Business; Capitalists and financiers -- United States; Speculation; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)
Gould and Fisk decamped by different routes. When the party had taken
refuge in “Fort” Taylor (Taylor’s Hotel), safe from the laws of New
York, they determined that no papers should be served upon them, and
gave strict orders to the host that they would not receive anything in
the shape of letters or notes. Communications of all kinds were
prohibited except through persons well known to the clique, and the
waiters at the hotel were strictly enjoined to observe this rule, on
pain of being discharged.
While Vanderbilt was working hard to reach the refugees through the
courts, the Legislature and his detectives, he discovered a method of
communicating with Drew in spite of the precautions with which the
latter was surrounded. The Commodore’s scheme would have done honor to a
first-class Nihilist of the present day. He instructed a person in his
service to play temporary detective, to go to the Taylor Hotel in the
garb of a commercial traveler from the Far West, and to watch the
movements of Drew, so as to get a note slipped into his hand in a way
that he would be certain to read it.
The amateur detective watched for a day or two, and saw that his only
chance of success was when Drew was at lunch, and that the person who
waited on him must hand him the note. He saw the waiter, and told him
what he wanted, and that when he should be discharged the Commodore
would find him a better place.
The waiter agreed to hand Mr. Drew the note. Drew was enraged, sent for
the host, and the waiter was instantly discharged, only to enter
Vanderbilt’s service, according to agreement, at much higher
remuneration. The note of the Commodore, however, had the desired
effect. What that note contained, probably, nobody but Vanderbilt and
Drew ever knew. Though the friends of Drew attempted to frighten him
from going by arousing his suspicions of being kidnapped, he came over
to New York on the following Sunday and had an interview with the
Commodore. The matter was fixed up between them, and while Gould and
Fisk were fighting Vanderbilt tooth and nail at Albany, and Gould was
arrested and arraigned for contempt of court and other high crimes and
misdemeanors in the eyes of the Vanderbilt lawyers, Drew was left
unmolested to pursue the even tenor of his way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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