Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/177

PACTS, failuhes, akd frauds. 1G5 warrant had been withdrawn, for it was on Gordon's head that the wrath of Mr. Edwards fell. Gordon could afford to bear this blame; but not so Cole, to whom the disclosure of the facts of the case would have been ruin. Edwards even threatened Gordon to have him up at the Mansion House that afternoon, but it was finally arranged that the "stop" should be removed the next day. This was done; the spelter was not demanded to be delivered up; the loan was continued, and paid, as agreed to, by instalments, the last instalment consisting of a cheque drawn by a firm in London, which subsequently received the very cheque from Davidson and Gordon of which Mr. Edwards had complained.

In March of 1852, Laing and Campbell, colonial brokers became possessed of Hagen Wharf warrants for spelter and Swedish steel that had been in the hands of Lackerstein and Co., who had suspended payment. Cole was at once anxious to get possession of them. If thrown upon the market, he would have to meet them, and this at an enormous loss, if Lackerstein and Co. had got possession of the warrants on the same easy terms as Davidson and Gordon. The Hagen Wharf warrants would stand good for the exhibition of goods, but not their delivery. Cole sent Gordon as his broker to Messrs. Laing and Campbell to inform him that the warrants had been improperly obtained. Laing and Campbell never doubted the truth of the story, and the warrants, to the nominal value of £2000, representing 122 tons 10 cwt. of steel, and 50 tons of spelter, were accordingly taken back.

A business acquaintance with Laing and Co. having been effected, Colo concerted measures to obtain from that house a large advance on securities partly fictitious and partly genuine. They had concluded that no man who paid the large sum of money expended by Cole to redeem the warrants that had come into their possession could have paid it out for worthless paper, and, not dreaming that ho was implicated in the issue, they did