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headline IT CANNOT LAST. Careful not to cross the line to libel, yet unmistakable in its intent, the editorial began, “Is Mr. Ponzi the ‘wizard’ of the foreign exchange market that his alleged profits appear to make him out, or is he running an old game under a new guise? The experience of the ages arouses skepticism that he can do what he claims to have done, and yet all the forces investigating his scheme so far have been unable to prove him guilty of fraud.” The editorial gained steam at the end, concluding that even if Ponzi’s postal coupon claims were true, “governments are not going to allow themselves to be mulcted [swindled] on this scale indefinitely, and it must be only a question of a few weeks before the golden goose is killed. There is, of course, still the alternative that possibly there never was any such goose.”

The battle had been fully joined between Richard Grozier and Charles Ponzi. The stakes were nothing less than their reputations and their livelihoods. Only one could survive.

Rose, Ponzi, and Imelde pose for a Post photographer outside their Lexington home on August 1, 1920.

The Boston Globe

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“EVEN HIS COWS COULDN’T GIVE MILK.”

The door to the Bell-in-Hand remained locked at nine the next morning, Thursday, July 29, and nervous whispers passed through the scores of people gathered in Pi Alley. Had Ponzi taken the money and run? Had the bubble burst? But shortly before ten o’clock one of Ponzi’s clerks swung open the door to the old tavern and invited all with Ponzi notes inside. Ponzi arrived around eleven, and the appearance of his Locomobile evoked a throaty roar. He stepped from the car, waved to his fans, and ducked inside.

Soon after, Ponzi left School Street to begin another jam-packed day of interviews and meetings, much of the time with his new lawyer, Dan Coakley. He understood that the public was taking its cues from him. If he wanted to retain its support, he needed to model himself on the mallards that seemed to glide effortlessly across the duck pond in the Public Garden. On the surface, he would appear placid and carefree, but below he would churn furiously to prevent being pulled under.

Throughout the day, depositors continued to seek refunds at the Securities Exchange Company. When they got to the tellers’ windows they caught sight of a large revolver lying menacingly on a desk to discourage thoughts of holdups. One young man, sweat dripping down his face, slid a clerk a Ponzi note for ten thousand dollars due to mature into fifteen thousand dollars on Saturday.

“You know,” the clerk told him, “this comes due in two days.”

“I want my principal!” he yelled. “I want my principal!”

He got it and left.

But as the day wore on, the balance began shifting toward investors who were there not to claim early withdrawals but to cash matured notes. By two in the afternoon the line had thinned to a trickle. Just after the four o’clock closing time, a Ponzi agent poked his head outside the door to ask if anyone else wanted his money. No one was there, so he locked the door.

Meanwhile, Ponzi was taking sporadic breaks to touch base with reporters. Some had yet to hear his rags-to-riches tale, and he was happy to oblige, telling the story from his arrival with two dollars and fifty cents to his receipt of the postal coupon from the correspondent in Spain to his stupendous success. When the inevitable question arose about exchanging postal coupons for dollars, Ponzi always demurred: “My secret is, ‘How do I cash the coupons?’ That is what I do not tell.” No interview was complete without a tribute to Rose. “And then I found my inspiration,” he told a New York reporter. “She was Rose Gnecco, daughter of a wholesale fruit merchant of Boston, and the fairest and most wonderful woman in all the world. All I have done is because of Rose. She is not only my right arm, but my heart, as well.” Rose herself was dodging the limelight, preferring to support her husband in the privacy of their home.

Occasionally his press agent, William McMasters, would speak for Ponzi,