Twice _The Times_ was kind enough to print a letter from me in large
type to warn my friends. It was of no use. I seldom went to London
without some friend coming up to me and asking after my brother, or
expressing himself thoroughly ashamed of having allowed himself to be so
stupidly victimised by a common impostor. One friend told me that he was
so convinced that the man was a swindler that he had him turned out of
the house. But then it struck him that after all the man might really be
my brother, who only wanted a ticket to go to Oxford, so he rushed into
the street after him, apologised, and pressed a sovereign into his hand.
“There were telegraphs in those days, and why did you not telegraph to
me?” I said. But my brother went on unabashed. He once called at the
house of Lord W., telling the old story of having been robbed, and
wanting a ticket to go to Oxford to see his dear brother. Lord W. was
not to be taken in so easily, but Lady W., who came into the room and
heard the story, said to the young man: “Perhaps you are not aware that
you are speaking to a very near relation of your brother, who is the
husband of my niece?” The man never flinched, but was rushing up to Lady
W. to shake hands most affectionately and to embrace her, if she had not
beaten a sudden retreat. Lord W. was quite convinced that the man was an
impudent beggar, took him to the front door, and told him to be gone.
“Would you tell your servant to call a cab for me,” he said, “to go to
the station?” A servant, who was present, hailed a cab. “Please to give
the man half a crown,” my brother said. The half-crown was given, and
the man got away unharmed, having swindled one of the cleverest
financial men in London out of half a crown. Only a few minutes after,
my wife called at her aunt’s house, and regretted that she was just too
late to make the long-desired personal acquaintance of my lost brother.
After carrying on this business for more than two years in England, and
chiefly in London, the place seems to have become too hot at last. He
vanished from the soil of England without ever having called on his
brother at Oxford, and the next I heard of him was through some friends
in New Zealand, who had suffered as others had suffered before in
England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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