At the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street, a stone's throw from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stood a grand mansion in the classical style. On Tuesday morning before the sun had risen, Littlemore instructed Roederheusen to cover the back of that mansion while he approached the front door.
There was no activity in the house. Fifth Avenue was quiet at five in the morning; a lone omnibus clattered down the street. One block north, a limousine idled on the park side of the avenue. Littlemore wondered whether it was Speyer's car, waiting to take him to the harbor.
Littlemore rang the front bell — and rang again and again, when no one answered. At last he heard footsteps on stairs. A light went on in the foyer.
'What is it? Who's there?' called a man's voice from behind the door, with the same German accent Littlemore had heard at Delmonico's.
In his best cockney accent, which was fair, Littlemore said, 'Is there a Mr Speyer in the house? Sailing today on the Imperator? Message for him from the Captain.' The Imperator was a British ship, its crew English.
'The Captain?' asked Speyer, opening the door.
'Yeah,' said Littlemore, pushing through and entering the foyer. 'The Police Captain you played for a sap on Sunday.'
Speyer, in a burgundy satin bathrobe, belted at the waist, fell back a step. 'I wronged you, Officer. I ask your forgiveness.'
'Turn around,' said Littlemore.
Speyer complied, saying, 'I ask you to forgive me.'
Littlemore jangled his handcuffs behind Speyer. 'Give me one good reason not to haul you downtown for absconding from a police officer.'
'I broke faith with you. Please forgive me.'
'Stow the forgiveness thing, will you?' said Littlemore, handcuffing Speyer.
'Sorry,' said Speyer. 'I was required to ask three times today. How much do you want? I'll give you whatever you want.'
'Now you're bribing me? That's five more years in the pen.'
'I beg your pardon. I assumed you were shaking me down.'
'Shaking you down. Pretty good English for a German. What did you do that I'd be shaking you down for?'
'I'm not German,' said Speyer, pronouncing the G in German with a hard Ch. 'I was born in this city. I'm as American as you are.'
'Sure you are,' said the detective. 'That's why you bankrolled the German army after we declared war.'
'Not me — my relatives, who live in Frankfurt. I had nothing to do with it.'
'Then why did your pal the Kaiser make you a knight of the Red Eagle?'
'That was in 1912,' protested Speyer. 'And if that makes a man a traitor, you should have arrested J. P. Morgan. He received the Eagle too.'
For the first time, Littlemore was caught off guard: 'Morgan?'
'Yes. He won it the year before I did.'
'If you're such a patriot,' said the detective, 'why are you skipping out of the country?'
'Skipping out? I'm going to Hamburg to have some very important contracts signed. I'll be home the eighth of October.'
'Show me those contracts,' said Littlemore. 'And your return ticket.'
'In my briefcase,' said Speyer. 'On the dinner table.'
Littlemore, pushing Speyer before him, entered a formal dining room, heavily ornamented, with a Michelangelesque fresco splashed on its ceiling. Oil paintings, large and small, adorned the walls. The detective stopped before a small portrait, so dark he could not at first make out its subject; it depicted an old man with a ruddy face and pouches under his eyes. 'This one must be worth a lot, since you can't even see it. How much does a little thing like this go for?'
'Do you know what that 'little thing' is, Officer?' asked Speyer.
'A Rembrandt.'
It was Speyer now who was taken by surprise.
'Saw one just like it at the museum,' added Littlemore.
'I paid a quarter of a million dollars for it.'
Littlemore whistled. On a rectangular table long enough to seat twenty lay an open briefcase. Inside was a ream of bond and debenture documents in English, Spanish, and German. Littlemore flipped through them. 'And who did the full-length picture behind me?' asked the detective, without looking up. 'The one of Mr James Speyer.'
'A boy from the Lower East Side,' said Speyer. 'A student at the Eldridge University Settlement. One of the schools I fund.'
The contracts concerned an enormous sum of money, evidently destined for a Mexican bank — whose chief officer was James Speyer. Littlemore also found an American passport and a ticket on the Cunard White Star sailing for New York City out of Hamburg on October the first.
'Don't you think this is taking things a little far,' asked Speyer, 'for a bottle of wine?'
'What bottle of wine?'
'The one I had at Delmonico's. Isn't that why you came to my table? Isn't that why you're here?'
'Dry laws aren't my department,' said the detective. 'Let me get this straight. Your story is that you ran out on me at Delmonico's because you were afraid I was going to pinch you for boozing?'
'That's right.'
'And what — you thought I'd just let you go?'
'I didn't realize you knew who I was,' said Speyer. 'But now that you do know, I might as well warn you, Officer. I'm a rich man, and a rich man can make life very unpleasant for a policeman who troubles him.'
'Don't give me that. You're broke, Speyer,' said Littlemore. 'You had to sell off two of your bigger paintings recently. You even let go of your old servants.'
Speyer stared at the detective: 'How do you know so much about me?'
'Just using my eyes.' Littlemore pointed to two spots on the wall where the slightest lightening of the wallpaper indicated that smaller portraits were now on display where two larger frames used to hang. 'You wouldn't be answering your own doorbell if you still had the servants a man who lives in this kind of house ought to have. I'd say you're trying to maintain appearances, Speyer. I'd say things are getting desperate. Why didn't you sell the Rembrandt?'
A long pause followed. 'I couldn't let it go,' said Speyer at last. 'What do you want with me?'
'The NYPD provides security when presidential candidates come to town,' answered Littlemore, not untruthfully. 'We have plain-clothesmen at every dinner. You were overheard at one of those dinners threatening a J. P. Morgan man.'
'Nonsense.'
'You deny telling a Morgan partner to watch out because the Morgan firm was combining with others to deny you credit?'
'What? I wasn't threatening Lamont. I was warning him.'
'You might be surprised, Mr Speyer, but the law doesn't draw too fine a distinction between threats and warnings.'
'You don't understand. I was warning Lamont about the Mexicans — despite everything Morgan's done to me. Mexico's new financial agent, he was the one doing the threatening. Making the wildest claims about what would happen to the House of Morgan — to Morgan himself — if they didn't lift the embargo.'
'What embargo?'
'The Morgan embargo against Mexico. You must know about the default?'
'No.'
Speyer shook his head. 'Where to begin? Twenty years ago, J. P. Morgan — the old man — floated the entire Mexican national debt. A big gamble, unheard of for a United States bank. It was a bold wager. Worked out handsomely for a long time. Made Morgan a fortune. But then Mexico had its revolution, and in 1914, the Mexicans defaulted. They haven't paid a penny since. By now they owe hundreds of millions in interest alone. Morgan
