The Gambler’s Wax Finger

Charles Legate—A Forger—Studying Him Up—Fifty Thousand Dollars, his “Prize”— Description of Legate—No Two Persons Ever Agree in Describing Another—A Mark Hit Upon—Start for St. Louis—Musings—Curious Incidents of My Journey—A Genealogical “Dodge”—On Legate’s Track at Last—St. Louis Reached—Of My Stay There—Leave for New Orleans Per Steamer—A Genial Crowd of Men and Women on Board—Characteristics of a Mississippi “Voyage”—Napoleon, Arkansas—Some “Characters” Come on Board There—A Gambling Scene on Board—One Jacobs Takes a Part—A Private Conference with Jacob’s Negro Servant—A Terrific Fight on Board Among the Gamblers—Jacobs Set Upon, and Makes a Brave Defence—How I Discovered “Jacobs” to be Probably Legate, in the Melee—He is Badly Bruised—His Life Despaired of—We Arrive in New Orleans—Jacobs’ Identification as Legate—Legate Proves to be Very Rich—A Curious Visit to an Italian Artist’s Studio—A Novel Medicine Administered to Signore Cancemi, the Sick Artist—He Gets Well at Once

by George McWatters

Early in my detective life, I was commissioned by a New York mercantile house to go to St. Louis first, and “anywhere else thereafter on the two continents” (as the senior member of the house fervently defined my latitude) where my thread might lead, to work up a subtle case of forgery to the amount of fifty thousands dollars, out of which the house had been defrauded by one Charles Legate, a Canadian by birth, but combining in himself all the craft of an Italian, with the address of the politest Frenchman, and the bold perseverance and self-complacency of a London “speculator.”

After a thorough study in every particular of the correspondence between Legate and the house, which covered a long period of time, and in which was discovered to me, as I thought, a pretty clear understanding of the man in all his various… Read More