Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/172

160 TACTS, PAILUEES, A>'D FEAUDS. had been issued. The warrant signed by Cole's own wharfinger, and made deliverable to him, would, on endorsement, pass current in the market, whilst that supplied from the warehouse, on being endorsed by the importers, could be used for obtaining advances.

Intent on the execution of his scheme. Cole soon obtained information that a small wharf, by the name of Hagen's Sufferance Wharf, situate on the Thames, in St. Saviour's Dock, Bermondsey, was to let. In all respects it appeared suitable to his purposes. The frontage was narrow, and there abutted on it enormous warehouses, which would strike any casual observer as being in the possession of the lessee of the wharf, and so enforce the authority of the acting wharfinger of the latter. This effect was the more striking that these warehouses not only adjoined, but opened on the wharf, which allowed free ingress and egress to the occupants. At the further end of the wharf, opening on Mill Street, was a shed, and opposite to it, divided by the road, a small cottage, which was part of the property. The wharf was found to be the property of Mrs. Mary Hagen, by whom also the adjoining warehouses were partly held, a discovery which promised materially to aid the pretensions Cole was about to set up. Anxious as was Cole to secure the premises, he avoided, in the exercise of his usual caution, all appearance of being the party seeking possession. Accordingly, his brother, James Edward Cole, and a person of the name of George Harris De Russett, "a gentleman at ease," who will figure again in this narration obtained the premises on a lease for fourteen years, at an annual rental of £130.

The ostensible and "coming man" was not far off. Cole had already provided for a wharfinger in the person of William Maltby, formerly a fellow-clerk in the house of Forbes, Forbes, and Co., and who had recently applied to him for a situation. Maltby, on whom so much depended, had proved himself.