A lawyer of this city, residin’ on an uptown cross street near Fifth avenue, had a very pretty daughter. She is married and settled now. The young lady was highly educated, spoke several languages and was very clever at music and paintin’. But she was a little inclined to romantic adventures, and liked anythin’ out of the ordinary routine of everyday life.
One mornin’ while shoppin’ on Broadway she met a fine-lookin’ young man, attired as an English swell in the height of fashion. He looked admirin’ly at her and she, it must be confessed, looked rather smilin’ly at him. Nothin’ transpired just then, however. But that very afternoon the lady and the English swell met again on Broadway, and the swell raised his hat and bowed most politely and elegantly.
Very foolishly the lady suffered herself slightly to return the bow, and, emboldened by this encouragement, the swell joined the lady in a promenade, and formed her acquaintance in what is called “the curbstone fashion.”
The lady was rather frightened at her own imprudence at first, but findin’ the swell to be a true gentleman, as she thought, she allowed herself to listen to his flatteries; and although she had the savin’ grace to conceal from him her real name and address, yet she was silly enough to meet him several times by appointment at stores and restaurants.
The swell gave her to understand that he was of a noble English family, travelin’ incog. for pleasure and observation; and he was such a splendid talker, and really good-lookin’, that the romantic young lady’s head was beginnin’ to get turned.
One afternoon, when the lawyer’s daughter and the English swell were strollin’ together along Fourteenth street, Detectives Dusenberry and Radford happened to be strollin’ along Fourteenth street, too, and the two detectives and the two lovers (for such they almost were by this time) happened to meet face to face. The two lovers didn’t know or notice the two detectives, but one of the two detectives, Dusenberry, noticed one of the lovers, the English swell particularly. Dusenberry called Radford’s attention to the swell also, and the two men turned and followed the man and woman.
Delmonico’s was then at the corner of Fourteenth street and Fifth avenue, and the swell escorted his lady there and, enterin’, ordered a luncheon for the pair. Seein’ this and calculating that they would be there a half an hour or more, Dusenberry sent Radford at once down to Police Headquarters in Mulberry street, while he remained in the vicinity of Delmonico’s.
On Redford’s return he found Dusenberry patiently awaitin’ him. He handed Dusenberry a certain somethin’, and Dusenberry lookin’ at it smiled. “I knew I was right,” he said. “I am never mistaken in a face.” Then he put the certain somethin’ into his pocket, and then the two detectives waited until the two lovers finished their lunch.
The detectives had a good long wait, but they felt a pride in findin’ their suspicions turned out correct, and were content. Presently out walks the swell in high feather, with the lady smilin’ sweetly at his side.
With a smile on his part, too, but a grim one, Dusenberry stepped up to the swell and tapped him on the arm.
Imagine the feelings of a high-toned English swell, in the company of a fashionable young lady, when tapped on the arm by an ordinary lookin’ stranger.
“A word with you, sir,” said Dusenberry to the swell.
“What on Earth do you mean, sir? Are you drunk?” said the swell to Dusenberry.
“You will find it in to your own interest to let me have a word with you in private,” persisted Dusenberry, restrainin’ his temper out of respect to the lady, who was amazed and agitated at this most unexpected interruption.
“If you annoy me a moment longer, or this lady,” said the swell, “I will hand you over to the police.”
“I,” said Dusenberry, quietly, “will save you that trouble, for I am one of the force myself.”
The lady looked more astonished and grew more agitated still, and they swell evidently had not been at all prepared for this announcement. But it was too late to recede now. He must go on as he had commenced. In fact, he blustered worse than ever.
But Dusenberry’s mad was up now. He wanted to get even for his long wait out in the cold, besides he wanted to expose a swindler, nip his plans, and save a woman. So he told the swell right to his face, and right before the lady’s face, that he, the swell, was really the notorious beat and imposter, the so-called Lord Beresford.
The so-called Lord Beresford got blue in the face with rage. He vehemently vowed to the mortified young lady that this was all a huge mistake, an insult, a conspiracy.
“What is this, then?” cried Dusenberry, pullin’ out of his pocket “the certain somethin’” which Radford had gone and got for him from Police Headquarters while the swell and the young lady had been “lunchin’,” and which turned out to be a photograph.
The lady looked at the photograph in the detective’s hands and recognized it at once as the picture of the man with whom she had been lunchin’ and whom she had been almost lovin’.
“Where did you get this?” asked the lady in a faint voice of the detective.
“I am sorry to say,” answered the detective respectfully, “that this is a photograph from the Rogue’s Gallery.”
“Then this man is–” she could not finish the sentence.
“A rogue,” said Dusenberry, finishin’ it for her. “You see, miss,” continued Dusenberry, sympathizin’ with the lady’s feelin’s, “this man’s portrait has been sent to Police Headquarters from England, and I knew him by it at once and I sent for it, and have been waitin’ out here in the cold these blessed two hours just to block his little game, and to show you, miss, his true character. Shall I call a cab?”
“If you please,” said the young lady, faintly, and lookin’ as if she was goin’ to faint.
A cab was called and the lady was driven at once home.
This was her last “romance,” her final “adventure,” the “wind up” of her street flirtations.
[Editor’s notes: This column appeared in 1883, describing the arrest of Courtenay/Clinton/Beresford, etc. in 1881. However the circumstances were a bit different than those described above:
At the time this column appeared, the great impostor was only a third of the way through his notorious career. I have written about him earlier, in my annotations to Thomas Byrnes’s Professional Criminals of America. Lascelles/Clinton/Courtenay/Beresford was such a chameleon that Inspector Byrnes profiled him twice–one in his 1886 edition, and again in 1895–without realizing that the two profiles were the same man.]
