Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/85

 In 1865, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to the penitentiary in Mo., but through some strange influence he was pardoned by the Governor. He directly resumed his old business, and went on as briskly as ever in the coney traffic. It was his boast that he "could paddle his own canoe in safety forty-nine times in fifty, and clear the breakers, sure." The other chance he did not hesitate to venture upon, and the hour of his downfall finally approached. When at length he was arrested by Col. Whitley, he resorted to all the old dodges he had so successfully played in other days—but without result. He offered money liberally to escape the punishment that loomed up prospectively before him: he bought up witnesses against him, and spirited them away at his own cost; and finally when placed upon his trial—he came into Court, again anticipating a triumph, but only to meet there, on this occasion, an apparition that totally dumbfounded him. One of his own former tools had suddenly turned up against him; upon confronting whom, the heart of the counterfeiter sank within him. His late confederate (Bill Shelley) appeared upon the witness stand, and Biebusch saw that the jig was up with him, at last! He bolted from the Court room in despair, and jumped his bail, at the last moment.

It occurred that Shelley had a few months previously left the west, where the repeated arrests, under Col. Whitley's orders, of his coney-dealing associates, had alarmed him—and he had come to New York, where he still worked at his profession as plate-cutter; continuing in the employ of Biebusch, but at a goodly distance from that worthy's western field of operations.

One day the Chief ferreted out the lurking-place where Shelley quietly pursued his work. He pounced upon the engraver without warning, and surprised him in the midst of his labors.