Read Ebook: From Boniface to Bank Burglar; Or The Price of Persecution How a Successful Business Man Through the Miscarriage of Justice Became a Notorious Bank Looter by White George M George Miles

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"I'm Tim Golden, one of the New York detective force," said he. "I'm here with the sheriff to get you for that Walpole Savings-bank job."

"Bank job?" I repeated, failing to catch his meaning.

"Yes, the Walpole bank burglary."

I had begun to feel a little upset. The worst I could think of was, that by the barest possibility I had made a business mistake and that a lawsuit was confronting me. At the mention of a bank burglary I felt that little worriment vanish, and bursting into a laugh, I cried: "Come, come! you can't persist in that joke, sheriff, for it won't work. Try another, old fellow."

Detective Golden's next words frightened me, for I realized that he was in earnest.

"This is serious, Mr. White. You're wanted in New Hampshire for that Walpole bank burglary, and there is no dodging it."

"Burglary! Why, man, my business affairs occupy me from sixteen to twenty hours a day, and I've been at it every day."

"Can't help that," said Golden.

"But I can." I felt my anger rising rapidly.

"You had time enough to be much in the company of Mark Shinburn," said the detective, looking at me, his eyes half closed. There was a harsh appearance about his face I failed to like when he did that.

"And who's Shinburn?" I asked. "Never have I heard of such a name."

"You were with him a lot last fall."

"It's a mistake--a big mistake!" I insisted angrily.

"But you have heard of Wyckoff?" insinuatingly inquired Detective Golden. I started. Any one else as innocent as I would have done the same. I had actually forgotten Wyckoff; yes, I had been with him last fall when he made the trip to Claremont and Concord.

"It seems to be of no use, Mr. White," put in the sheriff, "for that Wyckoff you were trundling about the country is Mark Shinburn, now under arrest at Keene. I confess the whole thing is a puzzle to me, but Golden, here, says you're mixed up in the case somehow, and you'll have to come up to Keene with us."

"But it is an outrage," cried I, following up the outburst with an argument much too long for the occasion, for it profited me nothing. Not a word I could say would in any way straighten out the tangle. In short, I was under arrest. Detective Golden asked me if I would go with him to New Hampshire without extradition formalities.

"Of course I'll go, if I must go at all; but, being innocent of this mess, I hate to be treated in such an ignominious manner. It is not the result I dread, for an innocent man can't be proved guilty in this age. Yes, I'm ready to go with you now."

And I went on to my fate--a fate I could not have foreseen. What a trip it was--one I never shall forget. We arrived at Keene, a lively though old-fashioned town, and the county-seat of Cheshire County, and I was, for the first time in my life, behind prison bars.

After all the years since that tremendous affliction, the like of which turns black hair to gray and the smooth brow into furrows, I can't bring myself to a calm retrospection of the scenes in which I was powerless in the strong hands of my unscrupulous enemies. But in all the blackness that memory still brings up to me, I have one bright remembrance of the faithfulness of my relatives and close friends, who, thank God, believed me innocent then, and do to this day.

While awaiting the action of the law and consulting frequently with my lawyers, I had ample time to learn the inside story of the Walpole bank robbery, of which I had no knowledge, save what I heard from neighbors and the newspapers. I had no pecuniary interest in the bank; therefore, when the arrest came, I had forgotten that a crime of that sort had been committed. Many of its details were told me later, by Detective Golden, and such as he didn't know were supplied me by others, among whom were my legal advisers.

THE UNEQUAL FIGHT

May no other man realize what I suffered in the weeks of confinement in the jail at Keene.

Innocent of the crime of burglary, a man who had always stood up boldly among his fellow-men, looking all squarely in the eye, to be thus ignominiously, horribly entangled in the meshes of the law was to set upon him the torments of hell. I doubt, if there be a corner set apart, in the infernal region, in which certain condemned ones must meditate forever over their evil deeds, whether their mental agony will be a tittle of the writhing anguish that besieged my soul, until I was left a wreck of my former self.

Ay, the torture I endured--an indescribable, lingering horror--can in no manner be compared with the most excruciating physical distress that mortal may bear and survive, except to demonstrate, by comparison, the insignificance of the latter. So far apart are they, that they stand as the East from the West, the remotest Past from the remotest Future.

I was at times far removed from a calm contemplation of my position, and on more than one occasion wondered if my brain would retain its normal reasoning. Once I feared that I would go stark mad, with the wild rush of a thousand fancies, pursuing each other through my brain, like so many little green-eyed imps. Oh, it was horrible. And there came moments when I cursed man and God, and raved that man was a misnomer for all that was devilish and that God was only a myth. Again, and I was being sifted, as it were, through a sieve of the finest mesh, that part of me left in the sieve being transformed into all that was vile, and my pulverized self passing through, all the good in me, being blown to the four winds of heaven. No doubt that this was a fantasy, yet as I lay in my cold cell I was so vividly impressed that it seemed a hideous reality.

Following such an affliction, there would come calmer moments, in which I was able to contemplate my condition, in much the same manner as a hardened criminal. When this mood possessed me, I had an awful, haunting dread of what the future might hold to rule my after days. But, as the time passed, and I had frequent consultations with my attorney; talked of the associations I had had with the man Wyckoff, whom I had come to know as Mark Shinburn; discussed my arrest at Stoneham, when I believed, at first, that I was the victim of a joke; and went over the various stages of my case, I began, at intervals, to be somewhat philosophical.

It was a hard matter to realize, that I, an innocent man, was actually under arrest and locked in the same jail with professional criminals, and accused, jointly with them, of burglary. Yet more difficult was it to believe that this man Shinburn was Wyckoff, the United States deputy marshal and guest at my hotel. Though he was identically the same smooth, affable gentleman in jail that I had met and travelled with the year before, I found it almost impossible at times to believe that he was a criminal--which I knew from the accumulating evidence. Day after day I came in contact with him, talked with him, discussed the evidence for and against him, and heard him confess to being sorry that his acts had involved me. I had liked Wyckoff the deputy marshal, and I liked none the less Mark Shinburn, though he was the means of my undoing.

As I lay in jail, I did not know that the avarice of a stockholder of the Walpole Bank would lead him to persecute me almost beyond measure. I did not think that he would, with good reason to believe me guiltless, use his influence to set one of the real criminals free, and set the law upon me, in order that he might recover the loss he had sustained through the robbery. I did not know that he would continue his persecution until every dollar of my wealth was stripped from me, and I was left at the mercy of my friends to defend my innocence. But so it was.

While I lay in jail, asking day by day for a hearing, the coils of injustice were being tightened about me. The prosecution did not show its hand by any too quick action. It was only when the process of the law must be carried out that there was no longer secrecy kept by those who held my fate in their hands. I had asked for an immediate hearing on the day of my arrest, but it had been denied me. One would have thought that a man who had borne a good reputation in a community bordering on the very jail that held him, would have been given more consideration than a professed criminal. It was not so. The earliest opportunity given me to be heard was four weeks after my arrest. Then I was afforded only a chance to plead not guilty to the charge, for the district attorney, F. F. Lane, asked for an adjournment for two weeks and was given it. What conspiracy was hatched during those two weeks, I shall allow the facts to tell in their undeniable way.

The jail was one, for strength, that modern builders might copy with profit to governments. It was of granite walls, two feet thick, with double-barred windows and ponderous doors, well secured with massive locks. The main floor of the jail proper was used for small fry thieves and petty offenders, but the second floor contained three cells which were used for the safe keeping of those charged with murder and felony. Shinburn, Cummings, and I occupied these cells. The two end ones were light, but that in the middle was on the order of a dungeon. My cell was large, and two windows opened from it to the street.

One morning, shortly after the adjourned hearing, I missed Cummings. No meals were brought to him that day, and when I could speak to the jailer's wife, she told me that he had been set free. At the first opportunity I communicated with Shinburn, whose cell was the farthest from mine. He said that Cummings had been let out of the back door of the jail, so to speak, after relinquishing all claim to the five thousand dollars he had when Detective Golden arrested him.

"Although the district attorney knew that Jim sold the bond to the Scranton man, it was not possible to prove that the cash found on him was received from the sale," said Shinburn; "and when Jim said he'd let up on the dust in case there was no conviction, Lane let him go. What's more, Jim's railroad fare was paid to Rochester."

Galling to me were these facts, if facts they were; and I had no reason to doubt Shinburn in view of the positive information that Cummings was no longer a prisoner. What a turn of fate was it, indeed, that wrought out the freedom of a guilty man and left me, the innocent one, still in jail! Was it any wonder that I groaned aloud and wondered whether there was a God?

I now recall with what rapidity my case was called after the district attorney had gotten Cummings out of the way. It was put forward with all the vigor that I had clamored for six weeks prior, and excuses were made that the delay was caused by the difficulty in framing the case. As the time for the hearing drew near, I had a feeling that I was in deadly peril, though Mr. Lynde assured me that there was no doubt that I would not be held for the grand jury.

At last the day of the hearing before the magistrate came, and Shinburn and I were taken into court. Mr. Lynde represented me, while Don H. Woodward, a bright young attorney, had been retained by Shinburn. The latter's brother Frank, of Saratoga, had come East to look after his interests. At times I had hopes that I would be free at the close of the hearing, and again I would be despondent. I knew that I ought not to be where I was, and it did seem to me that no circumstances ought to be convincing enough to long imprison an innocent man. The discharge of Cummings, by what means I never quite knew, created a grave doubt in me; besides, I hadn't much faith in the wisdom of the magistrate at the hearing.

Mr. Lynde made a good representation for me, and so did Woodward for Shinburn. In taking up my case, Mr. Lynde asked for a separate hearing on my behalf, on the ground that the facts in the charge were vastly different from those Shinburn must meet. This, District Attorney Lane opposed with all his legal power and personal influence. All the pleading that my attorney or I could do fell on unsympathetic ears, apparently. My plea, as an innocent man, for the administration of common, humane justice, was as futile as was Mr. Lynde's. It was ruled that Shinburn, the guilty, and White, the innocent, must be examined together. And we were. The facts were against him, and I, with him for a millstone about my neck, as it were, was held to await the action of the grand jury. Shinburn, being guilty of the crime charged, had hoped to escape, and it seemed to me that I had a right to.

Thus was I doomed to stand in the same prisoners' dock with him, my case tightly fastened to his with legal thongs,--the innocent and the guilty to stand or fall together! What an unequal fight, what an injustice, was dealt me!

In my declining years I often wonder, if there be a Supreme Ruler,--and I believe there is,--whether, on the Judgment Day, there'll not be an awful reckoning for those who were so unjustly against me in my vain battle to establish my innocence.

Realizing how matters were going, I asked Mr. Lynde to retain the services of Mr. Woodward, and as I bade him good-night at the jail, we'd decided to call to our aid also, ex-Judge Cushion and John M. Way, both of whom I knew very well. The bail in my case was fixed at fifteen thousand dollars, and in Shinburn's, five thousand more. I hoped to be out into the world again, before many hours, no matter what the future held for me beyond the grand jury. As I meditated over the release of Cummings and the action of the magistrate, I actually would not have been surprised if Shinburn had been discharged, while I, alone, was held to an accounting.

While I had lain in jail, Herbert Bellows began a suit in tort in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and, attaching my property, sacrificed it at a forced sale. Though the trial of the suit was never had, I was stripped of my property and left financially helpless, save for the loyalty of my friends. Notwithstanding this lack of means, these friends, not a few of them my creditors, came to my assistance, and I was admitted to bail. In the meantime the grand jury handed down a joint indictment against Shinburn and myself, and the case was placed on the calendar of the October term of the Cheshire County Court.

HANGING OF THE MILLSTONE

The trial day came, but our case was not called until long after noon. A big crowd was in the court-room, as widespread interest had been caused by the predicament which I was in. There were hundreds of people present from several counties, a great many of whom could not obtain admittance, owing to the lack of room.

I sat with my counsel, while Shinburn was seated twenty feet away, with his. My attorneys had planned to make a great fight for a separate trial, and had come to court primed with material to wage the battle. While District Attorney Lane, who I knew was as persistent as ever to convict me, was trying to get a jury, I had an opportunity to look about me. Herbert T. Bellows was there to press the charge against us, and as I looked in his face, I could see that he had no sympathy for me. Two women and a man, sitting not far from Shinburn, were pointed out to me as Mrs. and Miss Kimball and Frank Shinburn. The former, mother and daughter, and the latter, Shinburn's brother from Saratoga, had come to testify to an alibi for him. The women, I was told, had dined in a Boston hotel with him, at the time of the burglary. Another friend, whose name was said to be William Matthews, of New York City, sat near Shinburn and was present to testify that the latter was in Boston at the time of the burglary; and again, in testimony as to character, would swear that he knew the prisoner in New York, as a respectable Wall Street broker.

There were many of my friends present, which included my Boston business partners, Charles Meriam, a broker who had done no little business for me, and my friends and my employees from Stoneham. Besides these, I saw, what was dearer than all, my relatives, sitting there to say by their acts that they believed me innocent, though the whole world should be against me.

Disregarding the district attorney's anxiety to get a jury together, we registered a plea of not guilty to the crime of burglary, and Judge Cushion, addressing Judge Doe, the ruler of the court, asked for a separate trial of the indictment against me.

"We do not, your honor, dispute the law," said he, "but we wish to plead for a deep consideration of the merits of the case. It has been set forth that the prisoner Shinburn and my client, Mr. White, must, under the construction of the statutes of this state, be tried together, because the acts alleged to have been committed by one are linked with the acts committed by the other, as charged, and that this is the best procedure, in order to best serve the interests of the state, to the end that the law shall be vindicated and those punished who committed the Walpole bank burglary.

"Now, your honor, there is no man who stands firmer than I for the elevation of the moral and legal standards. I would see men walk in the best paths of citizenship, and I would have the people look upon the law as something too pure and unsullied to be lightly held, instead of being obeyed for fear of the consequences. I would have the law respected because it is right, and not because there is a penalty if it is violated. But in the case of the prisoners before the court to-day, there is a distinct difference. In Shinburn we have a man about whom there is nothing known in this community. He may be guilty of the charge of burglary or he may not. So far as I know, he is falsely accused. But, as to George White, my client, many of you here know, and I know, that until this damnable accusation was brought against him he was untouched by the shadow of suspicion.

"There are, no doubt, many in this court-room to-day who have known him as child and man, and who know him to be all that a well-bred youth and man should be. Born almost on this very soil, he has been educated, instructed in business affairs, and by his diligence and unusual energy has won the respect of all who have personally known him, and such as have not been fortunate enough to have an intimate acquaintance with him have respected him for the fine business reputation that his efforts have won. From one pursuit to another he went on, only to become more and more successful, and until the day that this awful charge was laid at his door, no man had dared to breathe a vile word against his splendid character. I doubt if he had an enemy in the world the day of his arrest, and, as far as I know, he has none to-day.

"But a robbery was committed in Walpole; a bank was unlocked with the cashier's keys, and several thousands of dollars were appropriated. Presently we find that two men, accused of that crime, have been apprehended. In the course of an investigation by the authorities, it was developed that these men, one alleging himself to be a United States deputy marshal, had hired, at various times, horses and carriages from the livery stable owned by my client, Mr. White, and that on an occasion he drove them to the points they desired, as he had been engaged to do. Having acted as their servant, and having been well paid for it, Mr. White returned to the pursuit of his business, and was in entire ignorance of the fact that the two men he had thus served were, at the very time, plotting to rob the Walpole Savings-bank, as is charged in the indictment.

"Now I claim, your honor, that in Mr. White, an innocent citizen, a reputable business man, whose character is above the awful imputation against him, we have an unusual case; and that this court of justice, in view of the fact that all men are entitled to every privilege whereby they may establish their innocence, is bound to respect those rights.

"In Mr. White we have a man known to the community in which he is to be tried. In the moral court he has been on trial before his fellow-men all his life, and the verdict has been handed down, that he has done well. We find that the magistrate who held him for the grand jury declared that he must stand trial, side by side, with a man who is an entire stranger in the community; and why? Because, your honor, this man saw fit to hire horses and vehicles from him! One of the men who went to Mr. White's stable and engaged a carriage, and who was apprehended and charged with the Walpole bank burglary, has been set free. Why is it that the man Cummings, about whom we know nothing, is given a clean bill of health, while my client here, Mr. White, whose life has been an open book, is held to prove his innocence? If the prisoner Shinburn, who, with Cummings, hired vehicles from Mr. White, is guilty, why is not the man Cummings brought before the bar to answer? Instead of that, your honor, the district attorney has arraigned one of the accused and permitted the other to go, and my client, Mr. White, seems to have been brought in to fill up the vacancy.

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