House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  “I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult, Mr. Cross. We certainly can’t call the job off. You can see the position I’m in.”

  With Brady’s hand still raised, Cross gathered his nerve. “Just let me peek in the window.”

  “What the hell good will that do?” Brady sneered.

  “Maybe he didn’t hear anything. Listen, I set up this job. You can at least give me ten minutes.”

  Kent nodded, though his eyes were skeptical. “All right, but you’re wasting your time, Mr. Cross…and mine.”

  Brady bristled with anger at his boss’s decision but didn’t protest.

  But Cross stopped and realized he had no way of getting down into the moat. No one brought ladders or ropes because he didn’t think they’d be necessary. Then he remembered that the gray granite walls that lined the moat were rusticated—they had deep, wide joints between the stones that could act as hand and footholds. Cross swung his body over the iron fence and slowly climbed down the wall as if it were a ladder. When he reached the stone floor, he crept over to below the window and craned his neck until his eyes peered just over the very edge of the sill. The lower sash had been raised about a foot, allowing the servant to get some air in the cramped room. Cross let his eyes adjust to the darkness of the interior. He raised up further, until his entire head was through the opening.

  The room was a typical servant’s abode, with barely any furniture and no rug. Servants were not allowed to display personal items, and with its bare, white plaster walls, the space resembled a prison cell. Directly below Cross was a cast-iron bed. A young man in a white nightshirt slept soundly on his back. Cross had no idea why he was in the house. The entire domestic staff of city mansions always went to Newport in the summer.

  He crouched back down and crawled away from the window, then sat against the stone wall of the house. He needed time to think. Kent waited impatiently above.

  “Do you keep a bottle of that stuff on you?” Cross asked in a hushed voice to McGurk, who was standing next to Kent.

  “The chloroform? Never leave the house without it,” he said with a smile, patting the side pocket of his jacket.

  Cross extended his arms and beckoned for McGurk to toss down the bottle, which he did.

  “Mr. Culver, will you please go to the carriage and get the whip and the sponge in the horse’s water bucket?”

  Culver was puzzled by the request but trotted off. After a few minutes, he was back with the whip and sponge.

  “What the fuck are you doing, swell? Time’s a wasting,” Brady hissed from the sidewalk above.

  “Go to hell, you blackguard,” Cross said, surprising himself with his nerve. He looked up at Kent and spoke directly. “You’re not going to kill him.”

  Taking the oblong yellow sponge, he squeezed it out. With his penknife, he cut a slit in the end and inserted the long handle of the carriage whip into the space. He emptied the entire bottle onto the sponge. A pungent smell rose up in the warm night air.

  Cross crept back and slowly threaded the carriage handle through the open window. Leaning his whole body into the opening, he lowered the sponge to the sleeping man’s face, covering his nose. Two minutes passed. Cross pulled his head back and whispered up to McGurk, “Is this long enough?”

  McGurk chuckled. “With the shot you gave ’im? He won’t wake till tomorrow evening.”

  Cross pulled the carriage handle out and climbed back up the wall. “All right, let’s get to it,” he said to Kent, almost like an order.

  Cross finished lowering the bridge. After Culver jimmied open the rear door, Cross took them first down to the subbasement, where they easily yanked off the padlock and entered the vault. He stood aside while they cleaned out the space, placing everything in canvas sacks. They worked quickly and efficiently, a well-oiled team. Even Brady threw himself into the effort. The vault was bare in minutes, the loot transported quickly across the drawbridge and piled into the wagons that waited in the rear yard.

  Throughout the process, Kent stood, smoking a cigar and observing. He seemed to be enjoying every second of the experience and was a good leader, like a general at the front of his troops’ charge into battle. His men respected that. And his eyes were sharp. As one man came out, Kent grabbed his arm. He reached into the man’s jacket pocket, produced a bottle of wine, and ordered him to put it back.

  Once the last of the loot was removed, the gang reassembled in the kitchen, and Cross led them up the servants’ stairs to Mrs. Cook’s bedroom. Once inside, they stood in stunned silence, gaping at the walls.

  “Holy hell,” McGurk whispered.

  The walls of Mrs. Cook’s bedroom were beautifully carved, gilt boiserie that sparkled in the light of the huge crystal chandelier. Cross hadn’t designed this room. The interior was purchased from a Louis XVI palace in France and reassembled upon arrival in New York. At the far end, a gargantuan, ornately carved four-poster bed sat on a high platform fronted by a gilded balustrade, draped by a canopy of scarlet silk and dark-green velvet.

  “A family of ten could sleep in that goddamn thing,” McGurk said.

  Eager to get the men’s attention back to the job at hand, Cross pointed out the safe in the base of the statue of Diana. Two men eased it out and onto the maroon and gold carpet. Then a man brought in two lengths of wood, which were placed under the safe. They carried it out of the bedroom as though on a litter. They’d obviously done this many times before; it was all so amazingly fast.

  Next came Mrs. Cook’s clothes. Ball and evening gowns, furs, coats, dresses, riding habits, and hats of all description were swept from the closets and stuffed into more canvas sacks. Scores of shoes, scarves, gloves, silk petticoats, chemises, even whalebone corsets were taken. Then Cross escorted them to Mr. Cook’s bedroom. The closets of London-tailored clothes were also stripped bare. The thieves reminded Cross of a horde of locusts, devouring a crop and leaving not a speck of grain behind.

  As the robbery progressed, Cross realized that, to his surprise, he wasn’t scared. Out in the carriage, he had been a nervous wreck, sweating like a pig. But once inside, he’d been so swept up in the excitement of the event that he actually had a feeling of giddy elation, like he’d drunk a bottle of champagne. He was alive with energy; an electrical current seemed to flow through his body.

  The men worked in total silence. The gregariousness of that night at McGlory’s had vanished, and not one word was exchanged. As they continued to scoop up more articles in Cook’s bedroom, a great crash was heard from an adjacent room, like something breaking on the floor. The men froze. Almost at once, each man pulled a gun out of his side jacket pocket. Cross, who also stopped dead in his tracks, was momentarily fascinated at the variety of weapons drawn—derringers, short barrel revolvers, big Colt Navy revolvers, a western six-shooter.

  A few seconds of deafening silence passed until McGurk slowly walked toward the wood-paneled door and pushed it wide open. Every man held their breath until he shined his lantern in to see a calico cat on the fireplace mantel and a Chinese vase lying in pieces below on the stone hearth. The cat jumped down and rubbed and purred against McGurk’s pant leg. Laughter broke out, then the gang went back to work. McGurk picked up the cat, rubbed under its chin, and set it down gently. The room was Cook’s private study, his inner sanctum, where he went to escape his wife and the world. In went the gang and out came his rare sixteenth-century dueling pistols and his beloved collection of ancient and medieval swords.

  With an air of great satisfaction, Kent smoked and watched. Then he strolled around, taking a slow tour of the second floor. The long hallway was lined with green onyx stone and lit by five bronze chandeliers. At one end, it connected with a monumental staircase of gray marble. Eyes sweeping the space critically, Kent ordered that a Flemish tapestry depicting a battle from ancient Rome be carted away, along with two suits of armor that had been brought over from a Scottish
castle. A man was even sent back to Mrs. Cook’s bedroom to roll up her rug.

  Finally, Kent came over to Cross and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Does Cook collect manuscripts?”

  When Cross shook his head, a look of disappointment came over Kent’s face. Sighing, he looked up at the coffered wood ceiling of the study. Even this was decorated in gold leaf.

  “A private palace, this. The workmanship is amazing. One day, Mr. Cross, I’ll have a place like this too. And you’re going to design it. Millicent will love it.”

  Cross, whose heart normally leaped at the thought of a new commission, grimaced.

  “These paintings,” Kent said abruptly. “Any true masterpieces—Titians, Rembrandts?”

  “No, they’re all by popular French salon painters. Like that military scene over there—it’s by Meissonier,” Cross said, gesturing to a huge painting of Napoleon on horseback, directing his troops from a hilltop.

  “Too bad they’re so damn big. There’s no room for them in the wagons.”

  Cross laughed. “To a society man, the bigger a painting, the more valuable it must be.”

  Culver signaled to Kent: they were finished. He and Cross walked toward the monumental staircase but paused when Brady called out to them.

  “Kent!”

  “Go on. I’ll meet you in the back,” Kent said to Cross, who started down the stair.

  Brady was standing by a door at the end of the second-floor hall. “Look what I found,” he said, yanking a skinny teenage girl out of the doorway. She had bright red hair and blue eyes and was dressed in a plain cotton nightgown. She shook violently in Brady’s grasp, eyes wide in fright.

  “I heard crying—found her hiding on the third-floor rear stair.”

  “Come here, young lady,” Kent said in a kind, paternal voice. “Tell me, are you and the fellow downstairs the only ones in the house?”

  The girl nodded.

  “You know what happens to little girls who lie, don’t you?”

  “They go to hell. But I’m telling the truth, sir,” she said, voice trembling.

  “And why are you here?”

  “I forgot to bring Mrs. Cook’s cat with us,” she said, lowering her head in shame. “Jamie came back with me to get him, and we decided to spend the night. Please don’t tell her I forgot him. She’ll be so cross with me.”

  “It’s all right. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Kent reached out to stroke her hair, smiled at Brady, and walked away.

  15

  “The house wins again.”

  George stared at the green-felt faro table and the blue-ivory check that represented his twenty-five-dollar losing bet. The dealer, who sat behind the table with an assistant who tracked the house’s card count, met his eyes, looking for a sign that he would continue to bet. But George turned and walked away from the table, Kitty on his arm.

  He was down four thousand. Two hours ago, he had been ahead seven.

  Less than a week after his debt was forgiven, George had caved in and resumed gambling. He couldn’t help himself; the gambling dens reeled him in like a helpless fish. He fought with all his might, but it was useless. With college finished, George devoted more days to teaching. Doing so put him in constant proximity to the scores of gambling joints on the Lower East Side. Walking by them every day was torture. He was like a starving man walking by rows and rows of restaurants, smells of delicious food wafting out to tantalize him.

  His brief hiatus had been hell. Like a drunk on the wagon, his body seemed to go through withdrawal. Smoking, pacing back and forth in his apartment, and going for long walks in Central Park were no help in shaking off the malaise. Even while making love to Kitty, he thought about the tables. But there would be no income until the fall, when he started teaching at Saint David’s. The only money George had on hand was his weekly trust fund allowance, which he needed for living expenses. If he blew that, he’d have to live off Kitty—or worse, go to his parents. Inevitably, they would start asking questions.

  One morning, he leaped out of bed and, without really thinking, took the graduation watch Aunt Caroline had given him to a pawnbroker on East Forty-Fourth Street, along with a few other valuable trinkets, such as a gold cigarette case. With a one-thousand-dollar stake burning a hole in his pocket, George’s willpower vanished into thin air. Kitty begged him to stop with all her might, but it was like trying to halt a runaway locomotive. George could not be swayed.

  Because Kitty insisted on going with him, George went to a respectable house instead of the lowlife joints, which had the lower stakes he preferred. Chamberlain’s, a first-class gambling house that catered to society men, looked no different from the other brownstone mansions off the side streets of Broadway. The interior was magnificently furnished with expensive furniture, marble fireplaces, frescoed ceilings, and plush velvet carpets. Its front parlor was given over to the entertainment of guests, while the rear parlor was reserved for gambling. A large dining room beyond the rear parlor provided free meals, cigars, and liquor to the well-dressed patrons. Faro, the most popular game in the city, was played fairly in these first-class houses. George knew he wouldn’t be cheated.

  They sat down on a recamier in the front parlor, and Kitty laid her head on his shoulder.

  “I can lend you some money to keep playing.”

  “No. You’ve given me too much already,” George said. He kissed her cheek.

  “Bad night, George?” asked a rotund, Havana-puffing man as he walked past.

  “Just wasn’t my night, Senator.”

  Chamberlain’s boasted the most exclusive clientele in the city. Like Senator Philip Merrill of New Jersey. Two Congressmen, a city councilman, and an ex-governor were in attendance. The house’s most frequent customers, though, were Wall Street speculators. They were in the enviable position of being able to lose five thousand in a night and then make eight thousand from deals the following day.

  Merrill was standing next to Ned Chamberlain, the middle-aged proprietor. As the senator walked away, Chamberlain leaned in and spoke confidentially to George. “I’m sorry about tonight, Mr. Cross,” he said apologetically. “I hope we can come to an understanding about tonight’s setback. You’re the last person I’d like to see something happen to.” He bowed slightly and walked off.

  Kitty shot a glance at George, who remained silent. “You have to ask your aunt for some money, Georgie.”

  George looked at her in astonishment. “For Christ’s sake, Kitty, I could never do that. The shame it would bring on my family! They’d be ruined.”

  “Ruined? That’s all you goddamned society people care about—your good name.”

  “You don’t understand. You think society people live in a world of luxury and pleasure? Well, it comes at a price. There’s an incredibly rigid code of behavior we have to obey, and if we break one single rule, we’re subject to something worse than physical torture or death: expulsion from society. Forever. No forgiveness.”

  Kitty shook her head slowly from side to side. “You people just don’t know how good you have it.”

  “And you just don’t understand,” George said, giving her a playful kiss on the cheek.

  “It’s four a.m. Come back to my place,” she said, changing the subject abruptly.

  “No. I have to go home and get cleaned up for class. I promised the students we’d go to Battery Park, and I can’t let them down. Not after everyone else already has.”

  “I have to work this evening,” said Kitty, “but I could come over to your place at two.”

  “I’ll be at the Windsor Palace.”

  Kitty sat up and clutched George’s arm. “For God’s sake, Georgie, you can’t go back there.”

  “They have a chuck-a-luck game going on, and I can win. I know I can,” George said, determined. He had just been introduced to the dice game, which had become very popular on t
he Bowery. “I’ll put down a fiver and let it ride.”

  “No, my love. Don’t. Stay home and wait for me. I can cook you your favorite breakfast in the morning. Beefsteak and kidneys.” She stroked his hair, gazing at him.

  Kitty knew she could have any man in New York. She could be showered with wealth and diamonds, feted and adored. But she chose George. He didn’t think of her as a mere sex object; he actually enjoyed her company. To Kitty, their conversations were the best part of their romance—long, engaging rambles about everything under the sun. Sometimes they’d talk into the night so enthusiastically that they’d forget about making love. They had gone to the Museum of Natural History and the theater at Niblo’s Garden and strolled the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, arm in arm. Never was George embarrassed to be seen with her. Not like my clients, Kitty sometimes thought bitterly, who would avert their eyes if they happened to pass one another on the street. To them, she was still a whore, no matter how beautiful and poised she appeared. It delighted her that George was so nonjudgmental.

  And never once did he ask her to give up her work. There was the practical side, of course—he couldn’t support her yet, so she had to earn a living, making in one night what he would be making in a month as a teacher. And there was something very erotic to George that other men coveted his girl. George was never ashamed of what she did for a living, nor was she; in fact, she enjoyed it. Kitty was refreshingly open and comfortable about sex, and she knew how to give pleasure to a man. To the society girls George knew, sex was an unpleasant obligation in a well-arranged marriage. When it came to immorality, his world was unforgiving. He told her once about a classmate of his sister Julia’s who had been hounded out of society because she sat beside a gentleman in a carriage instead of opposite. Her family was ruined. Even the slightest mention of sex in polite company was deeply inappropriate; a woman who exposed her ankle was dubbed a harlot.

  But all this ostensible propriety, Kitty knew full well, was an elaborate facade. Men of George’s class engaged in the most deviant sexual practices, sometimes with girls as young as ten. George had seen his father’s friend, Stanford White, entertaining one no more than thirteen at Miss Jennie’s. Half the buildings between Fifth and Seventh Avenues and Twenty-Fourth and Fortieth Streets were used for immoral goings-on, a veritable sexual playground for the rich and powerful. Sometimes it seemed that every society gentleman was a part of this secret world of indecency and vice. Kitty remembered a client telling her that a gentleman wouldn’t be a real gentleman if he didn’t have a dark secret, be it women, gambling, or little boys.