g with, as we did not think it
policy to risk our entire capital in one place. My first idea was to
find some solicitor of standing who kept his account at the Bank of
England, to give him a retaining fee of L100 to act as my legal adviser,
telling him some fairy tales about establishing a branch firm in London,
and engage him, as soon as we started, to devote all his time to our
business at a fat salary. But there were many objections to having a
lawyer to introduce me, they being wide awake and liable to scrutinize
too closely. If one should depart so far from his policy of caution as
to introduce a new client he might after the introduction easily notify
the bank that I was a stranger to him and perhaps advise them to
investigate, and investigation was the one thing I must avoid. Of
course, one is supposed to give reference, even if introduced. Although
I had no acquaintance with this bank's methods, yet I was confident that
all those at the top must be a stupid lot of red-tape sticklers, and I
resolved to do my business with them alone. I was pretty sure that the
routine of an introduction once well over, so as to give me access to
the officials, they could be easily satisfied and made to help on the
fraud, in place of being obstacles. The result proved my surmise
correct, for such a lot of self-sufficient barnacles no institution in
the world was ever burdened with.

The dry rot of officialism permeated the bank through and through; even
the bank solicitors, the Messrs. Freshfields, were merely "highly
respectable," and sometimes when that term is applied in England it
indicates mediocrity. The Freshfields managed to spend four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars of the bank's money in our prosecution. That fact
alone would have ruined the reputation of any law firm in America, but
the ring of toadies who control that close corporation called the
Benchers of the Inn was loud in its praise of this firm for the extreme
ability shown in working up the case for the bank.

I finally made up my mind to find some old established shopkeeper who
kept an account at the bank, and secure an introduction through him.

I determined to carry out the plan at once. The thing was first of all
to find my man; so at 2 o'clock that afternoon I stationed myself near
the bank to watch depositors coming out and then follow them. Four out
of five depositors when they take money to the bank come out examining
their passbooks. That afternoo