In searching Noyes the English police had found his garments were made by a certain London tailor who had several establishments. They brought the foremen and salesmen down to see him, and none could identify him; but the American detectives went over the ground again, and discovered that the London officers had missed one branch store. This was the one Noyes had patronized. They remembered him as a customer who had, when ordering garments, given the name of Bedford. This in itself was a bad point against Noyes, and the New York men wanted very much to make him talk, and had they been permitted to adopt the vigorous American methods they might have succeeded.
A salesman remembered seeing Noyes or Bedford one day walking in Mayfair with a gentleman who really was Mac, of whom he gave a good description, and taking the clerk the detectives started out to make a house-to-house investigation. Now, No. 1 Mayfair, the first house they entered, was the residence of a famous London doctor by the name of Payson Hewett, and Mac had been a patient of his. But Hewett knew absolutely nothing about him save only his name and the address he gave, Westminster Palace Hotel. The detectives were elated, and flew to this hotel, but as Mac had never been a guest they could learn nothing; still they had cause for rejoicing. Here was Noyes giving a fictitious name to a tailor and in company with an elegantly dressed American, who gave a fictitious address to his surgeon. And they were well satisfied that whenever the matter was dug out it would be found that the elegantly dressed stranger, as well as the clerk, had a hand in the business. Payson Hewett stated that Mac said he was a medical graduate from an American university, and said that, no doubt, he spoke the truth, as he had a perfect knowledge of medical subjects.
Here they were getting matters down pretty fine, and cabled all the facts to America with orders to look Mac up, also his friends. This information was the fruit of hard work--many blind trails had been followed that ran nowhere.
In the mean time George and Mac had determined to return to America. The last thing Mac did before leaving his lodgings in St. James' place was to roll up in three rolls $254,000 in United States bonds and send the trunk containing them by express to Major George Mathews, New York. He wrapped them in a nightshirt belonging to me, which in some way had got into his baggage. Then he bought a ticket to Paris and sent his baggage over, waiting in London a day or two longer before going himself.