Walking Papers

By David Seideman

Sherman Suchow has undergone quite a transformation. Born in Brooklyn 59 years ago, he now calls himself Charles Merrill Mount, affects an English accent, carries a walking stick and sports classic three-piece suits. An art historian and portrait painter, Mount stands accused of pursuing a third career as well: pilferer of rare historical documents. Last week the FBI arrested him for possessing a 1904 letter signed by Novelist Henry James that had been missing from the Library of Congress. Five days earlier Mount had been charged with stealing letters written by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Said Special FBI Agent W. Douglas Gow: "This isn't just one or two documents. It's a piece of history."

Mount came under suspicion last month after Goodspeed's, a Boston bookstore, paid him $20,000 for 27 documents, including nine letters from Portraitist James McNeill Whistler and one from James. In early August Mount approached the bookstore again with an offer to sell a collection of rare Civil War manuscripts featuring three Lincoln letters. Suspicious store officials alerted the FBI, which arrested Mount when he returned to the bookstore with the Lincoln letters on Aug. 13. A subsequent search of his safe-deposit box in Washington turned up a cache of some 200 papers from the Civil War era, many believed to have been stolen from the National Archives. Despite his elegant appearance, Mount admits he has fallen on "hard times" and is living in a Washington rooming house. He has published biographies of John Singer Sargent and other artists, and thus spent considerable time at the Library of Congress and National Archives. Though security is tight at both places, pilfering can go unnoticed. "We are caught between the need to give researchers access to + documents and security," explains Manuscript Librarian David Wigdor. "It doesn't do any good to have all this material unless people can use it."

Mount maintains his innocence: "The letters were mine and have been in my possession for 25 years," he told TIME. In fact, the Library of Congress has yet to determine the number of missing letters. If convicted of the charges against him, Mount could face up to ten years in prison. Before releasing him on $50,000 bail last week in Washington, U.S. Magistrate Jean Dwyer ordered the art historian to stay out of the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the National Gallery. "I have nothing else to do," Mount complained somewhat pathetically. Shot back Dwyer: "Try the zoo. Don't push your luck, Mr. Mount."

With reporting by Jerome Cramer/Washington