Читать книгу Why Crime Does Not Pay - Mrs. Sophie Van Elkan Lyons Burke - Страница 14

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THE SECRET OF THE STOLEN GAINSBOROUGH—AND THE LESSON OF THE CAREER OF RAYMOND, THE "PRINCE OF SAFE BLOWERS," WHO BUILT A MILLIONAIRE'S RESIDENCE IN A FASHIONABLE LONDON SUBURB AND KEPT A YACHT WITH A CREW OF 20 MEN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

It was on the morning of May 15, several years ago, that the manager of Agnew's great art gallery in London turned the key in the lock of the private gallery to show an art patron the famous "Gainsborough." His amiable smile faded from his lips as he came face to face with an empty gilt frame.

The great $125,000 painting had been cut from its frame.

Who stole this masterpiece? How was it stolen? Could it be recovered?

The best detectives of Europe and America were asked to find answers to these questions. They never did. I will answer them here for the first time to-day.

The man who cut the Gainsborough from its frame was a millionaire, he was an associate of mine, he was a bank burglar. Adam Worth, or Harry Raymond, as he was known to his friends, did not need the money and he did not want the painting—he entered that London art gallery at 3 o'clock in the morning and took that roll of canvas out under his arm for a purpose that nobody suspected. I will explain all this presently.

I have said that Raymond was a millionaire, and I said in previous chapters that crime does not pay—how is it possible to reconcile these two statements? We shall see.

Among all my old acquaintances and associates in the criminal world, perhaps no one serves better as an example of the truth that crime does not pay than this very millionaire burglar, this man who had earned the title of the "Prince of Safe Blowers." For a time he seemed to have everything his heart could desire—a mansion, servants, liveried equipages, a yacht; and it all crumbled away like a house of cards, vanished like the wealth of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights. And so Raymond, most "successful" bank robber of the day, lived to learn the lesson that crime does not pay.

Raymond was a Massachusetts boy—bright, wide awake, but headstrong. Born of an excellent family and well educated, he formed bad habits and developed a passion for gambling.