A French Detective Story

This is how I came to be mixed up with certain detectives of the Rue de Jerusaleme, the Scotland Yard of Paris.

A friend of mine, a solicitor, had among his clients a firm of East India brokers, into which had recently been admitted a partner, the son of the senior member of the house. This young man had by no means turned out well. He had not only been extravagant, but utterly reckless in money matters, and had lately capped his previous offenses by absconding to the Continent, and taking with him £10,000 worth of foreign bonds or securities, that were not only the property of the firm, but formed the nest-egg on which the partners relied in case of a rainy day. Like most foreign securities, these bonds were payable to “bearer,” and were therefore all the more easy to negotiate or dispose of. For several reasons the firm did not wish to make their loss public. In the first place, doing so would have been a severe, if not a fatal, blow to their credit in the city; and, secondly, the other partners were naturally unwilling to publish the dishonesty of an individual whose father was the head of their establishment. Somehow or other it had been ascertained that the absconded partner had gone to Paris. The affair had been placed in the hands of my friend, who, as I have said, was their solicitor, and his plan was to try and recover the securities on payment of a certain sum. As a matter of course it was expected those persons in whose hands they were pledged would ask as much as possible for these documents; and that, if they knew that legally there was a doubt if they could be looked upon as stolen, their demands would rise in proportion.

To me was entrusted the task of getting back the bonds. It was agreed that I was to start the next day; that I was to pay as little as possible for the recovery; and that I was to keep the whole affair as much as possible in the dark.… Read More