Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/99

 Mr. Gould's smartness was never made more apparent than in his manner of pretending to restore the money which he had misappropriated. He had to make restitution of this stolen money—"stolen" is the word used by the Hepburn Committee. After he had left Erie, the new management sought to ascertain how large was the plunder carried away by Gould. This information could be obtained with complete accuracy only from Morosini, the auditor of the company, and he refused to make up the accounts, leaving Erie to join his fortunes with those of Gould. Morosini now became inseparable from Gould and a notable figure in Wall street. He was a tall, athletic Italian, shrewd and faithful, an ideal private secretary. He had served with Garibaldi in the wars for Italian liberty, and was proud of his service under the great Italian patriot. He had been a sailor, too, and had a wide experience with the world, which, while not making him overscrupulous in his methods, made him invaluable to a man like Gould. When the firm of W. E. Connor & Co., of which Gould was a special partner, was founded, Morosini became partner, and when the firm dissolved, and Morosini retired from business, Gould said that his private secretary was worth $2,000,000 or $3,000,000.

A way was opened, however, by which the new Erie management gained some proof of Gould's wrong-doing. Gould, in company with Horace F. Clark, had engineered a corner in Northwestern stock, one of the most famous and successful cor