The Napoleon of Crime by Ben Macintyre Page B

and so was his record as a man who had “waged a ceaseless war on train and bank holdup robbers and express thieves who infested the Middle West after the close of the Civil War.” The direct precursor of the modern FBI, the Pinkerton Agency was gaining international respect as a detective force, thanks in large part to William Pinkerton’s phenomenal energy. The West’s most notable outlaws knew only too well the discomfort of having the Pinkertons on their trail. “It was not unusual in those bandit chasing days for William Pinkerton to be days in the saddle, accompanied by courageous law officers searching the plains and hills of the Middle West tracking these outlaws to their hideouts,” one of the detective’s early admirers recalled. A man of great bonhomie and charm, Pinkerton could also be utterly ruthless, as many criminals had discovered at the expense of their liberty and, in some instances, their lives. “When Bill Pinkerton went after a man he didn’t let up until he had got him, if it cost him a million dollars he didn’t mind,” recalled Eddie Guerin.
    Many years later Worth, in an interview with William Pinkerton, feigned nonchalance when recalling the detective’s unexpected and unwelcome arrival at the American Bar. “We were rather troubled at what had brought you to the club,” Worth said. Frantic would have been a more accurate description.
    Worth recognized the burly detective at once and, opting as ever for the brazen approach, offered to buy him another drink. Pinkerton blithely accepted, knowing full well he was enjoying the hospitality of the Boylston Bank robber. It was a strange encounter between the arch-criminal and the man who had already spent five years, and would spend the next twenty-five, trying to put him in prison. They chatted awhile on the subject of mutual acquaintances, of which they had many on both sides of the law, until Pinkerton announced that he ought to be getting along. The two men shook hands, without ever having needed to introduce themselves.
    The moment Pinkerton left the premises, Worth summoned Piano Charley and a visiting ruffian known as Old Vinegar and set out into the rue Scribe to follow the American detective. “There was no intention to assault you,” Worth later assured Pinkerton. “We just wanted to get a good look at you.” Pinkerton was fully aware he was being tailed, and after leading the trio through the streets of Paris, he suddenly turned on them. Piano Charley, his nerves frayed with drink, “nearly dropped dead” with fright and the three bolted in the opposite direction. “Old Vinegar went into hiding for weeks,” Worth later remarked with a laugh.
    He might not admit it, but Pinkerton’s surprise visit had rattled him. Worth was only partially reassured to discover, from a corrupt interpreter with the French police by the name of Dermunond, that the detective was not in pursuit of him and his partners but was in the pay of the Baltimore Bank and had his sights set on Joseph Chapman, Charles Becker, and Little Joe Elliott. Indeed, the informant warned, Pinkerton was already preparing extradition papers with the French authorities. Worth sent the message to his colleagues that they were in mortal danger and should on no account come to the bar. A few days later Pinkerton, accompanied by two French detectives, walked into another of the gang’s favored dives, a dance hall called the Voluntino, where Worth was dining with Little Joe Elliott. Worth happened to catch sight of the brawny detective as he came through the door, and rightly assuming the “entrances were guarded well,” he bundled Elliott upstairs to a private room, opened the window, and, holding Joe’s hands, dropped him fifteen feet into a courtyard below. “Joe made the drop alright and got up and hobbled away,” Worth recalled, but it had been another unpleasantly close escape.
    The gang got a welcome, if only temporary, reprieve when Pinkerton was called away to