House of Thieves

by Charles Belfoure

  “Here. I think this will do you some real good, Charlie Cross.”

  Charlie’s heart dropped like a stone. He looked up and saw his big brother standing above him, a very amused look on his face.

  “Let’s have a talk onshore, Little Brother,” said George.

  40

  “John. So good to see you, old man,” Stanford White bellowed. “I was wondering when you and Helen would make it up to Newport.”

  “With Helen preparing for Julia’s coming-out ball and all the work that’s come into the office of late, it’s been hard to get away,” Cross said.

  “I’m eager to see your design for the theater.”

  “You’ll see it in American Architect and Building News next month,” Cross said.

  “John Cross here is one of the city’s best architects, Bob,” White said to the tall man standing next to him. “You know Robert Goelet, John?”

  “Yes, we’ve met several times,” Cross said, nodding to Goelet.

  “Mr. Cross, always a pleasure,” Goelet said. “Quite a crowd tonight, eh?”

  The horseshoe-shaped porch at the rear of the Newport Casino was packed with women, whose vibrant summer gowns stood in stark contrast to the black evening wear of the men. The casino, on Bellevue Avenue, was the social center of the summer Newport season. It had been designed by Charlie McKim for James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of the New York Herald. Bennett’s friend had gotten kicked out of the Newport Reading Room, the resort’s former social center, after Bennett dared him to ride a horse inside. Outraged, Bennett bought land and built his own club. It was a wonderfully creative building, covered in wood shingles, its porch clad in a screen of lattice and spindles. White, who’d decorated the rooms, added a domed clock tower. Lawn tennis courts were added shortly after the building was completed, and McKim included a sizable theater on the second floor.

  Tonight, there was to be a performance by a well-known tenor from Italy.

  “Stanny designed a wonderful house for you, Mr. Goelet,” Cross said.

  After the Astors, the Goelets were the biggest landlords in New York, collecting millions in rent. Goelet and his brother, Ogden, had inherited the business from their father and uncle. Of late, real estate had become the most lucrative business in the city. If he’d known how valuable the land would become, John Jacob Astor was fond of saying, he would have bought up the entire island of Manhattan.

  Two years before, Stanny had done a huge shingled house for Robert Goelet on Narragansett Avenue, near the cliff overlooking the Atlantic. The project cost more than eighty thousand dollars. The house’s rear facade, facing the ocean, had a porch that stretched the width of the house, supported by the slender, Japanese-inspired columns Stanny so admired.

  “We love Southside. Sitting on the porch, seeing the sun rise over the ocean…it’s my favorite place in the world,” Goelet said, smiling at Stanny.

  To create a house in which a client loved to spend his time—that was one of the best things about being an architect. It wasn’t just four walls and a roof; it was a home and a refuge, a place where one might feel safe from the unfairness and cruelty of the world. Cross wished he could design a country house of his own. He could escape there and take his family with them, spiriting them away from harm.

  It was seven o’clock. The crowd began to make its way toward the theater. Cross excused himself and went to look for Helen. He found her in the café, surrounded as usual by male admirers. One of them, a distinguished man with an aquiline nose and a mane of swept-back hair, he’d seen somewhere before.

  “John, you remember Count Aleksandrov?”

  “Of course. We met at Honoria’s party. How are you, Count?”

  “In the presence of such beauty, I always feel elated,” the count said in heavily accented English, nodding toward Helen.

  Cross smiled at the compliment. Then he excused himself and pulled Helen aside.

  “Remember, you’ve got just two hours,” she said urgently. “Once the performance is over, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold Goelet here until you get back.”

  “If anyone asks where I am, tell them I hate Italian opera and went out for a smoke,” Cross said. He knew no one would miss him. The men would kill for the honor of sitting next to Helen and be glad that he was out of the way.

  “The necklace with eight hundred pearls is in the safe under the floorboards, in her private study on the second floor in front of the bay window,” Helen reminded him. “You have to lift the rug. And Goelet’s ninth-century gold chalice is behind a panel on the fourth bookshelf from the top in his library.”

  Cross nodded. Then he drifted to the rear of the crowd filing into the theater. As the last person entered, he slipped down the stairs to the entry hall and left. Walking two blocks north, Cross turned into an alley where a boy held the reins of a bay. Giving him a dollar, Cross mounted and headed east, making his way through backstreets until he came to Narragansett Avenue. As he rode, he couldn’t help wondering if—or when—the informant would strike again. Would he be riding into a trap? Would he find the Pinkertons and his brother waiting for him?

  No. He had to put his fears out of his mind and concentrate on the task ahead.

  Finally, he reached a large house on the right. There, the road dead-ended at the cliff. Tying the horse up behind a large holly bush, Cross opened the saddle bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He checked his pocket watch—7:15 p.m.—and walked up the drive.

  As he reached the front porch, Kent emerged from the front door. “Such a nice summer house. I’ll keep the details in mind when you design one for me,” he said, puffing away on his Havana.

  Cross cursed him under his breath but gave only a strained smile. “What about those servants?”

  “Fast asleep. Montgomery has sprinkled his fairy dust,” Kent said.

  Though it wouldn’t have bothered his conscience, Kent had thought killing six to eight servants too time-consuming. Another method had to be employed to get them out of the way. Luckily, the large houses always needed extra help in the summer. By lying through his teeth, Montgomery secured a job as a gardener’s assistant for the week before the robbery. He showed himself a hard and dedicated worker and was quickly accepted into the Goelet household. His fellow servants liked his jovial personality. Mrs. Hopkins, the widowed head housekeeper, had already taken a fancy to him.

  Two hours earlier, as the servants prepared to have their tea, Montgomery kindly offered to help—and put an expert dose of chloral hydrate in the pot. In the servants’ dining hall, Cross saw all seven fast asleep, heads resting on the long oak table. They looked like schoolchildren, fallen asleep atop their desks. The head butler was snoring so loudly that Cross burst out laughing. Shaking his head, he walked back to the twenty-four-foot-high entry hall White had designed. Kent’s men had already begun to work. Priceless Japanese and Chinese pottery was snatched up and bagged. Paintings came off the walls. With a blueprint he’d secured from White’s office, Cross directed them to a secret compartment behind a wall in Goelet’s dressing room that held jewelry, rare coins, and stacks of cash. His wife’s closets were cleaned out, as well as the china and silver service. Helen’s keen eye led them to the floor safe, where Mrs. Goelet kept her priceless necklace, and to the gold chalice.

  Watching the buzz of activity, that same incredible sense of exhilaration swept over Cross like an ocean wave. He felt as if he were walking on air, floating a foot above the floor.

  He strolled through the house, as much to admire Stanny’s interior decoration skills as to supervise the men. On each successive job, Stanny outdid himself—a hard thing for an architect to accomplish. But Stanny had yet to reach his artistic zenith. While Cross didn’t like robbing a friend’s client, he knew from conversations with Robert that he had to pick different marks. Mansions in the city were no longer safe. That made Newport the next most lucrative
target.

  The men were working their way through the eight bedrooms on the second floor. As Montgomery opened a wide, paneled oak door, a deafening explosion rang out, and he fell to the hall carpet, clutching his right leg.

  “I’ve been shot,” he cried and launched into a tirade of expletives. Dozens of tiny bloodstains appeared on his light gray Brooks Brothers trousers. His leg, the gang realized as they clustered around, had been blasted by buckshot.

  Another blast exploded above their heads, and the men dove for the floor.

  From inside the bedroom, an angry, high-pitched voice called out, “General Jackson, the British have commenced the attack! They’re advancing in force against the earthworks.”

  Another blast followed. The men scattered to either side of the bedroom door, trying to see inside. Kent joined them. In the dim light streaming through the bedroom shutters, he could make out a withered old man, sitting on the bed, reloading a double-barreled shotgun.

  “We have them on the run,” the old man shouted. “The bastards are falling back.” He raised the shotgun and unloaded both barrels at the door.

  Cross came up behind Kent. “What the hell is going on? This racket’s going to alarm the neighbors.”

  Kent frowned at him. “It’s a family member, I believe, who thinks he’s under attack.”

  “General Jackson, the fog is lifting. We can pick them off like squirrels!”

  Cross peeked in. “The old fool thinks he’s back with Stonewall Jackson?”

  “Not Stonewall—Andrew Jackson. At the Battle of New Orleans, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Cross was dumbfounded. “What should we do?”

  “You men finish up—and don’t forget that tapestry in the library,” Kent yelled.

  Another blast boomed forth. Cross and Kent ducked behind the wall, exchanging uneasy glances. Then Kent got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the bedroom.

  “Cease fire, cease fire! The Redcoats are retreating. We’ve got them on the run, boys!” Kent yelled with great dramatic effect, as if he were on a stage. Cautiously, he made his way to the side of the bed, stood up, and slapped the old man on the shoulder.

  “Good work, good work. We’ve won. I’m proud of you, son.”

  The old man laughed, waving the shotgun above his bald, wrinkled head.

  “We did it, General. We thumped those goddamn Britishers.”

  Kent smiled and gently removed the gun from the old man’s hands. Gently, he eased him back against the pillow.

  “You’ve had a rough day, son. Take a rest.”

  The old man smiled and closed his eyes. “We did it, sir,” he mumbled. “We whooped the hell out of ’em.”

  A bottle of soothing syrup stood on the nightstand. Kent picked it up and examined its contents. Seeing that it contained cocaine and had an 80 percent alcohol content, he gave the old man three tablespoons.

  “Sweet dreams, soldier.”

  Kent set the gun under the bed and left the bedroom. In the hallway, he met Cross, who was shouting orders, trying to get the men out. Montgomery was being helped down the stairs, still cursing his head off.

  The house had a corner turret. Cross ran to one of its tall windows and looked down Narragansett Avenue.

  “Gather the rest of the loot and get the hell out of here,” he yelled. “It’s the police!”

  Galloping down the street were two black-helmeted constables. If it had been a workingman’s house instead of a millionaire’s, Cross thought, the police would have taken hours to respond to the call.

  “Let ’em in the front door, and I’ll take care of ’em,” Brady said

  Kent turned to face him. “Get downstairs, lock the front doors, and rip out the telephone,” he commanded.

  Cross ran into the hallway. “Come on, goddamn it, get a move on. We haven’t got much time.” From a window in the entry hall, he saw the two policemen tethering their horses at the hitching post.

  “Everybody out. Now!” yelled Kent.

  Men dragging long, white canvas bags ran past him to the rear of the house.

  The constables started knocking on the front door in a polite but insistent manner. One tried the doorknob.

  “This is the police! Open up!” One of the constables finally lost patience and pounded his fist on the glass-and-wood door.

  Knowing that the transport of so much loot through Newport would attract unwanted attention, Kent had devised an ingenious scheme. Goelet’s backyard overlooked the ocean. It was easy to move the booty down the steep cliff path to the rocky beach, where three rowboats were waiting, ready to take the loot to a small steamship anchored out beyond the breaking waves. Kent’s men bounded out the back door and down the path to the beach.

  The police were shouting and pounding with all their might on the door.

  With the police at the front door, Cross and Kent ran down the hallway to the rear servants’ stair that led to the kitchen. Suddenly, Kent stopped and faced the wall on his left.

  “My God, that’s a manuscript from 900 A.D.! A Muslim work from Spain. Look!”

  On the wall were four framed, illuminated manuscript pages, done in gold and silver with brilliant purple and red.

  “These are priceless,” shouted Kent, as he began to take them off the walls.

  Cross stood in shock for a second, then ran to the top of the main stair and saw only one constable trying to force the door. He knew the other had headed for the back door. The constable smashed the leaded glass of the door and reached his hand in to unlock the door.

  “Christ almighty, Kent, we have to go,” screamed Cross, grabbing Kent by his sleeve. He had the four framed manuscript pages under his arm. Cross could hear the policeman running through the first floor like a crazed man, in and out of every room. When they got down the servants’ stair, they heard the other policeman break through the back door, and they retreated up the stairs.

  Kent knew the severity of their predicament. Cross watched with horror as Kent pulled a small pistol from the side pocket of his linen suit.

  “No,” hissed Cross, who looked about the hallway and yanked Kent by his lapels into a bedroom. He pulled him to what looked like a closet protruding from the wall. Opening the door, he shoved Kent in and followed behind. In a second, they were sliding down a corkscrew slide made up of polished sheet metal. Around and around they slid until they crashed into a door at its bottom. It opened up to the side yard, and out they ran to the beach path.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Kent in amazement.

  “Goelet’s aunt is scared of burning to death in a fire, so he had Stanford White put in a spiral fire escape slide just for her. It’s compact and better-looking than sticking a stair on the side of the house,” huffed Cross as they ran.

  At the path at the top of the cliff, he halted while Kent ran down, still clinging to his precious manuscripts. Cross saw that two rowboats were almost to the steamship. The last one was waiting for Kent on the beach. Luckily, the ocean was calm.

  With the police inside in the house, Cross circled around to the front yard and back to his horse. He was mentally and physically exhausted but managed to ride back to the casino without pitching off. He slipped into the rear of the theater as the audience rose to give the Italian howler a standing ovation. The crowd filed down into the courtyard, where Cross found his wife standing with the Goelets and a crowd of other guests.

  “I hope you enjoyed tonight’s performance, John,” said Helen in a soft, mocking tone.

  “I did. The evening was an unqualified success. We must do this again.”

  “Oh, and John,” Helen said. “Mr. Goelet has invited us back to his home for a late dinner.”

  “How kind. I’ve been dying to see the house.”

  41

  “You red devil, you’ll never have me!”

  “Y
ou’ll be the first of all my wives in my lodge, white woman!”

  “Never, you beast!”

  “But first you must be made to obey!”

  As the war-bonneted warrior chief hefted his tomahawk, ready to rain down a crushing blow upon the scantily clad white maiden, an explosion sounded outside the log cabin. Through the windows came the roar and crackle of reddish-yellow flames.

  A bugle call rang out, followed by a volley of earsplitting gunshots. The Indians inside the log cabin ran to the windows, pointed their Winchesters, and fired.

  “Holy shit, Eddie, they’re using real bullets!” Charlie screamed.

  Amid the chaos of the attack, the Indian chief leered at the white girl, lowered his weapon, and ripped her white lace bodice, exposing a plump, pink breast. The girl screamed, cowering back.

  “He’s going to fuck her right there,” yelled Eddie.

  The audience was in a frenzy, screaming and cursing the Indian for what he was about to do. The girl fainted, dropping limply to the floor, and people gasped, realizing that the redskin would easily have his way with her.

  “Leave her alone, you red shit!” someone in the audience screamed.

  Then the tide seemed to turn. The Indians at the windows began to fall like tenpins, grasping their chests where the bullets had pierced them. More explosions followed.

  With an evil smirk, the chief knelt over the helpless girl and lowered her dress to her waist.

  “Ya dirty Injun bastard, don’t you touch her,” bellowed a woman wearing a floppy hat ringed with fake yellow flowers.

  With a resounding crash, the crude wooden door of the log cabin slammed open, and a young cavalry officer with flowing blond hair thrust his way inside. Seeing the chief, his eyes widened in shock, and he lunged forward, ramming his saber through the Indian. The chief staggered back, holding his hands over his wound, and dropped to the floor. The crowd went mad with joy, cheering and clapping.