The Napoleon of Crime by Ben Macintyre

was a beautiful woman,” the detectives later reported, “a brilliant conversationalist dressed in the height of fashion: her company was sought by almost all the patrons of the house.”
    While gorgeous Kitty presided, a vision in silk and ringlets, the affable Bullard played the piano and Worth carefully monitored the clientele. An alarm button was discreetly installed behind the bar “which the bar-tender touched and which rung a buzzer in the gambling rooms above whenever the police or any suspicious party came in.” Within seconds, Worth could render the upper stories of 2, rue Scribe as quiet and respectable as the lower ones. The Paris police “made two or three raids on the house, but never succeeded in finding anything upstairs, except a lot of men sitting around reading papers, and no gambling in sight.” Worth also bribed the local police to tip him off when a raid might be expected.
    The American Bar, the first American-style nightclub in Paris, was an instant success, a gaudy magnet in the ravaged and weary city, and the Parisians were “astonished by its magnificence. The place soon became a famous resort and was extensively patronized, not only by Americans, but by Englishmen: in fact, by visitors from all over Europe.” Businessmen, bankers, tourists, burglars, forgers, convicts, counts, con men, and counterfeiters were all equally welcome to enjoy the products of Worth’s superb chef, sip a cocktail, or, if they preferred, repair upstairs, where the delightful Kitty would help them lose their money at the gambling tables with such grace that they almost always came back for more. Word soon spread through the underworld that the American Bar was the best place in Europe to make contact with other criminals, arrange a job, or simply hide out from the authorities.
    The elegant and pompous Max Shinburn became a regular patron. Like his former associates, the Baron had found it necessary to relocate to the Continent rather suddenly. Some two years earlier, to his intense embarrassment, he had been publicly arrested at an expensive hotel in Saratoga where he was “masquerading as a New York banker” and had been charged with the New Hampshire robbery committed in 1865. Police found $7,000 in stolen bonds in his pockets and, on searching his New York address, discovered “a complete workshop for the manufacture of burglar’s tools and wax impressions of keys.” Sentenced to ten years, the Baron had managed to escape from prison in Concord after nine months—a breakout considered “one of the most dashing and skillful planned in criminal history”—and then fled to Europe, where his safecracking skills were still in great demand. “With the money he made from his various burglaries, Shinburn is said to have left the country with nearly a million of dollars,” the Pinkertons reported.
    Shinburn had settled in Belgium, purchased an estate and an interest in a large silk mill, and formally declared himself to be the Baron Shindell, which “nobody cared to dispute.” His cosmopolitan existence included frequent visits to Paris and the American Bar, where the Baron liked to patronize his former criminal colleagues and spend “his moneywith an open hand.” Worth resented the intrusion of the “overbearing Dutch pig,” as he called him, somewhat inaccurately, but tolerated his presence for the sake of Piano Charley, who still owed the Baron a debt for springing him from jail.
    Sophie Lyons, who often traveled to Europe on business (entirely criminal in nature), was another familiar face at the American Bar, and soon a motley cluster of crooks, many of them familiars from the criminals’ New York days, began to orbit around the Paris club at a time when professional American bank robbers were migrating across the Atlantic in increasing numbers. “I could name a hundred men who got a good living at it [bank robbery] and then came over to Europe to try their luck. France used to be a particularly