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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***

-

-

-

-

-

-MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration: ~~ SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS ~~

-

-The Ross house, Washington Lane, Germantown, Pa.

-

-_From a sketch by W. P. Snyder_]

-

-

-

-

-MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING

-

-_By_

-EDWARD H. SMITH

-

-_Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc._

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-LINCOLN MAC VEAGH

-THE DIAL PRESS

-NEW YORK · MCMXXVII

-

-

-

-

-  Copyright, 1924, by

-

-  STREET AND SMITH CORPORATION

-

-  Copyright, 1927, by

-  THE DIAL PRESS, INC.

-

-

-  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

-  BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.

-

-

-

-

-  To

-

-  JOSEPH A. FAUROT

-

-  A GREAT FINDER OF WANTED MEN

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-

-  CHAPTER                                               PAGE

-

-  A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING                                  xi

-

-  I. THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA                               1

-

-  II. “SEVERED FROM THE RACE”                             23

-

-  III. THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE                              40

-

-  IV. THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY                               65

-

-  V. THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE                           82

-

-  VI. THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK                     101

-

-  VII. DOROTHY ARNOLD                                    120

-

-  VIII. EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE                       133

-

-  IX. THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING                              153

-

-  X. THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE                           171

-

-  XI. A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE                             187

-

-  XII. THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS                        203

-

-  XIII. THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA                        219

-

-  XIV. THE LOST MILLIONAIRE                              237

-

-  XV. THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY                           257

-

-  XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY                      273

-

-  XVII. SPECTRAL SHIPS                                   292

-

-  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                           313

-

-

-

-

-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

-

-

-  SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS      _Frontispiece_

-

-                                                TO FACE PAGE

-

-  CHARLIE ROSS                                            10

-

-  THEODOSIA BURR                                          32

-

-  MILLIE STÜBEL                                           44

-

-  ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR                                56

-

-  ARTHUR ORTON                                            94

-

-  MARION CLARKE                                          110

-

-  DOROTHY ARNOLD                                         126

-

-  PAT CROWE                                              146

-

-  JIMMIE GLASS                                           204

-

-  JOE VAROTTA                                            220

-

-  AMBROSE J. SMALL                                       240

-

-  AMBROSE BIERCE                                         260

-

-  DOCTOR ANDRÉE                                          280

-

-  _U. S. S. CYCLOPS_                                     304

-

-

-    _And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,

-    His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;

-    And lo, between the nightfall and the light,

-    He is not, and none knoweth of such an one._

-

-                                      --_Laus Veneris._

-

-

-

-

-A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING

-

- “... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit wished to

- bring tidings back no more and never to leave the place; there with

- the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed on lotus and forget the

- homeward way.”

-

-                                           THE ODYSSEY, Book IX.

-

-

-The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand and the Sirens from their

-Campanian isle, but still the sons of men go forth to strangeness and

-forgetfulness. What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds

-them in absence, we must try to read from their history, their psyche

-and the chemistry of their wandering souls. Some urgent whip of that

-divine vice, our curiosity, drives us to the exploration and will

-not relent until we discover whether they have been devoured by the

-Polyphemus of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or simply made

-drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.

-

-The unreturning adventurer--the man whose destiny is hid in doubt--has

-tormented the imagination in every century. In life the lost comrade

-wakes a more poignant curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of

-the true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the Etruscans

-slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila die of apoplexy in the

-arms of Hilda or shall we believe the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen

-and Volsunga sagas or the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it

-the genuine Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what of the

-two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of Dandhu Panth after he fled

-into Nepal in 1859; did he perish soon or is there truth in the tale

-of the finger burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died at

-Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege of the barn at

-Bloomfield?

-

-These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than any other minor

-facet of history, and the patient searching of scholars seems but to

-add to the popular confusion and to the charm of our doubts. Even where

-research seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling

-to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always sweeter than a

-sordid fact.

-

-Even in the modern world, so closely organized, so completely explored

-and so prodigiously policed, those enigmas continue to pile up. In

-our day it is an axiom that nothing is harder to lose sight of than

-a ship at sea or a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a

-paradox. It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name from a vessel,

-change her gear and peculiarities a little, paint a fresh word upon

-her side and so conceal her. Simpler still, why can’t any man, not too

-conspicuous or individual, step out of the crowd, alter the cut of

-his hair and clothes, assume another name and immediately be draped

-in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annual expenditure for ship

-registry and all sorts of marine policing on the one side, and an even

-greater sum for the land police, on the other, to prevent such things?

-Truly enough, and it is the police power of the earth, backed by

-certain plain or obscure motivations in mankind, that makes it next to

-impossible for a ship or a man to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.

-

-Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part of our argument, we

-may note that, for all the difficulty, thousands of human beings try

-to vanish every year. Plainly there are many circumstances, many

-crises in the lives of men, women and children, that make a complete

-detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay, imperative. Yet, of the

-twenty-five thousand persons reported missing to the police of the

-City of New York every year, to take an instance, only a few remain

-permanently undiscovered. Most are mere stayouts or young runaways

-and are returned to their inquiring relatives within a few hours or

-days. Others are deserting spouses--husbands who have wearied or wives

-who have found new loves. These sometimes lead long chases before

-they are reported and identified, at which time the police have no

-more to do with the matter unless there is action from the domestic

-courts. A number are suicides, whose bodies soon or late rise from the

-city-engirdling waters and are, almost without fail, identified by the

-marvelously efficient police detectives in charge of the morgues. Some

-are pretended amnesics and a few are true ones. But in the end the

-police of the cities clear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in

-the year 1924, the New York police department had on its books only one

-male and one female uncleared case originating in the year of 1918,

-or six years earlier. At the same time there were four male and six

-female cases dating from 1919, three male and one female cases that

-had originated in 1920, no male and three female cases that originated

-in 1921, three male and two female cases of the date of 1922, but in

-1924 there were still pending, as the police say, twenty-eight male and

-sixty-three female cases of the year preceding, 1923.

-

-The point here is that only one man and one woman could stay hid from

-the searching eyes of the law as long as six years. Evidently the

-business of vanishing presents some formidable difficulties.

-

-However, it is not even these solitary absentees that engage our

-interest most sharply, for usually we know why they went and have

-some indication that they are alive and merely skulking. There is

-another and far rarer genus of the family of the missing, however,

-that does strike hard upon that explosive chemical of human curiosity.

-Here we have those few and detached inexplicable affairs that neither

-astuteness nor diligence, time nor patience, frenzy nor faith can

-penetrate--the true romances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment.

-A man goes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he is gone

-from all that knew him, all that was familiar. There is a gap in the

-environment and many lives are affected, nearly or remotely. No one

-knows the why or where or how of his going and all the power of men

-and materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass and these tales of

-puzzlement become legends. They are then things to brood about before

-the fire, when the moving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness

-of life.

-

-Again, there are those strange instances of the theft of human beings

-by human beings--kidnappings, in the usual term. Nothing except a

-natural cataclysm is so excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion

-that there are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the

-public temper may result from such crimes will be seen from some of

-what follows. The most celebrated instance is, of course, the affair

-of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia, which carries us back more than half

-a century. We have here the classic American kidnapping case, already

-a tradition, rich in all the elements that make the perfect abduction

-tale.

-

-This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, as old as the

-races. From the Phoenicians who stole babes to feed to their bloody

-divinities, the Minoans who raped the youth of Greece for their

-bull-fights, and the priests of many lands who demanded maidens to

-satisfy the wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, down

-to the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or are said to steal,

-children for bridal gifts, we have this dread vein running through

-the body of our history. We need, accordingly, no going back into our

-phylogeny or biology, to understand the frenzy of the mother when the

-shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. The women of Normandy are

-said still to whisper with trembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or

-Retz), that bold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanne d’Arc,

-who seems to have been a stealer and killer of children, instead of

-the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard, as many believe. What terror

-other kidnappers have sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from

-the text.

-

-This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries, for such

-works exist in numbers. The author has limited himself to problems

-of disappearance and cases of kidnapping, thereby excluding many

-twice-told wonders--the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,

-Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s _Femme sans nom_, the

-changeling of Louis Philippe and the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair

-at Mayerling.

-

-Neither have I attempted any technical exploration of the conduct and

-motives of vanishers and kidnappers. It must be sufficiently clear

-that a man unpursued who flees and hides is out of tune with his

-environment, ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accent again

-the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included, are creatures of

-disease or defect.

-

-A general bibliography will be found at the end of the book. The

-information to be had from these volumes has been liberally supported

-and amplified from the files of contemporary newspapers in the

-countries and cities where these dramas of doubt were played. The

-records of legal trials have been consulted in instances where trials

-took place and I have talked with the accessible officials having

-knowledge of the cases or persons here treated.

-

-                                                        E. H. S.

-

- New York, August, 1927.

-

-

-

-

-MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING

-

-

-

-

-I

-

-THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA

-

-

-Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of June, 1874, two men in

-a shabby-covered buggy stopped their horse under the venerable elms

-of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy suburb of Philadelphia,

-with its grave-faced revolutionary houses and its air of lavendered

-maturity. All about these intruders was historic ground. Near at

-hand was the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington and his

-tattered command in their famous encounter. Yonder stood the old Morris

-Mansion, where the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his

-troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous Agnew

-fell before a backwoods rifleman, and there Mad Anthony Wayne was

-forced to decamp by the fire of his confused left. Not far away the

-first American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous house on the

-ridge had once been the American Capitol. The whole region was a hive

-of memories.

-

-Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign of interest in all

-these things. Instead, they devoted their attention to the two young

-sons of a grocer who happened to be playing among the bushes on their

-father’s property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence

-by the strangers, who offered them sweets and asked them who they were,

-where their parents were staying, how old they might be, and how they

-might like to go riding.

-

-The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary, tried to respond

-manfully, as his parents had taught him. He said that he was Walter

-Ross, and that his companion was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His

-mother, he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older daughters,

-and his father was busy at the store in the business section of the

-settlement. Yes, that big, white house on the knoll behind them was

-where they lived. All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled

-off to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their buggy he

-demurred. The men got pieces of candy from their pockets, filled the

-hands of both children, and drove away.

-

-When the father of the boys came home a little later, he found his

-sons busy with their candy, and he was told where they had got it. He

-smiled and felt that the two men in the buggy must be very fond of

-children. Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless

-incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was the prelude to the most

-famous of American abduction cases and the introduction to one of the

-abiding mysteries of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness

-came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide notoriousness--a case of

-kidnapping that stands firm in popular memory after the confusions of

-fifty-odd years.

-

-On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again. This time they

-had no difficulty in getting the children into their wagon.[1] Saying

-that they were going to buy fire crackers for the approaching Fourth

-of July, they carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and

-Richmond Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was given a silver

-quarter and told to go into a shop and buy what he wanted. At the

-end of five or ten minutes the boy emerged to find his brother, his

-benefactors and their buggy gone.

-

-[1] Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial,

-the following year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this

-seems unlikely.

-

-Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his home in the toils

-of a strange city, stood on the curb and gave childish vent to his

-feelings. The sight of the boy with his hands full of fireworks and

-his eyes full of tears, soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock

-finally took charge of the youngster and got from him the name and

-address of his father. At about eight o’clock that evening he arrived

-at the Ross dwelling and delivered the child, to find that the younger

-boy had not been brought home, and that the father was out visiting the

-police stations in quest of his sons.

-

-In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping was not

-immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile reception when the

-circumstances forced its entertainment. The father of the missing

-Charlie was Christian K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was

-popularly supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a

-prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and master of a

-competence. His flourishing trade, the big house in which he lived

-with his wife and seven children, and the fine grounds about his home

-naturally caused many to believe that he was a man of large means. In

-view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should have been

-considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited the details of his

-adventure with the men in a faithful and detailed way, telling enough

-about the talk and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.

-Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of the strangers.

-Finally, the manœuver of deserting the older boy and disappearing with

-his brother should have been sufficiently suggestive for the most

-lethargic policeman. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the

-skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves in the

-following advertisement, which I take from the _Philadelphia Ledger_ of

-July 3:

-

- “Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age, light

- complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will be paid

- on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner of Fifth and

- Chestnut streets.”

-

-The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal the fact of the

-child’s vanishment from his mother, who was not called from her summer

-resort until some days later.

-

-The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on their comfortable

-assumption that the boy had been lost. On the fifth, Mr. Ross received

-a letter which had been dated and posted on the day before in

-Philadelphia. It stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the

-writer, that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for

-him through the police, and that the father would hear more in a few

-days. The note was scrawled by some one who was trying to conceal his

-natural handwriting and any literate attainments he may have possessed.

-Punctuation and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest words

-were so crazily misspelled as to betray purposiveness. The unfortunate

-father was addressed as “Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was

-later contracted to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that followed

-were signed “John.”

-

-Even this communication did not mean much to the police, though they

-had not, at that early stage of the mystery, the troublesome flood of

-crank letters to plead as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter

-of fact, this first letter came before there had been anything but the

-briefest and most conservative announcements in the newspapers, and it

-should have been apparent to any one that there was nothing fraudulent

-about it. Yet the police officials dawdled. A second message from the

-mysterious John wakened them at last to action.

-

-On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer communication,

-unquestionably from the writer of the first, in which he was told that

-his appeal to the detectives would be vain. He must meet the terms of

-the ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the murderer of

-his own child. The writer declared that no power in the universe would

-discover the boy, or restore him to his father, without payment of the

-money, and he added that if the father sent detectives too near the

-hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the doom of his

-son. The letter closed with most terrifying threats. The kidnappers

-were frankly out to get money, and they would have it, either from

-Ross or from others. If he failed to yield, his child would be slain

-as an example to others, so that they would act more wisely when their

-children were taken. Ross would see his child either alive or dead. If

-he paid, the boy would be brought back alive; if not, his father would

-behold his corpse. Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified

-by the insertion of these words into the _Ledger_: “Ros, we be willing

-to negotiate.”

-

-Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie Ross terror burst

-upon Philadelphia and surrounding communities the following morning in

-full virulence. The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going

-road, searched the trains and boats, went through all the craft lying

-in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all the known criminals in town

-and immediately began a house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented

-proceeding in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory with

-every fresh edition. At once the mad pack of anonymous letter writers

-took up the cry, writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents,

-who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever came to their

-door, a most insulting and disheartening array of fulminations which

-caused the collapse of the already overburdened mother.

-

-In the fever which attacked the city any child was likely to be

-seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent, to the nearest police

-station, there to answer the suspicion of being Charlie Ross. Mothers

-with golden-haired boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted

-to Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that he give them

-written attestation of the fact that their children were not his, and

-the poor beladen man actually wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The

-madness of the public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the

-age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before the officials by

-unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with black hair were apprehended

-by the score at the demand of citizens who pleaded that they might be

-the missing boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought

-before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed seekers for

-the missing boy had to be driven from the station houses with threats

-and blows.

-

-Following the command of the child snatchers with literal fidelity,

-Mr. Ross had published in the _Ledger_ the words I have quoted. The

-result was a third epistle from the robbers. It recognized his reply,

-but made no definite proposition and gave no further orders, save the

-command that he reply in the _Ledger_, stating whether or not he was

-ready to pay the twenty thousand dollars. On the other hand, the letter

-continued the ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed

-at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked whether “Ros”

-cared more for money or his son. In this letter was the same labored

-effort to appear densely unlettered. One new note was added. The writer

-asked whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand pounds for

-the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer was, or wanted to seem, a

-Briton, used to speaking of money in British terms. This pretension was

-continued in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search

-for the missing boy in England.

-

-In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross relied absolutely

-on the police and put himself into their hands. He asked how he was

-to reply to the third letter and was told that he should pretend to

-acquiesce in the demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding

-them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy. But this

-subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors, with the result

-that a warning letter came to Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was

-told that he was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives

-could not help him, and that he must choose at once between his money

-and the life of his child.

-

-Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to yield to the demands

-of the extortioners, and several men of means offered him loans or

-gifts of such funds as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he

-signified his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the mysterious

-John wrote him two or three well-veiled letters which were intended

-to test his good faith. At this point the father and the abductors

-seemed about to agree, when the officials again intervened and caused

-the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement that

-he would not compound a felony by paying money for the return of his

-child. But this stand had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful

-anxiety caused another change of front.

-

-Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effect in more than one

-direction. Its most serious consequence was that it gave the abductors

-the impression that they were dealing with a man who did not know

-his own mind, could not be relied upon to keep his promises, and was

-obviously in the control of the officers. Accordingly they moved

-with supercaution and began to impose impossible conditions. By this

-time they had written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozen

-letters, each containing more terrifying threats than its antecedents.

-To look this correspondence over at this late day is to see the

-nervousness of the abductors, slowly mounting to the point of extreme

-danger to the child. But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was

-overpersuaded by official opinion.

-

-At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunder of all blunders

-was made. Philadelphia was tremulous with excitement. The police of

-every American city were looking for the apparition of the boy or his

-kidnappers. Officials in the chief British and Continental ports were

-watching arriving ships for the fugitives, and millions of newspaper

-readers were following the case in eager suspense. Naturally the police

-and the other officials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the world

-were upon them. They quite humanly decided on a course calculated to

-bring them celebrity in case of success and ample justification in case

-of failure. In other words, they made the gesture typical of baffled

-officialdom, without respect to the safety of the missing child or the

-real interests of its parents. At a meeting presided over by the mayor,

-attended by leading citizens and advised by the chiefs of the police,

-a reward of twenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransom

-demanded, was subscribed and advertised. The terms called for “evidence

-leading to the capture and conviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross

-and the safe return of the child,” conditions which may be cynically

-viewed as incongruous. The following day the chief of police announced

-that his men, should they participate in the successful coup, would

-claim no part of the reward.

-

-All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducement to informers, the

-hope being, apparently, that some one inside the kidnapping conspiracy

-would be bribed into revelations. But the actual result was quite the

-opposite. A sudden hush fell upon the writer of the letters. Also,

-there were no more communications in the _Ledger_. A week passed

-without further word, and the parents of the boy were thrown into utter

-hopelessness. Finally another letter came, this time from New York,

-whereas all previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It was

-clear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductors to leave

-the city, and their letter showed that they had slipped away with their

-prisoner, in spite of the vaunted precautions.

-

-The next note from the criminals warned Ross in terms of impressive

-finality that he must at once abandon the detectives and come to terms.

-He signified his intention of complying by inserting an advertisement

-in the _New York Herald_, as directed by the abductors. They wrote him

-that they would shortly inform him of the manner in which the money was

-to be paid over. Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Ross

-to procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes of small denomination.

-These he was to place in a leather traveling bag, which was to be

-painted white so that it might be visible at night. With this bag of

-money, Ross was to board the midnight train for New York on the night

-of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform, ready to toss the bag to

-the track. As soon as he should see a bright light and a white flag

-being waved, he was to let go the money, but the train was not to stop

-until the next station was reached. In case these conditions were fully

-and faithfully met, the child would be restored, safe and sound, within

-a few hours.

-

-Ross, after consultation with the police, decided to temporize once

-more. He got the white painted bag, as commanded, and took the

-midnight train, prepared to change to a Hudson River train in New York

-and continue his journey to Albany, as the abductors had further

-instructed. But there was no money in the valise. Instead, it contained

-a letter in which Ross said that he could not pay until he saw the

-child before him. He insisted that the exchange be made simultaneously

-and suggested that communication through the newspapers was not

-satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed all plans to the police.

-Some closer and secret way of communicating must be devised, he wrote.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ CHARLIE ROSS ~~]

-

-So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode to New York on the

-rear platform of one train and to Albany on another. But the agent

-of the kidnappers did not appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia

-crestfallen, only to find that a false newspaper report had caused

-the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announced that Ross was

-going West to follow up a clew. The kidnappers had seen this and

-decided that their man was not going to make the trip to New York and

-Albany. Consequently there was no one along the track to receive the

-valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductors would have laughed

-at the empty police dodge of suggesting a closer and secret method of

-communication--for the purpose of betraying the malefactors, of course.

-

-From this point on, Ross and the abductors continued to argue, through

-the _New York Herald_, the question of simultaneous exchange of the

-boy and money. Ross naturally took the position that he could not risk

-being imposed on by men who perhaps did not have the child at all. The

-robbers, on their side, contended that they could not see any safe way

-of making a synchronous exchange. So the negotiations dragged along.

-

-The New York police entered the case on August 2, when Chief Walling

-sent to Philadelphia for the letters received by Mr. Ross from the

-abductors. They were taken to New York by Captain Heins of the

-Philadelphia police, and “Chief Walling’s informant identified the

-writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”

-

-In order to draw the line between fact and fable as clearly as

-possible at this point, I quote from official police sources, namely,

-“Celebrated Criminal Cases of America,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain

-of police, San Francisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says that

-his facts have been “verified with the assistance of police officials

-throughout the country.” He continues with respect to the Ross case:

-

-“The informant then stated that in April, 1874--the year in

-question--Mosher and Joseph Douglas, alias Clark, endeavored to

-persuade him to participate in the kidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt

-children, while the child was playing on the lawn surrounding the

-family residence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)

-The child was to be held until a ransom of fifty thousand dollars was

-obtained, and the informant’s part of the plot would be to take the

-child on a small launch and keep it in seclusion until the money was

-received, but he declined to enter into the conspiracy.”

-

-With all due respect to the police and to official versions, this

-report smells strongly of fabrication after the fact, as we shall

-see. It is, however, true that the New York police had some sort of

-information early in August, and it may even be true that they had

-suspicions of Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A history of

-subsequent events will give the surest light on this disputed point.

-

-The negotiations between Ross and the abductors continued in a

-desultory fashion, without any attempt to deliver the child or get

-the ransom, until toward the middle of November. At this time the

-kidnappers arranged a meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. Mr.

-Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousand dollars in a

-package. A messenger was to call for this some time during the day.

-His approach and departure had been carefully planned. In case he was

-watched or followed, he would not find the abductors on his return, and

-the child would be killed. Only good faith could succeed. Mr. Ross was

-to insert in the _New York Herald_ a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus,

-Fifth Avenue Hotel--instant.” This would indicate his decision to pay

-the money and signify the day he would be at the hotel.

-

-Accordingly the father of the missing boy had the advertisement

-published, saying that he would be at the hotel with the money

-“Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.” Ross’ brother and nephew kept the

-tryst, but no messenger came for the money, and the last hope of the

-family seemed broken.

-

-The Rosses had long since given up the detectives and recognized

-the futility of police promises. The father of the boy had, in his

-distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentary sentiments pertaining

-to the guardians of the law, with the result that the unhappy man was

-subjected to taunt and insult and the questioning of his motives.

-Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkerton detectives, who evidently

-counseled Mr. Ross to act in secret. In any event, the appointment

-at the Fifth Avenue Hotel was the last of its kind to be made, though

-Ross and the abductors seemed to have been in contact at later dates.

-Whatever the precise facts may be on this point, five months had soon

-gone by without the recovery of the boy, or the apprehension of the

-kidnappers, while search was apparently being made in many countries.

-If, as claimed, Chief Walling of the New York police had direct

-information bearing on the identity of the abductors the first week

-in August, he managed a veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and

-his men failed, in four months, to find a widely known criminal who

-was afterward shown to have been in and about New York all of that

-time. Not the police, but a stroke of destiny, intervened to break the

-impasse.

-

-On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglars entered the

-summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt, presiding justice of the appellate

-division of the New York supreme court. This mansion stood overlooking

-New York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The

-villa was then unoccupied, but in the course of the preceding summer

-Justice Van Brunt had installed a burglar alarm system which connected

-with a gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt, about two

-hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hot weather residence. Holmes

-Van Brunt occupied his house the year around. He was at home on the

-night in question, and the sounding of the gong brought him out of bed.

-He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the young man came back with

-the report that there was a light moving in his uncle’s place.

-

-Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men from their quarters, armed

-them with revolvers or shotguns and went out to trap the intruders. The

-house of Justice Van Brunt was surrounded by the four men, who waited

-for the burglars to emerge. After half an hour two figures were seen

-to issue from the cellar door and were challenged. They answered by

-opening fire. The first was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The second ran

-around the house, only to be intercepted by young Van Brunt and shot

-down, dying instantly.

-

-When the Van Brunts and their servants gathered about the wounded man,

-who was lying on the sodden ground in the agony of death, he signified

-that he wished to make a statement. An umbrella was held over him to

-keep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences, that

-he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companion was William Mosher. He

-understood he was dying and therefore wished to tell the truth. He and

-Mosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He did not know where

-the child was, but Mosher could tell. Mr. Van Brunt told him that

-Mosher was dead, and the body of the other burglar was carried over and

-exhibited to the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the child would

-be returned safely in a few days. On hearing one of the party express

-doubt about his story, Douglas is said to have remarked:

-

-“Chief Walling knows all about us and was after us, and now he has us.”

-

-Douglas died there on the lawn, with the rain drenching his tortured

-body. Both he and Mosher were identified from the police records by

-officers who had known them and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man

-who had seen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantown

-with the two boys, were taken to New York. The brother of the kidnapped

-child, though he was purposely kept in the dark as to his mission,

-immediately recognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,

-saying that Douglas was the one who gave the candy, and that Mosher

-had driven the horse. This identification was confirmed by the other

-witness.

-

-The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously and hourly

-expected. But he had not arrived at the end of a week, and the police

-officials immediately moved in new directions.

-

-Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt, of New York, a

-former police officer, who was later convicted of complicity in the

-abduction. Westervelt and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time

-policeman made a rambling statement containing little information,

-but his sister admitted that she had been privy to the matter of the

-kidnapping. She had known for several months, she said, that her

-husband had kidnapped Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted in

-his planning, and did not know where he had kept the child hidden, and

-was unable to give any information.

-

-Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the child to be alive

-and stated her reasons. She did not believe her husband, burglar and

-kidnapper though he was, capable of injuring a child. He had four of

-his own and had always been a good father. The poverty of his family

-had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs. Mosher related, she had

-pleaded with her husband to return the stolen boy to his parents,

-saying that it was cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be

-little chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the danger to

-the abductors was becoming greater every day. This conversation, she

-said, had taken place only a few days before the Van Brunt burglary

-and Mosher’s death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that the

-child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still living.

-

-But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his abductors only

-intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives were sent to Europe, to

-Mexico, to the Pacific coast, and to various other places, whither

-false clews pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross

-himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds of journeys

-to look at suspected children in all parts of the United States. He

-spent, according to his own account, more than sixty thousand dollars

-on these hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted as

-had all the others. At last, after more than twenty years of seeking,

-Christian K. Ross gave up in despair, saying he felt sure the boy must

-be dead.

-

-For some time after the kidnappers had been killed and identified, a

-large part of the American public suspected that Westervelt or Mrs.

-Mosher, or some one connected with them, was detaining the missing

-child for fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its return home.

-The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enough to observe, remember

-and talk. He might, if released, give information that would lead to

-the imprisonment of Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,

-steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise. The

-Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, in February, 1875, which

-fixed the penalty for abducting or detaining a child at twenty-five

-years’ imprisonment, but the new law contained a proviso that any

-person or persons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriff

-on or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875, should be immune

-from any punishment. At the same time Mr. Ross offered a cash reward

-of five thousand dollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no

-questions asked. He named more than half a dozen responsible firms at

-whose places of business the child might be left for identification,

-announcing that all these business houses were prepared to pay the

-reward on the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in the boy

-would not be detained.

-

-All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last to be reached that

-the boy was beyond human powers of restoration.

-

-To tell what seems to have been the truth--though it was suspected at

-the time--the New York police had fairly reliable information on Mosher

-and Douglas soon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though he

-never openly said so, to have been informed by a brother of Mosher’s

-who was on bad terms with the kidnapper. Not long afterwards he had

-Westervelt brought in for questioning. That worthy had been dismissed

-from the New York police force a few months earlier for neglect of duty

-or shielding a policy room. His sister was Bill Mosher’s (the suspected

-man’s) wife and it was known that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia

-about the time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying, by

-every device, to get himself reinstated as a policeman, and Walling

-held out to him the double bait of renewed employment and the whole of

-the twenty thousand dollars of reward offered for the return of the

-boy and the capture of the kidnappers.

-

-Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidity seems to have

-been committed, for though Westervelt visited the chief of police

-no fewer than twenty times, he was never trailed to his scores of

-appointments with his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neither

-did the astute guardians of the law get wind of the fact that Mosher

-and Douglas were in and about New York most of the time. They failed

-to find out that Westervelt and probably one of the others had been

-seen with the little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed

-to make the least progress in the case, though they had definite

-information concerning the names of the kidnappers, both of them

-experienced criminals with long records. It might be hard to discover

-a more dreadful piece of police bluffing and blundering. First the

-Philadelphia and then the New York forces gave the poorest possible

-advice, made the most egregious boasts and promises and then proceeded

-to show the most incredible stupidity and lack of organization. A later

-prosecutor summed it all up when he said the police had been, at least,

-honest.

-

-But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed at Judge Van Brunt’s

-house and Douglas had made his dying statements, it was easy to lure

-Westervelt to Philadelphia, arrest him, charge him with aiding the

-kidnappers and his wife with having been an accessory. Walter Ross had

-identified Mosher and Douglas as the men who had been in the buggy but

-had never seen Westervelt. A neighboring merchant appeared, however,

-and picked him out as the man who had spent half an hour in his shop a

-few weeks after the kidnapping, asking many questions about the Rosses,

-especially as to their financial position and the rumor that Christian

-K. Ross was bankrupt. Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge the

-day before Mosher and Douglas broke into the Van Brunt house and were

-killed. A woman appeared who had seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn

-horse-car with a child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon

-reasonably clear that the one-time New York policeman had conspired

-with his brother-in-law and the other man to seize the boy and get the

-ransom. Westervelt’s motives were rancor at being caught at his tricks

-and dismissed and financial necessity, for he was almost in want after

-his discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparations for the

-kidnapping, had the boy in his charge for a time and used his standing

-as a former officer to hoodwink the New York police. He had also had to

-do with some of the ransom letters.

-

-On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trial in the Court of

-Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, Judge Elcock presiding. Theodore V.

-Burgin and George J. Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Brunts

-waylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’ dying

-story. The witnesses above mentioned told their versions of what they

-had heard and observed. A porter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking

-resort at 74 Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestial

-hordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Tavern drinking

-and consulting with Mosher and Douglas, that he had boasted he could

-name the kidnappers and that he had arranged for secret signals to

-reveal the presence of the two confederates now dead. Chief Walling

-also testified against the man. The jury returned a verdict of guilty

-on three counts of the indictment, reaching its decision on September

-20, after long deliberation. On October 9, Judge Elcock sentenced the

-disgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinement at

-labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.

-

-Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admit that the decision

-against him was just, confess that he had taken any part in the

-kidnapping or yield the least hint as to the fate of the unfortunate

-little boy.

-

-Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearful vigil of the parents

-in such a case. In his book, Christian K. Ross recites, without

-improper emotion, that, not counting the cases looked into for him

-by the Pinkertons, he personally or through others investigated two

-hundred and seventy-three children reported to be the lost Charlie. In

-every case there was a mistake or a deception. Some of the lads put

-forward were old enough to have been conventional uncles to him.

-

-In the following decades many strange rumors were bruited, many false

-trails followed to their empty endings, and many spurious or unbalanced

-claimants investigated and exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did not die

-down for a full generation, and even to-day mothers in the outlying

-States frighten their children into obedience with the name and rumor

-of this stolen boy. He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of

-pathos and terror for the generations.

-

-As recently as June 5 of the current year, the _Los Angeles Times_,

-a journal staid to reaction, printed long and credulous sticks of

-type to the effect that John W. Brown, ill in the General Hospital of

-Los Angeles, was really the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue

-“confessed” that he had remained silent for fifty years in order to

-“guard the honor of my mother” and said he had been kidnapped by his

-“foster-father, William Henry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross

-“declined to have anything further to do with him.”

-

-Comment upon such caddism can be clinical only. The fact that the

-wretch who uttered it was sick and dying alone explains the fevered

-hallucination.

-

-As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind of an item suggesting the

-discovery of Charlie Ross is always good copy and will be telegraphed

-about the country from end to end, and printed at greater or lesser

-length. If the thing has the least aura of credibility about it, Sunday

-features will follow, remarkable mainly for their inaccuracies. In

-other words, that sad little boy of Washington Lane long since became a

-classic to the American press.

-

-At the end of more than fifty years the commentator can hazard no

-safer opinion on the probable fate of Charlie Ross than did his

-contemporaries. The popular theories then were that he had died of

-grief and privation, that Mosher had drowned him in New York Bay when

-he felt the police were near at hand, or that he had been adopted by

-some distant family and taught to forget his home and parents. Of these

-hollow guesses, the reader may take his choice now as then.

-

-

-

-

-II

-

-“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”

-

-

-Headless horsemen and other strange ghostly figures march nightly on

-the beach at Nag’s Head. For more than two years these shades and

-spectres have been seen and Coast Guardsman Steve Basnight has been

-trying vainly to convince his fellows. They have laughed upon him with

-sepulchral laughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. They have

-chided him as a seer of visions, a mad hallucinant.

-

-But now there are others who have seen and fled. Mrs. Alice Grice,

-passing the lonely sands in her motor, had trouble with the engine

-and saw or thought she saw a man standing there, brooding across the

-waters. She called to him and he, as one shaken from some immortal

-reverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seeming quite to walk, but

-floating into the fog, silent and serene.

-

-Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglers or rum

-runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyes of terror. But that cannot

-be so, for the coast guard is staunch and active. This is no ordinary

-visitor, no thing of flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restless

-spirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave and come to haunt

-this wild and forlorn region.

-

-George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelled being most

-closely and accurately. It is a tall, great man, clad in purest white,

-strolling along the beach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer

-than the sad and dreaming face.

-

-It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter, whose wrecked

-ship is believed by many to have been driven ashore at this point.

-

-So much for the lasting charm of doubt, since I take my substance here,

-and most of my mystery, from the _New York World_ of June 9, 1927,

-contained in a dispatch from Manteo, N. C., bearing the date of the

-previous day--one hundred and fifteen years after the happening.

-

-But if we see Aaron Burr ghostwalking in the moonlight as once he trod

-in the tortured flesh at the Battery, looking out upon those bitter

-waters that denied him hope, or if we believe, with many writers, that

-he fell upon his knees and cried out, “By this blow I am severed from

-the human race!” we are still not much nearer to the pathos or the

-mystery of that old incident in 1812, when Theodosia Burr set out for

-New York by sea and never reached it.

-

-“By and by,” says Parton in his “The Life and Times of Aaron Burr,”

-“some idle tales were started in the newspapers, that the _Patriot_ had

-been captured by pirates and all on board murdered except Theodosia,

-who was carried on shore as a captive.”

-

-Idle tales they may have been, but their vitality has outlived the

-pathetic facts. Indeed, unless probability be false and romance true,

-“the most brilliant woman of her day in America” perished at sea a

-little more than a hundred and fifteen years ago, caught off the

-Virginia Capes in a hurricane that scattered the British war fleet and

-crushed the “miserable little pilot boat” that was trying to bear her

-to New York. In that more than a century of intervening time, however,

-a tradition of doubt has clouded itself about the quietus of Aaron

-Burr’s celebrated daughter which puts her story immovably upon the

-roster of the great mysteries of disappearance. The various accounts of

-piratical atrocities connected with her death may be fanciful or even

-studiedly fictive, but even this realization does nothing to dispel the

-fog.

-

-Theodosia Burr was born in New York in 1783 and educated under

-the unflagging solicitude and careful personal direction of her

-distinguished father, who wanted her to be, as he testifies in his

-letters, the equal of any woman on earth. To this enlightened training

-the precious girl responded with notable spirit and intellectual

-acquisitiveness, mastering French as a child and becoming proficient

-in Latin and Greek before she was adolescent. At fourteen, her mother

-having died some years earlier, she was already mistress of the house

-of the New York senator and a figure in the best political society

-of the times. As a slip of a girl she played hostess to Volney,

-Talleyrand, Jerome Bonaparte and numberless other notables, and bore,

-in addition to her repute as a bluestocking, the name of a most

-beautiful and charming young woman. Something of her quality may be

-read from her numerous extant letters, two of which are quoted below.

-

-In 1801, just after her father had received the famous tied vote for

-the Presidency and declined to enter into the conspiracy which aimed to

-prefer him to Jefferson, recipient of the popular majority, Theodosia

-Burr was married to Joseph Alston, a young Carolina lawyer and planter

-who later became governor of his state. Thus, about the time her father

-was being installed as Vice-President, his happy and adoring daughter,

-his friend and confidante to the end, was making her twenty days’

-journey to her new home in South Carolina, where her husband owned a

-residence in Charleston and several rice plantations in the northern

-part of the state.

-

-At the time of the famous duel with Hamilton, in 1804, Burr was still

-Vice-President, still one of the chief political figures and at the

-very height of his popularity and fortune, an elevation from which that

-unfortunate encounter began his dislodgment. Theodosia was in the South

-with her husband at the time and knew nothing either of the challenge

-or of the duel itself until weeks after Hamilton was dead.

-

-Of the merits of the Burr-Hamilton controversy or the right and wrong

-of either man’s conduct little need be said here. As time goes on it

-becomes more and more apparent that Burr in no way exceeded becoming

-conduct or violated the gentlemanly code as then practised. Hamilton

-had been his persistent and by no means always honorable enemy. He had

-attacked and not infrequently belied his opponent, thwarting him where

-he could politically and even resorting to the use of his personal

-connections for the private humiliation of his foe. The answer in

-1804 to such tactics was the challenge. Burr gave it and insisted on

-satisfaction. Hamilton met him on the heights at Weehawken, across the

-Hudson from New York, and fell mortally wounded at the first exchange,

-dying thirty-one hours later.

-

-It is evident from a reading of the newspapers of the time and from

-the celebrated sermon on Hamilton’s death delivered by Dr. Nott, later

-president of Union College, that duelling was then so common that there

-existed “a preponderance of opinion in favor of it,” and that the spot

-at which Hamilton fell was so much in use for affairs of honor that

-Dr. Nott apostrophized it as “ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned

-with the richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record against us,

-the annual register of murders which you keep and send up to God!”

-Nevertheless, the town was shocked by the death of Hamilton, and Burr’s

-enemies seized the moment to circulate all manner of absurd calumnies

-which gained general credence and served to undo the victorious

-antagonist.

-

-It was reported that Hamilton had not fired at all, a story which was

-refuted by his powder-stained empty pistol. Next it was charged that

-Burr had coldly shot his opponent down after he had fired into the air.

-The fact seems to be that Hamilton discharged his weapon a fraction of

-a second after Burr, just as he was struck by his adversary’s ball.

-Hamilton’s bullet cut a twig over Burr’s head. The many yarns to the

-general effect that Burr was a dead shot and had practised secretly

-for months before he sent the challenge seem also to belong to the

-realm of fiction. Burr was never an expert with fire-arms, but he was

-courageous, collected and determined. He had every right to believe,

-from Hamilton’s past conduct, that his opponent would show him no mercy

-on the field. Both men were soldiers and acquainted with the code and

-with the use of weapons.

-

-But Hamilton’s friends were numerous, powerful and bitter. They left

-nothing undone that might bring upon Burr the fullest measure of

-public and private reprehension. The results of their campaign were

-peculiar, inasmuch as Burr lost his influence in the states which

-had formerly been the seat of his power and gained a high popularity

-in the comparatively weak new western states, where Hamilton and the

-Federalist leaders were regarded with hostility. At the expiration of

-his term of office Burr found himself politically dead and practically

-exiled by the charges of murder which had been lodged against him both

-in New York and New Jersey.

-

-The duel and its consequences marked the beginning of the Burr

-misfortunes. Undoubtedly the ostracism which greeted him after his

-retirement from office was the immediate fact which moved him to

-undertake his famous enterprise against the West and Mexico, an

-adventure that resulted in his trial for treason. The fact that he was

-acquitted, even with the weight of the government and the personal

-influence of President Jefferson, his onetime friend, thrown against

-him, did not save him from still further popular dislike, and he was at

-length forced to leave the country. It was in the course of this exile

-in Europe that Theodosia wrote him the well known letter from which I

-quote an illuminating extract:

-

- “I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new

- misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me

- so superior, so elevated above other men; I contemplate you with such

- a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love and pride,

- that very little superstition would be necessary to make me worship

- you as a superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite

- in me. When I afterwards revert to myself, how insignificant my best

- qualities appear. My vanity would be greater if I had not been placed

- so near you; and yet my pride is our relationship. I had rather not

- live than not be the daughter of such a man.”

-

-Burr remained abroad for four years, trying vainly to interest

-the British government and then Napoleon in various schemes of

-privateering. The net result of his activities in England was an order

-to leave the country. Nor did Burr fare any better in France. Napoleon

-simply refused to receive him and the American’s past acquaintance

-with and hospitable treatment of the emperor’s brother, once king of

-Westphalia, failed to avail him. Consequently, Burr slipped back into

-the United States in 1812, quite like a thief in the night, not certain

-what reception he might get and even fearful lest Hamilton’s wildest

-partisans might actually undertake to throw him into jail and try him

-for the shooting of their chief. The reception he got was hostile and

-suspicious enough, but there was no attempt to proceed legally.

-

-Theodosia, who had never ceased to work in her father’s interest,

-writing to everyone she knew and beseeching all those who had been her

-friends in the days of Burr’s ascendancy, in an effort to clear the

-way for his return to his native land, was overjoyed at the homecoming

-of her parent and expressed her pleasure in various charmingly written

-letters, wherein she promised herself the excitement of a trip to New

-York as soon as arrangements could be made.

-

-But the Burr cup of misfortune was not yet full. That summer

-Theodosia’s only child, Aaron Burr Alston, sickened and died in his

-twelfth year, leaving the mother prostrated and the grandfather, who

-had doted on the boy, supervised his education and centered all his

-hopes upon him, bereft of his composure and optimism, possibly for the

-first time in his varied and tempestuous life. Mrs. Alston’s letters at

-this time deserve at least quotation:

-

- “A few miserable days past, my dear father, and your late letters

- would have gladdened my soul; and even now I rejoice in their contents

- as much as it is possible for me to rejoice at anything; but there is

- no more joy for me; the world is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child

- is gone for ever. He expired on the thirtieth of June. My head is not

- sufficiently collected to say any thing further. May Heaven, by other

- blessings, make you some amends for the noble grandson you have lost.”

-

-And again:

-

- “Whichever way I turn the same anguish still assails me. You talk of

- consolation. Ah! you know not what you have lost. I think Omnipotence

- could give me no equivalent for my boy; no, none--none.”

-

-This was the woman who set out a few months later, sadly emaciated and

-very weak, to join her father in New York, hoping that she might gain

-strength and hope again from the burdened but undaunted man who never

-yet had failed her.

-

-The second war with England was in progress. Theodosia’s husband was

-governor of South Carolina, general of the state militia and active in

-the field. He could not leave his post. Accordingly, the plan of making

-the trip overland in her own coach was abandoned and Mrs. Alston

-decided to set sail in the _Patriot_, a small schooner which had put

-into Charleston after a privateering enterprise. Parton says that “she

-was commanded by an experienced captain and had for a sailing master

-an old New York pilot, noted for his skill and courage. The vessel was

-famous for her sailing qualities and it was confidently expected she

-would perform the voyage to New York in five or six days.” On the other

-hand, Burr himself referred to the ship bitterly as “the miserable

-little pilot boat.”

-

-Whatever the precise facts, the _Patriot_ was made ready and Theodosia

-went aboard with her maid and a personal physician, whom Burr had sent

-south from New York to attend his daughter on the voyage. The guns

-of the _Patriot_ had been dismounted and stored below. To give her

-further ballast and to defray the expenses of the trip, Governor Alston

-filled the hold with tierces of rice from his plantations. The captain

-carried a letter from Governor Alston addressed to the commander of

-the British fleet, which was lying off the Capes, explaining the

-painful circumstances under which the little schooner was voyaging and

-requesting safe passage to New York. Thus occupied, the _Patriot_ put

-out from Charleston on the afternoon of December 30th and crossed the

-bar on the following morning. Here fact ends and conjecture begins.

-

-When, after the elapse of a week, the _Patriot_ had not reached New

-York, Burr began to worry and to make inquiries, but nothing was to

-be discovered. He could not even be sure until the arrival of his

-son-in-law’s letter, that Theodosia had set sail. Even then, he hoped

-there might be some mistake. When a second letter from the South made

-it plain that she had gone on the _Patriot_, Burr still did not abandon

-hope and we see the picture of this sorely punished man walking every

-day from his law office in Nassau street to the fashionable promenade

-at the Battery, where he strolled up and down, oblivious to the

-hostile or impertinent glances of the vulgar, staring out toward the

-Narrows--in vain.

-

-The poor little schooner was never seen again nor did any member of her

-crew reach safety and send word of her end. In due time came the report

-of the hurricane off Cape Hatteras, three days after the departure of

-the _Patriot_. Later still it was found that the storm had been of

-sufficient power to scatter the British fleet and send other vessels

-to the bottom. In all probability the craft which bore Theodosia had

-foundered with all hands.

-

-Naturally, every other possibility came to be considered. It was at

-first believed that the _Patriot_ might have been taken by a British

-man-of-war and held on account of her previous activities. Before this

-could be disproved it was suggested that the schooner might readily

-have been attacked by pirates, since her guns were stored below

-decks, and Mrs. Alston taken prisoner. Since there were still a few

-buccaneers in Southern waters, who sporadically took advantage of the

-preoccupation of the maritime powers with their wars, this theory of

-Theodosia Alston’s disappearance gained many adherents, chiefly among

-the romantics, it is true. But the possibility of such a thing was also

-seriously considered by the husband and for a time by the father, who

-hoped the unfortunate woman might have been taken to one of the lesser

-West Indies by some not unfeeling corsair. Surely, she would soon or

-late make her escape and win her way back to her dear ones. In the end

-Burr rejected this idea, too.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ THEODOSIA BURR ~~]

-

-“No, no,” he said to a friend who revived the fable of the pirates,

-“she is indeed dead. Were she alive all the prisons in the world could

-not keep her from her father.”

-

-But the mystery persisted and so the rumors and stories would not

-down. For a number of years after 1813 the newspapers contained, from

-time to time, reports from various parts of the world, generally to

-the effect that a beautiful and cultured woman had been seen aboard

-a ship supposed to be manned by pirates, that such a woman had been

-found in a colony of sea refugees in some vaguely described West Indian

-or South American retreat, or that a woman of English or American

-characteristics was being detained in an island prison, whither she

-had been consigned along with a captured piratical crew. The woman was

-always, by inference at least, Theodosia Burr.

-

-Nor were the persevering Burr calumniators idle, a circumstance which

-seems to testify to the fear his enemies must have had of this strange

-and greatly mistaken man. Theodosia Burr had been seen in Europe

-in company with a British naval officer who was paying her marked

-attentions; she had been located on an island off Panama, where she

-was living in contentment as the wife of a buccaneer; she was known to

-be in Mexico with a new husband who had first been her captor, then

-her lover and now was in the southern Republic trying to revive Burr’s

-dream of empire.

-

-The death of Governor Alston in 1816 caused a fresh crop of the old

-stories to blossom forth and the long deferred demise of Aaron Burr

-in 1836 released a still more formidable crop of rumors, fables and

-speculations. It was not until Burr had passed into the grave that

-there appeared on the American scene a type of romantic who made

-the next fifty years delightful. He was the old reformed pirate who

-desecrated his exit into eternity with a Theodosia Burr yarn. The great

-celebrity of the woman in her lifetime, the tragic fame of her father

-and the circumstances of her death naturally conspired to promote this

-kind of aberrant activity in many idle or unsettled minds. The result

-was that “pirates” who had been present at the capture of the _Patriot_

-in the first days of 1813 began to appear in many parts of the country

-and even in England, where they told, usually on their deathbeds, the

-most engaging and conflicting tales. It took, as I have remarked, half

-a century for all of them to die off.

-

-The accounts given by these various confessors differed in details

-only. All agreed that the _Patriot_ had been captured by sea rovers

-off the Carolina coast and that the entire crew had been forced to

-walk the plank or been cut down by the pirates. Thus the fabulists

-accounted for the fact that nothing had ever been heard from any of

-Mrs. Alston’s shipmates. Nearly all accounts agreed that Theodosia had

-been carried captive to an unnamed island where she had first been a

-rebellious prisoner but later the docile and devoted mate of the pirate

-chief. A few of the relators gave their narratives the spice of novelty

-by insisting that she, too, had been made to walk the plank into the

-heaving sea, after she had witnessed all her shipmates consigned to

-the same fate. The names of the pirate ships and pirate captains

-supposed to have caught the _Patriot_ and disposed of Theodosia Burr

-Alston ranged through all the lists of shipping. No two dying corsairs

-ever agreed on this point.

-

-Forty years after the disappearance of Mrs. Alston this typical yarn

-appeared in the _Pennsylvania Enquirer_:

-

- “An item of news just now going the rounds relates that a sailor, who

- died in Texas, confessed on his death bed that he was one of the crew

- of mutineers who, some forty years ago, took possession of a brig on

- its passage from Charleston to New York and caused all the officers

- and passengers to walk the gang plank. For forty years the wretched

- man had carried about the dreadful secret and died at last in an agony

- of despair.

-

- “What gives the story additional interest is the fact that the vessel

- referred to is the one in which Mrs. Theodosia Alston, the beloved

- daughter of Aaron Burr, took passage for New York, for the purpose of

- meeting her parent in the darkest days of his existence, and which,

- never having been heard of, was supposed to have been foundered at sea.

-

- “The dying sailor professed to remember her well and said she was the

- last who perished, and that he never forgot her look of despair as

- she took the last step from the fatal plank. On reading this account,

- I regarded it as fiction; but on conversing with an officer of the

- navy he assured me of its probable truth and stated that on one of his

- passages home several years ago, his vessel brought two pirates in

- irons who were subsequently executed at Norfolk for recent offenses,

- and who, before their execution, confessed that they had been members

- of the same crew and had participated in the murder of Mrs. Alston and

- her companions.

-

- “Whatever opinion may be entertained of the father, the memory of the

- daughter must be revered as one of the loveliest and most excellent of

- American woman, and the revelation of her untimely fate can only serve

- to invest that memory with a more tender and melancholy interest.”

-

-Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and their obvious conflict

-with known facts, the public took the dying confessions seriously

-and the editors of Sunday supplements printed them with a gay air

-of credence and a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was

-accomplished by this complicity with a most unashamed and unregenerate

-band of downright liars, the pirate legend came to be disseminated in

-every civilized country and there was gradually built up the great

-false tradition which hedges the name and fame of Theodosia Burr. She

-has even appeared in novels, American, British and Continental, in the

-shape of a mysterious queen of freebooters.

-

-The celebrity of her case came to be such that it was in time seized

-upon by the art fakers--perhaps an inevitable step toward genuine

-famosity. Several authentic likenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant,

-notably the painting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery,

-Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston, N. Y., whom

-Burr discovered, apprenticed to Gilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for

-study. He painted the landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of the

-Capitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neither restrained nor

-satisfied the freebooters of the arts. On the other hand, the pirate

-tales inspired them to profitable activity.

-

-In the nineties of the last century the New York newspapers contained

-accounts of a painting of Theodosia Burr which had been found in an

-old seashore cottage near Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwards

-made famous by the gliding experiments of the brothers Wright, and the

-scene of their first successful airplane flights. The printed accounts

-said that this picture had been found on an old schooner which had been

-wrecked off the coast many years before and various inconclusive and

-roundabout devices were employed for identifying it as a likeness of

-the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.

-

-Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most florid publicity in

-New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently, given out by one of the

-prominent Fifth Avenue art dealers. A woman client, it was said,

-had become interested in the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr,

-recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of North Carolina.

-Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken a search for the missing

-work of art and had at length recovered it, together with a most

-fascinating history.

-

-In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of Elizabeth City, N. C., spent

-the summer at Nag’s Head, a resort on the outer barrier of sand which

-protects the North Carolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape

-Hatteras. While there he was called to visit an aged woman who lived

-in an ancient cabin about two miles out of the town. His ministrations

-served to recover her health and she expressed the wish to pay him

-in some way other than with money, of which useful commodity she had

-none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerable curiosity, a most

-beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful, proud and intelligent lady of

-high social standing.” He immediately coveted this picture and asked

-his patient for it, since she wanted to give him something in return

-for his leechcraft. She not only gave him the portrait but she told him

-how she had come by it. Many years before, when she was still a girl,

-the old woman’s admirer and subsequent first husband had, with some

-others, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, which had stranded with

-all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfast served but undisturbed in

-the cabin. The pilot boat was empty and several trunks had been broken

-open, their contents being scattered about. Among the salvaged goods

-was this portrait, which had fallen to the lot of the old woman’s swain

-and come through him to her.

-

-From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture had passed to others

-without ever having left Elizabeth City. There the enterprising dealer

-had found it in the possession of a substantial widow, and she had

-consented to part with it. The rest of the story--the essentials--was

-to be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to be sure, the _Patriot_,

-the date of its stranding agreed with the beclouded incidents of

-January, 1813, and the “intelligent lady of high social standing” was

-none other than Theodosia Burr.

-

-It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelous and romantic

-work do not show the least resemblance to the known portrait of

-Theodosia, and it is also lamentable to find that the art dealer, in

-his sweet account of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptions

-and blunders as regards his subject and the tales of her demise. But,

-while both these portrait yarns may be dismissed without further

-attention, they have undoubtedly served to keep the old and enchanting

-story before modern eyes.

-

-In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of the Theodosia Burr

-case seems to be the acceptable one. The boat on which she embarked

-was small and frail. At the very time it must have been passing the

-treacherous region of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficient

-violence to scatter the heavy British frigates and ships of the line.

-The fate of a little schooner in such weather is almost a matter for

-assurance. Yet of certainty there can be none. The famous daughter

-of the traditional American villain--the devil incarnate to all the

-melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers and propagandists--went down

-to sea in her cockleshell and returned no more. Eleven decades have

-lighted no candle in the darkness that engulfed her.

-

-

-

-

-III

-

-THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE

-

-

-One of the most engrossing of modern mysteries is that which hides

-the final destination of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, better

-known to a generation of newspaper readers as John Orth. In the dawn

-of July 13, 1890, the bark _Santa Margarita_,[2] flying the flag of an

-Austrian merchantman, though her owner and skipper was none other than

-this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs, set sail from Ensenada,

-on the southern shore of the great estuary of the Plata, below Buenos

-Aires, and forthwith vanished from the earth. With her went Johann

-Salvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew of twenty-six. Though

-search has been made in every thinkable port, through the distant

-archipelagoes of the Pacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and though

-emissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missing men, from

-time to time, over a period of nearly forty years, no sight of any one

-connected with the lost ship has ever been got, and no man knows with

-certainty what fate befell her and her princely master.

-

-[2] Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.

-

-The enigma of his passing is not the only circumstance of curious

-doubt and romantic coloration that hedges the career of this imperial

-adventurer. His story, from the beginning, is one marked with dramatic

-incidents. As much of it as bears upon the final episode will have to

-be related.

-

-The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florence on the twenty-fifth

-day of November, 1852, the youngest son of Grand Duke Leopold II of

-Tuscany, and Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly,

-a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary.

-At the baptismal font young Johann received enough names to carry any

-man blissfully through life, his full array having been Johann Nepomuk

-Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand Balthazar Louis Gonzaga Peter

-Alexander Zenobius Antonin.

-

-Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italian revolutionists

-drove out his father and later united Tuscany to the growing kingdom

-of Victor Emanuel. So the hero of this account was reared in Austria

-and educated for the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he rose rapidly

-in rank for reasons quite other than his family connections. The young

-prince was endowed with a good mind and notable for independence

-of thought. He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn his

-pay, an opinion which led to indefatigable military studies and some

-well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings. First, the young archduke

-discovered what he considered faults in the artillery, and he wrote a

-brochure on the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and had him

-disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of military organization and

-wrote a well-known pamphlet called “Education or Drill,” wherein he

-attacked the old method of training soldiers as automatons and advised

-the mental development of the rank and file, in line with policies now

-generally adopted. But such advanced ideas struck the military masters

-of fifty years ago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johann

-was disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawal of his

-commission. At thirty-five he had reached next to the highest possible

-rank and been cashiered from it. This in 1887.

-

-Johann Salvator had, however, been much more than a progressive soldier

-man. He was an accomplished musician, composer of popular waltzes, an

-oratorio and the operetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and

-publicist, of eminent official standing at least, having collaborated

-with Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributed work, “The

-Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Picture,” which was published in

-1886. He was also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena,

-his library on this subject having been the most complete in Europe--a

-fact suggestive of something abnormal.

-

-Personally the man was both handsome and charming. He was, in spite

-of imperial rank and military habitude, democratic, simple, friendly,

-and unaffected. He liked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse

-interests in life, now playing the gallant in Vienna--to the high world

-of the court and the half world of the theater by turns; again retiring

-to his library and his studies, sometimes vegetating at his country

-estates and working on his farms. Official trammels and the rigid

-etiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still, he seems to

-have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissal from the army.

-

-Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a close personal friend

-of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacy had extended even to

-participation in some of the personal and sentimental escapades for

-which the ill-starred Rudolf was remarkable. Apparently the two men

-hardly held an opinion apart, and it was accepted that, with the death

-of the aging emperor and the accession of his son, Johann Salvator

-would be a most powerful personage.

-

-Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promises came to earth.

-After some rumblings and rumorings at Schoenbrunn, it was announced

-that Johann Salvator had petitioned the emperor for permission to

-resign all rank and title, sever his official connection with the royal

-house, and even give up his knighthood in the Order of the Golden

-Fleece. The petitioner also asked for the right to call himself Johann

-Orth, after the estate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was the

-favorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother. All these requests

-were officially granted and confirmed by the emperor, and so the man

-John Orth came into being.

-

-The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behind the official

-records of this strange resignation from rank and honor. Even to-day,

-after Orth has been missing for a whole generation, after all those who

-might have been concerned in keeping secret the motives and measures of

-those times have been gathered to the dust, and after the empire itself

-has been dissolved into its defeated components, the facts in the

-matter cannot be stated with any confidence. There are two principal

-versions of the affair, and both will have to be given so that the

-reader may make his own choice. The popular or romantic account

-deserves to be considered first.

-

-In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced by several handsome

-young women of the name Stübel. One of them, Lori, achieved

-considerable operatic distinction. Another sailed to New York with

-her brother and appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at the old

-Casino. The youngest of these sisters was Ludmilla Stübel, commonly

-called Millie, and on that account sometimes, erroneously, Emilie.

-

-This daring and charming girl began her career in a Viennese operetta

-chorus and rose to the rank of principal. She was not, so far as I

-can gather from the contemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice or

-dramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuous beauty and piquant

-manners” won her almost limitless attention and gave her a popularity

-that reached across the Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein

-Stübel appeared at the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York, then the

-shrine of German comic opera in the United States, creating the rôles

-of _Bettina_ in “The Mascot” and _Violette_ in “The Merry War.”

-

-The _New York Herald_, reviewing her American career a few years

-later, said: “In New York she became somewhat notorious for her risqué

-costumes. On one occasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in

-male costume, and created a scene when ejected. This conduct seems to

-have ended her career in the United States.”

-

-This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into the ken of Johann

-Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888, when that impetuous prince

-had already been dismissed from the army and his other affairs were

-gathering to the storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophic

-events followed rapidly.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ MILLIE STÜBEL ~~]

-

-In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead in the hunting lodge

-at Mayerling, with the Baroness Marie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a

-hundred kings is said to have been passionately devoted, and with whom

-he may have died in a suicide pact, though it has been said the crown

-prince and his sweetheart were murdered by persons whose identity

-has been sedulously concealed. This mysterious fatality robbed the

-dispirited Johann Salvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It

-may have had a good deal to do with what followed.

-

-A few months later Johann Salvator married morganatically his stage

-beauty. It was now, after the lapse of a few months, that he resigned

-all rank, title, and privileges, left Austria with his wife, and

-married her civilly in London.

-

-Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the death of the

-crown prince and the romance with the singer explained everything. The

-archduke, in disgrace with the army, bereft of his truest and most

-illustrious friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could

-not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the purple of

-his birth, had decided to “surrender all for love” and seek solace in

-foreign lands with the lady of his choice. This interpretation has all

-the elements of color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds

-of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to bear skeptical

-examination.

-

-Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was a man of independent

-mind and quixotic temperament, that he was embittered by his demotion

-from military rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by the

-death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend and his most powerful

-intercessor at court, no such extreme proceeding as the renunciation of

-all rank and the severing of family ties was called for.

-

-It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an affair with a

-woman of inferior rank, had embittered Franz Josef and probably caused

-the monarch to look with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among

-the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the morganatic marriage

-of his second cousin with the shining moth of the theater displeased

-the monarch and widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but it

-must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only a distant cousin; that

-he was not even remotely in line for succession to the throne; that he

-had already been deprived of military or other official connection with

-the government; and that affairs of this kind have been by no means

-rare among Hapsburg scions.

-

-Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been, he was no

-Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had not been quite free of

-sentimental episodes, and he was, after all, the heir to the proudest

-tradition in all Europe, head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and

-a believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have looked upon a

-morganatic union as something not uncommon or specially disgraceful,

-whereas a renunciation of rank and privilege can only have struck him

-as a precedent of the gravest kind.

-

-Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme step because

-of his histrionic wife. He might have remained in Austria happily

-enough, aside from a few snubs and the exclusion from further official

-participation in politics. He might have gone to any country in Europe

-and become the center of a distinguished society. His children would

-probably have been ennobled, and even his wife eventually given the

-same sort of recognition that was accorded the consorts of other

-princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose

-assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the World War. Instead, Johann

-Salvator made the most complete and unprecedented severance from all

-that seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to interpret this

-action in another light, and their explanation forms the second version

-of the incident, probably the true one.

-

-In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles for hegemony

-in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been elected Prince

-of Bulgaria, but Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and

-the other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise refrained

-from giving their approval. Austria was in a specially delicate

-position as regards this matter. She was the natural rival of Russia

-for dominance in the Balkans, but her statesmen did not feel strong

-enough openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had their

-eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had been an officer in

-the Austrian army. He was well liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood

-high in the regard of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the

-present question is that he was the friend of Johann Salvator.

-

-In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia attempted to

-drive the unwelcome German princeling from the Bulgarian throne by

-various military cabals, acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues,

-and the like. Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries

-rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It is known that he

-interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand, and he may have approached the

-emperor. Failing to get action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a

-plan of a military character which was calculated to force the hands

-of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing them into the field against

-Russia, to the end that Ferdinand might be recognized and more firmly

-seated. The plot was discovered in time, according to those who hold

-this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator came under the most

-severe displeasure of the emperor.

-

-It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately, that

-Johann Salvator’s rash course was one that came very near involving

-Austria in a Russian war, and that the most emphatic exhibitions of

-the emperor’s reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly, it

-is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of all rank and privileges

-by his cousin and exiled him from the empire for life. Here, at least,

-is a story of a more probable character, inasmuch as it presents

-provocation for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke Johann

-Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic marriage and his other

-conflicts with higher authority were seized upon as disguises under

-which to hide the secret diplomatic motive.

-

-Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony, started a tale to the

-effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator, had torn the Order of the

-Golden Fleece from his breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor,

-which thing can not have happened since the negotiations between the

-emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted at a distance through

-official emissaries or by mail.

-

-Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress Elizabeth,

-recounts even more fantastic yarns. She says in so many words that

-Crown Prince Rudolf was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others

-to seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor and so establish

-Rudolf as king before his time. It was fear of discovery in this plot,

-she continues, that led to the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after

-Mayerling, she recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box

-(apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade in the mist and he

-kissed her hand, exclaimed that she had saved his life--and more in the

-same strain.

-

-Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wrote or talked in

-self-justification and with the usual stupidity of the guilty. We may

-dismiss their yarns as mere women’s gabble and return to the solid

-fact that Johann Salvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under

-his military humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politics with the

-result that he found himself in the position of a bungling interloper,

-almost a betrayer of his country’s interests.

-

-Less than two years ago some further light was thrown upon the affair

-of the missing archduke through what have passed as letters taken

-from the Austrian archives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These

-letters were published in various European and American newspapers

-and journals and they may be, as asserted, the veritable official

-documents. The portions I quote are taken from the Sunday Magazine of

-the _New York World_ of January 10 and January 17, 1926. I must remark

-that I regard them with suspicion.

-

-The first letter purports to be a report on the violent misconduct of

-Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:

-

- “Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister of Foreign

- Affairs, Count Kalnoky:

-

- “I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about the relations

- and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am sorry to have to report

- to Your Excellency that, _in a rather unworthy manner_, he had

- intercourse on board and in public with a _lady lodged on board of

- the yacht_, which intercourse has not remained unobserved and which

- he could not be induced to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the

- President of the Chamber) Baron de Fin--Baron de Fin was so offended

- that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill, he left the

- ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part, reported to His

- Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is said to have, after five

- months of silence, written for the first time to His Majesty in order

- to complain of his Chamberlain. This unpleasant situation, still more

- troublesome abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved

- last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field Marshal

- Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial Order that His Imperial

- Highness immediately return to Orth at the Sea of Gmünden--to which he

- immediately submitted.

-

- “Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly terms with

- me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that would be bad enough.

- According to his experience and observation, His Highness does not

- know any other interests in the world than those of his person, and

- even this only in the common sense; that he, for instance, wished to

- ascend the throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people

- or for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after

- a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence of His

- Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that there would be

- no other means to cure that completely undisciplined and immoral

- character but by dismissing him formally from the imperial family and

- by allowing him, as it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name,

- that liberty that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes

- him (the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would return

- with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated according to his

- new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness of the Prince despite

- his talks of liberalism.”

-

-Then follows what may well have been the recreant archduke’s letter of

-abdication, thus:

-

- “Your Majesty:

-

- “My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced Your Majesty

- that, abstaining from all interests that did not concern me, I

- have lived in retirement in the endeavor to remove Your Majesty’s

- displeasure with me.

-

- “Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as a paid

- idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable, to me.

- Checked by a justified pride from asking for re-employment in the

- army, I had the alternative either to continue the unworthy existence

- of a princely idler or--as an ordinary human being, to seek a new

- existence, a new profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the

- latter sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of my

- position and my personal independence must be compensation for what I

- have lost.

-

- “I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the titles

- and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title into the hands

- of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty submissively to deign to

- grant me a civil name.

-

- “Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and my

- livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but honorable

- position. If, however, Your Majesty should call your subjects to arms,

- Your Highness will permit me to return home and--though only as a

- common soldier--to devote my life to Your Majesty.

-

- “Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was only impeded

- by the thought of giving offense to Your Majesty--Your Majesty to

- whose Highness I am particularly and infinitely indebted and devoted

- from the bottom of my heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly

- enough--with my entire social existence, with all that means hope and

- future--Your Majesty will pardon

-

-                       “Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,

-                                           “ARCHDUKE JOHANN, FML.”

-

-Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another, even an emperor,

-is a question which every reader must consider for himself, quite

-as he must decide whether grown sons of kings were capable of such

-middle-class sentiment.

-

-There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has the ring of

-genuineness:

-

-  “DEAR ARCHDUKE JOHANN:

-

- “In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel induced to

- decide the following:

-

- “1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded and

- treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and permit you to adopt a

- civil name, which you are to bring to my notice after you have made

- your choice.

-

- “2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer and

- relieve you at the same time of your responsibility for the Corps

- Artillery Regiment No. 2.

-

- “3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out of the

- 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’

-

- “4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil List) from

- my court donation, I will inform your brother Archduke Ferdinand

- of Tuscany of the suspension of your share out of the family funds

- proceeds.

-

- “5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to pass the

- frontiers of the monarchy from your residence abroad for a permanent

- or even a temporary stay in Austria. Finally,

-

- “6. You are to sign the written declaration which the bearer of this,

- my manuscript will submit to you for this purpose and which he is

- charged to return to me after the signature is affixed.

-

-                                                   “FRANZ JOSEF.”

-

-  “Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”

-

-Some correspondence followed on the subject of John Orth’s retention of

-his Austrian citizenship, which the emperor wished at first to deny him.

-

-In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria, and Prince of

-Tuscany, became John Orth, left Austria in the winter of 1889,

-purchased and refitted the bark _Santa Margarita_, had her taken to

-England, and there joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed for

-Buenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement, and reached

-the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife went ahead by steamer to join him

-at Buenos Aires.

-

-I quote here, from the same source as the preceding, part of a last

-letter from John Orth to his mother at Gmünden:

-

- “The country here is not very beautiful. Vast plains--the grazing

- grounds for flocks of bullocks, horses and ostriches. The towns

- are much more vivid. Everything is to be found here even at the

- smaller places--electric lights, telephone, all comforts of modern

- civilization. The population, however, is not very sympathetic, a

- combination of doubtful elements from all countries, striving to

- become rich as soon as possible; corruption, fraud, theft, are the

- order of the day.

-

- “I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer is a certain

- Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The Honorary Consul is

- Mihanovich, a man who--a few years ago was a porter--and now is a

- millionaire. Social obligations have caused much loss of time, which

- could have been better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing

- can be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos Aires. And

- we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo, negotiations about a new

- cargo, which I could have accepted if my merchant had not prevented

- me, changes of the board staff, purchase of supplies, work on board,

- the collection and despatch of money, &c., &c. The staff-officers have

- all to be changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by the

- fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’ toward

- whom he was too indulgent and who was a man of bad reputation. He has

- given me to understand, in the most impolite manner, that he could

- not remain under such circumstances, that he did not permit himself

- to be treated as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and

- therefore he resigned the command, &c. I, of course, accepted his

- resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned to

- excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has shown the insolence

- to deceive the consignee and by calculating forty-eight tons more

- in favor of the ship, believing to do me a favor by such an action.

- I have given to the consignee the necessary indemnification--and

- to restore the compromised honor of the ship, have dismissed the

- lieutenant. The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and

- quit voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain

- Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened

- him.[3]

-

- [3] There had been a fire on the _Santa Margarita_ on the way to Buenos

-Aires.

-

- “As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts as Captain

- and has the command--a man of forty-five years, very quiet,

- experienced and practical. Further, a Second Lieutenant, Mayer,

- Austro-German, very fit for accounts and writings; a boatswain,

- Vranich, who is a real jewel. Thus I hope--with the aid of God--to get

- on at least as well as under the command of Sodich.

-

- “Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has been a

- Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change of personnel, with

- whom alone I shall have intercourse for months and months.

-

- “In the first days of July, when everything will be ready, the journey

- will be continued. Now comes the most difficult part of the passage,

- i. e., the sailing around the dreadful Cape Horn, which is always

- exposed to howling storms. If all ends well, we shall be in two months

- at Valparaiso, which has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God

- willing, we shall return from there in good health.

-

- “I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly speaking, no

- letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in La Plata nor in Buenos

- Aires, neither poste restante nor in the Consulate, have I found

- your letters, and still I believe that you have been so good as to

- write me. I have found letters of Luise, that have been despatched

- by a German steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the

- Swiss Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter from

- Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome, and your dear

- telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg. I was sorry to see

- from the newspapers that Karl has been ill in Baden; I should be

- happy if this were not true. Then I have read the many nonsensical

- articles written about myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has

- remained in communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am

- also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young woman is

- now likely to come to an end. I know nothing about Vienna and Gmünden.

- But I repeat that I am disappointed at not having received your

- letters. I hope to God you are well and remain in good health.

-

- “My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you to address

- letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste restante.

-

- “Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the whole family and

- asking you for your blessing, I respectfully kiss your hands.

-

-                                    “Your tenderly loving son,

-                                                        GIOVANNI.”

-

-The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada, and on July 12,

-1890, John Orth wrote what proved to be the last communication ever

-sent by him. It was addressed to his attorney in Vienna and said that

-he was leaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, which might

-consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orth wrote, had been taken

-ill, and his first officer had proved incompetent, so that it had been

-necessary to discharge him. Accordingly Orth was personally in command

-of his vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experienced

-seaman. This is a somewhat altered version, to be sure.

-

-The apparent intention of the renegade archduke at this time was to

-follow the sea. He had caused the _Santa Margarita_ to be elaborately

-refitted inside, had insured her for two hundred and thirty thousand

-marks with the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he had written

-his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determination to make his living

-as a mariner and an honest man, instead of existing like an idler

-on his comfortable private means. There is nothing in the record to

-indicate that he intended to go into hiding.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR ~~]

-

-The _Santa Margarita_ accordingly sailed on the thirteenth of July.

-With good fortune she should have been in the Straits of Magellan the

-first week in August, and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expected

-not later than the first of September. But the ship did not reach port.

-The middle of September passed without word of her. When she had still

-not been reported by the first week in October the alarm was given.

-

-As the result of diplomatic representations from the Austrian minister,

-the Argentine government soon made elaborate arrangements for a

-search. On December the second the gunboat _Bermejo_, Captain Don

-Mensilla, put out from Buenos Aires and made a four months’ cruise

-of the Argentine coast, visiting every conceivable anchorage where

-a vessel of the _Santa Margarita’s_ size might possibly have found

-refuge. Don Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20, and

-continuing intermittently for nearly a month, there had been storms of

-the greatest violence in the region of Cape Blanco and the southern

-extremity of Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had been

-in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances had been

-of unusual character and duration, more than sufficient to overwhelm a

-sailing bark in the tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.

-

-Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a vessel answering to

-the general description of the _Santa Margarita_ had been wrecked off

-the little island of Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course

-of a hurricane which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at which

-dates the _Santa Margarita_ was very likely in this vicinity. The

-Argentine commander could find no trace of the wreck and no clew to any

-survivors. He continued his search for more than two months longer and

-then returned to base with his melancholy report.

-

-At the same time the Chilean government had sent out the small steamer

-_Toro_ to search the Pacific coast from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her

-captain returned after several months with no word of the archduke or

-any member of his crew.

-

-These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports at the Hamburg

-maritime observatory, soon convinced most authorities that John Orth

-and his vessel were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as

-in that of Roger Tichborne,[4] an old mother’s fond devotion refused

-to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance. The Grand Duchess Maria

-Antonia could not bring herself to believe that winds and waves had

-swallowed up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna with

-her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef finally sent out the

-corvette _Saida_, with instructions to make a fresh search, including

-the islands of the South Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report,

-John Orth had made his way.

-

-[4] See page 82.

-

-At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope Leo, and the

-pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in South America and all over

-the world to search for John Orth and send immediate news of his

-presence to the Holy See.

-

-The _Saida_ returned to Fiume at the end of a year without having

-been able to accomplish anything beyond confirming the report of Don

-Mensilla. And in response to the pope’s letter many reports came back,

-but none of them resulted in the finding of John Orth.

-

-Shortly after the return of the _Saida_ the Austrian heirs of John

-Orth moved for the payment of his insurance, and the Hamburg Marine

-Insurance Company, after going through the formality of a court

-proceeding, paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on two banks,

-one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for moneys

-deposited with them by the archduke after his departure from Austria

-in 1889. One of these banks raised the question of the death proof,

-claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an unproved

-death. The courts decided against the bank, thereby tacitly confirming

-the contention that the end of the archduke had been sufficiently

-demonstrated. About two million crowns were accordingly paid over to

-the Austrian custodians.

-

-In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to hand over the property

-of John Orth to his nephew and heir, and this high authority then

-declared that the missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane

-of August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme court of Austria

-to pass finally upon the matter, and a decision was handed down on May

-9, 1911, in which the archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890,

-the day on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts began.

-His property was ordered distributed, and his goods and chattels were

-sold. The books, instruments, art collection and furniture, which had

-long been preserved in the various villas and castles of the absent

-prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during the months

-of October and November, 1912.

-

-In spite of the great care that was taken to discover the facts in

-this case, and in the face of the various official reports and court

-decisions, a great romantic tradition grew up about John Orth and his

-mysterious destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his

-abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly much to do with the

-birth of the legend. Be that as it may, the world has for more than

-thirty years been feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and

-his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war the story

-was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato was in reality the missing

-archduke. The story was credited by many, but there proved to be no

-foundation for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their

-heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the archduke in

-that old monograph which had got him disciplined.

-

-Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief authority for one

-of the most plausible and insistent of all the John Orth stories.

-According to this politician and man of letters, there was present

-at Concordia, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in

-the years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished

-looking stranger of military habit and bearing, who had few friends,

-received few visits, always spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an

-Austrian merchant of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself in

-a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch treated the stranger

-with marked respect and deference.

-

-Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of the _Jefe de

-Policia_ of Concordia, an official who firmly believed the man of

-mystery to be John Orth. On the other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey,

-the closest friend and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway,

-denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the whole tale.

-At the same time, say Garzon and the chief of police, Señor de Villa

-Rey tried to conceal the presence of the man, and it was the activity

-of the police authorities, executing the law authorizing them to

-investigate and keep records of the identity of all strangers, that

-frightened the “archduke” away. He went to Paraguay and worked in a

-sawmill belonging to Villa Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the

-Russo-Japanese war he left for Japan.

-

-This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion. Senator Garzon’s

-book is full of doubtful corroboration and too subtle reasoning, but

-it is rewarding and entertaining for those who like romance and read

-Spanish.[5]

-

-[5] See Bibliography.

-

-The missing John Orth has likewise been reported alive from many

-other unlikely parts of the world and under the most incredible

-circumstances. Austrian, German, British, French, and American

-newspapers have been full of such stories every few years. The much

-sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running a pearl fishery

-in the Paumotus, working in a factory in Ohio, fighting with the Boers

-in South Africa, prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in

-Texas--what not and where not?

-

-One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth happened in New York.

-On the last day of March, 1924, a death certificate was filed with the

-Department of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator

-of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early that morning of

-heart disease in Columbus Hospital, one of the smaller semi-public

-institutions. Doctor John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital,

-signed the certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s

-identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”

-

-Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society photographer,”

-confirmed the story, and said she had discovered the identity of the

-man the year before and admitted some of her friends to the secret.

-He had lately been receiving some code cables from Europe which came

-collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied the money with

-which to pay for these mysterious messages. The dead man, said Mrs.

-Fairchild, had been living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a

-lecturer in Sanscrit and general scholar.

-

-“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on Sanscrit,” she

-recounted. “In his delirium he talked Sanscrit, and it was very

-beautiful.”

-

-According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,” he had

-furnished her with the true version of his irruption from the Austrian

-court in 1889. The emperor Franz Josef had applied a vile name to

-John Salvator’s mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his sword,

-broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his decorations

-and medals, flung them into the imperial face and finally blacked the

-emperor’s eye. Striding from the palace to the barracks, the archduke

-had found his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!” and offer

-him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the emperor then and there, he

-said, but he elected to quit the country and have done with the social

-life which disgusted him.

-

-This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the world over. Aside

-from the preposterousness of the yarn as a whole, one needs only to

-remember that Johann Salvator was an artillery officer and never held

-either an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was, at the

-time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed from the army and

-without military rank, and that striking the emperor would have been

-an offense that must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it

-is obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the legs of his

-friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams. Except in cases

-where special prearrangements have been made, as in the instances of

-great newspapers, large business houses, banks, and the departments

-of government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid. An imperial

-government would hardly thus impose on a wandering scion. The imposture

-is thus apparent.

-

-On the day after the death of the supposed archduke, however, a note of

-real drama was injected into the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was

-said to have been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the dead

-“archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on East Fifty-ninth Street

-that afternoon. She had drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she

-had got into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries

-of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death. Despondency over “John

-Orth’s” death was given as the explanation.

-

-These tales have all had their charm, much as they have lacked

-probability. Each and all they rest upon the single fact that the man

-was never seen dead. There is, of course, no way of being sure that

-John Orth perished in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but it

-is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive. For he would

-certainly have answered the pitiful appeals of his old mother, to whom

-he was devoted, and to whom he had written every few days whenever he

-had been separated from her. He would have been found by the papal

-missionaries in some part of the world, and the three vessels sent upon

-his final course must surely have discovered some trace of the man. It

-should be remembered that, except for letters that were traced back to

-harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like a communication was ever

-received from Orth or Ludmilla Stübel, or from any member of the crew

-of the _Santa Margarita_.

-

-In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not profound. All

-evidence and all reason point to the probability that Johann Salvator

-and his ship went down to darkness in some wild torment of waters and

-winds, leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit, but only a

-void in which the idle minds of romantics could spin their fabulations.

-

-

-

-

-IV

-

-THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY

-

-

-At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August 16, 1897, a small,

-barefoot boy appeared in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of

-Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a crumpled letter in

-one grimy hand and stopped at one door after another, inquiring where

-Mrs. Conway lived. The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to

-him that several of them later estimated his age at from ten years to

-seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99 and handed his note to

-the woman he sought, the wife of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train

-dispatcher. With that he was gone.

-

-Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter by a special

-messenger, tore open the envelope, sat down in the big rocking chair in

-her front room, and began to read this appalling communication:

-

- “Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped and when you

- receive this word, he will be a safe distance from Albany and where he

- could not be found in a hundred years. Your child will be returned to

- you on payment of _three thousand dollars_, $3000, _provided_ you pay

- the money _to-day and strictly obey the following directions_:

-

- “put the money in a package and send it by a man you can depend on to

- the lane going up the hill a few feet south of the _Troy road first

- tollgate_, just off the road on this lane here is a tree with a big

- trunk have the man put the package on the _south_ side of the tree and

- _at once come away and come back to your house_.

-

- “We want the money left at this spot at _exactly 8:15 o’clock

- to-night_.

-

- “See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him

- or you will _never look upon your little boy again_

-

- “If you say a word of this to any one outside _your_ family and the

- man you send with the money or if you take any steps to bring it to

- the attention _of the police you will never see your child_ again, for

- if _any one_ knows of it we will not take the risk of returning him,

- but will leave him _to his fate_.

-

- “If you obey our instructions in every point you will have word

- _within two hours_ after the money has been left where you can go and

- get your boy safe and sound

-

- “We have been after this thing for a _long time_ we _know our

- business_ and can beat all the police in America

-

- “we are after the money and if you do what you are _told_, _no harm

- will come to your little boy_. but if you fail to do what we tell you

- or do what we tell you not to do _you will never look upon your child

- again as sure as there is a god in heaven we know you have the money

- in the bank_ and that the bank closes at 2 o’clock and we _must_ have

- it _to-night so get in time_. don’t tell them why you draw it out. You

- can say you are buying property if you wish for this thing must be

- _between you and us_ if you want your boy back alive.

-

- “_Remember_ the case of _Charley Ross_ of Philadelphia. His father

- _did not do_ as _he was told_ but went to the police and then spent

- five times as much as he could have got him back for but never saw his

- little boy _to the day of his death a word to the wise man is enough_

-

- “_Now understand us plainly_ get the money from the bank _in time_

- don’t open your lips to any one and send the money by a trusty man to

- the place we say at 8:15 a _quarter past eight to-night_ He wants to

- _be sure that no one else sees him put the package there_, so there is

- no possible danger of any one _else_ getting it, then within two hours

- you shall have word from us where your boy is.

-

- “Every move you make will be known to us and if you attempt _any

- crooked work_ with us _say good-by to your boy_ and look out for

- _yourself_ for we will _meet you again when you least expect it_ Do as

- we tell you and all will be well and we will deal straight with you if

- you make the _least crooked move_ you will _regret it to the day of

- your death_.

-

- “If you want to have your little boy back _safe and sound_. Keep your

- lips closed and do _exactly as you are told_

-

- “If you fail to obey _every direction_ you will have _one child less_.

-

-                                    “Yours truly

-                                        “The Captain of the Gang.”

-

-Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she had got past the first few

-sentences and ran into the street, screaming for her boy. He did not

-answer. None of the neighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when he

-had been let out to play in the sun. It was true.

-

-The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistle in her hand, ran

-to summon her husband. He read the letter, set his jaw, and sent for

-the police. No one was going to extort three thousand dollars from him

-without a fight.

-

-Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to ask questions in the

-neighborhood and see whether there had been any witnesses to the

-abduction. The others began an examination of the strange letter in

-the hope of recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yielded nothing

-and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Here the first blunder was

-made, for I have yet to examine a kidnapper’s letter more revealingly

-written.

-

-The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long, prolix, and

-anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuation in part, wrongly

-punctuated at other points, miscapitalized or not capitalized at all,

-strangely underlined, curiously paragraphed, often without even the

-use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structure and yet

-contradictory on this very point. The facsimile copy which I have

-before me shows that in spite of all the solecisms and blunders, there

-is not a misspelled word in the long missive, a thing not always to be

-said in favor of the writings of educated and even eminent men. Also,

-there are several cheap literary echoes in the letter, such as “never

-look upon your child again” and “leave him to his fate.”

-

-The following deductions should have been made from the letter:

-

-That it was written or dictated by some one familiar with Albany and

-with the affairs of the Conways, since the writer knows Conway has

-the money in the bank, knows the closing hour, is familiar with the

-surrounding terrain, is precise in all directions, and knows there are

-other and older children, since he constantly refers to “your little

-boy” and says that Conway will have “one child less.”

-

-That the writer of the letter is not a professional criminal. Otherwise

-he would not have written at length.

-

-That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious to have the thing done

-at once.

-

-That he is a man without formal education, who has read a good deal,

-especially romances and inferior verse.

-

-That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, he is a man between

-thirty-five and forty-five years of age.

-

-That the kidnappers are anxious to have the money intrusted to some

-man known to them, to whom they repeatedly refer and whom they believe

-likely to be selected by Conway.

-

-That the child is in no danger, since the letter writer doth threaten

-too much.

-

-That the search for the kidnappers should begin close at home.

-

-Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of what the dialect calls

-hindsight, it may be well to say that these conclusions were made from

-the facsimile of the letter by an associate who is not familiar with

-the case and does not know the subsequent developments.

-

-The detective sciences had, however, reached no special developments

-in Albany thirty years ago and little of this vital information was

-extracted from the tell-tale letter. Instead of making some deductions

-from it and going quietly to work upon them, the officers chose the

-time-honored methods. They decided to send a man to the big tree with

-a package of paper, meantime concealing some members of the force near

-by to pounce upon any one who might call for the decoy. The whole

-proceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police went to the place at

-night and used lanterns, which must have revealed them to any watchers.

-They were not careful about concealing their plan and they even chose

-the wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!

-

-So the second day of the kidnapping mystery opened upon prostrated

-parents, who were only too willing to believe that their boy had been

-done away with, an excited community which locked the doors and feared

-to let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfited and

-abused police department.

-

-The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, the police made a fresh

-start. For one thing they searched the country round about the big

-tree on the Troy road, which may have been good training for adipose

-officers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such as police departments

-always make when the public is aroused. For another thing, they spread

-the dragnet and hauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to

-be stopping in Albany. They also searched the known criminal resorts,

-chased down a crop of the usual rumors, and wound up the day in

-breathless and futile excitement.

-

-Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. These energetic young

-men, whose repeated discomfitures of the police were one of the

-interesting facts of American city government in the last generation,

-had gone to work on the Conway case themselves. A young man named

-John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albany papers, began his

-investigations by interviewing the father of the missing child. One of

-the things the reporter wanted to know was whether any one had ever

-tried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. The train dispatcher

-replied with some reluctance that his brother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy,

-husband of one of Conway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed small

-amounts from the railroad man and once made a demand for a thousand

-dollars, which he failed to get, though he used threatening tactics.

-

-The reporter said nothing, but set about investigating Hardy. He found

-that the man was in Albany, that he was showing no signs of fright, and

-that he was indeed going about with much energy, apparently devoting

-himself to the quest for the stolen boy and threatening dire vengeance

-upon the kidnappers. Reporter Farrell and his associates took this

-business under suspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections and

-financial situation. They found the latter to be precarious. They also

-discovered that Hardy was the bosom friend of a man named H. G. Blake,

-who had operated a small furniture store in Albany, but was known

-to be an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no very definite

-social grade, means of livelihood, or character. In the middle of the

-afternoon, when this connection was first discovered, Blake could not

-be found in Albany, but late in the evening he was discovered, and the

-reporters took him in hand.

-

-At the time they had nothing to go upon except Blake’s firm friendship

-with Hardy, the relative of the missing child, who had once tried to

-extort a thousand dollars and presumably knew the money affairs of

-his brother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail. In the

-course of the day they had canvassed all the livery stables in and

-about Albany. They found that early on Monday morning a man had rented

-a horse and light wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. This

-signature was compared with that of Blake, taken from a hotel register

-and some tax declarations. The handwriting seemed to be identical, and

-the reporters suspected that Blake had rented the rig under an assumed

-name.

-

-While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulled into the belief that

-he was under no suspicion and allowed to go to his home and to bed,

-Blake was taken to the newspaper office by the reporters and there

-asked what he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He denied all knowledge

-until he was assured that the paper wished to score a “scoop” on the

-story and was willing to pay $2,500 cash for information that would

-lead to the recovery of the boy.

-

-A large wallet was shown him, containing a wadding of paper with

-several bank notes on the outside. Apparently the man was a bit

-feeble-minded. At any rate, he fell into the trap, abandoning all

-caution and reaching greedily for the money. He said, of course, that

-he knew nothing directly about the affair, but that he could find out.

-Later, when the money was withdrawn from his sight he began to boast of

-what he could do. Under various incitements and provocations he talked

-along until it became apparent that he was one of the kidnappers. When

-it was too late the man realized that he had talked too much, and then

-he tried to retract. When he attempted to leave the office he was met

-by two officers who had been quietly summoned by the reporters and

-appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet was once more held out to

-Blake, and his greed so far overcame him that he agreed to guide the

-reporters to the spot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference with

-his captain, and see that the child was delivered.

-

-The little party, consisting of two reporters, the two disguised

-officers, and Blake set out late at night and arrived at a place on

-the Schenectady road, about eight miles from Albany, shortly before

-midnight. Blake here demanded the cash, but was told that it would not

-be handed over until he produced the boy. He then said that he thought

-the purse did not contain the money. A long argument followed. Once

-more the glib talking of the reporters prevailed, and Blake went into

-the dense woods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly to find

-the boy.

-

-After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer, whom he still

-believed to be a driver, to remain behind, and proceeded farther into

-the forest. More than an hour passed before he returned, and the party

-was about to drive off, thinking the man had played a clever trick.

-Blake, however, came back querulous and suspicious. He demanded once

-more to see the money, and being refused, said the trick was up. One of

-the men, however, persuaded him to take him to the other members of the

-gang, promising that the money would be delivered the moment the boy

-was seen alive. Apparently Blake was once more befooled, for he allowed

-the supposed driver to accompany him and made off again into the heart

-of the woods. One of the reporters and the other disguised policeman

-followed secretly.

-

-When the two pairs of men had proceeded about three hundred yards, the

-second lurking in the van of the first, not daring to strike a light,

-slashed by the underbrush and in evident danger of being shot down, the

-smoky light of a camp fire appeared suddenly ahead. In another minute a

-childish voice could be heard, and the gruff tones of a man trying to

-silence it. Blake and his companion made for the fire and were met by

-a masked man with a leveled revolver who informed them that they were

-surrounded and would be killed if they made a false move. There was a

-parley, which lasted till the second pair came up.

-

-Just what happened at this interesting moment is not easy to say.

-The witnesses do not agree. Apparently, however, the little boy,

-momentarily released by his captor, ran away. The three hunters

-thereupon made a rush for him and there was an exchange of shots in

-the darkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy and dragged him

-to the road, closely followed by the reporter and the other officer,

-leaving Blake, the masked man, and whatever other kidnappers there

-might be to flee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into the wagon,

-the reporter and officers sprang in after him, and the horses were

-lashed into a gallop. Apparently, the midnight adventure had been a

-little trying on the nerves of the party.

-

-After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furious speed, it became

-apparent that there was no pursuit on part of the kidnappers and

-the drive was slowed to a more comfortable pace while the reporters

-questioned the child.

-

-Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that he had been playing in

-the street before his father’s house when a dray wagon came by. He had

-run and caught on to the rear of this for a ride down the block. As he

-dropped off the wagon, he had been met by a stranger who smiled, patted

-his head and offered to buy him candy. The child was readily beguiled

-and taken to the light wagon in which he was driven several miles into

-the country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacant cabin. The

-next night he and his captors spent in a church until they moved out

-into the woods and began to camp. At this spot the rescuers had found

-him.

-

-According to the child, the kidnappers had not been cruel or

-threatening. They had provided plenty of food. They had even played

-games with the little boy and tried to keep him amused. The only

-complaint Johnny Conway had to make was against the mosquitoes, which

-had cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly for the two nights

-and one day he and his captors spent in the woods.

-

-Very early on the morning of August 19th, just three days after the

-kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagon turned into Colonia Street and

-proceeded slowly up that quiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In

-spite of the unseasonable hour there was a crowd in the street, some

-of whose members had been on watch all night. Albany had been seized

-with terror and morbid curiosity. The Conway house was never without a

-few straggling watchers, eager for the first news or crumbs of gossip.

-Reporters from the New York newspapers were on the scene, and special

-officers from the great city were on their way. Everything was being

-prepared for another breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seated

-wagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that early morning.

-

-As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, and some of the

-stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensing something unusual, one

-of the reporters rose in the rear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in

-his arms.

-

-“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor called anxiously.

-

-“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspaper sleuth.

-

-There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighbors came running

-from their houses in night garb. The Conways came forth from a

-sleepless vigil and caught the child in their arms. So the mystery of

-the boy’s fate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lasting

-enigma immediately succeeded.

-

-Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediately seized at his

-home and dragged to the nearest station house. The rumor of his

-connection with the kidnapping got abroad within a few hours, and the

-police building was immediately besieged by a crowd which demanded

-to see the prisoner. The police drove the crowd off, but it returned

-after an hour, much augmented in numbers and provided with a rope for a

-lynching. After several exciting hours, the mob was finally cowed and

-driven away by the mayor of Albany and a platoon of police with drawn

-revolvers.

-

-One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, but at least two

-others were known, Blake and the man in the mask. Several posses set

-out at once and surrounded the woods in which the child had been found.

-After beating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepy night

-in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, the citizenry lost its

-pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albany only to find that the police

-of Schenectady had arrested Blake in that city late the preceding

-evening and that the man was lodged in another precinct house where he

-could not communicate with Hardy. Another abortive lynching bee was

-started. Once more the mayor and the police drove off the howling gangs.

-

-The man in the mask, however, was still at large. Both Hardy and Blake

-at first refused to name him, and the police were at sea. Then a

-curious thing happened.

-

-William N. Loew, a New York attorney, reading of the kidnapping affair

-at Albany, which appeared in the metropolitan newspapers under black

-headlines, went to the office of one of the journals and said he

-believed he could give valuable information.

-

-On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, Bernard Myers, a

-clothing merchant of West Third Street, New York, had flirted on a

-Broadway car with a handsome young woman, who had given him her name

-and address as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourth Street, and

-invited him to write her. Myers, more avid than cautious, wrote the

-woman a fervid letter, asking for an appointment. A few days later two

-men appeared in the Myers store. One of them, who carried a heavy cane,

-said that he was the husband of Mrs. Warner, brandished the guilty

-letter in one hand, the cane in the other, and demanded that Myers

-give him a check for three hundred dollars on the spot or take the

-consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave a check for one hundred

-dollars, and then, as soon as the men had left his store, rushed to his

-bank and stopped payment. He then visited the district attorney and

-caused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraigned and released on bail.

-

-Loew had been summoned to act as attorney for Warner. He now told the

-newspapers of disclosures his client had made to him in consultation.

-Warner, who was himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway,

-had told Loew that he was interested in a plot to organize kidnapping

-on a commercial scale, and that the first jobs would be attempted in

-up-State New York. He gave Loew many details and talked plausibly

-of the ease with which parents could be stripped of considerable

-sums. Loew, who considered his client and fellow attorney slightly

-demented, had paid little attention to this sinister talk at the time.

-Now, however, he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that he

-probably was the man in the mask.

-

-Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliant Blake admitted

-that he was a friend of Warner’s, that they had indeed been schoolmates

-in their youth. He also admitted that he had been in New York a few

-days before the abduction of Johnny Conway and had then visited Warner.

-So the chase began.

-

-The police discovered that Warner had been at his office a day ahead

-of them and slipped out of New York again. They also found that he had

-been at Albany the three days that Johnny Conway had been detained.

-Their investigations showed also that Warner, though he had the

-reputation of being a particularly shrewd and energetic counselor, had

-never adhered very closely to the law himself, but had again and again

-been implicated in shady or criminal transactions, though he had always

-escaped prison, probably through legal acumen.

-

-It was soon apparent that the man had got well away, and an alarm was

-sent across the country. The police circulars that went out to all

-parts of America and the chief British and continental ports, described

-a man between forty and forty-five years old, more than six feet tall,

-slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over a very high forehead. That

-Warner was a bicycle enthusiast was the only added detail.

-

-The quest for Warner was one of the most exciting in memory. The

-first person sought and found was the Mrs. Warner who had given her

-name and address to Bernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in

-the subsequent blackmail charges. She was found living quietly at a

-boarding house in one of the adjacent New Jersey towns and said that

-she had not seen Warner for some weeks, a claim which turned out to

-be very near the truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before he

-started to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confided to the girl,

-who was not in truth his wife, any of his plans or intentions.

-

-It was then discovered that Attorney Warner was married and had a wife,

-from whom he had long been separated, living in a small town in upper

-New York. The detectives also visited this woman, but she had not seen

-her husband in years and could supply no information.

-

-Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in ten places on the

-same day. His presence was reported from every corner of the country.

-Clews and reports led weary officers thousands of miles on empty

-pursuits. Finally, when no real information as to the man developed,

-the public wearied of him, and news of the case dropped out of the

-papers.

-

-Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake made an attempt

-to mitigate his case by turning State’s evidence, and Hardy pleaded

-that he had only been an intermediary, whose motivation was his

-brother-in-law’s closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the

-evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even without the

-admissions of either one, the prosecutor decided to reject their

-pleas and force them to stand trial. The cases were quickly heard and

-verdicts of guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once

-sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years in the State

-prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly removed to that gloomy house

-of pain in the Adirondack Mountains.

-

-All this happened before the first of October. The prisoners, having

-been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary, and the kidnapped boy

-being safely in his parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly

-forgotten.

-

-But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of December 12, two men

-entered the farm lot of William Goodrich near the little village of

-Riley in central Kansas, about two thousand miles from Albany and the

-scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm hand, one George

-Johnson, was milking in the cow stable by lantern light.

-

-As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and straw, horny of

-hand and tanned by the prairie winds, rose from his stool and started

-to leave the stable with his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside

-and approached him. One of them laid a rough hand on the farmer’s

-shoulder and said soberly:

-

-“Warner, I want you. Come along.”

-

-“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious Western drawl. “My

-name is Gawge Johnson.”

-

-“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New York it’s Albert S.

-Warner. I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the Conway

-kidnapping. You’ll have to come.”

-

-The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to change his clothes,

-and loaded upon the next eastbound train. When he reached Kansas City

-he refused to go farther without extradition formalities. After the

-officers had telegraphed to New York, the man changed his mind again

-and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany, where he was placed in

-jail and soon brought to trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’

-imprisonment, the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.

-

-The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann of the Albany police

-force. He had trailed the man about five thousand miles, partly on

-false scents. In his wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee,

-Minnesota, New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas, where he had

-satisfied himself that Warner was working on the Goodrich farm. McCann

-had then called a Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest

-office and made the arrest as already described.

-

-The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seems to have been that

-Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage, had been scheming for some time

-to get a thousand dollars out of his brother-in-law. He had confided

-his ideas to Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion of his

-friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer and clever schemer. Warner

-had then acted as organizer and leader, with what success the reader

-will judge.

-

-

-

-

-V

-

-THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE

-

-

-On the afternoon of the twentieth of April, 1854, the schooner _Bella_

-cast off her moorings at the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked her way down

-the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for her home port, New York. She

-was partly in ballast, because of slack commerce, and carried a single

-passenger. About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grew up a

-strange mystery and a stranger history.

-

-When the last glint of the _Bella’s_ sails was seen from Rio’s island

-anchorages, that vessel passed forever out of worldly cognizance. She

-never reached any port save the ultimate, and of those that rode in

-her, nothing came back but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs was

-veiled in a storm and hidden among unknown waters. The epitaph was

-written at Lloyd’s in the familiar syllables: “Foundered with all

-hands.”

-

-Of the _Bella’s_ master, or the forty members of her crew, there is

-no surviving memory, and only a grimy hunt through the old shipping

-records could avail in the discovery of anything concerning them. But

-the lone passenger happened to be the son of a British baronet and heir

-to a great estate--Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. The succession and

-the inheritance of the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof of

-this young man’s death. There was, accordingly, some formal inquiry

-as to the _Bella_ and her wreck. The required months were allowed to

-pass; the usual reports from all ports were scanned. On account of the

-insistence of the Tichborne family, some additional care was taken. But

-in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formally declared lost at sea,

-his insurance paid, and the question of succession taken before the

-court in chancery, which determined such matters.

-

-Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of young Tichborne would

-have ended, had it not been for the peculiar insistence of his mother.

-Lady Tichborne would not, and probably could not, bring herself to

-believe that her beloved elder son had met his end in this dark and

-mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnesses to his death

-and objective proofs of the end, she clung obstinately to hope and

-continued to advertise for the “lost” young man for many years after

-the courts had solved the problem--or believed they had.

-

-There had already been the cloud of pathos about the head of Roger

-Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessary to an understanding

-of subsequent events. Born in Paris on January 5, 1829--his mother

-being the natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire, and

-a beautiful French woman--Roger was the descendant of very ancient

-Hampshire stock. His father, the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne

-and his grandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of that line.

-

-Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country, Lady Tichborne

-decided that her son should be reared as a Frenchman, and the lad spent

-the first fourteen years of his life in France, with the result that

-he never afterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief English

-schooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough to get the young man out

-of the habit of thinking in French and translating his Gallic idioms

-into English, a fault that appears in his letters to the very end, and

-one that caused him considerable suffering as a boy in England.

-

-Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joined the Sixth Dragoon

-Guards at Dublin, as a subaltern. But in 1852 he sold out his

-commission and went home. His peculiarities of manner and appearance,

-his accent and strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness for

-soldiering had made him miserable in the army. The constant cruel, if

-thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of his fellows found him a sensitive

-mark.

-

-But the unhappy termination of the young man’s military career

-was only a minor factor in an almost desperate state of mind that

-possessed him at this time. He had fallen in love with his cousin,

-Kate Doughty, afterward Lady Radcliffe, and she had found herself

-unable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and storms the young heir

-of the Tichbornes set sail from Havre in March, 1853, and reached

-Valparaiso, Chile, about three months later, evidently determined to

-seek forgetfulness in stranger latitudes. In the course of the southern

-summer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reached Rio in March or

-early April. Here he embarked on the _Bella_ for New York, as recited,

-his further plans remaining unknown. In letters to his mother he had,

-however, spoken vaguely of an intention to go to Australia, a hint upon

-which much of the following romance was erected.

-

-When, in the following year, the insurance was paid, and the will

-proved, the Tichbornes accepted the death of the traveler as

-practically beyond question. But not so his mother. She began, after an

-interval, to advertise in many parts of the world for trace of her son.

-Such notices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental,

-and Australian journals without effect. Only one thing is to be

-learned from them, the appearance of the lost heir. He is described

-as being rather undersized, delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes,

-and straight black hair. These personal specifications will prove of

-importance later on.

-

-In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and a younger son succeeded

-to the baronetcy and estates. This event stirred the dowager Lady

-Tichborne to fresh activities, and her advertisements began to appear

-again in newspapers and shipping journals over half the world. As

-a result of these injudicious clamorings for information, many a

-seaspawned adventurer was received by the grieving mother at Tichborne

-House, and many a common liar imposed on her for money and other

-favors. Repeated misadventures of this sort might have been considered

-sufficient experience to cause the dowager to desist from her folly,

-but nothing seemed to move her from her fixed idea, and the fantastic

-reports and rumors brought her by every wandering sharper had the

-effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.

-

-Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to restore her

-son, had not been without its collateral effects. Among them was the

-wide dissemination of a romantic story and the enlistment of public

-sympathy. A large part of the newspaper-reading British populace soon

-came to look upon the lady as a high example of motherly devotion,

-to sympathize with her point of view, and gradually to conclude that

-she was right, and that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere

-in the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to emotional

-strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate Doughty, the object of

-the young nobleman’s bootless love, refused various offers of marriage

-and steadfastly remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as

-to the fate of her hapless lover.

-

-Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew up. The Tichborne

-case came to be looked upon in some quarters as another of the great

-mysteries of disappearance. In various distant lands volunteer seekers

-took up the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by the

-fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by the hope of reward.

-

-In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing friends’ bureau in Sydney,

-New South Wales, a fact which he advertised in the London newspapers.

-Lady Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw the

-notice in _The Times_ and communicated with Cubitt. As a result of this

-contact, Lady Tichborne was notified, in November, 1865, that a man

-had been discovered who answered the description of her missing “boy.”

-This fellow had been found keeping a small butcher shop in the town of

-Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas

-Castro, which he admitted to be assumed.

-

-Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated at once and did not

-fail to give the impression that the discovery and return of her eldest

-son would be a feat to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir

-to a large property, and since she was herself “most anxious to hear.”

-Australia was then, to be sure, much farther away than to-day. There

-were no cables and only occasional steamers. It often took months for

-a letter to pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady

-Tichborne received a second communication in which she was told that

-there could be little doubt about the identification, as the butcher of

-Wagga Wagga had owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas

-Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at least one

-person that he was none other than Roger Tichborne.

-

-Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her first letter from

-her missing “son”. He addressed her as “Dear Mama,” misspelled the

-Tichborne name by inserting a “t” after the “i,” spelled common

-words abominably, and handled the English language with a fine show

-of ignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incident at

-Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had not the slightest recollection.

-At first she was considerably damped by these discrepancies and

-mistakes of the claimant, as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to be

-termed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from her doubts and asserted

-her absolute confidence in the genuineness of the far-away pretender to

-the baronetcy.

-

-Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, even when it is recalled

-that subsequent letters from Australia revealed the claimant to be

-ignorant of common family traditions and totally confused about

-himself, even going so far as to say that he had been a common soldier

-in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne had been an officer, and

-referring to his schooling at Winchester, whereas the Roman Catholic

-Tichbornes had, of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborne

-apparently ascribed such lapses to the “terrible ordeal” her boy

-had suffered, and she was not the only one to recognize that Roger

-Tichborne had himself, because of his early French training and the

-meagerness of his subsequent education, misspelled just such words as

-appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misused his English in

-a very similar fashion.

-

-These details are interesting rather than important. Whatever their

-final significance, Lady Tichborne sent money to Australia to pay for

-the claimant’s passage home. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the

-last month of 1866, and visited several localities, among them Wapping,

-a London district which played a vital part in what was to come. He

-also visited the vicinity of Tichborne Park and made numerous inquiries

-there. Only after these preliminaries did he cross to Paris, where he

-summoned Lady Tichborne to meet him. When she called at his hotel she

-found him in bed complaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted,

-and she recounted afterward that he kept his face turned to the wall

-most of the time she spent with him.

-

-What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this man is an

-interesting matter for speculation. She had sent away, thirteen

-years before, a slight, delicate, poetic aristocrat, whose chief

-characteristic was an excessive refinement that made him quite unfit

-for the common stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short,

-gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults and vocal

-solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the young man who knew his

-French and did not know his English, here was a fellow who could speak

-not a word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.

-

-None of these things appeared to make any difference to Lady Tichborne.

-She received the claimant without reservation, said publicly that she

-had recovered her darling boy, and went so far as to announce her

-reasons for accepting him as her son.

-

-The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, an exciting topic

-of the newspapers of the time, with the result that the romantic

-story of his voyage, the shipwreck of the _Bella_, his rescue, his

-wanderings, his final discovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return

-to his mother’s arms became known to millions of people, many of whom

-accepted the legend for its charm and color alone, without reference to

-its probability. Indeed, the tale had all the elements that make for

-popularity and credibility. The opening incident of unrequited love,

-the journey in quest of forgetfulness, the crossing of the Andes, the

-ordeal of shipwreck, the adventures in the Australian bush, and the

-intervention of the hand of Providence to drag him back to his native

-land, his title and his inheritance! Was there lacking any element of

-pathetic grace?

-

-For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichborne family affairs

-and his sad illiteracy sober objections to the pretensions of the

-claimant, there was triple evidence of identification. Not only had

-Lady Tichborne recognized this wanderer as her son, but two old

-Tichborne servants had preceded her in their approval. It happened

-that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who had been intimate with

-Roger Tichborne as a boy, was living in New South Wales when the first

-claim was put forward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the request of

-the dowager this man went to see the pretender and talked with him at

-length, first in the presence of those who were pressing the claim

-and later alone. The servant and the claimant reviewed a number of

-incidents in Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported that he

-was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servant and subsequently

-accompanied him to England. Later a former Tichborne gardener,

-Grillefoyle by name, who also had gone out to Australia, was sent

-to interview the Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. He

-reported favorably to his former mistress, and it seems to have been

-mainly on the opinion of these two men that Lady Tichborne based her

-decision to disregard the difficulties inherent in the letters and to

-finance the return of the man to England. Their testimony, backed by

-the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubt swayed her to credence

-when she finally stood face to face with the improbable apparition that

-pretended to be her son.

-

-The claimant, though he had arrived in England in December, 1866,

-made various claims and went to court once or twice but did not make

-the definitive legal move to establish his position or to retrieve

-the baronetcy and estates until more than three years later. Suit was

-finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trial came on before

-the court of common pleas in London on the eleventh of May, 1871. This

-was the beginning of one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trial

-dramas to be found in the records of modern nations.

-

-The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delay for the purpose

-of gathering evidence and consolidating his case. He had sought out

-and won over to his side the trusted servants of the house, the family

-solicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineers and many

-others. The school, the officers’ mess, the Tichborne seat, and many

-other localities connected with the youth and young manhood of Roger

-Tichborne had all been visited. In addition, the obese claimant had

-further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who came to have more and more faith

-in him. Originally she had written:

-

-“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it will not prevent me

-from recognizing him, though his statements differ from mine.”

-

-Before the suit was filed, and the case came to be tried, his memory

-improved remarkably; he corrected the many errors in his earlier

-statements, and his recollection quickly assimilated itself to that

-of Lady Tichborne. After he had been in England for a time even his

-handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealed in the letters

-written by Roger Tichborne before his disappearance.

-

-There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidence in favor

-of the man from Australia. I have already said that the public

-accepted the stranger. It needs to be recorded that every new shred

-of similarity or circumstance that could be brought out only added to

-the conviction of the people. This was unquestionably Roger Tichborne

-and none other. Some elements asserted their opinion with a passion

-that was not far from violence, and the public generally regarded the

-hostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based on selfish motives.

-Naturally the other Tichbornes did not want to be dispossessed in favor

-of a man who had been confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted among

-the dead for more than fifteen years. The man in the street regarded

-the family position as natural, but reprehensible. How, it was asked,

-could there be any doubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was

-there anything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubt seemed almost

-monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher of Wagga Wagga became a public

-idol, and the Tichborne family an object of aversion.

-

-Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it became known that the

-claimant had no funds with which to prosecute his case, the suggestion

-of a public bond issue was made and promptly approved. Bonds, with no

-other backing than the promise to refund the advanced money when the

-claimant should come into possession of his property, were issued,

-and so extreme was the public confidence in the validity of the claim

-that they were bought up greedily. In addition, a number of wealthy

-individuals became so interested in the affair and so convinced of the

-rights of the stranger, that they made him large personal advances. One

-man, Mr. Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as 75,000

-pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow family advanced 30,000 pounds

-and Earl Rivers is believed to have wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on

-the impostor.

-

-Finally the civil trial of the suit took place. The proceedings began

-on the eleventh of May, 1871, and were not concluded until March,

-1872. Sir John Coleridge, who defended for the Tichborne family and

-later became lord chief justice, cross-questioned the claimant for

-twenty-two days, and his speech in summing up is said to have been the

-longest ever delivered before a court in England. The actual taking

-of evidence required more than one hundred court days, and at least a

-hundred witnesses identified the claimant as Roger Tichborne. To quote

-from Major Arthur Griffiths’ account:

-

-“These witnesses included Lady Tichborne,[6] Roger’s mother, the family

-solicitor, one baronet, six magistrates, one general, three colonels,

-one major, thirty non-commissioned officers and men, four clergymen,

-seven Tichborne tenants, and sixteen servants of the family.”

-

-[6] A mistake, for the dowager Lady Tichborne died on March 12, 1868.

-Her damage had been done before the trial.

-

-On the other hand, the defense produced only seventeen witnesses

-against the claimant, but it piled up a great deal of dark-looking

-evidence, and, in the course of his long and terrible interrogation of

-the plaintiff, Coleridge was able to bring out so many contradictions,

-such appalling blanks of memory, and such an accumulation of ignorances

-and blunders that the jury gave evidence of its inclination. Thereupon

-Serjeant Ballantine, the claimant’s leading counsel, abandoned the case.

-

-On the order of the judge the claimant was immediately seized, charged

-with three counts of perjury, and remanded for criminal trial. This

-case was not called until April, 1873, and it proved a more formidable

-legal contest than the unprecedented civil action. The proceedings

-lasted more than a year, and it took the judge eighteen days to charge

-the jury; this in spite of the usual despatch of British trials. How

-long such a case might have hung on in the notoriously slow American

-courts is a matter for painful speculation.

-

-This long and dramatic trial, full of emotional scenes and stirring

-incidents, moving slowly along to the accompaniment of popular unrest

-and violent partisanship in the newspapers, ended as did the civil

-action. The claimant was convicted of having impersonated Roger

-Tichborne, of having sullied the name of Miss Kate Doughty, and of

-having denied his true identity as Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping

-butcher. The infant nephew of the real Roger Tichborne was, by this

-verdict, confirmed in his rights, and the claimant was sentenced to

-fourteen years imprisonment. Thus ended one of the most magnificent

-impostures ever attempted. Lady Tichborne did not live to witness this

-collapse of the fraud, or the humiliation of the man she had so freely

-accepted as her own son. The poor lady was shown to be a monomaniac,

-whose judgment had been unseated by the shipwreck of her beloved eldest

-boy.

-

-I have purposely reserved the story, as brought out in the two trials,

-for direct narration, since it embraces the major romance connected

-with this celebrated case and needs to be told with regard to

-chronology and climax.

-

-Arthur Orton, the true name of the claimant, was born to a Wapping

-butcher, at 69 High Street, in June, 1834, and was thus nearly five

-years younger than Roger Tichborne. He had been afflicted with St.

-Vitus’ dance as a boy and had been delinquent. As a result of this, he

-had been sent from home when fourteen years old, and he had taken a

-sea voyage which landed him, by a strange coincidence, at Valparaiso,

-Chile, in 1848, five years before Tichborne reached that port. Orton

-remained in Chile for several years, living with a family named Castro,

-at the small inland city of Melipillo, until 1851, when he returned to

-England and visited his parents at Wapping. In the following year he

-sailed for Tasmania and settled at Hobart Town.

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                                               _Copyright, Maull & Fox_

-

-                          ~~ ARTHUR ORTON ~~]

-

-He operated a butcher shop in that place for some years, but made a

-failure of business and “disappeared into the brush,” owing every one.

-Trace of his movements then grew vague, but it is known that he was

-suspected of complicity in several highway robberies, which were staged

-in New South Wales a few years afterward, and he was certainly charged

-with horse stealing on one occasion. Later he appeared in Wagga Wagga

-and opened a small butcher shop under the name of Thomas Castro, which

-he had adopted from the family in Chile.

-

-In a confession which Orton wrote and sold to a London newspaper[7]

-years after his release from prison in 1884, he gives an account of

-the origin of the fraud. He says that some time before Cubitt, of the

-missing-friends bureau, found him and induced him to write to Lady

-Tichborne, he and his chum at Wagga Wagga, one Slade, had seen some of

-the advertisements which the distraught lady was having published in

-antipodean newspapers. Orton soon adopted the pose of superior station,

-told Slade that he was, in fact, a nobleman incognito, and finally let

-his friends understand that he was Roger Tichborne. The whole thing

-had been begun in a spirit of innocent acting, for the purpose of

-noting the effect of such a revelation upon his friend. In view of

-what followed we cannot escape the conclusion that the swinishly fat

-butcher undertook this adventure because he was mentally disturbed, in

-the sense of being a pathological liar. A talent for impersonation and

-imposture is one of the marked characteristics displayed by this common

-type of mental defective, and Orton certainly possessed it, almost to

-the point of genius.

-

-[7] _The People_, 1898.

-

-Whatever the explanation of Orton’s original motive, the fact remains

-that his friend Slade was impressed by the butcher’s tale and thus

-encouraged Orton to proceed with the fraud, as did a lawyer to whom

-Orton-Castro was in debt. He soon went swaggering about, trying to

-talk like a gentleman and giving what must have been a most painful

-imitation of the manners of a lord. His rude neighbors can have had no

-better discrimination in such matters than the British public and Lady

-Tichborne herself, so it was not a difficult feat to play upon local

-credulity.

-

-In the last month of 1865, when Cubitt sent an agent to Wagga Wagga,

-as a result of his correspondence with Lady Tichborne, the legend of

-Orton’s identity as Roger Tichborne was already firmly established in

-the minds of his townspeople, and the rumor thus gained its initial

-confirmation. The reader is asked to remember that Orton was known as

-Castro, and that his identification as Orton was a difficult feat,

-which remained unperformed until the final trial, more than eight years

-later.

-

-Lady Tichborne herself supplied Castro and his backers in Australia

-with their first vital information. In seeking to identify her son

-she quite guilelessly wrote to Cubitt and others many details of her

-son’s appearance, history, education, and peculiarities. She also

-mentioned a number of intimate happenings. All these were seized upon

-by the butcher and used in framing his letters to the dowager. In spite

-of this fact, he made the many stupid blunders already referred to.

-Lady Tichborne saw the discrepancies, as has been remarked, but her

-monomania urged her to credence, and she sent the ex-servants, Bogle

-and Grillefoyle to investigate. How Orton-Castro managed to win them

-over is not easy to determine. For a time it was suspected that perhaps

-these men had been corrupted by those interested in having the claimant

-recognized; but the facts seem to discountenance any such belief.

-One of the outstanding characteristics of Orton was his ability to

-make friends and gain their confidence, of which fact there can be no

-more eloquent testimony than the long list of witnesses who appeared

-for him at his trials. The man who was able to persuade a mother,

-a sharp-witted solicitor, half a dozen higher army officers, six

-magistrates, and numberless soldiers and tenants who had known Roger

-Tichborne well, to accept and support him in his preposterous claim,

-did not need money to befool an old gardener and a negro valet.

-

-Indeed, it was this personal gift, backed by the man’s abnormal

-histrionic bent and capacity for mimicry, that carried him so far and

-won him the support of so many individuals and almost the solid public.

-How far he was able to carry things has been suggested, but the details

-are so remarkable as to demand recounting.

-

-Orton had almost no schooling. He quite naturally misspelled the

-commonest words and was normally guilty of the most appalling

-grammatical and rhetorical solecisms. He knew not a word of French,

-Latin, or of any other language, save a smattering of Spanish, picked

-up from the Castros while at Melipillo. He had never associated with

-any one who remotely approached the position of a gentleman, and the

-best imitation he can have contrived, must have been patterned after

-performances witnessed on the stages of cheap variety houses. Moreover

-he knew absolutely nothing about the Tichbornes, not even the fact that

-they were Catholics. He did not know where their estates were, nor

-where Roger had gone to school; yet he carried his imposture within an

-inch of success. Indeed, it was the opinion of disinterested observers

-at the trial of his civil action that he must have won the case had he

-stayed off the stand himself.

-

-The feat of substitution this man almost succeeded in accomplishing

-was palpably an enormous one. He went to England, familiarized himself

-with the places Roger Tichborne had visited, studied French without

-managing to learn it, practiced the handwriting of the young Tichborne

-heir till it deceived even the experts, and likewise learned, in spite

-of his own lack of schooling, to imitate the English of Tichborne, and

-to misspell just those words on which the original Roger was weak. He

-crammed his memory with incidents and details picked up at every hand.

-He learned to talk almost like a gentleman. He worked with his voice

-until he got out of it most of the earthy harshness that belonged to

-it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtly behavior, gentle

-ways, and a certain charming deference which went far toward convincing

-those who took him seriously and gave him their support. In short, he

-was able to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness, but he could

-not, with all his talent, quite project himself into the personality

-and mentality of another and very different man. That, perhaps, is a

-simulation beyond human capacity.

-

-So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificent impersonation,

-went to prison for fourteen years, having made quite too grand a

-gesture and much too sad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and

-was then released in view of good conduct. Thereafter he wrote several

-confessions and retracted them all in turn. Finally, toward the end of

-his life, he changed his mind once more and prepared a final and fairly

-complete account of his life and misdeeds, from which some of the facts

-here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898.

-

-The extent to which he had moved the public may be judged from an

-incident the year following Orton’s conviction and imprisonment. His

-chief counsel at the criminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy,

-who was himself scathingly denounced by the court in connection with

-a misdirected attempt to have Orton identified as a castaway from the

-_Bella_ by a seaman who swore he had performed the rescue, but was

-shown to be a perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was elected to

-Parliament, so great was his popularity and that of his client. When

-Kenealy, soon after taking his seat, moved that the Tichborne case

-be referred to a royal commission, the House of Commons rejected the

-motion unanimously. This action inflamed the populace. There were angry

-street meetings, inflammatory speeches, and symptoms of a general riot.

-The troops had to be called and kept in readiness for instant action.

-Fortunately the sight of the soldiers sobered the mob, and the matter

-passed off with only minor bloodshed.

-

-But ten years later, when Orton emerged from prison, there was almost

-no one to greet him. The fickle public, that had once been ready to

-storm the Houses of Parliament for him, had utterly forgotten the man.

-Nor was there any sign of public interest, when he died in obscurity

-and poverty fourteen years later. A few of his persistent followers

-gave him honorable burial as “Sir Roger Tichborne.”

-

-The original enigma of the fate of Roger Tichborne, upon which this

-colossal structure of fraud and legal intricacy was founded, received,

-to be sure, not the slightest clarification from all the pother and

-feverish investigating. If ever there had been any good reason to doubt

-that the young Hampshire aristocrat went helplessly down with the

-stricken _Bella_ and her fated crew, none remained after the trials and

-the stupendous publicity they invoked.

-

-

-

-

-VI

-

-THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK

-

-

-On the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1899, Mrs. Arthur W. Clarke,

-the young wife of a British publisher’s agent residing at 159 East

-Sixty-fifth Street, New York, found this advertisement in the _New York

-Herald_, under the heading, “Employment Wanted:”

-

- GIRL (20) as child’s nurse; no experience in city. Nurse, 274

- _Herald_, Twenty-third Street.

-

-The following Tuesday Mrs. Clarke took into her employment, as

-attendant for her little daughter, Marion, twenty months old, a pretty

-young woman, who gave the name of Carrie Jones and said she had come

-only two weeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upper New

-York State. The fact explained her lack of references. Mrs. Clarke, far

-from being suspicious because of the absence of employment papers, was

-impressed with the new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled,

-even-tempered young woman, considerably above her station, devoted

-to children, and, what was particularly noted, gentle in voice and

-demeanor--a jewel among servants.

-

-Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby Marion Clarke had become

-the center of one of the celebrated abduction cases and, for a little

-while, the nucleus of a dark and appalling mystery. To-day, after

-the lapse of twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affair

-are still to be read in the precautions hedging the employment

-of nursemaids in American cities and in the timidity of parents

-everywhere. It was one of those occasional and impressive crimes which

-leave their mark on social habits and public behavior long after the

-details or the incidents themselves have been forgotten.

-

-The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifth Street is about

-two squares from the city’s great playground, Central Park, a veritable

-warren of children and their maids on every sunny day. Here Marion

-Clarke went almost every afternoon with her new nurse, and here the

-first scene of the ensuing drama was played.

-

-At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of the next Sunday, May 21,

-Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarke and asked if she might not take the

-little girl to the Park then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine

-inviting. In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarke and her

-husband consented, and the maid set off a little before eleven o’clock

-with Baby Marion tucked into a wicker carriage. She was told to return

-by one o’clock, so that the child might have her luncheon at the usual

-hour.

-

-At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk in the Park, also

-tempted from his home by the enchantments of the day. Mrs. Clarke did

-not accompany him, since she had borne a second baby only two or three

-months before, and she was still confined to the house.

-

-Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Street entrance and

-followed the paths idly along toward the old arsenal. Without

-especially seeking his daughter and her nurse, he nevertheless kept

-an eye out. A short distance from the arsenal he saw his child’s cart

-standing in front of the rest room; he approached, expecting to see the

-child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and the attendant explained that

-the child’s vehicle had been left in her care, while the nurse bore the

-baby to the menagerie.

-

-“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to be here any minute

-now,” prattled the public employee.

-

-The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatient and went off to

-wander through the animal gardens. In half an hour he was back at the

-rest room to find the attendant about to move the cart indoors and make

-her departure, her tour of duty being over.

-

-Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to the nearest

-policeman, who smiled, with the confidence of long experience, and

-advised him to go home. It was a common thing for a green country

-girl to get lost among the winding drives and walks of Central Park.

-No doubt the nurse would find her way home with the child in a little

-while.

-

-Clarke went back to his house and waited. At two o’clock he went

-excitedly back to the Park and consulted the captain of police, with

-the same results. The officers were ordered to look for the nurse and

-child, but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He was once more

-told to go home and wait. At the same time he was rather pointedly

-told not to return with his annoying inquiries. Such temporary

-disappearances of children happened every day.

-

-The harried father went home and paced the floor. His enervated wife

-wept and trembled with apprehension. At four o’clock the doorbell rang,

-and the father rushed excitedly to answer.

-

-A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibule and asked if Mr.

-Clarke lived here. Then he handed over a letter in a plain white

-envelope, lingering a moment, as if expecting a tip.

-

-Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quaking fingers and read:

-

- “MRS CLARK: Do not look for your nurse and baby. They are safe in our

- possession, where they will remain for the present. If the matter is

- kept out of the hands of the police and newspapers, you will get your

- baby back, safe and sound.

-

- “If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it all over, we

- will see to it that you never see her alive again. We are driven to

- this by the fact that we cannot get work, and one of us has a child

- dying through want of proper treatment and nourishment.

-

- “Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is still with

- her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us Monday or Tuesday.

-

-                                                          “THREE.”

-

-The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed, punctuated,

-and printed with a fine pen in a somewhat laborious simulation of

-writing-machine type. It also bore several markings characteristic of

-the journalist or publisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel

-lines drawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicate

-capitals. The envelope was the common plain white kind, but the sheet

-of paper on which the note had been penned was of the white unglazed

-and uncalendared kind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper

-offices as copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspected that the

-kidnapper must have been a newspaper man, printer, reader, or some one

-connected with a publishing house.

-

-The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alone the preceding Friday

-evening and had been writing. Evidently she had prepared the note at

-that time and had been planning the abduction with foresight and care.

-People at once reached the conclusion that she was one of the agents of

-a great band of professional kidnappers. Accordingly every child and

-every mother in the city stood in peril.

-

-To indicate the nature of the official search, we may as well reproduce

-Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:

-

- “Arrest for abduction--Carrie Jones, twenty-one years of age, five

- feet two inches tall, dark hair and eyes, pale face, high check bones,

- teeth prominent in lower jaw, American by birth; wore a white straw

- sailor hat with black band, military pin on side, blue-check shirt

- waist, black brilliantine skirt, black lace bicycle boots, white

- collar and black tie.

-

- “Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke, daughter of Arthur

- W. Clarke, of this city, and described as follows: twenty months

- old, light complexion, blue eyes, light hair, had twelve teeth,

- four in upper jaw, four in lower jaw, and four in back. There is

- a space between two upper front teeth, and red birthmark on back.

- Wore rose-colored dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black

- buttoned shoes.

-

- “Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in all

- institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children of the

- above age are received.”

-

-A photograph of the missing child accompanied the description.

-

-So the quest began. It was, however, by no means confined to Carrie

-Jones and the child. The New York newspaper reporters were early

-convinced that some one else stood behind the transaction, and they

-sought night and day for a man or woman connected either directly or

-distantly with their own profession. It was the day when the reporter

-prided himself especially on his superior acumen as a sleuth, with the

-result that every effort was made to give a fresh demonstration of

-journalistic enterprise and shrewdness.

-

-Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompanied by a sharp rise

-in public emotionalism and the incipience of panic among parents,

-failed, however, to produce even the most shadowy results. Rumors and

-suspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, but there came forth

-nothing that had the earmarks of the genuine clew. The arrests of

-innocent young women were many, and numerous little girls were dragged

-to police stations by the usual crop of fanatics.

-

-Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from all parts of the

-surrounding country and even from the most distant places. One report

-had her on her way to England, another showed her as having sailed for

-Sweden, a third report was that she had been taken to Australia by a

-childless couple. All the other common hypotheses were, of course,

-entertained. A bereaved mother had taken little Marion to fill the void

-of her own loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girl and was

-using her to present as her own offspring, probably to comply with the

-provisions of some freak will.

-

-But the hard fact remained that a letter had come within four hours

-after the abduction of the child, and before there had been the

-first note of alarm or publicity. Such an epistle could only have

-been written by the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy to

-the fact that the girl was gone. In that communication the writer

-had stated his or her case very definitely and, while not actually

-demanding ransom or naming a sum, had clearly indicated the intention

-of making such a subsequent demand.

-

-Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be it said to their

-credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spun hypotheses, but clung to

-the main track and sought the kidnappers. The _New York World_ offered

-a reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficient reportorial

-workers into the search. The other newspapers also kept their men

-going in shifts. Every possible trail was followed to its end, every

-promising part of the city searched. Even the most inane reports were

-investigated with diligence.

-

-Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bits of information

-which they, no doubt, considered suggestive or important. The

-well-known Captain McClusky, then chief of detectives, received these

-often wearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigation of

-their reports, and often remained at his desk late into the night.

-

-Among a large number of women who reported to the detective chief was a

-Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and voluble Irishwoman, who maintained a rooming

-house in Twenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff asserted that

-two women with a little girl of Marion Clarke’s age and general

-appearance had rented a room from her on the evening of the eventful

-Sunday and spent the night there. The next morning one of them had got

-the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secluded with the other

-woman and child for a time, and had then come out to announce that

-they would not remain another day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detected

-excitement in the manner of both women, but she had to admit that the

-child had made no complaint or outcry. Nevertheless, she felt that

-these were the wanted people.

-

-Had she noted anything of special interest about the child, any

-peculiarity by which the parents might recognize her? Or had she heard

-the women mention any town or place to which they might have gone?

-

-The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessed that her

-curiosity had led her to do a little spying, and recalled that she had

-heard one of the women mention a town. Either she had not heard the

-name distinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it was a name

-ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that. Fitchburg, Pittsburg,

-Williamsburg, Plattsburg--something like that. She did not know the

-reason for her feeling, but she was sure it was a place not very far

-from New York.

-

-As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothing except that

-it seemed good-humored, healthy, and clever. She had heard one of the

-women say: “Come on, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently the

-little girl had done some sort of impersonation.

-

-Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credence in Mrs. Cosgriff’s

-account, but he saw no special promise in her revelations till he

-repeated the details to the agonized parents. At the mention of the

-childish impersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.

-

-“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of her little tricks!”

-

-It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spent hours playing

-with the child, teaching it to walk and pose like a certain affected

-woman friend of its mother. Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie

-Jones, and another woman had been in South Brooklyn the evening after

-the abduction and spent the night and part of the next day at Mrs.

-Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoon for a town whose name ended in

-burg or berg.

-

-Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives made a list of towns

-with the burg termination, and one or two men were sent to each, with

-instructions to make a quiet, but thorough, search. Information of

-a confidential kind was also forwarded to the police departments of

-other cities, near and far. As a result a number of suspected young

-women were picked up. Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a

-short time when a girl answering to the description of Carrie Jones

-was seized in Connecticut and held for the arrival of the New York

-detectives, when she began to act mysteriously and failed to give a

-clear account of herself. It was found, however, that she had other

-substantial reasons for being cryptic, and that she was, moreover,

-enjoying her little joke on the officials.

-

-Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who would neither affirm nor

-deny that she was Carrie Jones, but let the local police have the very

-definite impression that they had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper.

-She turned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatory

-type. Her one real link with the affair was that her name happened

-to be Jones, a circumstance which got the members of this large and

-popular family of citizens no little discomfort during the pendency of

-the Clarke mystery.

-

-Meantime no further communication had been received from the abductors.

-They had said, in the single note received from them, that they would

-communicate Monday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything,

-far from being quiet, had been in a most plangent uproar, which

-circumstances alone should have been recognized as the reason for

-silence. But, as is usual, the clear and patent explanation seemed not

-to contain enough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretations

-were put forward in the usual variety of forms. The note had been sent

-merely to misguide, and one might be sure the abductors did not intend

-to return Baby Marion. If the abductors were looking for ransom, why

-had no more been heard? Why had they chosen the daughter of a man who

-had slender means and from whom no large ransom could be expected? No,

-it was something more sinister still. Probably Little Marion was dead.

-

-As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusive

-developments, the public sympathy toward the stricken couple became

-expressive and dramatic. Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth

-Street in hope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. The father was

-greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressions whenever he came or

-went. Many offers of aid were received, and some came forward who

-wanted to pay whatever ransom might be demanded.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ MARION CLARKE ~~]

-

-In these various ways the Marion Clarke case came to be a national and

-even an international sensation in the brief course of a week. Sympathy

-with the parents was instant and widespread, and passion against the

-abductors filled the newspaper correspondence columns with suggestions

-in favor of more stringent laws, plans for cruel vengeance on the

-kidnappers, complaints against the police, fulminations directed at

-quite every one connected with the unfortunate affair--all the usual

-expressions of helplessness and bafflement.

-

-On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven days after the

-disappearance, a woman with a little girl entered the general store at

-the little hamlet of St. John, N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided

-as postmistress to the community. The child was a little petulant and

-noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous. Both were strangers. The

-woman gave her name as Beauregard and took one or two letters which had

-come for her. With these and the little girl she made a quick departure.

-

-Because of the great excitement and wide publicity of the Clarke case,

-nothing of the sort could happen so near the city of New York without

-one inevitable result. The postmistress immediately notified Deputy

-Sheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, who had his office in

-St. John. Charleston was able to locate the woman and child before

-they could leave town, and he covertly followed them to the farmhouse

-of Frank Oakley, in the heart of the Ramapo Mountain region, near

-Sloatsburg, about nineteen miles from Haverstraw, on the Hudson River.

-

-The rural officer discovered, by making a few inquiries, that this Mrs.

-Beauregard had been known in the vicinity for some months, and she had

-been occupying the Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously,

-however, she had appeared with another woman and the little girl.

-

-The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; there were, or had been,

-two women; the place was ideal for hiding, and the child was of the

-proper age and description. Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned some

-other officers, descended on the place, seized the woman, the child,

-and the husband, locked them into the nearest jail, and sent word to

-Captain McClusky.

-

-New York detectives and reporters arrived by the next train, and Mr.

-Clarke came a short time later. As soon as he was on the ground,

-the party proceeded to the jail, and the weeping father caught his

-wandering girl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke. Within

-ten minutes every available telephone and telegraph wire was humming

-the triumphant message back to New York.

-

-But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mystery of the case only

-began to unfold itself. The woman seized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie

-Jones. Neither had the Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name

-of Mrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned about this matter,

-later “admitted” that she was really Mrs. Jennie Wilson. Her story

-was that a couple had brought the child to her, saying that it needed

-to remain in the mountains for the summer. They had paid her for the

-little girl’s board and care. She declared she did not know their

-address, but they would certainly be on hand in the fall to reclaim

-their baby.

-

-The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he was James Wilson; that

-he had no employment at the time, except working on the farm, and that

-he knew nothing of the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. He

-didn’t interfere in such affairs.

-

-Both were returned to New York after some slight delay. The detectives

-and the newspapers at once went to work on the problem of discovering

-who they were, and what had become of Carrie Jones.

-

-Meantime the abducted child was being brought home to her distracted

-mother. A crowd of several thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth

-Street, apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening

-newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded with presents, saluted

-by the public officials, and treated as the heroine that circumstance

-and good police work had made her. Photographs of her crowded the

-journals, and she was altogether the most famous youngster of the day.

-Her parents later removed to Boston with her, and they were heard of in

-the succeeding years when attempts were made to release the imprisoned

-kidnappers, or whenever there was another kidnapping or missing-child

-case. In time they passed back into obscurity, and Marion Clarke

-disappeared from the glare of notoriety.

-

-The work of identifying the man and woman caught in the Sloatsburg

-farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy Lang, the boy who had brought the

-note to the Clarke door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately

-recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who had handed him

-the missive and a five-cent piece in Second Avenue and asked him to

-deliver the note to Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and

-said that the prisoner was one of the two women who had stayed at

-her house on that Sunday night. It was apparent then that one of the

-active kidnappers, and not an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman

-and her husband, however, denied everything and refused to give any

-information about themselves.

-

-Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in an attempt to make

-the identification complete, discover just who the prisoners were, and

-establish their connections with others believed to have financed the

-kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than mere abduction for

-ransom was suspected, and it seemed to be indicated by certain facts

-that will appear presently. Accordingly the reporters and journalistic

-investigators were conducting a fresh search on very broad lines.

-

-On the evening of the second of June this hunt came to an abrupt close,

-when a reporter traced the mysterious Carrie Jones to the home of an

-aunt at White Oak Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the

-admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country girl who

-had been for no long period a waitress in the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker

-Street, New York. Bella Anderson readily told who the captive man and

-woman were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted and carried

-out. Her story may be summarized to clear the ground.

-

-Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of a retired soldier

-who had seen service in India and Africa. At the age of fourteen,

-her parents being dead, she and her brother, Samuel, had set out for

-America and been received by relatives in the States of New York and

-New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled and aided financially

-both by her brother and other relatives. The year before the kidnapping

-she had gone to New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel, in

-the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs. George Beauregard

-Barrow. They had been kind to her and become her intimates, nursing her

-through an illness and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.

-

-The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested pair, had

-persuaded her that the work of waiting on table in a hotel was too

-arduous and advised her to seek employment in a private family as nurse

-to a child. In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity

-to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a heavy ransom for its

-return. All this part of the business they would manage for her. All

-she needed to do was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this

-she was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be collected.

-

-Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a place as child’s

-nurse. Several parents answered. At the first two homes she was just

-too late to procure employment, other applicants having anticipated

-her. So it was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and

-determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.

-

-The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had coached her carefully.

-They had instructed her in the matter of her lack of references, in the

-manner of taking the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in

-the details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on through

-the list. They had been the mentors and the “master minds.”

-

-After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few days and had taken

-little Marion to the Park the first time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted

-with the nurse and instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the

-next excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many qualms and

-been unable to bring herself to the deed for several visits. Each time

-Mrs. Barrow met her in the Park and was ready to flee with the little

-girl. Finally the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon she

-found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They left the baby’s cart

-at the rest room, carried the child to a remote place, changed its

-coat and cap, and then set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they

-took the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to, the women

-exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned to Manhattan, gave the note

-to the boy, and turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had seen

-the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the game was dangerous,

-and set out quickly for Sloatsburg, where the farmhouse had been rented

-in advance by Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent away

-because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly sought and might be

-recognized in the neighborhood.

-

-This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows naturally sought

-to shield themselves. It was also discovered that Mrs. Barrow had been

-an Addie McNally, born and reared in up-State New York, and that she,

-with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment, thus

-explaining the chirographical characteristics of the Clarke abduction

-note. She was about twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not

-unattractive.

-

-Investigation brought out romantic and pathetic facts concerning the

-husband. He had apparently had no better employment in New York than

-that of motorman in the hire of an electric cab company then operating

-in that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguished parents.

-His father was Judge John C. Barrow of the superior court of Little

-Rock, Arkansas, and the descendant of other persons politically well

-known in the South. George Beauregard Barrow--his middle name being

-that of the famous Confederate commander at the first battle of Bull

-Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationship was claimed--had been

-incorrigible from childhood. In early manhood he had been connected

-with kidnapping threats and plots in his home city and with assaults on

-his enemies, with the result that he was finally sent away, cut off and

-told to make his own berth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his

-unfortunate son at the trial, but public feeling was too sorely aroused.

-

-George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried before Judge Fursman and

-quickly convicted. Barrow was sentenced to fourteen years and ten

-months, and the Anderson girl to four years, both judge and jury

-accepting her statement that she had been no more than a pawn in the

-hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs. Barrow, sensing the

-direction of the wind, took a plea of guilty before Judge Werner,

-hoping for clemency. The court, however, said that her crime merited

-the gravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixed her term at

-twelve years and ten months.

-

-These trials were had, and the sentences imposed within six weeks of

-the kidnapping, the courts having acted with despatch. While the cases

-were pending, Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had again and

-again been asked to reveal the names of others who had induced them

-to their crime or had financed them. All said there had been no other

-conspirators, but the feeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the

-support of professional criminals, or of some enemy of the Clarkes,

-either of whom had supplied him with considerable sums of money.

-

-This belief, which was specially strong with some of the newspapers,

-was predicated upon two facts.

-

-On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four days after the abduction

-of Marion Clarke, there had appeared in the _New York Herald_ the

-following advertisement:

-

- “M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in Baby Clarke case.

- Write again and let me know when and where I can meet you Thursday

- evening. Don’t fail--strictly confidential.”

-

-Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any persons acting for

-them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-reward offer or had

-communicated with any one who had been promised such a sum. Hence

-there were only two possible explanations of the advertisement. Either

-it had been inserted by some unbalanced person who wanted to create

-a stir--the kind of restless neurotic who projects his unwelcome

-apparition into every sensation--or there was really some dark force

-moving behind the kidnapping.

-

-A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion. In spite of

-the fact that George Barrow had been disowned at home and driven from

-his town, and opposed to the circumstances that he had worked at common

-and ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent for eleven months,

-had been seen in the shabbiest clothes and was known to be in need--the

-only force that might have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping--he was

-found to have a considerable sum in his pockets when searched at the

-jail; he informed his wife that he would get plenty of cash for their

-defense, and he was shown to have expended a fairly large sum on the

-planning of the crime, the traveling and other expenses, the rent of

-the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, and for his own amusement.

-Where had this come from?

-

-Not only the public and the newspapers, but Detective Chief McClusky

-were long occupied with this enigma. Barrow himself gave various

-specious explanations and finally refused to say more. Hints and

-bruits of all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarke could

-furnish the answer if he would, an accusation which the harried father

-indignantly rejected.

-

-In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkes removed to

-Boston, the public interest flagged, and the mystery remained unsolved.

-

-

-

-

-VII

-

-DOROTHY ARNOLD

-

-

-On the afternoon of Monday, December 12, 1910, a young woman of the

-upper social world vanished from the pavement of Fifth Avenue. Not

-only did she disappear from the center of one of the busiest streets

-on earth, at the sunniest hour of a brilliant winter afternoon, with

-thousands within sight and reach, with men and women who knew her at

-every side, and with officers of the law thickly strewn about her path;

-but she went without discernible motives, without preparation, and, so

-far as the public has ever been permitted to read, without leaving the

-dimmest clew to her possible destination.

-

-These are the peculiarities which mark the Dorothy Arnold case as one

-of the most irritating puzzles of modern police history, a true mystery

-of the missing.

-

-It is one of the maxims in the administration of absent-persons bureaus

-that disappearing men and women, no matter how carefully they may plan,

-regardless of all natural astuteness, invariably leave behind some

-token of their premeditation. Similarly, it is a truism that, barring

-purposeful self-occultation, the departure of an adult human being

-from so crowded a thoroughfare can be set down only to abduction or to

-mnemonic aberration. Remembering that a crime must have its motivation,

-and that cases of amnesia almost always are marked by previous

-symptoms and by fairly early recovery, the recondite and baffling

-aspects of this affair become manifest; for there was never the least

-hint of a ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuous for

-rugged physical and mental health.

-

-Thus, to sum up the affair, a disappearance which had from the

-beginning no standing in rationality, being logically both impenetrable

-and irreconcilable, remains, at the end of nearly a score of years, as

-obstinate and perplexing as ever--publicly a gall to human curiosity,

-an impossible problem for reason and analytical power.

-

-Dorothy Arnold was past twenty-five when she walked out of her father’s

-house into darkness that shining winter’s day. She was at the summit

-of her youth, rich, socially preferred, blessed with prospects, and

-to every outer eye, uncloudedly happy. Her father, a wealthy importer

-of perfumes, occupied a dignified house on East Seventy-ninth Street,

-in the center of one of the best residential districts, with his wife

-and four children--two sons and two daughters. Mr. Arnold’s sister was

-the wife of Justice Peckham of the United States Supreme Court, and

-the entire family was socially well known in Washington, Philadelphia,

-and New York. His missing daughter had been educated at Bryn Mawr and

-figured prominently in the activities of “the younger set” in all these

-cities. All descriptions set her down as having been active, cheerful,

-intelligent, and talented.

-

-The accepted story is that Miss Arnold left her father’s home at about

-half past eleven on the morning of her disappearance, apparently to go

-shopping for an evening gown. She appears to have had an appointment

-with a girl friend, which she broke earlier in the morning, saying

-that she was to go shopping with her mother. A few minutes before she

-left the house, the young woman went to her mother’s room and said she

-was going out to look for the dress. Her mother remarked that if her

-daughter would wait till she might finish dressing, she would go along.

-The girl demurred quietly, saying that it wasn’t worth the bother, and

-that she would telephone if she found anything to her liking. So far as

-her parent could make out, the girl was not anxious to be alone. She

-was no more than casual and seemed especially happy and well.

-

-At noon, half an hour after she had left her home, Miss Arnold went

-into a shop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, where she bought

-a box of candy and had it charged on her father’s account. At about

-half past one she was at Brentano’s bookshop, Twenty-seventh Street and

-Fifth Avenue. Here she bought a volume of fiction, also charging the

-item to her father.

-

-Whether she was recognized again at a later hour is in doubt. She met a

-girl chum and her mother in the street some time during the early part

-of the afternoon and stopped to gossip for a few moments; but whether

-this incident occurred just before or after her visit to the bookstore

-could not be made certain. At any rate, she was not seen later than two

-o’clock.

-

-When the young woman failed to appear at home for dinner, there was

-a little irritation, but no concern. Her family decided that she had

-probably come across friends and forgotten to telephone her intention

-of dining out. But when midnight came, and there was still no word

-from the young woman, her father began to feel uneasy and communicated

-by telephone with the homes of various friends, where his daughter

-might have been visiting. When he failed to discover her in this way,

-Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney, and a search was begun.

-

-The reader is asked to note that there was no public announcement of

-the young woman’s absence for more than six weeks. Just why it was

-considered wise to proceed discreetly and privately cannot be more

-than surmised. This action on the part of her family has always been

-considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicion and a determination

-to prevent its publication. At any rate, it was not until January 26,

-that revelation was made to the newspapers, at the strong urging of W.

-J. Flynn, then in charge of the New York detectives.

-

-In those six weeks, however, there had been no idleness. As soon as

-it was apparent that the girl could not be merely visiting, private

-detectives were summoned, and a formal quest begun. Her room and its

-contents revealed nothing of a positive character. She had left the

-house in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat and street shoes,

-carrying a silver-fox muff and satin bag, probably containing less

-than thirty dollars in money. Her checkbook had been left behind; nor

-had there been any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts. No part of

-the girl’s clothing had been packed or taken along; none of her more

-valuable jewelry was missing; no letter had been left, and nothing

-pointed to preparation of any sort.

-

-A search of her correspondence revealed, however, a packet of letters

-from a man of a well-known family in another city. When, somewhat

-later, Mr. Arnold was summoned by the district attorney and asked to

-produce the letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, but added

-that they contained nothing of significance.

-

-It developed, too, that, while her parents were in Maine in the

-preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold had gone to Boston on the pretext of

-visiting a school chum, resident in the university suburb of Cambridge;

-whereas she had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and had pawned about

-five hundred dollars’ worth of personal jewelry with a local lender,

-taking no trouble, however to conceal her name or home address. It was

-shown that the man of the letters was registered at another Boston

-hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he denied having seen her or

-been with her on this occasion, and there was no way of proving to the

-contrary. The date of this Boston visit was September 23, about two and

-a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance. The police were never

-able to establish any connection between the Boston visit, the pawning

-of the jewels, and the subsequent events, so that the reader must rely

-at this point upon his own conjecture.

-

-Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment of the young

-heiress, both her mother and brother and the man of the letters had

-returned from Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her.

-He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of Miss Arnold’s

-plans, proclaimed that he knew of no reason why she should have left

-home, announced that he had considered himself engaged to marry her,

-and he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly appear.

-Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained over the young

-man and all his movements for many months. In the end, however, the

-police seemed satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of

-Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out of the case almost

-as suddenly as he had entered it.

-

-In the six weeks before the public was acquainted with the facts,

-private detectives, and later the public police, had worked

-unremittingly on the several possible theories covering the case. There

-were naturally a number of possibilities: First, that the girl had

-met with a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital;

-second, that she had been run down by some reckless motorist, killed,

-and carried off by the frightened driver and secretly buried; third,

-that she had been kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that

-she had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering about the

-country, unable to give any clew to her identity; sixth, that she had

-quarreled with her parents and chosen this method of bringing them to

-terms by the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested as a

-shoplifter and was concealing her identity for shame.

-

-As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded. The hospitals

-and morgues were searched in vain; the records of traffic accidents

-were scanned with the utmost care; the roadhouses and resorts in

-all directions from the city were visited, and their owners closely

-questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected, the passenger

-lists of all departing ships examined, and later sailings observed. The

-authorities in European and other ports were notified by cable, and

-the captains of ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the

-first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and prisons were

-visited and every female prisoner noted. Similar precautions were taken

-in other American cities, where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues

-were also subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of

-physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and all manner

-of possible and impossible retreats were made the objects of detective

-attention--all without result.

-

-The notion that the girl might have been abducted and held for ransom

-was discarded at the end of a few weeks, when no word had come from

-possible kidnappers. The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, with

-the most emphatic denials coming from all the near and distant members

-of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea of an elopement also had to be

-discarded after a time, and so also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic

-attack.

-

-After the police finally insisted on the publication of the facts and

-the summoning of public aid, and after the various early hypotheses had

-one and all failed to stand the test of scrutiny and time, various more

-and more fantastic or improbable conjectures came into currency. One

-was that the girl might have been carried off to some distant American

-town or foreign port. Another was that some secret enemy, whose name

-and grievance her parents were loath to reveal, had made away with

-the young woman, or was holding her to satisfy his spite. The public

-excitement was nigh boundless, and ingenious fabulations or diseased

-imaginings came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted

-parents with every mail.

-

-Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. As the story of the

-young woman’s disappearance continued to occupy the leading columns

-of the daily papers, day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstable

-elements of the population came into vigorous play. Dorothy Arnold was

-reported from all parts of the country, and both the members of her

-family and numberless detectives were kept on the jump, running down

-the most absurd reports on the meager possibility that there might be

-a grain of truth in one of them. Soon there appeared the pathological

-liars and self-accusers, with whose peculiarities neither the police

-nor the public were then sufficiently acquainted. In more than a

-hundred cities--judging from a tabulation of the newspaper reports of

-that day--women of the most diverse ages and types came forward with

-the suggestion that they concealed within themselves the person of the

-missing heiress. Girls of fourteen made the claim and women of fifty.

-Such absurdities soon had the police in a state of weary skepticism,

-but the Arnold family and the newspaper-reading public were still upset

-by every fresh report.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ DOROTHY ARNOLD ~~]

-

-Naturally enough, the fact that a prominent young woman, enjoying the

-full protection of wealth and social distinction, could apparently be

-snatched away from the most populous quarter of a world city, struck

-terror to the hearts of many. If a Dorothy Arnold could be ravished

-from the familiar sidewalks of her home city, what fate waited for the

-obscure stranger? Was it not possible that some new and strange kind of

-criminal, equipped with diabolic cunning and actuated by impenetrable

-motives, was launched upon a campaign of woman stealing? Who was safe?

-

-One of the popular beliefs of the time was that Miss Arnold might have

-gone into some small and obscure shop at a time when there was no other

-customer in the place and been there seized, bound, gagged, and made

-ready for abduction. The notion was widely accepted for the dual reason

-that it provided a set of circumstances under which it was possible

-to explain the totally unwitnessed snatching of the young woman and,

-at the same time, set a likely locale, since there are thousands of

-such little shops in New York. As a result of the currency of this

-story, many women hesitated to enter the establishments of cobblers,

-bootblacks, stationers, confectioners, tobacconists, and other petty

-tradesmen, especially in the more outlying parts of the city. Many

-bankruptcies of these minor business people resulted, as one may read

-from the court records.

-

-A similar fabulation, to the effect that the girl might have entered a

-cruising taxicab, operated by a sinister ex-convict, and been whisked

-off to some secret den of crime and vice, was almost as popular,

-with the result that cabs did a poor business with women clients for

-more than a year afterward. An old hackman, who was arrested in that

-feverish time because of the hysteria of a woman passenger, tells me

-that even to-day he encounters women who grow suspicious and excited,

-if he happens to drive by some unaccustomed route, a thing often done

-in these days to avoid the congestion on the main streets.

-

-While all this popular burning and sweating was going on, the police

-and many thousands of private investigators, professional and amateur,

-were busy with the problem of elucidating some motive to fit the case.

-Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to reason, the

-possibilities became a very general preoccupation. The deductive steps

-may be briefly set down. First, there were the alternative propositions

-of voluntary or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction. Second,

-if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained, there were only

-two general possibilities--abduction for ransom or kidnapping by some

-maniac. The ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like,

-come under the latter head. The notion of a fatal accident had been

-eliminated.

-

-The proposition of voluntary absence presented a more complex picture.

-Suicide, elopement, amnesia, personal rebellion, an unrevealed family

-situation, a forbidden love affair, the desire to hide some social

-lapse--any of these might be the basis of a self-willed absence of a

-permanent or temporary kind.

-

-The failure, after months of quest, to find any trace of a body, seemed

-to have rendered the propositions of murder and of suicide alike

-improbable. Elopement and amnesia were likewise rendered untenable

-theories by time, nor was it long before the conceit of a disagreement

-was relegated to the improbabilities.

-

-Justly or unjustly, a good many practical detectives came after a time

-to the opinion that the case demanded a masculinizing of the familiar

-adage into _cherchez l’homme_. More seasoned officers inclined to the

-idea that there must have been some man, possibly one whose identity

-had been successfully concealed by the distraught girl. Again, as is

-common in such cases, there was the very general feeling that Miss

-Arnold’s family knew a good deal more than had been revealed either to

-the police or the public, and there was something about the long delay

-in reporting the case and the subsequent guarded attitude of the girl’s

-relatives that seemed to confirm this perhaps idle suspicion.

-

-The trouble with a great many of the theories evolved in the first

-months following the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold, was that they

-fitted only a part of the facts and probabilities. After all, here was

-an intricate and baffling situation, involving a person who, because

-of position, antecedents, and social situation, might be expected to

-act in a conventional manner. Accordingly, any explanation that fitted

-the physical facts and was still characterized by extraordinary details

-might reasonably be discarded.

-

-It was several years before the girl’s father finally declared his

-belief in her death, and it is a fact that a sum of not less than a

-hundred thousand dollars was expended, first and last, in running

-down all sorts of rumors and clews. The search extended to England,

-Italy, France, Switzerland, Canada--even to the Far East and Australia.

-But all trails led to vacancy, and all speculations were at length

-empty. No dimmest trace of the girl was ever found, and no genuinely

-satisfactory explanation of the strange story has ever been put forward.

-

-It is true there have been, at times in the intervening dozen or more

-years, rumors of a solution. Persons more or less closely connected

-with the official investigation have on several occasions been reported

-as voicing the opinion that the Arnold family was in possession of the

-facts, but denials have followed every such declaration. On April 8,

-1921, for instance, Captain John H. Ayers, in charge of the Missing

-Persons Bureau of the New York Police Department, told an audience at

-the High School of Commerce that the fate of Miss Arnold had at that

-time been known to the police for many months, and that the case was

-regarded as closed. This pronouncement received the widest publicity

-in the New York and other American newspapers, but Captain Ayers’

-statement was immediately and vigorously controverted by John S. Keith,

-the personal attorney of the girl’s father, who declared that the

-police official had told a “damned lie,” and that the mystery was as

-deep as ever it had been. The police chiefs later issued interviews

-full of dubiety and qualifications, the general tenor being that

-Captain Ayers had spoken without sufficient knowledge of the facts.

-

-Just a year later the father of this woman of mysterious tragedy died,

-the last decade of his life beclouded by the sorrowful story and

-painful doubt. In his will was this pathetic clause:

-

- “I make no provision in this will for my beloved daughter, H. C.

- Dorothy Arnold, as I am satisfied that she is dead.”

-

-The death of Miss Arnold’s father once more set the rumor mongers to

-work and a variety of tales, bolder than had been uttered before,

-were circulated through the demi-world of New York and hinted in the

-newspapers. These rumors have not been printed directly and there has

-thus been no need of denial on part of the family. It must be said

-at once that they are mere bruits, mere attempts on the part of the

-cynical town to invent a set of circumstances to fit what few facts and

-alleged facts are known.

-

-On the other hand, the newspapers have been only too ready to take

-seriously the most absurd fabulations. In 1916, for instance, a thief

-arrested at Providence, R. I., for motives best known to himself,

-declared that he had helped to bury Dorothy Arnold’s body in the cellar

-of a house about ten miles below West Point, near the J. P. Morgan

-estate. Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, Captain Grant Williams and a

-number of detectives provided with digging tools set out for the place

-in motor cars, closely pursued by other cars containing the newspaper

-reporters. The police managed to shake off the newspaper men and

-reached the house. There they dug till they ached and found nothing

-whatever.

-

-Returning to New York, the detectives left their shovels, some of which

-were rusty or covered with a red clay, at a station house and there the

-reporters caught a glimpse of them. The result was that a bit of rust

-or ferrous earth translated itself into blood and thence into headlines

-in the morning papers, declaring that Dorothy Arnold’s body had been

-found. Denials followed within hours, to be sure.

-

-So the case rests.

-

-Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death will open the lips of

-one or another who knows the secret and has been sealed to silence by

-the fears and needs of life. But it is just as likely that the words of

-her dying parent contain as much as can be known of the truth about the

-missing Dorothy Arnold.

-

-

-

-

-VIII

-

-EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE

-

-

-At seven o’clock on the bright winter evening of December 18,

-1900, Edward A. Cudahy, the multimillionaire meat packer, sent

-his fifteen-year-old son to the home of a friend, with a pile of

-periodicals. The boy, Edward A., junior, but shortly to be known over

-two continents as Eddie Cudahy, left his father’s elaborate house at

-No. 518 South Thirty-seventh Street, Omaha, walked three blocks to

-the home of Doctor Fred Rustin, also in South Thirty-seventh Street,

-delivered the magazines, turned on his heel and disappeared.

-

-Shortly before nine o’clock the rich packer noticed that his son had

-not returned, and he observed to his wife that the Rustins must have

-invited the boy to stay. Mrs. Cudahy felt a little nervous and urged

-her husband to make sure. He telephoned to the Rustin home and was

-promptly told that Eddie had been there, left the papers and departed

-immediately, almost two hours before.

-

-The Cudahys were instantly alarmed and convinced that something out

-of the ordinary had befallen the boy. He had promised to return

-immediately to consult with his father over a Christmas list. He was

-known to have no more than a few cents in his pockets, and unexplained

-absences from home at night were unprecedented with him.

-

-The beef magnate notified the Omaha police without long hesitation, and

-the quest for the missing rich boy was on. All that night detectives,

-patrolmen, servants, and friends of the family went up and down the

-streets and alleys of the overgrown Nebraska packing town, with its

-strange snortings from the cattle pens, its grunting railroad engines,

-its colonies of white and black laborers from distant lands, its

-brawling night life and its pretentious new avenues where the brash and

-sudden rich resided. At dawn the searchers congregated, sleepless, at

-the police headquarters or the Cudahy mansion, baffled and affrighted.

-Not the first clew to the boy had been found, and no one dared to

-whisper the clearest suspicions.

-

-By noon all Omaha was in turmoil. The great packing houses had

-practically stopped their activity; the police had been called in

-from their usual assignments and put to searching the city, district

-by district; the resorts and gambling houses were combed by the

-detectives; the anxious father had telegraphed to Chicago for twenty

-Pinkerton men, and the usual flight of mad rumors was in the air.

-

-One man reported that he had seen two boys, one of them with a broken

-arm, leave a street car at the city limits on the preceding night.

-The fact that the car line passed near the Cudahy home was enough to

-lead people to think one of the boys must have been Eddie Cudahy. As

-a result, his known young friends were sought out and questioned; the

-schools were gone over for the boy with a broken arm, and all the

-street-car crews in town were examined by the police.

-

-By the middle of the afternoon, the newspapers issued special editions,

-which bore the news that a letter had been received from kidnappers.

-According to this account, a man on horseback had ridden swiftly past

-the Cudahy home at nine o’clock that morning and tossed a letter to the

-lawn. This had been picked up by one of the servants, and it read as

-follows:

-

- “We have your son. He is safe. We will take good care of him and

- return him for a consideration of twenty-five thousand dollars. We

- mean business.

-

-                                                          “Jack.”

-

-With the publication of this alleged communication, even more fantastic

-reports began to reach the police and the parents. One young intimate

-of the family came in and reported in all seriousness that he had seen

-a horse and trap standing in Thirty-seventh Street, near the Cudahy

-home on several occasions in the course of the preceding week. The fact

-that it looked like any one of a hundred smart rigs then in common use

-did not seem to detract from its fancied significance.

-

-Another neighbor reported that three days before the kidnapping he had

-seen a covered light wagon standing at the curb in the street, a block

-to the rear of the Cudahy home. One man on the seat was talking with

-another, who was standing on the walk, and, as the narrator passed,

-they had lowered their voices to a whisper. He had not thought the

-incident suggestive until after the report of the kidnapping. And the

-police, quite forgetting the instinctive universal habit of lowering

-the voice when strangers pass, sent out squads of men to find the wagon

-and the whisperers!

-

-In short, the town was excited out of all sanity, and the very

-forces which should have maintained calmness and acted with all

-possible self-possession seemed the most headless. All the officials

-accomplished was the brief detention of several innocent persons, the

-theatrical raiding of a few gambling houses, and the further excitation

-of the citizenry, always ready to respond to police histrionism.

-

-To add an amusing exhibit to the already heavy store of evidence on

-this last point, it may be noted with amusement, not to say amazement,

-that the kidnapping letter, which had so agitated the public, was

-itself a police fake, and the rider who had thrown it on the lawn was a

-clumsy invention.

-

-Meantime, however, a genuine kidnapping letter had reached the hands

-of Mr. Cudahy. A little before nine o’clock on the morning of the

-nineteenth, after he too had been up all night, the family coachman was

-walking across the front lawn when he saw a piece of red cloth tied to

-a stout wooden stick about two feet long. He approached it, looked at

-it suspiciously, and finally picked it up, to find that an envelope

-was wrapped about the stick and addressed in pencil to Mr. Cudahy.

-Evidently some one had thrown this curiously prepared missive into the

-yard in the course of the preceding night, for there had been numbers

-of policemen, detectives, and neighbors on the lawn and on the walks in

-front of the property since dawn.

-

-The letter, with its staff and red cloth, was immediately carried

-to the packer, who read with affrighted eyes this remarkable and

-characteristic communication:

-

-  “OMAHA, December 19, 1900.

-

-  “Mr. Cudahy:

-

- “We have kidnapped your child and demand twenty-five thousand dollars

- for his safe return. If you give us the money, the child will be

- returned as safe as when you last saw him; but if you refuse, we will

- put acid in his eyes and blind him. Then we will immediately kidnap

- another millionaire’s child that we have spotted, and we will demand

- one hundred thousand dollars, and we will get it, for he will see the

- condition of your child and realize the fact that we mean business and

- will not be monkeyed with or captured.

-

- “Get the money all in gold--five, ten, and twenty-dollar pieces--put

- it in a grip in a white wheat sack, get in your buggy alone on the

- night of December 19, at seven o’clock p.m., and drive south from your

- house to Center Street; turn west on Center Street and drive back to

- Ruser’s Park and follow the paved road toward Fremont.

-

- “When you come to a lantern that is lighted by the side of the road,

- place your money by the lantern and immediately turn your horse around

- and return home. You will know our lantern, for it will have two

- ribbons, black and white, tied on the handle. You must place a red

- lantern on your buggy where it can be plainly seen, so we will know

- you a mile away.

-

- “This letter and every part of it must be returned with the money,

- and any attempt at capture will be the saddest thing you ever done.

- _Caution! For Here Lies Danger._

-

- “If you remember, some twenty years ago Charley Ross was kidnapped in

- New York City, and twenty thousand dollars ransom asked. Old man Ross

- was willing to give up the money, but Byrnes[8] the great detective,

- with others, persuaded the old man not to give up the money, assuring

- him that the thieves would be captured. Ross died of a broken heart,

- sorry that he allowed the detectives to dictate to him.

-

- [8] Mr. Crowe had his criminal history somewhat vaguely in mind.

-

- “This letter must not be seen by any one but you. If the police or

- some stranger knew its contents, they might attempt to capture us,

- although entirely against your wish; or some one might use a lantern

- and represent us, thus the wrong party would secure the money, and

- this would be as fatal to you as if you refused to give up the money.

- So you see the danger if you let the letter be seen.

-

- “Mr. Cudahy, you are up against it, and there is only one way out.

- Give up the coin. Money we want, and money we will get. If you don’t

- give it up, the next man will, for he will see that we mean business,

- and you can lead your boy around blind the rest of your days, and all

- you will have is the damn copper’s sympathy.

-

- “Do the right thing by us, and we will do the same by you. If you

- refuse you will soon see the saddest sight you ever seen.

-

- “Wednesday, December 19th. This night or never. Follow these

- instructions, or harm will befall you or yours.”

-

-There was no signature. I have quoted the letter exactly, with the

-lapses in grammar and spelling preserved. It was written in pencil on

-five separate pieces of cheap note paper and in a small, but firm,

-masculine hand. It was read to the chief police authorities soon after

-its receipt. Just why they felt compelled to announce that it had come,

-and to invent the absurd draft they issued, remains for every man’s own

-intuitions.

-

-In this case, as in other abduction affairs, the police advised the

-father not to comply with the demand of the criminals, but to rely upon

-their efforts. No doubt their sense of duty to the public is as much

-responsible for this invariable position as any confidence in their

-own powers. An officer must feel, after all, that he cannot counsel

-bargaining with dangerous criminals, and that to pay them is only to

-encourage other kidnappers and further kidnappings.

-

-In spite of the menacing terms of the rather garrulous letter, which

-betrayed by its very length the fervor of its persuasive threats, and

-the darkness of its reminders, the nervousness of its composer, Mr.

-Cudahy was minded to listen to the advice of the officers and defy the

-abductors of his son. In this frame of mind he delayed action until

-toward the close of the afternoon, meantime sitting by the telephone

-and hearing reports from police headquarters and his own private

-officers every half hour. By four o’clock he and his attorney began to

-realize that there was no clew of any kind; that the whole Omaha police

-force and all the men his wealth had been able to supply in addition,

-had been able to make not even the first promising step, and that the

-hour for a decision that might be fatal was fast approaching. Still,

-he hesitated to take a step in direct violation of official policy and

-counsel.

-

-In this dilemma Mrs. Cudahy came forward with a demand for action to

-meet the immediate emergency and protect her only son. She refused to

-listen to talk of remoter considerations, declared that the amount of

-ransom was a trifle to a man of her husband’s fortune, and weepingly

-insisted that she would not sacrifice her boy to any mad plans of

-outsiders, who felt no such poignant concern as her own.

-

-Shortly before five o’clock Mr. Cudahy telephoned the First National

-Bank, which had, of course, closed for the day, and asked the cashier

-to make ready the twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. A little later

-the Cudahy attorney called at the bank and received the specie in five

-bags and in the denominations asked by the abductors. The money was

-taken at once to the Cudahy house and deposited inside, without the

-knowledge of the servants or outsiders.

-

-At half past six Mr. Cudahy ordered his driving mare hitched to the

-buggy in which he made the rounds of his yards and plants. At seven

-o’clock he slipped quietly out of his house, without letting his wife,

-the servants, or any one but his attorney know his errand. He carried a

-satchel containing the five bags of gold, which weighed more than one

-hundred pounds, to the stable, put the precious stuff into the bottom

-of his vehicle, took up the reins, and set out on his perilous and

-ill-boding adventure.

-

-Mr. Cudahy had not been allowed to leave home without warnings from the

-police and his attorney. They had told him that he might readily expect

-to find himself trapped by the kidnappers, who would then hold both him

-and his son for still higher ransom. So he drove toward the appointed

-place along the dim, night-hidden roads, with more than ordinary

-misgiving. Once or twice, after he had proceeded six or seven miles

-into the blackness of the open prairie, without seeing any signs from

-the abductors, he came near turning back; but the danger to his son and

-the thought that the criminals could have no object in sending him on a

-fruitless expedition, held him to his course.

-

-About ten miles out of town, still jogging anxiously along behind

-his horse, Mr. Cudahy saw a passenger train on one of the two

-transcontinental lines that converge at that point, coiling away into

-the infinite blackness, like some vast phosphorescent serpent. The

-beauty and mystery of the spectacle meant nothing to him, but it served

-to raise his hopes. No doubt the kidnappers would soon appear now.

-They had probably chosen this locality, with the swift trains running

-by, for their rendezvous. Once possessed of the gold, they would catch

-the next flyer for either coast and be gone out of the reach of local

-police. Perhaps they would even have the missing boy with them and

-surrender him as soon as they had been paid the ransom.

-

-Thus buoyed and heartened, the father drove on. Suddenly the road

-entered a cleft between two abrupt hills or butts. A sense of

-impendency oppressed the lonely driver. He took up a revolver beside

-him on the seat, clutching it near him, with some protective instinct.

-At the same moment he turned higher the flame in his red lantern, which

-swung from the whip socket of his buggy, and peered out into the gulch.

-Everything was pit-black and grave-silent. He lay back disappointed and

-spoke to the horse, debating whether to turn back. Once more he decided

-to go on. The cleft between the two eminences grew narrower. The horse

-turned a swift sharp corner. Cudahy sat up with startled alertness.

-

-There in the road before him, not ten rods away, was a smoky lantern,

-throwing but a pallid radiance about it in the thick darkness, but

-lighting a great hope in the father’s heart. He approached directly,

-drew up his horse a few yards away, found that the lantern, tied to

-a twig by the roadside, was decorated with the specified ribbons of

-black and white, returned to his buggy, carried the bags of gold to the

-lantern, put them down in the roadside, waited a few moments for any

-sign that might be given, turned his horse about, and started for home,

-driving slowly and listening intently for any sound from his expected

-son.

-

-The ten miles back to Omaha were covered in this slow and tense

-way, with eyes and ears open, and a mind fluctuating between hope

-and despair. But no lost boy came out of the darkness, and Cudahy

-reached his house without the least further encouragement. It was

-then past eleven o’clock. His attorney and his wife were still in

-the drawing-room, sleepless, tense, and terrified. They greeted the

-boy’s father with swift questions and relapsed into hopelessness

-when he related what he had done. An hour passed, while Cudahy tried

-to keep up the courage of his wife by argument and reasoning. Then

-came one o’clock. Now half past one. Surely there was no longer any

-need of waiting now. Either the kidnappers had hoaxed the suffering

-parents, or that note had not come from kidnappers at all, but from

-impostors--or--something far worse. At best, nothing would be heard

-till morning.

-

-“It’s no use, Mrs. Cudahy,” said the lawyer. “You’d better get what

-sleep you can, and----”

-

-“Hs-s-sh!” said the mother, laying her finger on her lips and listening

-like a hunted doe.

-

-In an instant she sprang out of her chair, ran into the hall, out of

-the door, down the walk to the street, and out of the gate. The two men

-sprang up and followed in time to see her catch the missing boy into

-her arms. She had heard his footfall.

-

-The news of the boy’s return was flashed to police headquarters within

-a few minutes, and the detective chief went at once to the Cudahy home

-to hear the returning boy’s story. It was simple and brief enough.

-

-Eddie Cudahy had left Doctor Rustin’s house the night before, and gone

-directly homeward. Three or four doors from his parents’ house Eddie

-Cudahy was suddenly confronted by two men who faced him with revolvers,

-called him Eddie McGee, declared that he was wanted for theft, that

-they were officers, and that he must come to the police station. He

-protested that he was not Eddie McGee, and that he could be identified

-in the house yonder; but his captors forced him into their buggy and

-drove off, warning him to make no outcry. They had gone only a few

-blocks when they changed their tone, tied the lad’s arms behind him,

-and put a bandage over his eyes and another over his mouth, so that he

-could not cry out. He understood that he had been kidnapped.

-

-Thus trussed up and prevented from either seeing where he was being

-taken, or making any outcry, the young fellow was driven about for an

-hour, and finally delivered to an old house, which he believed to be

-unfurnished, judging from the hollow sound of the footsteps, as he

-and his captors were going up the stairs. He was taken into a room on

-the second floor, seated in a chair, and handcuffed to it. His gag

-was removed, but not the bandage on his eyes. He was supplied with

-cigarettes and offered food, but he could not eat. One of the two men

-stood guard, the other departing at once, but returning later on.

-

-All that night and the next day the boy was unable to sleep. But

-he sensed that his captor seemed to be imbibing whisky with great

-regularity. Finally, about an hour before he had been set free, Eddie

-heard the other man return and hold a whispered conversation with his

-guard. The boy was then taken from the house, put back into the same

-buggy, driven to within a quarter of a mile of his father’s home, and

-released. He ran for home, and his captors drove off.

-

-Eddie Cudahy could not give any working description of the criminals.

-He had not got a good look at them in the street when they seized him,

-because it was dark, and they had the brims of their large hats pulled

-down over their eyes. Immediately afterward he had been bandaged and

-deprived of all further chance of observation. One man was tall, and

-the other short. The tall man seemed to be in command. The short man

-had been his guard. He thought there was a third man who was bringing

-in reports.

-

-There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation. First, it

-would surely be possible to find the house in which the boy had been

-held captive, for Omaha was not so large that there were many empty

-houses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides, the time

-at which any such house had been rented would offer evidence. It might

-be possible to get a clew to the identity of the kidnappers through the

-description of the person or persons who had done the renting.

-

-Second, the kidnappers must have got the horse and buggy somewhere;

-most likely from a local livery stable. If its source could be found,

-the liveryman also would be able to describe the persons with whom he

-had done business.

-

-So the police set to work, searching the town again for house and for

-stable. They found several deserted two-story cottages that fitted the

-picture well enough, and in each instance there were circumstances

-which seemed to indicate that the kidnappers had been there. Finally,

-however, all were eliminated, except a crude two-story cabin at 3604

-Grover Street. This turned out to be the place, situated near the

-outskirts, on the top of a hill, with the nearest neighbors a block

-away. Cigarette ends, burned matches, empty whisky bottles, and windows

-covered with newspapers gave silent, but conclusive, testimony.

-

-The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It had not been hired

-at any stable in Omaha or in Council Bluffs, across the Missouri

-River. Advertising and police calls brought out no private owner who

-had rented such a rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer

-living about twenty miles out of town who had sold a bay pony to a

-tall stranger several weeks before. Another man was found who had sold

-a second-hand buggy to a man of the same general description. At last

-the police began to realize that they were dealing with a criminal of

-genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man had not blundered in any

-of the usual ways, and he had made the trail so confused that more than

-a week had passed before there were any positive indications as to his

-possible identity.

-

-In the end several indications pointed in the same direction. It

-seemed highly probable that the kidnapper chieftain had been some one

-acquainted with the packing business and probably with the Cudahys.

-He was also familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commanding

-voice, was accompanied by a shorter man, who seemed to be older, but

-was still dominated by his companion. More important still, this chief

-of abductors was an experienced and clever criminal. He gave every

-evidence of knowing all the ropes. These specifications seemed to fit

-just one man whose name now began to be used on all sides--the thrice

-perilous and ill-reputed Pat Crowe.

-

-It was recalled that this man had begun life as a butcher, been

-a trusted employee of the Cudahys ten years before, and had been

-dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequently he had turned his hand to crime,

-and achieved a startling reputation in the western United States as

-an intrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handy man with

-a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in a corner. He had been

-in prison more than once, had lately made what seemed an effort at

-reform, knew Edward A. Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors

-and gratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactly the man

-to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeks and evidence only

-strengthened the suspicion against him. Crowe, though he had been seen

-in Omaha the day before the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered.

-Even this fact added to the general belief that he and none other had

-done the deed. In a short time the Cudahy kidnapping mystery resolved

-itself into a quest for this notorious fellow.

-

-The alarm was spread throughout the United States and Canada, to

-the British Isles, and the Continental ports, and to Mexico and the

-Central American border and port cities, where it was believed the

-fugitive might make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended,

-and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases, with occasional

-lapses back into exciting alarms. Every little while the capture of

-Pat Crowe was reported, and on at least a dozen occasions men turned

-up with confessions and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping.

-These apparitions and alleged captures took place in such diffused

-spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil, San Francisco, and

-various obscure towns in the United States and Canada. The genuine

-and authentic Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the

-captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                                                           _Wide World_

-

-                           ~~ PAT CROWE ~~]

-

-Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on the Union Pacific

-Railroad, had been taken and brought to trial. His name was James

-Callahan, and there was then and is now no question about his

-connection with the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on

-April 29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the presiding

-tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of duty, saying that never had

-evidence more clearly indicated guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on

-other counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be released.

-

-In the same year, 1901, word was received from Crowe through an

-attorney he had employed in an earlier difficulty. Crowe had sent

-this barrister a draft from Capetown, South Africa, in payment of

-an old debt. The much sought desperado had got through the lines to

-the Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting against

-the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated for distinguished

-courage, and was, according to his own statement, done with crime and

-living a different life--adventurous, but honest. So many canards had

-been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story, albeit time

-proved it to be true.

-

-At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five thousand dollars

-had been offered for the capture and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty

-thousand by Cudahy and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha.

-This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man had, of course,

-contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide interest in the case.

-Yet even these fat inducements accomplished nothing.

-

-Finally, in 1906, when Crowe had been hunted in vain for more than five

-years, he suddenly opened negotiations with Omaha’s chief of police

-through an attorney, offering to come in and surrender, in case all the

-rewards were immediately and honestly withdrawn, so that there would be

-no money inducement which might cause officers or others to manufacture

-a case against him. After some preliminaries, these terms were met, but

-not until an attempt to capture the desperado had been made and failed,

-with the net result of three badly wounded officers.

-

-In February, 1906, Crowe was at last brought to trial and, to the utter

-astoundment and chagrin of the entire country, promptly acquitted,

-though he offered no defense and tacitly admitted that he had taken

-the boy. One bit of conclusive evidence that had been offered by the

-prosecution and admitted by the court, was a letter written by Crowe to

-his parish priest in the little Iowa town of his boyhood. In the course

-of this letter, which had been written to the priest in the hope that

-he might make peace with Cudahy, the desperado admitted that “I am

-solely responsible for the Cudahy kidnapping. No one else is to blame.”

-

-No matter. The jury would not consider the evidence and brought in the

-verdict already indicated. Crowe, after six years of being hunted with

-a price of fifty-five thousand dollars on his head, was a free man.

-

-The acquittals of Crowe and Callahan have furnished material for a good

-deal of amused and some angry speculation. The local situation in Omaha

-at the time furnishes the key to the puzzle. First of all, there was

-the bitter anti-beef trust agitation, founded on the fact that many

-small independent butchers had been put out of business by the great

-packing-house combination, of which Cudahy was a member; and that meat

-prices had everywhere been rapidly advanced to almost double their

-earlier prices. Next, there was the circumstance of Cudahy’s abundant

-and flaunting wealth. The common man considered that these millions

-had been gouged out of his pocket and cut from off his dinner plate.

-Cudahy had also begun the introduction of cheap negro labor into Omaha

-to break a strike of his packing-house employees, and the city was

-bitterly angry at him. Also, Crowe was himself popular and well known.

-Many considered him a hero. But there was still another strange cause

-of the state of the public mind.

-

-In the very beginning a not inconsiderable part of Omaha’s people had

-somehow come to the curious conclusion that there had been no Cudahy

-kidnapping. One story said that Eddie Cudahy was a wild youth, and that

-he himself had conspired with Crowe and Callahan to abduct him and get

-the ransom, since he needed a share of it for his own purpose, and

-he saw in this plan an easy method to mulct his unsuspecting father.

-A later version denied the boy’s guilt, but still insisted that the

-whole story, as told by the father and confirmed by the police, was a

-piece of fiction. What motive the rich packer could have had for such

-a fraud, no one could say. The best explanation given was that he saw

-in it a plan to get worldwide advertising for the Cudahy name. How

-this could have sold any additional hams or beeves, is a bit hard to

-imagine, but the story was so generally believed that two jurors at

-one of the trials voiced it in the jury room and scoffed at all the

-evidence. All this rumor is, of course, absurd.

-

-Crowe, after his acquittal, went straight, as the word goes. He has

-committed no more crimes, unless one wants to rate under this heading

-a book of highly romantic confessions, which he had published the

-following year. In this book he set forth the circumstances of the

-crime in great, but unreliable, detail. He made it very plain, however,

-that he and Callahan alone planned the crime and carried it out.

-

-Crowe personally conceived the whole plan and took Callahan into the

-conspiracy only because he needed help. The two held up the boy, as

-already related. As soon as they had him safe in the old house, Crowe

-drove back to the Cudahy home in his buggy and threw the note, wrapped

-about the stick and decorated with the red cloth, upon the lawn, where

-it was found the next morning by the coachman. Of the twenty-five

-thousand dollars in gold, Crowe gave his assistant only three thousand

-dollars, used one thousand for expenses, and buried the rest,

-recovering it later when the coast was clear. He selected Cudahy for a

-victim because he knew that the packer was a fond father, had a nervous

-wife, and would be strong enough to resist any mad police advice.

-

-A few years later I first encountered Crowe in New York, when he came

-to see me with a petty favor to ask and an article of his reminiscences

-to sell. He had meantime become a kind of peregrine reformer, lecturer,

-pamphlet seller and semi-mendicant, now blessed with a little

-evanescent prosperity, again sleeping in Bowery flops and eking out

-a miserable living by any device short of lawbreaking. And he has

-called upon me or crossed my wanderings repeatedly in the intervening

-years, always voluble, plausible and a trifle pathetic. Now he is off

-to call upon the President, to memorialize a governor or to address a

-provincial legislature. He is bent on abolishing prisons, has a florid

-set-speech, which he delivers in a big sententious voice, and perhaps

-he impresses his rural hearers, though the tongue in the cheek and the

-twinkle in the eye never escape those who know him of old.

-

-This grand rascal is no longer young--rising sixty, I should say--and

-life has treated him shabbily in the last twenty years. Yet neither

-poverty nor age has quite taken from him a certain leonine robustness,

-a kind of ruined strength and power that shines a little sadly through

-his charlatanry.

-

-Only once or twice, when he has lost himself in the excited recounting

-of his adventures, of his hardy old crimes, of the Cudahy kidnapping,

-have I ever caught in him the quality that must once have been

-his--the force, the fire that made his name shudder around the world.

-Convention has beaten him as it beats them all, these brave and baneful

-men. It has made a sidling apologist of a great rogue in Crowe’s

-case--and what a sad declension!

-

-

-

-

-IX

-

-THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING

-

-

-Abduction is always a puzzling crime. The risks are so great, the

-punishment, of late years, so severe, and the chances of profit so

-slight that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary motive

-on the part of the criminal. It is true that kidnapping is one of the

-easiest crimes to commit. It is also a fact that it seems to offer

-a quick and promising way of extorting large sums of money without

-physical risk. But every offender must know that the chances of success

-are of the most meager.

-

-A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses the public

-as nothing else can, not even murder. This state of general alarm,

-indignation, and alertness is the first peril of the kidnapper.

-Again, the problem of getting the ransom from even the most willing

-victim without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most intricate

-and unpromising one. It is well known that child snatchers almost

-never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the

-kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being

-caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any

-criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear

-from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police

-officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact

-and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.

-

-The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these recognized

-discouragements probably accounts for the proneness of policemen and

-citizens to interpret into every abduction case some moving force other

-than mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs of action,

-whether real or surmised, are often the inner penetralia of child

-stealing mysteries. So with the famous Whitla case.

-

-At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909, a short, stocky

-man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse, in the little steel town of

-Sharon, in western Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned

-to Wesley Sloss, the janitor.

-

-“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right away,” said the

-stranger.

-

-It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to be summoned from

-his classes in this way, but in Sharon no one questioned vagaries

-having to do with this particular child. Willie Whitla was the

-eight-year-old son of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla,

-who was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was also, and

-more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of Frank M. Buhl, the

-multimillionaire iron master and industrial overlord of the region.

-

-Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside to Room 2,

-told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that the boy was wanted, helped

-bundle him into his coat, and led him out to the buggy. The man in the

-conveyance tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his thanks, and

-drove off in the direction of the town’s center, where the father’s

-office was situated.

-

-When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for luncheon at the noon

-recess, there was no special apprehension. Probably he had gone to a

-chum’s house and would be along at the close of the afternoon session.

-His mother was vexed, but not worried.

-

-At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla veranda, blew his

-whistle, and left a note which had been posted in the town some hours

-before. It was addressed to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of

-the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand, read:

-

- “We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if you comply with our

- instructions. If you give this letter to the newspapers, or divulge

- any of its contents, you will never see your boy again. We demand

- ten thousand dollars in twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar

- bills. If you attempt to mark the money, or place counterfeit money,

- you will be sorry. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead boys. You

- may answer at the following addresses: _Cleveland Press_, _Youngstown

- Vindicator_, _Indianapolis News_, and _Pittsburgh Dispatch_ in the

- personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do as you requested. J. P. W.’”

-

-A few minutes later the whole town was searching, and the alarm had

-been broadcast by telegraph and telephone. Before nightfall a hundred

-thousand officers were on the lookout in a thousand cities and towns

-through the eastern United States.

-

-At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard of the abduction, a

-boy named Morris was found, who had seen Willie Whitla get out of a

-buggy at the edge of the town, drop a letter into the mail box, and get

-back into the vehicle, which was driven away.

-

-This discovery had hardly been made when it was also learned that a

-stranger had rented a horse and buggy, fitting the description of those

-used by the kidnapper, in South Sharon early in the morning. At five

-o’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rented buggy, was found

-tied to a post in Warren, Ohio, twenty-five miles from Sharon.

-

-The search immediately began in the northern or lake cities and towns

-of Ohio, the trend of the search running strongly toward Cleveland,

-where it was believed the abductor or abductors would try the hiding

-properties of urban crowds.

-

-The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense and caution. They were

-sufficiently well informed to know that the police are doubtful

-agencies for the safe recovery of snatched children. They were rich to

-the point of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meant nothing. The

-safety and speedy return of the child were the only considerations that

-could have swayed them. Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents

-of the note, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide to the

-police any other details, or the direction of their intentions. The

-fact of the kidnapping could, of course, not be concealed, but all else

-was guarded from official or public intrusion.

-

-On the advice of friends the parents did employ private detectives,

-but even their advice was disregarded, and Mr. Whitla without delay

-signified his willingness to capitulate by inserting the dictated

-notice into all the four mentioned newspapers.

-

-The answer of the abductors came very promptly through the mails,

-reaching Whitla on the morning of the twentieth, less than forty-eight

-hours after the boy had been taken.

-

-Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicate to the police

-the contents of this note or his plans. Instead, he set off quietly

-for Cleveland, evidently to mislead the public officers, who seemed to

-take delight in their efforts to seize control of the case. At eight

-o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompanied by one private

-detective, and went to the neighboring city of Ashtabula. Here the

-detective was left at the White Hotel, and the father of the missing

-boy set out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.

-

-They, it appears, had written him that he must go at ten o’clock at

-night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip of land on the outskirts of

-Ashtabula, and there deposit under a certain stone the package of

-bills. He was told what route to follow, commanded to go alone, and

-warned not to communicate with the police. Having left the money as

-commanded, Whitla was to return to the hotel and wait there for the

-coming of his son, who would be restored as soon as the abductors were

-safely in possession of the money.

-

-So the father set out in the dark of the night, followed the route

-given him by the abductors, deposited the money in the park, and

-returned forthwith to the hotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock.

-Here he sat with his bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition

-of his little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’s

-nervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, some

-local officers appeared and notified the frenzied lawyer that they had

-been watching the park all night, and that no one had appeared to claim

-the package of money.

-

-Police interference had ruined the plan.

-

-The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnappers were

-to call for the money in the park, they must be in Ashtabula. They

-accordingly set out, searched all night, invaded the houses of sleeping

-citizens, turned the hotels and rooming houses inside out, prowled

-their way through cars in the railroad yards and boats in the harbor,

-watched the roads leading in and out of the city, searched the street

-cars and generally played the devil. But all in vain. There were no

-suspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.

-

-The following morning the father of the boy visited the mayor and

-requested that the police cease their activities. He pointed out that

-there were no clews of definite promise, and the peril in which the

-child stood ought to command official coöperation instead of dangerous

-interference. Whitla finally managed to convince the officers that they

-stood no worse chance of catching the criminals after the recovery of

-the boy, and the Ashtabula officers were immediately called off.

-

-The disappointed and harried father was forced to return to Sharon in

-defeat and bring the disappointing news to his prostrated wife. The

-little steel town had got the definite impression that news of the

-child had been got, and preparations for the boy’s return had been

-made. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receive the little

-wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation. Crowds besieged the

-Whitla home, and policemen had to be kept on guard to turn away a

-stream of well-meaning friends and curious persons, who would have kept

-the breaking mother from such little sleep as was possible under the

-circumstances.

-

-The excitement of the vicinity had by this time spread to all the

-country. As is always the case, arrests on suspicion were made of the

-most unlikely persons in the most impossible situations. Men, women,

-and children were stopped in the streets, dragged from their rooms,

-questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and even locked into

-jails for investigation, while the missing boy and his abductors

-succeeded in eluding completely the large army of pursuers now in the

-field.

-

-Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers on the twenty-first,

-and the hearts of the bewildered parents and relatives sank with

-apprehension, but the morning mail of the twenty-second again contained

-a note which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate that the business

-of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabula may have been a test

-maneuver, to find out whether Whitla would keep the faith and act

-without the police. This note read:

-

- “A mistake was made at Ashtabula Saturday night. You come to Cleveland

- on the Erie train leaving Youngstown at 11:10 a. m. Leave the train at

- Wilson Avenue. Take a car to Wilson and St. Clair. At Dunbar’s drug

- store you will find a letter addressed to William Williams.

-

- “We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt to catch

- us you will never see your boy again.”

-

-This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. He accordingly had

-his representatives announce that all activities would cease for

-the time being, in the hope that the kidnappers would regain their

-confidence and reopen communications. At the same time he told the

-Ashtabula police to resume their activities. With these two false leads

-given out, Whitla slipped away from his home, caught the train, and

-went straight to Cleveland.

-

-Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that he had eluded the

-overzealous officers, Whitla went to Dunbar’s drug store and found the

-note waiting, as promised. It contained nothing but further directions.

-He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by a Mrs. Hendricks at

-1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliver the ransom, carefully done into a

-package, to the woman in charge. He was to tell her the package should

-be held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.

-

-Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned over the package of ten

-thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks, and was given a note in return.

-This missive instructed him to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel,

-where he was to wait for his boy. The promise was made that the child

-would be returned within three hours.

-

-It was about five o’clock when this exchange was made. The tortured

-father turned and went immediately to the Hollenden, one of the chief

-hostelries of Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hour passed.

-His anxiety became intolerable. He went down to the lobby and began

-walking back and forth, in and out of the doors, up and down the walk,

-back into the hotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several

-noticed his nervousness and preoccupation, but only a lone newspaper

-man identified him and kept him under watch.

-

-Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seven the worn lawyer’s

-agitation increased to the point of frenzy. He could do no more than

-retire to a quiet corner of the lobby, huddle himself into a big chair,

-and sink into the half stupor of exhaustion.

-

-A few minutes before eight o’clock the motorman of a Payne Avenue

-street car saw a man and a small boy come out of the gloom at a street

-corner in East Cleveland and motion him to stop. The man put the child

-aboard and gave the conductor some instructions, paying its fare, and

-immediately vanished in the darkness. The little boy, wearing a pair of

-dark goggles and a large yellow cap that was pulled far down over his

-ears, sat quietly in the back seat and made not a sound.

-

-A few squares further along the line two boys of seventeen or eighteen

-years boarded the car and were immediately intrigued by the glum little

-figure. The newcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney and Thomas W.

-Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspicious that this might be the

-much-sought Willie Whitla. When they asked his name the lad said he was

-Willie Jones. In response to other questions he told that he was on his

-way to meet his father at the Hollenden.

-

-The two young men said no more till the hotel was reached. Here they

-insisted on leaving the car with the boy and at once called a policeman

-to whom they voiced their suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and

-the child thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. In response

-to further interrogation, the little fellow still insisted that he

-was Jones, but, being deprived of his big cap and goggles and called

-Willie Whitla, he asked:

-

-“How did you know me? Where is my daddy?”

-

-The gloomy man in the corner chair got one tinkle of the childish

-voice, ran across the big room, caught up the child and rushed

-hysterically to his own apartment, where he telephoned at once to the

-boy’s mother. By the time the attorney could be persuaded to come

-back down stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father and child were

-welcomed with cheers.

-

-The boy shortly gave his father and the police his story. The man who

-had taken him from school in the buggy had told him that he was being

-taken out of town to the country at his father’s request, because

-there was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors would

-lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly gone willingly

-to Cleveland, where he had been taken to what he believed to be a

-hospital. A man and woman had taken care of him and treated him well.

-They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused him in any way. In

-fact, he liked them, except for the fact that they made him hide under

-the kitchen sink when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him

-candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the boy said, had put

-him aboard the street car, paid his fare, instructed him to tell any

-inquirers that his name was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to

-the hotel and join his father. The only additional information got from

-the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions of the abductors, was to

-the effect that he had been taken to the “hospital” the night following

-his abduction and had not left the place till he was led out to be sent

-to the hotel.

-

-The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed with music and a

-salute from the local militia company, displayed before the serenading

-citizens, and photographed for the American and foreign press.

-

-Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under way. The private

-detectives in the employ of the Whitlas were immediately withdrawn when

-the boy was recovered, but the police of Cleveland and other cities

-plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with whom the note had

-been left, and the woman confectioner, who had received the package

-of ransom money, were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the

-transaction they had aided was concerned with the Whitla case, and both

-were frightened and astonished. They could give little information that

-has not already been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy

-store, however, was able to particularize the description of the man

-who had come to her place, left the note for Mr. Whitla, and returned

-later for the package of money. He was, she said, about thirty years

-old, with dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face, weighed

-about one hundred and sixty pounds, and seemed to be Irish.

-

-Considering the car line which had brought the boy to the Hollenden

-Hotel, the point at which he had boarded the car, and the description

-he gave of the place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were

-certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house somewhere in the

-southeast quarter of the city, and detectives were accordingly sent to

-comb that part of the city in quest of a furnished suite in which the

-kidnappers might still be hiding.

-

-Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday night. Tuesday

-evening, about twenty-two hours after the boy had made his dramatic

-entry into the Hollenden, the detectives went through a three-story

-flat building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a couple answering

-the general descriptions furnished by Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks

-had rented a furnished apartment there on the night following the

-kidnapping and had departed only a few hours ahead of the detectives.

-They had conducted themselves very quietly while in the place, and the

-woman who had sublet the rooms to them was not even sure there had been

-a child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this place as the

-scene of his captivity.

-

-The discovery of this apartment might have been less significant for

-the moment, had the building not been but a few squares from the point

-at which Willie had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join

-his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot on the trail.

-Reserves were rushed to that part of town, patrolmen were not relieved

-at the end of their tours of duty, and the extra men were stationed at

-the exits from the city, with instructions to stop and question all

-suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the quarry was by no

-means in sight.

-

-At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far broader forces than

-the police were thrown upon the stage. The governor of Pennsylvania

-signed a proclamation in the course of the afternoon, offering to

-continue the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been posted

-by the State for the recovery of the boy and the arrest and conviction

-of his abductors. Since the boy had been returned, the money was to

-go to those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly, the

-people of several States were watching with no perfunctory alertness.

-High hopes of immediate capture were thus based on more than one

-consideration; but the night was aging without result.

-

-At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman of the most

-inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario

-Street, Cleveland, sat down at a table in the rear room, and ordered

-drink. The liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar

-bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling the proprietor

-to include the other patrons then in the place. Again he offered a

-new bill of the same denomination, and once again he commanded that

-all present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the woman drank

-rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the effects of the liquor and

-becoming more and more loquacious, spendthrift and effusive.

-

-There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such conduct. Men came

-in often enough who drank heavily, spent freely, and insisted on

-“buying for the house.” But it was a little unusual for a man to let go

-of thirty dollars in little more than an hour, and it was still more

-unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar note after the

-other.

-

-O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew that there had been

-a kidnapping; that there was a reward of fifteen thousand dollars

-outstanding; that a man and woman were supposed to have held the boy

-captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon. Also he had read

-about the package of five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. His brows

-lifted. O’Reilly waited for an opportune moment and went to his cash

-drawer. The bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new;

-that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all of the same issue,

-even of the same series and in consequent numbers. If so----

-

-The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When his suspect callers had

-their attention on something else, he slipped the money from the till

-and moved to the end of the bar near the window, where he was out of

-their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar case, adjusted

-his glasses, and stared.

-

-In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly urged them to stay,

-insisted on supplying them with a free drink, did what he could,

-without arousing suspicion, to detain them, hoping that an officer

-would saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With an

-exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of the door and gone

-into the night, whose shadows had yielded them up an hour before.

-

-O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a telephone. In

-response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck and Detective Woods were

-hurried to the place and set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and

-description. They had no more than moved from the saloon when the

-rollicking pair was seen returning.

-

-The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark about the

-weather and the lateness of the hour. Instantly the man took to his

-heels, with Captain Shattuck in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the

-officer drew and fired high.

-

-The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman ran to him,

-marveling that his aim had been so unintentionally good. He found,

-however, that the fugitive had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at

-flight.

-

-Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest police station

-and subjected to questioning. They were inarticulately drunk, or

-determinedly reticent and pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half

-assured that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers, Captain

-Shattuck ordered them searched.

-

-At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing, still in

-the neat packages in which it had been taken from the bank, were nine

-thousand, seven hundred and ninety dollars.

-

-The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and Helen McDermott

-Boyle--he a floating adventurer known to the cities of Pennsylvania and

-Ohio, she the daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she had

-quit several years before to go venturing on her own account.

-

-From the beginning both the police and the public held the opinion that

-these two people had not been alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive

-investigation failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of

-the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in Cleveland, it

-was concluded that the prisoners had possibly been the sole active

-agents, but the opinion was retained that some one else must have

-plotted the crime.

-

-Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure little town? Why

-had they chosen Willie Whitla, when there were tens of thousands of

-boys with wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives? Who

-had acquainted them with the particularities of the Whitlas’ lives,

-the probable attitude at the school, the child’s fear of smallpox and

-pest houses? Was it not obvious that some one close to the family had

-supplied the information and laid the plans?

-

-James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of May, faced with his

-accusers, and swiftly encircled with the accusing evidence, which was

-complete and unequivocal. He accepted it without display of emotion and

-offered no defense. After brief argument the case went to the jury,

-which reached an affirmative verdict within a few minutes.

-

-Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward and also presented

-no defense. A verdict was found against her with equal expedition on

-May 10, and she was remanded for sentence.

-

-On the following day both defendants were called before the court. The

-judge imposed the life sentence on Boyle and a term of twenty-five

-years on his wife. A few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper

-reporters to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them a written

-statement.

-

-Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895, when the body of

-Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying on the sidewalk on East Federal

-Street, Youngstown, Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There

-had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached to Reeble’s

-end.

-

-Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble, but he said in

-his statement that he and one Daniel Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper,

-who had died in 1907, had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs.

-James P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a number of

-letters from the pockets of the dead man, as his body lay on the walk.

-Boyle recited that not only had he and Shay found Forker in this

-compromising position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked

-by Forker, in which were found four letters from women, two from a

-girl in New York State and the other two from a Cleveland woman. The

-contents were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure

-that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.

-

-Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently written

-Forker, told him about the letters, and suggested that they were

-for sale. Forker had immediately replied and made various efforts

-to recover the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and

-continued to extort money from Forker for years, threatening to reveal

-the letters unless paid.

-

-Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to recite, a demand

-for five thousand dollars had been made on Forker, who said he could

-not raise the money, but would come into an inheritance later and would

-then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When Forker failed in

-this undertaking, fresh threats were made, with the result that Forker

-suggested the kidnapping of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand

-dollars’ ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to get the

-five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.

-

-Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping and attended

-to the matter of having the boy taken from the school. He said that

-some one else had done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle,

-in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found.

-

-This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning as it did,

-created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately and indignantly

-denied the accusation and brought to their support a Youngstown police

-officer, Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of Dan

-Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking to Reeble on the walk

-before the building in which Reeble resided, early in the morning of

-June 8, 1895. Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking slowly

-down the street when he heard a thump and groans behind him. Returning

-to the spot where he had left Reeble, he found his companion of a few

-minutes before, dying on the walk.

-

-Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting on his window

-sill, and that the man had apparently fallen out to his death. He swore

-that neither Forker, Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when

-Reeble died.

-

-There are, to be sure, some elements which verge upon improbability

-in this account, but the denials of Forker and Whitla were strongly

-reinforced by the testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the

-livery where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly identified

-Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt with, thus refuting the latter

-part of Boyle’s accusative statement.

-

-Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years of her long term.

-Her husband, on the other hand, continued his servitude and died of

-pneumonia in Riverside Penitentiary on January 23, 1920.

-

-

-

-

-X

-

-THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE

-

-

-A few minutes past seven o’clock, on the evening of March 27, 1901,

-Willie McCormick, a ten-year-old schoolboy, started to attend vespers

-in the little Church of the Sacred Heart, in the Highbridge section of

-New York City. His mother gave him a copper cent for the collection

-plate, and he ran out of the door, struggling into his short brown

-overcoat, in great haste to overtake two of his elder sisters who had

-started ahead of him. Three doors down the street he stopped and blew a

-toy whistle to attract the attention of a playmate. This boy’s mother

-called from the porch that her son was to take a music lesson and could

-not go to church. So Willie McCormick lifted his cap and went his way.

-

-It was a cold spring evening, and cutting winds were piping through the

-woods and across the open spaces of that then sparsely settled district

-of the American metropolis. Dusk had fallen, and the thinly planted

-electric lights along Ogden Avenue threw the shadows of the curbside

-trees across the walks in moving arabesques. The boy buttoned his coat

-closely about him, running away into the gloom, while the neighbor

-woman watched him disappear. In that moment the profounder darkness

-enveloped him, swallowed him into a void from which he never emerged

-alive, and made him the chief figure of another of the abiding problems

-of vanishment.

-

-Highbridge is an outlying section of New York, fringing the eastern

-bank of the Harlem River and centering about one approach to the old

-and beautiful stone bridge from which it takes its name. The tracks of

-the New York Central Railroad skirt the edge of the river on their way

-up-state. Further back from the stream the ground rises, and along the

-ridge, paralleling the river, is Ogden Avenue. Near the southern foot

-of this thoroughfare, at One Hundred and Sixty-first Street, the steel

-skeleton of the McComb’s Dam bridge thrust itself across the Harlem,

-with its eastern arch spanning high above the muddy mouth of Cromwell

-Creek,[9] which empties into the Harlem at this point. At the shore

-level, under the great bridge approach, a hinged steel platform span,

-raised and lowered by means of balance weights to permit the passage

-of minor shipping up and down the creek, carried the tracks across the

-lesser stream. Three blocks to the north of this confluence, which

-plays an important part in the mystery, stood the McCormick home, a

-comfortable brick and frame house of the villa type, set back from the

-highest point of Ogden Avenue in a lawn.

-

-[9] This creek has since been filled in and a playground marks its site.

-

-Twenty-five and more years ago, when Willie McCormick disappeared,

-the vicinity bore, as it still bears to a lesser degree, the air of

-suburbia. Then houses were few and rather far apart. Some of the side

-streets were unpaved, and all about were patches of unimproved land,

-where clumps of trees, that once were part of the Bronx Woods, still

-flourished in dense order. The first apartment houses of the district

-were building, and gangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of

-native mechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections.

-

-Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of Cromwell Creek, while a

-factory, a coal dump, and two lumber yards sprawled along the other.

-Five squares to the north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to the

-west is the Highbridge police station. The Church of the Sacred Heart,

-then in charge of the wealthy and venerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands

-two blocks to the east of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same

-cross street with the police building. Neither of these places is more

-than a third of a mile from the McCormick home.

-

-Shortly after nine o’clock on the important evening already noted, the

-two young daughters of William McCormick returned from church without

-their brother. He had not overtaken them on the way, or joined them at

-the services. They had not seen him and supposed he had either remained

-at home, or played truant from church and gone to romp with other boys.

-The father was immediately alarmed. It was not like Willie to stay out

-in the dark. He was the eleventh of twelve children, all the others

-being girls, and he was accordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine.

-He had an especially strong dread of the dark and had never been known

-to venture out in the night without his older sisters or other boys.

-Besides, there had been kidnapping rumors in the neighborhood. It was

-not long after the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, and parents in

-all parts of the United States were still nervous and watchful.

-

-Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or because of the

-general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhood had gone to almost

-ludicrous extremes in his precautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer

-named Oscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundred yards

-from that of the McCormicks. He had a young son, also ten years old.

-His apprehensions for the safety of this lad, who was a playmate of

-Willie McCormick, resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across the front of

-his property, with an ornamental iron gate that was kept padlocked at

-night, though this step invalidated the fire insurance, an eight-foot

-iron fence about the sides and rear of the property, topped with

-strands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogs that ran at large

-day and night.

-

-The fears of the neighborhood rich man had naturally communicated

-themselves to other parents, and they seethed in William McCormick’s

-mind, as he hurried from his home to seek the absent boy. Willie was

-not to be found at the home of any of his chums; he was not playing at

-a near-by street corner, where some older boys were congregated, and

-apparently no one had seen him since the neighbor woman, Mrs. Tierney,

-had told him that her son could not go to church. The father, growing

-more and more excited, stormed about the Highbridge district half the

-night and then set out to visit relatives, to whose homes the boy might

-have gone. But Willie McCormick was not to be traced anywhere. On the

-following morning, when he did not appear, his father summoned the

-police.

-

-What followed provides an excellent exposition of the phenomenon

-of public unconcern being gradually rallied to excitement and

-finally driven to hysteria. The police listened to the statements

-of the missing boy’s parents and sisters, made some perfunctory

-investigations, and said that Willie McCormick had evidently run away

-from home. Many boys did that. Moreover, it was spring, and such

-vagaries were to be expected in youngsters. The newspapers noted the

-case with short routine paragraphs. A street-car conductor brought

-in the information that he had carried a boy, whom he was willing

-to identify as Willie McCormick, judging from nothing better than

-photographs, to a site in South Brooklyn, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild

-West Show was encamped. Another conductor reported that he had taken a

-boy answering the description of Willie McCormick to the Gravesend race

-course, where the horses were tuning up for the spring meeting. But the

-police found no trace of the wanderer at either place, nor at several

-others that were suggested.

-

-The McCormicks took the attitude at once that their son had not gone

-away voluntarily. He was, they said, far too timid for adventuring,

-much too beloved and pampered at home to seek other environment, and

-too young to be troubled with the dromomania that attacks adolescents.

-To these objections one of the police officials responded with the

-charge that the McCormicks were not telling all they knew, and that he

-was satisfied they had an idea what had happened to the runaway, as he

-insisted on terming him.

-

-At this point two interventions brought the McCormick case out of

-obscurity. Father Mullin, having been appealed to by the McCormicks,

-pointed out to the police in an interview that Willie McCormick had

-vanished with one cent in his pocket, that he could have taken a sum

-which must have seemed sufficient for long wanderings to a childish

-mind from his mother’s purse, which lay at hand; that he had started

-to church with his sisters and returned for his overcoat, and that

-the departure was wholly unprepared and assuredly unpremeditated. The

-astute priest said that every runaway made preparations for flight, and

-that, no matter how carefully the plans might be laid, there always

-remained behind the evidence of intent to disappear. A child, he said,

-could not have planned more cunningly than many clever men, and he

-insisted that there must be another explanation for the absence of the

-boy.

-

-Naturally the newspapers paid more attention to the priest, and they

-began printing pictures of the boy, with scare headlines. Father Mullin

-had just taken in hand the affair when Oscar Willgerodt, the man of the

-stone wall and iron fences, came forward with an offer of a thousand

-dollars’ reward for information leading to the discovery of the missing

-boy. He said that he felt sure kidnappers had been at work, and that

-they had taken the McCormick boy in mistake for his own son. He added

-that he had received threats of abduction at intervals for more than a

-year.

-

-A few days later, the boy’s uncle appeared in the press with an offer

-of five thousand dollars for the safe return of the child and the

-production of his abductors. By this time the newspapers were flaming

-with accounts of the disappearance in every edition. Their reporters

-and detectives swarmed over Highbridge, and that quiet district was

-immediately thrown into the wildest excitement, which rose as the days

-succeeded.

-

-Father Mullin next offered ten thousand dollars for the apprehension

-of the kidnappers and return of the boy. Then a restaurant keeper

-of the neighborhood, whose nephew had been threatened by anonymous

-letter writers, offered two thousand dollars more for the return of

-the McCormick boy, and he said he would pay an additional thousand

-for evidence against kidnappers. Thus the total of fees offered was

-nineteen thousand dollars. Still no word came from the absent lad, and

-the efforts of a thousand officers failed to disclose any abductors.

-

-The constant appearance of these articles in the newspapers and the

-offers of such high rewards succeeded, however, in throwing a city of

-five or six million people into general hysteria. Parents refused to

-allow their children out of doors without escort; rich men called up

-at all hours of the day and night, demanding special police to protect

-their homes; excited women throughout the city and later throughout the

-State and surrounding communities proceeded to interpret the apparition

-of every stranger as evidence of kidnappers and to bombard the police

-of a hundred towns and cities with frantic appeals. The absence of this

-obscure child had become a public catastrophe.

-

-Developments in the investigation came not at all. The police, the

-reporters, and numberless private officers, who were attracted to the

-case by the possibility of achieving celebrity and rich reward, all

-bogged down precisely where they started. Willie McCormick had vanished

-within a hundred feet of his father’s door. The night had simply

-swallowed him up, and all efforts failed to penetrate a step into the

-gloom.

-

-Only two suggestive bits of information could be got from the

-McCormicks and the missing boy’s friends. The father, being closely

-interrogated as to possible enemies, could recall only one person

-who might have had a grievance. This was a mechanic, who lived a few

-squares away, and with whom there had been a disagreement as to pay.

-But this man was at home and going steadily about his work; he was

-vouched for by neighbors and his employers, and he came out of a police

-grilling completely absolved.

-

-Launcelot Tierney, the playmate for whom Willie McCormick had blown his

-whistle a minute or two before he vanished, supplied the information

-that Willie had tormented an Italian laborer on the morning before

-the disappearance, and that this man had nursed his grudge until

-the afternoon, when the boys were returning home from school. Then,

-said the Tierney boy, this workman had lain in wait behind a pile of

-lumber and dashed out after Willie, as the children passed. Willie had

-run for safety and proved fleeter than his pursuer, who gave up the

-attempt after running a few rods. Investigation showed that none of the

-laborers employed at the indicated building was absent. However the

-Tierney boy was unable to identify the man he had accused, when the

-workmen were lined up for his inspection. A good deal was made of this

-circumstance.

-

-The public police, however, always came back to their original

-attitude. Kidnappers were actuated by the hope of extorting money, they

-said. Since William McCormick was a poor man, there could have been no

-motive for the abduction of his son. Consequently it was almost certain

-that the boy had gone away.

-

-Mr. McCormick replied that while he was now poor, he had formerly been

-well to do. He reasoned that the kidnapper might very well have been

-ignorant of his decline in fortune and taken the boy in the belief that

-his parent was still wealthy. Others joined the controversy by pointing

-out in the newspapers that abductions were sometimes motivated by

-revenge or spite on the part of persons quite unknown or unsuspected by

-the parents; that children were often stolen by irrational or demented

-men or women, and that there was at least some basis for faith in the

-abduction theory, but no evidence to support the idea of a runaway.

-

-Meantime events had added their spice of immediate drama. A few nights

-after the disappearance of Willie McCormick, Doctor D. A. McLeod,

-a surgeon occupying the next house but one to the McCormick’s, had

-found a masked man skulking about the rear of his property just after

-nightfall, and tried to grapple with the intruder. A week later, from

-a house two blocks away, another neighbor reported that he, too, had

-found the masked man prowling about his place and had followed him

-into the woods, where he had been lost. This informant said that the

-mysterious stranger was a negro. Detectives were posted in hiding

-throughout the district, but the visitant did not appear again.

-

-Next two Gypsy girls visited a photographer in Washington, and one of

-them showed the camera man a slip of paper with some childish scrawl.

-Somehow this bit of writing came to be identified as that of one of

-Willie McCormick’s sisters. It was said the scrap of paper must have

-been taken from the McCormick house. The two Gypsy children were seized

-and held in jail, while detectives hurried off to interrogate their

-elders and search through the Romany camps up and down the Atlantic

-seaboard. No trace of the missing boy was found, and the girls were

-quickly released.

-

-Finally the expected note from the kidnapper reached William McCormick.

-It was scrawled awkwardly on a piece of nondescript paper by some

-illiterate person who was apparently trying to conceal his normal

-handwriting. It said that Willie was being held for ransom; that he was

-well; that he would be safe so long as no attempt was made to bring the

-police into the negotiations, and that disaster would follow if the

-father played false. The writer then demanded the absurdly small sum of

-two hundred dollars for the release of the boy and directed that the

-money be taken at night to the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundred

-and Thirty-fifth Street, and there placed in an old tin bucket which

-would be found inside an abandoned steam boiler. The missive bore the

-signature “Kid.”

-

-The police immediately denounced the letter as the work of some mental

-defective, but instructed the father to go to the rendezvous at the

-appointed time and deposit a bundle of paper which might look like the

-demanded sum in bank notes.

-

-McCormick did as commanded. He found the corner of Third Avenue and One

-Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street to be a half-abandoned spot near the

-east bank of the Harlem, at its juncture with the East River. A low

-barroom, a disused manufacturing plant, and some rookeries of dubious

-tenantry ornamented the place, while coarsely dressed men, the dregs

-of the river quarter, lounged about and robbed the stranger of any

-gathered reassurance. The old boiler was there, standing in the center

-of open, flat ground that sloped down to the railroad tracks and the

-river under the Third Avenue bridge. Plainly the writer of the letter

-had chosen a likely spot, which might be kept under observation from a

-considerable distance and could not be surrounded or approached without

-the certain knowledge of a watcher posted in any one of a hundred

-windows commanding the view. McCormick deposited the package and went

-his way, while disguised detectives lay in various vantages and watched

-the boiler for days. No one went near it, and the game was abandoned.

-

-But, at the end of ten days, McCormick received a second letter from

-Kid, in which he was reproached for having enlisted the police; he

-was told that such crude tactics would not work, and he was ordered

-to place two thousand dollars in cash under a certain stone, which he

-was directed to find under the approach of the McComb’s Dam bridge, a

-few rods from the mouth of Cromwell Creek. He was told that the amount

-of the ransom had been increased because of his association with the

-police, and the letter closed with the solemn warning that the demand

-must be met if McCormick hoped to see his son again. A postscript said

-that if the police appeared again the boy’s ears would be thrown upon

-his father’s porch.

-

-Relatives, friends, and neighbors were at hand to furnish the demanded

-money, and the father was more than willing to deposit it according to

-the stipulation, but the police again intervened and had McCormick

-leave another dummy packet. Once more he saw, and the police should

-have noted, that the spot selected by the letter writer was most suited

-to the purpose. Once more it was an open area in the formidable shadow

-of a great bridge, freely observable from all sides and impossible to

-surround effectively.

-

-No one was baited to the trap, but McCormick got a third letter from

-Kid, in which he was told that his silly tactics would avail him

-nothing; that his boy had been taken out to sea, and that he would not

-hear again until he reached England. He was told to blame his own folly

-if he never beheld his child alive.

-

-It must be said in favor of the police point of view that these were

-not the only letters from supposed kidnappers which reached the

-distraught parents. Indeed, there was a steady accumulation of all

-sorts of missives of this type, most of them quite obviously the work

-of lunatics. These were easily distinguishable, however. An experienced

-officer ought to be able to choose between such vaporings of disjointed

-intelligences and letters which bore some evidence of reason, some mark

-of plausibility. The police who handled this case committed the common

-blunder of lumping them all together. They had determined that the boy

-was a runaway and were naturally inhospitable to contrary evidences.

-

-But others were as firmly convinced on the other side. The father now

-became genuinely alarmed and feared that further activity by the police

-might indeed lead to the murder of the child. Accordingly Father Mullin

-withdrew his ten-thousand-dollar offer for the apprehension of the

-criminals, and Michael McCormick, the lost boy’s uncle, moved swiftly

-to change the terms of his five-thousand-dollar reward. In seeking

-for a way to make an appeal directly to the abductors and assure them

-of their personal safety, he brought into the case at this point the

-redoubtable Pat Sheedy.

-

-Sheedy had just achieved worldwide notoriety by recovering from the

-thieves’ fence, Adam Worth, the famous Gainsborough painting of

-Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, which had been stolen from Agnew’s

-Art Rooms in London in 1876, and which had been hunted over half the

-earth for twenty-five years. This successful intermediacy between

-the police and the underworld gave the New York and Buffalo “honest

-gambler” a tremendous reputation for confidential dealing, and the

-McCormicks counted on Sheedy’s trusted position among criminals to

-convince the kidnappers that they could deliver the boy, collect five

-thousand dollars, and be safe from arrest or betrayal. So Sheedy came

-forward, announced that he was prepared to pay over the money on

-the spot and without question, the moment the boy was delivered and

-identified.

-

-The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension, disgusted by the

-police failures and thrilled by Sheedy’s performance in the matter of

-the stolen painting, received the news of his intervention in the case

-with signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s return was breathlessly

-expected, and many believed the feat as good as accomplished. But this

-time the task was beyond the powers of even the man who enjoyed the

-confidence of the foremost professional criminals of the day, counted

-the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli, as an intimate, forced the

-celebrated international fence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam

-Worth, to leave London and follow him across the ocean after the lost

-Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar of the American Express

-office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,[10] and seemed able to compel the

-most abandoned lawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, but

-Sheedy got no word and could find no trace.

-

-[10] Or so says one of the most persistent of underworld legends.

-

-On the rain-drenched afternoon of May 10, John Garfield, bridge tender

-for the New York Central Railroad at Cromwell Creek, worked the levers

-and lifted the steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighter bound

-up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. After he had lowered the

-platform again he observed that a large floating object had worked its

-way to the shore and threatened to get caught in the machinery which

-operated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkhead with a boat hook,

-intending to dislodge it. At the extreme end he leaned over and bent

-down, prodding the object with his pole. The thing turned in the stream

-and swam into better view. It was the body of a boy.

-

-Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawled back to the bridge,

-called to two boys and a man, who were angling near by, and soon

-put out with them in a rowboat. In five minutes the body had been

-brought to shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it had been

-identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectives had been

-seeking him thousands of miles away, and European port authorities had

-been watching the in-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had

-lain dead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares from his

-home. The churning propeller of the steam lighter had brought the body

-to the surface.

-

-A coroner’s autopsy revealed that the body had been in the water for

-a period which could not be fixed with any degree of precision. It

-might have been two weeks, but the coroner felt unable to state that

-the body had not been in the creek for six weeks, the full length of

-time since the disappearance. There was no way to make sure. Again,

-it was not possible to determine if the boy had been choked to death

-before being cast into the waters. There was no skull fracture, no

-breakage of bones, and no discernible wound. There was also no evidence

-of poison--no abnormal condition of the lungs. The official physicians

-were inclined to believe that death had been caused by drowning, but

-they would not make a definite declaration.

-

-The police dismissed the case with the assertion that they had been

-vindicated. It was clear that the boy had played truant from church,

-wandered away, fallen into the river, probably on the night of his

-disappearance, and lain under the water for six weeks.

-

-But to this conclusion the McCormicks and many others, among them

-several distinguished private officers, took exception, and it must

-be said that the police explanation leaves some important questions

-suspended. Why did the boy turn and go three blocks to the south of his

-home, when he had last been seen hurrying northward toward church? What

-could have led this timid and dark-frightened boy to go voluntarily

-down to the sinister and gloomy river bank on the edge of night? How

-did it happen that the Kid directed William McCormick to deposit the

-two-thousand-dollar ransom within a few score yards of the spot where

-the body was recovered? Who was the mysterious masked man?

-

-We shall never know, and neither shall we be able to answer whether

-accident or foul design lurks in the shadow of this mystery.

-

-

-

-

-XI

-

-A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE

-

-

-Whoever is familiar with Central European popular literature has

-tucked away in his memory some part or parcel of the story of Barbara

-Ubrik. The romance of her life and parentage has furnished material

-for countless novels, plays, short stories, tales and poems of

-the imaginative kind. Bits of her history appear in more serious

-literature, in religious and social polemics, even in the memoirs of

-personages. And more than one of the tragic incidents of opera may

-be, if diligence and intuition are not lacking, traced back to this

-forgotten Polish woman and her exorbitant adventures. Time and creative

-interpretation have fashioned her case into one of the classic legends

-of disappearance.

-

-In the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, a certain Alexander Ubrik played

-a part sufficiently noteworthy to get himself exiled to Siberia for

-life, leaving behind him a wife and four young daughters, the third

-of whom, Barbara, was the chief figure of the subsequent affair. But

-the Ubrik family had already known the feel of the romantic fabric and

-there had already been a remarkable disappearance mystery involving

-a relative no more remote than the mother of Barbara and wife of the

-banished Alexander. It is with this part of the family history that

-much of the literary offspring deals.

-

-About the year 1800, according to the account of the celebrated Polish

-detective Masilewski, extensively quoted by his American friend and

-compeer, the late George S. McWatters of the United States Secret

-Service, the first of the series of astonishing scenes involving

-the Ubrik family was played in Warsaw. There was then resident in

-the Polish capital one Jaromir Ubrik, the profligate son of an old

-and noble Polish house who had wasted his substance in gambling and

-roistering. Ubrik, though fallen into disrepute among his former

-friends, was still intimate with a few of the aristocratic families,

-among them that of Count Michael Satorin.

-

-The Countess Satorin had borne her lord several daughters but no son to

-succeed to the title. When, in the year mentioned, Mme. Satorin yielded

-still another daughter, her husband being then absent in Russia, she

-sought to forestall the wrath and disappointment of her spouse by

-substituting a male child. It happened that the wife of Jaromir Ubrik

-had borne a son only two days earlier and died in childbirth. For the

-consideration of ten thousand florins, Ubrik consented to exchange

-children with the countess, who said she was additionally persuaded to

-the arrangement by the fact that the Ubrik blood was as good as her

-own and the boy thus fit to wear a title. The little Ubrik boy was,

-accordingly, delivered to the countess and her little daughter turned

-over to Jaromir Ubrik, nestled in a down lined basket with a fine gold

-chain and cross about her neck.

-

-The elements of a thousand plots will be apparent even at this early

-stage of the story. But far more fabulous-seeming things followed

-immediately.

-

-Ubrik took the basket containing the little girl and started home. On

-the way, following his unhappy weakness, he entered a tavern and began

-to spend some of the money he had been paid. He got drunk, staggered

-home without the little girl in her basket and returned the following

-day to find that a nameless Jew had claimed this strange parcel and

-disappeared.

-

-Not long afterwards, it seems, Countess Satorin, plagued by her

-natural feelings, came to see her daughter and had to be told the

-story. The outraged mother finally exacted an oath that he devote his

-worthless life to the quest for the stolen child. Ubrik began his work,

-apparently sobered by the death of his wife, the theft of the little

-girl and the charge her mother had laid upon him. After several years

-he rose in the ranks of the Russian intelligence service and was made

-captain of the Warsaw police.

-

-About this time the keeper of the inn where Ubrik had lost the little

-girl was seized with a mortal disease and called the police captain to

-his bedside, confessing that he had turned the little girl over to a

-Jewish adventurer named Aaron Koenigsberger, whose address in Germany

-the dying man supplied. Captain Ubrik proceeded to Germany, confronted

-Koenigsberger with the confession of his accomplice and dragged the

-abductor back to Poland to face the courts. Koenigsberger, to avoid

-punishment, assisted in the search for the little girl and guided

-Captain Ubrik to Kiev, where he had sold the child to another Jew

-named Gerson. The Gersons appeared to be respectable people, who had

-taken the little girl to console them in their own childlessness. They

-deplored that she had been stolen several years earlier by a band of

-Gypsies. Captain Ubrik, at length satisfied that this story was true,

-set out on an Odyssean journey in quest of the child. For more than

-eleven years he followed Gypsy bands through all parts of western and

-southern Russia and into Austria and Germany. At last, in a village not

-an hour’s journey from Warsaw, he discovered the missing daughter of

-the Countess Satorin and returned her to her mother, as a grown woman

-who believed herself to be a Jewess and could now at last explain why

-her supposed people had always said she looked like a “Goy.”

-

-The woman recovered as Judith Gerson seems to have been satisfactorily

-documented as the missing daughter of the countess. At any rate, she

-was taken into the Satorin family and christened Elka Satorin. Her

-father had meantime died, leaving the bulk of his fortune and the title

-to his supposed son, Alexander. Elka Satorin, however, inherited her

-mother’s property and, a few years later, married the boy who had been

-substituted for her in the cradle.

-

-This was the strange match from which Barbara Ubrik was spawned into a

-life that was to be darkened with more sinister adventures. The year

-of her birth is given as 1828, so that she was a tot of three when her

-father was dragged away to the marshes and mines of Russia in Asia.

-

-I must confess that I set down so fantastic a tale only after

-hesitation and skeptical misgiving. It, and what is to follow, reads

-like a piece of motion picture fustian, an old wives’ tale. The meter

-of reasonableness and probability is not there. The whole yarn is too

-crudely colored. It is sensation; it is melodrama. But it seems also

-to be the truth. My sources are old books by reputable chroniclers,

-containing long quotations from the story of Masilewski, the detective,

-from the testimony of Wolcech Zarski, the lover who appeared in

-Barbara Ubrik’s life at a disastrous moment, from the proceedings of

-an ecclesiastical trial. Indeed, the whole thing seems to be a matter

-of court record in Warsaw and in Cracow, the old Polish capital. This

-being so, we must conclude that fiction has been once more detected in

-the act of going to life even for its ultimate extravagances.

-

-The years following the great revolt of 1831 were full of torment

-for Poland. Nicholas I, weary of what he termed the obstinacy of the

-people, began a series of the most dire repressions, including the

-closing of the Polish universities, the revocation of the constitution,

-the persecution of the Roman priests and a general effort to abolish

-the Polish language and national culture. The old nobility, made up of

-devout Roman Catholics and chauvinistic patriots, was especially sought

-out for the reactionary discipline of the czar, and a family like that

-of Barbara Ubrik, whose chief had been sent to Siberia for treason, was

-naturally among the worst afflicted.

-

-The attempt from St. Petersburg to uproot the church of Rome was the

-cause of an intense devotionalism among the Poles, with the result

-that many men and women of distinguished families gave themselves up

-to the religious life and entered the monasteries and convents. This

-passion touched the Ubriks as well as others and Barbara, naturally of

-a passionate and enthusiastic nature, decided as a girl that she would

-retire from the world and devote herself to her forbidden faith. Her

-mother, Elka Satorin-Ubrik, once a ward of the Jewish family in Kiev

-and later the prisoner of the Gypsies, strongly opposed such a course,

-but in 1844, when she was 16 years old, the girl could no longer be

-restrained. She presented herself to the Carmelite cloister of St.

-Theresa in Warsaw in the spring of that year and was admitted to the

-novitiate.

-

-From the beginning, however, the spirited young noblewoman seems to

-have been most ill-adapted to the stern regulations hedging life in

-a monastery of the unshod cenobite Carmelites. She had brought into

-the austere atmosphere of the nunnery something that has played havoc

-with rules and good intentions under far happier environments than

-that of the cloister; namely, young beauty. The older and less favored

-nuns saw it first with misgiving and soon with envy, a sin which seems

-not altogether foreign to the holiest places. What was more directly

-in line with evil consequences, Father Gratian, the still youthful

-confessor of the cloister, also saw and appraised the charms of the

-youthful sister and was quite humanly moved.

-

-The official story is silent as to details but it appears that in 1846

-Sister Jovita, as Barbara Ubrik had been named in the convent, bore a

-child. Very naturally, she was called before the abbess, who appears

-in the accounts as Zitta, confronted with her sin and sentenced to

-the usual and doubtless severe punishments. In the progress of her

-chastisement she seems to have declared that Father Gratian was the

-guilty man.

-

-This was the beginning of the young man’s troubles. Detective

-Masilewski, in his report on the investigation of the case, says that

-the motivation of the nun’s subsequent mistreatment was complex. Father

-Gratian naturally wanted to defend himself from the serious charge. The

-abbess, Zitta, was quite as anxious both to discipline the nun and to

-prevent the airing of a scandal, especially in times of suspicion and

-persecution, when the imperial attitude toward the holy orders was far

-from friendly and any pretext might have been seized for the closing of

-a nunnery and the expropriation of church property. Masilewski says,

-also, that Sister Jovita possessed a considerable property which was

-to belong to the cloister and that there was, thus, a further material

-motive.

-

-But, whatever else may have actuated either the priest or the abbess,

-Sister Jovita aggravated matters by her own conduct. The severity of

-her punishment led her to desire liberty and she sought to renounce her

-vows and return to her family. Such a course would probably have been

-followed by a public repetition of the charges made by the young nun,

-and every effort was accordingly made to prevent her from leaving the

-order. She was locked into her cell, loaded with penances and almost

-unbelievably severe punishments and prevented from communicating with

-her mother and sisters.

-

-Not long afterwards love again intruded itself into the story of

-Sister Jovita and further complicated the situation. This was in the

-last months of 1847. It appears that a young lay brother whose worldly

-name was Wolcech Zarski happened about this time to meet the beautiful

-young nun, while occupied at the convent with some official duties, and

-straightway fell in love with her. She told him of her experiences and

-sufferings and he, a spirited young man and not yet a monk, immediately

-laid plans to elope. Owing to the stringent discipline and the careful

-watch kept over the offending sister, this departure was not quickly

-or easily accomplished. Finally, however, on the night of May 25th,

-1848, Zarski managed to pull his beloved to the top of the convent wall

-by means of a rope. In trying to descend outside, she fell and was

-injured, with the result that flight was impeded.

-

-Zarski seems, however, to have had the strength to carry his precious

-burden to the nearest inn. Here friends and human nature failed

-him. The friends did not appear with a coach and change of feminine

-clothing, as they had promised, and the superstitious dread of the

-innkeeper’s wife led her to send immediate word to the convent. Before

-he could move from the neighborhood, Zarski was overcome by a bevy of

-stout friars and Sister Jovita carried back to the nunnery.

-

-The monasteries and nunneries of Poland had still their own judicial

-jurisdiction, so Zarski could not enter St. Theresa’s by legal means.

-He tried again and again to communicate with his beloved by stealth,

-but the Abbess Zitta was now fully awake to the danger and every effort

-was defeated. The young lover tried one measure after another, appealed

-to ecclesiastical authorities, consulted lawyers, besieged officials.

-At length he was told that the object of all this devotion was no

-longer in St. Theresa’s but had been removed to another Carmelite seat,

-the name of which was, of course, refused.

-

-Here political events intervened. Nicholas I had grown slowly but

-surely relentless in his attitude toward the Roman clergy in Poland,

-whom he considered to be the chief fomenters and supporters of the

-continued Polish resistance. Nicholas simply closed the monasteries

-and cloisters and drove the clergy out of Poland. It was the kind

-of drastic step always taken in the past in response to religious

-interference in political matters.

-

-Now the unfortunate Zarski was at his dark hour. The nuns were

-scattered into foreign lands where he, as a foreigner, could have

-little chance of either legal or official aid, where he knew nothing of

-the ways, was acquainted with no one, could count on no encouragement.

-Worse yet, he was not rich. He had to stop for months and even years at

-a time and earn more money with which to press his quest. His tenacity

-seems to have been heroic; his faith tragic.

-

-One evening in the summer of 1868, twenty years after Sister Jovita

-had last been seen, Detective Masilewski was driving homeward toward

-Warsaw, after a day’s hunt, when an old peasant stepped before the

-horse, doffed his hat and asked:

-

-“Are you the secret detective, Mr. Masilewski?”

-

-On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigator a letter,

-explaining that an unknown man had handed it to him with a tip to pay

-for its delivery. The note said simply:

-

- “Dear Sir: In the convent of St. Mary of the Carmelites at Cracow, a

- nun by the name of Jovita, her real name being Barbara Ubrik, has been

- held a captive for twenty years, which imprisonment has made her a

- lunatic. I do not care to mention my name but vouch for the truth of

- my assertion. Seek and you will find.

-

-                                             “Your correspondent.”

-

-Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not a little incredulous.

-True, he had heard of this nun and her disappearance, but she had

-vanished long ago and surely death had sealed the lid of this mystery,

-as of others. No doubt this was another of those romantic reappearances

-of the famous missing. Still--what if there were truth in it. But no,

-it must be a figment, else why had the informant hidden himself? It was

-an attempt to make a fool of an honest detective.

-

-So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remote possibility of

-something grotesque and extraordinary plagued him and drove him at

-last to action. Even when he had determined to move, however, he knew

-that he must act with caution. If he were to go to the bishop of the

-diocese, for instance, and ask for permission to search the nunnery

-of St. Mary’s, the very possible result might be the transfer of the

-unfortunate nun to some new hiding place and the infliction of worse

-penalties and tortures.

-

-If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austria having

-annexed the province of Cracow in 1846), he might enter the convent and

-find himself the victim of a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate

-humiliation for a detective. There was no possible course except

-cautious investigation.

-

-So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowly he traced back the

-stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother, the exchanged babies, the theft

-by the old Jew and the captivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the

-record of Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’s birth

-certificate, learned about her admittance to the convent, the part

-played in her life by Father Gratian and the early chastisement. How

-he did these things one needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care

-and watchful judgment were necessary. He must never let the enemies of

-the nun know that a detective was at work. All he did had to be handled

-through intermediaries. Probably it would even be a thankless job, but

-it was an enigma, a temptation. He went ahead.

-

-Finally Masilewski stumbled upon the fact that the convent of St.

-Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiastical library. The inspiration

-came to him at once. He or someone else must play the part of a

-learned student of religious and local ecclesiastical matters and

-get permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. After some seeking,

-Masilewski came upon a renegade theological student and sent this man

-first to the bishop and then to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the

-diocese apparently approved the student, he was permitted to enter and

-use the rare old books and records.

-

-Under instructions from Masilewski, the man worked with caution. The

-detective invented a subject with which the man busied himself for

-days before a chance question, skillfully introduced into his research

-problem, called for an inspection of the old church law records of the

-convent. There was a moment of suspense and the investigator feared

-that he had been suspected or that the abbess would rule against any

-such liberty. But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decided

-that so holy and studious a young man might well be permitted to see

-the secret papers.

-

-Once the records were in his hands, the mock student turned immediately

-to the date of the nun’s escape and found under date of June 3, 1848,

-this remarkable record:

-

- “Barbara Ubrik, known under the name of Jovita, is accused of

- immoral actions, continued disturbances in the convent, manifold

- irregularities and trespasses of the rules of the convent, even

- of theft and cunningly plotted crime; she has refused the mercy

- of baptism and given her soul to the devil, for which cause she

- was unworthy of the holy Lord’s Supper, and by this act she has

- calumniated God; she has clandestinely broken the vows of purity, in

- so far that she held a love correspondence with the novice, Zarski,

- and allowed herself to elope with him; at last she has offended

- against the law of obedience of poverty and seclusion, and on the 25th

- of May, 1848, she has accomplished an escape from the convent.”

-

-Trial was held before the abbess and judgment was thus rendered:

-

- “The criminal has to do three days’ expiation of sins in the church,

- afterwards she will be lashed by all the sisters of the order and be

- forfeited of her clerical dignity; she herself will be considered as

- dead and her name will be taken from the list of the order. At last,

- she has forfeited the right to the holy Mass and the Lord’s Supper,

- and is condemned to perpetual imprisonment.”

-

-The reader is warned not to take this as a sample of monastic life

-or justice as it might be discovered to-day or even as it generally

-existed then. Sister Jovita had simply got herself involved in one of

-those sad tangles of scandal which had to be kept hid at any and every

-price. She was the victim not of monasticism or of any form of religion

-but of a political situation and of her relations with other men and

-women, some of whom have been hard and evil from the beginning of the

-world, respectless of vows or trust.

-

-In one particular, however, her treatment was a definite result of

-certain religious beliefs then prevalent in all strict churches. She

-was accused of being devil ridden or possessed by the fiend and many

-of her cries of anguish, screams of madness and acts of defiance were

-attributed to such a possession. It was then customary in certain parts

-of Europe to drive the devil out by means of torture. This was in no

-sense a belief peculiar to Catholics. Martin Luther held it, and so did

-John Wesley, as any historian must tell you. Therefore many of Jovita’s

-sufferings were the result of beliefs general in those days except

-among the exceptionally enlightened.

-

-With this record copied and safely in his hand, Masilewski moved

-immediately and directly. One morning he and a squad of Gallician

-gendarmes appeared before the convent of St. Mary’s and demanded

-admittance in the name of the emperor. The abbess, certain what was

-about to happen, tried to temporize, but Masilewski entered, arrested

-the abbess with an imperial warrant and commanded a search of the

-place. The mother superior, seeing that there was nothing to be gained

-by resistance led the company down to the lowest cellars of the

-building and turned over to Masilewski a key to a damp cell.

-

-The detective opened the door, felt rats run across his shoes as he

-stepped inside and found, crouched in a corner on a pile of wet straw,

-the shrunken form of what had been the beautiful Barbara Ubrik. She was

-brought forth to the light of day, to see the sheen upon the autumn

-trees once more and the clouds sailing in the skies. Alas, she was no

-Bonnivard. Life had lost its colors and symmetries for her. She had

-long been hopelessly mad.

-

-There is still a detail of this famous case of mystery and detection

-to be told. Father Gratian had disappeared when Russia drove out the

-clergy. Masilewski was determined to complete his work and bring the

-malefactor back to answer for his crimes. After the ruin of Barbara

-Ubrik had been lodged in an asylum, Masilewski set out to find the

-priest. After seven months of wandering through Austria, Prussia and

-Poland, the detective was rewarded with the information that Father

-Gratian had gone to Hamburg. He went immediately to the great German

-seaboard town, searched there for months and found that the man he

-sought had gone to London years before.

-

-The quest began anew in the British capital. It was like seeking a flea

-in a hayloft, but success came at last. Masilewski was passing through

-one of the obscure streets when he noticed a man with the peculiar gait

-and bearing of priests, which seems to mark them apart to the expert

-eye, no matter what their physique or dress, going into a bookstall

-where foreign books were sold.

-

-The detective, who was, of course, totally unknown to Father Gratian,

-followed into the shop and found to his delight that the priestly

-person was the owner of the shop. Many of the books dealt in were

-German or Polish. Masilewski rummaged for a long time, made a few

-purchases and ingratiated himself with the bibliophile. When he left he

-went directly to the first book expert he could find, stuffed himself

-with the terms and general knowledge of the book dealer and soon

-returned to the little shop.

-

-On his second visit he let drop a few Polish terms which made the

-shopkeeper prick up his ears. As Masilewski learned more and more of

-the new rôle he was to play he gradually revealed that he was himself

-a great continental expert. Later he informed the shopkeeper of a huge

-sale of famous libraries that was about to be held in Hamburg and

-invited the London dealer to accompany him. The priestly man was too

-much interested and beguiled to refuse a man who could speak his own

-language and loved his own subject.

-

-On the trip to Hamburg the London bookseller told, after skillful

-questioning, that he had once been a priest, that he had lived in

-Warsaw, that a love affair had driven him from the church--in short,

-that he was Father Gratian.

-

-Masilewski waited until he got his man safely on the continent and

-then, knowing the extradition agreements in force between Austria and

-the various German states, placed his man under arrest, not without

-a feeling of pain and regret. Father Gratian, like one relieved of a

-strange weight, immediately accompanied Masilewski to Cracow and faced

-his accusers without denying the facts. He could offer no extenuation

-save that nature had not ordained him to be a priest and “the devil

-had been too strong for his weak flesh.” He confessed his part in the

-whole transaction and even added that he had given the unfortunate nun

-drugs to bereave her of her reason. He made every attempt to shield the

-abbess, but she, too, face to face with the authority of the empire and

-the church, refused to deny or extenuate.

-

-For once the courts were more merciful than their victims. Mother Zitta

-was sentenced to expulsion from the order, imprisonment for five years

-and exile from the empire. Father Gratian was likewise expelled from

-the church, which he had long deserted, put to prison for ten years and

-exiled.

-

-

-

-

-XII

-

-THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS

-

-

-In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, long employed as an

-auditor by the Erie Railroad and living in Jersey City, was grievously

-ill. In May, when he had recovered to the point of convalescence, it

-was decided he should go to the country to recuperate. For several

-years he and his family had been spending their vacations in the

-little hamlet of Greeley, five miles from Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in

-the pleasant hill country. So Glass bundled his wife and three small

-children to a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and the Frazer farm,

-where he had arranged for rooms and board. This on May eleventh.

-

-The Frazer farmhouse was one of those country establishments which

-take boarders for the season. Before it ran the main road leading to

-the larger towns along the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and

-beyond the road began the tangle of wild woods and hilly ground rising

-up to the wrinkle of mountains.

-

-Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play, and Mrs. Glass

-started for the post office, about two hundred yards up the road, to

-mail some post cards to her parents, noting the safe arrival of the

-family. She called to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook his head

-and went out into the field beside the house, interested in a hired man

-who was plowing in the far corner. The elder girl went with her up

-the road. The baby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on the porch

-watching his son. The little boy, just past four years old, was running

-about in the young green of the field.

-

-Charles Glass got up from the porch and went inside for a glass of

-water. He stayed there a minute or two. When he came out he saw his

-wife and little girl coming back down the road from the post office.

-They had been gone from the house not more than ten minutes.

-

-Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about, and asked:

-“Where’s Jimmie?”

-

-Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and surmised: “Maybe

-he went up the road after you.”

-

-The road was scanned and then the field. Then the farm hand was called

-and questioned. He had seen the youngster crawling through a break in

-the fence a few minutes before, but had paid no attention.

-

-One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely missing of recent

-history had begun. This hunt, which extended over years and covered a

-continent, taking advantage of several modern inventions never before

-employed in the quest of a human being, started off with alarmed calls

-on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent woods, gullies, and

-thickets. In the course of the evening, however, the organized quest

-began. It is interesting to note some of the confusion that overcame

-the people most concerned and the little town of a hundred souls. The

-suspicion of abduction was not slow in forming, and the question as

-to who might have done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was

-sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road going to

-or coming from the post office. William Losky, the farm hand who was

-plowing in the field, and Fred Lindloff, who was working on the road,

-felt sure they had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road,

-occupied by one man and one woman who had a plush lap robe pulled up

-about their knees to protect them from the May breezes.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~]

-

-Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three miles down the

-road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands all of seven hundred feet back,

-saw a one-seated car stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she

-might be of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the

-car saw her approaching and at once drove off.

-

-Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs. Konwickie noted a

-one-seated motor car with a sobbing child, a woman and two men inside,

-the child crouching on the floor against the woman’s knees and being

-covered with the same black plush lap robe.

-

-All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see, and I cite them

-only to show how unreliable is the human mind and how quickly panic

-and forensic imagination get hold of people and cause them to see the

-unseen.

-

-On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was brought from near

-by--just what kind of bloodhound the record does not show. The dog was

-given a scent of the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out

-through the break in the fence to the far side of the road, passed a

-little distance into the woods, and there stopped still, whined, and

-quit.

-

-The following morning word of the disappearance or kidnapping had

-been flashed to surrounding towns and many came to aid in the search.

-A committee was formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding

-terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the fourteenth.

-On the fifteenth of May a much larger committee undertook the work and

-the surrounding mountains were searched foot after foot. This work took

-several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about, whose members worked

-slowly inward, covering all the ground as they came to a center at

-Greeley. This maneuver also failed to yield hail or trail of the child.

-At last the weary and foot-sore hunters gave it up.

-

-The search was now begun in a more methodical way. The State

-constabulary took charge of a systematic review of the ground. Ponds

-were drained, culverts blown up, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves

-of the preceding autumn raked out of hollows or from the depths of

-quarries--all in vain.

-

-Meantime, the mayor and director of public safety in Jersey City,

-appealed to by the distracted parents, began the official quest.

-Descriptions of the boy were broadcast. He was four years old, blond,

-with blue eyes, had good teeth, a double crown or cowlick in his hair,

-weighed about thirty-five pounds, and wore new shoes, tan overalls

-with a pink trimming, but no hat. Every town and hamlet in the United

-States, Canada, and the West Indies was sooner or later placarded with

-the picture and description of the boy. The film distributors were

-prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for the first notable

-occasion, at least, the movies were used to search for a missing

-person, more than ten thousand theaters having shown Jimmie Glass’

-lineaments and flashed his description.

-

-A few years later the radio broadcasting stations spread through

-the air the story of his disappearance and the particulars of his

-description.

-

-To understand the drama of the hunt for Jimmie Glass, one must,

-however, begin with events closely following his vanishment and try to

-trace their succession through more than eight years. When once the

-idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors whose interest in the

-affair was partly sympathetic but more morbid, sat about shaking their

-heads and sagely talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a

-demand for ransom in a few days. When the few days had passed without

-the receipt of any request for money, the wiseacres shook their heads

-more gravely and opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some

-safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in coming. But time

-gave the soft quietus to all these speculations. Except for an obvious

-extortion letter received the following year, no ransom demand ever

-came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.

-

-Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead body could be

-found, and since there seemed to be no sustenance for the idea of

-kidnapping for ransom, the theorists were forced into another position,

-one full of the ripe color of centuries.

-

-On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling carnival show had

-been at Lackawaxen, and with it had toured a band of Gypsy fortune

-tellers. Later on, Mr. John Bentley, the director of public safety in

-Jersey City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police, found that

-these Gypsies, two or three men and one woman, known sometimes as Cruze

-and sometimes as Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It

-could be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there had been

-Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to give fresh life to the old

-fable. Gypsies stole children to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they

-had taken Jimmie Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads

-to earth and force them to give up the child.

-

-Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain Rooney that she

-had seen a swart man and woman in an automobile on the day of the

-kidnapping, not far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.

-

-Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and many other officers

-engaged in a systematic investigation of Gypsy camps wherever they

-were found, following the nomads south in the winter and north again

-with the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were found about

-the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners, with the result that

-Mrs. Glass, now fairly set out upon her travels in quest for her son,

-visited one tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought

-Jimmie.

-

-The discovery of blond or blondish children in Tzigane encampments

-always stirred the finders and the public to the same emotions,

-to the indignant belief that such children must have been stolen.

-All this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany people

-and the American Gypsies in especial. No one knows just what the

-original Gypsies were or whence they came. The only hint is contained

-in the fact that their language contains strong Aryan and Sanscrit

-connections and suggestions. They appeared in Eastern Europe, probably

-in the thirteenth century and in France somewhat later, being there

-mistaken for Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks

-were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or brown eyed.

-But several Gypsy clans appeared in England all of five hundred years

-ago and there soon began to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of

-Tzigane blood. In the course of the generations the English Gypsy came

-to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall, straight, dark men, with

-piercing eyes and the more or less typical Gypsy facial characteristics

-appeared among them, but these usually occur in cases where there

-has been marriage with strains from the Continent, from Hungary

-and Roumania. For instance, Richard Burton, the great traveler and

-anthropologist, was half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the

-last century.

-

-The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English origin, though

-there are a good many from Eastern Europe. Among both kinds there is

-frequent intermarriage with American girls from the mountain countries

-of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies pure blond

-children are of frequent occurrence and one often sees the charming

-contradiction of light hair and dark, emotive eyes.

-

-Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children. Nomads have very

-little sense of the property rights of others and may take anything,

-animal, mineral or vegetable, that strikes their fancy. But so much for

-the facts on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.

-

-Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps kept the police

-and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the move. The Cruze party gave

-them especial trouble and contributed one of the high dramatic moments

-of the eight years of search and suspense.

-

-When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman called Rose Cruze had

-been near Greeley on the day the child vanished, he set out to trace

-her down with her male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at

-the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more, a most puzzling

-matter to one who does not understand the motives and habits of

-nomads. Rose Cruze and the blond boy she was supposed to have with

-her kept just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into

-Mexico and continued southward with her band, having meantime married

-Lister Costello, the head of another clan. Later she was heard of in

-Venezuela, then in Brazil.

-

-One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram was brought to Director

-Bentley in Jersey City. It came from Porto Rico, was signed with the

-mysterious name Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy

-answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies encamped

-near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram also gave the information

-that the men were Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and

-the woman was Costello’s wife.

-

-Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities, probably

-a good deal more skeptical about Gypsy stories than are Americans,

-questioned whether the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously.

-By the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late by the

-American officials on the island, the band had moved on into the

-mountains.

-

-Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of no special standing,

-and he was severely questioned. But this time there was no foolery. He

-stuck to his story very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate

-practically everything he said, and firmly established the fact that

-among the Gypsies were the much-sought Costello-Cruze family.

-

-The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went out that the

-hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba. In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made

-ready to sail. Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused him

-to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him to packing his

-bags. He was almost ready to embark when the thing dropped with sudden

-and sad deflation. The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not

-Jimmie Glass.

-

-This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of the eight years

-of quest. Ever and again, not ten times but ten hundred, came reports

-that Jimmy Glass had been found. Many of them came from irresponsible

-enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest but mistaken. A

-few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the marked egg.

-

-One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City grocery store with the

-following scrawled on the shell:

-

- “Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”

-

-The police chased themselves in excited circles. One of them was off to

-Richmond at once. The eggs were carefully traced back to the nests of

-their origin. It was found that they came from a place much nearer than

-Richmond, and that the inscription was the work of a fifteen-year-old

-boy.

-

-Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated by the final running

-down of the much-sought band, another form of thrill had played its

-fullest ravages with the unhappy parents and given the public its

-crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the boy, the

-showing of his picture on the screens and the repeated newspaper

-summations of the strange case, all had the effect of putting idle

-brains and fevered imaginations to work. From almost every part of the

-country came reports of missing children who looked as though they

-might be Jimmie Glass.

-

-The distracted mother, suffering like any other woman in a similar

-predicament from the idea that her child could not fail to be restored,

-traveled from one part of the country to the other under the lash of

-these reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the newspapers

-have estimated that she traveled more than forty thousand miles in all,

-seeking what she never found.

-

-As happens in many excitements of this kind, the hunt for James Glass

-resulted in the finding of many other strayed or stolen children,

-from San Diego to Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in

-the possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to show that

-the child had been left with them, and they readily gave it up to the

-authorities for lodgment in an institution. But, alas, none of these

-was Jimmie Glass.

-

-The affair of the one demand for money came near ending in a tragedy.

-The blackmail note demanded that five thousand dollars be placed in

-a milk bottle near a shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses

-filled the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the agreed

-spot, after the police had taken up watch near by. The bottle stayed

-where it had been placed for hours. Finally the proprietor of the

-stand saw the thing. His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the

-bottle, and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police headquarters,

-protesting that he did not mean to steal anything. It developed that

-this honest workman knew nothing about the whole affair. The real

-extortioners had, of course, been much too alert for the police.

-

-One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited before the end. The

-quest for Jimmy Glass was at its height when news came from the little

-town of Norman, Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a shoe

-store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long trip in vain, asked

-that photographs be sent, and they were received at the end of the

-week. What they thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they

-caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City, and motored to

-Norman.

-

-Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the town had suspended

-business and hung the streets and houses with flags in their honor.

-

-Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately to one of the houses

-of the town, where the child was being kept, and ushered into the

-parlor, while a large crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the

-streets, giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.

-

-Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy was brought in.

-Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and held out her arms. The child

-rushed to her and was showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child

-promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother, choking with sobs,

-clasped the little fellow closely to her. He struggled, and she

-released him. He ran to sit on Mr. Glass’ lap.

-

-“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I was convinced. Surely

-this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He had his every feature. For the time

-there was no doubt in either of our minds. We were too happy for words.”

-

-But then the examination of the child began and the discrepancies

-appeared. The child was Jimmie’s size and age. His hair and eyes were

-of the same color and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.

-This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of Jimmie’s

-peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of Mr. Glass’ son;

-there was an old scar on one foot that was unlike anything that had

-disfigured Jimmie, and there were other slight differences.

-

-Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up

-her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told

-to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative

-word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away.

-Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find

-other evidence that might yet change their minds.

-

-A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She

-confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her,

-that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and

-that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store,

-hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say

-he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and

-other local emotionals.

-

-So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone

-to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for

-the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed

-about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took

-in the Rosses years before.

-

-One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of

-Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie

-Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy

-ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to

-be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the

-accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for

-a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.

-

-Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun

-ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some

-sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a

-round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked

-it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the

-eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too,

-had taken part. Could this be---- He did not stop to ponder much, but

-looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull

-were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found

-them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing,

-carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.

-

-Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles

-Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the

-hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative

-positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have

-lain down on his side and wakened no more.

-

-Little was found in addition to the shoes and the skull, except a few

-bone buttons, the metal clasps from a child’s garters and such like.

-The skull and shoes furnished the evidence needed. The former, examined

-by experts, revealed the double crown which had caused the upstanding

-of the missing boy’s back hair. The shoes, washed free of the encasing

-mud, showed the maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole.

-All the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have retained the

-mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn a brand new pair the morning he

-strayed out.

-

-Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered away that

-seductive May morning, gone on and on, as children sometimes do, got

-into the boggy ground and been unable to get out. Exhaustion had

-overtaken him, and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again,

-this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring of 1915,

-and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in and been drowned, only

-to have his bones cast up again by the droughty fall eight years later.

-

-With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain Rooney refused

-absolutely to entertain them. He had been over the ground many times.

-It was of the most difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally

-strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he tried to do

-more than creep among them, absolutely impassable to a child. Again,

-there was the matter of distance. How could a child of four years,

-none too firm a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and

-scar will testify, have made its way for more than two miles over this

-hellish terrain into a morass? Must it not have fallen exhausted long

-before and rested till the voices of the searchers in that first night

-had wakened it?

-

-And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney asks us. Of what

-leather were they made to have lain for eight and one half years in

-that impassable bog and yet to have been so well preserved as to retain

-the maker’s imprint?

-

-“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may be the bones of

-Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one must have taken him there.”

-

-Perhaps--and then again? How far a lost and desperate child will stray

-is not too simple a question. If, as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie

-Glass probably would have tired and lain down to rest, would he not

-also have risen again and blundered on? As for the durability of the

-leather, any one may go to any well-stocked museum and find hides of

-the sixteenth century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took

-the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that morass, who was

-it?

-

-It is much easier to believe with the parents. The enchantment of

-spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited and undreamed places

-unfolding before a child’s eyes, and straying from flower to flower,

-wonder to wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,

-disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness that clouds all

-living. It is more pleasant to think of the matter so, to believe that

-Jimmy Glass, four years in the world, was but a forthfarer into the

-mysteries, who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and went to

-sleep--a Babe in the Woods.

-

-

-

-

-XIII

-

-THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA

-

-

-On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, Salvatore Varotta took his

-eldest son for a ride on Long Island. Perhaps it was not quite the

-right thing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him. His

-employers might not like the idea of a child being carted about the

-countryside in their delivery van. Still, what did it matter? The day

-had been hot. Little Adolfo had begged to go. No one would ever know

-the difference, and the boy would be happy. So this simple-hearted

-Italian motor driver set out from the reeks and throngs of New York’s

-lower East Side on what was to be a pilgrimage of pleasure.

-

-There was a cool wind in the country and the landscape was still green.

-The truck chauffeur enjoyed his drive as he rolled by fields where

-farmers were at their late plowing. The nine-year-old Adolfo sat beside

-him, chattering with curiosity or musing in pure delight. After all, it

-was a bright and perfect world, for all men’s groans and growls.

-

-Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Another truck lurched

-drunkenly across his path. There was a horrid shriek of collision,

-the shattering tinkle of glass, the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore

-Varotta was tossed aside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He picked

-himself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreck and little

-Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flame as one of the tanks blew

-up. The undaunted father plunged into the smoke and managed to draw

-out the boy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions, but

-breathing and alive.

-

-Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a frightfully

-cut and burned face and a crushed leg. The surgeons looked at the

-mangled child and shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that

-wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it might be possible

-to restore that ruined face to human semblance, but the work would

-take many months. It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free

-hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of the doctors.

-

-The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a rookery on East

-Thirteenth Street, the father, the mother and five children, of whom

-the injured boy was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as

-truck driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such a family

-an accident like that which had overtaken Adolfo means about what a

-broken leg does to a horse: Death is the greatest mercy. In this case,

-however, some one with connections got interested either in the boy or

-in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and charitable woman

-for aid. This lady came down from her apartment on Park Avenue and

-stood by the bedside of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that

-he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested not only in the

-boy but his family.

-

-One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were appalled to see

-the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress drive up to their

-tenement. They watched her enter the humble home, pat the children,

-talk with the burdened mother, and then drive away perilously through

-the swarms of children screaming and pranking in the street. The “great

-lady” came again and again. It was understood that she had paid much

-money to help little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.

-That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his son had brought him

-the patronage of the rich. Surely, he would know how to make something

-of his good fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness is

-no more than weakness and must be taken advantage of accordingly. The

-neighbors of Salvatore Varotta were such men and women.

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                                            _Pacific & Atlantic Photo._

-

-                          ~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~]

-

-Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched and mended, when

-his father sued the owner of the colliding truck for fifty thousand

-dollars, alleging carelessness, permanent injury to the child, and so

-on. The neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore

-_was_ a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he would get it, too.

-Did he not have a rich and powerful patroness?

-

-Thus, through the intervention of a charitable woman and a lawsuit,

-Varotta became a dignitary in his block, a person of special and

-consuming interest. He had or would soon have money. In that case he

-would be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and guileless

-fellow. A way would be found.

-

-In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from the hospital with his

-leg partly restored but with his face still in need of skin grafting

-and other treatments, Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap,

-second-hand automobile. He could make money with it and also use it to

-give his family an airing once in a while. The car, for which only one

-hundred and fifty dollars had been paid, attracted the attention of the

-East Thirteenth Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an

-automobile? Then there must have been a settlement in the damage suit

-over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore had money, then. So, so!

-

-One of the neighbor women happened to pass when the rickety car was

-standing at the curb, and Mrs. Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest

-child in her arms.

-

-“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buys you a

-hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked the woman.

-

-“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if he wanted to,” said the

-wife with a surge of false pride.

-

-That was enough. That was confirmation. The damage suit had been

-settled. Salvatore Varotta had the money. He could have bought an

-expensive car, but he had spent only a hundred and fifty. The niggardly

-old rascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So the word fled up

-and down the street, to the amusement of some and the closer interest

-of others.

-

-As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not been settled. It was even

-doubtful whether Salvatore would ever get a cent for all his son’s

-injuries and suffering. The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s

-had no means and could not be made to give what he did not possess. So

-it was an entirely false rumor of prosperity and a word of bragging

-from a sensitive wife that brought about many things.

-

-At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24, 1921, Giuseppe

-Varotta, five years old, the younger brother of the wounded Adolfo,

-put on his clean sailor suit and his new shoes and went out into East

-Thirteenth Street to wait for the homecoming of his father and the

-automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did not know or care

-whether the car had cost a hundred or a thousand dollars. It was a car,

-it belonged to his father, and Joe intended to have a ride in it.

-

-For some minutes Joe played about the doorstep. Then his childish

-patience forsook him, and he ran down the block to spend a penny

-which a passer-by had given him. Other children playing in the street

-observed him by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, and watched him

-go down the walk to the confectioner’s. They did not mark his further

-progress.

-

-At half past three, Salvatore Varotta came home in his car. He ran

-up the steps into the house to his wife. She greeted him and asked

-immediately:

-

-“Where’s Joe?”

-

-Varotta had not seen his little son. No doubt he was playing in the

-street and would be in soon.

-

-The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe did not appear, and

-twenty minutes had passed, his mother went out to the stoop to call

-him. She could not find him in the street, and he did not respond to

-her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and another looking

-up and down the street. Then Salvatore Varotta was forced to yield to

-his wife’s anxious entreaties and set out after the lad.

-

-He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends and neighbors,

-questioned the children, circled the blocks, looked into cellars

-and areaways, visited the kindergarten where the child was a pupil,

-implored the aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at

-night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and told his story

-to the captain, who was sympathetic but busy and inclined to take the

-matter lightly. The child would turn up. Lots of children strayed away

-in New York every day. They were almost always found again. It was very

-seldom that anything happened.

-

-So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife and told her what

-the “big chief policeman” had said. No doubt, the officer spoke from

-experience. They had better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn

-up in the morning.

-

-On the afternoon of the following day the postman brought a letter to

-Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver read it and trembled with fear

-and apprehension. His wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a

-candle before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began endless

-prayers and protestations.

-

-The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one habited to the

-Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer was a member of a powerful

-society, too secret and too strong to be afraid of the police. The

-society had taken little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price

-of his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars. Varotta

-was to get the money at once in cash and have it ready in his home, so

-that he could hand it over to a messenger who would call for it. If the

-money were promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored safe and

-sound, but if the police were notified and any attempt were made to

-catch the kidnappers, the powerful society would destroy the child and

-take further vengeance upon the family.

-

-There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this forbidding missive

-with a dripping dagger at its side.

-

-Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair. They did not know

-whom they might trust, or whether they dared speak of the matter at

-all. But necessity finally decided their course for them. Varotta did

-not have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have it ready when

-the fateful footfall of the messenger would sound on the stairs. In his

-extremity he had to seek aid. He went to the police again and showed

-the letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.

-

-The same evening the case was placed in the hands of the veteran head

-of the New York Italian Squad, Sergeant Michael Fiaschetti, successor

-of the murdered Petrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin

-killers to the chair and the prison house than any other officer in

-the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clear vision that this

-job was probably not the work of any organized or powerful society.

-He knew that professional criminals act with more caution and better

-information. They would never have made the blunder of assuming that

-Varotta had money when he had none. The detective also saw that the

-plan of sending a messenger to the house for the ransom was the plan

-of resourceless amateurs. He reasoned that the work had been done by

-relatives or neighbors, who knew something but not enough of Varotta’s

-affairs, and he also concluded that the child was not far from its home.

-

-Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordance with

-these conclusions. His first work was to get a detective into the

-Varotta house unobserved or unsuspected. For this work he chose a woman

-officer, Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage and could

-speak the Sicilian dialect.

-

-The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping and inquiring after her

-child, let it be known that she had telegraphed to her cousin in

-Detroit, who had a little money. The cousin was coming to aid her in

-her difficulties.

-

-That night the cousin came. She drove up to the house in a station

-taxicab with two heavy suit cases for baggage. After inquiring the

-correct address from a bystander, the visiting cousin made her way into

-the Varotta home. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introduced herself

-to her assignment.

-

-The young woman was not long in the house before things began to

-happen. First of all, she observed that the Varotta tenement was being

-constantly watched from the windows across the street. Next she noted

-that she was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do a little

-shopping for the house, but really to telephone to Fiaschetti. Finally

-came visitors.

-

-The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant, who dwelt

-across the street from the Varottas and knew Salvatore and the whole

-family well.

-

-Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedly the best

-thing to do was to pay the money. The Black Handers were terrible

-people, not to be trifled with. What? Varotta had no money? He could

-raise only five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructed

-Varotta to mention this sum. The Black Handers would laugh at such

-an amount. Varotta must get more. He must meet the terms of the

-kidnappers. As for the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easy

-on that point, but they must get the money quickly.

-

-The following day there were other callers from across the street.

-Antonio Marino came with his wife and his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary

-Pogano, née Ruggieri. The Marinos, too, were full of tender human

-kindness and advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta had reported

-the kidnapping to the police he shook his head in alarm. That was bad;

-very bad. The police could do nothing against a powerful society of

-Black Handers. It was folly. If the police were really to interfere,

-the Black Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio had known of other

-cases. There was but one thing to do--pay the money. Another man he had

-known had done so promptly and without making any fuss. He had got his

-son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.

-

-Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for news and said that perhaps

-the Black Handers would take five hundred dollars if that was really

-all Varotta could raise. He did not know, but Varotta had better have

-that sum ready for the messenger when he came. As he left the house,

-Cusamano accidentally made what seemed a suggestive statement.

-

-“You will hear from me soon,” he remarked to Varotta.

-

-While these conversations were being held, Mrs. Nicoletti, the

-detective, was bustling about the house, listening to every word she

-could catch. She had taken up the rôle of visiting cousin, was busy

-preparing meals, working about the house, and generally assisting the

-sorrowing mother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existed was

-soon allayed. She even sat in on the council with Cusamano and told him

-she had saved about six hundred dollars and would advance Varotta five

-hundred of it if that would save the child.

-

-Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almost certain that

-their original theory of the crime was correct. The neighbors were

-certainly a party to the matter, and it seemed that a capture of the

-whole band and the quick recovery of the child were to be expected.

-Plans were accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming for the money

-and any one who might be with him or near the place when he came.

-

-On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seen before came to the

-house late at night and asked in hushed accents for the father of the

-missing boy. The caller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, who

-thus had every opportunity to look at him and hear his voice. He was

-led upstairs to a room where Varotta was waiting.

-

-When the dark and midnight emissary of the terrible Black Hand strode

-across the threshold, the tortured father could hold back his emotion

-no longer. He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, lifted his

-clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots, begging that his

-child be sent safely home and pleading that he had only five hundred

-dollars to pay. It was not true that he had received any money. It was

-impossible for him to ask his rich patroness who had befriended Adolfo

-for anything. All he had was the little money his wife’s good cousin

-was willing to lend him for the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would

-the Black Hand not take the five hundred dollars and send back the

-child, who was so innocent and so pretty that his teacher had taken his

-picture in the kindergarten?

-

-The grim caller had very little to say. He would report to the society

-what Varotta had told him and he would return later with the answer.

-Meantime, Varotta had better get ready all the money he could raise.

-The messenger might come again the next night.

-

-The detectives were ready when the time came. In the course of the next

-day Varotta went to the bank as if to get the money. While there he was

-handed five hundred dollars in bills which had previously been marked

-by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decided that Mrs. Nicoletti

-would need help in dealing with the kidnappers’ messenger, who might

-not come alone. Varotta himself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly,

-Detective John Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, supplied with kit

-and tools, and sent to the Varotta house to mend a leaking faucet and

-repair some broken pipes. He came and went several times, bringing

-with him some new tools or part when he returned. In this way he hoped

-to confuse the watchers as to his final position. The trick was again

-successful. Pellegrino remained in the house at last, and the lookouts

-for the kidnappers evidently thought him gone.

-

-A little after ten o’clock on the night of June second there was a

-knocking at the Varotta door. Two men were there, one of them the

-emissary of the Black Hand who had called the night before. This man

-curtly announced the purpose of his visit and sent his companion up to

-get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairs himself.

-

-Varotta received the stranger in the same room where he had kissed the

-boots of the first messenger the night before, talked over the details

-with him, inquired anxiously as to the safety of Joe, and was told that

-he need not worry. Joe had been playing happily with other children and

-would be home about midnight if the money were paid. This time Varotta

-managed to retain some composure. He counted out the five hundred

-dollars to the messenger, asked this man to count the money again, saw

-that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’s pocket and then gave

-the agreed signal.

-

-Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery, sprang into the

-room with drawn revolver, covered the intruder, handcuffed him and

-immediately communicated with the street by signal from a window. Other

-detectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissary who was

-waiting there. On the near-by corner, Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of

-his staff clapped the wristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and James

-Ruggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamano was dragged

-from the bakeshop where he worked. Five of the gang were in the toils

-and five more were seized before the night was over.

-

-Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out to be Roberto

-Raffaelo, made admissions which were later shown in court as

-confessions. All the prisoners were locked into separate and distant

-cells in the Tombs, and the search for Joe Varotta was begun. Sergeant

-Fiaschetti, amply fortified by the correctness of his surmises, took

-the position that the child was not far away and would be released

-within a few hours now that the members of the gang were in custody.

-

-Here, however, the shrewd detective counted without a full

-consideration of the desperateness and deadliness of the amateur

-criminal, characteristics that have repeatedly upset and baffled those

-who know crime professionally and are conversant with the habits

-and conduct of experienced offenders. There can be no doubt that

-professionals would, in this situation, have released the boy and sent

-him home, though the Ross case furnishes a fearful exception. The whole

-logic of the situation was on this side of the scale. Once the boy

-was safely at home, his parents would probably have lost interest in

-the prosecution, and the police, busy with many graver matters, would

-probably have been content with convicting the actual messengers, the

-only ones against whom there was direct evidence. These men might have

-expected moderate terms of imprisonment and the whole affair would have

-been soon forgotten.

-

-But Little Joe was not released. The days dragged by, while the men in

-the Tombs were questioned, threatened, cajoled and besought. One and

-all they pretended to know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.

-More than a week went by while the parents of the child grew more and

-more hysterical and finally gave up all but their prayers, convinced

-that only divine intervention could avail them. Was little Joe alive or

-dead? They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’s aid and

-probably he would give them his answer soon.

-

-At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh, John Derahica, a

-Polish laborer, went down to the beach near Piermont, a settlement just

-below Nyack, in quest of driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson,

-and Derahica had no trouble reaching the end of a small pier which

-extended out into the stream at this point. Just beyond, in about three

-feet of water, he found the body of a little boy, caught hold of the

-loose clothing with a stick, and brought it out.

-

-Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned the local police chief,

-E. H. Stebbins. The body was carried to a local undertaker’s and was

-at once suspected of being that of the missing Italian child. The next

-night Sergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived at Piermont and

-went to see the body, which had meantime been buried and then exhumed

-when the coming of the New York officer was announced.

-

-The remains were already sorely decomposed and the face past

-recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked at the swollen little hands

-and feet and the blue sailor suit. He knelt by the slab where this

-childish wreck lay prone and sobbed his recognition and his grief.

-

-A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had been thrown alive into

-the stream and drowned. Calculating the probable results of the

-reaction of tides and currents, it was decided that Giuseppe had been

-cast to his death somewhere above the point at which the recovery of

-the corpse was made.

-

-Long and tedious investigations followed. When had the child been

-killed and by whom? Was the little boy still alive when the two

-messengers arrived at the Varotta home for the ransom and the trap was

-sprung which gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposed

-accessories? If so, who was the confederate who had committed the final

-deed of murderous desperation? Who had done the actual kidnapping?

-Where had the child been concealed while the negotiations were

-proceeding?

-

-Some of these questions have never been answered, but it is now

-possible, from the confession of one of the men, from the evidence

-presented at four ensuing murder trials, and from the subsequent drift

-of police information, to reconstruct the story of the crime in greater

-part.

-

-On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when little Joe Varotta went

-into the candy store with his penny, he was engaged in talk by one

-of the men from across the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend of

-his father’s. The child was enticed into a back room, seized, gagged,

-stuffed into a barrel and then loaded into a delivery wagon. Thus

-effectively concealed, the little prisoner was driven through the

-streets to another part of town and there held in a house by some

-member of the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up to this point

-were all either neighbors or their relatives and friends.

-

-On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, Roberto Raffaelo was sitting

-despondently on a bench in Union Square when a stranger sat down

-beside him and accosted him in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance

-acquaintance, it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelo was

-down on his luck and had found work hard to get. He was, as a matter

-of fact, washing dishes in a Bowery lunch room for five dollars a week

-and meals. Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informed

-that they might be better, he told Raffaelo of a chance to make some

-real money, explaining the facts about the kidnapping, saying that a

-powerful society was back of the thing, and representing that Varotta

-was a craven and an easy mark. All that was required of Raffaelo was

-that he go to the Varotta house and get the money. For his pains he was

-to have five hundred dollars.

-

-Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamano and Marino. The next

-night he went to visit Varotta with the result already described.

-

-After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to be better tactics

-to send some one else to do the actual taking of the money. This man

-had to be a stranger, so Raffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old

-acquaintance. Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fifty

-dollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaelo to the Varotta

-home on the night of June second, to get the money. Melchione went

-upstairs and took the marked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the

-vestibule. It was the former whom Detective Pellegrino caught in the

-act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seen little Joe and both so

-maintained to the end, nor is there much doubt on this point.

-

-On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione, Cusamano, Marino

-and Ruggieri were caught and the others arrested a little later,

-Raffaelo made some statements to Detective Fiaschetti which sent the

-officers off the right track for the time being. This prevarication,

-which was done to shield himself and his confederates, he came to

-regret most bitterly later on.

-

-On June third, as soon as the word got abroad that the five men and

-their five friends had been arrested and lodged in jail, another

-confederate, perhaps more than one, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and

-threw him in, having first strangled the little fellow so that he might

-not scream. The boy was destroyed because the confederates who had him

-in charge were frightened into panic by the sudden collapse of their

-scheme and feared they would either be caught with the boy in their

-possession or that the arrested men might “squeal” and be supported by

-the identification from the little victim’s lips were he allowed to

-live.

-

-Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quickly convicted of

-murder in the first degree. He was committed to the death house at

-Sing Sing and there waited to be joined by his fellows. When the hour

-for his execution had almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seized with

-remorse and declared that he was willing to tell all he knew. He was

-reprieved and appeared at the trials of the others, where he told

-his story substantially as recited above. Largely as a result of his

-testimony, Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentenced

-to electrocution while Melchione went mad in the Tombs and was sent to

-Matteawan to end his life among the criminal insane. Governor Smith

-finally granted commutations to life imprisonment in each of these

-cases, because it was fairly well established that all the convicted

-men had been in the Tombs at the time Joe Varotta was drowned and had

-probably nothing to do with his actual murder. They are still in prison

-and will very likely stay there a great many years before there can be

-any question of pardon.

-

-In spite of every effort on the part of the police and every inducement

-held out to the convicted men, no information could ever be got as

-to the identity of the man or men who threw the little boy into

-the river. The arrested and convicted men, except for Raffaelo, who

-evidently did not know any more than he told, absolutely refused to

-talk, saying it would be certain death if they did so. They tried all

-along to create the impression that they were only the minor tools of

-some great and mysterious organization, but this claim may be dismissed

-as fiction and romance.

-

-

-

-

-XIV

-

-THE LOST MILLIONAIRE

-

-

-Some time before three o’clock on the afternoon of December 2, 1919,

-Ambrose Joseph Small deposited in the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, a

-check for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clock that evening

-the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadian playhouses bought his

-habitual newspapers from the familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide

-Street, before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, and strode

-off into the night, to return no more.

-

-In the intervening years men have ferreted in all corners of the world

-for the missing rich man; rewards up to fifty thousand dollars have

-been offered for his return, or the discovery of his body; reports

-of his presence have chased detectives into distant latitudes, and

-the alarm for him has been spread to all the trails and tides without

-result. By official action of the Canadian courts, Amby Small, as he

-was known, is dead, and his fortune has been distributed to his heirs.

-To the romantic speculation he must still exist, however. And whatever

-the fact, his case presents one of the strangest stories of mysterious

-absenteeism to be found upon the books.

-

-Men disappear every day. The police records of any great city and of

-many smaller places bear almost interminable lists of fellows who have

-suddenly and curiously dropped out of their grooves and placements.

-Some are washed up as dead bodies--the slain and self-slain. Some

-return after long wanderings, to make needless excuses to their friends

-and families. And others pass from their regular haunts into new

-fields. These latter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary of

-life’s routine.

-

-Ambrose Small, however, was a person of different kidney. He was rich,

-for one thing. Thirty-five years earlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of

-his tours to Canada had found the youthful Small taking tickets in a

-Toronto theater. Attracted by some unusual quality in the youngster,

-Irving shrewdly advised him to quit the study of law and devote himself

-to the theatrical business. Following this counsel, Small had risen

-slowly and surely until he controlled theaters in all parts of the

-Dominion and was rated at several millions. On the afternoon before his

-disappearance he had consummated a deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters,

-Limited, by which he was to receive nearly two millions in money and

-a share of the profits, in return for his theatrical holdings. The

-million-dollar check he deposited had been the first payment.

-

-Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canada and almost as well

-acquainted in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities of the

-United States. Figuratively, at least, everybody knew him--thousands of

-actors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men, promoters,

-newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, all the Wandering Jews and

-Gentiles of the profession of make-believe, with which he had been

-connected so long and profitably. With such a list of acquaintances,

-whose rovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almost

-impossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out of sight.

-

-Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and most deeply interested

-relatives. Entirely aside from the questions of inheritance and the

-division of his estate, which netted about two millions, as was

-determined later on, Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether

-she was a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters would certainly

-suspect everything and everybody, leaving nothing undone that would

-bring the man back to his home, or punish those who might have been

-responsible for any evil termination of his life.

-

-Thus the Small case presents very different factors from those

-governing the ordinary disappearance case. It is full of the elements

-which make for mystery and bafflement, and it may be set down at once

-as an enigma of the most arresting and irritating type, upon whose

-darknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.

-

-So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies and felt no

-apprehensions. He was totally immersed for some months before his

-disappearance in the negotiations for the sale of his interests to the

-Trans-Canada Company, and apparently he devoted all his energies to

-this project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusion for some time

-and looked upon the signing of the agreements and writing of the check

-on December 2 as nothing more than a formality.

-

-Late in the morning of the day in question, Small met his attorney

-and the representatives of the Trans-Canada Company in his offices,

-and the formalities were concluded. Some time after noon he deposited

-the check in the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small to luncheon.

-Afterward he visited a Catholic children’s institution with her and

-left her at about three o’clock to return to his desk in the Grand

-Theater, where he had sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling

-up his fortune.

-

-There seems to be not the slightest question that Small went directly

-to his office and spent the remainder of the afternoon there. Not only

-his secretary, John Doughty, who had been Small’s confidential man for

-nineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysterious part in the

-disappearance drama, but several other employees of the Grand Theater

-saw their retiring master at his usual post that afternoon. Small not

-only talked with these workers, but he called business associates on

-the telephone and made at least two appointments for the following day.

-He also was in conference with his solicitor as late as five o’clock.

-

-According to Doughty, his employer left the Grand Theater at about five

-thirty o’clock and this time of departure coincided perfectly with what

-is known of Small’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be at home

-for dinner at six thirty o’clock.

-

-There is also confirmation at this point. For years Small had been in

-the habit of dropping into Lamb’s Hotel, next door to his theater,

-before going home in the evening. He was intimately acquainted there,

-often met his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generally chatted

-a few minutes before leaving for his residence. The proprietor of the

-hotel came forward after Small’s disappearance and recalled that he had

-seen the theater man in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock.

-He was also under the impression that Small had stayed for some

-time, but he could not be sure.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE J. SMALL ~~]

-

-The next and final point of time that can be fixed is seven fifteen

-o’clock. At that time Small approached the newsboy in Adelaide Street,

-who knew the magnate well, and bought his usual evening papers. The

-boy believed that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure he

-had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said nothing but the

-usual things, seemed in no way different from his ordinary mood, and

-tarried only long enough to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.

-

-Probably there is something significant about the fact that Small did

-not leave the vicinity of his office until seven fifteen o’clock, when

-he was due at home by half past six. What happened to him after he had

-left his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment with his

-wife? That something turned up to change his plan is obvious. Whether

-he merely encountered some one and talked longer than he realized,

-or whether something arrested him that had a definite bearing on

-his disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to be the

-reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of man lightly to neglect

-his agreements, particularly those of a domestic kind.

-

-Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when her husband

-failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew he had been going through

-a busy day, and she reasoned that probably something pressing had come

-up to detain him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient and

-telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited two hours longer

-before she telephoned to the home of John Doughty’s sister. She found

-her husband’s secretary there and was assured that Doughty had been

-there all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty said his

-employer had left the theater at five thirty o’clock, and that he knew

-no more. He could not explain Small’s absence from home, but took the

-matter lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got ready.

-

-At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s various theaters in

-eastern Canada, asking for her husband. In the course of the next

-twenty-four hours she got responses from all of them. No one had seen

-Small or knew anything about his movements.

-

-Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting. Mrs. Small did

-not go to the police; neither did she employ private detectives until

-later. For two weeks she evidently waited, believing that her husband

-had gone off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of his

-intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of the secret of his

-absence took the same attitude. It was explained later that there was

-nothing unprecedented about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt

-for some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and self-centered

-individual. He had gone off before in this way and come back when he

-got ready. He might have gone to New York suddenly on some business.

-Probably he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared this view,

-and her reasons for so doing developed a good deal later. In fact, she

-refused for months to believe that anything had befallen her husband,

-and it was only when there was no remaining alternative that she

-changed her position.

-

-Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’s disappearance,

-his wife and attorneys went to the Dominion police and laid the case

-before them. Even then the quest was undertaken in a cautious and

-skeptical way. This attitude was natural. The police could find not

-the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea that such a man had

-been kidnapped seemed preposterous. Besides, what could have been

-the object? There had been no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small

-had gone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probably his wife

-understood these impulsions better than she would say. There were

-rumors of infelicity in the Small home, and these proved later to be

-well grounded. The police simply felt that they would not be made

-ridiculous. Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, only to have

-Small return and spill his wrath upon their innocent heads.

-

-But the days spun out, and still there was no news of the missing man.

-Many began to turn from their original attitude of knowing skepticism.

-Other rumors began to fly about. Gradually the conviction gained ground

-that something sinister had befallen the master of theaters. Could it

-not be possible that Small had been entrapped in some blackmailing plot

-and perhaps killed when he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but

-such things did happen. How about his finances? Was his money intact

-in the bank? Had he drawn any checks against his account? It was soon

-discovered that no funds had been withdrawn either on December 2 or

-subsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had only a few dollars

-in his pockets when he vanished, unless, as was suggested, he kept a

-secret cache of ready money.

-

-Attention was now directed toward every one who had been close to the

-theater owner. One of the most obvious marks for this kind of inquiry

-was John Doughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as already

-remarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearly two decades. He knew

-his employer’s secrets, was close to all his business affairs, and

-was even known to have been Small’s companion on occasional drinking

-bouts. At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a niggardly way

-as regards pay. The secretary had been receiving forty-five dollars a

-week for years, never more. At the same time, probably through other

-bits of income which his position brought him, Doughty had saved some

-money, bought property in Toronto, and established himself with a small

-competence.

-

-That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly and was careful to

-provide for him, is shown by the fact that Small had got Doughty a new

-and better place as manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,

-which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his new job Doughty

-received seventy-five dollars a week. He had left to assume his new

-duties a day or two after the consolidation of the interests, which is

-to say a day or two after Small vanished.

-

-Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it seemed obvious that

-this time he knew nothing of his old employer’s movements. He had

-accordingly stayed on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and

-paying very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three weeks

-after Small had gone, and one week after the case had been taken to the

-police, however, new attention began to be paid to Doughty, and there

-were some unpleasant whisperings.

-

-On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks after Small had walked

-off into the void, came the dramatic break. Doughty, as was his habit,

-left Montreal the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto

-with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning, instead of appearing

-at his desk, he telephoned from Toronto that he was ill and might not

-be at work for some days. His employers took him at his word and paid

-no further attention until, three days having elapsed, they telephoned

-to the home of Doughty’s sister. She had not seen him since Monday. The

-man was gone!

-

-If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been considered a

-somewhat dubious jest, it now became a genuine sensation. For the first

-time the Canadian and American newspapers began to treat the matter

-under scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began to

-move with force and alacrity.

-

-An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where Small was now

-said to have kept a large total of securities, showed that Doughty

-had visited this place twice on December 2, the day of Small’s

-disappearance, and he had on each occasion either put in, or taken

-away, some bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have

-revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

-

-Even this discovery did not change the minds of the skeptics, in whose

-ranks the missing magnate’s wife still remained. It was now believed

-that Doughty had received a secret summons from Small, and that he

-had taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside, at Small’s

-instruction, and gone to join his chief in some hidden retreat. A good

-part of Toronto believed that Small had gone on a protracted “party,”

-or that he had seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his

-business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in disagreement.

-

-When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion gradually veered

-about to the opposite side. After all, it was possible that Small had

-not gone away voluntarily, that he was the victim of some criminal

-conspiracy, and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion turning

-its face toward him. The absence of the supposed one hundred and fifty

-thousand dollars in bonds provided sufficient motivation to fit almost

-any criminal hypothesis.

-

-As this attitude became general, Toronto came to examine the

-relationship between Small and Doughty. It was recalled that

-the secretary had, on more than one occasion when he was in his

-cups, spoken bitterly of Small’s exaggerated wealth and his cold

-niggardliness. Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,

-and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibility

-of kidnapping Small for ransom; though the man who reported this

-conversation admitted Doughty had seemed to be joking. The conclusion

-reached by the police was not clear. Doughty, they found, had been

-faithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to conclude that he

-was careful and substantial, and they could not discover that he had

-ever had the slightest connection with the underworld or with suspect

-characters. At the same time they decided that the man was unstable,

-emotional, imaginative, and probably not hard to mislead. In short,

-they came to the definite suspicion that Doughty had figured as the

-tool of conspirators, in the disappearance of Small. They soon brought

-Mrs. Small around to this view. Now the hunt began.

-

-A reward of five hundred dollars, which had been perfunctorily

-offered as payment for information concerning Small’s whereabouts,

-was withdrawn, and three new rewards were offered by the wife--fifty

-thousand dollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteen

-thousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousand dollars for

-the capture of Doughty.

-

-The Toronto chief constable immediately assigned a squad of detectives

-to the case, and Mrs. Small employed a firm of Canadian private

-detectives to pursue a line of investigation which she outlined. Later

-on she employed four more widely known investigating firms in the

-United States to continue the quest. Small’s sisters also summoned

-American officers to carry out their special inquiries. Thus there were

-no fewer than seven distinct bodies of police working at the mystery.

-

-Circulars containing pictures of Small and Doughty, with their

-descriptions, and announcement of the rewards, were circulated

-throughout Canada and the United States; then from Scotland Yard

-they were sent to all the police offices in the British Empire, and,

-finally, from the American, Canadian, and British capitals to every

-known postmaster and police head on earth. More than half a million

-copies of the circulars were printed, it is said, and translations

-into more than twenty languages were distributed. I am told by

-eminent police authorities that this campaign, supported as it was by

-advertisements and news items in the press of almost every nation,

-some of them containing pictures of the missing millionaire, has never

-been approached in any other absent person case. Mrs. Small and her

-advisers set out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearance

-and the rewards should reach to the most remote places, and they spent

-a small fortune for printing bills and postage. Even the quest for the

-lost Archduke John Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a special

-letter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representatives

-of the Roman Catholic Church in every part of the world, seems to have

-been less far-reaching.

-

-Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began to come in soon after the

-first alarms. Small and Doughty were reported seen in Paris, on the

-Italian Riviera, at the Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at

-Calcutta, aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, at Zanzibar,

-and where not? A skeleton was found in a ravine not far from Toronto,

-and for a time the fate of Small was believed to be understood. But

-physicians and anatomists soon determined that the bones could not have

-been those of the theatrical man for a variety of conclusive reasons.

-So the hunt began again.

-

-Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, and results failed

-to show themselves, the private detective firms were dismissed, one

-after the other, and the task of running down rumors in this clewless

-case was left to the Toronto police. The usual sums of money and of

-time were wasted in following blind leads. The usual failures and

-absurdities were recorded. One Canadian officer, however, Detective

-Austin R. Mitchell, began to develop a theory of the case and was

-allowed to follow his ideas logically toward their conclusion.

-Working in silence, when the public had long come to believe that

-the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchell plugged away,

-month after month, without definite accomplishment. He was not able

-to get more than an occasional scrap of information which seemed to

-bear out his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundreds of

-investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless, the Toronto

-authorities permitted him to go on with his work, and he is probably

-still occupied at times with the Small mystery.

-

-Detective Mitchell was actively following his course toward the end

-of November, 1920, eleven months after the flight of Doughty, when a

-telegram arrived at police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,

-a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small town far out near the

-Pacific. Once more the weary detective took a train West, arriving in

-Oregon City on the evening of November 22.

-

-Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the train and told him

-his story. He had seen one of the circulars a few months earlier and

-had carried the images of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had

-observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill, and he had

-been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The man had been there for some

-time and risen from the meanest work to the position of foreman in one

-of the shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even indirectly,

-and he failed on various occasions to get a view of the worker without

-his hat on. Because the picture on the circular showed Doughty

-bare-headed, the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected

-man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had sent his telegram.

-

-Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously. He had made a

-hundred trips of the same sort, he said. Probably there was another

-mistake. But Constable Fortune seemed certain of his game, and he was

-right.

-

-Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to a modest

-house, where some of the mill workers boarded. They entered, and

-Mitchell was immediately confronted with Doughty, whom he had known

-intimately in Toronto.

-

-“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as the fugitive.

-“How could you do it?”

-

-In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest came to an end.

-

-Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the officer a voluntary

-statement. He admitted without reservation that he had taken Canadian

-Victory bonds to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars

-from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done after the

-millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely and firmly any

-knowledge of Small’s whereabouts; pleaded that he had never had any

-knowledge of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he

-had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past five on the

-evening of the disappearance. To this account he adhered doggedly and

-unswervingly. Doughty was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the

-next day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his sister’s

-house, where he had made his home with his two small sons, since the

-death of his wife several years before.

-

-In April of the following year Doughty was brought to trial on a charge

-of having stolen the bonds, a second indictment for complicity in the

-kidnapping remaining for future disposal. The trial was a formal and,

-in some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping and all

-hints which might have indicated the direction of Doughty’s ideas on

-the central mystery were rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and

-one correction of accepted statements came out. It was revealed that

-Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars in bonds to be

-used for charitable purposes on the day before his disappearance. This

-fact had not been hinted before, and some interpreted the testimony as

-a concealed way of stating the fact that Small had made some kind of

-settlement with his wife on the first of December.

-

-Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement that he had taken

-the bonds after Small’s disappearance. He testified that he had been

-sent to the vault on the second of December, and that he had then

-extracted the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds. He

-had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he had no notion that

-Small would disappear. He explained his act by saying that Small had

-long promised him some reward for his many years of service, and had

-repeatedly stated that he would arrange the matter when the deal with

-the Trans-Canada Company had been concluded. Knowing that the papers

-had been signed that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,

-Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds in his hands and

-suggest that these might serve as a fitting reward for his contribution

-to the success of the Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this

-action and fled.

-

-The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the ground that it

-was incredible, but nothing was brought out to show what opposing

-theory might fit the facts. Doughty was convicted of larceny and

-sentenced to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge was

-never brought to trial. Instead, the police let it be known that they

-believed Doughty had not played any part in the “actual murder” of

-Amby Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally, it was

-admitted that the police believed Small to be dead. That was the only

-point on which any information was given, and even here not the first

-detail was supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected

-of having kidnapped and killed Small was in progress, and the officials

-were being careful to reveal nothing of their information or intentions.

-

-Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against him, but abandoned

-the fight later in the spring of 1921, and was sent to prison. Here

-the unravelling of the Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year

-passed, then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty was in

-prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive. Perhaps they had

-abandoned the hunt. Possibly they knew what had befallen the theater

-owner and were refraining from making revelations for reasons of public

-policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers, there were persons

-of influence involved in the mess, persons powerful enough to hush the

-officials.

-

-But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance, and there

-were indications of a bitter contest between the wife and Small’s two

-sisters, who had apparently been hostile for years. This struggle

-promised to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the

-public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.

-

-Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved formally to

-protect his property by having a measure introduced into the Dominion

-Parliament declaring Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank

-in control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with the result

-that the Small fortune, amounting to about two million dollars, net,

-continued to be profitably administered.

-

-Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years in prison, and all

-rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance mystery had died down, Mrs.

-Small appeared in court with a petition to have her husband declared

-dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal will made on

-September 6, 1903. This document was written on a single small sheet of

-paper and devised to Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was

-of modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.

-

-The court refused to declare the missing magnate dead, saying that

-insufficient evidence had been presented, and that the police were

-apparently not satisfied. Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the

-reviewing court reversed the decision and declared Small legally dead.

-Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and was immediately attacked

-by Small’s sisters, who declared that they had in their possession a

-will made in 1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited

-Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never produced.

-

-There followed a series of hearings. At one of these, opposing counsel

-began a line of cross-questioning which suggested that Mrs. Small

-had been guilty of a liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in

-the records merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramatically in court,

-indignantly denied these imputations as well as the induced theory

-that her misbehavior had led to an estrangement from her husband and,

-perhaps, to his disappearance. The widow declared that this suspicion

-was diametrically opposed to the truth, and that if Small were in

-court he would be the first to reject it. As a matter of fact, she

-testified, it was Small who had been guilty. He had confessed his fault

-to her, promised to be done with the woman in the matter, and had been

-forgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation, she said, and Small

-had agreed that one half of the million-dollar check which he received

-on the day of his disappearance should be hers.

-

-To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Small soon after

-obtained permission of the court to file certain letters which had been

-found among Small’s effects after his disappearance. In this manner

-the secret love affair in the theater magnate’s last years came to be

-spread upon the books. The letters presented by the wife had all come

-from a certain married woman who, according to the testimony of her own

-writings and of others who knew of the connection, had been associated

-with Amby Small since 1915. It appears that Mrs. Small discovered the

-attachment in 1918 and forced her husband to cause his inamorata to

-leave Toronto. The letters, which need not be reprinted here, contained

-only one significant strain.

-

-A letter, which reached Small two or three days before he disappeared,

-concluded thus: “Write me often, dear heart, for I just live for your

-letters. God bless you, dearest.”

-

-Three weeks earlier, evidently with reference to the impending close

-of his big deal and his retirement from active business, the same lady

-wrote: “I am the most unhappy girl in the world. I want you. Can’t

-you suggest something after the first of December? You will be free,

-practically. Let’s beat it away from our troubles.”

-

-And five days later she amended this in another note: “Some day,

-perhaps, if you want me, we can be together all the time. Let’s pray

-for that time to come, when we can have each other legitimately.”

-

-Mrs. Small declared that she had found these letters immediately after

-her husband’s departure, and that they had kept her from turning the

-case over to the police until two weeks after the disappearance.

-Meantime the other woman had been summoned, interrogated by the police,

-and released. She had not seen Small nor had she heard from him either

-directly or indirectly. It was apparent that, while she had been

-corresponding with Small up to the very week of his last appearance, he

-had not gone to see her.

-

-Finally the will contest was settled out of court, Small’s sisters

-receiving four hundred thousand dollars, and the widow retaining the

-balance.

-

-And here the darkness closes in again. Even in the progress of the will

-controversy no hint was given of the official or family beliefs as to

-the mystery. There are only two tenable conclusions. Either there is

-a further skeleton to be guarded, or the police have some kind of

-information which promises the eventual solution of the case and the

-apprehension of suspected criminals. How slender this promise must be,

-every reader will judge for himself, remembering the years of fruitless

-attack on this extraordinary and complex enigma.

-

-

-

-

-XV

-

-THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY

-

-

-Some time in his middle career, Ambrose Bierce wrote three short tales

-of vanishment--weird and supernatural things in one of his favorite

-veins. The three sketches--for they are no more--he classed under the

-heading, “Mysterious Disappearances,” a subject which occupied his

-speculations from time to time. Herein lies a complete irony. Bierce

-himself was later to disappear as mysteriously as any of his heroes.

-

-No one will understand his story, with its many implications, or get

-from it the full flavor of romance and sardonics without some brief

-glance at the man and his history. Nor need one make apology for

-intruding a short account of him in a story of mystery, for Bierce

-alive was almost as strange and enigmatic a creature as Bierce dead.

-

-Ambrose Bierce, whom a good many critics have regarded as the foremost

-master of the American short story after Poe, was born in Ohio in

-1841. He joined the Union armies as a private in 1861, when he was in

-his twenty-first year, rose quickly through the ranks to the grade

-of lieutenant, fought and was wounded at Chickamauga as a captain of

-engineers under Thomas, and retired with the brevet rank of major.

-After the war he took up writing for a living, and soon went to London,

-where his early short stories, sketches and criticisms attracted

-attention. His cutting wit and ironic spirit soon won him the popular

-name “Bitter Bierce.”

-

-After 1870, the banished Empress Eugénie of France, alarmed at the

-escape of her implacable journalistic enemy, Henri Rochette, and the

-impending revival in London of his paper, _La Lanterne_, in which she

-had been intolerably lampooned, sought to forestall the French writer

-by establishing an English paper called _The Lantern_, thus taking

-advantage of the law which forbade a duplication of titles. For this

-purpose she employed Bierce, purely on his polemical reputation, and

-Bierce straightway began the publication of _The Lantern_, and devoted

-his most vitriolic explosions to the baffled Rochette, who saw that he

-could not succeed in England without the name which he had made famous

-at the head of his paper and could not return to France, whence he was

-a political exile.

-

-In this employment Bierce exhibited one of his peculiarities. His

-assaults on her old enemy greatly pleased the banished empress, and she

-finally sent for Bierce. Following the imperial etiquette, which she

-still sought to maintain, she “commanded” his presence. Bierce, who

-understood and obeyed military commands, did not like that manner of

-wording an invitation from a dethroned empress. He did not attend and

-_The Lantern_ soon disappeared from the scene of politics and letters.

-

-Bierce returned to America and went to San Francisco, where he in time

-became the “dean of Western writers.” His journalistic work in San

-Francisco and later in Washington set him apart as a satirist of the

-bitterest strain. His literary productions marked him as a man of the

-most independent thought and distinctive taste. Most of his tales are

-Poe plus sulphur. He reveled in the mysterious, the dark, the terrible

-and the bizarre.

-

-Between intervals of writing his tales, criticisms and epigrams, Bierce

-found time to manage ranches and mining properties, to fight bad men

-and frontier highwaymen, to grill politicians, and to write verse.

-

-Bierce went through life seeking combat, weathering storm after storm,

-by some regarded as the foremost American literary man of his time,

-by others denounced as a brute, a pedant, even as a scoundrel. In the

-West he was generally lionized, in the East neglected. One man called

-him the last of the satirists, another considered him a strutting

-dunce. Bierce contributed to the confusion by making something of a

-riddle of himself. He loved mystery and indirection. He liked the

-fabulous stories which grew up about him and encouraged them by his

-own silence and air of concealment. In the essentials, however, he was

-no more than an intelligent and perspicacious man of high talent, who

-hated sentiment, reveled in the assault on popular prejudices, liked

-nothing so much as to throw himself upon the clay idols of the day with

-ferocious claws, and yet had a tender and humble heart.

-

-Toward the end of 1913, Mexico was in another of its torments. The

-visionary Madero had been assassinated. Huerta was in the dictator’s

-chair, Wilson had inaugurated his “watchful waiting,” and the new

-rebels were moving in the north--Carranza and Villa. At the time

-Ambrose Bierce was living, more or less retired, in Washington,

-probably convinced that he had had his last fling, for he was already

-past seventy-two and “not so spry as he once had been.” But along came

-the order for the mobilization along the border. General Funston and

-his little army took up the patrol along the Rio Grande, the newspapers

-began to hint at a possible invasion of Mexico, and there was a stir of

-martial blood among the many.

-

-Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth is born again.

-Everything that belonged to the dawn becomes hallowed in the sunset of

-manhood. It must have been so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm

-than he fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpets of

-Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent for fifty years, called him

-out again and he set out for Mexico, saying little to any one about

-his plans or intentions. Some believed that he was going down to the

-Rio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he planned to join the

-Constitutionalists as a military adviser. Either might have been true,

-for Bierce was as good an officer as a writer. He knew both games from

-the roots up.

-

-Even the preliminary movements of the man are a little hazy, but

-apparently he went first to his old home in California and then down

-to the border. He did not stop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was

-reported to have crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretary

-in Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letter from him

-postmarked in Chihuahua.

-

-Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expected to hear

-again within a month. When no letter came, she wondered, but was not

-alarmed. Bierce was a man of irregular habits. He was down there in a

-war-torn country, moving about in the wilderness with armies and bands

-of insurgents; he might not be able to get a letter through the

-lines. There was no reason to feel special apprehension. In September,

-1914, however, Bierce’s daughter, Mrs. H. D. Cowden of Bloomington,

-Illinois, decided that something must be amiss, no word having come

-from her father in eight months. She appealed to the State Department

-at Washington, saying that she feared for his life.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE BIERCE ~~]

-

-The Department quickly notified the American chargé d’affaires in

-Mexico to make inquiries and the War Department shortly afterwards

-instructed General Funston to send word along his lines and to

-communicate with the Mexican commanders opposite him, asking for

-Bierce. The Washington officials soon notified Mrs. Cowden that a

-search was being made. General Funston also answered that he was

-proceeding with an inquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both the

-diplomatic and the military forces reported that they had been unable

-to find Bierce or any trace of him. Probably, it was added, he was with

-one of the independent rebel commands in the mountains and out of touch

-with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.

-

-Now the rumoring began. First came the report that Bierce had really

-gone to Mexico to join Villa, whose reputation as a guerrilla fighter

-had attracted the veteran, and whose emissaries were said to have

-asked Bierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide. Bierce,

-it was reported, had joined Villa and had been with that commander in

-Chihuahua just before the battle there, in which the rebel forces were

-unsuccessful. Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story was soon

-discarded on the ground that Villa, had Bierce been on his staff,

-would certainly have reported the death of so widely-known a man and

-one so close to himself.

-

-A little later came a second report, this time backed by what seemed

-to be more credible evidence. It was said that Bierce had been at the

-later battle of Torreon in command of the Villista artillery, that he

-had taken part in the running campaign through the province of Sonora

-and that he had probably died of hardships and exposure in those trying

-days.

-

-A California friend now came forward with the report of a talk with

-Bierce, said to have been held just before the author set out for

-Mexico. The old satirist was reported to have said that he had grown

-weary of the stodgy life of literature and journalism, that he wanted

-to wind up his career with some more glorious end than death in bed and

-that he had decided to go down into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave

-or crawl off into some cave and die like a free beast.”

-

-It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’s other friends

-immediately declared that it was entirely out of character. Bierce had

-gone to Mexico to fight and see another war. He had not gone to die. He

-was a fatalist. He would take whatever came, but he would not go out

-and seek a conclusion.

-

-So the talk went on and the months went by. There were no scare

-headlines in the papers. After all, Bierce was only a distinguished man

-of letters.

-

-But there was a still better reason for the lack of attention. The

-absence of Bierce had not yet been reported officially when the vast

-black cloud of war rolled up in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to

-the Atlantic and the fields of Flanders. The American adventure along

-the Mexican border seemed trivial and grotesque. The little puff of

-wind in the South was forgotten before the menacing tornado in the

-East. What did a poet matter when the armies of the great powers were

-caught in their bloody embrace?

-

-Yet Bierce was not altogether forgotten. In April, 1915, more than a

-year after his last letter from Chihuahua, another note, supposedly

-from him, was received by his daughter. It said that Major Bierce was

-in England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he was taking a prominent

-part in the recruiting movement in Britain. This sensation lasted ten

-days. Then, inquiry having been made of the British War Office, the

-sober report was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear on the rolls

-and that he certainly was not attached to Lord Kitchener’s staff.

-

-Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put the touch of disaster

-to the fable. Miss Christianson announced in Washington that careful

-investigation abroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting with the

-Allies, and that she and his family had been forced to the melancholy

-conclusion that he was dead.

-

-But how and where? The State Department continued its inquiries in

-Mexico, but many private individuals also began to investigate.

-Journalists at the southern front tried to get trace or rumor of the

-man. Old friends went into the troubled region to seek what they could

-find. The literary world was touched both with curiosity and grief and

-with a romantic interest in the man’s fate. Bierce became a later

-Byron, and it was held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressed and

-found himself another Missolonghi.

-

-Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Bierce was dead, though

-even this was by no means certain. There was no evidence save the fact

-that he had not written for more than a year, which, in view of the

-man’s character and the situation in which he was caught, might be

-no evidence at all. But, granting that he was dead, how had his end

-come? Where was his body? It was impossible to escape the impression

-that one whose life had been touched with such extraordinary color

-should have died without a flame. The men and women who knew and loved

-Bierce--and they were a considerable number--kept saying over and over

-to themselves that this heroic fellow could not have passed out without

-some signal. Surely some one had seen him die and could tell of his end

-and place of repose. So the quest began again.

-

-For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico, where Bierce had

-certainly met his end, if indeed, he was dead, was no place for a

-hunter after bits of literary history to go wandering in. First there

-was the constant fighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists.

-Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza became president. There

-followed the various campaigns of pacification. Next Villa rebelled

-against his old ally, leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies.

-Finally the whole region was infested by marauding bands of irregular

-and rebellious militia, part soldiers and part bandits. To cap the

-climax came the invasion of Mexico by the expedition under Pershing.

-

-In 1918 was heard the first report on Bierce which seemed to have some

-basis in fact. A traveler had heard in Mexico City and at several

-points along the railroad that an aged American, who was supposed to

-have been fighting with either Villa or Carranza, had been executed by

-order of a field commander. From descriptions, this man was supposed

-to have been Bierce. At any rate, he might have been Bierce as well as

-another, and, since Bierce was both conspicuous and missing, there was

-some reason for credence. But no one could get any details or give the

-scene of the execution. The report was finally discarded as no more

-reliable than several others.

-

-Another year went by. In February, 1919, however, came a report which

-carries some of the marks of credibility.

-

-One of the several persons who set out to clear up the Bierce enigma

-was Mr. George F. Weeks, an old friend and close associate of the old

-writer’s, who went to Mexico City and later visited the various towns

-in northern Mexico where Bierce was supposed to have been seen shortly

-before his death. Weeks went up and down and across northern Mexico

-without finding anything definite. Then he returned to Mexico City and

-by chance encountered a Mexican officer who had been with Villa in his

-campaigns and had known Bierce well. Weeks mentioned Bierce to this

-soldier and was told this story:

-

-Bierce actually did join the Villista forces soon after January, 1914,

-when he wrote his last letter from Chihuahua. He said to those who were

-not supposed to know his affairs too intimately that he, like other

-American journalists and writers, had gone to Mexico to get material

-for a book on conditions in that unhappy country. In reality, however,

-he was acting as adviser and military observer with Villa, though not

-attached to the eminent guerilla in person. The Mexican officer related

-that Bierce could speak hardly any Spanish and Villa’s staff hardly any

-English. On the other hand, this particular man spoke English fluently.

-Naturally, he and Bierce had been thrown together a great deal and had

-held numerous conversations. So much for showing that he had known

-Bierce well, and how and why.

-

-After Chihuahua, the officer continued, he and Bierce had parted

-company, due to the exigencies of military affairs, and he had never

-seen the American alive again. He had often wondered about him and had

-made inquiries from time to time as he encountered various commandos

-of the Constitutionalist army. Finally, about a year later, which is

-to say some time toward the end of 1915, the relating officer met a

-Mexican army surgeon, who also had been with Villa, and this surgeon

-had told him a tale.

-

-Soon after the breach between Villa and Carranza in 1915, a small

-detachment of Carranza troops occupied the village of Icamole, east of

-Chihuahua State in the direction of Monterey and Saltillo. The Villista

-forces in that quarter, commanded by General Tomas Urbina, one of the

-most ruthless of all the Villa subcommanders, who was himself later put

-to death, were encamped not far from Icamole, attempting to beleaguer

-the town or, at least, to cut the Carranza garrison off from its base

-of supplies and the main command. Neither side was strong enough to

-risk an engagement and the whole thing settled down into a waiting and

-sniping campaign.

-

-In the gray of one oppressive morning toward the end of 1915, according

-to the surgeon who was with Urbina, one of that commander’s scouts

-gave an alarm, having seen four mules and two men on the horizon,

-making toward Icamole. A mounted detachment was at once sent out and

-the strangers were brought in. They turned out to be an American of

-advanced years but military bearing, a nondescript Mexican, and four

-mules laden with the parts of a machine gun and a large quantity of its

-ammunition.

-

-Both men were immediately taken before General Urbina, according to the

-surgeon’s story, and subjected to questioning. The Mexican said that

-he had been employed by another Mexican, whose name he did not know,

-to conduct the American and his convoy to Icamole and the Carranza

-commander. Urbina turned to the American and started to question him,

-but found that the man could speak hardly any Spanish and was therefore

-unable to explain his actions or to defend himself.

-

-It may be as well to note the first objections to the credibility of

-the story here. Bierce had been in Mexico almost two years, according

-to these dates. He was a man of the keenest intelligence and the

-quickest perceptions. He had also lived in California for many years,

-where Spanish names are common and Spanish is spoken by many. It

-seems hard to believe that such a man could have survived to the end

-of 1915 in such ignorance of the speech of the Mexican people as to

-be unable to explain what he was doing or to tell his name and who

-he was. It seems hard to believe, also, that Bierce would have been

-doing any gun-running or that he could have been alive twenty months

-after the Chihuahua letter without communicating with some one in the

-United States, without being found or heard of by the military and

-diplomatic agents who had then already been seeking him for more than

-a year. Also, it is necessary to explain how the man who went down to

-fight with Villa happened suddenly to be taking a gun and ammunition

-to Villa’s enemies, though this might be reconciled on the theory that

-Bierce had gone to fight with the Constitutionalists and had remained

-with them when Villa rebelled. But we may disregard these minor

-discrepancies as possibly capable of reconciliation or correction, and

-proceed further with the surgeon’s story.

-

-Urbina, after questioning the captives for a little while, lost

-patience, concluded that they must be enemies at best and took no half

-measures. Life was cheap in northern Mexico in those days, judgments

-were swift and harsh, and Urbina was savage by nature. He took away the

-lives of these two with a wave of the hand. Immediate execution was

-their fate.

-

-Ambrose Bierce and the unknown Mexican were led out and placed against

-the wall of a building, in this case a stable. Faced with the terrible

-sight, the Mexican fell to his knees and began to pray, refusing to

-rise and face his executioners. Bierce, following the example of his

-companion, also knelt but did not pray. Instead, he refused the cloth

-over his eyes and asked the soldiers not to mutilate his face. And so

-he died.

-

-“I was much interested in the whole affair,” the nameless Mexican

-officer told Mr. Weeks, “and I asked my surgeon friend many questions.

-He did not know Bierce at all and did not know he was describing the

-death of some one in whom I was deeply concerned. But I had known

-Bierce well and asked the surgeon for detail after detail of the

-murdered American’s appearance, age, bearing, and manner. From what he

-told me, I have not the slightest doubt that this was Ambrose Bierce

-and that he died in this manner at the hands of the butcher, Urbina.”

-

-Following the reports of Mr. Weeks, the San Francisco _Bulletin_ sent

-one of its special writers, Mr. U. H. Wilkins, down into Mexico, to

-further examine and confirm or discredit the report of the Mexican

-officer. Mr. Wilkins reported in March, 1920, confirming the Weeks

-report and adding what seems to be direct testimony. Mr. Wilkins says

-that he found a Mexican soldier who had been in Urbina’s command at

-Icamole and who was a member of the firing squad. This man showed Mr.

-Wilkins a picture of Bierce which, he said, he had taken from the

-pocket of the dead man just after the execution had taken place.

-

-Still the doubt perseveres. No one has been able to find the grave of

-Bierce. The picture which the soldier said he took from the pocket of

-the dead man was not produced and has never, so far as I can discover,

-been shown.

-

-Personally, I find in this material more elements for skepticism than

-for belief. Would Ambrose Bierce have been carrying a picture of

-himself about the wastes of Mexico? Perhaps, if it was on a passport or

-other credentials. In that case General Urbina must have known whom

-he was shooting. And would a guerilla leader, with much more of the

-brigand about him than the soldier, have shot a man like Bierce, who

-certainly was worth a fortune living and nothing dead? I must beg to

-doubt.

-

-Nor do the other details ring true. If the captured Americano was

-Ambrose Bierce, one of two things must have happened. Either he would

-have resorted, to save his life, to invective and persuasiveness, for

-which he was remarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned.

-This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tired of living and

-pretending for valedictory heroics. And he was too much of a soldier to

-wince. For this and another reason the story of his execution will not

-go down.

-

-Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of the firing squad

-asking that his face be not disfigured is a piece of standard Mexican

-romance. According to the tradition of that country, the Emperor

-Maximilian, when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, begged that

-he be shot through the body, so that his mother might look upon his

-face again. Hence, I suspect the soldierly Mexican _raconteur_ of

-having been guilty of a romantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious

-substitution. If the man whom Urbina shot had been Ambrose Bierce, he

-would neither have knelt, nor made the pitiful gesture of asking the

-inviolateness of his face.

-

-Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compelling the publishers

-of a collected edition of Bierce’s writings to recognize him as the

-co-author of “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within the

-year published a version of Bierce’s end[11] that has some of the same

-elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, was shot by Villa’s soldiers at

-the guerilla leader’s command. Here is the story condensed:

-

-[11] “Ambrose Bierce as He Really Was,” _The American Parade_, October,

-1926.

-

-Bierce was with Villa at the taking of Chihuahua in 1913. After this

-fight there was nothing for the novelist-soldier to do and he took

-to drinking _tequila_, a liquor which causes those who drink it any

-length of time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him a peon who

-understood a little English and acted as valet and cup companion. When

-he was in his mugs Bierce talked too much, complained of inactivity and

-criticised Villa. One drunken night he suggested to the peon that they

-desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattle and carried it to

-Villa, who had the peon tortured till he confessed the truth. He was

-released and instructed to carry out the plan with the Gringo. That

-night, as they started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peon were

-overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left for the vultures.”

-

-Though Vincent Starrett[12] records that Villa flew into a rage

-when questioned about Bierce, a reaction looked upon by some as

-confirming Villa’s guilt, others have pointed out objections that seem

-insuperable. The break between Carranza and Villa did not follow until

-a long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they point out, and Bierce

-must have been alive all the while without writing a letter or sending

-a word of news to anyone. Possible but improbable, is the verdict of

-those who knew him most intimately.

-

-[12] “Ambrose Bierce,” by V. Starrett.

-

-So, applying the critical acid to the whole affair, there is still the

-mystery, as dark as in the beginning. We may have our delight with the

-dramatic or poetic accounts of his end if that be our taste, but really

-we are no closer to any satisfactory solution than we were in 1914.

-

-Bierce is dead, past doubt. That much needs no additional proof.

-His fierce spirit has traveled. His bitter pen will scrawl no more

-denunciations across the page; neither will he sit in his study weaving

-mysteries and ironies for the delectation of those who love abstraction

-as beauty, and doubt as something better than truth.

-

-My own guess is that he started out to fight battles and shoulder

-hardships as he had done when a boy, somehow believing that a tough

-spirit would carry him through. Wounded or stricken with disease, he

-probably lay down in some pesthouse of a hospital, some troop train

-filled with other stricken men; or he may have crawled off to some

-water hole and died, with nothing more articulate than the winds and

-stars for witness.

-

-

-

-

-XVI

-

-THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY

-

-

-No account of disappearances under curious and romantic circumstances,

-or of the enigmatic fates of forthfaring men in our times, would

-approach completeness without some narration of one of the boldest and

-maddest projects ever undertaken by human beings, in many ways the

-crowning adventure of the nineteenth century. Particularly now, when

-a circumnavigation of the earth by airplane has been accomplished,

-when the Atlantic has been bridged by a dirigible flight, and men have

-flown over the North Pole in plane and airship, the heroic and pathetic

-story of Doctor Andrée and his attempt to reach the top of the world by

-balloon is of fresh and abiding interest.

-

-No one who was not alive in the late nineties of the last century

-and of age to read and be thrilled, can have any conception of the

-wonder and excitement this man and his voyage caused, of the cloud of

-doubt and mystery which hung about his still unexplained end, of the

-rumors and tales that came out of the North year after year, of the

-expeditions that started out to solve the riddle, of the whole decade

-of slowly abating preoccupation with the terrible romance of this

-singular man and his undiscoverable end.

-

-In the summer of 1895, at the International Geographical Congress in

-London, Doctor Salomon August Andrée, a noted engineer, and chief

-examiner of the Royal Swedish Patent Office in Stockholm, let it be

-known that he was planning for a flight to the pole in a balloon, and

-that active preparations were under way. At first the public regarded

-the whole thing with an interested incredulity, though geographers,

-meteorologists, geodesists, and some students of aëronautics had been

-discussing the possibilities of such a voyage for much longer than a

-generation, and many had expressed the belief in its feasibility. Sivel

-and Silbermann, of the University of Paris, had declared as early as

-1870 that this was the practical way of attaining the pole.

-

-Even so, they had not by long anticipated Doctor Andrée. His first

-inquiries into the possibility of such a flight had been made in the

-course of a voyage to the United States in 1876 to visit the Centennial

-Exposition at Philadelphia. On shipboard he had made numerous

-observations of the winds and air currents, which led him to the belief

-that there was a general suction or drift of air toward the pole

-from the direction of the northern coast of Europe and from the pole

-southward along the Siberian or Alaskan coasts.

-

-With this belief in mind, Andrée had gone back to Sweden and begun a

-series of experiments in ballooning. He built various gas bags and

-made a considerable number of voyages in them, on several occasions

-with nearly fatal results. Mishaps, however, did not daunt him, and

-he became, in the course of the following twenty years, perhaps the

-best versed aëronaut on earth. He was not, of course, an ordinary

-balloonist, but a scientific experimenter, busy with an attempt to work

-out a serious, and to him a practical, problem. In the early nineties

-Andrée succeeded in making a flight of four hundred kilometers in a

-comparatively small balloon, and it was on the observations taken in

-the course of this voyage that he based mathematical calculations which

-formed his guide in the polar undertaking.

-

-If, as I have said, the first public announcement of the Andrée

-project was received by the rank and file of men as an entertaining,

-but impossible, speculation, there was a rapid change of mind in the

-course of the following months. News came that Andrée had opened a

-subscription for funds, and that the hundred thousand dollars he

-believed necessary had been quickly provided by the enthusiastic

-members of the Swedish Academy of Science, by King Oscar from his

-private purse, and by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of nitroglycerin and

-provider of the prizes which bear his name. Evidently this fellow meant

-business.

-

-In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party of scientists and

-workmen, including two friends who had decided to make the desperate

-essay with him, sailed from Gothenburg in the little steamer _Virgo_

-for Spitzbergen. They had on board a balloon made by Lachambre of

-Paris, the foremost designer of that day, with a gas capacity of

-more than six thousand cubic meters, the largest bag which had been

-constructed at that time. The gas container was of triple varnished

-silk, and there was a specially designed gondola, whose details are of

-surviving interest.

-

-This compartment, in which three men hoped to live through such

-temperatures as might be expected in the air currents fanning the North

-Pole, was made of wicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas and

-inside with oiled silk, these two substances being considered capable

-of making the big basket practically air and weather proof. The gondola

-was about six and one half feet long inside and about five feet wide.

-It contained a sleeping mattress for one, with provision for a second

-bed, though the plan was to keep two of the three men constantly on

-deck, while the third took two hours of sleep at a time. This basket

-was covered, to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, through

-which the voyagers could come up to the deck. Inside and outside the

-gondola, in various pockets and bags, were fixed the provisions and

-supplies, while the various nautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’

-paraphernalia, and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or were

-fixed to the gondola by specially invented devices. Everything had been

-thought out in great detail, most of the apparatus had been designed

-for the occasion, and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from

-all the foremost flyers and scientific theorists in Europe. His was

-anything but a haphazard or ill-prepared expedition.

-

-Toward the end of June, Andrée and his party landed on the obscure

-Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group, where he found a log cottage

-built some years before by Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter.

-Here a large octagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloon

-from the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finally all was

-ready, the chemicals were put to work, and the great bag slowly filled

-with hydrogen. Everything was in shape for flying by the middle of

-July, but now various mishaps and delays came to foil the eager

-adventurer, the worst of all being the fact that the wind steadily

-refused to blow from the south, as Andrée had anticipated. He waited

-until the middle of August, and then returned somewhat crestfallen

-to Sweden, where he was received with that ready and heartbreaking

-ridicule which often greets a brave man set out upon some undertaking

-whose difficulties and perils the fickle and callous public little

-understands.

-

-Andrée himself was nothing damped by his reverses, and even felt that

-he had learned something that would be of benefit. For one thing, he

-had the gas bag of his balloon enlarged to contain about two hundred

-thousand cubic feet, and made some changes in its coating, which was

-expected to prevent the seepage of the hydrogen, a problem which much

-more modern aircraft builders have had difficulty in meeting.

-

-If the delay in Andrée’s sailing had lost him a little of the

-public’s confidence and alienated a few lay admirers, his prestige

-with scientific bodies had not suffered, and his popularity with the

-subscribers of his fund was undiminished. King Oscar again met the

-additional expenses with a subscription from his own funds, and Andrée

-was accordingly able to set out for the second essay in June of 1897.

-His goods and the reconstructed balloon were sent as far as Tromsoe

-by rail, and there loaded into the _Virgo_ and taken to Danes Island,

-accompanied by a small group of friends and interested scientists.

-

-Almost at the last moment came a desertion, a happening that is looked

-upon by all explorers and adventurers as something of most evil omen.

-Doctor Ekholm, who had made the first trip to Danes Island and intended

-to be one of the three making the flight, had married in the course

-of the delay, the lady of his choice being fully aware of his perilous

-project. When it came time for him to start north in 1897, however, she

-had a not unnatural change of heart, and finally forced her husband to

-quit the expedition. Another man stepped into the gap without a day’s

-delay, and so the party started north.

-

-The enlarged bag was attached to the gondola and its fittings, and the

-process of inflation began anew in that strange eight-sided building

-on that barren arctic island. The bag was fully distended at the end

-of the first week in July, and Andrée impatiently waited for just the

-right currents of air before casting off.

-

-In those last few days of waiting a good deal of foreboding advice

-was given the daring aëronauts by the group of admirers who had made

-the voyage to Danes Island with them. It is even said that one of the

-leading scientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spent a

-night with him, and tried to convince the man that his theories and

-calculations were mistaken; that the air currents were inconstant, and

-could not be depended on to sweep the balloon across the pole and down

-on the other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperatures at

-the pole might readily cause the hydrogen to shrink and thus bring the

-balloon to earth; and that the whole region was full of such doubts and

-surprises as to forbid the adventure.

-

-To all this Andrée is said to have answered simply that he had made his

-decision and must stand by it.

-

-Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most thoroughly

-matured in his own mind. In twenty years of aëronautics he had worked

-out his ideas and theories in the greatest detail. He had not been

-blind to the problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air,

-but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction that might lend

-itself to guidance through the air, had evidently not struck him as

-feasible, and was not brought to any kind of success until several

-years later under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to steer his

-balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as already said, oblong, with

-a front and back. The front was provided with two portholes fitted with

-heavy glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations in

-the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist, he knew that,

-once his car was in the air, the great bag was almost certain to begin

-spinning and to travel through the air at various speeds, increasing

-the rate of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater.

-That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow for the gondola

-seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée had his own ideas as to this.

-

-The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to any great heights,

-or to subject himself to the rotating action which is one of the

-unpleasantnesses and perils of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern

-of his gondola three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long,

-which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen pigtails. In the

-center of each hundred-yard length of rope was a thinner spot or safety

-escapement, by means of which the lower half of any one of the ropes

-could be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for releasing

-all of the rope or ropes.

-

-These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s steering gear and

-antiwhirling apparatus. His intention was to fly at an elevation of

-somewhat less than one hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his

-three ropes trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of any

-open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was expected to keep

-his gondola pointed forward by means of its dragging effect. Realizing

-that one or all of the ropes might become entangled in some manner with

-objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might wreck the

-gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements to let go the lower half

-or all the ropes.

-

-Just what the man expected to do, may be read from his own articles

-in the New York and European papers. He hoped to fly low over a great

-part of the arctic regions, make photographs and maps, study the land

-and water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological, geological,

-geographical, and other information that came his way, cross the pole,

-if he could, and find his way back on the other side of the earth

-to some point within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said that he

-might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles from Danes Island to the

-pole in anywhere from two days to two weeks, depending on the force

-and direction of the surface wind. He did not expect to consume more

-than three weeks to a month for the entire trip, but his ship carried

-condensed emergency provisions for three years.

-

-While a widely known French balloonist, who had planned a rival

-expedition and then abandoned it, had intended to take along a

-team of dogs, Andrée’s balloon had not sufficient lifting power or

-accommodations for anything of this kind, and he was content to carry

-two light collapsible sleds on which he expected to carry the

-provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.

-

-[Illustration: ~~ DOCTOR ANDRÉE ~~]

-

-When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before he set out, what

-provisions he had made for a mishap, and just what he would do if his

-balloon were to come down in open water, the explorer showed his spirit

-in the tersest of responses: “Drown.”

-

-Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination, it is not

-quite certain in what spirit Andrée set forth. It has often been said

-that he was a stubborn, self-willed, and self-esteeming enthusiast,

-who had worked up a vast confidence in himself and an overweening

-passion for his project through his flying and experimenting. Others

-have pictured him as an infatuated scientific theorist, bound to prove

-himself right, or die in the attempt. And there is still the other

-possibility that the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt, in

-spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule of the public and the

-skepticism of some critics. He felt that he would be a laughingstock

-before the world and a discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to

-set out, it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remains

-a fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausible to engage

-the attention and credence of a considerable number of scientists, and

-his enthusiasm bright enough to attach two others to him in his great

-emprise.

-

-In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andrée got into

-the gondola of his car, tested the ropes and other apparatus, and

-was quickly joined by his two assistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H.

-F. Frankel, the latter having been chosen to take the place of the

-defected Ekholm.

-

-At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off, after Andrée

-had sent his farewell message, “a greeting to friends and countrymen at

-home.” The great bag hesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shot

-up to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowly about, with its

-three ropes dragging first on the ice and then in the water of the sea,

-and set out majestically for the northwest, carried by a steady slow

-breeze.

-

-The little group of men on the desolate arctic island stood late

-through the afternoon, with eyes straining into the distance, where the

-balloon hung, an ever-diminishing ball against the northern horizon.

-What doubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculating crowd,

-what burnings of the heart and moistenings of the eyes overcame

-its members, as they watched the intrepid trio put off upon their

-unprecedented adventure, the subsequent accounts reveal. But the

-imagination of the reader will need no promptings on this score. A

-little more than an hour the ship of the air remained in sight. Then,

-at last, it floated off into the mist, and the doubt from which it

-never emerged.

-

-Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sending back word of his

-situation and progress. For early communication he carried a coop of

-homing pigeons. In addition, he had provided himself with a series of

-specially designed buoys, lined with copper and coated with cork. They

-were hollow inside and so fashioned as to contain a written message and

-preserve it indefinitely from the sea water, like a manuscript in a

-bottle. To the top of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, with

-a little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release one of the small

-buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, thus marking

-out, by the longitude observations as well, the precise route taken by

-the balloon in its drift toward or away from the pole.

-

-About a week after Andrée’s departure one of the carrier pigeons

-returned to Danes Island, with this message in the little cylinder

-attached to its legs:

-

- “July 13, 10.30 P. M.--82.20 north latitude; 15.5 east longitude. Good

- progress toward north. All goes well on board. This message is the

- third by carrier pigeon.

-

-                                                          “ANDRÉE.”

-

-The earlier birds and any the balloonists may have released after the

-night of the thirteenth, about fifty-five hours out from Danes Island,

-must have been overcome by the distance and the excruciating cold. None

-except the one mentioned ever reached either Danes Island or any cotes

-in the civilized world.

-

-All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaper accounts of

-Andrée’s daring undertaking, waited with something like bated breath

-for further news of the adventuring three. It was not expected that the

-brave Swedes could reach civilization again, even with every turn of

-luck in their favor, in less than two months. Even six months or a year

-were elapsed periods not considered too long, for the chances were that

-the balloon would land in some far northern and difficult spot, out of

-which the three men would not be able to make their way before winter.

-That being so, they would be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then,

-very likely, they could find their way to some outpost and bring back

-the tidings of their monumental feat.

-

-Meantime the world got to work on its preparations. The Czar,

-foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and his two companions might

-alight somewhere in upper Siberia, sent a communication by various

-agencies to the wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains,

-explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andrée and his men were,

-and admonishing the natives to treat any such wayfarers with kindness

-and respect, aiding them in every way and sending them south as

-speedily as possible, the special guests of the imperial government

-and the great white father. In other northern countries similar

-precautions were taken, with the result that the news of Andrée and his

-expedition was circulated far up beyond the circle, among the Indians

-and adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters of Labrador and

-interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos, and scores of other tribes and

-peoples.

-

-But the fall of 1897 passed without any further sign from Andrée, and

-1898 died into its winter, with the pole voyagers still unreported. By

-this time there was a feeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among

-the optimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange that no further

-messages of any kind had been received. Another significant thing was

-that one of the copper-and-cork buoys had been picked up in the arctic

-current--empty. Still, it might have been dropped by accident, and it

-was yet possible that Andrée had reached a safe, if distant, anchorage

-somewhere, and he might turn up the following summer.

-

-Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing except one or two more

-of the empty buoys, and the definite feeling of despair. Expeditions

-began to organize for the purpose of starting north in search of the

-balloonists, and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in a

-dirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in getting under way,

-and the summer of 1900 came along with nothing accomplished.

-

-On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however, another, if

-not very satisfactory, bit of news was picked up. It was, once more,

-one of the buoys from the balloon. This time, to the delight of the

-finders, there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:

-

- “Buoy No. 4. The first to be thrown out. July 11, 10 P. M., Greenwich

- mean time.

-

- “All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an altitude of

- about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction at first northerly, ten

- degrees east; later northerly, forty-five degrees east. Four carrier

- pigeons were dispatched at 5.40 P.M. They flew westward. We are

- now above the ice, which is very cut up in all directions. Weather

- splendid. In excellent spirits.

-

-                                   “ANDRÉE, STRINDBERG, FRANKEL.”

-

-  “Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”

-

-It will be noted at once that the body of this communication was

-written the night after the departure from Danes Island, and the

-postscript probably at seven forty-five o’clock the next morning, so

-that it must have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before

-the single returning pigeon was released. No light of hope in such a

-communication.

-

-The North was by this time resonant with rumors and fables. Almost

-every traveler who came down from the boreal regions brought some

-fancy or report, sometimes supporting the product of his or another’s

-imagination with scraps of what purported to be evidence. A prospector

-came down from the upper Alaskan gold claims with a bit of tarred and

-oiled cloth which had been given him by the chief of some remote Indian

-tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the Andrée balloon? For a

-time there was a thrill of credulity. Then the thing turned out to be

-hide, instead of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.

-

-In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin that Andrée and his party

-had been killed by Eskimos in upper Canada, when they descended from

-the clouds and started to shoot caribou. But why go into details? Month

-after month came other reports of all kinds, most of them of similar

-import. They came from all points, beginning at Kamtchatka and running

-around the world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and they were

-all more or less fiction.

-

-Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece. A long dispatch

-from Winnipeg announced that C. C. Chipman, head commissioner of

-the Hudson’s Bay Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the

-northernmost outpost of the company, several letters from the local

-factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate of Doctor Andrée and his

-comrades was contained. The news had been received at Fort Churchill

-from wandering Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw

-mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great ship descend

-from the sky and had followed it many miles till it settled on the ice.

-Three men had got out and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally

-unacquainted with white men, and far less with balloons, believed the

-intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked them, eventually

-killing all with their bows and arrows, though the white men were armed

-with repeating rifles and put up a good fight. There were many other

-confirmatory details in the report. The mushers were found with modern

-Swedish rifles and with cooking and other utensils salvaged from the

-wrecked balloon.

-

-These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to the commissioner

-of the Hudson’s Bay Company for confirmation, with the result that the

-story was at once exploded in these words:

-

-“There is no probability of there being any truth in the report

-regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s balloon. The chief

-officer of the company on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself

-interviewed the natives on the matter, has reported as his firm

-conviction that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon

-imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the story was given.

-The sketches of the balloon which the company has been careful to

-distribute throughout northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much

-talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly to be wondered

-at that some such tale might be given out by natives peculiarly cunning

-and prone to practice upon the credulity of those not familiar with

-them, or easily imposed upon.”

-

-But the imagination of the world was nothing daunted by such cold

-douches of fact, and more reports of Andrée’s death, of his survival

-in the igloos of detached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his

-balloon, of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of his party,

-and of many fancies came down from the northern sectors of the

-world, season after season. There was a great revival of these yarns

-in 1905, once more due to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and

-in 1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was an even more

-belated group of rumors, all centering about the fact that one Father

-Turquotille, a Roman Catholic missionary residing at Reindeer Lake,

-and often making long treks farther into the arctic, had found a party

-of nomadic natives in possession of a revolver and some rope, which

-fact they explained to him by telling the story of the Andrée balloon,

-which was supposed to have landed somewhere in their territory. The

-good priest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal, of Prince

-Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmitted the report to Ottawa,

-whence it was spread broadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having

-made a special journey to confirm the rumors, was obliged to discredit

-them. And so another end to gossip.

-

-Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirty years after

-that heroic launching out from Danes Island, after the pole has long

-been attained, and all the regions of the Far North traversed back and

-forth by countless expeditions and hunting parties, no sure knowledge

-of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is that he never returned, and

-all that can be asserted as beyond reasonable doubt is that he and his

-companions perished somewhere in the North. The probabilities are more

-interesting, though they cannot be termed more than inductions from the

-scattered bits of fact.

-

-The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, which were picked up from

-time to time between the spring of 1899 and the late summer of 1912,

-when the Norwegian steamer _Beta_, outward bound on September 1st,

-from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoe on the fourteenth,

-with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, which had been picked up on the eighth in

-the open ocean. This buoy, like all the others, except the one already

-described, was empty and had its top unsecured. It rests with the

-others in the royal museum at Stockholm. When Andrée flew from Danes

-Island he took twelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he

-expected to drop as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, and

-one larger float, which was to be dropped in triumph at the North Pole.

-This biggest buoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899, and

-identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessed the preparation

-for the flight. In all, seven of these floats have been retrieved from

-the northern seas.

-

-We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on the morning of July 12, 1897,

-less than sixteen hours from his base, and that he liberated a pigeon

-on the following night, after an elapsed time of about fifty-five

-hours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northern latitude

-and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. Since Danes Island lies above the

-seventy-ninth parallel, and in about 12 degrees of eastern longitude,

-the balloon had drifted about three degrees north and three east in

-fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundred and fifty miles,

-as the crow flies. His net rate of progress toward the pole was thus

-no better than seven to eight miles an hour, and he was being carried

-northeast instead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidently he was

-disillusioned as to the correctness of his theories before he was far

-from his starting point.

-

-The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to what must have happened

-thereafter. When the big North Pole buoy was brought back to Sweden,

-the great explorer Nansen shook his head in dismay and said the

-emptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous of disaster. Andrée

-would never have cast his largest and best buoy adrift, except in an

-emergency, or until he had reached the pole, in which case it would

-surely have contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoy had been

-thrown overboard as ballast, when the ship seemed about to settle into

-the sea. But even then, it would seem, Andrée would have scribbled some

-message and put it into the float, had there been time.

-

-The fact that this main buoy and five others were picked up, with their

-tops unfastened and barren of the least scrap of writing, seems to

-argue that some sudden disaster overtook the balloon and its horrified

-passengers. Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidly toward the

-sea or an ice floe, that everything was thrown out in an attempt to

-arrest its fall, or there was an explosion, and the whole great air

-vessel, with all its human and mechanical freight, was dropped into the

-icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would have floated off and been

-found scattered about the northern ocean, while the explorer and his

-men must have met the fate he had so briefly described--“drowned.”

-

-The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearing any message later

-than that carried by the solitary homing pigeon would seem also to

-indicate that death overcame the party soon after the night of July

-13th, with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs and ice packs

-of the North.

-

-In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of the most splendid and

-mad adventures of any time came to its dark and mysterious conclusion,

-leaving the world an enigma and a legend.

-

-

-

-

-XVII

-

-SPECTRAL SHIPS

-

-

-We have not yet lost that sense of terror before the vast power and

-wrath of the waters that wrought strange gods and monsters from the

-fancy of our ancestors. It is this fright and helplessness in us

-that gives disappearances at sea their special quality. In spite of

-all progress, all inventiveness, all the power of man’s engines,

-every putting forth to sea is still an adventure. The same fate that

-overcomes the little catboat caught in a squall may overtake the

-greatest liner--the Titanic to note a trite example.

-

-As a matter of fact, never a year passes without the loss of some ship

-somewhere in the wild expanse of the world’s waters. Boats go down,

-leaving usually at least some indirect evidence of their fate. Now

-and again, as in the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s _Santa

-Margarita_ and Roger Tichborne’s schooner _Bella_, not a survivor lives

-to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckage found to give indication.

-Here we have the genuine marine mystery. The marvel lies in the number

-of such completely vanished ships. A most casual survey of the records

-turns up this generous list, from the American naval records alone:

-

-The brig _Reprisal_, 1777; the _General Gates_, 1777; the _Saratoga_,

-1781; the _Insurgent_, 1800; the _Pickering_, 1800; the _Hamilton_,

-1813; the _Wasp III_, 1814; the _Epervier_, 1815; the _Lynx_, 1821; the

-_Wildcat_, 1829; the _Hornet_, 1829; the _Sylph II_ and the _Seagull_,

-both in 1839; the _Grampus_, in 1843; the _Jefferson_, 1850; the

-_Albany_, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; and _Levant II_, with

-exactly the same number aboard, in 1860. In 1910 the tug _Nina_ steamed

-out of Norfolk and was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoing

-tug _Conestoga_ put out from Mare Island, Cal., bound for Pearl Harbor,

-Hawaii, with four officers and fifty-two men aboard, and was never

-again reported. These are not mere marine disasters[13] but complete

-mysteries. No one knows precisely what happened to any of these ships

-and their people.

-

-[13] For a handy list of these see The World Almanac, 1927 Edition,

-pages 691-95.

-

-No account of sea riddles would be complete without mention of the

-American brigantine _Marie Celeste_, of New York, Captain Briggs, which

-was found floating abandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity of

-Gibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. She had sailed from New

-York late in October with a cargo of alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the

-morning mentioned the British bark _Dei Gratia_, Captain Boyce, found

-the _Marie Celeste_ in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15 W. with sails set

-but acting queerly, yawing and falling up into the wind. Captain Boyce

-ran up the urgent hoist but got no answer from the brigantine. The day

-being almost windless and the sea beautifully calm, Captain Boyce put

-off in a boat with his mate, Mr. Adams, and two sailors, reached the

-_Marie Celeste_ and managed to board her. There was not a soul to be

-seen, not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indication of any

-preparations for abandonment, not a boat gone from the davits.

-

-Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, made a careful inspection

-of the ship and wrote full reports of what they had found. In the cabin

-a breakfast had been laid for four persons and only partly eaten. One

-of these four was a child, whose half empty bowl of porridge stood on

-the table. A hard boiled egg, peeled and cut in two but not bitten

-into, lay near one of the other places. There were biscuits and other

-food on the table.

-

-Investigation showed that the cargo had not shifted and was completely

-intact. None of the food, water or other supplies had been carried

-off, the captain’s funds, of considerable amount, were safe and his

-gold watch hung in his bunk, as did the watches of two of the seamen.

-There was no evidence whatever of any struggle, and a report published

-by irresponsible papers, to the effect that a bloody sword had been

-found was officially denied. Neither was there any leak or any defect,

-except that there were two square cuts at the bow on the outside. They

-had been made with an axe or similar tool and might have been there for

-some time.

-

-The _Dei Gratia_ towed her prize into Gibraltar and notified the

-American consul, who again examined the brigantine with all care and

-reported to Washington. It was found that the _Marie Celeste_ had set

-sail with a crew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife and their

-eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of six hundred tons.

-

-Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the region near the

-finding place of the abandoned vessel resulted in nothing and a

-general quest throughout the world brought no better results. The

-British ship _Highlander_ reported that she had passed the _Marie

-Celeste_ and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December 4th, the

-day before she was picked up, and that the brigantine had answered “All

-well.” This is obviously a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores

-lies about five hundred miles from the place where the ship was found

-or about twice as far as she was likely to have sailed in twenty-four

-hours.

-

-There are conflicting statements as to the actual state of affairs on

-the _Marie Celeste_ when found. One report says the ship’s clock was

-still ticking. On the other hand the log, which was found, had not

-been brought up beyond ten days prior to the discovery. One statement

-says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were gone, another

-that everything was intact. All indications are, however, that the

-crew had not been long away. A bottle of cough medicine stood upright

-and uncorked on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough

-weather or continued yawing and twisting before the wind with a loose

-rudder would have upset it. Again, on a sewing machine, which stood

-near the table in the cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off

-to the floor if there had been any specially active dipping or lurching

-of the brigantine.

-

-Many theories have been propounded to explain the disappearance of the

-crew, not the least fantastic of which is the giant cuttlefish yarn.

-Those who spin this tale affect to believe that there are squidlike

-monsters in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and bold

-enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship and snatch off fourteen

-persons one after the other. Personally, I like much better the idea

-that Sinbad’s roc had come back to life and carried the crew off to the

-Valley of Diamonds on his back.

-

-As in other mysteries, men have turned up from time to time who

-asserted that they knew the fate of the crew of the _Marie Celeste_,

-that they were the one and only survivor, that murder and foul crime

-had been committed on the brigantine and more in the same strain.

-

-In 1913, the _Strand Magazine_ (London) printed a tale which has about

-it some elements of credibility. The article was written by A. Howard

-Linford, head master of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable

-British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically disowned

-responsibility for what he narrated, saying that he had no first hand

-knowledge. His story was, he said, based on some papers left him in

-three boxes by an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.

-

-This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as one of the ten members

-of the crew--the steward in fact. He recounts that the carpenter had

-built a little platform in the bows, where the child of the captain

-might play in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’s quarterdeck,

-and upon this structure the child played daily in the sun, while its

-mother sat beside it, reading or sewing. The good woman had been ill

-the first part of the trip and was now greatly worried because of the

-nervous health of her husband, who had suffered a breakdown.

-

-One morning, according to the supposed Fosdyk papers, the captain

-determined to swim about the ship in his clothes, possibly as the

-result of a challenge from the mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her

-husband but he was obdurate and she prompted the mate to swim with

-him. They plunged in and the whole crew, with the commander’s wife and

-child, crowded on the little platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly

-there was a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell into the

-sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine, with sail set,

-rapidly ran away from the swimmers and the hopeless strugglers in the

-water. Fosdyk alone managed to cling to the platform and was washed to

-the African shore, where he was restored to health by some friendly

-blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874 Marseilles. Later on he got to

-London and was employed by Mr. Linford’s father.

-

-Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm of possibility. We

-may believe it if we like, without risking the suspicious glances of

-our better balanced brothers, but----

-

-Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervous state, have gone

-swimming hundreds of miles from land, leaving his vessel with sail

-set and expecting, even in a calm, to keep pace with her? Would the

-helmsman have left his post under such circumstances to stand on the

-baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captain and mate have got up

-without finishing their breakfast to engage in such folly? Finally, why

-did this Abel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on his return to

-Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when there was a great hue and cry

-still in the air and sure information would have been rewarded? Or why

-did he not tell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapers

-again and again revived the mystery and sought to solve it? Why did he

-leave papers to be published by another after his death?

-

-My answer is that the mystery of the _Marie Celeste_ is no nearer

-solution since the so-called Fosdyk papers were published. Moreover, I

-cannot find that worthy’s name on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.

-

-A more credible explanation has recently been put forth by a writer

-in the New York _Times_, who says that the whole case rested upon a

-conspiracy. The captain and crew of the _Marie Celeste_ had agreed

-with the personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted in

-the region where she was found, her men to put off in a longboat which

-had previously been supplied by the conspirators in order that none of

-the _Marie Celeste’s_ boats should be missing. The other vessel was to

-come along presently, pick up the derelict and collect the prize money,

-while the owners were to profit by the insurance. The deserting crew

-was to get its share of the proceeds and then disappear.

-

-There are objections to this explanation also. Would a set of sailors

-and a captain, the latter with his wife and little girl, venture

-upon the sea in an open boat some hundreds of miles from land? Would

-the captain have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him if

-such a trick had been planned? And why was no member of the crew

-ever discovered in the course of the feverish search or through the

-persistent curiosity that followed? On the other hand, such tricks

-have been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit crimes

-often attempt and accomplish the perilous and seemingly impossible. The

-doubts are by no means dispelled by this theory but here is at least a

-rational version of the affair.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the long roster that

-stand out with a special and tormenting character. The war had hardly

-opened when the British navy set out to destroy a small number of

-German cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and

-Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral Cradock and

-his ships to the bottom at the battle of Coronel and was subsequently

-destroyed by a force of British off the Falkland Islands. There was the

-_Emden_, that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for Allied

-shipping for month after month, until she was overtaken, beaten and

-beached. Finally, there was the _Karlsruhe_.

-

-This modern light cruiser, completed only the year before the war

-began, did exactly what she was designed for--commerce raiding.

-With her light armament of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed

-(25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning) she

-was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen. Since there was no

-considerable German fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few

-hot weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic. One vessel

-after another fell to her hunting pouch, while crews taken off the

-captured or sunken merchantmen began to arrive at American, West Indian

-and South American ports.

-

-These refugees told, one and all, the same story. There would be a

-smudge of smoke on the horizon and within minutes the long slender

-German cruiser would come churning up out of the distance with the

-speed of an express train, firing a shot across the bows and signalling

-for the surrender of the trader. The prize crew came aboard, always

-acting with the most punctilious politeness and treating crew and

-passengers with apologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow,

-her coal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred, her

-crew and passengers removed to safety and the craft sent to the bottom

-with bombs or by opening the sea cocks. If, on the other hand, the

-captured ship was modern and swift, she was manned from the cruiser,

-loaded with coal and other needed supplies, crowded with the captives

-and made to form an escort. At one time the cruiser is said to have had

-six such vessels in her train, at another four. When there got to be

-too many passengers and other captives, the least worthy of the vessels

-was detached and ordered to steam to a given port, being allowed just

-enough coal to get there.

-

-As early as October 4, 1914, two months after the opening of

-hostilities, it was announced that the _Karlsruhe_ had captured

-thirteen British merchantmen in the Atlantic, including four hundred

-prisoners. She did much better than that before she was through and

-the chances are she had then already put about twenty ships out of

-business, for this was a conservative announcement from the British

-Admiralty, which let it be known soon afterwards that all of seventy

-British war vessels were hunting the _Karlsruhe_ and her sister raider,

-the _Emden_.

-

-Shipping in the Atlantic was in a perilous way and excitement was high

-among newspaper readers ashore, who watched the game of hide and seek

-with all the interest of spectators at some magnificent sporting event.

-Nor was the sympathy all against the German, for the odds were too

-heavy. The wildest rumors were floating in by every craft that reached

-port from the Southern Atlantic, by radio and by cable. On October

-27, a Ward Line boat came into New York with the report that she had

-observed a night battle off the Virginia Capes between the German

-raider and British men-of-war. On November 3 came the report that the

-_Karlsruhe_ had captured a big Lamport and Holt liner off the coast of

-Brazil as late as October 26. On November 10 an officer of a British

-freighter captured by the raider reached Edinburgh and told the story

-that the _Karlsruhe_ was using Bocas Reef, off the north Brazilian

-coast, as a base.

-

-Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the forays of the modern corsair

-ceased. The first belief was, of course, that the pursuing British had

-found her and sent her to Davy Jones. But as the weeks went by without

-any announcement to that effect, doubts crept in. Soon the British

-government, without making a formal declaration, revealed the untruth

-of this report by keeping its searching vessels at sea. It was the

-theory that the _Karlsruhe_ had run up the Amazon or the Orinoco for

-repairs and rest. The expectation was that she would soon be at her old

-tricks again.

-

-The battle and sinking story persisted in the British press, the

-wish being evidently father to the thought. On January, 12, 1915,

-for instance, the Montreal _Gazette_ published an unverified (and

-afterwards disproved) report from a correspondent at Grenada, British

-West Indies, giving a detailed description of a four hour battle in

-which the raider was destroyed. This story was allegedly verified by

-the washing ashore of wreckage and the finding of sailors’ corpses. All

-moonshine.

-

-On January 21, an American steamer captain announced having sighted the

-_Karlsruhe_ off Porto Rico. On other dates in January and February she

-was also falsely reported off La Guayra, the Canary Islands, Port au

-Prince and other places. On March 17, the Brooklyn _Eagle_ published a

-tale to the effect that the hulk of the raider lay off the Grenadines,

-a little string of islets that stretch north from Grenada in the

-Windwards. This report said there had been no battle. The cruiser had

-been self-wrecked or broken up in a storm. Again wreckage was said to

-have been found, but here once more was falsehood.

-

-On March 18, the _Stifts-Tidende_ of Copenhagen reported that the

-_Karlsruhe_ had been blown up by an internal explosion one evening

-as the officers and men were having tea. One half of the wreck sank

-immediately, the report went on to say, while the other floated for

-some time, enabling between 150 and 200 of the crew to be rescued by

-one of the accompanying auxiliaries. The survivors, it was added, had

-been sworn to secrecy before reaching port--why this, no one can guess.

-

-The following day, the _National Tidende_ published corroboration from

-a German merchant captain then in Denmark, to the effect that the “crew

-of the Karlsruhe had been brought home early in December, 1914, by the

-German liner, Rio Negro, one of the Karlsruhe’s escort ships.”

-

-Somewhat later, a Brooklyn man, wintering at Nassau, in the Bahamas,

-reported finding the raider’s motor pinnace on the shore of Abaco

-Island, north of Nassau.

-

-To this there is little to add. Admiral von Tirpitz, then the head of

-the German navy, says in his memoirs just this and no more:

-

- “The commander of the _Karlsruhe_, Captain Köhler, never dreamt of

- taking advantage of the permission to make his way homeward; working

- with the auxiliary vessels in the Atlantic, surrounded by the English

- cruisers, but relying on his superior speed, he sought ever further

- successes, until he was destroyed with his ship by an explosion, the

- probable cause of which was some unstable explosive brought aboard.”

-

-It is obvious from this that the _Karlsruhe_ was given the option of

-returning home, having gained enough glory and sunk enough ships to

-satisfy a dozen admirals. But the main fact to be gleaned from Tirpit’s

-statement is that an internal explosion was the thing officially

-accepted by the head of the German admiralty as the cause of her

-disappearance. And this is the most likely of all the theories that

-have been or can be proposed. But, that said, we are still a long way

-from any satisfaction of our deeper curiosity. Where and when did the

-explosion take place? Under what circumstances? Did any escape and

-return to Germany to tell the tale?

-

-To these queries there are no positive answers. If the _Karlsruhe_

-was, as so often stated, accompanied by one or more auxiliaries or

-coaling ships, it seems incredible that all the crew can have been

-lost and quite beyond imagination that there was not even a distant

-witnessing of the accident. Yet this seems to have been the case. In

-spite of the report that a large part of the famous raider’s crew got

-safely home after the supposed explosion, I have searched and scouted

-through the German press and the German book lists for an account of

-the affair--all in vain. Not only that, but I am assured by reliable

-correspondents of the American press in Germany that nothing credible

-or authoritative has appeared. We have von Mücke’s book “The Emden,”

-published in the United States as early as 1917, and previously in

-Germany. We have the exploits of the _Moewe_, and we have the lesser

-adventures of the popular von Luckner and his craft. But of the famous

-_Karlsruhe_ we have nothing at all, save rumors and gossip.

-

-The conclusion must be that the ship did break up somewhere in the

-deepest ocean, as the result of an explosion, while she was altogether

-unattended. She must have gone down with all her men, for not even the

-reports of finding bits of her wreckage have ever been verified. The

-mystery of her end is still much discussed among seafaring men and

-William McFee, in one of his tales, suggests that she lay hid up one of

-the South American rivers and came to grief there.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Even more fantastic than this, however, is the story of the great

-United States collier _Cyclops_. This vessel, of nineteen thousand tons

-displacement, five hundred and eighteen feet long, of sixty-five foot

-beam and twenty-seven foot draught, with a cargo capacity of twelve

-thousand five hundred tons, was built by the Cramps in Philadelphia

-in 1910. She was designed to coal the first-line fighting ships of our

-fleet while at sea and under way, by means of traveling cables from her

-arm-like booms. She had frequently accompanied our battleships abroad,

-had transported the marines to Cuba and the refugees from Vera Cruz to

-Galveston in April 1914. On a trip to Kiel in 1911, she was wonderingly

-examined by the German naval critics and builders, who declared her to

-be a marvel of design and structure.

-

-[Illustration:

-

-                                                          _Wide World._

-

-                       ~~ _U. S. S. CYCLOPS_ ~~]

-

-On March 4, 1918, the _Cyclops_ sailed from Barbados for an unnamed

-Atlantic port (Norfolk, as it proved), with a crew of 221 and 57

-passengers, including Alfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States Consul

-General at Rio de Janeiro. She was due to arrive on March 13. When that

-date had come and nothing had been heard from her, it was announced

-that one of her two engines had been injured and she was proceeding

-slowly with the other engine compounded. But on April 14 the news came

-out in the press that the great ship was a month overdue and totally

-unaccounted for.

-

-For a whole month the story had been veiled under the censorship while

-the Navy Department had been making every conceivable effort to find

-the ship or some evidence of her fate. There had been no news through

-her radio equipment since her departure from Barbados. There had

-been no heavy weather in that vicinity. She had been steaming in the

-well-traveled lane of ships passing between North and South America,

-yet not a vessel had spoken her, heard her radio call or seen her at

-any distance. Destroyers had been searching the whole Gulf, Caribbean,

-North and South Atlantic regions for three frantic weeks. They had not

-found so much as a life preserver belonging to the missing ship.

-

-The public mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that a German

-submarine had done this dirty piece of business, if an attack on an

-enemy naval vessel in time of war may be so listed. Alas, there were

-no German submarines so far from their home bases at that time or

-any proximate period. None had been reported by other vessels and

-the German admiralty has long since confirmed the understood fact

-that there was none abroad. A floating mine was next suspected, but

-the lower West Indies are a long distance from any mine field then

-in existence and a ship of the size of the _Cyclops_, even if mined,

-probably would have had time to use her radio, lower some boats and

-put some of her people afloat. At the very least, she must have left

-some flotsam to reach the beaches of the archipelago with its tragic

-meanings.

-

-The mystery was soon complicated. On May 6 a British steamer from

-Brazil brought news that two weeks after the due date of the _Cyclops_

-but still two weeks before her disappearance was announced, an

-advertisement had been published in a Portuguese newspaper at Rio

-announcing requiem mass for the repose of the soul of A. L. M.

-Gottschalk “lost when the _Cyclops_ was sunk at sea.” Efforts were

-made by the secret agents of the American and Brazilian governments to

-discover the identity of the persons responsible for the advertisement,

-but nothing of worth was ever discovered. The notice was signed with

-the names of several prominent Brazilians, all of whom denied that they

-had the least knowledge of the matter. The rector of the church denied

-that any arrangement had been made for the mass and said he had not

-known Gottschalk. Some chose to believe that the advertisement had been

-inserted by German secret agents for the purpose of notifying the large

-number of Germans in Brazil that the Fatherland was still active in

-American waters.

-

-A rumor having no substance whatever was to the effect that the crew

-of the ship had revolted, overcome the officers and converted the ship

-into a German raider. A companion tale said the ship had sailed for

-Germany to deliver her cargo of manganese to the enemy, by whom this

-valuable metal was sorely needed. The only foundation for this rumor

-was the fact that the _Cyclops_ was indeed carrying a load of manganese

-ore to the United States.

-

-It was not until August 30, 1918, that Secretary of the Navy Josephus

-Daniels announced that the ship was officially recorded as lost.

-At that time he notified the relatives of the officers, crew and

-passengers. More than three months later, on December 9th, Mr. Daniels

-supplemented this official notice with the statement, given to the

-newspaper correspondents, that “no reasonable explanation” of the

-_Cyclops_ case could be given. And here the official news ends. At this

-writing, inquiry at the official source in Washington brings the answer

-that nothing has since been learned to alter the then issued statement.

-

-The _Cyclops_ case naturally excited and disturbed the public mind,

-with the result of an unusual crop of fancies, lies, false alarms and

-hoaxes. On May 8, 1923, for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh

-reported that she had found a bottle at Atlantic City containing the

-message “_Cyclops_ wrecked at Sea.--H.” This note was written on a

-piece of note paper torn from a memorandum book and was yellowed with

-age. The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealing wax--a

-substance which shipwrecked sailors do not have in their pockets at the

-moment of peril.

-

-Other such messages were found from time to time. One floated ashore at

-Velasco, Tex., also in a bottle. It read:

-

- “U. S. S. _Cyclops_, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25, Long. 35.11.

- All on board when German submarine fired on us. Lifeboats going to

- pieces. No one to be left to tell the tale.”

-

-The position indicated is midway between Hatteras and the Azores, where

-the _Cyclops_ had no business and probably never was. It was found

-after the war, as already suggested, that no German submarine had been

-in any so distant region at the time. We may accordingly look upon this

-bottle as another flagon of disordered fancy, another press from the

-old “_spurlos versenkt_” madness.

-

-Finally, in their search for something that might explain this dark and

-baffling affair, the hunters came upon a suggestive fact. The commander

-of the _Cyclops_ was Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It now came

-to light--and it struck many persons like a revelation--that this man

-was really G. W. Wichtman, that he was born a German; ergo, that he

-was the man responsible for this disaster to our navy. It proved true

-that Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, but he had been brought

-to the United States as a child and had spent twenty-six years in

-the American navy. No one in official position suspected him, but the

-professional Hun _strafers_ insisted that this was the typical act of a

-German, no matter how long separated from his native land, how little

-acquainted with it or how long and faithfully attached to the service

-of his adopted country. It is only fair to the memory of a blameless

-officer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worley could not have done

-such a complete job had he wished to and that his record is officially

-without the least blemish.

-

-We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanations of

-the fate of the big collier. One possibility is that the manganese

-developed dangerous gases in the hold and caused a terrific explosion,

-which blew the ship out of the water without warning, killed almost all

-on board and so wrecked the boats that none could reach land. The only

-trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand ton ship, when destroyed

-by an explosion, is certain to leave a great mass of surface wreckage,

-which will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing

-vessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vessels sent out by the

-Navy Department visited every ness and cove and bay along the coast

-from Brazil to Hatteras, every island in the West Indies and every

-quarter of the circling seas without ever finding so much as a splinter

-belonging to the collier. Fishermen and boatmen in all the great region

-were questioned, encouraged with promises of reward and sent seeking,

-but they, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that great ship.

-

-This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disaster at the

-hands of a German raider or submarine. Besides, to emphasize the

-matter once more, the German records show that there is no possibility

-of anything of this sort. The suspicion has been officially and

-categorically denied and there is no reason for concealment now.

-

-There remains one further possibility, which probably conceals the

-truth. The _Cyclops_, like her sister ships, the _Neptune_ and

-_Jupiter_, was topheavy. She carried, like them, six big steel derricks

-on a superstructure fifty feet from her main deck. This great weight

-aloft made it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she could not

-roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing. We have

-but to suppose that with her one crippled engine she ran into heavy

-weather or perhaps a tidal wave, that she heeled over suddenly, her

-cargo shifted and her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a few

-seconds. In that event there would have been no time for using the

-wireless, no chance to launch any boats. Also, with everything battened

-and tied down, ship-shape for a naval vessel travelling in time of

-war, especially if the weather was a little heavy, there is the strong

-possibility that nothing could have been loose to float free. In this

-manner the whole big ship with all her parts and all who rode upon her

-may have been dumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One of the

-floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in the previous year by

-the U 121 may have done the fatal rocking, it is true.

-

-There is no better explanation, and I have reason to know that an

-upset of this sort is the theory held by naval builders and naval

-officials generally. But certainly there is none and a satisfying

-answer is not likely to come from the graveyard of the deep.

-

-

-

-

-BIBLIOGRAPHY

-

-

- Note--the number in parenthesis after each reference indicates the

- chapter of this volume concerned.

-

- “American Versus Italian Brigandage.--Life, Trial and Conviction of W.

- H. Westervelt,” Philadelphia, 1875. (1)

-

- Atlay, James Beresford; “The Tichborne Case,” London, 1916. (5)

-

- Austrian Archives, Letters from the, quoted in the New York _World_,

- Jan. 10 and 17, 1926. (3)

-

- Bierce, Ambrose; “Collected Works.” (15)

-

- Bierce, Ambrose; “Letters of,” Edited by Bertha Pope, San Francisco,

- 1922. (15)

-

- Crowe, Pat; “His Story, Confessions and Reformation,” New York, 1906.

- (8)

-

- Crowe, Pat; “Spreading Evil,” New York, 1927. (8)

-

- Faucigny-Lucigne, Mme. de.; “L’Archiduc Jean Salvator,” Paris. (3)

-

- Faustini, Arnaldo; “Gli Esploratori,” Turin, 1913. (16)

-

- Faustini, Arnaldo; “Le Memorie dell’ ingegniere Andrée,” Milan, 1914.

- (16)

-

- Felstead, Sidney Theodore (and Lady Muir); “Famous Criminals and their

- Trials,” London and New York, 1926. (5)

-

- Fisher, H. W.; “The Story of Louise,” New York, 1912. (3)

-

- Garzon, Eugenio; “Jean Orth,” Paris, 1906. (3)

-

- Griffiths, Arthur; “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” London, 1902. (5)

-

- Kenealy, Maurice Edward; “The Tichborne Tragedy,” London, 1913. (5)

-

- Lachmabre, Henri, and Machuron, A.; “Andrée’s Balloon Expedition in

- Search of the North Pole,” New York, 1898. (16)

-

- Larisch, Countess Marie; “My Past,” London and New York, 1913. (3)

-

- “Letters from Andrée’s Party,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian

- Institution for 1897. (16)

-

- Louise of Belgium, Princess; “My Own Affairs,” New York, (3)

-

- Louise Marie Amélie, Princess of Belgium; “Autour des trônes que j’ai

- vu tomber,” Paris, 1921. (3)

-

- Louisa of Tuscany, ex-Crown Princess of Saxony; “My Own Story,” London

- and New York, 1911. (3)

-

- McWatters, George S.; “Detectives of Europe and America,” Hartford,

- 1877-1883. (11)

-

- Minnigerode, Meade; “Lives and Times.” (2)

-

- Orton, Arthur; “Confessions of,” London, 1908. (5)

-

- Parry, Edward Abbott; “Vagabonds All,” London, 1926. (5)

-

- Parton, James; “Life and Times of Aaron Burr,” Boston and New York,

- 1898. (2)

-

- Parton, James; “Famous Americans of Recent Times.” (2)

-

- Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Blennerhassett, or the Decree of Fate,”

- Boston, 1901. (2)

-

- Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Theodosia, the First Gentlewoman of her

- Times,” Boston, 1907. (2)

-

- Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, V. 14, 1916. (2)

-

- Report of the Select Committee of the Parliament of New South Wales on

- the Case of William Creswell, Sydney, 1900. (5)

-

- Ross, Christian K.; “Charley Ross,” etc., Philadelphia, 1876; London,

- 1877. (1)

-

- Safford, W. H.; “Life of Harman Blennerhassett,” 1850. (2)

-

- Safford, W. H.; “The Blennerhassett Papers,” Ed. by, Cincinnati, 1864.

- (2)

-

- Starrett, Vincent; “Ambrose Bierce,” Chicago, 1920.

-

- Stoker, Bram; “Famous Impostors,” London. (5)

-

- Tod, Charles Burr; “Life of Col. Aaron Burr,” etc., pamph., New York,

- 1879. (2)

-

- Torelli, Enrico; “Mari d’Altesse,” Paris, 1913. (3)

-

- Wandell, Samuel and Minnigerode, Meade; “Life of Aaron Burr,” New

- York, 1925. (2)

-

- Walling, George W.; “Recollections of a New York Chief of Police,” New

- York, 1888. (1)

-

- Westervelt, “Life Trial and Conviction of,” pamph., Philadelphia,

- 1879. (1)

-

-

-

-

-Transcriber’s Notes:

-

-

-Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

-

-Some questionable spellings (e.g. Monterey instead of Monterrey) are

-retained from the original.

-

-

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***

+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ~~ SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS ~~
+
+The Ross house, Washington Lane, Germantown, Pa.
+
+_From a sketch by W. P. Snyder_]
+
+
+
+
+MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING
+
+_By_
+EDWARD H. SMITH
+
+_Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
+THE DIAL PRESS
+NEW YORK · MCMXXVII
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1924, by
+
+  STREET AND SMITH CORPORATION
+
+  Copyright, 1927, by
+  THE DIAL PRESS, INC.
+
+
+  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+  BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+  To
+
+  JOSEPH A. FAUROT
+
+  A GREAT FINDER OF WANTED MEN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+
+  A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING                                  xi
+
+  I. THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA                               1
+
+  II. “SEVERED FROM THE RACE”                             23
+
+  III. THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE                              40
+
+  IV. THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY                               65
+
+  V. THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE                           82
+
+  VI. THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK                     101
+
+  VII. DOROTHY ARNOLD                                    120
+
+  VIII. EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE                       133
+
+  IX. THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING                              153
+
+  X. THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE                           171
+
+  XI. A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE                             187
+
+  XII. THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS                        203
+
+  XIII. THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA                        219
+
+  XIV. THE LOST MILLIONAIRE                              237
+
+  XV. THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY                           257
+
+  XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY                      273
+
+  XVII. SPECTRAL SHIPS                                   292
+
+  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                           313
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                TO FACE PAGE
+
+  CHARLIE ROSS                                            10
+
+  THEODOSIA BURR                                          32
+
+  MILLIE STÜBEL                                           44
+
+  ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR                                56
+
+  ARTHUR ORTON                                            94
+
+  MARION CLARKE                                          110
+
+  DOROTHY ARNOLD                                         126
+
+  PAT CROWE                                              146
+
+  JIMMIE GLASS                                           204
+
+  JOE VAROTTA                                            220
+
+  AMBROSE J. SMALL                                       240
+
+  AMBROSE BIERCE                                         260
+
+  DOCTOR ANDRÉE                                          280
+
+  _U. S. S. CYCLOPS_                                     304
+
+
+    _And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,
+    His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;
+    And lo, between the nightfall and the light,
+    He is not, and none knoweth of such an one._
+
+                                      --_Laus Veneris._
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING
+
+ “... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit wished to
+ bring tidings back no more and never to leave the place; there with
+ the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed on lotus and forget the
+ homeward way.”
+
+                                           THE ODYSSEY, Book IX.
+
+
+The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand and the Sirens from their
+Campanian isle, but still the sons of men go forth to strangeness and
+forgetfulness. What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds
+them in absence, we must try to read from their history, their psyche
+and the chemistry of their wandering souls. Some urgent whip of that
+divine vice, our curiosity, drives us to the exploration and will
+not relent until we discover whether they have been devoured by the
+Polyphemus of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or simply made
+drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.
+
+The unreturning adventurer--the man whose destiny is hid in doubt--has
+tormented the imagination in every century. In life the lost comrade
+wakes a more poignant curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of
+the true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the Etruscans
+slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila die of apoplexy in the
+arms of Hilda or shall we believe the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen
+and Volsunga sagas or the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it
+the genuine Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what of the
+two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of Dandhu Panth after he fled
+into Nepal in 1859; did he perish soon or is there truth in the tale
+of the finger burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died at
+Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege of the barn at
+Bloomfield?
+
+These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than any other minor
+facet of history, and the patient searching of scholars seems but to
+add to the popular confusion and to the charm of our doubts. Even where
+research seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling
+to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always sweeter than a
+sordid fact.
+
+Even in the modern world, so closely organized, so completely explored
+and so prodigiously policed, those enigmas continue to pile up. In
+our day it is an axiom that nothing is harder to lose sight of than
+a ship at sea or a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a
+paradox. It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name from a vessel,
+change her gear and peculiarities a little, paint a fresh word upon
+her side and so conceal her. Simpler still, why can’t any man, not too
+conspicuous or individual, step out of the crowd, alter the cut of
+his hair and clothes, assume another name and immediately be draped
+in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annual expenditure for ship
+registry and all sorts of marine policing on the one side, and an even
+greater sum for the land police, on the other, to prevent such things?
+Truly enough, and it is the police power of the earth, backed by
+certain plain or obscure motivations in mankind, that makes it next to
+impossible for a ship or a man to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.
+
+Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part of our argument, we
+may note that, for all the difficulty, thousands of human beings try
+to vanish every year. Plainly there are many circumstances, many
+crises in the lives of men, women and children, that make a complete
+detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay, imperative. Yet, of the
+twenty-five thousand persons reported missing to the police of the
+City of New York every year, to take an instance, only a few remain
+permanently undiscovered. Most are mere stayouts or young runaways
+and are returned to their inquiring relatives within a few hours or
+days. Others are deserting spouses--husbands who have wearied or wives
+who have found new loves. These sometimes lead long chases before
+they are reported and identified, at which time the police have no
+more to do with the matter unless there is action from the domestic
+courts. A number are suicides, whose bodies soon or late rise from the
+city-engirdling waters and are, almost without fail, identified by the
+marvelously efficient police detectives in charge of the morgues. Some
+are pretended amnesics and a few are true ones. But in the end the
+police of the cities clear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in
+the year 1924, the New York police department had on its books only one
+male and one female uncleared case originating in the year of 1918,
+or six years earlier. At the same time there were four male and six
+female cases dating from 1919, three male and one female cases that
+had originated in 1920, no male and three female cases that originated
+in 1921, three male and two female cases of the date of 1922, but in
+1924 there were still pending, as the police say, twenty-eight male and
+sixty-three female cases of the year preceding, 1923.
+
+The point here is that only one man and one woman could stay hid from
+the searching eyes of the law as long as six years. Evidently the
+business of vanishing presents some formidable difficulties.
+
+However, it is not even these solitary absentees that engage our
+interest most sharply, for usually we know why they went and have
+some indication that they are alive and merely skulking. There is
+another and far rarer genus of the family of the missing, however,
+that does strike hard upon that explosive chemical of human curiosity.
+Here we have those few and detached inexplicable affairs that neither
+astuteness nor diligence, time nor patience, frenzy nor faith can
+penetrate--the true romances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment.
+A man goes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he is gone
+from all that knew him, all that was familiar. There is a gap in the
+environment and many lives are affected, nearly or remotely. No one
+knows the why or where or how of his going and all the power of men
+and materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass and these tales of
+puzzlement become legends. They are then things to brood about before
+the fire, when the moving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness
+of life.
+
+Again, there are those strange instances of the theft of human beings
+by human beings--kidnappings, in the usual term. Nothing except a
+natural cataclysm is so excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion
+that there are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the
+public temper may result from such crimes will be seen from some of
+what follows. The most celebrated instance is, of course, the affair
+of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia, which carries us back more than half
+a century. We have here the classic American kidnapping case, already
+a tradition, rich in all the elements that make the perfect abduction
+tale.
+
+This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, as old as the
+races. From the Phoenicians who stole babes to feed to their bloody
+divinities, the Minoans who raped the youth of Greece for their
+bull-fights, and the priests of many lands who demanded maidens to
+satisfy the wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, down
+to the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or are said to steal,
+children for bridal gifts, we have this dread vein running through
+the body of our history. We need, accordingly, no going back into our
+phylogeny or biology, to understand the frenzy of the mother when the
+shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. The women of Normandy are
+said still to whisper with trembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or
+Retz), that bold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanne d’Arc,
+who seems to have been a stealer and killer of children, instead of
+the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard, as many believe. What terror
+other kidnappers have sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from
+the text.
+
+This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries, for such
+works exist in numbers. The author has limited himself to problems
+of disappearance and cases of kidnapping, thereby excluding many
+twice-told wonders--the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,
+Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s _Femme sans nom_, the
+changeling of Louis Philippe and the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair
+at Mayerling.
+
+Neither have I attempted any technical exploration of the conduct and
+motives of vanishers and kidnappers. It must be sufficiently clear
+that a man unpursued who flees and hides is out of tune with his
+environment, ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accent again
+the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included, are creatures of
+disease or defect.
+
+A general bibliography will be found at the end of the book. The
+information to be had from these volumes has been liberally supported
+and amplified from the files of contemporary newspapers in the
+countries and cities where these dramas of doubt were played. The
+records of legal trials have been consulted in instances where trials
+took place and I have talked with the accessible officials having
+knowledge of the cases or persons here treated.
+
+                                                        E. H. S.
+
+ New York, August, 1927.
+
+
+
+
+MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA
+
+
+Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of June, 1874, two men in
+a shabby-covered buggy stopped their horse under the venerable elms
+of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy suburb of Philadelphia,
+with its grave-faced revolutionary houses and its air of lavendered
+maturity. All about these intruders was historic ground. Near at
+hand was the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington and his
+tattered command in their famous encounter. Yonder stood the old Morris
+Mansion, where the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his
+troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous Agnew
+fell before a backwoods rifleman, and there Mad Anthony Wayne was
+forced to decamp by the fire of his confused left. Not far away the
+first American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous house on the
+ridge had once been the American Capitol. The whole region was a hive
+of memories.
+
+Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign of interest in all
+these things. Instead, they devoted their attention to the two young
+sons of a grocer who happened to be playing among the bushes on their
+father’s property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence
+by the strangers, who offered them sweets and asked them who they were,
+where their parents were staying, how old they might be, and how they
+might like to go riding.
+
+The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary, tried to respond
+manfully, as his parents had taught him. He said that he was Walter
+Ross, and that his companion was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His
+mother, he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older daughters,
+and his father was busy at the store in the business section of the
+settlement. Yes, that big, white house on the knoll behind them was
+where they lived. All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled
+off to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their buggy he
+demurred. The men got pieces of candy from their pockets, filled the
+hands of both children, and drove away.
+
+When the father of the boys came home a little later, he found his
+sons busy with their candy, and he was told where they had got it. He
+smiled and felt that the two men in the buggy must be very fond of
+children. Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless
+incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was the prelude to the most
+famous of American abduction cases and the introduction to one of the
+abiding mysteries of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness
+came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide notoriousness--a case of
+kidnapping that stands firm in popular memory after the confusions of
+fifty-odd years.
+
+On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again. This time they
+had no difficulty in getting the children into their wagon.[1] Saying
+that they were going to buy fire crackers for the approaching Fourth
+of July, they carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and
+Richmond Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was given a silver
+quarter and told to go into a shop and buy what he wanted. At the
+end of five or ten minutes the boy emerged to find his brother, his
+benefactors and their buggy gone.
+
+[1] Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial,
+the following year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this
+seems unlikely.
+
+Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his home in the toils
+of a strange city, stood on the curb and gave childish vent to his
+feelings. The sight of the boy with his hands full of fireworks and
+his eyes full of tears, soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock
+finally took charge of the youngster and got from him the name and
+address of his father. At about eight o’clock that evening he arrived
+at the Ross dwelling and delivered the child, to find that the younger
+boy had not been brought home, and that the father was out visiting the
+police stations in quest of his sons.
+
+In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping was not
+immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile reception when the
+circumstances forced its entertainment. The father of the missing
+Charlie was Christian K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was
+popularly supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a
+prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and master of a
+competence. His flourishing trade, the big house in which he lived
+with his wife and seven children, and the fine grounds about his home
+naturally caused many to believe that he was a man of large means. In
+view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should have been
+considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited the details of his
+adventure with the men in a faithful and detailed way, telling enough
+about the talk and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.
+Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of the strangers.
+Finally, the manœuver of deserting the older boy and disappearing with
+his brother should have been sufficiently suggestive for the most
+lethargic policeman. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the
+skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves in the
+following advertisement, which I take from the _Philadelphia Ledger_ of
+July 3:
+
+ “Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age, light
+ complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will be paid
+ on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner of Fifth and
+ Chestnut streets.”
+
+The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal the fact of the
+child’s vanishment from his mother, who was not called from her summer
+resort until some days later.
+
+The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on their comfortable
+assumption that the boy had been lost. On the fifth, Mr. Ross received
+a letter which had been dated and posted on the day before in
+Philadelphia. It stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the
+writer, that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for
+him through the police, and that the father would hear more in a few
+days. The note was scrawled by some one who was trying to conceal his
+natural handwriting and any literate attainments he may have possessed.
+Punctuation and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest words
+were so crazily misspelled as to betray purposiveness. The unfortunate
+father was addressed as “Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was
+later contracted to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that followed
+were signed “John.”
+
+Even this communication did not mean much to the police, though they
+had not, at that early stage of the mystery, the troublesome flood of
+crank letters to plead as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter
+of fact, this first letter came before there had been anything but the
+briefest and most conservative announcements in the newspapers, and it
+should have been apparent to any one that there was nothing fraudulent
+about it. Yet the police officials dawdled. A second message from the
+mysterious John wakened them at last to action.
+
+On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer communication,
+unquestionably from the writer of the first, in which he was told that
+his appeal to the detectives would be vain. He must meet the terms of
+the ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the murderer of
+his own child. The writer declared that no power in the universe would
+discover the boy, or restore him to his father, without payment of the
+money, and he added that if the father sent detectives too near the
+hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the doom of his
+son. The letter closed with most terrifying threats. The kidnappers
+were frankly out to get money, and they would have it, either from
+Ross or from others. If he failed to yield, his child would be slain
+as an example to others, so that they would act more wisely when their
+children were taken. Ross would see his child either alive or dead. If
+he paid, the boy would be brought back alive; if not, his father would
+behold his corpse. Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified
+by the insertion of these words into the _Ledger_: “Ros, we be willing
+to negotiate.”
+
+Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie Ross terror burst
+upon Philadelphia and surrounding communities the following morning in
+full virulence. The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going
+road, searched the trains and boats, went through all the craft lying
+in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all the known criminals in town
+and immediately began a house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented
+proceeding in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory with
+every fresh edition. At once the mad pack of anonymous letter writers
+took up the cry, writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents,
+who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever came to their
+door, a most insulting and disheartening array of fulminations which
+caused the collapse of the already overburdened mother.
+
+In the fever which attacked the city any child was likely to be
+seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent, to the nearest police
+station, there to answer the suspicion of being Charlie Ross. Mothers
+with golden-haired boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted
+to Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that he give them
+written attestation of the fact that their children were not his, and
+the poor beladen man actually wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The
+madness of the public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the
+age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before the officials by
+unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with black hair were apprehended
+by the score at the demand of citizens who pleaded that they might be
+the missing boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought
+before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed seekers for
+the missing boy had to be driven from the station houses with threats
+and blows.
+
+Following the command of the child snatchers with literal fidelity,
+Mr. Ross had published in the _Ledger_ the words I have quoted. The
+result was a third epistle from the robbers. It recognized his reply,
+but made no definite proposition and gave no further orders, save the
+command that he reply in the _Ledger_, stating whether or not he was
+ready to pay the twenty thousand dollars. On the other hand, the letter
+continued the ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed
+at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked whether “Ros”
+cared more for money or his son. In this letter was the same labored
+effort to appear densely unlettered. One new note was added. The writer
+asked whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand pounds for
+the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer was, or wanted to seem, a
+Briton, used to speaking of money in British terms. This pretension was
+continued in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search
+for the missing boy in England.
+
+In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross relied absolutely
+on the police and put himself into their hands. He asked how he was
+to reply to the third letter and was told that he should pretend to
+acquiesce in the demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding
+them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy. But this
+subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors, with the result
+that a warning letter came to Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was
+told that he was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives
+could not help him, and that he must choose at once between his money
+and the life of his child.
+
+Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to yield to the demands
+of the extortioners, and several men of means offered him loans or
+gifts of such funds as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he
+signified his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the mysterious
+John wrote him two or three well-veiled letters which were intended
+to test his good faith. At this point the father and the abductors
+seemed about to agree, when the officials again intervened and caused
+the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement that
+he would not compound a felony by paying money for the return of his
+child. But this stand had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful
+anxiety caused another change of front.
+
+Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effect in more than one
+direction. Its most serious consequence was that it gave the abductors
+the impression that they were dealing with a man who did not know
+his own mind, could not be relied upon to keep his promises, and was
+obviously in the control of the officers. Accordingly they moved
+with supercaution and began to impose impossible conditions. By this
+time they had written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozen
+letters, each containing more terrifying threats than its antecedents.
+To look this correspondence over at this late day is to see the
+nervousness of the abductors, slowly mounting to the point of extreme
+danger to the child. But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was
+overpersuaded by official opinion.
+
+At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunder of all blunders
+was made. Philadelphia was tremulous with excitement. The police of
+every American city were looking for the apparition of the boy or his
+kidnappers. Officials in the chief British and Continental ports were
+watching arriving ships for the fugitives, and millions of newspaper
+readers were following the case in eager suspense. Naturally the police
+and the other officials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the world
+were upon them. They quite humanly decided on a course calculated to
+bring them celebrity in case of success and ample justification in case
+of failure. In other words, they made the gesture typical of baffled
+officialdom, without respect to the safety of the missing child or the
+real interests of its parents. At a meeting presided over by the mayor,
+attended by leading citizens and advised by the chiefs of the police,
+a reward of twenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransom
+demanded, was subscribed and advertised. The terms called for “evidence
+leading to the capture and conviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross
+and the safe return of the child,” conditions which may be cynically
+viewed as incongruous. The following day the chief of police announced
+that his men, should they participate in the successful coup, would
+claim no part of the reward.
+
+All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducement to informers, the
+hope being, apparently, that some one inside the kidnapping conspiracy
+would be bribed into revelations. But the actual result was quite the
+opposite. A sudden hush fell upon the writer of the letters. Also,
+there were no more communications in the _Ledger_. A week passed
+without further word, and the parents of the boy were thrown into utter
+hopelessness. Finally another letter came, this time from New York,
+whereas all previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It was
+clear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductors to leave
+the city, and their letter showed that they had slipped away with their
+prisoner, in spite of the vaunted precautions.
+
+The next note from the criminals warned Ross in terms of impressive
+finality that he must at once abandon the detectives and come to terms.
+He signified his intention of complying by inserting an advertisement
+in the _New York Herald_, as directed by the abductors. They wrote him
+that they would shortly inform him of the manner in which the money was
+to be paid over. Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Ross
+to procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes of small denomination.
+These he was to place in a leather traveling bag, which was to be
+painted white so that it might be visible at night. With this bag of
+money, Ross was to board the midnight train for New York on the night
+of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform, ready to toss the bag to
+the track. As soon as he should see a bright light and a white flag
+being waved, he was to let go the money, but the train was not to stop
+until the next station was reached. In case these conditions were fully
+and faithfully met, the child would be restored, safe and sound, within
+a few hours.
+
+Ross, after consultation with the police, decided to temporize once
+more. He got the white painted bag, as commanded, and took the
+midnight train, prepared to change to a Hudson River train in New York
+and continue his journey to Albany, as the abductors had further
+instructed. But there was no money in the valise. Instead, it contained
+a letter in which Ross said that he could not pay until he saw the
+child before him. He insisted that the exchange be made simultaneously
+and suggested that communication through the newspapers was not
+satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed all plans to the police.
+Some closer and secret way of communicating must be devised, he wrote.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ CHARLIE ROSS ~~]
+
+So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode to New York on the
+rear platform of one train and to Albany on another. But the agent
+of the kidnappers did not appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia
+crestfallen, only to find that a false newspaper report had caused
+the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announced that Ross was
+going West to follow up a clew. The kidnappers had seen this and
+decided that their man was not going to make the trip to New York and
+Albany. Consequently there was no one along the track to receive the
+valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductors would have laughed
+at the empty police dodge of suggesting a closer and secret method of
+communication--for the purpose of betraying the malefactors, of course.
+
+From this point on, Ross and the abductors continued to argue, through
+the _New York Herald_, the question of simultaneous exchange of the
+boy and money. Ross naturally took the position that he could not risk
+being imposed on by men who perhaps did not have the child at all. The
+robbers, on their side, contended that they could not see any safe way
+of making a synchronous exchange. So the negotiations dragged along.
+
+The New York police entered the case on August 2, when Chief Walling
+sent to Philadelphia for the letters received by Mr. Ross from the
+abductors. They were taken to New York by Captain Heins of the
+Philadelphia police, and “Chief Walling’s informant identified the
+writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”
+
+In order to draw the line between fact and fable as clearly as
+possible at this point, I quote from official police sources, namely,
+“Celebrated Criminal Cases of America,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain
+of police, San Francisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says that
+his facts have been “verified with the assistance of police officials
+throughout the country.” He continues with respect to the Ross case:
+
+“The informant then stated that in April, 1874--the year in
+question--Mosher and Joseph Douglas, alias Clark, endeavored to
+persuade him to participate in the kidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt
+children, while the child was playing on the lawn surrounding the
+family residence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)
+The child was to be held until a ransom of fifty thousand dollars was
+obtained, and the informant’s part of the plot would be to take the
+child on a small launch and keep it in seclusion until the money was
+received, but he declined to enter into the conspiracy.”
+
+With all due respect to the police and to official versions, this
+report smells strongly of fabrication after the fact, as we shall
+see. It is, however, true that the New York police had some sort of
+information early in August, and it may even be true that they had
+suspicions of Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A history of
+subsequent events will give the surest light on this disputed point.
+
+The negotiations between Ross and the abductors continued in a
+desultory fashion, without any attempt to deliver the child or get
+the ransom, until toward the middle of November. At this time the
+kidnappers arranged a meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. Mr.
+Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousand dollars in a
+package. A messenger was to call for this some time during the day.
+His approach and departure had been carefully planned. In case he was
+watched or followed, he would not find the abductors on his return, and
+the child would be killed. Only good faith could succeed. Mr. Ross was
+to insert in the _New York Herald_ a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus,
+Fifth Avenue Hotel--instant.” This would indicate his decision to pay
+the money and signify the day he would be at the hotel.
+
+Accordingly the father of the missing boy had the advertisement
+published, saying that he would be at the hotel with the money
+“Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.” Ross’ brother and nephew kept the
+tryst, but no messenger came for the money, and the last hope of the
+family seemed broken.
+
+The Rosses had long since given up the detectives and recognized
+the futility of police promises. The father of the boy had, in his
+distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentary sentiments pertaining
+to the guardians of the law, with the result that the unhappy man was
+subjected to taunt and insult and the questioning of his motives.
+Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkerton detectives, who evidently
+counseled Mr. Ross to act in secret. In any event, the appointment
+at the Fifth Avenue Hotel was the last of its kind to be made, though
+Ross and the abductors seemed to have been in contact at later dates.
+Whatever the precise facts may be on this point, five months had soon
+gone by without the recovery of the boy, or the apprehension of the
+kidnappers, while search was apparently being made in many countries.
+If, as claimed, Chief Walling of the New York police had direct
+information bearing on the identity of the abductors the first week
+in August, he managed a veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and
+his men failed, in four months, to find a widely known criminal who
+was afterward shown to have been in and about New York all of that
+time. Not the police, but a stroke of destiny, intervened to break the
+impasse.
+
+On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglars entered the
+summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt, presiding justice of the appellate
+division of the New York supreme court. This mansion stood overlooking
+New York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The
+villa was then unoccupied, but in the course of the preceding summer
+Justice Van Brunt had installed a burglar alarm system which connected
+with a gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt, about two
+hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hot weather residence. Holmes
+Van Brunt occupied his house the year around. He was at home on the
+night in question, and the sounding of the gong brought him out of bed.
+He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the young man came back with
+the report that there was a light moving in his uncle’s place.
+
+Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men from their quarters, armed
+them with revolvers or shotguns and went out to trap the intruders. The
+house of Justice Van Brunt was surrounded by the four men, who waited
+for the burglars to emerge. After half an hour two figures were seen
+to issue from the cellar door and were challenged. They answered by
+opening fire. The first was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The second ran
+around the house, only to be intercepted by young Van Brunt and shot
+down, dying instantly.
+
+When the Van Brunts and their servants gathered about the wounded man,
+who was lying on the sodden ground in the agony of death, he signified
+that he wished to make a statement. An umbrella was held over him to
+keep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences, that
+he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companion was William Mosher. He
+understood he was dying and therefore wished to tell the truth. He and
+Mosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He did not know where
+the child was, but Mosher could tell. Mr. Van Brunt told him that
+Mosher was dead, and the body of the other burglar was carried over and
+exhibited to the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the child would
+be returned safely in a few days. On hearing one of the party express
+doubt about his story, Douglas is said to have remarked:
+
+“Chief Walling knows all about us and was after us, and now he has us.”
+
+Douglas died there on the lawn, with the rain drenching his tortured
+body. Both he and Mosher were identified from the police records by
+officers who had known them and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man
+who had seen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantown
+with the two boys, were taken to New York. The brother of the kidnapped
+child, though he was purposely kept in the dark as to his mission,
+immediately recognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,
+saying that Douglas was the one who gave the candy, and that Mosher
+had driven the horse. This identification was confirmed by the other
+witness.
+
+The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously and hourly
+expected. But he had not arrived at the end of a week, and the police
+officials immediately moved in new directions.
+
+Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt, of New York, a
+former police officer, who was later convicted of complicity in the
+abduction. Westervelt and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time
+policeman made a rambling statement containing little information,
+but his sister admitted that she had been privy to the matter of the
+kidnapping. She had known for several months, she said, that her
+husband had kidnapped Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted in
+his planning, and did not know where he had kept the child hidden, and
+was unable to give any information.
+
+Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the child to be alive
+and stated her reasons. She did not believe her husband, burglar and
+kidnapper though he was, capable of injuring a child. He had four of
+his own and had always been a good father. The poverty of his family
+had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs. Mosher related, she had
+pleaded with her husband to return the stolen boy to his parents,
+saying that it was cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be
+little chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the danger to
+the abductors was becoming greater every day. This conversation, she
+said, had taken place only a few days before the Van Brunt burglary
+and Mosher’s death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that the
+child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still living.
+
+But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his abductors only
+intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives were sent to Europe, to
+Mexico, to the Pacific coast, and to various other places, whither
+false clews pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross
+himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds of journeys
+to look at suspected children in all parts of the United States. He
+spent, according to his own account, more than sixty thousand dollars
+on these hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted as
+had all the others. At last, after more than twenty years of seeking,
+Christian K. Ross gave up in despair, saying he felt sure the boy must
+be dead.
+
+For some time after the kidnappers had been killed and identified, a
+large part of the American public suspected that Westervelt or Mrs.
+Mosher, or some one connected with them, was detaining the missing
+child for fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its return home.
+The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enough to observe, remember
+and talk. He might, if released, give information that would lead to
+the imprisonment of Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,
+steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise. The
+Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, in February, 1875, which
+fixed the penalty for abducting or detaining a child at twenty-five
+years’ imprisonment, but the new law contained a proviso that any
+person or persons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriff
+on or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875, should be immune
+from any punishment. At the same time Mr. Ross offered a cash reward
+of five thousand dollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no
+questions asked. He named more than half a dozen responsible firms at
+whose places of business the child might be left for identification,
+announcing that all these business houses were prepared to pay the
+reward on the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in the boy
+would not be detained.
+
+All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last to be reached that
+the boy was beyond human powers of restoration.
+
+To tell what seems to have been the truth--though it was suspected at
+the time--the New York police had fairly reliable information on Mosher
+and Douglas soon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though he
+never openly said so, to have been informed by a brother of Mosher’s
+who was on bad terms with the kidnapper. Not long afterwards he had
+Westervelt brought in for questioning. That worthy had been dismissed
+from the New York police force a few months earlier for neglect of duty
+or shielding a policy room. His sister was Bill Mosher’s (the suspected
+man’s) wife and it was known that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia
+about the time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying, by
+every device, to get himself reinstated as a policeman, and Walling
+held out to him the double bait of renewed employment and the whole of
+the twenty thousand dollars of reward offered for the return of the
+boy and the capture of the kidnappers.
+
+Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidity seems to have
+been committed, for though Westervelt visited the chief of police
+no fewer than twenty times, he was never trailed to his scores of
+appointments with his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neither
+did the astute guardians of the law get wind of the fact that Mosher
+and Douglas were in and about New York most of the time. They failed
+to find out that Westervelt and probably one of the others had been
+seen with the little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed
+to make the least progress in the case, though they had definite
+information concerning the names of the kidnappers, both of them
+experienced criminals with long records. It might be hard to discover
+a more dreadful piece of police bluffing and blundering. First the
+Philadelphia and then the New York forces gave the poorest possible
+advice, made the most egregious boasts and promises and then proceeded
+to show the most incredible stupidity and lack of organization. A later
+prosecutor summed it all up when he said the police had been, at least,
+honest.
+
+But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed at Judge Van Brunt’s
+house and Douglas had made his dying statements, it was easy to lure
+Westervelt to Philadelphia, arrest him, charge him with aiding the
+kidnappers and his wife with having been an accessory. Walter Ross had
+identified Mosher and Douglas as the men who had been in the buggy but
+had never seen Westervelt. A neighboring merchant appeared, however,
+and picked him out as the man who had spent half an hour in his shop a
+few weeks after the kidnapping, asking many questions about the Rosses,
+especially as to their financial position and the rumor that Christian
+K. Ross was bankrupt. Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge the
+day before Mosher and Douglas broke into the Van Brunt house and were
+killed. A woman appeared who had seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn
+horse-car with a child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon
+reasonably clear that the one-time New York policeman had conspired
+with his brother-in-law and the other man to seize the boy and get the
+ransom. Westervelt’s motives were rancor at being caught at his tricks
+and dismissed and financial necessity, for he was almost in want after
+his discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparations for the
+kidnapping, had the boy in his charge for a time and used his standing
+as a former officer to hoodwink the New York police. He had also had to
+do with some of the ransom letters.
+
+On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trial in the Court of
+Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, Judge Elcock presiding. Theodore V.
+Burgin and George J. Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Brunts
+waylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’ dying
+story. The witnesses above mentioned told their versions of what they
+had heard and observed. A porter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking
+resort at 74 Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestial
+hordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Tavern drinking
+and consulting with Mosher and Douglas, that he had boasted he could
+name the kidnappers and that he had arranged for secret signals to
+reveal the presence of the two confederates now dead. Chief Walling
+also testified against the man. The jury returned a verdict of guilty
+on three counts of the indictment, reaching its decision on September
+20, after long deliberation. On October 9, Judge Elcock sentenced the
+disgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinement at
+labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.
+
+Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admit that the decision
+against him was just, confess that he had taken any part in the
+kidnapping or yield the least hint as to the fate of the unfortunate
+little boy.
+
+Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearful vigil of the parents
+in such a case. In his book, Christian K. Ross recites, without
+improper emotion, that, not counting the cases looked into for him
+by the Pinkertons, he personally or through others investigated two
+hundred and seventy-three children reported to be the lost Charlie. In
+every case there was a mistake or a deception. Some of the lads put
+forward were old enough to have been conventional uncles to him.
+
+In the following decades many strange rumors were bruited, many false
+trails followed to their empty endings, and many spurious or unbalanced
+claimants investigated and exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did not die
+down for a full generation, and even to-day mothers in the outlying
+States frighten their children into obedience with the name and rumor
+of this stolen boy. He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of
+pathos and terror for the generations.
+
+As recently as June 5 of the current year, the _Los Angeles Times_,
+a journal staid to reaction, printed long and credulous sticks of
+type to the effect that John W. Brown, ill in the General Hospital of
+Los Angeles, was really the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue
+“confessed” that he had remained silent for fifty years in order to
+“guard the honor of my mother” and said he had been kidnapped by his
+“foster-father, William Henry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross
+“declined to have anything further to do with him.”
+
+Comment upon such caddism can be clinical only. The fact that the
+wretch who uttered it was sick and dying alone explains the fevered
+hallucination.
+
+As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind of an item suggesting the
+discovery of Charlie Ross is always good copy and will be telegraphed
+about the country from end to end, and printed at greater or lesser
+length. If the thing has the least aura of credibility about it, Sunday
+features will follow, remarkable mainly for their inaccuracies. In
+other words, that sad little boy of Washington Lane long since became a
+classic to the American press.
+
+At the end of more than fifty years the commentator can hazard no
+safer opinion on the probable fate of Charlie Ross than did his
+contemporaries. The popular theories then were that he had died of
+grief and privation, that Mosher had drowned him in New York Bay when
+he felt the police were near at hand, or that he had been adopted by
+some distant family and taught to forget his home and parents. Of these
+hollow guesses, the reader may take his choice now as then.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”
+
+
+Headless horsemen and other strange ghostly figures march nightly on
+the beach at Nag’s Head. For more than two years these shades and
+spectres have been seen and Coast Guardsman Steve Basnight has been
+trying vainly to convince his fellows. They have laughed upon him with
+sepulchral laughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. They have
+chided him as a seer of visions, a mad hallucinant.
+
+But now there are others who have seen and fled. Mrs. Alice Grice,
+passing the lonely sands in her motor, had trouble with the engine
+and saw or thought she saw a man standing there, brooding across the
+waters. She called to him and he, as one shaken from some immortal
+reverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seeming quite to walk, but
+floating into the fog, silent and serene.
+
+Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglers or rum
+runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyes of terror. But that cannot
+be so, for the coast guard is staunch and active. This is no ordinary
+visitor, no thing of flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restless
+spirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave and come to haunt
+this wild and forlorn region.
+
+George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelled being most
+closely and accurately. It is a tall, great man, clad in purest white,
+strolling along the beach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer
+than the sad and dreaming face.
+
+It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter, whose wrecked
+ship is believed by many to have been driven ashore at this point.
+
+So much for the lasting charm of doubt, since I take my substance here,
+and most of my mystery, from the _New York World_ of June 9, 1927,
+contained in a dispatch from Manteo, N. C., bearing the date of the
+previous day--one hundred and fifteen years after the happening.
+
+But if we see Aaron Burr ghostwalking in the moonlight as once he trod
+in the tortured flesh at the Battery, looking out upon those bitter
+waters that denied him hope, or if we believe, with many writers, that
+he fell upon his knees and cried out, “By this blow I am severed from
+the human race!” we are still not much nearer to the pathos or the
+mystery of that old incident in 1812, when Theodosia Burr set out for
+New York by sea and never reached it.
+
+“By and by,” says Parton in his “The Life and Times of Aaron Burr,”
+“some idle tales were started in the newspapers, that the _Patriot_ had
+been captured by pirates and all on board murdered except Theodosia,
+who was carried on shore as a captive.”
+
+Idle tales they may have been, but their vitality has outlived the
+pathetic facts. Indeed, unless probability be false and romance true,
+“the most brilliant woman of her day in America” perished at sea a
+little more than a hundred and fifteen years ago, caught off the
+Virginia Capes in a hurricane that scattered the British war fleet and
+crushed the “miserable little pilot boat” that was trying to bear her
+to New York. In that more than a century of intervening time, however,
+a tradition of doubt has clouded itself about the quietus of Aaron
+Burr’s celebrated daughter which puts her story immovably upon the
+roster of the great mysteries of disappearance. The various accounts of
+piratical atrocities connected with her death may be fanciful or even
+studiedly fictive, but even this realization does nothing to dispel the
+fog.
+
+Theodosia Burr was born in New York in 1783 and educated under
+the unflagging solicitude and careful personal direction of her
+distinguished father, who wanted her to be, as he testifies in his
+letters, the equal of any woman on earth. To this enlightened training
+the precious girl responded with notable spirit and intellectual
+acquisitiveness, mastering French as a child and becoming proficient
+in Latin and Greek before she was adolescent. At fourteen, her mother
+having died some years earlier, she was already mistress of the house
+of the New York senator and a figure in the best political society
+of the times. As a slip of a girl she played hostess to Volney,
+Talleyrand, Jerome Bonaparte and numberless other notables, and bore,
+in addition to her repute as a bluestocking, the name of a most
+beautiful and charming young woman. Something of her quality may be
+read from her numerous extant letters, two of which are quoted below.
+
+In 1801, just after her father had received the famous tied vote for
+the Presidency and declined to enter into the conspiracy which aimed to
+prefer him to Jefferson, recipient of the popular majority, Theodosia
+Burr was married to Joseph Alston, a young Carolina lawyer and planter
+who later became governor of his state. Thus, about the time her father
+was being installed as Vice-President, his happy and adoring daughter,
+his friend and confidante to the end, was making her twenty days’
+journey to her new home in South Carolina, where her husband owned a
+residence in Charleston and several rice plantations in the northern
+part of the state.
+
+At the time of the famous duel with Hamilton, in 1804, Burr was still
+Vice-President, still one of the chief political figures and at the
+very height of his popularity and fortune, an elevation from which that
+unfortunate encounter began his dislodgment. Theodosia was in the South
+with her husband at the time and knew nothing either of the challenge
+or of the duel itself until weeks after Hamilton was dead.
+
+Of the merits of the Burr-Hamilton controversy or the right and wrong
+of either man’s conduct little need be said here. As time goes on it
+becomes more and more apparent that Burr in no way exceeded becoming
+conduct or violated the gentlemanly code as then practised. Hamilton
+had been his persistent and by no means always honorable enemy. He had
+attacked and not infrequently belied his opponent, thwarting him where
+he could politically and even resorting to the use of his personal
+connections for the private humiliation of his foe. The answer in
+1804 to such tactics was the challenge. Burr gave it and insisted on
+satisfaction. Hamilton met him on the heights at Weehawken, across the
+Hudson from New York, and fell mortally wounded at the first exchange,
+dying thirty-one hours later.
+
+It is evident from a reading of the newspapers of the time and from
+the celebrated sermon on Hamilton’s death delivered by Dr. Nott, later
+president of Union College, that duelling was then so common that there
+existed “a preponderance of opinion in favor of it,” and that the spot
+at which Hamilton fell was so much in use for affairs of honor that
+Dr. Nott apostrophized it as “ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned
+with the richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record against us,
+the annual register of murders which you keep and send up to God!”
+Nevertheless, the town was shocked by the death of Hamilton, and Burr’s
+enemies seized the moment to circulate all manner of absurd calumnies
+which gained general credence and served to undo the victorious
+antagonist.
+
+It was reported that Hamilton had not fired at all, a story which was
+refuted by his powder-stained empty pistol. Next it was charged that
+Burr had coldly shot his opponent down after he had fired into the air.
+The fact seems to be that Hamilton discharged his weapon a fraction of
+a second after Burr, just as he was struck by his adversary’s ball.
+Hamilton’s bullet cut a twig over Burr’s head. The many yarns to the
+general effect that Burr was a dead shot and had practised secretly
+for months before he sent the challenge seem also to belong to the
+realm of fiction. Burr was never an expert with fire-arms, but he was
+courageous, collected and determined. He had every right to believe,
+from Hamilton’s past conduct, that his opponent would show him no mercy
+on the field. Both men were soldiers and acquainted with the code and
+with the use of weapons.
+
+But Hamilton’s friends were numerous, powerful and bitter. They left
+nothing undone that might bring upon Burr the fullest measure of
+public and private reprehension. The results of their campaign were
+peculiar, inasmuch as Burr lost his influence in the states which
+had formerly been the seat of his power and gained a high popularity
+in the comparatively weak new western states, where Hamilton and the
+Federalist leaders were regarded with hostility. At the expiration of
+his term of office Burr found himself politically dead and practically
+exiled by the charges of murder which had been lodged against him both
+in New York and New Jersey.
+
+The duel and its consequences marked the beginning of the Burr
+misfortunes. Undoubtedly the ostracism which greeted him after his
+retirement from office was the immediate fact which moved him to
+undertake his famous enterprise against the West and Mexico, an
+adventure that resulted in his trial for treason. The fact that he was
+acquitted, even with the weight of the government and the personal
+influence of President Jefferson, his onetime friend, thrown against
+him, did not save him from still further popular dislike, and he was at
+length forced to leave the country. It was in the course of this exile
+in Europe that Theodosia wrote him the well known letter from which I
+quote an illuminating extract:
+
+ “I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new
+ misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me
+ so superior, so elevated above other men; I contemplate you with such
+ a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love and pride,
+ that very little superstition would be necessary to make me worship
+ you as a superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite
+ in me. When I afterwards revert to myself, how insignificant my best
+ qualities appear. My vanity would be greater if I had not been placed
+ so near you; and yet my pride is our relationship. I had rather not
+ live than not be the daughter of such a man.”
+
+Burr remained abroad for four years, trying vainly to interest
+the British government and then Napoleon in various schemes of
+privateering. The net result of his activities in England was an order
+to leave the country. Nor did Burr fare any better in France. Napoleon
+simply refused to receive him and the American’s past acquaintance
+with and hospitable treatment of the emperor’s brother, once king of
+Westphalia, failed to avail him. Consequently, Burr slipped back into
+the United States in 1812, quite like a thief in the night, not certain
+what reception he might get and even fearful lest Hamilton’s wildest
+partisans might actually undertake to throw him into jail and try him
+for the shooting of their chief. The reception he got was hostile and
+suspicious enough, but there was no attempt to proceed legally.
+
+Theodosia, who had never ceased to work in her father’s interest,
+writing to everyone she knew and beseeching all those who had been her
+friends in the days of Burr’s ascendancy, in an effort to clear the
+way for his return to his native land, was overjoyed at the homecoming
+of her parent and expressed her pleasure in various charmingly written
+letters, wherein she promised herself the excitement of a trip to New
+York as soon as arrangements could be made.
+
+But the Burr cup of misfortune was not yet full. That summer
+Theodosia’s only child, Aaron Burr Alston, sickened and died in his
+twelfth year, leaving the mother prostrated and the grandfather, who
+had doted on the boy, supervised his education and centered all his
+hopes upon him, bereft of his composure and optimism, possibly for the
+first time in his varied and tempestuous life. Mrs. Alston’s letters at
+this time deserve at least quotation:
+
+ “A few miserable days past, my dear father, and your late letters
+ would have gladdened my soul; and even now I rejoice in their contents
+ as much as it is possible for me to rejoice at anything; but there is
+ no more joy for me; the world is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child
+ is gone for ever. He expired on the thirtieth of June. My head is not
+ sufficiently collected to say any thing further. May Heaven, by other
+ blessings, make you some amends for the noble grandson you have lost.”
+
+And again:
+
+ “Whichever way I turn the same anguish still assails me. You talk of
+ consolation. Ah! you know not what you have lost. I think Omnipotence
+ could give me no equivalent for my boy; no, none--none.”
+
+This was the woman who set out a few months later, sadly emaciated and
+very weak, to join her father in New York, hoping that she might gain
+strength and hope again from the burdened but undaunted man who never
+yet had failed her.
+
+The second war with England was in progress. Theodosia’s husband was
+governor of South Carolina, general of the state militia and active in
+the field. He could not leave his post. Accordingly, the plan of making
+the trip overland in her own coach was abandoned and Mrs. Alston
+decided to set sail in the _Patriot_, a small schooner which had put
+into Charleston after a privateering enterprise. Parton says that “she
+was commanded by an experienced captain and had for a sailing master
+an old New York pilot, noted for his skill and courage. The vessel was
+famous for her sailing qualities and it was confidently expected she
+would perform the voyage to New York in five or six days.” On the other
+hand, Burr himself referred to the ship bitterly as “the miserable
+little pilot boat.”
+
+Whatever the precise facts, the _Patriot_ was made ready and Theodosia
+went aboard with her maid and a personal physician, whom Burr had sent
+south from New York to attend his daughter on the voyage. The guns
+of the _Patriot_ had been dismounted and stored below. To give her
+further ballast and to defray the expenses of the trip, Governor Alston
+filled the hold with tierces of rice from his plantations. The captain
+carried a letter from Governor Alston addressed to the commander of
+the British fleet, which was lying off the Capes, explaining the
+painful circumstances under which the little schooner was voyaging and
+requesting safe passage to New York. Thus occupied, the _Patriot_ put
+out from Charleston on the afternoon of December 30th and crossed the
+bar on the following morning. Here fact ends and conjecture begins.
+
+When, after the elapse of a week, the _Patriot_ had not reached New
+York, Burr began to worry and to make inquiries, but nothing was to
+be discovered. He could not even be sure until the arrival of his
+son-in-law’s letter, that Theodosia had set sail. Even then, he hoped
+there might be some mistake. When a second letter from the South made
+it plain that she had gone on the _Patriot_, Burr still did not abandon
+hope and we see the picture of this sorely punished man walking every
+day from his law office in Nassau street to the fashionable promenade
+at the Battery, where he strolled up and down, oblivious to the
+hostile or impertinent glances of the vulgar, staring out toward the
+Narrows--in vain.
+
+The poor little schooner was never seen again nor did any member of her
+crew reach safety and send word of her end. In due time came the report
+of the hurricane off Cape Hatteras, three days after the departure of
+the _Patriot_. Later still it was found that the storm had been of
+sufficient power to scatter the British fleet and send other vessels
+to the bottom. In all probability the craft which bore Theodosia had
+foundered with all hands.
+
+Naturally, every other possibility came to be considered. It was at
+first believed that the _Patriot_ might have been taken by a British
+man-of-war and held on account of her previous activities. Before this
+could be disproved it was suggested that the schooner might readily
+have been attacked by pirates, since her guns were stored below
+decks, and Mrs. Alston taken prisoner. Since there were still a few
+buccaneers in Southern waters, who sporadically took advantage of the
+preoccupation of the maritime powers with their wars, this theory of
+Theodosia Alston’s disappearance gained many adherents, chiefly among
+the romantics, it is true. But the possibility of such a thing was also
+seriously considered by the husband and for a time by the father, who
+hoped the unfortunate woman might have been taken to one of the lesser
+West Indies by some not unfeeling corsair. Surely, she would soon or
+late make her escape and win her way back to her dear ones. In the end
+Burr rejected this idea, too.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ THEODOSIA BURR ~~]
+
+“No, no,” he said to a friend who revived the fable of the pirates,
+“she is indeed dead. Were she alive all the prisons in the world could
+not keep her from her father.”
+
+But the mystery persisted and so the rumors and stories would not
+down. For a number of years after 1813 the newspapers contained, from
+time to time, reports from various parts of the world, generally to
+the effect that a beautiful and cultured woman had been seen aboard
+a ship supposed to be manned by pirates, that such a woman had been
+found in a colony of sea refugees in some vaguely described West Indian
+or South American retreat, or that a woman of English or American
+characteristics was being detained in an island prison, whither she
+had been consigned along with a captured piratical crew. The woman was
+always, by inference at least, Theodosia Burr.
+
+Nor were the persevering Burr calumniators idle, a circumstance which
+seems to testify to the fear his enemies must have had of this strange
+and greatly mistaken man. Theodosia Burr had been seen in Europe
+in company with a British naval officer who was paying her marked
+attentions; she had been located on an island off Panama, where she
+was living in contentment as the wife of a buccaneer; she was known to
+be in Mexico with a new husband who had first been her captor, then
+her lover and now was in the southern Republic trying to revive Burr’s
+dream of empire.
+
+The death of Governor Alston in 1816 caused a fresh crop of the old
+stories to blossom forth and the long deferred demise of Aaron Burr
+in 1836 released a still more formidable crop of rumors, fables and
+speculations. It was not until Burr had passed into the grave that
+there appeared on the American scene a type of romantic who made
+the next fifty years delightful. He was the old reformed pirate who
+desecrated his exit into eternity with a Theodosia Burr yarn. The great
+celebrity of the woman in her lifetime, the tragic fame of her father
+and the circumstances of her death naturally conspired to promote this
+kind of aberrant activity in many idle or unsettled minds. The result
+was that “pirates” who had been present at the capture of the _Patriot_
+in the first days of 1813 began to appear in many parts of the country
+and even in England, where they told, usually on their deathbeds, the
+most engaging and conflicting tales. It took, as I have remarked, half
+a century for all of them to die off.
+
+The accounts given by these various confessors differed in details
+only. All agreed that the _Patriot_ had been captured by sea rovers
+off the Carolina coast and that the entire crew had been forced to
+walk the plank or been cut down by the pirates. Thus the fabulists
+accounted for the fact that nothing had ever been heard from any of
+Mrs. Alston’s shipmates. Nearly all accounts agreed that Theodosia had
+been carried captive to an unnamed island where she had first been a
+rebellious prisoner but later the docile and devoted mate of the pirate
+chief. A few of the relators gave their narratives the spice of novelty
+by insisting that she, too, had been made to walk the plank into the
+heaving sea, after she had witnessed all her shipmates consigned to
+the same fate. The names of the pirate ships and pirate captains
+supposed to have caught the _Patriot_ and disposed of Theodosia Burr
+Alston ranged through all the lists of shipping. No two dying corsairs
+ever agreed on this point.
+
+Forty years after the disappearance of Mrs. Alston this typical yarn
+appeared in the _Pennsylvania Enquirer_:
+
+ “An item of news just now going the rounds relates that a sailor, who
+ died in Texas, confessed on his death bed that he was one of the crew
+ of mutineers who, some forty years ago, took possession of a brig on
+ its passage from Charleston to New York and caused all the officers
+ and passengers to walk the gang plank. For forty years the wretched
+ man had carried about the dreadful secret and died at last in an agony
+ of despair.
+
+ “What gives the story additional interest is the fact that the vessel
+ referred to is the one in which Mrs. Theodosia Alston, the beloved
+ daughter of Aaron Burr, took passage for New York, for the purpose of
+ meeting her parent in the darkest days of his existence, and which,
+ never having been heard of, was supposed to have been foundered at sea.
+
+ “The dying sailor professed to remember her well and said she was the
+ last who perished, and that he never forgot her look of despair as
+ she took the last step from the fatal plank. On reading this account,
+ I regarded it as fiction; but on conversing with an officer of the
+ navy he assured me of its probable truth and stated that on one of his
+ passages home several years ago, his vessel brought two pirates in
+ irons who were subsequently executed at Norfolk for recent offenses,
+ and who, before their execution, confessed that they had been members
+ of the same crew and had participated in the murder of Mrs. Alston and
+ her companions.
+
+ “Whatever opinion may be entertained of the father, the memory of the
+ daughter must be revered as one of the loveliest and most excellent of
+ American woman, and the revelation of her untimely fate can only serve
+ to invest that memory with a more tender and melancholy interest.”
+
+Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and their obvious conflict
+with known facts, the public took the dying confessions seriously
+and the editors of Sunday supplements printed them with a gay air
+of credence and a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was
+accomplished by this complicity with a most unashamed and unregenerate
+band of downright liars, the pirate legend came to be disseminated in
+every civilized country and there was gradually built up the great
+false tradition which hedges the name and fame of Theodosia Burr. She
+has even appeared in novels, American, British and Continental, in the
+shape of a mysterious queen of freebooters.
+
+The celebrity of her case came to be such that it was in time seized
+upon by the art fakers--perhaps an inevitable step toward genuine
+famosity. Several authentic likenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant,
+notably the painting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery,
+Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston, N. Y., whom
+Burr discovered, apprenticed to Gilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for
+study. He painted the landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of the
+Capitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neither restrained nor
+satisfied the freebooters of the arts. On the other hand, the pirate
+tales inspired them to profitable activity.
+
+In the nineties of the last century the New York newspapers contained
+accounts of a painting of Theodosia Burr which had been found in an
+old seashore cottage near Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwards
+made famous by the gliding experiments of the brothers Wright, and the
+scene of their first successful airplane flights. The printed accounts
+said that this picture had been found on an old schooner which had been
+wrecked off the coast many years before and various inconclusive and
+roundabout devices were employed for identifying it as a likeness of
+the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.
+
+Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most florid publicity in
+New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently, given out by one of the
+prominent Fifth Avenue art dealers. A woman client, it was said,
+had become interested in the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr,
+recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of North Carolina.
+Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken a search for the missing
+work of art and had at length recovered it, together with a most
+fascinating history.
+
+In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of Elizabeth City, N. C., spent
+the summer at Nag’s Head, a resort on the outer barrier of sand which
+protects the North Carolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape
+Hatteras. While there he was called to visit an aged woman who lived
+in an ancient cabin about two miles out of the town. His ministrations
+served to recover her health and she expressed the wish to pay him
+in some way other than with money, of which useful commodity she had
+none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerable curiosity, a most
+beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful, proud and intelligent lady of
+high social standing.” He immediately coveted this picture and asked
+his patient for it, since she wanted to give him something in return
+for his leechcraft. She not only gave him the portrait but she told him
+how she had come by it. Many years before, when she was still a girl,
+the old woman’s admirer and subsequent first husband had, with some
+others, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, which had stranded with
+all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfast served but undisturbed in
+the cabin. The pilot boat was empty and several trunks had been broken
+open, their contents being scattered about. Among the salvaged goods
+was this portrait, which had fallen to the lot of the old woman’s swain
+and come through him to her.
+
+From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture had passed to others
+without ever having left Elizabeth City. There the enterprising dealer
+had found it in the possession of a substantial widow, and she had
+consented to part with it. The rest of the story--the essentials--was
+to be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to be sure, the _Patriot_,
+the date of its stranding agreed with the beclouded incidents of
+January, 1813, and the “intelligent lady of high social standing” was
+none other than Theodosia Burr.
+
+It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelous and romantic
+work do not show the least resemblance to the known portrait of
+Theodosia, and it is also lamentable to find that the art dealer, in
+his sweet account of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptions
+and blunders as regards his subject and the tales of her demise. But,
+while both these portrait yarns may be dismissed without further
+attention, they have undoubtedly served to keep the old and enchanting
+story before modern eyes.
+
+In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of the Theodosia Burr
+case seems to be the acceptable one. The boat on which she embarked
+was small and frail. At the very time it must have been passing the
+treacherous region of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficient
+violence to scatter the heavy British frigates and ships of the line.
+The fate of a little schooner in such weather is almost a matter for
+assurance. Yet of certainty there can be none. The famous daughter
+of the traditional American villain--the devil incarnate to all the
+melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers and propagandists--went down
+to sea in her cockleshell and returned no more. Eleven decades have
+lighted no candle in the darkness that engulfed her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE
+
+
+One of the most engrossing of modern mysteries is that which hides
+the final destination of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, better
+known to a generation of newspaper readers as John Orth. In the dawn
+of July 13, 1890, the bark _Santa Margarita_,[2] flying the flag of an
+Austrian merchantman, though her owner and skipper was none other than
+this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs, set sail from Ensenada,
+on the southern shore of the great estuary of the Plata, below Buenos
+Aires, and forthwith vanished from the earth. With her went Johann
+Salvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew of twenty-six. Though
+search has been made in every thinkable port, through the distant
+archipelagoes of the Pacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and though
+emissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missing men, from
+time to time, over a period of nearly forty years, no sight of any one
+connected with the lost ship has ever been got, and no man knows with
+certainty what fate befell her and her princely master.
+
+[2] Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.
+
+The enigma of his passing is not the only circumstance of curious
+doubt and romantic coloration that hedges the career of this imperial
+adventurer. His story, from the beginning, is one marked with dramatic
+incidents. As much of it as bears upon the final episode will have to
+be related.
+
+The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florence on the twenty-fifth
+day of November, 1852, the youngest son of Grand Duke Leopold II of
+Tuscany, and Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly,
+a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary.
+At the baptismal font young Johann received enough names to carry any
+man blissfully through life, his full array having been Johann Nepomuk
+Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand Balthazar Louis Gonzaga Peter
+Alexander Zenobius Antonin.
+
+Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italian revolutionists
+drove out his father and later united Tuscany to the growing kingdom
+of Victor Emanuel. So the hero of this account was reared in Austria
+and educated for the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he rose rapidly
+in rank for reasons quite other than his family connections. The young
+prince was endowed with a good mind and notable for independence
+of thought. He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn his
+pay, an opinion which led to indefatigable military studies and some
+well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings. First, the young archduke
+discovered what he considered faults in the artillery, and he wrote a
+brochure on the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and had him
+disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of military organization and
+wrote a well-known pamphlet called “Education or Drill,” wherein he
+attacked the old method of training soldiers as automatons and advised
+the mental development of the rank and file, in line with policies now
+generally adopted. But such advanced ideas struck the military masters
+of fifty years ago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johann
+was disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawal of his
+commission. At thirty-five he had reached next to the highest possible
+rank and been cashiered from it. This in 1887.
+
+Johann Salvator had, however, been much more than a progressive soldier
+man. He was an accomplished musician, composer of popular waltzes, an
+oratorio and the operetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and
+publicist, of eminent official standing at least, having collaborated
+with Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributed work, “The
+Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Picture,” which was published in
+1886. He was also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena,
+his library on this subject having been the most complete in Europe--a
+fact suggestive of something abnormal.
+
+Personally the man was both handsome and charming. He was, in spite
+of imperial rank and military habitude, democratic, simple, friendly,
+and unaffected. He liked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse
+interests in life, now playing the gallant in Vienna--to the high world
+of the court and the half world of the theater by turns; again retiring
+to his library and his studies, sometimes vegetating at his country
+estates and working on his farms. Official trammels and the rigid
+etiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still, he seems to
+have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissal from the army.
+
+Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a close personal friend
+of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacy had extended even to
+participation in some of the personal and sentimental escapades for
+which the ill-starred Rudolf was remarkable. Apparently the two men
+hardly held an opinion apart, and it was accepted that, with the death
+of the aging emperor and the accession of his son, Johann Salvator
+would be a most powerful personage.
+
+Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promises came to earth.
+After some rumblings and rumorings at Schoenbrunn, it was announced
+that Johann Salvator had petitioned the emperor for permission to
+resign all rank and title, sever his official connection with the royal
+house, and even give up his knighthood in the Order of the Golden
+Fleece. The petitioner also asked for the right to call himself Johann
+Orth, after the estate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was the
+favorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother. All these requests
+were officially granted and confirmed by the emperor, and so the man
+John Orth came into being.
+
+The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behind the official
+records of this strange resignation from rank and honor. Even to-day,
+after Orth has been missing for a whole generation, after all those who
+might have been concerned in keeping secret the motives and measures of
+those times have been gathered to the dust, and after the empire itself
+has been dissolved into its defeated components, the facts in the
+matter cannot be stated with any confidence. There are two principal
+versions of the affair, and both will have to be given so that the
+reader may make his own choice. The popular or romantic account
+deserves to be considered first.
+
+In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced by several handsome
+young women of the name Stübel. One of them, Lori, achieved
+considerable operatic distinction. Another sailed to New York with
+her brother and appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at the old
+Casino. The youngest of these sisters was Ludmilla Stübel, commonly
+called Millie, and on that account sometimes, erroneously, Emilie.
+
+This daring and charming girl began her career in a Viennese operetta
+chorus and rose to the rank of principal. She was not, so far as I
+can gather from the contemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice or
+dramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuous beauty and piquant
+manners” won her almost limitless attention and gave her a popularity
+that reached across the Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein
+Stübel appeared at the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York, then the
+shrine of German comic opera in the United States, creating the rôles
+of _Bettina_ in “The Mascot” and _Violette_ in “The Merry War.”
+
+The _New York Herald_, reviewing her American career a few years
+later, said: “In New York she became somewhat notorious for her risqué
+costumes. On one occasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in
+male costume, and created a scene when ejected. This conduct seems to
+have ended her career in the United States.”
+
+This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into the ken of Johann
+Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888, when that impetuous prince
+had already been dismissed from the army and his other affairs were
+gathering to the storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophic
+events followed rapidly.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ MILLIE STÜBEL ~~]
+
+In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead in the hunting lodge
+at Mayerling, with the Baroness Marie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a
+hundred kings is said to have been passionately devoted, and with whom
+he may have died in a suicide pact, though it has been said the crown
+prince and his sweetheart were murdered by persons whose identity
+has been sedulously concealed. This mysterious fatality robbed the
+dispirited Johann Salvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It
+may have had a good deal to do with what followed.
+
+A few months later Johann Salvator married morganatically his stage
+beauty. It was now, after the lapse of a few months, that he resigned
+all rank, title, and privileges, left Austria with his wife, and
+married her civilly in London.
+
+Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the death of the
+crown prince and the romance with the singer explained everything. The
+archduke, in disgrace with the army, bereft of his truest and most
+illustrious friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could
+not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the purple of
+his birth, had decided to “surrender all for love” and seek solace in
+foreign lands with the lady of his choice. This interpretation has all
+the elements of color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds
+of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to bear skeptical
+examination.
+
+Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was a man of independent
+mind and quixotic temperament, that he was embittered by his demotion
+from military rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by the
+death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend and his most powerful
+intercessor at court, no such extreme proceeding as the renunciation of
+all rank and the severing of family ties was called for.
+
+It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an affair with a
+woman of inferior rank, had embittered Franz Josef and probably caused
+the monarch to look with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among
+the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the morganatic marriage
+of his second cousin with the shining moth of the theater displeased
+the monarch and widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but it
+must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only a distant cousin; that
+he was not even remotely in line for succession to the throne; that he
+had already been deprived of military or other official connection with
+the government; and that affairs of this kind have been by no means
+rare among Hapsburg scions.
+
+Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been, he was no
+Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had not been quite free of
+sentimental episodes, and he was, after all, the heir to the proudest
+tradition in all Europe, head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and
+a believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have looked upon a
+morganatic union as something not uncommon or specially disgraceful,
+whereas a renunciation of rank and privilege can only have struck him
+as a precedent of the gravest kind.
+
+Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme step because
+of his histrionic wife. He might have remained in Austria happily
+enough, aside from a few snubs and the exclusion from further official
+participation in politics. He might have gone to any country in Europe
+and become the center of a distinguished society. His children would
+probably have been ennobled, and even his wife eventually given the
+same sort of recognition that was accorded the consorts of other
+princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose
+assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the World War. Instead, Johann
+Salvator made the most complete and unprecedented severance from all
+that seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to interpret this
+action in another light, and their explanation forms the second version
+of the incident, probably the true one.
+
+In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles for hegemony
+in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been elected Prince
+of Bulgaria, but Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and
+the other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise refrained
+from giving their approval. Austria was in a specially delicate
+position as regards this matter. She was the natural rival of Russia
+for dominance in the Balkans, but her statesmen did not feel strong
+enough openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had their
+eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had been an officer in
+the Austrian army. He was well liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood
+high in the regard of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the
+present question is that he was the friend of Johann Salvator.
+
+In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia attempted to
+drive the unwelcome German princeling from the Bulgarian throne by
+various military cabals, acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues,
+and the like. Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries
+rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It is known that he
+interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand, and he may have approached the
+emperor. Failing to get action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a
+plan of a military character which was calculated to force the hands
+of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing them into the field against
+Russia, to the end that Ferdinand might be recognized and more firmly
+seated. The plot was discovered in time, according to those who hold
+this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator came under the most
+severe displeasure of the emperor.
+
+It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately, that
+Johann Salvator’s rash course was one that came very near involving
+Austria in a Russian war, and that the most emphatic exhibitions of
+the emperor’s reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly, it
+is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of all rank and privileges
+by his cousin and exiled him from the empire for life. Here, at least,
+is a story of a more probable character, inasmuch as it presents
+provocation for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke Johann
+Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic marriage and his other
+conflicts with higher authority were seized upon as disguises under
+which to hide the secret diplomatic motive.
+
+Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony, started a tale to the
+effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator, had torn the Order of the
+Golden Fleece from his breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor,
+which thing can not have happened since the negotiations between the
+emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted at a distance through
+official emissaries or by mail.
+
+Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress Elizabeth,
+recounts even more fantastic yarns. She says in so many words that
+Crown Prince Rudolf was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others
+to seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor and so establish
+Rudolf as king before his time. It was fear of discovery in this plot,
+she continues, that led to the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after
+Mayerling, she recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box
+(apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade in the mist and he
+kissed her hand, exclaimed that she had saved his life--and more in the
+same strain.
+
+Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wrote or talked in
+self-justification and with the usual stupidity of the guilty. We may
+dismiss their yarns as mere women’s gabble and return to the solid
+fact that Johann Salvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under
+his military humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politics with the
+result that he found himself in the position of a bungling interloper,
+almost a betrayer of his country’s interests.
+
+Less than two years ago some further light was thrown upon the affair
+of the missing archduke through what have passed as letters taken
+from the Austrian archives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These
+letters were published in various European and American newspapers
+and journals and they may be, as asserted, the veritable official
+documents. The portions I quote are taken from the Sunday Magazine of
+the _New York World_ of January 10 and January 17, 1926. I must remark
+that I regard them with suspicion.
+
+The first letter purports to be a report on the violent misconduct of
+Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:
+
+ “Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister of Foreign
+ Affairs, Count Kalnoky:
+
+ “I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about the relations
+ and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am sorry to have to report
+ to Your Excellency that, _in a rather unworthy manner_, he had
+ intercourse on board and in public with a _lady lodged on board of
+ the yacht_, which intercourse has not remained unobserved and which
+ he could not be induced to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the
+ President of the Chamber) Baron de Fin--Baron de Fin was so offended
+ that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill, he left the
+ ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part, reported to His
+ Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is said to have, after five
+ months of silence, written for the first time to His Majesty in order
+ to complain of his Chamberlain. This unpleasant situation, still more
+ troublesome abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved
+ last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field Marshal
+ Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial Order that His Imperial
+ Highness immediately return to Orth at the Sea of Gmünden--to which he
+ immediately submitted.
+
+ “Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly terms with
+ me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that would be bad enough.
+ According to his experience and observation, His Highness does not
+ know any other interests in the world than those of his person, and
+ even this only in the common sense; that he, for instance, wished to
+ ascend the throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people
+ or for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after
+ a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence of His
+ Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that there would be
+ no other means to cure that completely undisciplined and immoral
+ character but by dismissing him formally from the imperial family and
+ by allowing him, as it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name,
+ that liberty that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes
+ him (the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would return
+ with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated according to his
+ new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness of the Prince despite
+ his talks of liberalism.”
+
+Then follows what may well have been the recreant archduke’s letter of
+abdication, thus:
+
+ “Your Majesty:
+
+ “My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced Your Majesty
+ that, abstaining from all interests that did not concern me, I
+ have lived in retirement in the endeavor to remove Your Majesty’s
+ displeasure with me.
+
+ “Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as a paid
+ idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable, to me.
+ Checked by a justified pride from asking for re-employment in the
+ army, I had the alternative either to continue the unworthy existence
+ of a princely idler or--as an ordinary human being, to seek a new
+ existence, a new profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the
+ latter sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of my
+ position and my personal independence must be compensation for what I
+ have lost.
+
+ “I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the titles
+ and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title into the hands
+ of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty submissively to deign to
+ grant me a civil name.
+
+ “Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and my
+ livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but honorable
+ position. If, however, Your Majesty should call your subjects to arms,
+ Your Highness will permit me to return home and--though only as a
+ common soldier--to devote my life to Your Majesty.
+
+ “Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was only impeded
+ by the thought of giving offense to Your Majesty--Your Majesty to
+ whose Highness I am particularly and infinitely indebted and devoted
+ from the bottom of my heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly
+ enough--with my entire social existence, with all that means hope and
+ future--Your Majesty will pardon
+
+                       “Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,
+                                           “ARCHDUKE JOHANN, FML.”
+
+Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another, even an emperor,
+is a question which every reader must consider for himself, quite
+as he must decide whether grown sons of kings were capable of such
+middle-class sentiment.
+
+There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has the ring of
+genuineness:
+
+  “DEAR ARCHDUKE JOHANN:
+
+ “In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel induced to
+ decide the following:
+
+ “1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded and
+ treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and permit you to adopt a
+ civil name, which you are to bring to my notice after you have made
+ your choice.
+
+ “2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer and
+ relieve you at the same time of your responsibility for the Corps
+ Artillery Regiment No. 2.
+
+ “3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out of the
+ 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’
+
+ “4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil List) from
+ my court donation, I will inform your brother Archduke Ferdinand
+ of Tuscany of the suspension of your share out of the family funds
+ proceeds.
+
+ “5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to pass the
+ frontiers of the monarchy from your residence abroad for a permanent
+ or even a temporary stay in Austria. Finally,
+
+ “6. You are to sign the written declaration which the bearer of this,
+ my manuscript will submit to you for this purpose and which he is
+ charged to return to me after the signature is affixed.
+
+                                                   “FRANZ JOSEF.”
+
+  “Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”
+
+Some correspondence followed on the subject of John Orth’s retention of
+his Austrian citizenship, which the emperor wished at first to deny him.
+
+In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria, and Prince of
+Tuscany, became John Orth, left Austria in the winter of 1889,
+purchased and refitted the bark _Santa Margarita_, had her taken to
+England, and there joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed for
+Buenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement, and reached
+the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife went ahead by steamer to join him
+at Buenos Aires.
+
+I quote here, from the same source as the preceding, part of a last
+letter from John Orth to his mother at Gmünden:
+
+ “The country here is not very beautiful. Vast plains--the grazing
+ grounds for flocks of bullocks, horses and ostriches. The towns
+ are much more vivid. Everything is to be found here even at the
+ smaller places--electric lights, telephone, all comforts of modern
+ civilization. The population, however, is not very sympathetic, a
+ combination of doubtful elements from all countries, striving to
+ become rich as soon as possible; corruption, fraud, theft, are the
+ order of the day.
+
+ “I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer is a certain
+ Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The Honorary Consul is
+ Mihanovich, a man who--a few years ago was a porter--and now is a
+ millionaire. Social obligations have caused much loss of time, which
+ could have been better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing
+ can be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos Aires. And
+ we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo, negotiations about a new
+ cargo, which I could have accepted if my merchant had not prevented
+ me, changes of the board staff, purchase of supplies, work on board,
+ the collection and despatch of money, &c., &c. The staff-officers have
+ all to be changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by the
+ fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’ toward
+ whom he was too indulgent and who was a man of bad reputation. He has
+ given me to understand, in the most impolite manner, that he could
+ not remain under such circumstances, that he did not permit himself
+ to be treated as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and
+ therefore he resigned the command, &c. I, of course, accepted his
+ resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned to
+ excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has shown the insolence
+ to deceive the consignee and by calculating forty-eight tons more
+ in favor of the ship, believing to do me a favor by such an action.
+ I have given to the consignee the necessary indemnification--and
+ to restore the compromised honor of the ship, have dismissed the
+ lieutenant. The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and
+ quit voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain
+ Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened
+ him.[3]
+
+ [3] There had been a fire on the _Santa Margarita_ on the way to Buenos
+Aires.
+
+ “As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts as Captain
+ and has the command--a man of forty-five years, very quiet,
+ experienced and practical. Further, a Second Lieutenant, Mayer,
+ Austro-German, very fit for accounts and writings; a boatswain,
+ Vranich, who is a real jewel. Thus I hope--with the aid of God--to get
+ on at least as well as under the command of Sodich.
+
+ “Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has been a
+ Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change of personnel, with
+ whom alone I shall have intercourse for months and months.
+
+ “In the first days of July, when everything will be ready, the journey
+ will be continued. Now comes the most difficult part of the passage,
+ i. e., the sailing around the dreadful Cape Horn, which is always
+ exposed to howling storms. If all ends well, we shall be in two months
+ at Valparaiso, which has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God
+ willing, we shall return from there in good health.
+
+ “I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly speaking, no
+ letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in La Plata nor in Buenos
+ Aires, neither poste restante nor in the Consulate, have I found
+ your letters, and still I believe that you have been so good as to
+ write me. I have found letters of Luise, that have been despatched
+ by a German steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the
+ Swiss Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter from
+ Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome, and your dear
+ telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg. I was sorry to see
+ from the newspapers that Karl has been ill in Baden; I should be
+ happy if this were not true. Then I have read the many nonsensical
+ articles written about myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has
+ remained in communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am
+ also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young woman is
+ now likely to come to an end. I know nothing about Vienna and Gmünden.
+ But I repeat that I am disappointed at not having received your
+ letters. I hope to God you are well and remain in good health.
+
+ “My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you to address
+ letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste restante.
+
+ “Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the whole family and
+ asking you for your blessing, I respectfully kiss your hands.
+
+                                    “Your tenderly loving son,
+                                                        GIOVANNI.”
+
+The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada, and on July 12,
+1890, John Orth wrote what proved to be the last communication ever
+sent by him. It was addressed to his attorney in Vienna and said that
+he was leaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, which might
+consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orth wrote, had been taken
+ill, and his first officer had proved incompetent, so that it had been
+necessary to discharge him. Accordingly Orth was personally in command
+of his vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experienced
+seaman. This is a somewhat altered version, to be sure.
+
+The apparent intention of the renegade archduke at this time was to
+follow the sea. He had caused the _Santa Margarita_ to be elaborately
+refitted inside, had insured her for two hundred and thirty thousand
+marks with the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he had written
+his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determination to make his living
+as a mariner and an honest man, instead of existing like an idler
+on his comfortable private means. There is nothing in the record to
+indicate that he intended to go into hiding.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR ~~]
+
+The _Santa Margarita_ accordingly sailed on the thirteenth of July.
+With good fortune she should have been in the Straits of Magellan the
+first week in August, and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expected
+not later than the first of September. But the ship did not reach port.
+The middle of September passed without word of her. When she had still
+not been reported by the first week in October the alarm was given.
+
+As the result of diplomatic representations from the Austrian minister,
+the Argentine government soon made elaborate arrangements for a
+search. On December the second the gunboat _Bermejo_, Captain Don
+Mensilla, put out from Buenos Aires and made a four months’ cruise
+of the Argentine coast, visiting every conceivable anchorage where
+a vessel of the _Santa Margarita’s_ size might possibly have found
+refuge. Don Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20, and
+continuing intermittently for nearly a month, there had been storms of
+the greatest violence in the region of Cape Blanco and the southern
+extremity of Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had been
+in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances had been
+of unusual character and duration, more than sufficient to overwhelm a
+sailing bark in the tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.
+
+Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a vessel answering to
+the general description of the _Santa Margarita_ had been wrecked off
+the little island of Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course
+of a hurricane which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at which
+dates the _Santa Margarita_ was very likely in this vicinity. The
+Argentine commander could find no trace of the wreck and no clew to any
+survivors. He continued his search for more than two months longer and
+then returned to base with his melancholy report.
+
+At the same time the Chilean government had sent out the small steamer
+_Toro_ to search the Pacific coast from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her
+captain returned after several months with no word of the archduke or
+any member of his crew.
+
+These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports at the Hamburg
+maritime observatory, soon convinced most authorities that John Orth
+and his vessel were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as
+in that of Roger Tichborne,[4] an old mother’s fond devotion refused
+to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance. The Grand Duchess Maria
+Antonia could not bring herself to believe that winds and waves had
+swallowed up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna with
+her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef finally sent out the
+corvette _Saida_, with instructions to make a fresh search, including
+the islands of the South Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report,
+John Orth had made his way.
+
+[4] See page 82.
+
+At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope Leo, and the
+pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in South America and all over
+the world to search for John Orth and send immediate news of his
+presence to the Holy See.
+
+The _Saida_ returned to Fiume at the end of a year without having
+been able to accomplish anything beyond confirming the report of Don
+Mensilla. And in response to the pope’s letter many reports came back,
+but none of them resulted in the finding of John Orth.
+
+Shortly after the return of the _Saida_ the Austrian heirs of John
+Orth moved for the payment of his insurance, and the Hamburg Marine
+Insurance Company, after going through the formality of a court
+proceeding, paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on two banks,
+one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for moneys
+deposited with them by the archduke after his departure from Austria
+in 1889. One of these banks raised the question of the death proof,
+claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an unproved
+death. The courts decided against the bank, thereby tacitly confirming
+the contention that the end of the archduke had been sufficiently
+demonstrated. About two million crowns were accordingly paid over to
+the Austrian custodians.
+
+In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to hand over the property
+of John Orth to his nephew and heir, and this high authority then
+declared that the missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane
+of August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme court of Austria
+to pass finally upon the matter, and a decision was handed down on May
+9, 1911, in which the archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890,
+the day on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts began.
+His property was ordered distributed, and his goods and chattels were
+sold. The books, instruments, art collection and furniture, which had
+long been preserved in the various villas and castles of the absent
+prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during the months
+of October and November, 1912.
+
+In spite of the great care that was taken to discover the facts in
+this case, and in the face of the various official reports and court
+decisions, a great romantic tradition grew up about John Orth and his
+mysterious destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his
+abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly much to do with the
+birth of the legend. Be that as it may, the world has for more than
+thirty years been feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and
+his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war the story
+was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato was in reality the missing
+archduke. The story was credited by many, but there proved to be no
+foundation for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their
+heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the archduke in
+that old monograph which had got him disciplined.
+
+Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief authority for one
+of the most plausible and insistent of all the John Orth stories.
+According to this politician and man of letters, there was present
+at Concordia, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in
+the years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished
+looking stranger of military habit and bearing, who had few friends,
+received few visits, always spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an
+Austrian merchant of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself in
+a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch treated the stranger
+with marked respect and deference.
+
+Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of the _Jefe de
+Policia_ of Concordia, an official who firmly believed the man of
+mystery to be John Orth. On the other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey,
+the closest friend and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway,
+denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the whole tale.
+At the same time, say Garzon and the chief of police, Señor de Villa
+Rey tried to conceal the presence of the man, and it was the activity
+of the police authorities, executing the law authorizing them to
+investigate and keep records of the identity of all strangers, that
+frightened the “archduke” away. He went to Paraguay and worked in a
+sawmill belonging to Villa Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the
+Russo-Japanese war he left for Japan.
+
+This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion. Senator Garzon’s
+book is full of doubtful corroboration and too subtle reasoning, but
+it is rewarding and entertaining for those who like romance and read
+Spanish.[5]
+
+[5] See Bibliography.
+
+The missing John Orth has likewise been reported alive from many
+other unlikely parts of the world and under the most incredible
+circumstances. Austrian, German, British, French, and American
+newspapers have been full of such stories every few years. The much
+sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running a pearl fishery
+in the Paumotus, working in a factory in Ohio, fighting with the Boers
+in South Africa, prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in
+Texas--what not and where not?
+
+One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth happened in New York.
+On the last day of March, 1924, a death certificate was filed with the
+Department of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator
+of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early that morning of
+heart disease in Columbus Hospital, one of the smaller semi-public
+institutions. Doctor John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital,
+signed the certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s
+identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”
+
+Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society photographer,”
+confirmed the story, and said she had discovered the identity of the
+man the year before and admitted some of her friends to the secret.
+He had lately been receiving some code cables from Europe which came
+collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied the money with
+which to pay for these mysterious messages. The dead man, said Mrs.
+Fairchild, had been living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a
+lecturer in Sanscrit and general scholar.
+
+“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on Sanscrit,” she
+recounted. “In his delirium he talked Sanscrit, and it was very
+beautiful.”
+
+According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,” he had
+furnished her with the true version of his irruption from the Austrian
+court in 1889. The emperor Franz Josef had applied a vile name to
+John Salvator’s mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his sword,
+broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his decorations
+and medals, flung them into the imperial face and finally blacked the
+emperor’s eye. Striding from the palace to the barracks, the archduke
+had found his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!” and offer
+him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the emperor then and there, he
+said, but he elected to quit the country and have done with the social
+life which disgusted him.
+
+This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the world over. Aside
+from the preposterousness of the yarn as a whole, one needs only to
+remember that Johann Salvator was an artillery officer and never held
+either an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was, at the
+time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed from the army and
+without military rank, and that striking the emperor would have been
+an offense that must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it
+is obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the legs of his
+friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams. Except in cases
+where special prearrangements have been made, as in the instances of
+great newspapers, large business houses, banks, and the departments
+of government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid. An imperial
+government would hardly thus impose on a wandering scion. The imposture
+is thus apparent.
+
+On the day after the death of the supposed archduke, however, a note of
+real drama was injected into the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was
+said to have been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the dead
+“archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on East Fifty-ninth Street
+that afternoon. She had drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she
+had got into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries
+of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death. Despondency over “John
+Orth’s” death was given as the explanation.
+
+These tales have all had their charm, much as they have lacked
+probability. Each and all they rest upon the single fact that the man
+was never seen dead. There is, of course, no way of being sure that
+John Orth perished in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but it
+is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive. For he would
+certainly have answered the pitiful appeals of his old mother, to whom
+he was devoted, and to whom he had written every few days whenever he
+had been separated from her. He would have been found by the papal
+missionaries in some part of the world, and the three vessels sent upon
+his final course must surely have discovered some trace of the man. It
+should be remembered that, except for letters that were traced back to
+harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like a communication was ever
+received from Orth or Ludmilla Stübel, or from any member of the crew
+of the _Santa Margarita_.
+
+In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not profound. All
+evidence and all reason point to the probability that Johann Salvator
+and his ship went down to darkness in some wild torment of waters and
+winds, leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit, but only a
+void in which the idle minds of romantics could spin their fabulations.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY
+
+
+At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August 16, 1897, a small,
+barefoot boy appeared in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of
+Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a crumpled letter in
+one grimy hand and stopped at one door after another, inquiring where
+Mrs. Conway lived. The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to
+him that several of them later estimated his age at from ten years to
+seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99 and handed his note to
+the woman he sought, the wife of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train
+dispatcher. With that he was gone.
+
+Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter by a special
+messenger, tore open the envelope, sat down in the big rocking chair in
+her front room, and began to read this appalling communication:
+
+ “Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped and when you
+ receive this word, he will be a safe distance from Albany and where he
+ could not be found in a hundred years. Your child will be returned to
+ you on payment of _three thousand dollars_, $3000, _provided_ you pay
+ the money _to-day and strictly obey the following directions_:
+
+ “put the money in a package and send it by a man you can depend on to
+ the lane going up the hill a few feet south of the _Troy road first
+ tollgate_, just off the road on this lane here is a tree with a big
+ trunk have the man put the package on the _south_ side of the tree and
+ _at once come away and come back to your house_.
+
+ “We want the money left at this spot at _exactly 8:15 o’clock
+ to-night_.
+
+ “See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him
+ or you will _never look upon your little boy again_
+
+ “If you say a word of this to any one outside _your_ family and the
+ man you send with the money or if you take any steps to bring it to
+ the attention _of the police you will never see your child_ again, for
+ if _any one_ knows of it we will not take the risk of returning him,
+ but will leave him _to his fate_.
+
+ “If you obey our instructions in every point you will have word
+ _within two hours_ after the money has been left where you can go and
+ get your boy safe and sound
+
+ “We have been after this thing for a _long time_ we _know our
+ business_ and can beat all the police in America
+
+ “we are after the money and if you do what you are _told_, _no harm
+ will come to your little boy_. but if you fail to do what we tell you
+ or do what we tell you not to do _you will never look upon your child
+ again as sure as there is a god in heaven we know you have the money
+ in the bank_ and that the bank closes at 2 o’clock and we _must_ have
+ it _to-night so get in time_. don’t tell them why you draw it out. You
+ can say you are buying property if you wish for this thing must be
+ _between you and us_ if you want your boy back alive.
+
+ “_Remember_ the case of _Charley Ross_ of Philadelphia. His father
+ _did not do_ as _he was told_ but went to the police and then spent
+ five times as much as he could have got him back for but never saw his
+ little boy _to the day of his death a word to the wise man is enough_
+
+ “_Now understand us plainly_ get the money from the bank _in time_
+ don’t open your lips to any one and send the money by a trusty man to
+ the place we say at 8:15 a _quarter past eight to-night_ He wants to
+ _be sure that no one else sees him put the package there_, so there is
+ no possible danger of any one _else_ getting it, then within two hours
+ you shall have word from us where your boy is.
+
+ “Every move you make will be known to us and if you attempt _any
+ crooked work_ with us _say good-by to your boy_ and look out for
+ _yourself_ for we will _meet you again when you least expect it_ Do as
+ we tell you and all will be well and we will deal straight with you if
+ you make the _least crooked move_ you will _regret it to the day of
+ your death_.
+
+ “If you want to have your little boy back _safe and sound_. Keep your
+ lips closed and do _exactly as you are told_
+
+ “If you fail to obey _every direction_ you will have _one child less_.
+
+                                    “Yours truly
+                                        “The Captain of the Gang.”
+
+Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she had got past the first few
+sentences and ran into the street, screaming for her boy. He did not
+answer. None of the neighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when he
+had been let out to play in the sun. It was true.
+
+The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistle in her hand, ran
+to summon her husband. He read the letter, set his jaw, and sent for
+the police. No one was going to extort three thousand dollars from him
+without a fight.
+
+Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to ask questions in the
+neighborhood and see whether there had been any witnesses to the
+abduction. The others began an examination of the strange letter in
+the hope of recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yielded nothing
+and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Here the first blunder was
+made, for I have yet to examine a kidnapper’s letter more revealingly
+written.
+
+The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long, prolix, and
+anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuation in part, wrongly
+punctuated at other points, miscapitalized or not capitalized at all,
+strangely underlined, curiously paragraphed, often without even the
+use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structure and yet
+contradictory on this very point. The facsimile copy which I have
+before me shows that in spite of all the solecisms and blunders, there
+is not a misspelled word in the long missive, a thing not always to be
+said in favor of the writings of educated and even eminent men. Also,
+there are several cheap literary echoes in the letter, such as “never
+look upon your child again” and “leave him to his fate.”
+
+The following deductions should have been made from the letter:
+
+That it was written or dictated by some one familiar with Albany and
+with the affairs of the Conways, since the writer knows Conway has
+the money in the bank, knows the closing hour, is familiar with the
+surrounding terrain, is precise in all directions, and knows there are
+other and older children, since he constantly refers to “your little
+boy” and says that Conway will have “one child less.”
+
+That the writer of the letter is not a professional criminal. Otherwise
+he would not have written at length.
+
+That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious to have the thing done
+at once.
+
+That he is a man without formal education, who has read a good deal,
+especially romances and inferior verse.
+
+That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, he is a man between
+thirty-five and forty-five years of age.
+
+That the kidnappers are anxious to have the money intrusted to some
+man known to them, to whom they repeatedly refer and whom they believe
+likely to be selected by Conway.
+
+That the child is in no danger, since the letter writer doth threaten
+too much.
+
+That the search for the kidnappers should begin close at home.
+
+Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of what the dialect calls
+hindsight, it may be well to say that these conclusions were made from
+the facsimile of the letter by an associate who is not familiar with
+the case and does not know the subsequent developments.
+
+The detective sciences had, however, reached no special developments
+in Albany thirty years ago and little of this vital information was
+extracted from the tell-tale letter. Instead of making some deductions
+from it and going quietly to work upon them, the officers chose the
+time-honored methods. They decided to send a man to the big tree with
+a package of paper, meantime concealing some members of the force near
+by to pounce upon any one who might call for the decoy. The whole
+proceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police went to the place at
+night and used lanterns, which must have revealed them to any watchers.
+They were not careful about concealing their plan and they even chose
+the wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!
+
+So the second day of the kidnapping mystery opened upon prostrated
+parents, who were only too willing to believe that their boy had been
+done away with, an excited community which locked the doors and feared
+to let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfited and
+abused police department.
+
+The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, the police made a fresh
+start. For one thing they searched the country round about the big
+tree on the Troy road, which may have been good training for adipose
+officers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such as police departments
+always make when the public is aroused. For another thing, they spread
+the dragnet and hauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to
+be stopping in Albany. They also searched the known criminal resorts,
+chased down a crop of the usual rumors, and wound up the day in
+breathless and futile excitement.
+
+Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. These energetic young
+men, whose repeated discomfitures of the police were one of the
+interesting facts of American city government in the last generation,
+had gone to work on the Conway case themselves. A young man named
+John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albany papers, began his
+investigations by interviewing the father of the missing child. One of
+the things the reporter wanted to know was whether any one had ever
+tried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. The train dispatcher
+replied with some reluctance that his brother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy,
+husband of one of Conway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed small
+amounts from the railroad man and once made a demand for a thousand
+dollars, which he failed to get, though he used threatening tactics.
+
+The reporter said nothing, but set about investigating Hardy. He found
+that the man was in Albany, that he was showing no signs of fright, and
+that he was indeed going about with much energy, apparently devoting
+himself to the quest for the stolen boy and threatening dire vengeance
+upon the kidnappers. Reporter Farrell and his associates took this
+business under suspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections and
+financial situation. They found the latter to be precarious. They also
+discovered that Hardy was the bosom friend of a man named H. G. Blake,
+who had operated a small furniture store in Albany, but was known
+to be an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no very definite
+social grade, means of livelihood, or character. In the middle of the
+afternoon, when this connection was first discovered, Blake could not
+be found in Albany, but late in the evening he was discovered, and the
+reporters took him in hand.
+
+At the time they had nothing to go upon except Blake’s firm friendship
+with Hardy, the relative of the missing child, who had once tried to
+extort a thousand dollars and presumably knew the money affairs of
+his brother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail. In the
+course of the day they had canvassed all the livery stables in and
+about Albany. They found that early on Monday morning a man had rented
+a horse and light wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. This
+signature was compared with that of Blake, taken from a hotel register
+and some tax declarations. The handwriting seemed to be identical, and
+the reporters suspected that Blake had rented the rig under an assumed
+name.
+
+While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulled into the belief that
+he was under no suspicion and allowed to go to his home and to bed,
+Blake was taken to the newspaper office by the reporters and there
+asked what he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He denied all knowledge
+until he was assured that the paper wished to score a “scoop” on the
+story and was willing to pay $2,500 cash for information that would
+lead to the recovery of the boy.
+
+A large wallet was shown him, containing a wadding of paper with
+several bank notes on the outside. Apparently the man was a bit
+feeble-minded. At any rate, he fell into the trap, abandoning all
+caution and reaching greedily for the money. He said, of course, that
+he knew nothing directly about the affair, but that he could find out.
+Later, when the money was withdrawn from his sight he began to boast of
+what he could do. Under various incitements and provocations he talked
+along until it became apparent that he was one of the kidnappers. When
+it was too late the man realized that he had talked too much, and then
+he tried to retract. When he attempted to leave the office he was met
+by two officers who had been quietly summoned by the reporters and
+appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet was once more held out to
+Blake, and his greed so far overcame him that he agreed to guide the
+reporters to the spot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference with
+his captain, and see that the child was delivered.
+
+The little party, consisting of two reporters, the two disguised
+officers, and Blake set out late at night and arrived at a place on
+the Schenectady road, about eight miles from Albany, shortly before
+midnight. Blake here demanded the cash, but was told that it would not
+be handed over until he produced the boy. He then said that he thought
+the purse did not contain the money. A long argument followed. Once
+more the glib talking of the reporters prevailed, and Blake went into
+the dense woods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly to find
+the boy.
+
+After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer, whom he still
+believed to be a driver, to remain behind, and proceeded farther into
+the forest. More than an hour passed before he returned, and the party
+was about to drive off, thinking the man had played a clever trick.
+Blake, however, came back querulous and suspicious. He demanded once
+more to see the money, and being refused, said the trick was up. One of
+the men, however, persuaded him to take him to the other members of the
+gang, promising that the money would be delivered the moment the boy
+was seen alive. Apparently Blake was once more befooled, for he allowed
+the supposed driver to accompany him and made off again into the heart
+of the woods. One of the reporters and the other disguised policeman
+followed secretly.
+
+When the two pairs of men had proceeded about three hundred yards, the
+second lurking in the van of the first, not daring to strike a light,
+slashed by the underbrush and in evident danger of being shot down, the
+smoky light of a camp fire appeared suddenly ahead. In another minute a
+childish voice could be heard, and the gruff tones of a man trying to
+silence it. Blake and his companion made for the fire and were met by
+a masked man with a leveled revolver who informed them that they were
+surrounded and would be killed if they made a false move. There was a
+parley, which lasted till the second pair came up.
+
+Just what happened at this interesting moment is not easy to say.
+The witnesses do not agree. Apparently, however, the little boy,
+momentarily released by his captor, ran away. The three hunters
+thereupon made a rush for him and there was an exchange of shots in
+the darkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy and dragged him
+to the road, closely followed by the reporter and the other officer,
+leaving Blake, the masked man, and whatever other kidnappers there
+might be to flee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into the wagon,
+the reporter and officers sprang in after him, and the horses were
+lashed into a gallop. Apparently, the midnight adventure had been a
+little trying on the nerves of the party.
+
+After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furious speed, it became
+apparent that there was no pursuit on part of the kidnappers and
+the drive was slowed to a more comfortable pace while the reporters
+questioned the child.
+
+Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that he had been playing in
+the street before his father’s house when a dray wagon came by. He had
+run and caught on to the rear of this for a ride down the block. As he
+dropped off the wagon, he had been met by a stranger who smiled, patted
+his head and offered to buy him candy. The child was readily beguiled
+and taken to the light wagon in which he was driven several miles into
+the country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacant cabin. The
+next night he and his captors spent in a church until they moved out
+into the woods and began to camp. At this spot the rescuers had found
+him.
+
+According to the child, the kidnappers had not been cruel or
+threatening. They had provided plenty of food. They had even played
+games with the little boy and tried to keep him amused. The only
+complaint Johnny Conway had to make was against the mosquitoes, which
+had cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly for the two nights
+and one day he and his captors spent in the woods.
+
+Very early on the morning of August 19th, just three days after the
+kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagon turned into Colonia Street and
+proceeded slowly up that quiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In
+spite of the unseasonable hour there was a crowd in the street, some
+of whose members had been on watch all night. Albany had been seized
+with terror and morbid curiosity. The Conway house was never without a
+few straggling watchers, eager for the first news or crumbs of gossip.
+Reporters from the New York newspapers were on the scene, and special
+officers from the great city were on their way. Everything was being
+prepared for another breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seated
+wagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that early morning.
+
+As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, and some of the
+stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensing something unusual, one
+of the reporters rose in the rear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in
+his arms.
+
+“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor called anxiously.
+
+“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspaper sleuth.
+
+There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighbors came running
+from their houses in night garb. The Conways came forth from a
+sleepless vigil and caught the child in their arms. So the mystery of
+the boy’s fate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lasting
+enigma immediately succeeded.
+
+Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediately seized at his
+home and dragged to the nearest station house. The rumor of his
+connection with the kidnapping got abroad within a few hours, and the
+police building was immediately besieged by a crowd which demanded
+to see the prisoner. The police drove the crowd off, but it returned
+after an hour, much augmented in numbers and provided with a rope for a
+lynching. After several exciting hours, the mob was finally cowed and
+driven away by the mayor of Albany and a platoon of police with drawn
+revolvers.
+
+One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, but at least two
+others were known, Blake and the man in the mask. Several posses set
+out at once and surrounded the woods in which the child had been found.
+After beating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepy night
+in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, the citizenry lost its
+pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albany only to find that the police
+of Schenectady had arrested Blake in that city late the preceding
+evening and that the man was lodged in another precinct house where he
+could not communicate with Hardy. Another abortive lynching bee was
+started. Once more the mayor and the police drove off the howling gangs.
+
+The man in the mask, however, was still at large. Both Hardy and Blake
+at first refused to name him, and the police were at sea. Then a
+curious thing happened.
+
+William N. Loew, a New York attorney, reading of the kidnapping affair
+at Albany, which appeared in the metropolitan newspapers under black
+headlines, went to the office of one of the journals and said he
+believed he could give valuable information.
+
+On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, Bernard Myers, a
+clothing merchant of West Third Street, New York, had flirted on a
+Broadway car with a handsome young woman, who had given him her name
+and address as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourth Street, and
+invited him to write her. Myers, more avid than cautious, wrote the
+woman a fervid letter, asking for an appointment. A few days later two
+men appeared in the Myers store. One of them, who carried a heavy cane,
+said that he was the husband of Mrs. Warner, brandished the guilty
+letter in one hand, the cane in the other, and demanded that Myers
+give him a check for three hundred dollars on the spot or take the
+consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave a check for one hundred
+dollars, and then, as soon as the men had left his store, rushed to his
+bank and stopped payment. He then visited the district attorney and
+caused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraigned and released on bail.
+
+Loew had been summoned to act as attorney for Warner. He now told the
+newspapers of disclosures his client had made to him in consultation.
+Warner, who was himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway,
+had told Loew that he was interested in a plot to organize kidnapping
+on a commercial scale, and that the first jobs would be attempted in
+up-State New York. He gave Loew many details and talked plausibly
+of the ease with which parents could be stripped of considerable
+sums. Loew, who considered his client and fellow attorney slightly
+demented, had paid little attention to this sinister talk at the time.
+Now, however, he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that he
+probably was the man in the mask.
+
+Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliant Blake admitted
+that he was a friend of Warner’s, that they had indeed been schoolmates
+in their youth. He also admitted that he had been in New York a few
+days before the abduction of Johnny Conway and had then visited Warner.
+So the chase began.
+
+The police discovered that Warner had been at his office a day ahead
+of them and slipped out of New York again. They also found that he had
+been at Albany the three days that Johnny Conway had been detained.
+Their investigations showed also that Warner, though he had the
+reputation of being a particularly shrewd and energetic counselor, had
+never adhered very closely to the law himself, but had again and again
+been implicated in shady or criminal transactions, though he had always
+escaped prison, probably through legal acumen.
+
+It was soon apparent that the man had got well away, and an alarm was
+sent across the country. The police circulars that went out to all
+parts of America and the chief British and continental ports, described
+a man between forty and forty-five years old, more than six feet tall,
+slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over a very high forehead. That
+Warner was a bicycle enthusiast was the only added detail.
+
+The quest for Warner was one of the most exciting in memory. The
+first person sought and found was the Mrs. Warner who had given her
+name and address to Bernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in
+the subsequent blackmail charges. She was found living quietly at a
+boarding house in one of the adjacent New Jersey towns and said that
+she had not seen Warner for some weeks, a claim which turned out to
+be very near the truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before he
+started to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confided to the girl,
+who was not in truth his wife, any of his plans or intentions.
+
+It was then discovered that Attorney Warner was married and had a wife,
+from whom he had long been separated, living in a small town in upper
+New York. The detectives also visited this woman, but she had not seen
+her husband in years and could supply no information.
+
+Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in ten places on the
+same day. His presence was reported from every corner of the country.
+Clews and reports led weary officers thousands of miles on empty
+pursuits. Finally, when no real information as to the man developed,
+the public wearied of him, and news of the case dropped out of the
+papers.
+
+Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake made an attempt
+to mitigate his case by turning State’s evidence, and Hardy pleaded
+that he had only been an intermediary, whose motivation was his
+brother-in-law’s closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the
+evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even without the
+admissions of either one, the prosecutor decided to reject their
+pleas and force them to stand trial. The cases were quickly heard and
+verdicts of guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once
+sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years in the State
+prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly removed to that gloomy house
+of pain in the Adirondack Mountains.
+
+All this happened before the first of October. The prisoners, having
+been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary, and the kidnapped boy
+being safely in his parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly
+forgotten.
+
+But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of December 12, two men
+entered the farm lot of William Goodrich near the little village of
+Riley in central Kansas, about two thousand miles from Albany and the
+scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm hand, one George
+Johnson, was milking in the cow stable by lantern light.
+
+As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and straw, horny of
+hand and tanned by the prairie winds, rose from his stool and started
+to leave the stable with his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside
+and approached him. One of them laid a rough hand on the farmer’s
+shoulder and said soberly:
+
+“Warner, I want you. Come along.”
+
+“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious Western drawl. “My
+name is Gawge Johnson.”
+
+“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New York it’s Albert S.
+Warner. I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the Conway
+kidnapping. You’ll have to come.”
+
+The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to change his clothes,
+and loaded upon the next eastbound train. When he reached Kansas City
+he refused to go farther without extradition formalities. After the
+officers had telegraphed to New York, the man changed his mind again
+and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany, where he was placed in
+jail and soon brought to trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’
+imprisonment, the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.
+
+The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann of the Albany police
+force. He had trailed the man about five thousand miles, partly on
+false scents. In his wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee,
+Minnesota, New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas, where he had
+satisfied himself that Warner was working on the Goodrich farm. McCann
+had then called a Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest
+office and made the arrest as already described.
+
+The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seems to have been that
+Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage, had been scheming for some time
+to get a thousand dollars out of his brother-in-law. He had confided
+his ideas to Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion of his
+friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer and clever schemer. Warner
+had then acted as organizer and leader, with what success the reader
+will judge.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE
+
+
+On the afternoon of the twentieth of April, 1854, the schooner _Bella_
+cast off her moorings at the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked her way down
+the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for her home port, New York. She
+was partly in ballast, because of slack commerce, and carried a single
+passenger. About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grew up a
+strange mystery and a stranger history.
+
+When the last glint of the _Bella’s_ sails was seen from Rio’s island
+anchorages, that vessel passed forever out of worldly cognizance. She
+never reached any port save the ultimate, and of those that rode in
+her, nothing came back but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs was
+veiled in a storm and hidden among unknown waters. The epitaph was
+written at Lloyd’s in the familiar syllables: “Foundered with all
+hands.”
+
+Of the _Bella’s_ master, or the forty members of her crew, there is
+no surviving memory, and only a grimy hunt through the old shipping
+records could avail in the discovery of anything concerning them. But
+the lone passenger happened to be the son of a British baronet and heir
+to a great estate--Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. The succession and
+the inheritance of the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof of
+this young man’s death. There was, accordingly, some formal inquiry
+as to the _Bella_ and her wreck. The required months were allowed to
+pass; the usual reports from all ports were scanned. On account of the
+insistence of the Tichborne family, some additional care was taken. But
+in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formally declared lost at sea,
+his insurance paid, and the question of succession taken before the
+court in chancery, which determined such matters.
+
+Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of young Tichborne would
+have ended, had it not been for the peculiar insistence of his mother.
+Lady Tichborne would not, and probably could not, bring herself to
+believe that her beloved elder son had met his end in this dark and
+mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnesses to his death
+and objective proofs of the end, she clung obstinately to hope and
+continued to advertise for the “lost” young man for many years after
+the courts had solved the problem--or believed they had.
+
+There had already been the cloud of pathos about the head of Roger
+Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessary to an understanding
+of subsequent events. Born in Paris on January 5, 1829--his mother
+being the natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire, and
+a beautiful French woman--Roger was the descendant of very ancient
+Hampshire stock. His father, the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne
+and his grandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of that line.
+
+Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country, Lady Tichborne
+decided that her son should be reared as a Frenchman, and the lad spent
+the first fourteen years of his life in France, with the result that
+he never afterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief English
+schooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough to get the young man out
+of the habit of thinking in French and translating his Gallic idioms
+into English, a fault that appears in his letters to the very end, and
+one that caused him considerable suffering as a boy in England.
+
+Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joined the Sixth Dragoon
+Guards at Dublin, as a subaltern. But in 1852 he sold out his
+commission and went home. His peculiarities of manner and appearance,
+his accent and strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness for
+soldiering had made him miserable in the army. The constant cruel, if
+thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of his fellows found him a sensitive
+mark.
+
+But the unhappy termination of the young man’s military career
+was only a minor factor in an almost desperate state of mind that
+possessed him at this time. He had fallen in love with his cousin,
+Kate Doughty, afterward Lady Radcliffe, and she had found herself
+unable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and storms the young heir
+of the Tichbornes set sail from Havre in March, 1853, and reached
+Valparaiso, Chile, about three months later, evidently determined to
+seek forgetfulness in stranger latitudes. In the course of the southern
+summer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reached Rio in March or
+early April. Here he embarked on the _Bella_ for New York, as recited,
+his further plans remaining unknown. In letters to his mother he had,
+however, spoken vaguely of an intention to go to Australia, a hint upon
+which much of the following romance was erected.
+
+When, in the following year, the insurance was paid, and the will
+proved, the Tichbornes accepted the death of the traveler as
+practically beyond question. But not so his mother. She began, after an
+interval, to advertise in many parts of the world for trace of her son.
+Such notices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental,
+and Australian journals without effect. Only one thing is to be
+learned from them, the appearance of the lost heir. He is described
+as being rather undersized, delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes,
+and straight black hair. These personal specifications will prove of
+importance later on.
+
+In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and a younger son succeeded
+to the baronetcy and estates. This event stirred the dowager Lady
+Tichborne to fresh activities, and her advertisements began to appear
+again in newspapers and shipping journals over half the world. As
+a result of these injudicious clamorings for information, many a
+seaspawned adventurer was received by the grieving mother at Tichborne
+House, and many a common liar imposed on her for money and other
+favors. Repeated misadventures of this sort might have been considered
+sufficient experience to cause the dowager to desist from her folly,
+but nothing seemed to move her from her fixed idea, and the fantastic
+reports and rumors brought her by every wandering sharper had the
+effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.
+
+Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to restore her
+son, had not been without its collateral effects. Among them was the
+wide dissemination of a romantic story and the enlistment of public
+sympathy. A large part of the newspaper-reading British populace soon
+came to look upon the lady as a high example of motherly devotion,
+to sympathize with her point of view, and gradually to conclude that
+she was right, and that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere
+in the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to emotional
+strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate Doughty, the object of
+the young nobleman’s bootless love, refused various offers of marriage
+and steadfastly remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as
+to the fate of her hapless lover.
+
+Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew up. The Tichborne
+case came to be looked upon in some quarters as another of the great
+mysteries of disappearance. In various distant lands volunteer seekers
+took up the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by the
+fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by the hope of reward.
+
+In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing friends’ bureau in Sydney,
+New South Wales, a fact which he advertised in the London newspapers.
+Lady Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw the
+notice in _The Times_ and communicated with Cubitt. As a result of this
+contact, Lady Tichborne was notified, in November, 1865, that a man
+had been discovered who answered the description of her missing “boy.”
+This fellow had been found keeping a small butcher shop in the town of
+Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas
+Castro, which he admitted to be assumed.
+
+Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated at once and did not
+fail to give the impression that the discovery and return of her eldest
+son would be a feat to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir
+to a large property, and since she was herself “most anxious to hear.”
+Australia was then, to be sure, much farther away than to-day. There
+were no cables and only occasional steamers. It often took months for
+a letter to pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady
+Tichborne received a second communication in which she was told that
+there could be little doubt about the identification, as the butcher of
+Wagga Wagga had owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas
+Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at least one
+person that he was none other than Roger Tichborne.
+
+Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her first letter from
+her missing “son”. He addressed her as “Dear Mama,” misspelled the
+Tichborne name by inserting a “t” after the “i,” spelled common
+words abominably, and handled the English language with a fine show
+of ignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incident at
+Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had not the slightest recollection.
+At first she was considerably damped by these discrepancies and
+mistakes of the claimant, as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to be
+termed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from her doubts and asserted
+her absolute confidence in the genuineness of the far-away pretender to
+the baronetcy.
+
+Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, even when it is recalled
+that subsequent letters from Australia revealed the claimant to be
+ignorant of common family traditions and totally confused about
+himself, even going so far as to say that he had been a common soldier
+in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne had been an officer, and
+referring to his schooling at Winchester, whereas the Roman Catholic
+Tichbornes had, of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborne
+apparently ascribed such lapses to the “terrible ordeal” her boy
+had suffered, and she was not the only one to recognize that Roger
+Tichborne had himself, because of his early French training and the
+meagerness of his subsequent education, misspelled just such words as
+appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misused his English in
+a very similar fashion.
+
+These details are interesting rather than important. Whatever their
+final significance, Lady Tichborne sent money to Australia to pay for
+the claimant’s passage home. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the
+last month of 1866, and visited several localities, among them Wapping,
+a London district which played a vital part in what was to come. He
+also visited the vicinity of Tichborne Park and made numerous inquiries
+there. Only after these preliminaries did he cross to Paris, where he
+summoned Lady Tichborne to meet him. When she called at his hotel she
+found him in bed complaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted,
+and she recounted afterward that he kept his face turned to the wall
+most of the time she spent with him.
+
+What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this man is an
+interesting matter for speculation. She had sent away, thirteen
+years before, a slight, delicate, poetic aristocrat, whose chief
+characteristic was an excessive refinement that made him quite unfit
+for the common stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short,
+gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults and vocal
+solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the young man who knew his
+French and did not know his English, here was a fellow who could speak
+not a word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.
+
+None of these things appeared to make any difference to Lady Tichborne.
+She received the claimant without reservation, said publicly that she
+had recovered her darling boy, and went so far as to announce her
+reasons for accepting him as her son.
+
+The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, an exciting topic
+of the newspapers of the time, with the result that the romantic
+story of his voyage, the shipwreck of the _Bella_, his rescue, his
+wanderings, his final discovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return
+to his mother’s arms became known to millions of people, many of whom
+accepted the legend for its charm and color alone, without reference to
+its probability. Indeed, the tale had all the elements that make for
+popularity and credibility. The opening incident of unrequited love,
+the journey in quest of forgetfulness, the crossing of the Andes, the
+ordeal of shipwreck, the adventures in the Australian bush, and the
+intervention of the hand of Providence to drag him back to his native
+land, his title and his inheritance! Was there lacking any element of
+pathetic grace?
+
+For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichborne family affairs
+and his sad illiteracy sober objections to the pretensions of the
+claimant, there was triple evidence of identification. Not only had
+Lady Tichborne recognized this wanderer as her son, but two old
+Tichborne servants had preceded her in their approval. It happened
+that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who had been intimate with
+Roger Tichborne as a boy, was living in New South Wales when the first
+claim was put forward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the request of
+the dowager this man went to see the pretender and talked with him at
+length, first in the presence of those who were pressing the claim
+and later alone. The servant and the claimant reviewed a number of
+incidents in Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported that he
+was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servant and subsequently
+accompanied him to England. Later a former Tichborne gardener,
+Grillefoyle by name, who also had gone out to Australia, was sent
+to interview the Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. He
+reported favorably to his former mistress, and it seems to have been
+mainly on the opinion of these two men that Lady Tichborne based her
+decision to disregard the difficulties inherent in the letters and to
+finance the return of the man to England. Their testimony, backed by
+the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubt swayed her to credence
+when she finally stood face to face with the improbable apparition that
+pretended to be her son.
+
+The claimant, though he had arrived in England in December, 1866,
+made various claims and went to court once or twice but did not make
+the definitive legal move to establish his position or to retrieve
+the baronetcy and estates until more than three years later. Suit was
+finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trial came on before
+the court of common pleas in London on the eleventh of May, 1871. This
+was the beginning of one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trial
+dramas to be found in the records of modern nations.
+
+The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delay for the purpose
+of gathering evidence and consolidating his case. He had sought out
+and won over to his side the trusted servants of the house, the family
+solicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineers and many
+others. The school, the officers’ mess, the Tichborne seat, and many
+other localities connected with the youth and young manhood of Roger
+Tichborne had all been visited. In addition, the obese claimant had
+further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who came to have more and more faith
+in him. Originally she had written:
+
+“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it will not prevent me
+from recognizing him, though his statements differ from mine.”
+
+Before the suit was filed, and the case came to be tried, his memory
+improved remarkably; he corrected the many errors in his earlier
+statements, and his recollection quickly assimilated itself to that
+of Lady Tichborne. After he had been in England for a time even his
+handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealed in the letters
+written by Roger Tichborne before his disappearance.
+
+There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidence in favor
+of the man from Australia. I have already said that the public
+accepted the stranger. It needs to be recorded that every new shred
+of similarity or circumstance that could be brought out only added to
+the conviction of the people. This was unquestionably Roger Tichborne
+and none other. Some elements asserted their opinion with a passion
+that was not far from violence, and the public generally regarded the
+hostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based on selfish motives.
+Naturally the other Tichbornes did not want to be dispossessed in favor
+of a man who had been confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted among
+the dead for more than fifteen years. The man in the street regarded
+the family position as natural, but reprehensible. How, it was asked,
+could there be any doubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was
+there anything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubt seemed almost
+monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher of Wagga Wagga became a public
+idol, and the Tichborne family an object of aversion.
+
+Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it became known that the
+claimant had no funds with which to prosecute his case, the suggestion
+of a public bond issue was made and promptly approved. Bonds, with no
+other backing than the promise to refund the advanced money when the
+claimant should come into possession of his property, were issued,
+and so extreme was the public confidence in the validity of the claim
+that they were bought up greedily. In addition, a number of wealthy
+individuals became so interested in the affair and so convinced of the
+rights of the stranger, that they made him large personal advances. One
+man, Mr. Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as 75,000
+pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow family advanced 30,000 pounds
+and Earl Rivers is believed to have wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on
+the impostor.
+
+Finally the civil trial of the suit took place. The proceedings began
+on the eleventh of May, 1871, and were not concluded until March,
+1872. Sir John Coleridge, who defended for the Tichborne family and
+later became lord chief justice, cross-questioned the claimant for
+twenty-two days, and his speech in summing up is said to have been the
+longest ever delivered before a court in England. The actual taking
+of evidence required more than one hundred court days, and at least a
+hundred witnesses identified the claimant as Roger Tichborne. To quote
+from Major Arthur Griffiths’ account:
+
+“These witnesses included Lady Tichborne,[6] Roger’s mother, the family
+solicitor, one baronet, six magistrates, one general, three colonels,
+one major, thirty non-commissioned officers and men, four clergymen,
+seven Tichborne tenants, and sixteen servants of the family.”
+
+[6] A mistake, for the dowager Lady Tichborne died on March 12, 1868.
+Her damage had been done before the trial.
+
+On the other hand, the defense produced only seventeen witnesses
+against the claimant, but it piled up a great deal of dark-looking
+evidence, and, in the course of his long and terrible interrogation of
+the plaintiff, Coleridge was able to bring out so many contradictions,
+such appalling blanks of memory, and such an accumulation of ignorances
+and blunders that the jury gave evidence of its inclination. Thereupon
+Serjeant Ballantine, the claimant’s leading counsel, abandoned the case.
+
+On the order of the judge the claimant was immediately seized, charged
+with three counts of perjury, and remanded for criminal trial. This
+case was not called until April, 1873, and it proved a more formidable
+legal contest than the unprecedented civil action. The proceedings
+lasted more than a year, and it took the judge eighteen days to charge
+the jury; this in spite of the usual despatch of British trials. How
+long such a case might have hung on in the notoriously slow American
+courts is a matter for painful speculation.
+
+This long and dramatic trial, full of emotional scenes and stirring
+incidents, moving slowly along to the accompaniment of popular unrest
+and violent partisanship in the newspapers, ended as did the civil
+action. The claimant was convicted of having impersonated Roger
+Tichborne, of having sullied the name of Miss Kate Doughty, and of
+having denied his true identity as Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping
+butcher. The infant nephew of the real Roger Tichborne was, by this
+verdict, confirmed in his rights, and the claimant was sentenced to
+fourteen years imprisonment. Thus ended one of the most magnificent
+impostures ever attempted. Lady Tichborne did not live to witness this
+collapse of the fraud, or the humiliation of the man she had so freely
+accepted as her own son. The poor lady was shown to be a monomaniac,
+whose judgment had been unseated by the shipwreck of her beloved eldest
+boy.
+
+I have purposely reserved the story, as brought out in the two trials,
+for direct narration, since it embraces the major romance connected
+with this celebrated case and needs to be told with regard to
+chronology and climax.
+
+Arthur Orton, the true name of the claimant, was born to a Wapping
+butcher, at 69 High Street, in June, 1834, and was thus nearly five
+years younger than Roger Tichborne. He had been afflicted with St.
+Vitus’ dance as a boy and had been delinquent. As a result of this, he
+had been sent from home when fourteen years old, and he had taken a
+sea voyage which landed him, by a strange coincidence, at Valparaiso,
+Chile, in 1848, five years before Tichborne reached that port. Orton
+remained in Chile for several years, living with a family named Castro,
+at the small inland city of Melipillo, until 1851, when he returned to
+England and visited his parents at Wapping. In the following year he
+sailed for Tasmania and settled at Hobart Town.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                                               _Copyright, Maull & Fox_
+
+                          ~~ ARTHUR ORTON ~~]
+
+He operated a butcher shop in that place for some years, but made a
+failure of business and “disappeared into the brush,” owing every one.
+Trace of his movements then grew vague, but it is known that he was
+suspected of complicity in several highway robberies, which were staged
+in New South Wales a few years afterward, and he was certainly charged
+with horse stealing on one occasion. Later he appeared in Wagga Wagga
+and opened a small butcher shop under the name of Thomas Castro, which
+he had adopted from the family in Chile.
+
+In a confession which Orton wrote and sold to a London newspaper[7]
+years after his release from prison in 1884, he gives an account of
+the origin of the fraud. He says that some time before Cubitt, of the
+missing-friends bureau, found him and induced him to write to Lady
+Tichborne, he and his chum at Wagga Wagga, one Slade, had seen some of
+the advertisements which the distraught lady was having published in
+antipodean newspapers. Orton soon adopted the pose of superior station,
+told Slade that he was, in fact, a nobleman incognito, and finally let
+his friends understand that he was Roger Tichborne. The whole thing
+had been begun in a spirit of innocent acting, for the purpose of
+noting the effect of such a revelation upon his friend. In view of
+what followed we cannot escape the conclusion that the swinishly fat
+butcher undertook this adventure because he was mentally disturbed, in
+the sense of being a pathological liar. A talent for impersonation and
+imposture is one of the marked characteristics displayed by this common
+type of mental defective, and Orton certainly possessed it, almost to
+the point of genius.
+
+[7] _The People_, 1898.
+
+Whatever the explanation of Orton’s original motive, the fact remains
+that his friend Slade was impressed by the butcher’s tale and thus
+encouraged Orton to proceed with the fraud, as did a lawyer to whom
+Orton-Castro was in debt. He soon went swaggering about, trying to
+talk like a gentleman and giving what must have been a most painful
+imitation of the manners of a lord. His rude neighbors can have had no
+better discrimination in such matters than the British public and Lady
+Tichborne herself, so it was not a difficult feat to play upon local
+credulity.
+
+In the last month of 1865, when Cubitt sent an agent to Wagga Wagga,
+as a result of his correspondence with Lady Tichborne, the legend of
+Orton’s identity as Roger Tichborne was already firmly established in
+the minds of his townspeople, and the rumor thus gained its initial
+confirmation. The reader is asked to remember that Orton was known as
+Castro, and that his identification as Orton was a difficult feat,
+which remained unperformed until the final trial, more than eight years
+later.
+
+Lady Tichborne herself supplied Castro and his backers in Australia
+with their first vital information. In seeking to identify her son
+she quite guilelessly wrote to Cubitt and others many details of her
+son’s appearance, history, education, and peculiarities. She also
+mentioned a number of intimate happenings. All these were seized upon
+by the butcher and used in framing his letters to the dowager. In spite
+of this fact, he made the many stupid blunders already referred to.
+Lady Tichborne saw the discrepancies, as has been remarked, but her
+monomania urged her to credence, and she sent the ex-servants, Bogle
+and Grillefoyle to investigate. How Orton-Castro managed to win them
+over is not easy to determine. For a time it was suspected that perhaps
+these men had been corrupted by those interested in having the claimant
+recognized; but the facts seem to discountenance any such belief.
+One of the outstanding characteristics of Orton was his ability to
+make friends and gain their confidence, of which fact there can be no
+more eloquent testimony than the long list of witnesses who appeared
+for him at his trials. The man who was able to persuade a mother,
+a sharp-witted solicitor, half a dozen higher army officers, six
+magistrates, and numberless soldiers and tenants who had known Roger
+Tichborne well, to accept and support him in his preposterous claim,
+did not need money to befool an old gardener and a negro valet.
+
+Indeed, it was this personal gift, backed by the man’s abnormal
+histrionic bent and capacity for mimicry, that carried him so far and
+won him the support of so many individuals and almost the solid public.
+How far he was able to carry things has been suggested, but the details
+are so remarkable as to demand recounting.
+
+Orton had almost no schooling. He quite naturally misspelled the
+commonest words and was normally guilty of the most appalling
+grammatical and rhetorical solecisms. He knew not a word of French,
+Latin, or of any other language, save a smattering of Spanish, picked
+up from the Castros while at Melipillo. He had never associated with
+any one who remotely approached the position of a gentleman, and the
+best imitation he can have contrived, must have been patterned after
+performances witnessed on the stages of cheap variety houses. Moreover
+he knew absolutely nothing about the Tichbornes, not even the fact that
+they were Catholics. He did not know where their estates were, nor
+where Roger had gone to school; yet he carried his imposture within an
+inch of success. Indeed, it was the opinion of disinterested observers
+at the trial of his civil action that he must have won the case had he
+stayed off the stand himself.
+
+The feat of substitution this man almost succeeded in accomplishing
+was palpably an enormous one. He went to England, familiarized himself
+with the places Roger Tichborne had visited, studied French without
+managing to learn it, practiced the handwriting of the young Tichborne
+heir till it deceived even the experts, and likewise learned, in spite
+of his own lack of schooling, to imitate the English of Tichborne, and
+to misspell just those words on which the original Roger was weak. He
+crammed his memory with incidents and details picked up at every hand.
+He learned to talk almost like a gentleman. He worked with his voice
+until he got out of it most of the earthy harshness that belonged to
+it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtly behavior, gentle
+ways, and a certain charming deference which went far toward convincing
+those who took him seriously and gave him their support. In short, he
+was able to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness, but he could
+not, with all his talent, quite project himself into the personality
+and mentality of another and very different man. That, perhaps, is a
+simulation beyond human capacity.
+
+So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificent impersonation,
+went to prison for fourteen years, having made quite too grand a
+gesture and much too sad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and
+was then released in view of good conduct. Thereafter he wrote several
+confessions and retracted them all in turn. Finally, toward the end of
+his life, he changed his mind once more and prepared a final and fairly
+complete account of his life and misdeeds, from which some of the facts
+here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898.
+
+The extent to which he had moved the public may be judged from an
+incident the year following Orton’s conviction and imprisonment. His
+chief counsel at the criminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy,
+who was himself scathingly denounced by the court in connection with
+a misdirected attempt to have Orton identified as a castaway from the
+_Bella_ by a seaman who swore he had performed the rescue, but was
+shown to be a perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was elected to
+Parliament, so great was his popularity and that of his client. When
+Kenealy, soon after taking his seat, moved that the Tichborne case
+be referred to a royal commission, the House of Commons rejected the
+motion unanimously. This action inflamed the populace. There were angry
+street meetings, inflammatory speeches, and symptoms of a general riot.
+The troops had to be called and kept in readiness for instant action.
+Fortunately the sight of the soldiers sobered the mob, and the matter
+passed off with only minor bloodshed.
+
+But ten years later, when Orton emerged from prison, there was almost
+no one to greet him. The fickle public, that had once been ready to
+storm the Houses of Parliament for him, had utterly forgotten the man.
+Nor was there any sign of public interest, when he died in obscurity
+and poverty fourteen years later. A few of his persistent followers
+gave him honorable burial as “Sir Roger Tichborne.”
+
+The original enigma of the fate of Roger Tichborne, upon which this
+colossal structure of fraud and legal intricacy was founded, received,
+to be sure, not the slightest clarification from all the pother and
+feverish investigating. If ever there had been any good reason to doubt
+that the young Hampshire aristocrat went helplessly down with the
+stricken _Bella_ and her fated crew, none remained after the trials and
+the stupendous publicity they invoked.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK
+
+
+On the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1899, Mrs. Arthur W. Clarke,
+the young wife of a British publisher’s agent residing at 159 East
+Sixty-fifth Street, New York, found this advertisement in the _New York
+Herald_, under the heading, “Employment Wanted:”
+
+ GIRL (20) as child’s nurse; no experience in city. Nurse, 274
+ _Herald_, Twenty-third Street.
+
+The following Tuesday Mrs. Clarke took into her employment, as
+attendant for her little daughter, Marion, twenty months old, a pretty
+young woman, who gave the name of Carrie Jones and said she had come
+only two weeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upper New
+York State. The fact explained her lack of references. Mrs. Clarke, far
+from being suspicious because of the absence of employment papers, was
+impressed with the new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled,
+even-tempered young woman, considerably above her station, devoted
+to children, and, what was particularly noted, gentle in voice and
+demeanor--a jewel among servants.
+
+Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby Marion Clarke had become
+the center of one of the celebrated abduction cases and, for a little
+while, the nucleus of a dark and appalling mystery. To-day, after
+the lapse of twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affair
+are still to be read in the precautions hedging the employment
+of nursemaids in American cities and in the timidity of parents
+everywhere. It was one of those occasional and impressive crimes which
+leave their mark on social habits and public behavior long after the
+details or the incidents themselves have been forgotten.
+
+The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifth Street is about
+two squares from the city’s great playground, Central Park, a veritable
+warren of children and their maids on every sunny day. Here Marion
+Clarke went almost every afternoon with her new nurse, and here the
+first scene of the ensuing drama was played.
+
+At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of the next Sunday, May 21,
+Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarke and asked if she might not take the
+little girl to the Park then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine
+inviting. In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarke and her
+husband consented, and the maid set off a little before eleven o’clock
+with Baby Marion tucked into a wicker carriage. She was told to return
+by one o’clock, so that the child might have her luncheon at the usual
+hour.
+
+At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk in the Park, also
+tempted from his home by the enchantments of the day. Mrs. Clarke did
+not accompany him, since she had borne a second baby only two or three
+months before, and she was still confined to the house.
+
+Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Street entrance and
+followed the paths idly along toward the old arsenal. Without
+especially seeking his daughter and her nurse, he nevertheless kept
+an eye out. A short distance from the arsenal he saw his child’s cart
+standing in front of the rest room; he approached, expecting to see the
+child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and the attendant explained that
+the child’s vehicle had been left in her care, while the nurse bore the
+baby to the menagerie.
+
+“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to be here any minute
+now,” prattled the public employee.
+
+The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatient and went off to
+wander through the animal gardens. In half an hour he was back at the
+rest room to find the attendant about to move the cart indoors and make
+her departure, her tour of duty being over.
+
+Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to the nearest
+policeman, who smiled, with the confidence of long experience, and
+advised him to go home. It was a common thing for a green country
+girl to get lost among the winding drives and walks of Central Park.
+No doubt the nurse would find her way home with the child in a little
+while.
+
+Clarke went back to his house and waited. At two o’clock he went
+excitedly back to the Park and consulted the captain of police, with
+the same results. The officers were ordered to look for the nurse and
+child, but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He was once more
+told to go home and wait. At the same time he was rather pointedly
+told not to return with his annoying inquiries. Such temporary
+disappearances of children happened every day.
+
+The harried father went home and paced the floor. His enervated wife
+wept and trembled with apprehension. At four o’clock the doorbell rang,
+and the father rushed excitedly to answer.
+
+A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibule and asked if Mr.
+Clarke lived here. Then he handed over a letter in a plain white
+envelope, lingering a moment, as if expecting a tip.
+
+Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quaking fingers and read:
+
+ “MRS CLARK: Do not look for your nurse and baby. They are safe in our
+ possession, where they will remain for the present. If the matter is
+ kept out of the hands of the police and newspapers, you will get your
+ baby back, safe and sound.
+
+ “If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it all over, we
+ will see to it that you never see her alive again. We are driven to
+ this by the fact that we cannot get work, and one of us has a child
+ dying through want of proper treatment and nourishment.
+
+ “Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is still with
+ her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us Monday or Tuesday.
+
+                                                          “THREE.”
+
+The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed, punctuated,
+and printed with a fine pen in a somewhat laborious simulation of
+writing-machine type. It also bore several markings characteristic of
+the journalist or publisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel
+lines drawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicate
+capitals. The envelope was the common plain white kind, but the sheet
+of paper on which the note had been penned was of the white unglazed
+and uncalendared kind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper
+offices as copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspected that the
+kidnapper must have been a newspaper man, printer, reader, or some one
+connected with a publishing house.
+
+The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alone the preceding Friday
+evening and had been writing. Evidently she had prepared the note at
+that time and had been planning the abduction with foresight and care.
+People at once reached the conclusion that she was one of the agents of
+a great band of professional kidnappers. Accordingly every child and
+every mother in the city stood in peril.
+
+To indicate the nature of the official search, we may as well reproduce
+Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:
+
+ “Arrest for abduction--Carrie Jones, twenty-one years of age, five
+ feet two inches tall, dark hair and eyes, pale face, high check bones,
+ teeth prominent in lower jaw, American by birth; wore a white straw
+ sailor hat with black band, military pin on side, blue-check shirt
+ waist, black brilliantine skirt, black lace bicycle boots, white
+ collar and black tie.
+
+ “Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke, daughter of Arthur
+ W. Clarke, of this city, and described as follows: twenty months
+ old, light complexion, blue eyes, light hair, had twelve teeth,
+ four in upper jaw, four in lower jaw, and four in back. There is
+ a space between two upper front teeth, and red birthmark on back.
+ Wore rose-colored dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black
+ buttoned shoes.
+
+ “Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in all
+ institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children of the
+ above age are received.”
+
+A photograph of the missing child accompanied the description.
+
+So the quest began. It was, however, by no means confined to Carrie
+Jones and the child. The New York newspaper reporters were early
+convinced that some one else stood behind the transaction, and they
+sought night and day for a man or woman connected either directly or
+distantly with their own profession. It was the day when the reporter
+prided himself especially on his superior acumen as a sleuth, with the
+result that every effort was made to give a fresh demonstration of
+journalistic enterprise and shrewdness.
+
+Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompanied by a sharp rise
+in public emotionalism and the incipience of panic among parents,
+failed, however, to produce even the most shadowy results. Rumors and
+suspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, but there came forth
+nothing that had the earmarks of the genuine clew. The arrests of
+innocent young women were many, and numerous little girls were dragged
+to police stations by the usual crop of fanatics.
+
+Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from all parts of the
+surrounding country and even from the most distant places. One report
+had her on her way to England, another showed her as having sailed for
+Sweden, a third report was that she had been taken to Australia by a
+childless couple. All the other common hypotheses were, of course,
+entertained. A bereaved mother had taken little Marion to fill the void
+of her own loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girl and was
+using her to present as her own offspring, probably to comply with the
+provisions of some freak will.
+
+But the hard fact remained that a letter had come within four hours
+after the abduction of the child, and before there had been the
+first note of alarm or publicity. Such an epistle could only have
+been written by the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy to
+the fact that the girl was gone. In that communication the writer
+had stated his or her case very definitely and, while not actually
+demanding ransom or naming a sum, had clearly indicated the intention
+of making such a subsequent demand.
+
+Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be it said to their
+credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spun hypotheses, but clung to
+the main track and sought the kidnappers. The _New York World_ offered
+a reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficient reportorial
+workers into the search. The other newspapers also kept their men
+going in shifts. Every possible trail was followed to its end, every
+promising part of the city searched. Even the most inane reports were
+investigated with diligence.
+
+Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bits of information
+which they, no doubt, considered suggestive or important. The
+well-known Captain McClusky, then chief of detectives, received these
+often wearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigation of
+their reports, and often remained at his desk late into the night.
+
+Among a large number of women who reported to the detective chief was a
+Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and voluble Irishwoman, who maintained a rooming
+house in Twenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff asserted that
+two women with a little girl of Marion Clarke’s age and general
+appearance had rented a room from her on the evening of the eventful
+Sunday and spent the night there. The next morning one of them had got
+the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secluded with the other
+woman and child for a time, and had then come out to announce that
+they would not remain another day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detected
+excitement in the manner of both women, but she had to admit that the
+child had made no complaint or outcry. Nevertheless, she felt that
+these were the wanted people.
+
+Had she noted anything of special interest about the child, any
+peculiarity by which the parents might recognize her? Or had she heard
+the women mention any town or place to which they might have gone?
+
+The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessed that her
+curiosity had led her to do a little spying, and recalled that she had
+heard one of the women mention a town. Either she had not heard the
+name distinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it was a name
+ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that. Fitchburg, Pittsburg,
+Williamsburg, Plattsburg--something like that. She did not know the
+reason for her feeling, but she was sure it was a place not very far
+from New York.
+
+As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothing except that
+it seemed good-humored, healthy, and clever. She had heard one of the
+women say: “Come on, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently the
+little girl had done some sort of impersonation.
+
+Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credence in Mrs. Cosgriff’s
+account, but he saw no special promise in her revelations till he
+repeated the details to the agonized parents. At the mention of the
+childish impersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.
+
+“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of her little tricks!”
+
+It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spent hours playing
+with the child, teaching it to walk and pose like a certain affected
+woman friend of its mother. Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie
+Jones, and another woman had been in South Brooklyn the evening after
+the abduction and spent the night and part of the next day at Mrs.
+Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoon for a town whose name ended in
+burg or berg.
+
+Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives made a list of towns
+with the burg termination, and one or two men were sent to each, with
+instructions to make a quiet, but thorough, search. Information of
+a confidential kind was also forwarded to the police departments of
+other cities, near and far. As a result a number of suspected young
+women were picked up. Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a
+short time when a girl answering to the description of Carrie Jones
+was seized in Connecticut and held for the arrival of the New York
+detectives, when she began to act mysteriously and failed to give a
+clear account of herself. It was found, however, that she had other
+substantial reasons for being cryptic, and that she was, moreover,
+enjoying her little joke on the officials.
+
+Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who would neither affirm nor
+deny that she was Carrie Jones, but let the local police have the very
+definite impression that they had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper.
+She turned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatory
+type. Her one real link with the affair was that her name happened
+to be Jones, a circumstance which got the members of this large and
+popular family of citizens no little discomfort during the pendency of
+the Clarke mystery.
+
+Meantime no further communication had been received from the abductors.
+They had said, in the single note received from them, that they would
+communicate Monday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything,
+far from being quiet, had been in a most plangent uproar, which
+circumstances alone should have been recognized as the reason for
+silence. But, as is usual, the clear and patent explanation seemed not
+to contain enough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretations
+were put forward in the usual variety of forms. The note had been sent
+merely to misguide, and one might be sure the abductors did not intend
+to return Baby Marion. If the abductors were looking for ransom, why
+had no more been heard? Why had they chosen the daughter of a man who
+had slender means and from whom no large ransom could be expected? No,
+it was something more sinister still. Probably Little Marion was dead.
+
+As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusive
+developments, the public sympathy toward the stricken couple became
+expressive and dramatic. Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth
+Street in hope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. The father was
+greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressions whenever he came or
+went. Many offers of aid were received, and some came forward who
+wanted to pay whatever ransom might be demanded.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ MARION CLARKE ~~]
+
+In these various ways the Marion Clarke case came to be a national and
+even an international sensation in the brief course of a week. Sympathy
+with the parents was instant and widespread, and passion against the
+abductors filled the newspaper correspondence columns with suggestions
+in favor of more stringent laws, plans for cruel vengeance on the
+kidnappers, complaints against the police, fulminations directed at
+quite every one connected with the unfortunate affair--all the usual
+expressions of helplessness and bafflement.
+
+On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven days after the
+disappearance, a woman with a little girl entered the general store at
+the little hamlet of St. John, N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided
+as postmistress to the community. The child was a little petulant and
+noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous. Both were strangers. The
+woman gave her name as Beauregard and took one or two letters which had
+come for her. With these and the little girl she made a quick departure.
+
+Because of the great excitement and wide publicity of the Clarke case,
+nothing of the sort could happen so near the city of New York without
+one inevitable result. The postmistress immediately notified Deputy
+Sheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, who had his office in
+St. John. Charleston was able to locate the woman and child before
+they could leave town, and he covertly followed them to the farmhouse
+of Frank Oakley, in the heart of the Ramapo Mountain region, near
+Sloatsburg, about nineteen miles from Haverstraw, on the Hudson River.
+
+The rural officer discovered, by making a few inquiries, that this Mrs.
+Beauregard had been known in the vicinity for some months, and she had
+been occupying the Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously,
+however, she had appeared with another woman and the little girl.
+
+The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; there were, or had been,
+two women; the place was ideal for hiding, and the child was of the
+proper age and description. Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned some
+other officers, descended on the place, seized the woman, the child,
+and the husband, locked them into the nearest jail, and sent word to
+Captain McClusky.
+
+New York detectives and reporters arrived by the next train, and Mr.
+Clarke came a short time later. As soon as he was on the ground,
+the party proceeded to the jail, and the weeping father caught his
+wandering girl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke. Within
+ten minutes every available telephone and telegraph wire was humming
+the triumphant message back to New York.
+
+But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mystery of the case only
+began to unfold itself. The woman seized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie
+Jones. Neither had the Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name
+of Mrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned about this matter,
+later “admitted” that she was really Mrs. Jennie Wilson. Her story
+was that a couple had brought the child to her, saying that it needed
+to remain in the mountains for the summer. They had paid her for the
+little girl’s board and care. She declared she did not know their
+address, but they would certainly be on hand in the fall to reclaim
+their baby.
+
+The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he was James Wilson; that
+he had no employment at the time, except working on the farm, and that
+he knew nothing of the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. He
+didn’t interfere in such affairs.
+
+Both were returned to New York after some slight delay. The detectives
+and the newspapers at once went to work on the problem of discovering
+who they were, and what had become of Carrie Jones.
+
+Meantime the abducted child was being brought home to her distracted
+mother. A crowd of several thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth
+Street, apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening
+newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded with presents, saluted
+by the public officials, and treated as the heroine that circumstance
+and good police work had made her. Photographs of her crowded the
+journals, and she was altogether the most famous youngster of the day.
+Her parents later removed to Boston with her, and they were heard of in
+the succeeding years when attempts were made to release the imprisoned
+kidnappers, or whenever there was another kidnapping or missing-child
+case. In time they passed back into obscurity, and Marion Clarke
+disappeared from the glare of notoriety.
+
+The work of identifying the man and woman caught in the Sloatsburg
+farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy Lang, the boy who had brought the
+note to the Clarke door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately
+recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who had handed him
+the missive and a five-cent piece in Second Avenue and asked him to
+deliver the note to Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and
+said that the prisoner was one of the two women who had stayed at
+her house on that Sunday night. It was apparent then that one of the
+active kidnappers, and not an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman
+and her husband, however, denied everything and refused to give any
+information about themselves.
+
+Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in an attempt to make
+the identification complete, discover just who the prisoners were, and
+establish their connections with others believed to have financed the
+kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than mere abduction for
+ransom was suspected, and it seemed to be indicated by certain facts
+that will appear presently. Accordingly the reporters and journalistic
+investigators were conducting a fresh search on very broad lines.
+
+On the evening of the second of June this hunt came to an abrupt close,
+when a reporter traced the mysterious Carrie Jones to the home of an
+aunt at White Oak Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the
+admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country girl who
+had been for no long period a waitress in the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker
+Street, New York. Bella Anderson readily told who the captive man and
+woman were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted and carried
+out. Her story may be summarized to clear the ground.
+
+Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of a retired soldier
+who had seen service in India and Africa. At the age of fourteen,
+her parents being dead, she and her brother, Samuel, had set out for
+America and been received by relatives in the States of New York and
+New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled and aided financially
+both by her brother and other relatives. The year before the kidnapping
+she had gone to New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel, in
+the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs. George Beauregard
+Barrow. They had been kind to her and become her intimates, nursing her
+through an illness and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.
+
+The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested pair, had
+persuaded her that the work of waiting on table in a hotel was too
+arduous and advised her to seek employment in a private family as nurse
+to a child. In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity
+to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a heavy ransom for its
+return. All this part of the business they would manage for her. All
+she needed to do was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this
+she was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be collected.
+
+Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a place as child’s
+nurse. Several parents answered. At the first two homes she was just
+too late to procure employment, other applicants having anticipated
+her. So it was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and
+determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.
+
+The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had coached her carefully.
+They had instructed her in the matter of her lack of references, in the
+manner of taking the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in
+the details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on through
+the list. They had been the mentors and the “master minds.”
+
+After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few days and had taken
+little Marion to the Park the first time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted
+with the nurse and instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the
+next excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many qualms and
+been unable to bring herself to the deed for several visits. Each time
+Mrs. Barrow met her in the Park and was ready to flee with the little
+girl. Finally the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon she
+found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They left the baby’s cart
+at the rest room, carried the child to a remote place, changed its
+coat and cap, and then set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they
+took the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to, the women
+exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned to Manhattan, gave the note
+to the boy, and turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had seen
+the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the game was dangerous,
+and set out quickly for Sloatsburg, where the farmhouse had been rented
+in advance by Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent away
+because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly sought and might be
+recognized in the neighborhood.
+
+This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows naturally sought
+to shield themselves. It was also discovered that Mrs. Barrow had been
+an Addie McNally, born and reared in up-State New York, and that she,
+with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment, thus
+explaining the chirographical characteristics of the Clarke abduction
+note. She was about twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not
+unattractive.
+
+Investigation brought out romantic and pathetic facts concerning the
+husband. He had apparently had no better employment in New York than
+that of motorman in the hire of an electric cab company then operating
+in that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguished parents.
+His father was Judge John C. Barrow of the superior court of Little
+Rock, Arkansas, and the descendant of other persons politically well
+known in the South. George Beauregard Barrow--his middle name being
+that of the famous Confederate commander at the first battle of Bull
+Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationship was claimed--had been
+incorrigible from childhood. In early manhood he had been connected
+with kidnapping threats and plots in his home city and with assaults on
+his enemies, with the result that he was finally sent away, cut off and
+told to make his own berth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his
+unfortunate son at the trial, but public feeling was too sorely aroused.
+
+George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried before Judge Fursman and
+quickly convicted. Barrow was sentenced to fourteen years and ten
+months, and the Anderson girl to four years, both judge and jury
+accepting her statement that she had been no more than a pawn in the
+hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs. Barrow, sensing the
+direction of the wind, took a plea of guilty before Judge Werner,
+hoping for clemency. The court, however, said that her crime merited
+the gravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixed her term at
+twelve years and ten months.
+
+These trials were had, and the sentences imposed within six weeks of
+the kidnapping, the courts having acted with despatch. While the cases
+were pending, Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had again and
+again been asked to reveal the names of others who had induced them
+to their crime or had financed them. All said there had been no other
+conspirators, but the feeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the
+support of professional criminals, or of some enemy of the Clarkes,
+either of whom had supplied him with considerable sums of money.
+
+This belief, which was specially strong with some of the newspapers,
+was predicated upon two facts.
+
+On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four days after the abduction
+of Marion Clarke, there had appeared in the _New York Herald_ the
+following advertisement:
+
+ “M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in Baby Clarke case.
+ Write again and let me know when and where I can meet you Thursday
+ evening. Don’t fail--strictly confidential.”
+
+Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any persons acting for
+them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-reward offer or had
+communicated with any one who had been promised such a sum. Hence
+there were only two possible explanations of the advertisement. Either
+it had been inserted by some unbalanced person who wanted to create
+a stir--the kind of restless neurotic who projects his unwelcome
+apparition into every sensation--or there was really some dark force
+moving behind the kidnapping.
+
+A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion. In spite of
+the fact that George Barrow had been disowned at home and driven from
+his town, and opposed to the circumstances that he had worked at common
+and ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent for eleven months,
+had been seen in the shabbiest clothes and was known to be in need--the
+only force that might have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping--he was
+found to have a considerable sum in his pockets when searched at the
+jail; he informed his wife that he would get plenty of cash for their
+defense, and he was shown to have expended a fairly large sum on the
+planning of the crime, the traveling and other expenses, the rent of
+the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, and for his own amusement.
+Where had this come from?
+
+Not only the public and the newspapers, but Detective Chief McClusky
+were long occupied with this enigma. Barrow himself gave various
+specious explanations and finally refused to say more. Hints and
+bruits of all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarke could
+furnish the answer if he would, an accusation which the harried father
+indignantly rejected.
+
+In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkes removed to
+Boston, the public interest flagged, and the mystery remained unsolved.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+DOROTHY ARNOLD
+
+
+On the afternoon of Monday, December 12, 1910, a young woman of the
+upper social world vanished from the pavement of Fifth Avenue. Not
+only did she disappear from the center of one of the busiest streets
+on earth, at the sunniest hour of a brilliant winter afternoon, with
+thousands within sight and reach, with men and women who knew her at
+every side, and with officers of the law thickly strewn about her path;
+but she went without discernible motives, without preparation, and, so
+far as the public has ever been permitted to read, without leaving the
+dimmest clew to her possible destination.
+
+These are the peculiarities which mark the Dorothy Arnold case as one
+of the most irritating puzzles of modern police history, a true mystery
+of the missing.
+
+It is one of the maxims in the administration of absent-persons bureaus
+that disappearing men and women, no matter how carefully they may plan,
+regardless of all natural astuteness, invariably leave behind some
+token of their premeditation. Similarly, it is a truism that, barring
+purposeful self-occultation, the departure of an adult human being
+from so crowded a thoroughfare can be set down only to abduction or to
+mnemonic aberration. Remembering that a crime must have its motivation,
+and that cases of amnesia almost always are marked by previous
+symptoms and by fairly early recovery, the recondite and baffling
+aspects of this affair become manifest; for there was never the least
+hint of a ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuous for
+rugged physical and mental health.
+
+Thus, to sum up the affair, a disappearance which had from the
+beginning no standing in rationality, being logically both impenetrable
+and irreconcilable, remains, at the end of nearly a score of years, as
+obstinate and perplexing as ever--publicly a gall to human curiosity,
+an impossible problem for reason and analytical power.
+
+Dorothy Arnold was past twenty-five when she walked out of her father’s
+house into darkness that shining winter’s day. She was at the summit
+of her youth, rich, socially preferred, blessed with prospects, and
+to every outer eye, uncloudedly happy. Her father, a wealthy importer
+of perfumes, occupied a dignified house on East Seventy-ninth Street,
+in the center of one of the best residential districts, with his wife
+and four children--two sons and two daughters. Mr. Arnold’s sister was
+the wife of Justice Peckham of the United States Supreme Court, and
+the entire family was socially well known in Washington, Philadelphia,
+and New York. His missing daughter had been educated at Bryn Mawr and
+figured prominently in the activities of “the younger set” in all these
+cities. All descriptions set her down as having been active, cheerful,
+intelligent, and talented.
+
+The accepted story is that Miss Arnold left her father’s home at about
+half past eleven on the morning of her disappearance, apparently to go
+shopping for an evening gown. She appears to have had an appointment
+with a girl friend, which she broke earlier in the morning, saying
+that she was to go shopping with her mother. A few minutes before she
+left the house, the young woman went to her mother’s room and said she
+was going out to look for the dress. Her mother remarked that if her
+daughter would wait till she might finish dressing, she would go along.
+The girl demurred quietly, saying that it wasn’t worth the bother, and
+that she would telephone if she found anything to her liking. So far as
+her parent could make out, the girl was not anxious to be alone. She
+was no more than casual and seemed especially happy and well.
+
+At noon, half an hour after she had left her home, Miss Arnold went
+into a shop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, where she bought
+a box of candy and had it charged on her father’s account. At about
+half past one she was at Brentano’s bookshop, Twenty-seventh Street and
+Fifth Avenue. Here she bought a volume of fiction, also charging the
+item to her father.
+
+Whether she was recognized again at a later hour is in doubt. She met a
+girl chum and her mother in the street some time during the early part
+of the afternoon and stopped to gossip for a few moments; but whether
+this incident occurred just before or after her visit to the bookstore
+could not be made certain. At any rate, she was not seen later than two
+o’clock.
+
+When the young woman failed to appear at home for dinner, there was
+a little irritation, but no concern. Her family decided that she had
+probably come across friends and forgotten to telephone her intention
+of dining out. But when midnight came, and there was still no word
+from the young woman, her father began to feel uneasy and communicated
+by telephone with the homes of various friends, where his daughter
+might have been visiting. When he failed to discover her in this way,
+Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney, and a search was begun.
+
+The reader is asked to note that there was no public announcement of
+the young woman’s absence for more than six weeks. Just why it was
+considered wise to proceed discreetly and privately cannot be more
+than surmised. This action on the part of her family has always been
+considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicion and a determination
+to prevent its publication. At any rate, it was not until January 26,
+that revelation was made to the newspapers, at the strong urging of W.
+J. Flynn, then in charge of the New York detectives.
+
+In those six weeks, however, there had been no idleness. As soon as
+it was apparent that the girl could not be merely visiting, private
+detectives were summoned, and a formal quest begun. Her room and its
+contents revealed nothing of a positive character. She had left the
+house in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat and street shoes,
+carrying a silver-fox muff and satin bag, probably containing less
+than thirty dollars in money. Her checkbook had been left behind; nor
+had there been any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts. No part of
+the girl’s clothing had been packed or taken along; none of her more
+valuable jewelry was missing; no letter had been left, and nothing
+pointed to preparation of any sort.
+
+A search of her correspondence revealed, however, a packet of letters
+from a man of a well-known family in another city. When, somewhat
+later, Mr. Arnold was summoned by the district attorney and asked to
+produce the letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, but added
+that they contained nothing of significance.
+
+It developed, too, that, while her parents were in Maine in the
+preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold had gone to Boston on the pretext of
+visiting a school chum, resident in the university suburb of Cambridge;
+whereas she had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and had pawned about
+five hundred dollars’ worth of personal jewelry with a local lender,
+taking no trouble, however to conceal her name or home address. It was
+shown that the man of the letters was registered at another Boston
+hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he denied having seen her or
+been with her on this occasion, and there was no way of proving to the
+contrary. The date of this Boston visit was September 23, about two and
+a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance. The police were never
+able to establish any connection between the Boston visit, the pawning
+of the jewels, and the subsequent events, so that the reader must rely
+at this point upon his own conjecture.
+
+Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment of the young
+heiress, both her mother and brother and the man of the letters had
+returned from Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her.
+He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of Miss Arnold’s
+plans, proclaimed that he knew of no reason why she should have left
+home, announced that he had considered himself engaged to marry her,
+and he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly appear.
+Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained over the young
+man and all his movements for many months. In the end, however, the
+police seemed satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of
+Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out of the case almost
+as suddenly as he had entered it.
+
+In the six weeks before the public was acquainted with the facts,
+private detectives, and later the public police, had worked
+unremittingly on the several possible theories covering the case. There
+were naturally a number of possibilities: First, that the girl had
+met with a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital;
+second, that she had been run down by some reckless motorist, killed,
+and carried off by the frightened driver and secretly buried; third,
+that she had been kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that
+she had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering about the
+country, unable to give any clew to her identity; sixth, that she had
+quarreled with her parents and chosen this method of bringing them to
+terms by the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested as a
+shoplifter and was concealing her identity for shame.
+
+As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded. The hospitals
+and morgues were searched in vain; the records of traffic accidents
+were scanned with the utmost care; the roadhouses and resorts in
+all directions from the city were visited, and their owners closely
+questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected, the passenger
+lists of all departing ships examined, and later sailings observed. The
+authorities in European and other ports were notified by cable, and
+the captains of ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the
+first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and prisons were
+visited and every female prisoner noted. Similar precautions were taken
+in other American cities, where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues
+were also subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of
+physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and all manner
+of possible and impossible retreats were made the objects of detective
+attention--all without result.
+
+The notion that the girl might have been abducted and held for ransom
+was discarded at the end of a few weeks, when no word had come from
+possible kidnappers. The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, with
+the most emphatic denials coming from all the near and distant members
+of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea of an elopement also had to be
+discarded after a time, and so also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic
+attack.
+
+After the police finally insisted on the publication of the facts and
+the summoning of public aid, and after the various early hypotheses had
+one and all failed to stand the test of scrutiny and time, various more
+and more fantastic or improbable conjectures came into currency. One
+was that the girl might have been carried off to some distant American
+town or foreign port. Another was that some secret enemy, whose name
+and grievance her parents were loath to reveal, had made away with
+the young woman, or was holding her to satisfy his spite. The public
+excitement was nigh boundless, and ingenious fabulations or diseased
+imaginings came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted
+parents with every mail.
+
+Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. As the story of the
+young woman’s disappearance continued to occupy the leading columns
+of the daily papers, day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstable
+elements of the population came into vigorous play. Dorothy Arnold was
+reported from all parts of the country, and both the members of her
+family and numberless detectives were kept on the jump, running down
+the most absurd reports on the meager possibility that there might be
+a grain of truth in one of them. Soon there appeared the pathological
+liars and self-accusers, with whose peculiarities neither the police
+nor the public were then sufficiently acquainted. In more than a
+hundred cities--judging from a tabulation of the newspaper reports of
+that day--women of the most diverse ages and types came forward with
+the suggestion that they concealed within themselves the person of the
+missing heiress. Girls of fourteen made the claim and women of fifty.
+Such absurdities soon had the police in a state of weary skepticism,
+but the Arnold family and the newspaper-reading public were still upset
+by every fresh report.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ DOROTHY ARNOLD ~~]
+
+Naturally enough, the fact that a prominent young woman, enjoying the
+full protection of wealth and social distinction, could apparently be
+snatched away from the most populous quarter of a world city, struck
+terror to the hearts of many. If a Dorothy Arnold could be ravished
+from the familiar sidewalks of her home city, what fate waited for the
+obscure stranger? Was it not possible that some new and strange kind of
+criminal, equipped with diabolic cunning and actuated by impenetrable
+motives, was launched upon a campaign of woman stealing? Who was safe?
+
+One of the popular beliefs of the time was that Miss Arnold might have
+gone into some small and obscure shop at a time when there was no other
+customer in the place and been there seized, bound, gagged, and made
+ready for abduction. The notion was widely accepted for the dual reason
+that it provided a set of circumstances under which it was possible
+to explain the totally unwitnessed snatching of the young woman and,
+at the same time, set a likely locale, since there are thousands of
+such little shops in New York. As a result of the currency of this
+story, many women hesitated to enter the establishments of cobblers,
+bootblacks, stationers, confectioners, tobacconists, and other petty
+tradesmen, especially in the more outlying parts of the city. Many
+bankruptcies of these minor business people resulted, as one may read
+from the court records.
+
+A similar fabulation, to the effect that the girl might have entered a
+cruising taxicab, operated by a sinister ex-convict, and been whisked
+off to some secret den of crime and vice, was almost as popular,
+with the result that cabs did a poor business with women clients for
+more than a year afterward. An old hackman, who was arrested in that
+feverish time because of the hysteria of a woman passenger, tells me
+that even to-day he encounters women who grow suspicious and excited,
+if he happens to drive by some unaccustomed route, a thing often done
+in these days to avoid the congestion on the main streets.
+
+While all this popular burning and sweating was going on, the police
+and many thousands of private investigators, professional and amateur,
+were busy with the problem of elucidating some motive to fit the case.
+Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to reason, the
+possibilities became a very general preoccupation. The deductive steps
+may be briefly set down. First, there were the alternative propositions
+of voluntary or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction. Second,
+if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained, there were only
+two general possibilities--abduction for ransom or kidnapping by some
+maniac. The ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like,
+come under the latter head. The notion of a fatal accident had been
+eliminated.
+
+The proposition of voluntary absence presented a more complex picture.
+Suicide, elopement, amnesia, personal rebellion, an unrevealed family
+situation, a forbidden love affair, the desire to hide some social
+lapse--any of these might be the basis of a self-willed absence of a
+permanent or temporary kind.
+
+The failure, after months of quest, to find any trace of a body, seemed
+to have rendered the propositions of murder and of suicide alike
+improbable. Elopement and amnesia were likewise rendered untenable
+theories by time, nor was it long before the conceit of a disagreement
+was relegated to the improbabilities.
+
+Justly or unjustly, a good many practical detectives came after a time
+to the opinion that the case demanded a masculinizing of the familiar
+adage into _cherchez l’homme_. More seasoned officers inclined to the
+idea that there must have been some man, possibly one whose identity
+had been successfully concealed by the distraught girl. Again, as is
+common in such cases, there was the very general feeling that Miss
+Arnold’s family knew a good deal more than had been revealed either to
+the police or the public, and there was something about the long delay
+in reporting the case and the subsequent guarded attitude of the girl’s
+relatives that seemed to confirm this perhaps idle suspicion.
+
+The trouble with a great many of the theories evolved in the first
+months following the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold, was that they
+fitted only a part of the facts and probabilities. After all, here was
+an intricate and baffling situation, involving a person who, because
+of position, antecedents, and social situation, might be expected to
+act in a conventional manner. Accordingly, any explanation that fitted
+the physical facts and was still characterized by extraordinary details
+might reasonably be discarded.
+
+It was several years before the girl’s father finally declared his
+belief in her death, and it is a fact that a sum of not less than a
+hundred thousand dollars was expended, first and last, in running
+down all sorts of rumors and clews. The search extended to England,
+Italy, France, Switzerland, Canada--even to the Far East and Australia.
+But all trails led to vacancy, and all speculations were at length
+empty. No dimmest trace of the girl was ever found, and no genuinely
+satisfactory explanation of the strange story has ever been put forward.
+
+It is true there have been, at times in the intervening dozen or more
+years, rumors of a solution. Persons more or less closely connected
+with the official investigation have on several occasions been reported
+as voicing the opinion that the Arnold family was in possession of the
+facts, but denials have followed every such declaration. On April 8,
+1921, for instance, Captain John H. Ayers, in charge of the Missing
+Persons Bureau of the New York Police Department, told an audience at
+the High School of Commerce that the fate of Miss Arnold had at that
+time been known to the police for many months, and that the case was
+regarded as closed. This pronouncement received the widest publicity
+in the New York and other American newspapers, but Captain Ayers’
+statement was immediately and vigorously controverted by John S. Keith,
+the personal attorney of the girl’s father, who declared that the
+police official had told a “damned lie,” and that the mystery was as
+deep as ever it had been. The police chiefs later issued interviews
+full of dubiety and qualifications, the general tenor being that
+Captain Ayers had spoken without sufficient knowledge of the facts.
+
+Just a year later the father of this woman of mysterious tragedy died,
+the last decade of his life beclouded by the sorrowful story and
+painful doubt. In his will was this pathetic clause:
+
+ “I make no provision in this will for my beloved daughter, H. C.
+ Dorothy Arnold, as I am satisfied that she is dead.”
+
+The death of Miss Arnold’s father once more set the rumor mongers to
+work and a variety of tales, bolder than had been uttered before,
+were circulated through the demi-world of New York and hinted in the
+newspapers. These rumors have not been printed directly and there has
+thus been no need of denial on part of the family. It must be said
+at once that they are mere bruits, mere attempts on the part of the
+cynical town to invent a set of circumstances to fit what few facts and
+alleged facts are known.
+
+On the other hand, the newspapers have been only too ready to take
+seriously the most absurd fabulations. In 1916, for instance, a thief
+arrested at Providence, R. I., for motives best known to himself,
+declared that he had helped to bury Dorothy Arnold’s body in the cellar
+of a house about ten miles below West Point, near the J. P. Morgan
+estate. Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, Captain Grant Williams and a
+number of detectives provided with digging tools set out for the place
+in motor cars, closely pursued by other cars containing the newspaper
+reporters. The police managed to shake off the newspaper men and
+reached the house. There they dug till they ached and found nothing
+whatever.
+
+Returning to New York, the detectives left their shovels, some of which
+were rusty or covered with a red clay, at a station house and there the
+reporters caught a glimpse of them. The result was that a bit of rust
+or ferrous earth translated itself into blood and thence into headlines
+in the morning papers, declaring that Dorothy Arnold’s body had been
+found. Denials followed within hours, to be sure.
+
+So the case rests.
+
+Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death will open the lips of
+one or another who knows the secret and has been sealed to silence by
+the fears and needs of life. But it is just as likely that the words of
+her dying parent contain as much as can be known of the truth about the
+missing Dorothy Arnold.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE
+
+
+At seven o’clock on the bright winter evening of December 18,
+1900, Edward A. Cudahy, the multimillionaire meat packer, sent
+his fifteen-year-old son to the home of a friend, with a pile of
+periodicals. The boy, Edward A., junior, but shortly to be known over
+two continents as Eddie Cudahy, left his father’s elaborate house at
+No. 518 South Thirty-seventh Street, Omaha, walked three blocks to
+the home of Doctor Fred Rustin, also in South Thirty-seventh Street,
+delivered the magazines, turned on his heel and disappeared.
+
+Shortly before nine o’clock the rich packer noticed that his son had
+not returned, and he observed to his wife that the Rustins must have
+invited the boy to stay. Mrs. Cudahy felt a little nervous and urged
+her husband to make sure. He telephoned to the Rustin home and was
+promptly told that Eddie had been there, left the papers and departed
+immediately, almost two hours before.
+
+The Cudahys were instantly alarmed and convinced that something out
+of the ordinary had befallen the boy. He had promised to return
+immediately to consult with his father over a Christmas list. He was
+known to have no more than a few cents in his pockets, and unexplained
+absences from home at night were unprecedented with him.
+
+The beef magnate notified the Omaha police without long hesitation, and
+the quest for the missing rich boy was on. All that night detectives,
+patrolmen, servants, and friends of the family went up and down the
+streets and alleys of the overgrown Nebraska packing town, with its
+strange snortings from the cattle pens, its grunting railroad engines,
+its colonies of white and black laborers from distant lands, its
+brawling night life and its pretentious new avenues where the brash and
+sudden rich resided. At dawn the searchers congregated, sleepless, at
+the police headquarters or the Cudahy mansion, baffled and affrighted.
+Not the first clew to the boy had been found, and no one dared to
+whisper the clearest suspicions.
+
+By noon all Omaha was in turmoil. The great packing houses had
+practically stopped their activity; the police had been called in
+from their usual assignments and put to searching the city, district
+by district; the resorts and gambling houses were combed by the
+detectives; the anxious father had telegraphed to Chicago for twenty
+Pinkerton men, and the usual flight of mad rumors was in the air.
+
+One man reported that he had seen two boys, one of them with a broken
+arm, leave a street car at the city limits on the preceding night.
+The fact that the car line passed near the Cudahy home was enough to
+lead people to think one of the boys must have been Eddie Cudahy. As
+a result, his known young friends were sought out and questioned; the
+schools were gone over for the boy with a broken arm, and all the
+street-car crews in town were examined by the police.
+
+By the middle of the afternoon, the newspapers issued special editions,
+which bore the news that a letter had been received from kidnappers.
+According to this account, a man on horseback had ridden swiftly past
+the Cudahy home at nine o’clock that morning and tossed a letter to the
+lawn. This had been picked up by one of the servants, and it read as
+follows:
+
+ “We have your son. He is safe. We will take good care of him and
+ return him for a consideration of twenty-five thousand dollars. We
+ mean business.
+
+                                                          “Jack.”
+
+With the publication of this alleged communication, even more fantastic
+reports began to reach the police and the parents. One young intimate
+of the family came in and reported in all seriousness that he had seen
+a horse and trap standing in Thirty-seventh Street, near the Cudahy
+home on several occasions in the course of the preceding week. The fact
+that it looked like any one of a hundred smart rigs then in common use
+did not seem to detract from its fancied significance.
+
+Another neighbor reported that three days before the kidnapping he had
+seen a covered light wagon standing at the curb in the street, a block
+to the rear of the Cudahy home. One man on the seat was talking with
+another, who was standing on the walk, and, as the narrator passed,
+they had lowered their voices to a whisper. He had not thought the
+incident suggestive until after the report of the kidnapping. And the
+police, quite forgetting the instinctive universal habit of lowering
+the voice when strangers pass, sent out squads of men to find the wagon
+and the whisperers!
+
+In short, the town was excited out of all sanity, and the very
+forces which should have maintained calmness and acted with all
+possible self-possession seemed the most headless. All the officials
+accomplished was the brief detention of several innocent persons, the
+theatrical raiding of a few gambling houses, and the further excitation
+of the citizenry, always ready to respond to police histrionism.
+
+To add an amusing exhibit to the already heavy store of evidence on
+this last point, it may be noted with amusement, not to say amazement,
+that the kidnapping letter, which had so agitated the public, was
+itself a police fake, and the rider who had thrown it on the lawn was a
+clumsy invention.
+
+Meantime, however, a genuine kidnapping letter had reached the hands
+of Mr. Cudahy. A little before nine o’clock on the morning of the
+nineteenth, after he too had been up all night, the family coachman was
+walking across the front lawn when he saw a piece of red cloth tied to
+a stout wooden stick about two feet long. He approached it, looked at
+it suspiciously, and finally picked it up, to find that an envelope
+was wrapped about the stick and addressed in pencil to Mr. Cudahy.
+Evidently some one had thrown this curiously prepared missive into the
+yard in the course of the preceding night, for there had been numbers
+of policemen, detectives, and neighbors on the lawn and on the walks in
+front of the property since dawn.
+
+The letter, with its staff and red cloth, was immediately carried
+to the packer, who read with affrighted eyes this remarkable and
+characteristic communication:
+
+  “OMAHA, December 19, 1900.
+
+  “Mr. Cudahy:
+
+ “We have kidnapped your child and demand twenty-five thousand dollars
+ for his safe return. If you give us the money, the child will be
+ returned as safe as when you last saw him; but if you refuse, we will
+ put acid in his eyes and blind him. Then we will immediately kidnap
+ another millionaire’s child that we have spotted, and we will demand
+ one hundred thousand dollars, and we will get it, for he will see the
+ condition of your child and realize the fact that we mean business and
+ will not be monkeyed with or captured.
+
+ “Get the money all in gold--five, ten, and twenty-dollar pieces--put
+ it in a grip in a white wheat sack, get in your buggy alone on the
+ night of December 19, at seven o’clock p.m., and drive south from your
+ house to Center Street; turn west on Center Street and drive back to
+ Ruser’s Park and follow the paved road toward Fremont.
+
+ “When you come to a lantern that is lighted by the side of the road,
+ place your money by the lantern and immediately turn your horse around
+ and return home. You will know our lantern, for it will have two
+ ribbons, black and white, tied on the handle. You must place a red
+ lantern on your buggy where it can be plainly seen, so we will know
+ you a mile away.
+
+ “This letter and every part of it must be returned with the money,
+ and any attempt at capture will be the saddest thing you ever done.
+ _Caution! For Here Lies Danger._
+
+ “If you remember, some twenty years ago Charley Ross was kidnapped in
+ New York City, and twenty thousand dollars ransom asked. Old man Ross
+ was willing to give up the money, but Byrnes[8] the great detective,
+ with others, persuaded the old man not to give up the money, assuring
+ him that the thieves would be captured. Ross died of a broken heart,
+ sorry that he allowed the detectives to dictate to him.
+
+ [8] Mr. Crowe had his criminal history somewhat vaguely in mind.
+
+ “This letter must not be seen by any one but you. If the police or
+ some stranger knew its contents, they might attempt to capture us,
+ although entirely against your wish; or some one might use a lantern
+ and represent us, thus the wrong party would secure the money, and
+ this would be as fatal to you as if you refused to give up the money.
+ So you see the danger if you let the letter be seen.
+
+ “Mr. Cudahy, you are up against it, and there is only one way out.
+ Give up the coin. Money we want, and money we will get. If you don’t
+ give it up, the next man will, for he will see that we mean business,
+ and you can lead your boy around blind the rest of your days, and all
+ you will have is the damn copper’s sympathy.
+
+ “Do the right thing by us, and we will do the same by you. If you
+ refuse you will soon see the saddest sight you ever seen.
+
+ “Wednesday, December 19th. This night or never. Follow these
+ instructions, or harm will befall you or yours.”
+
+There was no signature. I have quoted the letter exactly, with the
+lapses in grammar and spelling preserved. It was written in pencil on
+five separate pieces of cheap note paper and in a small, but firm,
+masculine hand. It was read to the chief police authorities soon after
+its receipt. Just why they felt compelled to announce that it had come,
+and to invent the absurd draft they issued, remains for every man’s own
+intuitions.
+
+In this case, as in other abduction affairs, the police advised the
+father not to comply with the demand of the criminals, but to rely upon
+their efforts. No doubt their sense of duty to the public is as much
+responsible for this invariable position as any confidence in their
+own powers. An officer must feel, after all, that he cannot counsel
+bargaining with dangerous criminals, and that to pay them is only to
+encourage other kidnappers and further kidnappings.
+
+In spite of the menacing terms of the rather garrulous letter, which
+betrayed by its very length the fervor of its persuasive threats, and
+the darkness of its reminders, the nervousness of its composer, Mr.
+Cudahy was minded to listen to the advice of the officers and defy the
+abductors of his son. In this frame of mind he delayed action until
+toward the close of the afternoon, meantime sitting by the telephone
+and hearing reports from police headquarters and his own private
+officers every half hour. By four o’clock he and his attorney began to
+realize that there was no clew of any kind; that the whole Omaha police
+force and all the men his wealth had been able to supply in addition,
+had been able to make not even the first promising step, and that the
+hour for a decision that might be fatal was fast approaching. Still,
+he hesitated to take a step in direct violation of official policy and
+counsel.
+
+In this dilemma Mrs. Cudahy came forward with a demand for action to
+meet the immediate emergency and protect her only son. She refused to
+listen to talk of remoter considerations, declared that the amount of
+ransom was a trifle to a man of her husband’s fortune, and weepingly
+insisted that she would not sacrifice her boy to any mad plans of
+outsiders, who felt no such poignant concern as her own.
+
+Shortly before five o’clock Mr. Cudahy telephoned the First National
+Bank, which had, of course, closed for the day, and asked the cashier
+to make ready the twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. A little later
+the Cudahy attorney called at the bank and received the specie in five
+bags and in the denominations asked by the abductors. The money was
+taken at once to the Cudahy house and deposited inside, without the
+knowledge of the servants or outsiders.
+
+At half past six Mr. Cudahy ordered his driving mare hitched to the
+buggy in which he made the rounds of his yards and plants. At seven
+o’clock he slipped quietly out of his house, without letting his wife,
+the servants, or any one but his attorney know his errand. He carried a
+satchel containing the five bags of gold, which weighed more than one
+hundred pounds, to the stable, put the precious stuff into the bottom
+of his vehicle, took up the reins, and set out on his perilous and
+ill-boding adventure.
+
+Mr. Cudahy had not been allowed to leave home without warnings from the
+police and his attorney. They had told him that he might readily expect
+to find himself trapped by the kidnappers, who would then hold both him
+and his son for still higher ransom. So he drove toward the appointed
+place along the dim, night-hidden roads, with more than ordinary
+misgiving. Once or twice, after he had proceeded six or seven miles
+into the blackness of the open prairie, without seeing any signs from
+the abductors, he came near turning back; but the danger to his son and
+the thought that the criminals could have no object in sending him on a
+fruitless expedition, held him to his course.
+
+About ten miles out of town, still jogging anxiously along behind
+his horse, Mr. Cudahy saw a passenger train on one of the two
+transcontinental lines that converge at that point, coiling away into
+the infinite blackness, like some vast phosphorescent serpent. The
+beauty and mystery of the spectacle meant nothing to him, but it served
+to raise his hopes. No doubt the kidnappers would soon appear now.
+They had probably chosen this locality, with the swift trains running
+by, for their rendezvous. Once possessed of the gold, they would catch
+the next flyer for either coast and be gone out of the reach of local
+police. Perhaps they would even have the missing boy with them and
+surrender him as soon as they had been paid the ransom.
+
+Thus buoyed and heartened, the father drove on. Suddenly the road
+entered a cleft between two abrupt hills or butts. A sense of
+impendency oppressed the lonely driver. He took up a revolver beside
+him on the seat, clutching it near him, with some protective instinct.
+At the same moment he turned higher the flame in his red lantern, which
+swung from the whip socket of his buggy, and peered out into the gulch.
+Everything was pit-black and grave-silent. He lay back disappointed and
+spoke to the horse, debating whether to turn back. Once more he decided
+to go on. The cleft between the two eminences grew narrower. The horse
+turned a swift sharp corner. Cudahy sat up with startled alertness.
+
+There in the road before him, not ten rods away, was a smoky lantern,
+throwing but a pallid radiance about it in the thick darkness, but
+lighting a great hope in the father’s heart. He approached directly,
+drew up his horse a few yards away, found that the lantern, tied to
+a twig by the roadside, was decorated with the specified ribbons of
+black and white, returned to his buggy, carried the bags of gold to the
+lantern, put them down in the roadside, waited a few moments for any
+sign that might be given, turned his horse about, and started for home,
+driving slowly and listening intently for any sound from his expected
+son.
+
+The ten miles back to Omaha were covered in this slow and tense
+way, with eyes and ears open, and a mind fluctuating between hope
+and despair. But no lost boy came out of the darkness, and Cudahy
+reached his house without the least further encouragement. It was
+then past eleven o’clock. His attorney and his wife were still in
+the drawing-room, sleepless, tense, and terrified. They greeted the
+boy’s father with swift questions and relapsed into hopelessness
+when he related what he had done. An hour passed, while Cudahy tried
+to keep up the courage of his wife by argument and reasoning. Then
+came one o’clock. Now half past one. Surely there was no longer any
+need of waiting now. Either the kidnappers had hoaxed the suffering
+parents, or that note had not come from kidnappers at all, but from
+impostors--or--something far worse. At best, nothing would be heard
+till morning.
+
+“It’s no use, Mrs. Cudahy,” said the lawyer. “You’d better get what
+sleep you can, and----”
+
+“Hs-s-sh!” said the mother, laying her finger on her lips and listening
+like a hunted doe.
+
+In an instant she sprang out of her chair, ran into the hall, out of
+the door, down the walk to the street, and out of the gate. The two men
+sprang up and followed in time to see her catch the missing boy into
+her arms. She had heard his footfall.
+
+The news of the boy’s return was flashed to police headquarters within
+a few minutes, and the detective chief went at once to the Cudahy home
+to hear the returning boy’s story. It was simple and brief enough.
+
+Eddie Cudahy had left Doctor Rustin’s house the night before, and gone
+directly homeward. Three or four doors from his parents’ house Eddie
+Cudahy was suddenly confronted by two men who faced him with revolvers,
+called him Eddie McGee, declared that he was wanted for theft, that
+they were officers, and that he must come to the police station. He
+protested that he was not Eddie McGee, and that he could be identified
+in the house yonder; but his captors forced him into their buggy and
+drove off, warning him to make no outcry. They had gone only a few
+blocks when they changed their tone, tied the lad’s arms behind him,
+and put a bandage over his eyes and another over his mouth, so that he
+could not cry out. He understood that he had been kidnapped.
+
+Thus trussed up and prevented from either seeing where he was being
+taken, or making any outcry, the young fellow was driven about for an
+hour, and finally delivered to an old house, which he believed to be
+unfurnished, judging from the hollow sound of the footsteps, as he
+and his captors were going up the stairs. He was taken into a room on
+the second floor, seated in a chair, and handcuffed to it. His gag
+was removed, but not the bandage on his eyes. He was supplied with
+cigarettes and offered food, but he could not eat. One of the two men
+stood guard, the other departing at once, but returning later on.
+
+All that night and the next day the boy was unable to sleep. But
+he sensed that his captor seemed to be imbibing whisky with great
+regularity. Finally, about an hour before he had been set free, Eddie
+heard the other man return and hold a whispered conversation with his
+guard. The boy was then taken from the house, put back into the same
+buggy, driven to within a quarter of a mile of his father’s home, and
+released. He ran for home, and his captors drove off.
+
+Eddie Cudahy could not give any working description of the criminals.
+He had not got a good look at them in the street when they seized him,
+because it was dark, and they had the brims of their large hats pulled
+down over their eyes. Immediately afterward he had been bandaged and
+deprived of all further chance of observation. One man was tall, and
+the other short. The tall man seemed to be in command. The short man
+had been his guard. He thought there was a third man who was bringing
+in reports.
+
+There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation. First, it
+would surely be possible to find the house in which the boy had been
+held captive, for Omaha was not so large that there were many empty
+houses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides, the time
+at which any such house had been rented would offer evidence. It might
+be possible to get a clew to the identity of the kidnappers through the
+description of the person or persons who had done the renting.
+
+Second, the kidnappers must have got the horse and buggy somewhere;
+most likely from a local livery stable. If its source could be found,
+the liveryman also would be able to describe the persons with whom he
+had done business.
+
+So the police set to work, searching the town again for house and for
+stable. They found several deserted two-story cottages that fitted the
+picture well enough, and in each instance there were circumstances
+which seemed to indicate that the kidnappers had been there. Finally,
+however, all were eliminated, except a crude two-story cabin at 3604
+Grover Street. This turned out to be the place, situated near the
+outskirts, on the top of a hill, with the nearest neighbors a block
+away. Cigarette ends, burned matches, empty whisky bottles, and windows
+covered with newspapers gave silent, but conclusive, testimony.
+
+The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It had not been hired
+at any stable in Omaha or in Council Bluffs, across the Missouri
+River. Advertising and police calls brought out no private owner who
+had rented such a rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer
+living about twenty miles out of town who had sold a bay pony to a
+tall stranger several weeks before. Another man was found who had sold
+a second-hand buggy to a man of the same general description. At last
+the police began to realize that they were dealing with a criminal of
+genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man had not blundered in any
+of the usual ways, and he had made the trail so confused that more than
+a week had passed before there were any positive indications as to his
+possible identity.
+
+In the end several indications pointed in the same direction. It
+seemed highly probable that the kidnapper chieftain had been some one
+acquainted with the packing business and probably with the Cudahys.
+He was also familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commanding
+voice, was accompanied by a shorter man, who seemed to be older, but
+was still dominated by his companion. More important still, this chief
+of abductors was an experienced and clever criminal. He gave every
+evidence of knowing all the ropes. These specifications seemed to fit
+just one man whose name now began to be used on all sides--the thrice
+perilous and ill-reputed Pat Crowe.
+
+It was recalled that this man had begun life as a butcher, been
+a trusted employee of the Cudahys ten years before, and had been
+dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequently he had turned his hand to crime,
+and achieved a startling reputation in the western United States as
+an intrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handy man with
+a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in a corner. He had been
+in prison more than once, had lately made what seemed an effort at
+reform, knew Edward A. Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors
+and gratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactly the man
+to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeks and evidence only
+strengthened the suspicion against him. Crowe, though he had been seen
+in Omaha the day before the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered.
+Even this fact added to the general belief that he and none other had
+done the deed. In a short time the Cudahy kidnapping mystery resolved
+itself into a quest for this notorious fellow.
+
+The alarm was spread throughout the United States and Canada, to
+the British Isles, and the Continental ports, and to Mexico and the
+Central American border and port cities, where it was believed the
+fugitive might make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended,
+and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases, with occasional
+lapses back into exciting alarms. Every little while the capture of
+Pat Crowe was reported, and on at least a dozen occasions men turned
+up with confessions and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping.
+These apparitions and alleged captures took place in such diffused
+spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil, San Francisco, and
+various obscure towns in the United States and Canada. The genuine
+and authentic Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the
+captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                                                           _Wide World_
+
+                           ~~ PAT CROWE ~~]
+
+Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on the Union Pacific
+Railroad, had been taken and brought to trial. His name was James
+Callahan, and there was then and is now no question about his
+connection with the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on
+April 29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the presiding
+tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of duty, saying that never had
+evidence more clearly indicated guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on
+other counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be released.
+
+In the same year, 1901, word was received from Crowe through an
+attorney he had employed in an earlier difficulty. Crowe had sent
+this barrister a draft from Capetown, South Africa, in payment of
+an old debt. The much sought desperado had got through the lines to
+the Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting against
+the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated for distinguished
+courage, and was, according to his own statement, done with crime and
+living a different life--adventurous, but honest. So many canards had
+been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story, albeit time
+proved it to be true.
+
+At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five thousand dollars
+had been offered for the capture and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty
+thousand by Cudahy and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha.
+This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man had, of course,
+contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide interest in the case.
+Yet even these fat inducements accomplished nothing.
+
+Finally, in 1906, when Crowe had been hunted in vain for more than five
+years, he suddenly opened negotiations with Omaha’s chief of police
+through an attorney, offering to come in and surrender, in case all the
+rewards were immediately and honestly withdrawn, so that there would be
+no money inducement which might cause officers or others to manufacture
+a case against him. After some preliminaries, these terms were met, but
+not until an attempt to capture the desperado had been made and failed,
+with the net result of three badly wounded officers.
+
+In February, 1906, Crowe was at last brought to trial and, to the utter
+astoundment and chagrin of the entire country, promptly acquitted,
+though he offered no defense and tacitly admitted that he had taken
+the boy. One bit of conclusive evidence that had been offered by the
+prosecution and admitted by the court, was a letter written by Crowe to
+his parish priest in the little Iowa town of his boyhood. In the course
+of this letter, which had been written to the priest in the hope that
+he might make peace with Cudahy, the desperado admitted that “I am
+solely responsible for the Cudahy kidnapping. No one else is to blame.”
+
+No matter. The jury would not consider the evidence and brought in the
+verdict already indicated. Crowe, after six years of being hunted with
+a price of fifty-five thousand dollars on his head, was a free man.
+
+The acquittals of Crowe and Callahan have furnished material for a good
+deal of amused and some angry speculation. The local situation in Omaha
+at the time furnishes the key to the puzzle. First of all, there was
+the bitter anti-beef trust agitation, founded on the fact that many
+small independent butchers had been put out of business by the great
+packing-house combination, of which Cudahy was a member; and that meat
+prices had everywhere been rapidly advanced to almost double their
+earlier prices. Next, there was the circumstance of Cudahy’s abundant
+and flaunting wealth. The common man considered that these millions
+had been gouged out of his pocket and cut from off his dinner plate.
+Cudahy had also begun the introduction of cheap negro labor into Omaha
+to break a strike of his packing-house employees, and the city was
+bitterly angry at him. Also, Crowe was himself popular and well known.
+Many considered him a hero. But there was still another strange cause
+of the state of the public mind.
+
+In the very beginning a not inconsiderable part of Omaha’s people had
+somehow come to the curious conclusion that there had been no Cudahy
+kidnapping. One story said that Eddie Cudahy was a wild youth, and that
+he himself had conspired with Crowe and Callahan to abduct him and get
+the ransom, since he needed a share of it for his own purpose, and
+he saw in this plan an easy method to mulct his unsuspecting father.
+A later version denied the boy’s guilt, but still insisted that the
+whole story, as told by the father and confirmed by the police, was a
+piece of fiction. What motive the rich packer could have had for such
+a fraud, no one could say. The best explanation given was that he saw
+in it a plan to get worldwide advertising for the Cudahy name. How
+this could have sold any additional hams or beeves, is a bit hard to
+imagine, but the story was so generally believed that two jurors at
+one of the trials voiced it in the jury room and scoffed at all the
+evidence. All this rumor is, of course, absurd.
+
+Crowe, after his acquittal, went straight, as the word goes. He has
+committed no more crimes, unless one wants to rate under this heading
+a book of highly romantic confessions, which he had published the
+following year. In this book he set forth the circumstances of the
+crime in great, but unreliable, detail. He made it very plain, however,
+that he and Callahan alone planned the crime and carried it out.
+
+Crowe personally conceived the whole plan and took Callahan into the
+conspiracy only because he needed help. The two held up the boy, as
+already related. As soon as they had him safe in the old house, Crowe
+drove back to the Cudahy home in his buggy and threw the note, wrapped
+about the stick and decorated with the red cloth, upon the lawn, where
+it was found the next morning by the coachman. Of the twenty-five
+thousand dollars in gold, Crowe gave his assistant only three thousand
+dollars, used one thousand for expenses, and buried the rest,
+recovering it later when the coast was clear. He selected Cudahy for a
+victim because he knew that the packer was a fond father, had a nervous
+wife, and would be strong enough to resist any mad police advice.
+
+A few years later I first encountered Crowe in New York, when he came
+to see me with a petty favor to ask and an article of his reminiscences
+to sell. He had meantime become a kind of peregrine reformer, lecturer,
+pamphlet seller and semi-mendicant, now blessed with a little
+evanescent prosperity, again sleeping in Bowery flops and eking out
+a miserable living by any device short of lawbreaking. And he has
+called upon me or crossed my wanderings repeatedly in the intervening
+years, always voluble, plausible and a trifle pathetic. Now he is off
+to call upon the President, to memorialize a governor or to address a
+provincial legislature. He is bent on abolishing prisons, has a florid
+set-speech, which he delivers in a big sententious voice, and perhaps
+he impresses his rural hearers, though the tongue in the cheek and the
+twinkle in the eye never escape those who know him of old.
+
+This grand rascal is no longer young--rising sixty, I should say--and
+life has treated him shabbily in the last twenty years. Yet neither
+poverty nor age has quite taken from him a certain leonine robustness,
+a kind of ruined strength and power that shines a little sadly through
+his charlatanry.
+
+Only once or twice, when he has lost himself in the excited recounting
+of his adventures, of his hardy old crimes, of the Cudahy kidnapping,
+have I ever caught in him the quality that must once have been
+his--the force, the fire that made his name shudder around the world.
+Convention has beaten him as it beats them all, these brave and baneful
+men. It has made a sidling apologist of a great rogue in Crowe’s
+case--and what a sad declension!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING
+
+
+Abduction is always a puzzling crime. The risks are so great, the
+punishment, of late years, so severe, and the chances of profit so
+slight that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary motive
+on the part of the criminal. It is true that kidnapping is one of the
+easiest crimes to commit. It is also a fact that it seems to offer
+a quick and promising way of extorting large sums of money without
+physical risk. But every offender must know that the chances of success
+are of the most meager.
+
+A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses the public
+as nothing else can, not even murder. This state of general alarm,
+indignation, and alertness is the first peril of the kidnapper.
+Again, the problem of getting the ransom from even the most willing
+victim without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most intricate
+and unpromising one. It is well known that child snatchers almost
+never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the
+kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being
+caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any
+criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear
+from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police
+officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact
+and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.
+
+The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these recognized
+discouragements probably accounts for the proneness of policemen and
+citizens to interpret into every abduction case some moving force other
+than mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs of action,
+whether real or surmised, are often the inner penetralia of child
+stealing mysteries. So with the famous Whitla case.
+
+At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909, a short, stocky
+man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse, in the little steel town of
+Sharon, in western Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned
+to Wesley Sloss, the janitor.
+
+“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right away,” said the
+stranger.
+
+It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to be summoned from
+his classes in this way, but in Sharon no one questioned vagaries
+having to do with this particular child. Willie Whitla was the
+eight-year-old son of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla,
+who was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was also, and
+more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of Frank M. Buhl, the
+multimillionaire iron master and industrial overlord of the region.
+
+Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside to Room 2,
+told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that the boy was wanted, helped
+bundle him into his coat, and led him out to the buggy. The man in the
+conveyance tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his thanks, and
+drove off in the direction of the town’s center, where the father’s
+office was situated.
+
+When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for luncheon at the noon
+recess, there was no special apprehension. Probably he had gone to a
+chum’s house and would be along at the close of the afternoon session.
+His mother was vexed, but not worried.
+
+At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla veranda, blew his
+whistle, and left a note which had been posted in the town some hours
+before. It was addressed to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of
+the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand, read:
+
+ “We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if you comply with our
+ instructions. If you give this letter to the newspapers, or divulge
+ any of its contents, you will never see your boy again. We demand
+ ten thousand dollars in twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar
+ bills. If you attempt to mark the money, or place counterfeit money,
+ you will be sorry. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead boys. You
+ may answer at the following addresses: _Cleveland Press_, _Youngstown
+ Vindicator_, _Indianapolis News_, and _Pittsburgh Dispatch_ in the
+ personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do as you requested. J. P. W.’”
+
+A few minutes later the whole town was searching, and the alarm had
+been broadcast by telegraph and telephone. Before nightfall a hundred
+thousand officers were on the lookout in a thousand cities and towns
+through the eastern United States.
+
+At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard of the abduction, a
+boy named Morris was found, who had seen Willie Whitla get out of a
+buggy at the edge of the town, drop a letter into the mail box, and get
+back into the vehicle, which was driven away.
+
+This discovery had hardly been made when it was also learned that a
+stranger had rented a horse and buggy, fitting the description of those
+used by the kidnapper, in South Sharon early in the morning. At five
+o’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rented buggy, was found
+tied to a post in Warren, Ohio, twenty-five miles from Sharon.
+
+The search immediately began in the northern or lake cities and towns
+of Ohio, the trend of the search running strongly toward Cleveland,
+where it was believed the abductor or abductors would try the hiding
+properties of urban crowds.
+
+The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense and caution. They were
+sufficiently well informed to know that the police are doubtful
+agencies for the safe recovery of snatched children. They were rich to
+the point of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meant nothing. The
+safety and speedy return of the child were the only considerations that
+could have swayed them. Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents
+of the note, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide to the
+police any other details, or the direction of their intentions. The
+fact of the kidnapping could, of course, not be concealed, but all else
+was guarded from official or public intrusion.
+
+On the advice of friends the parents did employ private detectives,
+but even their advice was disregarded, and Mr. Whitla without delay
+signified his willingness to capitulate by inserting the dictated
+notice into all the four mentioned newspapers.
+
+The answer of the abductors came very promptly through the mails,
+reaching Whitla on the morning of the twentieth, less than forty-eight
+hours after the boy had been taken.
+
+Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicate to the police
+the contents of this note or his plans. Instead, he set off quietly
+for Cleveland, evidently to mislead the public officers, who seemed to
+take delight in their efforts to seize control of the case. At eight
+o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompanied by one private
+detective, and went to the neighboring city of Ashtabula. Here the
+detective was left at the White Hotel, and the father of the missing
+boy set out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.
+
+They, it appears, had written him that he must go at ten o’clock at
+night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip of land on the outskirts of
+Ashtabula, and there deposit under a certain stone the package of
+bills. He was told what route to follow, commanded to go alone, and
+warned not to communicate with the police. Having left the money as
+commanded, Whitla was to return to the hotel and wait there for the
+coming of his son, who would be restored as soon as the abductors were
+safely in possession of the money.
+
+So the father set out in the dark of the night, followed the route
+given him by the abductors, deposited the money in the park, and
+returned forthwith to the hotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock.
+Here he sat with his bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition
+of his little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’s
+nervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, some
+local officers appeared and notified the frenzied lawyer that they had
+been watching the park all night, and that no one had appeared to claim
+the package of money.
+
+Police interference had ruined the plan.
+
+The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnappers were
+to call for the money in the park, they must be in Ashtabula. They
+accordingly set out, searched all night, invaded the houses of sleeping
+citizens, turned the hotels and rooming houses inside out, prowled
+their way through cars in the railroad yards and boats in the harbor,
+watched the roads leading in and out of the city, searched the street
+cars and generally played the devil. But all in vain. There were no
+suspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.
+
+The following morning the father of the boy visited the mayor and
+requested that the police cease their activities. He pointed out that
+there were no clews of definite promise, and the peril in which the
+child stood ought to command official coöperation instead of dangerous
+interference. Whitla finally managed to convince the officers that they
+stood no worse chance of catching the criminals after the recovery of
+the boy, and the Ashtabula officers were immediately called off.
+
+The disappointed and harried father was forced to return to Sharon in
+defeat and bring the disappointing news to his prostrated wife. The
+little steel town had got the definite impression that news of the
+child had been got, and preparations for the boy’s return had been
+made. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receive the little
+wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation. Crowds besieged the
+Whitla home, and policemen had to be kept on guard to turn away a
+stream of well-meaning friends and curious persons, who would have kept
+the breaking mother from such little sleep as was possible under the
+circumstances.
+
+The excitement of the vicinity had by this time spread to all the
+country. As is always the case, arrests on suspicion were made of the
+most unlikely persons in the most impossible situations. Men, women,
+and children were stopped in the streets, dragged from their rooms,
+questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and even locked into
+jails for investigation, while the missing boy and his abductors
+succeeded in eluding completely the large army of pursuers now in the
+field.
+
+Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers on the twenty-first,
+and the hearts of the bewildered parents and relatives sank with
+apprehension, but the morning mail of the twenty-second again contained
+a note which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate that the business
+of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabula may have been a test
+maneuver, to find out whether Whitla would keep the faith and act
+without the police. This note read:
+
+ “A mistake was made at Ashtabula Saturday night. You come to Cleveland
+ on the Erie train leaving Youngstown at 11:10 a. m. Leave the train at
+ Wilson Avenue. Take a car to Wilson and St. Clair. At Dunbar’s drug
+ store you will find a letter addressed to William Williams.
+
+ “We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt to catch
+ us you will never see your boy again.”
+
+This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. He accordingly had
+his representatives announce that all activities would cease for
+the time being, in the hope that the kidnappers would regain their
+confidence and reopen communications. At the same time he told the
+Ashtabula police to resume their activities. With these two false leads
+given out, Whitla slipped away from his home, caught the train, and
+went straight to Cleveland.
+
+Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that he had eluded the
+overzealous officers, Whitla went to Dunbar’s drug store and found the
+note waiting, as promised. It contained nothing but further directions.
+He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by a Mrs. Hendricks at
+1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliver the ransom, carefully done into a
+package, to the woman in charge. He was to tell her the package should
+be held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.
+
+Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned over the package of ten
+thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks, and was given a note in return.
+This missive instructed him to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel,
+where he was to wait for his boy. The promise was made that the child
+would be returned within three hours.
+
+It was about five o’clock when this exchange was made. The tortured
+father turned and went immediately to the Hollenden, one of the chief
+hostelries of Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hour passed.
+His anxiety became intolerable. He went down to the lobby and began
+walking back and forth, in and out of the doors, up and down the walk,
+back into the hotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several
+noticed his nervousness and preoccupation, but only a lone newspaper
+man identified him and kept him under watch.
+
+Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seven the worn lawyer’s
+agitation increased to the point of frenzy. He could do no more than
+retire to a quiet corner of the lobby, huddle himself into a big chair,
+and sink into the half stupor of exhaustion.
+
+A few minutes before eight o’clock the motorman of a Payne Avenue
+street car saw a man and a small boy come out of the gloom at a street
+corner in East Cleveland and motion him to stop. The man put the child
+aboard and gave the conductor some instructions, paying its fare, and
+immediately vanished in the darkness. The little boy, wearing a pair of
+dark goggles and a large yellow cap that was pulled far down over his
+ears, sat quietly in the back seat and made not a sound.
+
+A few squares further along the line two boys of seventeen or eighteen
+years boarded the car and were immediately intrigued by the glum little
+figure. The newcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney and Thomas W.
+Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspicious that this might be the
+much-sought Willie Whitla. When they asked his name the lad said he was
+Willie Jones. In response to other questions he told that he was on his
+way to meet his father at the Hollenden.
+
+The two young men said no more till the hotel was reached. Here they
+insisted on leaving the car with the boy and at once called a policeman
+to whom they voiced their suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and
+the child thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. In response
+to further interrogation, the little fellow still insisted that he
+was Jones, but, being deprived of his big cap and goggles and called
+Willie Whitla, he asked:
+
+“How did you know me? Where is my daddy?”
+
+The gloomy man in the corner chair got one tinkle of the childish
+voice, ran across the big room, caught up the child and rushed
+hysterically to his own apartment, where he telephoned at once to the
+boy’s mother. By the time the attorney could be persuaded to come
+back down stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father and child were
+welcomed with cheers.
+
+The boy shortly gave his father and the police his story. The man who
+had taken him from school in the buggy had told him that he was being
+taken out of town to the country at his father’s request, because
+there was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors would
+lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly gone willingly
+to Cleveland, where he had been taken to what he believed to be a
+hospital. A man and woman had taken care of him and treated him well.
+They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused him in any way. In
+fact, he liked them, except for the fact that they made him hide under
+the kitchen sink when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him
+candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the boy said, had put
+him aboard the street car, paid his fare, instructed him to tell any
+inquirers that his name was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to
+the hotel and join his father. The only additional information got from
+the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions of the abductors, was to
+the effect that he had been taken to the “hospital” the night following
+his abduction and had not left the place till he was led out to be sent
+to the hotel.
+
+The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed with music and a
+salute from the local militia company, displayed before the serenading
+citizens, and photographed for the American and foreign press.
+
+Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under way. The private
+detectives in the employ of the Whitlas were immediately withdrawn when
+the boy was recovered, but the police of Cleveland and other cities
+plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with whom the note had
+been left, and the woman confectioner, who had received the package
+of ransom money, were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the
+transaction they had aided was concerned with the Whitla case, and both
+were frightened and astonished. They could give little information that
+has not already been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy
+store, however, was able to particularize the description of the man
+who had come to her place, left the note for Mr. Whitla, and returned
+later for the package of money. He was, she said, about thirty years
+old, with dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face, weighed
+about one hundred and sixty pounds, and seemed to be Irish.
+
+Considering the car line which had brought the boy to the Hollenden
+Hotel, the point at which he had boarded the car, and the description
+he gave of the place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were
+certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house somewhere in the
+southeast quarter of the city, and detectives were accordingly sent to
+comb that part of the city in quest of a furnished suite in which the
+kidnappers might still be hiding.
+
+Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday night. Tuesday
+evening, about twenty-two hours after the boy had made his dramatic
+entry into the Hollenden, the detectives went through a three-story
+flat building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a couple answering
+the general descriptions furnished by Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks
+had rented a furnished apartment there on the night following the
+kidnapping and had departed only a few hours ahead of the detectives.
+They had conducted themselves very quietly while in the place, and the
+woman who had sublet the rooms to them was not even sure there had been
+a child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this place as the
+scene of his captivity.
+
+The discovery of this apartment might have been less significant for
+the moment, had the building not been but a few squares from the point
+at which Willie had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join
+his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot on the trail.
+Reserves were rushed to that part of town, patrolmen were not relieved
+at the end of their tours of duty, and the extra men were stationed at
+the exits from the city, with instructions to stop and question all
+suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the quarry was by no
+means in sight.
+
+At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far broader forces than
+the police were thrown upon the stage. The governor of Pennsylvania
+signed a proclamation in the course of the afternoon, offering to
+continue the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been posted
+by the State for the recovery of the boy and the arrest and conviction
+of his abductors. Since the boy had been returned, the money was to
+go to those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly, the
+people of several States were watching with no perfunctory alertness.
+High hopes of immediate capture were thus based on more than one
+consideration; but the night was aging without result.
+
+At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman of the most
+inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario
+Street, Cleveland, sat down at a table in the rear room, and ordered
+drink. The liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar
+bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling the proprietor
+to include the other patrons then in the place. Again he offered a
+new bill of the same denomination, and once again he commanded that
+all present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the woman drank
+rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the effects of the liquor and
+becoming more and more loquacious, spendthrift and effusive.
+
+There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such conduct. Men came
+in often enough who drank heavily, spent freely, and insisted on
+“buying for the house.” But it was a little unusual for a man to let go
+of thirty dollars in little more than an hour, and it was still more
+unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar note after the
+other.
+
+O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew that there had been
+a kidnapping; that there was a reward of fifteen thousand dollars
+outstanding; that a man and woman were supposed to have held the boy
+captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon. Also he had read
+about the package of five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. His brows
+lifted. O’Reilly waited for an opportune moment and went to his cash
+drawer. The bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new;
+that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all of the same issue,
+even of the same series and in consequent numbers. If so----
+
+The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When his suspect callers had
+their attention on something else, he slipped the money from the till
+and moved to the end of the bar near the window, where he was out of
+their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar case, adjusted
+his glasses, and stared.
+
+In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly urged them to stay,
+insisted on supplying them with a free drink, did what he could,
+without arousing suspicion, to detain them, hoping that an officer
+would saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With an
+exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of the door and gone
+into the night, whose shadows had yielded them up an hour before.
+
+O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a telephone. In
+response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck and Detective Woods were
+hurried to the place and set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and
+description. They had no more than moved from the saloon when the
+rollicking pair was seen returning.
+
+The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark about the
+weather and the lateness of the hour. Instantly the man took to his
+heels, with Captain Shattuck in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the
+officer drew and fired high.
+
+The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman ran to him,
+marveling that his aim had been so unintentionally good. He found,
+however, that the fugitive had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at
+flight.
+
+Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest police station
+and subjected to questioning. They were inarticulately drunk, or
+determinedly reticent and pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half
+assured that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers, Captain
+Shattuck ordered them searched.
+
+At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing, still in
+the neat packages in which it had been taken from the bank, were nine
+thousand, seven hundred and ninety dollars.
+
+The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and Helen McDermott
+Boyle--he a floating adventurer known to the cities of Pennsylvania and
+Ohio, she the daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she had
+quit several years before to go venturing on her own account.
+
+From the beginning both the police and the public held the opinion that
+these two people had not been alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive
+investigation failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of
+the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in Cleveland, it
+was concluded that the prisoners had possibly been the sole active
+agents, but the opinion was retained that some one else must have
+plotted the crime.
+
+Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure little town? Why
+had they chosen Willie Whitla, when there were tens of thousands of
+boys with wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives? Who
+had acquainted them with the particularities of the Whitlas’ lives,
+the probable attitude at the school, the child’s fear of smallpox and
+pest houses? Was it not obvious that some one close to the family had
+supplied the information and laid the plans?
+
+James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of May, faced with his
+accusers, and swiftly encircled with the accusing evidence, which was
+complete and unequivocal. He accepted it without display of emotion and
+offered no defense. After brief argument the case went to the jury,
+which reached an affirmative verdict within a few minutes.
+
+Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward and also presented
+no defense. A verdict was found against her with equal expedition on
+May 10, and she was remanded for sentence.
+
+On the following day both defendants were called before the court. The
+judge imposed the life sentence on Boyle and a term of twenty-five
+years on his wife. A few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper
+reporters to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them a written
+statement.
+
+Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895, when the body of
+Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying on the sidewalk on East Federal
+Street, Youngstown, Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There
+had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached to Reeble’s
+end.
+
+Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble, but he said in
+his statement that he and one Daniel Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper,
+who had died in 1907, had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs.
+James P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a number of
+letters from the pockets of the dead man, as his body lay on the walk.
+Boyle recited that not only had he and Shay found Forker in this
+compromising position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked
+by Forker, in which were found four letters from women, two from a
+girl in New York State and the other two from a Cleveland woman. The
+contents were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure
+that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.
+
+Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently written
+Forker, told him about the letters, and suggested that they were
+for sale. Forker had immediately replied and made various efforts
+to recover the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and
+continued to extort money from Forker for years, threatening to reveal
+the letters unless paid.
+
+Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to recite, a demand
+for five thousand dollars had been made on Forker, who said he could
+not raise the money, but would come into an inheritance later and would
+then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When Forker failed in
+this undertaking, fresh threats were made, with the result that Forker
+suggested the kidnapping of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand
+dollars’ ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to get the
+five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.
+
+Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping and attended
+to the matter of having the boy taken from the school. He said that
+some one else had done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle,
+in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found.
+
+This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning as it did,
+created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately and indignantly
+denied the accusation and brought to their support a Youngstown police
+officer, Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of Dan
+Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking to Reeble on the walk
+before the building in which Reeble resided, early in the morning of
+June 8, 1895. Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking slowly
+down the street when he heard a thump and groans behind him. Returning
+to the spot where he had left Reeble, he found his companion of a few
+minutes before, dying on the walk.
+
+Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting on his window
+sill, and that the man had apparently fallen out to his death. He swore
+that neither Forker, Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when
+Reeble died.
+
+There are, to be sure, some elements which verge upon improbability
+in this account, but the denials of Forker and Whitla were strongly
+reinforced by the testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the
+livery where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly identified
+Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt with, thus refuting the latter
+part of Boyle’s accusative statement.
+
+Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years of her long term.
+Her husband, on the other hand, continued his servitude and died of
+pneumonia in Riverside Penitentiary on January 23, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE
+
+
+A few minutes past seven o’clock, on the evening of March 27, 1901,
+Willie McCormick, a ten-year-old schoolboy, started to attend vespers
+in the little Church of the Sacred Heart, in the Highbridge section of
+New York City. His mother gave him a copper cent for the collection
+plate, and he ran out of the door, struggling into his short brown
+overcoat, in great haste to overtake two of his elder sisters who had
+started ahead of him. Three doors down the street he stopped and blew a
+toy whistle to attract the attention of a playmate. This boy’s mother
+called from the porch that her son was to take a music lesson and could
+not go to church. So Willie McCormick lifted his cap and went his way.
+
+It was a cold spring evening, and cutting winds were piping through the
+woods and across the open spaces of that then sparsely settled district
+of the American metropolis. Dusk had fallen, and the thinly planted
+electric lights along Ogden Avenue threw the shadows of the curbside
+trees across the walks in moving arabesques. The boy buttoned his coat
+closely about him, running away into the gloom, while the neighbor
+woman watched him disappear. In that moment the profounder darkness
+enveloped him, swallowed him into a void from which he never emerged
+alive, and made him the chief figure of another of the abiding problems
+of vanishment.
+
+Highbridge is an outlying section of New York, fringing the eastern
+bank of the Harlem River and centering about one approach to the old
+and beautiful stone bridge from which it takes its name. The tracks of
+the New York Central Railroad skirt the edge of the river on their way
+up-state. Further back from the stream the ground rises, and along the
+ridge, paralleling the river, is Ogden Avenue. Near the southern foot
+of this thoroughfare, at One Hundred and Sixty-first Street, the steel
+skeleton of the McComb’s Dam bridge thrust itself across the Harlem,
+with its eastern arch spanning high above the muddy mouth of Cromwell
+Creek,[9] which empties into the Harlem at this point. At the shore
+level, under the great bridge approach, a hinged steel platform span,
+raised and lowered by means of balance weights to permit the passage
+of minor shipping up and down the creek, carried the tracks across the
+lesser stream. Three blocks to the north of this confluence, which
+plays an important part in the mystery, stood the McCormick home, a
+comfortable brick and frame house of the villa type, set back from the
+highest point of Ogden Avenue in a lawn.
+
+[9] This creek has since been filled in and a playground marks its site.
+
+Twenty-five and more years ago, when Willie McCormick disappeared,
+the vicinity bore, as it still bears to a lesser degree, the air of
+suburbia. Then houses were few and rather far apart. Some of the side
+streets were unpaved, and all about were patches of unimproved land,
+where clumps of trees, that once were part of the Bronx Woods, still
+flourished in dense order. The first apartment houses of the district
+were building, and gangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of
+native mechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections.
+
+Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of Cromwell Creek, while a
+factory, a coal dump, and two lumber yards sprawled along the other.
+Five squares to the north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to the
+west is the Highbridge police station. The Church of the Sacred Heart,
+then in charge of the wealthy and venerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands
+two blocks to the east of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same
+cross street with the police building. Neither of these places is more
+than a third of a mile from the McCormick home.
+
+Shortly after nine o’clock on the important evening already noted, the
+two young daughters of William McCormick returned from church without
+their brother. He had not overtaken them on the way, or joined them at
+the services. They had not seen him and supposed he had either remained
+at home, or played truant from church and gone to romp with other boys.
+The father was immediately alarmed. It was not like Willie to stay out
+in the dark. He was the eleventh of twelve children, all the others
+being girls, and he was accordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine.
+He had an especially strong dread of the dark and had never been known
+to venture out in the night without his older sisters or other boys.
+Besides, there had been kidnapping rumors in the neighborhood. It was
+not long after the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, and parents in
+all parts of the United States were still nervous and watchful.
+
+Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or because of the
+general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhood had gone to almost
+ludicrous extremes in his precautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer
+named Oscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundred yards
+from that of the McCormicks. He had a young son, also ten years old.
+His apprehensions for the safety of this lad, who was a playmate of
+Willie McCormick, resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across the front of
+his property, with an ornamental iron gate that was kept padlocked at
+night, though this step invalidated the fire insurance, an eight-foot
+iron fence about the sides and rear of the property, topped with
+strands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogs that ran at large
+day and night.
+
+The fears of the neighborhood rich man had naturally communicated
+themselves to other parents, and they seethed in William McCormick’s
+mind, as he hurried from his home to seek the absent boy. Willie was
+not to be found at the home of any of his chums; he was not playing at
+a near-by street corner, where some older boys were congregated, and
+apparently no one had seen him since the neighbor woman, Mrs. Tierney,
+had told him that her son could not go to church. The father, growing
+more and more excited, stormed about the Highbridge district half the
+night and then set out to visit relatives, to whose homes the boy might
+have gone. But Willie McCormick was not to be traced anywhere. On the
+following morning, when he did not appear, his father summoned the
+police.
+
+What followed provides an excellent exposition of the phenomenon
+of public unconcern being gradually rallied to excitement and
+finally driven to hysteria. The police listened to the statements
+of the missing boy’s parents and sisters, made some perfunctory
+investigations, and said that Willie McCormick had evidently run away
+from home. Many boys did that. Moreover, it was spring, and such
+vagaries were to be expected in youngsters. The newspapers noted the
+case with short routine paragraphs. A street-car conductor brought
+in the information that he had carried a boy, whom he was willing
+to identify as Willie McCormick, judging from nothing better than
+photographs, to a site in South Brooklyn, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild
+West Show was encamped. Another conductor reported that he had taken a
+boy answering the description of Willie McCormick to the Gravesend race
+course, where the horses were tuning up for the spring meeting. But the
+police found no trace of the wanderer at either place, nor at several
+others that were suggested.
+
+The McCormicks took the attitude at once that their son had not gone
+away voluntarily. He was, they said, far too timid for adventuring,
+much too beloved and pampered at home to seek other environment, and
+too young to be troubled with the dromomania that attacks adolescents.
+To these objections one of the police officials responded with the
+charge that the McCormicks were not telling all they knew, and that he
+was satisfied they had an idea what had happened to the runaway, as he
+insisted on terming him.
+
+At this point two interventions brought the McCormick case out of
+obscurity. Father Mullin, having been appealed to by the McCormicks,
+pointed out to the police in an interview that Willie McCormick had
+vanished with one cent in his pocket, that he could have taken a sum
+which must have seemed sufficient for long wanderings to a childish
+mind from his mother’s purse, which lay at hand; that he had started
+to church with his sisters and returned for his overcoat, and that
+the departure was wholly unprepared and assuredly unpremeditated. The
+astute priest said that every runaway made preparations for flight, and
+that, no matter how carefully the plans might be laid, there always
+remained behind the evidence of intent to disappear. A child, he said,
+could not have planned more cunningly than many clever men, and he
+insisted that there must be another explanation for the absence of the
+boy.
+
+Naturally the newspapers paid more attention to the priest, and they
+began printing pictures of the boy, with scare headlines. Father Mullin
+had just taken in hand the affair when Oscar Willgerodt, the man of the
+stone wall and iron fences, came forward with an offer of a thousand
+dollars’ reward for information leading to the discovery of the missing
+boy. He said that he felt sure kidnappers had been at work, and that
+they had taken the McCormick boy in mistake for his own son. He added
+that he had received threats of abduction at intervals for more than a
+year.
+
+A few days later, the boy’s uncle appeared in the press with an offer
+of five thousand dollars for the safe return of the child and the
+production of his abductors. By this time the newspapers were flaming
+with accounts of the disappearance in every edition. Their reporters
+and detectives swarmed over Highbridge, and that quiet district was
+immediately thrown into the wildest excitement, which rose as the days
+succeeded.
+
+Father Mullin next offered ten thousand dollars for the apprehension
+of the kidnappers and return of the boy. Then a restaurant keeper
+of the neighborhood, whose nephew had been threatened by anonymous
+letter writers, offered two thousand dollars more for the return of
+the McCormick boy, and he said he would pay an additional thousand
+for evidence against kidnappers. Thus the total of fees offered was
+nineteen thousand dollars. Still no word came from the absent lad, and
+the efforts of a thousand officers failed to disclose any abductors.
+
+The constant appearance of these articles in the newspapers and the
+offers of such high rewards succeeded, however, in throwing a city of
+five or six million people into general hysteria. Parents refused to
+allow their children out of doors without escort; rich men called up
+at all hours of the day and night, demanding special police to protect
+their homes; excited women throughout the city and later throughout the
+State and surrounding communities proceeded to interpret the apparition
+of every stranger as evidence of kidnappers and to bombard the police
+of a hundred towns and cities with frantic appeals. The absence of this
+obscure child had become a public catastrophe.
+
+Developments in the investigation came not at all. The police, the
+reporters, and numberless private officers, who were attracted to the
+case by the possibility of achieving celebrity and rich reward, all
+bogged down precisely where they started. Willie McCormick had vanished
+within a hundred feet of his father’s door. The night had simply
+swallowed him up, and all efforts failed to penetrate a step into the
+gloom.
+
+Only two suggestive bits of information could be got from the
+McCormicks and the missing boy’s friends. The father, being closely
+interrogated as to possible enemies, could recall only one person
+who might have had a grievance. This was a mechanic, who lived a few
+squares away, and with whom there had been a disagreement as to pay.
+But this man was at home and going steadily about his work; he was
+vouched for by neighbors and his employers, and he came out of a police
+grilling completely absolved.
+
+Launcelot Tierney, the playmate for whom Willie McCormick had blown his
+whistle a minute or two before he vanished, supplied the information
+that Willie had tormented an Italian laborer on the morning before
+the disappearance, and that this man had nursed his grudge until
+the afternoon, when the boys were returning home from school. Then,
+said the Tierney boy, this workman had lain in wait behind a pile of
+lumber and dashed out after Willie, as the children passed. Willie had
+run for safety and proved fleeter than his pursuer, who gave up the
+attempt after running a few rods. Investigation showed that none of the
+laborers employed at the indicated building was absent. However the
+Tierney boy was unable to identify the man he had accused, when the
+workmen were lined up for his inspection. A good deal was made of this
+circumstance.
+
+The public police, however, always came back to their original
+attitude. Kidnappers were actuated by the hope of extorting money, they
+said. Since William McCormick was a poor man, there could have been no
+motive for the abduction of his son. Consequently it was almost certain
+that the boy had gone away.
+
+Mr. McCormick replied that while he was now poor, he had formerly been
+well to do. He reasoned that the kidnapper might very well have been
+ignorant of his decline in fortune and taken the boy in the belief that
+his parent was still wealthy. Others joined the controversy by pointing
+out in the newspapers that abductions were sometimes motivated by
+revenge or spite on the part of persons quite unknown or unsuspected by
+the parents; that children were often stolen by irrational or demented
+men or women, and that there was at least some basis for faith in the
+abduction theory, but no evidence to support the idea of a runaway.
+
+Meantime events had added their spice of immediate drama. A few nights
+after the disappearance of Willie McCormick, Doctor D. A. McLeod,
+a surgeon occupying the next house but one to the McCormick’s, had
+found a masked man skulking about the rear of his property just after
+nightfall, and tried to grapple with the intruder. A week later, from
+a house two blocks away, another neighbor reported that he, too, had
+found the masked man prowling about his place and had followed him
+into the woods, where he had been lost. This informant said that the
+mysterious stranger was a negro. Detectives were posted in hiding
+throughout the district, but the visitant did not appear again.
+
+Next two Gypsy girls visited a photographer in Washington, and one of
+them showed the camera man a slip of paper with some childish scrawl.
+Somehow this bit of writing came to be identified as that of one of
+Willie McCormick’s sisters. It was said the scrap of paper must have
+been taken from the McCormick house. The two Gypsy children were seized
+and held in jail, while detectives hurried off to interrogate their
+elders and search through the Romany camps up and down the Atlantic
+seaboard. No trace of the missing boy was found, and the girls were
+quickly released.
+
+Finally the expected note from the kidnapper reached William McCormick.
+It was scrawled awkwardly on a piece of nondescript paper by some
+illiterate person who was apparently trying to conceal his normal
+handwriting. It said that Willie was being held for ransom; that he was
+well; that he would be safe so long as no attempt was made to bring the
+police into the negotiations, and that disaster would follow if the
+father played false. The writer then demanded the absurdly small sum of
+two hundred dollars for the release of the boy and directed that the
+money be taken at night to the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundred
+and Thirty-fifth Street, and there placed in an old tin bucket which
+would be found inside an abandoned steam boiler. The missive bore the
+signature “Kid.”
+
+The police immediately denounced the letter as the work of some mental
+defective, but instructed the father to go to the rendezvous at the
+appointed time and deposit a bundle of paper which might look like the
+demanded sum in bank notes.
+
+McCormick did as commanded. He found the corner of Third Avenue and One
+Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street to be a half-abandoned spot near the
+east bank of the Harlem, at its juncture with the East River. A low
+barroom, a disused manufacturing plant, and some rookeries of dubious
+tenantry ornamented the place, while coarsely dressed men, the dregs
+of the river quarter, lounged about and robbed the stranger of any
+gathered reassurance. The old boiler was there, standing in the center
+of open, flat ground that sloped down to the railroad tracks and the
+river under the Third Avenue bridge. Plainly the writer of the letter
+had chosen a likely spot, which might be kept under observation from a
+considerable distance and could not be surrounded or approached without
+the certain knowledge of a watcher posted in any one of a hundred
+windows commanding the view. McCormick deposited the package and went
+his way, while disguised detectives lay in various vantages and watched
+the boiler for days. No one went near it, and the game was abandoned.
+
+But, at the end of ten days, McCormick received a second letter from
+Kid, in which he was reproached for having enlisted the police; he
+was told that such crude tactics would not work, and he was ordered
+to place two thousand dollars in cash under a certain stone, which he
+was directed to find under the approach of the McComb’s Dam bridge, a
+few rods from the mouth of Cromwell Creek. He was told that the amount
+of the ransom had been increased because of his association with the
+police, and the letter closed with the solemn warning that the demand
+must be met if McCormick hoped to see his son again. A postscript said
+that if the police appeared again the boy’s ears would be thrown upon
+his father’s porch.
+
+Relatives, friends, and neighbors were at hand to furnish the demanded
+money, and the father was more than willing to deposit it according to
+the stipulation, but the police again intervened and had McCormick
+leave another dummy packet. Once more he saw, and the police should
+have noted, that the spot selected by the letter writer was most suited
+to the purpose. Once more it was an open area in the formidable shadow
+of a great bridge, freely observable from all sides and impossible to
+surround effectively.
+
+No one was baited to the trap, but McCormick got a third letter from
+Kid, in which he was told that his silly tactics would avail him
+nothing; that his boy had been taken out to sea, and that he would not
+hear again until he reached England. He was told to blame his own folly
+if he never beheld his child alive.
+
+It must be said in favor of the police point of view that these were
+not the only letters from supposed kidnappers which reached the
+distraught parents. Indeed, there was a steady accumulation of all
+sorts of missives of this type, most of them quite obviously the work
+of lunatics. These were easily distinguishable, however. An experienced
+officer ought to be able to choose between such vaporings of disjointed
+intelligences and letters which bore some evidence of reason, some mark
+of plausibility. The police who handled this case committed the common
+blunder of lumping them all together. They had determined that the boy
+was a runaway and were naturally inhospitable to contrary evidences.
+
+But others were as firmly convinced on the other side. The father now
+became genuinely alarmed and feared that further activity by the police
+might indeed lead to the murder of the child. Accordingly Father Mullin
+withdrew his ten-thousand-dollar offer for the apprehension of the
+criminals, and Michael McCormick, the lost boy’s uncle, moved swiftly
+to change the terms of his five-thousand-dollar reward. In seeking
+for a way to make an appeal directly to the abductors and assure them
+of their personal safety, he brought into the case at this point the
+redoubtable Pat Sheedy.
+
+Sheedy had just achieved worldwide notoriety by recovering from the
+thieves’ fence, Adam Worth, the famous Gainsborough painting of
+Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, which had been stolen from Agnew’s
+Art Rooms in London in 1876, and which had been hunted over half the
+earth for twenty-five years. This successful intermediacy between
+the police and the underworld gave the New York and Buffalo “honest
+gambler” a tremendous reputation for confidential dealing, and the
+McCormicks counted on Sheedy’s trusted position among criminals to
+convince the kidnappers that they could deliver the boy, collect five
+thousand dollars, and be safe from arrest or betrayal. So Sheedy came
+forward, announced that he was prepared to pay over the money on
+the spot and without question, the moment the boy was delivered and
+identified.
+
+The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension, disgusted by the
+police failures and thrilled by Sheedy’s performance in the matter of
+the stolen painting, received the news of his intervention in the case
+with signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s return was breathlessly
+expected, and many believed the feat as good as accomplished. But this
+time the task was beyond the powers of even the man who enjoyed the
+confidence of the foremost professional criminals of the day, counted
+the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli, as an intimate, forced the
+celebrated international fence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam
+Worth, to leave London and follow him across the ocean after the lost
+Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar of the American Express
+office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,[10] and seemed able to compel the
+most abandoned lawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, but
+Sheedy got no word and could find no trace.
+
+[10] Or so says one of the most persistent of underworld legends.
+
+On the rain-drenched afternoon of May 10, John Garfield, bridge tender
+for the New York Central Railroad at Cromwell Creek, worked the levers
+and lifted the steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighter bound
+up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. After he had lowered the
+platform again he observed that a large floating object had worked its
+way to the shore and threatened to get caught in the machinery which
+operated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkhead with a boat hook,
+intending to dislodge it. At the extreme end he leaned over and bent
+down, prodding the object with his pole. The thing turned in the stream
+and swam into better view. It was the body of a boy.
+
+Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawled back to the bridge,
+called to two boys and a man, who were angling near by, and soon
+put out with them in a rowboat. In five minutes the body had been
+brought to shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it had been
+identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectives had been
+seeking him thousands of miles away, and European port authorities had
+been watching the in-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had
+lain dead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares from his
+home. The churning propeller of the steam lighter had brought the body
+to the surface.
+
+A coroner’s autopsy revealed that the body had been in the water for
+a period which could not be fixed with any degree of precision. It
+might have been two weeks, but the coroner felt unable to state that
+the body had not been in the creek for six weeks, the full length of
+time since the disappearance. There was no way to make sure. Again,
+it was not possible to determine if the boy had been choked to death
+before being cast into the waters. There was no skull fracture, no
+breakage of bones, and no discernible wound. There was also no evidence
+of poison--no abnormal condition of the lungs. The official physicians
+were inclined to believe that death had been caused by drowning, but
+they would not make a definite declaration.
+
+The police dismissed the case with the assertion that they had been
+vindicated. It was clear that the boy had played truant from church,
+wandered away, fallen into the river, probably on the night of his
+disappearance, and lain under the water for six weeks.
+
+But to this conclusion the McCormicks and many others, among them
+several distinguished private officers, took exception, and it must
+be said that the police explanation leaves some important questions
+suspended. Why did the boy turn and go three blocks to the south of his
+home, when he had last been seen hurrying northward toward church? What
+could have led this timid and dark-frightened boy to go voluntarily
+down to the sinister and gloomy river bank on the edge of night? How
+did it happen that the Kid directed William McCormick to deposit the
+two-thousand-dollar ransom within a few score yards of the spot where
+the body was recovered? Who was the mysterious masked man?
+
+We shall never know, and neither shall we be able to answer whether
+accident or foul design lurks in the shadow of this mystery.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE
+
+
+Whoever is familiar with Central European popular literature has
+tucked away in his memory some part or parcel of the story of Barbara
+Ubrik. The romance of her life and parentage has furnished material
+for countless novels, plays, short stories, tales and poems of
+the imaginative kind. Bits of her history appear in more serious
+literature, in religious and social polemics, even in the memoirs of
+personages. And more than one of the tragic incidents of opera may
+be, if diligence and intuition are not lacking, traced back to this
+forgotten Polish woman and her exorbitant adventures. Time and creative
+interpretation have fashioned her case into one of the classic legends
+of disappearance.
+
+In the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, a certain Alexander Ubrik played
+a part sufficiently noteworthy to get himself exiled to Siberia for
+life, leaving behind him a wife and four young daughters, the third
+of whom, Barbara, was the chief figure of the subsequent affair. But
+the Ubrik family had already known the feel of the romantic fabric and
+there had already been a remarkable disappearance mystery involving
+a relative no more remote than the mother of Barbara and wife of the
+banished Alexander. It is with this part of the family history that
+much of the literary offspring deals.
+
+About the year 1800, according to the account of the celebrated Polish
+detective Masilewski, extensively quoted by his American friend and
+compeer, the late George S. McWatters of the United States Secret
+Service, the first of the series of astonishing scenes involving
+the Ubrik family was played in Warsaw. There was then resident in
+the Polish capital one Jaromir Ubrik, the profligate son of an old
+and noble Polish house who had wasted his substance in gambling and
+roistering. Ubrik, though fallen into disrepute among his former
+friends, was still intimate with a few of the aristocratic families,
+among them that of Count Michael Satorin.
+
+The Countess Satorin had borne her lord several daughters but no son to
+succeed to the title. When, in the year mentioned, Mme. Satorin yielded
+still another daughter, her husband being then absent in Russia, she
+sought to forestall the wrath and disappointment of her spouse by
+substituting a male child. It happened that the wife of Jaromir Ubrik
+had borne a son only two days earlier and died in childbirth. For the
+consideration of ten thousand florins, Ubrik consented to exchange
+children with the countess, who said she was additionally persuaded to
+the arrangement by the fact that the Ubrik blood was as good as her
+own and the boy thus fit to wear a title. The little Ubrik boy was,
+accordingly, delivered to the countess and her little daughter turned
+over to Jaromir Ubrik, nestled in a down lined basket with a fine gold
+chain and cross about her neck.
+
+The elements of a thousand plots will be apparent even at this early
+stage of the story. But far more fabulous-seeming things followed
+immediately.
+
+Ubrik took the basket containing the little girl and started home. On
+the way, following his unhappy weakness, he entered a tavern and began
+to spend some of the money he had been paid. He got drunk, staggered
+home without the little girl in her basket and returned the following
+day to find that a nameless Jew had claimed this strange parcel and
+disappeared.
+
+Not long afterwards, it seems, Countess Satorin, plagued by her
+natural feelings, came to see her daughter and had to be told the
+story. The outraged mother finally exacted an oath that he devote his
+worthless life to the quest for the stolen child. Ubrik began his work,
+apparently sobered by the death of his wife, the theft of the little
+girl and the charge her mother had laid upon him. After several years
+he rose in the ranks of the Russian intelligence service and was made
+captain of the Warsaw police.
+
+About this time the keeper of the inn where Ubrik had lost the little
+girl was seized with a mortal disease and called the police captain to
+his bedside, confessing that he had turned the little girl over to a
+Jewish adventurer named Aaron Koenigsberger, whose address in Germany
+the dying man supplied. Captain Ubrik proceeded to Germany, confronted
+Koenigsberger with the confession of his accomplice and dragged the
+abductor back to Poland to face the courts. Koenigsberger, to avoid
+punishment, assisted in the search for the little girl and guided
+Captain Ubrik to Kiev, where he had sold the child to another Jew
+named Gerson. The Gersons appeared to be respectable people, who had
+taken the little girl to console them in their own childlessness. They
+deplored that she had been stolen several years earlier by a band of
+Gypsies. Captain Ubrik, at length satisfied that this story was true,
+set out on an Odyssean journey in quest of the child. For more than
+eleven years he followed Gypsy bands through all parts of western and
+southern Russia and into Austria and Germany. At last, in a village not
+an hour’s journey from Warsaw, he discovered the missing daughter of
+the Countess Satorin and returned her to her mother, as a grown woman
+who believed herself to be a Jewess and could now at last explain why
+her supposed people had always said she looked like a “Goy.”
+
+The woman recovered as Judith Gerson seems to have been satisfactorily
+documented as the missing daughter of the countess. At any rate, she
+was taken into the Satorin family and christened Elka Satorin. Her
+father had meantime died, leaving the bulk of his fortune and the title
+to his supposed son, Alexander. Elka Satorin, however, inherited her
+mother’s property and, a few years later, married the boy who had been
+substituted for her in the cradle.
+
+This was the strange match from which Barbara Ubrik was spawned into a
+life that was to be darkened with more sinister adventures. The year
+of her birth is given as 1828, so that she was a tot of three when her
+father was dragged away to the marshes and mines of Russia in Asia.
+
+I must confess that I set down so fantastic a tale only after
+hesitation and skeptical misgiving. It, and what is to follow, reads
+like a piece of motion picture fustian, an old wives’ tale. The meter
+of reasonableness and probability is not there. The whole yarn is too
+crudely colored. It is sensation; it is melodrama. But it seems also
+to be the truth. My sources are old books by reputable chroniclers,
+containing long quotations from the story of Masilewski, the detective,
+from the testimony of Wolcech Zarski, the lover who appeared in
+Barbara Ubrik’s life at a disastrous moment, from the proceedings of
+an ecclesiastical trial. Indeed, the whole thing seems to be a matter
+of court record in Warsaw and in Cracow, the old Polish capital. This
+being so, we must conclude that fiction has been once more detected in
+the act of going to life even for its ultimate extravagances.
+
+The years following the great revolt of 1831 were full of torment
+for Poland. Nicholas I, weary of what he termed the obstinacy of the
+people, began a series of the most dire repressions, including the
+closing of the Polish universities, the revocation of the constitution,
+the persecution of the Roman priests and a general effort to abolish
+the Polish language and national culture. The old nobility, made up of
+devout Roman Catholics and chauvinistic patriots, was especially sought
+out for the reactionary discipline of the czar, and a family like that
+of Barbara Ubrik, whose chief had been sent to Siberia for treason, was
+naturally among the worst afflicted.
+
+The attempt from St. Petersburg to uproot the church of Rome was the
+cause of an intense devotionalism among the Poles, with the result
+that many men and women of distinguished families gave themselves up
+to the religious life and entered the monasteries and convents. This
+passion touched the Ubriks as well as others and Barbara, naturally of
+a passionate and enthusiastic nature, decided as a girl that she would
+retire from the world and devote herself to her forbidden faith. Her
+mother, Elka Satorin-Ubrik, once a ward of the Jewish family in Kiev
+and later the prisoner of the Gypsies, strongly opposed such a course,
+but in 1844, when she was 16 years old, the girl could no longer be
+restrained. She presented herself to the Carmelite cloister of St.
+Theresa in Warsaw in the spring of that year and was admitted to the
+novitiate.
+
+From the beginning, however, the spirited young noblewoman seems to
+have been most ill-adapted to the stern regulations hedging life in
+a monastery of the unshod cenobite Carmelites. She had brought into
+the austere atmosphere of the nunnery something that has played havoc
+with rules and good intentions under far happier environments than
+that of the cloister; namely, young beauty. The older and less favored
+nuns saw it first with misgiving and soon with envy, a sin which seems
+not altogether foreign to the holiest places. What was more directly
+in line with evil consequences, Father Gratian, the still youthful
+confessor of the cloister, also saw and appraised the charms of the
+youthful sister and was quite humanly moved.
+
+The official story is silent as to details but it appears that in 1846
+Sister Jovita, as Barbara Ubrik had been named in the convent, bore a
+child. Very naturally, she was called before the abbess, who appears
+in the accounts as Zitta, confronted with her sin and sentenced to
+the usual and doubtless severe punishments. In the progress of her
+chastisement she seems to have declared that Father Gratian was the
+guilty man.
+
+This was the beginning of the young man’s troubles. Detective
+Masilewski, in his report on the investigation of the case, says that
+the motivation of the nun’s subsequent mistreatment was complex. Father
+Gratian naturally wanted to defend himself from the serious charge. The
+abbess, Zitta, was quite as anxious both to discipline the nun and to
+prevent the airing of a scandal, especially in times of suspicion and
+persecution, when the imperial attitude toward the holy orders was far
+from friendly and any pretext might have been seized for the closing of
+a nunnery and the expropriation of church property. Masilewski says,
+also, that Sister Jovita possessed a considerable property which was
+to belong to the cloister and that there was, thus, a further material
+motive.
+
+But, whatever else may have actuated either the priest or the abbess,
+Sister Jovita aggravated matters by her own conduct. The severity of
+her punishment led her to desire liberty and she sought to renounce her
+vows and return to her family. Such a course would probably have been
+followed by a public repetition of the charges made by the young nun,
+and every effort was accordingly made to prevent her from leaving the
+order. She was locked into her cell, loaded with penances and almost
+unbelievably severe punishments and prevented from communicating with
+her mother and sisters.
+
+Not long afterwards love again intruded itself into the story of
+Sister Jovita and further complicated the situation. This was in the
+last months of 1847. It appears that a young lay brother whose worldly
+name was Wolcech Zarski happened about this time to meet the beautiful
+young nun, while occupied at the convent with some official duties, and
+straightway fell in love with her. She told him of her experiences and
+sufferings and he, a spirited young man and not yet a monk, immediately
+laid plans to elope. Owing to the stringent discipline and the careful
+watch kept over the offending sister, this departure was not quickly
+or easily accomplished. Finally, however, on the night of May 25th,
+1848, Zarski managed to pull his beloved to the top of the convent wall
+by means of a rope. In trying to descend outside, she fell and was
+injured, with the result that flight was impeded.
+
+Zarski seems, however, to have had the strength to carry his precious
+burden to the nearest inn. Here friends and human nature failed
+him. The friends did not appear with a coach and change of feminine
+clothing, as they had promised, and the superstitious dread of the
+innkeeper’s wife led her to send immediate word to the convent. Before
+he could move from the neighborhood, Zarski was overcome by a bevy of
+stout friars and Sister Jovita carried back to the nunnery.
+
+The monasteries and nunneries of Poland had still their own judicial
+jurisdiction, so Zarski could not enter St. Theresa’s by legal means.
+He tried again and again to communicate with his beloved by stealth,
+but the Abbess Zitta was now fully awake to the danger and every effort
+was defeated. The young lover tried one measure after another, appealed
+to ecclesiastical authorities, consulted lawyers, besieged officials.
+At length he was told that the object of all this devotion was no
+longer in St. Theresa’s but had been removed to another Carmelite seat,
+the name of which was, of course, refused.
+
+Here political events intervened. Nicholas I had grown slowly but
+surely relentless in his attitude toward the Roman clergy in Poland,
+whom he considered to be the chief fomenters and supporters of the
+continued Polish resistance. Nicholas simply closed the monasteries
+and cloisters and drove the clergy out of Poland. It was the kind
+of drastic step always taken in the past in response to religious
+interference in political matters.
+
+Now the unfortunate Zarski was at his dark hour. The nuns were
+scattered into foreign lands where he, as a foreigner, could have
+little chance of either legal or official aid, where he knew nothing of
+the ways, was acquainted with no one, could count on no encouragement.
+Worse yet, he was not rich. He had to stop for months and even years at
+a time and earn more money with which to press his quest. His tenacity
+seems to have been heroic; his faith tragic.
+
+One evening in the summer of 1868, twenty years after Sister Jovita
+had last been seen, Detective Masilewski was driving homeward toward
+Warsaw, after a day’s hunt, when an old peasant stepped before the
+horse, doffed his hat and asked:
+
+“Are you the secret detective, Mr. Masilewski?”
+
+On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigator a letter,
+explaining that an unknown man had handed it to him with a tip to pay
+for its delivery. The note said simply:
+
+ “Dear Sir: In the convent of St. Mary of the Carmelites at Cracow, a
+ nun by the name of Jovita, her real name being Barbara Ubrik, has been
+ held a captive for twenty years, which imprisonment has made her a
+ lunatic. I do not care to mention my name but vouch for the truth of
+ my assertion. Seek and you will find.
+
+                                             “Your correspondent.”
+
+Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not a little incredulous.
+True, he had heard of this nun and her disappearance, but she had
+vanished long ago and surely death had sealed the lid of this mystery,
+as of others. No doubt this was another of those romantic reappearances
+of the famous missing. Still--what if there were truth in it. But no,
+it must be a figment, else why had the informant hidden himself? It was
+an attempt to make a fool of an honest detective.
+
+So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remote possibility of
+something grotesque and extraordinary plagued him and drove him at
+last to action. Even when he had determined to move, however, he knew
+that he must act with caution. If he were to go to the bishop of the
+diocese, for instance, and ask for permission to search the nunnery
+of St. Mary’s, the very possible result might be the transfer of the
+unfortunate nun to some new hiding place and the infliction of worse
+penalties and tortures.
+
+If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austria having
+annexed the province of Cracow in 1846), he might enter the convent and
+find himself the victim of a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate
+humiliation for a detective. There was no possible course except
+cautious investigation.
+
+So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowly he traced back the
+stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother, the exchanged babies, the theft
+by the old Jew and the captivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the
+record of Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’s birth
+certificate, learned about her admittance to the convent, the part
+played in her life by Father Gratian and the early chastisement. How
+he did these things one needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care
+and watchful judgment were necessary. He must never let the enemies of
+the nun know that a detective was at work. All he did had to be handled
+through intermediaries. Probably it would even be a thankless job, but
+it was an enigma, a temptation. He went ahead.
+
+Finally Masilewski stumbled upon the fact that the convent of St.
+Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiastical library. The inspiration
+came to him at once. He or someone else must play the part of a
+learned student of religious and local ecclesiastical matters and
+get permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. After some seeking,
+Masilewski came upon a renegade theological student and sent this man
+first to the bishop and then to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the
+diocese apparently approved the student, he was permitted to enter and
+use the rare old books and records.
+
+Under instructions from Masilewski, the man worked with caution. The
+detective invented a subject with which the man busied himself for
+days before a chance question, skillfully introduced into his research
+problem, called for an inspection of the old church law records of the
+convent. There was a moment of suspense and the investigator feared
+that he had been suspected or that the abbess would rule against any
+such liberty. But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decided
+that so holy and studious a young man might well be permitted to see
+the secret papers.
+
+Once the records were in his hands, the mock student turned immediately
+to the date of the nun’s escape and found under date of June 3, 1848,
+this remarkable record:
+
+ “Barbara Ubrik, known under the name of Jovita, is accused of
+ immoral actions, continued disturbances in the convent, manifold
+ irregularities and trespasses of the rules of the convent, even
+ of theft and cunningly plotted crime; she has refused the mercy
+ of baptism and given her soul to the devil, for which cause she
+ was unworthy of the holy Lord’s Supper, and by this act she has
+ calumniated God; she has clandestinely broken the vows of purity, in
+ so far that she held a love correspondence with the novice, Zarski,
+ and allowed herself to elope with him; at last she has offended
+ against the law of obedience of poverty and seclusion, and on the 25th
+ of May, 1848, she has accomplished an escape from the convent.”
+
+Trial was held before the abbess and judgment was thus rendered:
+
+ “The criminal has to do three days’ expiation of sins in the church,
+ afterwards she will be lashed by all the sisters of the order and be
+ forfeited of her clerical dignity; she herself will be considered as
+ dead and her name will be taken from the list of the order. At last,
+ she has forfeited the right to the holy Mass and the Lord’s Supper,
+ and is condemned to perpetual imprisonment.”
+
+The reader is warned not to take this as a sample of monastic life
+or justice as it might be discovered to-day or even as it generally
+existed then. Sister Jovita had simply got herself involved in one of
+those sad tangles of scandal which had to be kept hid at any and every
+price. She was the victim not of monasticism or of any form of religion
+but of a political situation and of her relations with other men and
+women, some of whom have been hard and evil from the beginning of the
+world, respectless of vows or trust.
+
+In one particular, however, her treatment was a definite result of
+certain religious beliefs then prevalent in all strict churches. She
+was accused of being devil ridden or possessed by the fiend and many
+of her cries of anguish, screams of madness and acts of defiance were
+attributed to such a possession. It was then customary in certain parts
+of Europe to drive the devil out by means of torture. This was in no
+sense a belief peculiar to Catholics. Martin Luther held it, and so did
+John Wesley, as any historian must tell you. Therefore many of Jovita’s
+sufferings were the result of beliefs general in those days except
+among the exceptionally enlightened.
+
+With this record copied and safely in his hand, Masilewski moved
+immediately and directly. One morning he and a squad of Gallician
+gendarmes appeared before the convent of St. Mary’s and demanded
+admittance in the name of the emperor. The abbess, certain what was
+about to happen, tried to temporize, but Masilewski entered, arrested
+the abbess with an imperial warrant and commanded a search of the
+place. The mother superior, seeing that there was nothing to be gained
+by resistance led the company down to the lowest cellars of the
+building and turned over to Masilewski a key to a damp cell.
+
+The detective opened the door, felt rats run across his shoes as he
+stepped inside and found, crouched in a corner on a pile of wet straw,
+the shrunken form of what had been the beautiful Barbara Ubrik. She was
+brought forth to the light of day, to see the sheen upon the autumn
+trees once more and the clouds sailing in the skies. Alas, she was no
+Bonnivard. Life had lost its colors and symmetries for her. She had
+long been hopelessly mad.
+
+There is still a detail of this famous case of mystery and detection
+to be told. Father Gratian had disappeared when Russia drove out the
+clergy. Masilewski was determined to complete his work and bring the
+malefactor back to answer for his crimes. After the ruin of Barbara
+Ubrik had been lodged in an asylum, Masilewski set out to find the
+priest. After seven months of wandering through Austria, Prussia and
+Poland, the detective was rewarded with the information that Father
+Gratian had gone to Hamburg. He went immediately to the great German
+seaboard town, searched there for months and found that the man he
+sought had gone to London years before.
+
+The quest began anew in the British capital. It was like seeking a flea
+in a hayloft, but success came at last. Masilewski was passing through
+one of the obscure streets when he noticed a man with the peculiar gait
+and bearing of priests, which seems to mark them apart to the expert
+eye, no matter what their physique or dress, going into a bookstall
+where foreign books were sold.
+
+The detective, who was, of course, totally unknown to Father Gratian,
+followed into the shop and found to his delight that the priestly
+person was the owner of the shop. Many of the books dealt in were
+German or Polish. Masilewski rummaged for a long time, made a few
+purchases and ingratiated himself with the bibliophile. When he left he
+went directly to the first book expert he could find, stuffed himself
+with the terms and general knowledge of the book dealer and soon
+returned to the little shop.
+
+On his second visit he let drop a few Polish terms which made the
+shopkeeper prick up his ears. As Masilewski learned more and more of
+the new rôle he was to play he gradually revealed that he was himself
+a great continental expert. Later he informed the shopkeeper of a huge
+sale of famous libraries that was about to be held in Hamburg and
+invited the London dealer to accompany him. The priestly man was too
+much interested and beguiled to refuse a man who could speak his own
+language and loved his own subject.
+
+On the trip to Hamburg the London bookseller told, after skillful
+questioning, that he had once been a priest, that he had lived in
+Warsaw, that a love affair had driven him from the church--in short,
+that he was Father Gratian.
+
+Masilewski waited until he got his man safely on the continent and
+then, knowing the extradition agreements in force between Austria and
+the various German states, placed his man under arrest, not without
+a feeling of pain and regret. Father Gratian, like one relieved of a
+strange weight, immediately accompanied Masilewski to Cracow and faced
+his accusers without denying the facts. He could offer no extenuation
+save that nature had not ordained him to be a priest and “the devil
+had been too strong for his weak flesh.” He confessed his part in the
+whole transaction and even added that he had given the unfortunate nun
+drugs to bereave her of her reason. He made every attempt to shield the
+abbess, but she, too, face to face with the authority of the empire and
+the church, refused to deny or extenuate.
+
+For once the courts were more merciful than their victims. Mother Zitta
+was sentenced to expulsion from the order, imprisonment for five years
+and exile from the empire. Father Gratian was likewise expelled from
+the church, which he had long deserted, put to prison for ten years and
+exiled.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS
+
+
+In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, long employed as an
+auditor by the Erie Railroad and living in Jersey City, was grievously
+ill. In May, when he had recovered to the point of convalescence, it
+was decided he should go to the country to recuperate. For several
+years he and his family had been spending their vacations in the
+little hamlet of Greeley, five miles from Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in
+the pleasant hill country. So Glass bundled his wife and three small
+children to a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and the Frazer farm,
+where he had arranged for rooms and board. This on May eleventh.
+
+The Frazer farmhouse was one of those country establishments which
+take boarders for the season. Before it ran the main road leading to
+the larger towns along the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and
+beyond the road began the tangle of wild woods and hilly ground rising
+up to the wrinkle of mountains.
+
+Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play, and Mrs. Glass
+started for the post office, about two hundred yards up the road, to
+mail some post cards to her parents, noting the safe arrival of the
+family. She called to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook his head
+and went out into the field beside the house, interested in a hired man
+who was plowing in the far corner. The elder girl went with her up
+the road. The baby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on the porch
+watching his son. The little boy, just past four years old, was running
+about in the young green of the field.
+
+Charles Glass got up from the porch and went inside for a glass of
+water. He stayed there a minute or two. When he came out he saw his
+wife and little girl coming back down the road from the post office.
+They had been gone from the house not more than ten minutes.
+
+Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about, and asked:
+“Where’s Jimmie?”
+
+Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and surmised: “Maybe
+he went up the road after you.”
+
+The road was scanned and then the field. Then the farm hand was called
+and questioned. He had seen the youngster crawling through a break in
+the fence a few minutes before, but had paid no attention.
+
+One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely missing of recent
+history had begun. This hunt, which extended over years and covered a
+continent, taking advantage of several modern inventions never before
+employed in the quest of a human being, started off with alarmed calls
+on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent woods, gullies, and
+thickets. In the course of the evening, however, the organized quest
+began. It is interesting to note some of the confusion that overcame
+the people most concerned and the little town of a hundred souls. The
+suspicion of abduction was not slow in forming, and the question as
+to who might have done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was
+sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road going to
+or coming from the post office. William Losky, the farm hand who was
+plowing in the field, and Fred Lindloff, who was working on the road,
+felt sure they had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road,
+occupied by one man and one woman who had a plush lap robe pulled up
+about their knees to protect them from the May breezes.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~]
+
+Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three miles down the
+road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands all of seven hundred feet back,
+saw a one-seated car stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she
+might be of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the
+car saw her approaching and at once drove off.
+
+Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs. Konwickie noted a
+one-seated motor car with a sobbing child, a woman and two men inside,
+the child crouching on the floor against the woman’s knees and being
+covered with the same black plush lap robe.
+
+All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see, and I cite them
+only to show how unreliable is the human mind and how quickly panic
+and forensic imagination get hold of people and cause them to see the
+unseen.
+
+On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was brought from near
+by--just what kind of bloodhound the record does not show. The dog was
+given a scent of the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out
+through the break in the fence to the far side of the road, passed a
+little distance into the woods, and there stopped still, whined, and
+quit.
+
+The following morning word of the disappearance or kidnapping had
+been flashed to surrounding towns and many came to aid in the search.
+A committee was formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding
+terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the fourteenth.
+On the fifteenth of May a much larger committee undertook the work and
+the surrounding mountains were searched foot after foot. This work took
+several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about, whose members worked
+slowly inward, covering all the ground as they came to a center at
+Greeley. This maneuver also failed to yield hail or trail of the child.
+At last the weary and foot-sore hunters gave it up.
+
+The search was now begun in a more methodical way. The State
+constabulary took charge of a systematic review of the ground. Ponds
+were drained, culverts blown up, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves
+of the preceding autumn raked out of hollows or from the depths of
+quarries--all in vain.
+
+Meantime, the mayor and director of public safety in Jersey City,
+appealed to by the distracted parents, began the official quest.
+Descriptions of the boy were broadcast. He was four years old, blond,
+with blue eyes, had good teeth, a double crown or cowlick in his hair,
+weighed about thirty-five pounds, and wore new shoes, tan overalls
+with a pink trimming, but no hat. Every town and hamlet in the United
+States, Canada, and the West Indies was sooner or later placarded with
+the picture and description of the boy. The film distributors were
+prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for the first notable
+occasion, at least, the movies were used to search for a missing
+person, more than ten thousand theaters having shown Jimmie Glass’
+lineaments and flashed his description.
+
+A few years later the radio broadcasting stations spread through
+the air the story of his disappearance and the particulars of his
+description.
+
+To understand the drama of the hunt for Jimmie Glass, one must,
+however, begin with events closely following his vanishment and try to
+trace their succession through more than eight years. When once the
+idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors whose interest in the
+affair was partly sympathetic but more morbid, sat about shaking their
+heads and sagely talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a
+demand for ransom in a few days. When the few days had passed without
+the receipt of any request for money, the wiseacres shook their heads
+more gravely and opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some
+safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in coming. But time
+gave the soft quietus to all these speculations. Except for an obvious
+extortion letter received the following year, no ransom demand ever
+came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.
+
+Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead body could be
+found, and since there seemed to be no sustenance for the idea of
+kidnapping for ransom, the theorists were forced into another position,
+one full of the ripe color of centuries.
+
+On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling carnival show had
+been at Lackawaxen, and with it had toured a band of Gypsy fortune
+tellers. Later on, Mr. John Bentley, the director of public safety in
+Jersey City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police, found that
+these Gypsies, two or three men and one woman, known sometimes as Cruze
+and sometimes as Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It
+could be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there had been
+Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to give fresh life to the old
+fable. Gypsies stole children to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they
+had taken Jimmie Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads
+to earth and force them to give up the child.
+
+Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain Rooney that she
+had seen a swart man and woman in an automobile on the day of the
+kidnapping, not far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.
+
+Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and many other officers
+engaged in a systematic investigation of Gypsy camps wherever they
+were found, following the nomads south in the winter and north again
+with the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were found about
+the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners, with the result that
+Mrs. Glass, now fairly set out upon her travels in quest for her son,
+visited one tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought
+Jimmie.
+
+The discovery of blond or blondish children in Tzigane encampments
+always stirred the finders and the public to the same emotions,
+to the indignant belief that such children must have been stolen.
+All this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany people
+and the American Gypsies in especial. No one knows just what the
+original Gypsies were or whence they came. The only hint is contained
+in the fact that their language contains strong Aryan and Sanscrit
+connections and suggestions. They appeared in Eastern Europe, probably
+in the thirteenth century and in France somewhat later, being there
+mistaken for Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks
+were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or brown eyed.
+But several Gypsy clans appeared in England all of five hundred years
+ago and there soon began to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of
+Tzigane blood. In the course of the generations the English Gypsy came
+to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall, straight, dark men, with
+piercing eyes and the more or less typical Gypsy facial characteristics
+appeared among them, but these usually occur in cases where there
+has been marriage with strains from the Continent, from Hungary
+and Roumania. For instance, Richard Burton, the great traveler and
+anthropologist, was half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the
+last century.
+
+The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English origin, though
+there are a good many from Eastern Europe. Among both kinds there is
+frequent intermarriage with American girls from the mountain countries
+of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies pure blond
+children are of frequent occurrence and one often sees the charming
+contradiction of light hair and dark, emotive eyes.
+
+Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children. Nomads have very
+little sense of the property rights of others and may take anything,
+animal, mineral or vegetable, that strikes their fancy. But so much for
+the facts on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.
+
+Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps kept the police
+and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the move. The Cruze party gave
+them especial trouble and contributed one of the high dramatic moments
+of the eight years of search and suspense.
+
+When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman called Rose Cruze had
+been near Greeley on the day the child vanished, he set out to trace
+her down with her male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at
+the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more, a most puzzling
+matter to one who does not understand the motives and habits of
+nomads. Rose Cruze and the blond boy she was supposed to have with
+her kept just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into
+Mexico and continued southward with her band, having meantime married
+Lister Costello, the head of another clan. Later she was heard of in
+Venezuela, then in Brazil.
+
+One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram was brought to Director
+Bentley in Jersey City. It came from Porto Rico, was signed with the
+mysterious name Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy
+answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies encamped
+near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram also gave the information
+that the men were Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and
+the woman was Costello’s wife.
+
+Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities, probably
+a good deal more skeptical about Gypsy stories than are Americans,
+questioned whether the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously.
+By the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late by the
+American officials on the island, the band had moved on into the
+mountains.
+
+Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of no special standing,
+and he was severely questioned. But this time there was no foolery. He
+stuck to his story very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate
+practically everything he said, and firmly established the fact that
+among the Gypsies were the much-sought Costello-Cruze family.
+
+The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went out that the
+hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba. In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made
+ready to sail. Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused him
+to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him to packing his
+bags. He was almost ready to embark when the thing dropped with sudden
+and sad deflation. The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not
+Jimmie Glass.
+
+This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of the eight years
+of quest. Ever and again, not ten times but ten hundred, came reports
+that Jimmy Glass had been found. Many of them came from irresponsible
+enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest but mistaken. A
+few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the marked egg.
+
+One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City grocery store with the
+following scrawled on the shell:
+
+ “Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”
+
+The police chased themselves in excited circles. One of them was off to
+Richmond at once. The eggs were carefully traced back to the nests of
+their origin. It was found that they came from a place much nearer than
+Richmond, and that the inscription was the work of a fifteen-year-old
+boy.
+
+Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated by the final running
+down of the much-sought band, another form of thrill had played its
+fullest ravages with the unhappy parents and given the public its
+crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the boy, the
+showing of his picture on the screens and the repeated newspaper
+summations of the strange case, all had the effect of putting idle
+brains and fevered imaginations to work. From almost every part of the
+country came reports of missing children who looked as though they
+might be Jimmie Glass.
+
+The distracted mother, suffering like any other woman in a similar
+predicament from the idea that her child could not fail to be restored,
+traveled from one part of the country to the other under the lash of
+these reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the newspapers
+have estimated that she traveled more than forty thousand miles in all,
+seeking what she never found.
+
+As happens in many excitements of this kind, the hunt for James Glass
+resulted in the finding of many other strayed or stolen children,
+from San Diego to Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in
+the possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to show that
+the child had been left with them, and they readily gave it up to the
+authorities for lodgment in an institution. But, alas, none of these
+was Jimmie Glass.
+
+The affair of the one demand for money came near ending in a tragedy.
+The blackmail note demanded that five thousand dollars be placed in
+a milk bottle near a shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses
+filled the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the agreed
+spot, after the police had taken up watch near by. The bottle stayed
+where it had been placed for hours. Finally the proprietor of the
+stand saw the thing. His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the
+bottle, and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police headquarters,
+protesting that he did not mean to steal anything. It developed that
+this honest workman knew nothing about the whole affair. The real
+extortioners had, of course, been much too alert for the police.
+
+One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited before the end. The
+quest for Jimmy Glass was at its height when news came from the little
+town of Norman, Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a shoe
+store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long trip in vain, asked
+that photographs be sent, and they were received at the end of the
+week. What they thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they
+caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City, and motored to
+Norman.
+
+Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the town had suspended
+business and hung the streets and houses with flags in their honor.
+
+Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately to one of the houses
+of the town, where the child was being kept, and ushered into the
+parlor, while a large crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the
+streets, giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy was brought in.
+Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and held out her arms. The child
+rushed to her and was showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child
+promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother, choking with sobs,
+clasped the little fellow closely to her. He struggled, and she
+released him. He ran to sit on Mr. Glass’ lap.
+
+“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I was convinced. Surely
+this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He had his every feature. For the time
+there was no doubt in either of our minds. We were too happy for words.”
+
+But then the examination of the child began and the discrepancies
+appeared. The child was Jimmie’s size and age. His hair and eyes were
+of the same color and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.
+This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of Jimmie’s
+peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of Mr. Glass’ son;
+there was an old scar on one foot that was unlike anything that had
+disfigured Jimmie, and there were other slight differences.
+
+Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up
+her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told
+to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative
+word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away.
+Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find
+other evidence that might yet change their minds.
+
+A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She
+confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her,
+that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and
+that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store,
+hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say
+he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and
+other local emotionals.
+
+So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone
+to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for
+the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed
+about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took
+in the Rosses years before.
+
+One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of
+Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie
+Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy
+ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to
+be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the
+accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for
+a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.
+
+Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun
+ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some
+sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a
+round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked
+it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the
+eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too,
+had taken part. Could this be---- He did not stop to ponder much, but
+looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull
+were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found
+them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing,
+carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.
+
+Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles
+Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the
+hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative
+positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have
+lain down on his side and wakened no more.
+
+Little was found in addition to the shoes and the skull, except a few
+bone buttons, the metal clasps from a child’s garters and such like.
+The skull and shoes furnished the evidence needed. The former, examined
+by experts, revealed the double crown which had caused the upstanding
+of the missing boy’s back hair. The shoes, washed free of the encasing
+mud, showed the maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole.
+All the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have retained the
+mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn a brand new pair the morning he
+strayed out.
+
+Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered away that
+seductive May morning, gone on and on, as children sometimes do, got
+into the boggy ground and been unable to get out. Exhaustion had
+overtaken him, and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again,
+this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring of 1915,
+and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in and been drowned, only
+to have his bones cast up again by the droughty fall eight years later.
+
+With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain Rooney refused
+absolutely to entertain them. He had been over the ground many times.
+It was of the most difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally
+strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he tried to do
+more than creep among them, absolutely impassable to a child. Again,
+there was the matter of distance. How could a child of four years,
+none too firm a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and
+scar will testify, have made its way for more than two miles over this
+hellish terrain into a morass? Must it not have fallen exhausted long
+before and rested till the voices of the searchers in that first night
+had wakened it?
+
+And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney asks us. Of what
+leather were they made to have lain for eight and one half years in
+that impassable bog and yet to have been so well preserved as to retain
+the maker’s imprint?
+
+“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may be the bones of
+Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one must have taken him there.”
+
+Perhaps--and then again? How far a lost and desperate child will stray
+is not too simple a question. If, as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie
+Glass probably would have tired and lain down to rest, would he not
+also have risen again and blundered on? As for the durability of the
+leather, any one may go to any well-stocked museum and find hides of
+the sixteenth century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took
+the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that morass, who was
+it?
+
+It is much easier to believe with the parents. The enchantment of
+spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited and undreamed places
+unfolding before a child’s eyes, and straying from flower to flower,
+wonder to wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,
+disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness that clouds all
+living. It is more pleasant to think of the matter so, to believe that
+Jimmy Glass, four years in the world, was but a forthfarer into the
+mysteries, who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and went to
+sleep--a Babe in the Woods.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA
+
+
+On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, Salvatore Varotta took his
+eldest son for a ride on Long Island. Perhaps it was not quite the
+right thing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him. His
+employers might not like the idea of a child being carted about the
+countryside in their delivery van. Still, what did it matter? The day
+had been hot. Little Adolfo had begged to go. No one would ever know
+the difference, and the boy would be happy. So this simple-hearted
+Italian motor driver set out from the reeks and throngs of New York’s
+lower East Side on what was to be a pilgrimage of pleasure.
+
+There was a cool wind in the country and the landscape was still green.
+The truck chauffeur enjoyed his drive as he rolled by fields where
+farmers were at their late plowing. The nine-year-old Adolfo sat beside
+him, chattering with curiosity or musing in pure delight. After all, it
+was a bright and perfect world, for all men’s groans and growls.
+
+Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Another truck lurched
+drunkenly across his path. There was a horrid shriek of collision,
+the shattering tinkle of glass, the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore
+Varotta was tossed aside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He picked
+himself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreck and little
+Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flame as one of the tanks blew
+up. The undaunted father plunged into the smoke and managed to draw
+out the boy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions, but
+breathing and alive.
+
+Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a frightfully
+cut and burned face and a crushed leg. The surgeons looked at the
+mangled child and shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that
+wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it might be possible
+to restore that ruined face to human semblance, but the work would
+take many months. It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free
+hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of the doctors.
+
+The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a rookery on East
+Thirteenth Street, the father, the mother and five children, of whom
+the injured boy was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as
+truck driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such a family
+an accident like that which had overtaken Adolfo means about what a
+broken leg does to a horse: Death is the greatest mercy. In this case,
+however, some one with connections got interested either in the boy or
+in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and charitable woman
+for aid. This lady came down from her apartment on Park Avenue and
+stood by the bedside of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that
+he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested not only in the
+boy but his family.
+
+One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were appalled to see
+the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress drive up to their
+tenement. They watched her enter the humble home, pat the children,
+talk with the burdened mother, and then drive away perilously through
+the swarms of children screaming and pranking in the street. The “great
+lady” came again and again. It was understood that she had paid much
+money to help little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.
+That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his son had brought him
+the patronage of the rich. Surely, he would know how to make something
+of his good fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness is
+no more than weakness and must be taken advantage of accordingly. The
+neighbors of Salvatore Varotta were such men and women.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                                            _Pacific & Atlantic Photo._
+
+                          ~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~]
+
+Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched and mended, when
+his father sued the owner of the colliding truck for fifty thousand
+dollars, alleging carelessness, permanent injury to the child, and so
+on. The neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore
+_was_ a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he would get it, too.
+Did he not have a rich and powerful patroness?
+
+Thus, through the intervention of a charitable woman and a lawsuit,
+Varotta became a dignitary in his block, a person of special and
+consuming interest. He had or would soon have money. In that case he
+would be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and guileless
+fellow. A way would be found.
+
+In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from the hospital with his
+leg partly restored but with his face still in need of skin grafting
+and other treatments, Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap,
+second-hand automobile. He could make money with it and also use it to
+give his family an airing once in a while. The car, for which only one
+hundred and fifty dollars had been paid, attracted the attention of the
+East Thirteenth Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an
+automobile? Then there must have been a settlement in the damage suit
+over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore had money, then. So, so!
+
+One of the neighbor women happened to pass when the rickety car was
+standing at the curb, and Mrs. Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest
+child in her arms.
+
+“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buys you a
+hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked the woman.
+
+“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if he wanted to,” said the
+wife with a surge of false pride.
+
+That was enough. That was confirmation. The damage suit had been
+settled. Salvatore Varotta had the money. He could have bought an
+expensive car, but he had spent only a hundred and fifty. The niggardly
+old rascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So the word fled up
+and down the street, to the amusement of some and the closer interest
+of others.
+
+As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not been settled. It was even
+doubtful whether Salvatore would ever get a cent for all his son’s
+injuries and suffering. The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s
+had no means and could not be made to give what he did not possess. So
+it was an entirely false rumor of prosperity and a word of bragging
+from a sensitive wife that brought about many things.
+
+At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24, 1921, Giuseppe
+Varotta, five years old, the younger brother of the wounded Adolfo,
+put on his clean sailor suit and his new shoes and went out into East
+Thirteenth Street to wait for the homecoming of his father and the
+automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did not know or care
+whether the car had cost a hundred or a thousand dollars. It was a car,
+it belonged to his father, and Joe intended to have a ride in it.
+
+For some minutes Joe played about the doorstep. Then his childish
+patience forsook him, and he ran down the block to spend a penny
+which a passer-by had given him. Other children playing in the street
+observed him by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, and watched him
+go down the walk to the confectioner’s. They did not mark his further
+progress.
+
+At half past three, Salvatore Varotta came home in his car. He ran
+up the steps into the house to his wife. She greeted him and asked
+immediately:
+
+“Where’s Joe?”
+
+Varotta had not seen his little son. No doubt he was playing in the
+street and would be in soon.
+
+The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe did not appear, and
+twenty minutes had passed, his mother went out to the stoop to call
+him. She could not find him in the street, and he did not respond to
+her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and another looking
+up and down the street. Then Salvatore Varotta was forced to yield to
+his wife’s anxious entreaties and set out after the lad.
+
+He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends and neighbors,
+questioned the children, circled the blocks, looked into cellars
+and areaways, visited the kindergarten where the child was a pupil,
+implored the aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at
+night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and told his story
+to the captain, who was sympathetic but busy and inclined to take the
+matter lightly. The child would turn up. Lots of children strayed away
+in New York every day. They were almost always found again. It was very
+seldom that anything happened.
+
+So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife and told her what
+the “big chief policeman” had said. No doubt, the officer spoke from
+experience. They had better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn
+up in the morning.
+
+On the afternoon of the following day the postman brought a letter to
+Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver read it and trembled with fear
+and apprehension. His wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a
+candle before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began endless
+prayers and protestations.
+
+The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one habited to the
+Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer was a member of a powerful
+society, too secret and too strong to be afraid of the police. The
+society had taken little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price
+of his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars. Varotta
+was to get the money at once in cash and have it ready in his home, so
+that he could hand it over to a messenger who would call for it. If the
+money were promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored safe and
+sound, but if the police were notified and any attempt were made to
+catch the kidnappers, the powerful society would destroy the child and
+take further vengeance upon the family.
+
+There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this forbidding missive
+with a dripping dagger at its side.
+
+Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair. They did not know
+whom they might trust, or whether they dared speak of the matter at
+all. But necessity finally decided their course for them. Varotta did
+not have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have it ready when
+the fateful footfall of the messenger would sound on the stairs. In his
+extremity he had to seek aid. He went to the police again and showed
+the letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.
+
+The same evening the case was placed in the hands of the veteran head
+of the New York Italian Squad, Sergeant Michael Fiaschetti, successor
+of the murdered Petrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin
+killers to the chair and the prison house than any other officer in
+the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clear vision that this
+job was probably not the work of any organized or powerful society.
+He knew that professional criminals act with more caution and better
+information. They would never have made the blunder of assuming that
+Varotta had money when he had none. The detective also saw that the
+plan of sending a messenger to the house for the ransom was the plan
+of resourceless amateurs. He reasoned that the work had been done by
+relatives or neighbors, who knew something but not enough of Varotta’s
+affairs, and he also concluded that the child was not far from its home.
+
+Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordance with
+these conclusions. His first work was to get a detective into the
+Varotta house unobserved or unsuspected. For this work he chose a woman
+officer, Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage and could
+speak the Sicilian dialect.
+
+The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping and inquiring after her
+child, let it be known that she had telegraphed to her cousin in
+Detroit, who had a little money. The cousin was coming to aid her in
+her difficulties.
+
+That night the cousin came. She drove up to the house in a station
+taxicab with two heavy suit cases for baggage. After inquiring the
+correct address from a bystander, the visiting cousin made her way into
+the Varotta home. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introduced herself
+to her assignment.
+
+The young woman was not long in the house before things began to
+happen. First of all, she observed that the Varotta tenement was being
+constantly watched from the windows across the street. Next she noted
+that she was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do a little
+shopping for the house, but really to telephone to Fiaschetti. Finally
+came visitors.
+
+The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant, who dwelt
+across the street from the Varottas and knew Salvatore and the whole
+family well.
+
+Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedly the best
+thing to do was to pay the money. The Black Handers were terrible
+people, not to be trifled with. What? Varotta had no money? He could
+raise only five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructed
+Varotta to mention this sum. The Black Handers would laugh at such
+an amount. Varotta must get more. He must meet the terms of the
+kidnappers. As for the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easy
+on that point, but they must get the money quickly.
+
+The following day there were other callers from across the street.
+Antonio Marino came with his wife and his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary
+Pogano, née Ruggieri. The Marinos, too, were full of tender human
+kindness and advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta had reported
+the kidnapping to the police he shook his head in alarm. That was bad;
+very bad. The police could do nothing against a powerful society of
+Black Handers. It was folly. If the police were really to interfere,
+the Black Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio had known of other
+cases. There was but one thing to do--pay the money. Another man he had
+known had done so promptly and without making any fuss. He had got his
+son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.
+
+Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for news and said that perhaps
+the Black Handers would take five hundred dollars if that was really
+all Varotta could raise. He did not know, but Varotta had better have
+that sum ready for the messenger when he came. As he left the house,
+Cusamano accidentally made what seemed a suggestive statement.
+
+“You will hear from me soon,” he remarked to Varotta.
+
+While these conversations were being held, Mrs. Nicoletti, the
+detective, was bustling about the house, listening to every word she
+could catch. She had taken up the rôle of visiting cousin, was busy
+preparing meals, working about the house, and generally assisting the
+sorrowing mother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existed was
+soon allayed. She even sat in on the council with Cusamano and told him
+she had saved about six hundred dollars and would advance Varotta five
+hundred of it if that would save the child.
+
+Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almost certain that
+their original theory of the crime was correct. The neighbors were
+certainly a party to the matter, and it seemed that a capture of the
+whole band and the quick recovery of the child were to be expected.
+Plans were accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming for the money
+and any one who might be with him or near the place when he came.
+
+On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seen before came to the
+house late at night and asked in hushed accents for the father of the
+missing boy. The caller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, who
+thus had every opportunity to look at him and hear his voice. He was
+led upstairs to a room where Varotta was waiting.
+
+When the dark and midnight emissary of the terrible Black Hand strode
+across the threshold, the tortured father could hold back his emotion
+no longer. He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, lifted his
+clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots, begging that his
+child be sent safely home and pleading that he had only five hundred
+dollars to pay. It was not true that he had received any money. It was
+impossible for him to ask his rich patroness who had befriended Adolfo
+for anything. All he had was the little money his wife’s good cousin
+was willing to lend him for the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would
+the Black Hand not take the five hundred dollars and send back the
+child, who was so innocent and so pretty that his teacher had taken his
+picture in the kindergarten?
+
+The grim caller had very little to say. He would report to the society
+what Varotta had told him and he would return later with the answer.
+Meantime, Varotta had better get ready all the money he could raise.
+The messenger might come again the next night.
+
+The detectives were ready when the time came. In the course of the next
+day Varotta went to the bank as if to get the money. While there he was
+handed five hundred dollars in bills which had previously been marked
+by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decided that Mrs. Nicoletti
+would need help in dealing with the kidnappers’ messenger, who might
+not come alone. Varotta himself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly,
+Detective John Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, supplied with kit
+and tools, and sent to the Varotta house to mend a leaking faucet and
+repair some broken pipes. He came and went several times, bringing
+with him some new tools or part when he returned. In this way he hoped
+to confuse the watchers as to his final position. The trick was again
+successful. Pellegrino remained in the house at last, and the lookouts
+for the kidnappers evidently thought him gone.
+
+A little after ten o’clock on the night of June second there was a
+knocking at the Varotta door. Two men were there, one of them the
+emissary of the Black Hand who had called the night before. This man
+curtly announced the purpose of his visit and sent his companion up to
+get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairs himself.
+
+Varotta received the stranger in the same room where he had kissed the
+boots of the first messenger the night before, talked over the details
+with him, inquired anxiously as to the safety of Joe, and was told that
+he need not worry. Joe had been playing happily with other children and
+would be home about midnight if the money were paid. This time Varotta
+managed to retain some composure. He counted out the five hundred
+dollars to the messenger, asked this man to count the money again, saw
+that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’s pocket and then gave
+the agreed signal.
+
+Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery, sprang into the
+room with drawn revolver, covered the intruder, handcuffed him and
+immediately communicated with the street by signal from a window. Other
+detectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissary who was
+waiting there. On the near-by corner, Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of
+his staff clapped the wristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and James
+Ruggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamano was dragged
+from the bakeshop where he worked. Five of the gang were in the toils
+and five more were seized before the night was over.
+
+Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out to be Roberto
+Raffaelo, made admissions which were later shown in court as
+confessions. All the prisoners were locked into separate and distant
+cells in the Tombs, and the search for Joe Varotta was begun. Sergeant
+Fiaschetti, amply fortified by the correctness of his surmises, took
+the position that the child was not far away and would be released
+within a few hours now that the members of the gang were in custody.
+
+Here, however, the shrewd detective counted without a full
+consideration of the desperateness and deadliness of the amateur
+criminal, characteristics that have repeatedly upset and baffled those
+who know crime professionally and are conversant with the habits
+and conduct of experienced offenders. There can be no doubt that
+professionals would, in this situation, have released the boy and sent
+him home, though the Ross case furnishes a fearful exception. The whole
+logic of the situation was on this side of the scale. Once the boy
+was safely at home, his parents would probably have lost interest in
+the prosecution, and the police, busy with many graver matters, would
+probably have been content with convicting the actual messengers, the
+only ones against whom there was direct evidence. These men might have
+expected moderate terms of imprisonment and the whole affair would have
+been soon forgotten.
+
+But Little Joe was not released. The days dragged by, while the men in
+the Tombs were questioned, threatened, cajoled and besought. One and
+all they pretended to know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.
+More than a week went by while the parents of the child grew more and
+more hysterical and finally gave up all but their prayers, convinced
+that only divine intervention could avail them. Was little Joe alive or
+dead? They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’s aid and
+probably he would give them his answer soon.
+
+At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh, John Derahica, a
+Polish laborer, went down to the beach near Piermont, a settlement just
+below Nyack, in quest of driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson,
+and Derahica had no trouble reaching the end of a small pier which
+extended out into the stream at this point. Just beyond, in about three
+feet of water, he found the body of a little boy, caught hold of the
+loose clothing with a stick, and brought it out.
+
+Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned the local police chief,
+E. H. Stebbins. The body was carried to a local undertaker’s and was
+at once suspected of being that of the missing Italian child. The next
+night Sergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived at Piermont and
+went to see the body, which had meantime been buried and then exhumed
+when the coming of the New York officer was announced.
+
+The remains were already sorely decomposed and the face past
+recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked at the swollen little hands
+and feet and the blue sailor suit. He knelt by the slab where this
+childish wreck lay prone and sobbed his recognition and his grief.
+
+A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had been thrown alive into
+the stream and drowned. Calculating the probable results of the
+reaction of tides and currents, it was decided that Giuseppe had been
+cast to his death somewhere above the point at which the recovery of
+the corpse was made.
+
+Long and tedious investigations followed. When had the child been
+killed and by whom? Was the little boy still alive when the two
+messengers arrived at the Varotta home for the ransom and the trap was
+sprung which gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposed
+accessories? If so, who was the confederate who had committed the final
+deed of murderous desperation? Who had done the actual kidnapping?
+Where had the child been concealed while the negotiations were
+proceeding?
+
+Some of these questions have never been answered, but it is now
+possible, from the confession of one of the men, from the evidence
+presented at four ensuing murder trials, and from the subsequent drift
+of police information, to reconstruct the story of the crime in greater
+part.
+
+On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when little Joe Varotta went
+into the candy store with his penny, he was engaged in talk by one
+of the men from across the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend of
+his father’s. The child was enticed into a back room, seized, gagged,
+stuffed into a barrel and then loaded into a delivery wagon. Thus
+effectively concealed, the little prisoner was driven through the
+streets to another part of town and there held in a house by some
+member of the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up to this point
+were all either neighbors or their relatives and friends.
+
+On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, Roberto Raffaelo was sitting
+despondently on a bench in Union Square when a stranger sat down
+beside him and accosted him in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance
+acquaintance, it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelo was
+down on his luck and had found work hard to get. He was, as a matter
+of fact, washing dishes in a Bowery lunch room for five dollars a week
+and meals. Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informed
+that they might be better, he told Raffaelo of a chance to make some
+real money, explaining the facts about the kidnapping, saying that a
+powerful society was back of the thing, and representing that Varotta
+was a craven and an easy mark. All that was required of Raffaelo was
+that he go to the Varotta house and get the money. For his pains he was
+to have five hundred dollars.
+
+Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamano and Marino. The next
+night he went to visit Varotta with the result already described.
+
+After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to be better tactics
+to send some one else to do the actual taking of the money. This man
+had to be a stranger, so Raffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old
+acquaintance. Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fifty
+dollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaelo to the Varotta
+home on the night of June second, to get the money. Melchione went
+upstairs and took the marked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the
+vestibule. It was the former whom Detective Pellegrino caught in the
+act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seen little Joe and both so
+maintained to the end, nor is there much doubt on this point.
+
+On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione, Cusamano, Marino
+and Ruggieri were caught and the others arrested a little later,
+Raffaelo made some statements to Detective Fiaschetti which sent the
+officers off the right track for the time being. This prevarication,
+which was done to shield himself and his confederates, he came to
+regret most bitterly later on.
+
+On June third, as soon as the word got abroad that the five men and
+their five friends had been arrested and lodged in jail, another
+confederate, perhaps more than one, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and
+threw him in, having first strangled the little fellow so that he might
+not scream. The boy was destroyed because the confederates who had him
+in charge were frightened into panic by the sudden collapse of their
+scheme and feared they would either be caught with the boy in their
+possession or that the arrested men might “squeal” and be supported by
+the identification from the little victim’s lips were he allowed to
+live.
+
+Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quickly convicted of
+murder in the first degree. He was committed to the death house at
+Sing Sing and there waited to be joined by his fellows. When the hour
+for his execution had almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seized with
+remorse and declared that he was willing to tell all he knew. He was
+reprieved and appeared at the trials of the others, where he told
+his story substantially as recited above. Largely as a result of his
+testimony, Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentenced
+to electrocution while Melchione went mad in the Tombs and was sent to
+Matteawan to end his life among the criminal insane. Governor Smith
+finally granted commutations to life imprisonment in each of these
+cases, because it was fairly well established that all the convicted
+men had been in the Tombs at the time Joe Varotta was drowned and had
+probably nothing to do with his actual murder. They are still in prison
+and will very likely stay there a great many years before there can be
+any question of pardon.
+
+In spite of every effort on the part of the police and every inducement
+held out to the convicted men, no information could ever be got as
+to the identity of the man or men who threw the little boy into
+the river. The arrested and convicted men, except for Raffaelo, who
+evidently did not know any more than he told, absolutely refused to
+talk, saying it would be certain death if they did so. They tried all
+along to create the impression that they were only the minor tools of
+some great and mysterious organization, but this claim may be dismissed
+as fiction and romance.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE LOST MILLIONAIRE
+
+
+Some time before three o’clock on the afternoon of December 2, 1919,
+Ambrose Joseph Small deposited in the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, a
+check for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clock that evening
+the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadian playhouses bought his
+habitual newspapers from the familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide
+Street, before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, and strode
+off into the night, to return no more.
+
+In the intervening years men have ferreted in all corners of the world
+for the missing rich man; rewards up to fifty thousand dollars have
+been offered for his return, or the discovery of his body; reports
+of his presence have chased detectives into distant latitudes, and
+the alarm for him has been spread to all the trails and tides without
+result. By official action of the Canadian courts, Amby Small, as he
+was known, is dead, and his fortune has been distributed to his heirs.
+To the romantic speculation he must still exist, however. And whatever
+the fact, his case presents one of the strangest stories of mysterious
+absenteeism to be found upon the books.
+
+Men disappear every day. The police records of any great city and of
+many smaller places bear almost interminable lists of fellows who have
+suddenly and curiously dropped out of their grooves and placements.
+Some are washed up as dead bodies--the slain and self-slain. Some
+return after long wanderings, to make needless excuses to their friends
+and families. And others pass from their regular haunts into new
+fields. These latter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary of
+life’s routine.
+
+Ambrose Small, however, was a person of different kidney. He was rich,
+for one thing. Thirty-five years earlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of
+his tours to Canada had found the youthful Small taking tickets in a
+Toronto theater. Attracted by some unusual quality in the youngster,
+Irving shrewdly advised him to quit the study of law and devote himself
+to the theatrical business. Following this counsel, Small had risen
+slowly and surely until he controlled theaters in all parts of the
+Dominion and was rated at several millions. On the afternoon before his
+disappearance he had consummated a deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters,
+Limited, by which he was to receive nearly two millions in money and
+a share of the profits, in return for his theatrical holdings. The
+million-dollar check he deposited had been the first payment.
+
+Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canada and almost as well
+acquainted in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities of the
+United States. Figuratively, at least, everybody knew him--thousands of
+actors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men, promoters,
+newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, all the Wandering Jews and
+Gentiles of the profession of make-believe, with which he had been
+connected so long and profitably. With such a list of acquaintances,
+whose rovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almost
+impossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out of sight.
+
+Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and most deeply interested
+relatives. Entirely aside from the questions of inheritance and the
+division of his estate, which netted about two millions, as was
+determined later on, Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether
+she was a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters would certainly
+suspect everything and everybody, leaving nothing undone that would
+bring the man back to his home, or punish those who might have been
+responsible for any evil termination of his life.
+
+Thus the Small case presents very different factors from those
+governing the ordinary disappearance case. It is full of the elements
+which make for mystery and bafflement, and it may be set down at once
+as an enigma of the most arresting and irritating type, upon whose
+darknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.
+
+So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies and felt no
+apprehensions. He was totally immersed for some months before his
+disappearance in the negotiations for the sale of his interests to the
+Trans-Canada Company, and apparently he devoted all his energies to
+this project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusion for some time
+and looked upon the signing of the agreements and writing of the check
+on December 2 as nothing more than a formality.
+
+Late in the morning of the day in question, Small met his attorney
+and the representatives of the Trans-Canada Company in his offices,
+and the formalities were concluded. Some time after noon he deposited
+the check in the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small to luncheon.
+Afterward he visited a Catholic children’s institution with her and
+left her at about three o’clock to return to his desk in the Grand
+Theater, where he had sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling
+up his fortune.
+
+There seems to be not the slightest question that Small went directly
+to his office and spent the remainder of the afternoon there. Not only
+his secretary, John Doughty, who had been Small’s confidential man for
+nineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysterious part in the
+disappearance drama, but several other employees of the Grand Theater
+saw their retiring master at his usual post that afternoon. Small not
+only talked with these workers, but he called business associates on
+the telephone and made at least two appointments for the following day.
+He also was in conference with his solicitor as late as five o’clock.
+
+According to Doughty, his employer left the Grand Theater at about five
+thirty o’clock and this time of departure coincided perfectly with what
+is known of Small’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be at home
+for dinner at six thirty o’clock.
+
+There is also confirmation at this point. For years Small had been in
+the habit of dropping into Lamb’s Hotel, next door to his theater,
+before going home in the evening. He was intimately acquainted there,
+often met his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generally chatted
+a few minutes before leaving for his residence. The proprietor of the
+hotel came forward after Small’s disappearance and recalled that he had
+seen the theater man in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock.
+He was also under the impression that Small had stayed for some
+time, but he could not be sure.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE J. SMALL ~~]
+
+The next and final point of time that can be fixed is seven fifteen
+o’clock. At that time Small approached the newsboy in Adelaide Street,
+who knew the magnate well, and bought his usual evening papers. The
+boy believed that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure he
+had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said nothing but the
+usual things, seemed in no way different from his ordinary mood, and
+tarried only long enough to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.
+
+Probably there is something significant about the fact that Small did
+not leave the vicinity of his office until seven fifteen o’clock, when
+he was due at home by half past six. What happened to him after he had
+left his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment with his
+wife? That something turned up to change his plan is obvious. Whether
+he merely encountered some one and talked longer than he realized,
+or whether something arrested him that had a definite bearing on
+his disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to be the
+reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of man lightly to neglect
+his agreements, particularly those of a domestic kind.
+
+Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when her husband
+failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew he had been going through
+a busy day, and she reasoned that probably something pressing had come
+up to detain him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient and
+telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited two hours longer
+before she telephoned to the home of John Doughty’s sister. She found
+her husband’s secretary there and was assured that Doughty had been
+there all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty said his
+employer had left the theater at five thirty o’clock, and that he knew
+no more. He could not explain Small’s absence from home, but took the
+matter lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got ready.
+
+At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s various theaters in
+eastern Canada, asking for her husband. In the course of the next
+twenty-four hours she got responses from all of them. No one had seen
+Small or knew anything about his movements.
+
+Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting. Mrs. Small did
+not go to the police; neither did she employ private detectives until
+later. For two weeks she evidently waited, believing that her husband
+had gone off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of his
+intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of the secret of his
+absence took the same attitude. It was explained later that there was
+nothing unprecedented about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt
+for some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and self-centered
+individual. He had gone off before in this way and come back when he
+got ready. He might have gone to New York suddenly on some business.
+Probably he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared this view,
+and her reasons for so doing developed a good deal later. In fact, she
+refused for months to believe that anything had befallen her husband,
+and it was only when there was no remaining alternative that she
+changed her position.
+
+Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’s disappearance,
+his wife and attorneys went to the Dominion police and laid the case
+before them. Even then the quest was undertaken in a cautious and
+skeptical way. This attitude was natural. The police could find not
+the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea that such a man had
+been kidnapped seemed preposterous. Besides, what could have been
+the object? There had been no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small
+had gone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probably his wife
+understood these impulsions better than she would say. There were
+rumors of infelicity in the Small home, and these proved later to be
+well grounded. The police simply felt that they would not be made
+ridiculous. Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, only to have
+Small return and spill his wrath upon their innocent heads.
+
+But the days spun out, and still there was no news of the missing man.
+Many began to turn from their original attitude of knowing skepticism.
+Other rumors began to fly about. Gradually the conviction gained ground
+that something sinister had befallen the master of theaters. Could it
+not be possible that Small had been entrapped in some blackmailing plot
+and perhaps killed when he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but
+such things did happen. How about his finances? Was his money intact
+in the bank? Had he drawn any checks against his account? It was soon
+discovered that no funds had been withdrawn either on December 2 or
+subsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had only a few dollars
+in his pockets when he vanished, unless, as was suggested, he kept a
+secret cache of ready money.
+
+Attention was now directed toward every one who had been close to the
+theater owner. One of the most obvious marks for this kind of inquiry
+was John Doughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as already
+remarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearly two decades. He knew
+his employer’s secrets, was close to all his business affairs, and
+was even known to have been Small’s companion on occasional drinking
+bouts. At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a niggardly way
+as regards pay. The secretary had been receiving forty-five dollars a
+week for years, never more. At the same time, probably through other
+bits of income which his position brought him, Doughty had saved some
+money, bought property in Toronto, and established himself with a small
+competence.
+
+That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly and was careful to
+provide for him, is shown by the fact that Small had got Doughty a new
+and better place as manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,
+which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his new job Doughty
+received seventy-five dollars a week. He had left to assume his new
+duties a day or two after the consolidation of the interests, which is
+to say a day or two after Small vanished.
+
+Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it seemed obvious that
+this time he knew nothing of his old employer’s movements. He had
+accordingly stayed on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and
+paying very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three weeks
+after Small had gone, and one week after the case had been taken to the
+police, however, new attention began to be paid to Doughty, and there
+were some unpleasant whisperings.
+
+On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks after Small had walked
+off into the void, came the dramatic break. Doughty, as was his habit,
+left Montreal the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto
+with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning, instead of appearing
+at his desk, he telephoned from Toronto that he was ill and might not
+be at work for some days. His employers took him at his word and paid
+no further attention until, three days having elapsed, they telephoned
+to the home of Doughty’s sister. She had not seen him since Monday. The
+man was gone!
+
+If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been considered a
+somewhat dubious jest, it now became a genuine sensation. For the first
+time the Canadian and American newspapers began to treat the matter
+under scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began to
+move with force and alacrity.
+
+An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where Small was now
+said to have kept a large total of securities, showed that Doughty
+had visited this place twice on December 2, the day of Small’s
+disappearance, and he had on each occasion either put in, or taken
+away, some bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have
+revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
+
+Even this discovery did not change the minds of the skeptics, in whose
+ranks the missing magnate’s wife still remained. It was now believed
+that Doughty had received a secret summons from Small, and that he
+had taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside, at Small’s
+instruction, and gone to join his chief in some hidden retreat. A good
+part of Toronto believed that Small had gone on a protracted “party,”
+or that he had seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his
+business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in disagreement.
+
+When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion gradually veered
+about to the opposite side. After all, it was possible that Small had
+not gone away voluntarily, that he was the victim of some criminal
+conspiracy, and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion turning
+its face toward him. The absence of the supposed one hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars in bonds provided sufficient motivation to fit almost
+any criminal hypothesis.
+
+As this attitude became general, Toronto came to examine the
+relationship between Small and Doughty. It was recalled that
+the secretary had, on more than one occasion when he was in his
+cups, spoken bitterly of Small’s exaggerated wealth and his cold
+niggardliness. Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,
+and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibility
+of kidnapping Small for ransom; though the man who reported this
+conversation admitted Doughty had seemed to be joking. The conclusion
+reached by the police was not clear. Doughty, they found, had been
+faithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to conclude that he
+was careful and substantial, and they could not discover that he had
+ever had the slightest connection with the underworld or with suspect
+characters. At the same time they decided that the man was unstable,
+emotional, imaginative, and probably not hard to mislead. In short,
+they came to the definite suspicion that Doughty had figured as the
+tool of conspirators, in the disappearance of Small. They soon brought
+Mrs. Small around to this view. Now the hunt began.
+
+A reward of five hundred dollars, which had been perfunctorily
+offered as payment for information concerning Small’s whereabouts,
+was withdrawn, and three new rewards were offered by the wife--fifty
+thousand dollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteen
+thousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousand dollars for
+the capture of Doughty.
+
+The Toronto chief constable immediately assigned a squad of detectives
+to the case, and Mrs. Small employed a firm of Canadian private
+detectives to pursue a line of investigation which she outlined. Later
+on she employed four more widely known investigating firms in the
+United States to continue the quest. Small’s sisters also summoned
+American officers to carry out their special inquiries. Thus there were
+no fewer than seven distinct bodies of police working at the mystery.
+
+Circulars containing pictures of Small and Doughty, with their
+descriptions, and announcement of the rewards, were circulated
+throughout Canada and the United States; then from Scotland Yard
+they were sent to all the police offices in the British Empire, and,
+finally, from the American, Canadian, and British capitals to every
+known postmaster and police head on earth. More than half a million
+copies of the circulars were printed, it is said, and translations
+into more than twenty languages were distributed. I am told by
+eminent police authorities that this campaign, supported as it was by
+advertisements and news items in the press of almost every nation,
+some of them containing pictures of the missing millionaire, has never
+been approached in any other absent person case. Mrs. Small and her
+advisers set out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearance
+and the rewards should reach to the most remote places, and they spent
+a small fortune for printing bills and postage. Even the quest for the
+lost Archduke John Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a special
+letter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representatives
+of the Roman Catholic Church in every part of the world, seems to have
+been less far-reaching.
+
+Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began to come in soon after the
+first alarms. Small and Doughty were reported seen in Paris, on the
+Italian Riviera, at the Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at
+Calcutta, aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, at Zanzibar,
+and where not? A skeleton was found in a ravine not far from Toronto,
+and for a time the fate of Small was believed to be understood. But
+physicians and anatomists soon determined that the bones could not have
+been those of the theatrical man for a variety of conclusive reasons.
+So the hunt began again.
+
+Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, and results failed
+to show themselves, the private detective firms were dismissed, one
+after the other, and the task of running down rumors in this clewless
+case was left to the Toronto police. The usual sums of money and of
+time were wasted in following blind leads. The usual failures and
+absurdities were recorded. One Canadian officer, however, Detective
+Austin R. Mitchell, began to develop a theory of the case and was
+allowed to follow his ideas logically toward their conclusion.
+Working in silence, when the public had long come to believe that
+the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchell plugged away,
+month after month, without definite accomplishment. He was not able
+to get more than an occasional scrap of information which seemed to
+bear out his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundreds of
+investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless, the Toronto
+authorities permitted him to go on with his work, and he is probably
+still occupied at times with the Small mystery.
+
+Detective Mitchell was actively following his course toward the end
+of November, 1920, eleven months after the flight of Doughty, when a
+telegram arrived at police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,
+a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small town far out near the
+Pacific. Once more the weary detective took a train West, arriving in
+Oregon City on the evening of November 22.
+
+Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the train and told him
+his story. He had seen one of the circulars a few months earlier and
+had carried the images of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had
+observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill, and he had
+been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The man had been there for some
+time and risen from the meanest work to the position of foreman in one
+of the shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even indirectly,
+and he failed on various occasions to get a view of the worker without
+his hat on. Because the picture on the circular showed Doughty
+bare-headed, the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected
+man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had sent his telegram.
+
+Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously. He had made a
+hundred trips of the same sort, he said. Probably there was another
+mistake. But Constable Fortune seemed certain of his game, and he was
+right.
+
+Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to a modest
+house, where some of the mill workers boarded. They entered, and
+Mitchell was immediately confronted with Doughty, whom he had known
+intimately in Toronto.
+
+“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as the fugitive.
+“How could you do it?”
+
+In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest came to an end.
+
+Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the officer a voluntary
+statement. He admitted without reservation that he had taken Canadian
+Victory bonds to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars
+from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done after the
+millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely and firmly any
+knowledge of Small’s whereabouts; pleaded that he had never had any
+knowledge of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he
+had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past five on the
+evening of the disappearance. To this account he adhered doggedly and
+unswervingly. Doughty was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the
+next day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his sister’s
+house, where he had made his home with his two small sons, since the
+death of his wife several years before.
+
+In April of the following year Doughty was brought to trial on a charge
+of having stolen the bonds, a second indictment for complicity in the
+kidnapping remaining for future disposal. The trial was a formal and,
+in some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping and all
+hints which might have indicated the direction of Doughty’s ideas on
+the central mystery were rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and
+one correction of accepted statements came out. It was revealed that
+Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars in bonds to be
+used for charitable purposes on the day before his disappearance. This
+fact had not been hinted before, and some interpreted the testimony as
+a concealed way of stating the fact that Small had made some kind of
+settlement with his wife on the first of December.
+
+Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement that he had taken
+the bonds after Small’s disappearance. He testified that he had been
+sent to the vault on the second of December, and that he had then
+extracted the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds. He
+had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he had no notion that
+Small would disappear. He explained his act by saying that Small had
+long promised him some reward for his many years of service, and had
+repeatedly stated that he would arrange the matter when the deal with
+the Trans-Canada Company had been concluded. Knowing that the papers
+had been signed that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,
+Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds in his hands and
+suggest that these might serve as a fitting reward for his contribution
+to the success of the Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this
+action and fled.
+
+The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the ground that it
+was incredible, but nothing was brought out to show what opposing
+theory might fit the facts. Doughty was convicted of larceny and
+sentenced to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge was
+never brought to trial. Instead, the police let it be known that they
+believed Doughty had not played any part in the “actual murder” of
+Amby Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally, it was
+admitted that the police believed Small to be dead. That was the only
+point on which any information was given, and even here not the first
+detail was supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected
+of having kidnapped and killed Small was in progress, and the officials
+were being careful to reveal nothing of their information or intentions.
+
+Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against him, but abandoned
+the fight later in the spring of 1921, and was sent to prison. Here
+the unravelling of the Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year
+passed, then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty was in
+prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive. Perhaps they had
+abandoned the hunt. Possibly they knew what had befallen the theater
+owner and were refraining from making revelations for reasons of public
+policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers, there were persons
+of influence involved in the mess, persons powerful enough to hush the
+officials.
+
+But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance, and there
+were indications of a bitter contest between the wife and Small’s two
+sisters, who had apparently been hostile for years. This struggle
+promised to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the
+public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.
+
+Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved formally to
+protect his property by having a measure introduced into the Dominion
+Parliament declaring Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank
+in control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with the result
+that the Small fortune, amounting to about two million dollars, net,
+continued to be profitably administered.
+
+Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years in prison, and all
+rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance mystery had died down, Mrs.
+Small appeared in court with a petition to have her husband declared
+dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal will made on
+September 6, 1903. This document was written on a single small sheet of
+paper and devised to Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was
+of modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.
+
+The court refused to declare the missing magnate dead, saying that
+insufficient evidence had been presented, and that the police were
+apparently not satisfied. Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the
+reviewing court reversed the decision and declared Small legally dead.
+Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and was immediately attacked
+by Small’s sisters, who declared that they had in their possession a
+will made in 1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited
+Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never produced.
+
+There followed a series of hearings. At one of these, opposing counsel
+began a line of cross-questioning which suggested that Mrs. Small
+had been guilty of a liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in
+the records merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramatically in court,
+indignantly denied these imputations as well as the induced theory
+that her misbehavior had led to an estrangement from her husband and,
+perhaps, to his disappearance. The widow declared that this suspicion
+was diametrically opposed to the truth, and that if Small were in
+court he would be the first to reject it. As a matter of fact, she
+testified, it was Small who had been guilty. He had confessed his fault
+to her, promised to be done with the woman in the matter, and had been
+forgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation, she said, and Small
+had agreed that one half of the million-dollar check which he received
+on the day of his disappearance should be hers.
+
+To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Small soon after
+obtained permission of the court to file certain letters which had been
+found among Small’s effects after his disappearance. In this manner
+the secret love affair in the theater magnate’s last years came to be
+spread upon the books. The letters presented by the wife had all come
+from a certain married woman who, according to the testimony of her own
+writings and of others who knew of the connection, had been associated
+with Amby Small since 1915. It appears that Mrs. Small discovered the
+attachment in 1918 and forced her husband to cause his inamorata to
+leave Toronto. The letters, which need not be reprinted here, contained
+only one significant strain.
+
+A letter, which reached Small two or three days before he disappeared,
+concluded thus: “Write me often, dear heart, for I just live for your
+letters. God bless you, dearest.”
+
+Three weeks earlier, evidently with reference to the impending close
+of his big deal and his retirement from active business, the same lady
+wrote: “I am the most unhappy girl in the world. I want you. Can’t
+you suggest something after the first of December? You will be free,
+practically. Let’s beat it away from our troubles.”
+
+And five days later she amended this in another note: “Some day,
+perhaps, if you want me, we can be together all the time. Let’s pray
+for that time to come, when we can have each other legitimately.”
+
+Mrs. Small declared that she had found these letters immediately after
+her husband’s departure, and that they had kept her from turning the
+case over to the police until two weeks after the disappearance.
+Meantime the other woman had been summoned, interrogated by the police,
+and released. She had not seen Small nor had she heard from him either
+directly or indirectly. It was apparent that, while she had been
+corresponding with Small up to the very week of his last appearance, he
+had not gone to see her.
+
+Finally the will contest was settled out of court, Small’s sisters
+receiving four hundred thousand dollars, and the widow retaining the
+balance.
+
+And here the darkness closes in again. Even in the progress of the will
+controversy no hint was given of the official or family beliefs as to
+the mystery. There are only two tenable conclusions. Either there is
+a further skeleton to be guarded, or the police have some kind of
+information which promises the eventual solution of the case and the
+apprehension of suspected criminals. How slender this promise must be,
+every reader will judge for himself, remembering the years of fruitless
+attack on this extraordinary and complex enigma.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY
+
+
+Some time in his middle career, Ambrose Bierce wrote three short tales
+of vanishment--weird and supernatural things in one of his favorite
+veins. The three sketches--for they are no more--he classed under the
+heading, “Mysterious Disappearances,” a subject which occupied his
+speculations from time to time. Herein lies a complete irony. Bierce
+himself was later to disappear as mysteriously as any of his heroes.
+
+No one will understand his story, with its many implications, or get
+from it the full flavor of romance and sardonics without some brief
+glance at the man and his history. Nor need one make apology for
+intruding a short account of him in a story of mystery, for Bierce
+alive was almost as strange and enigmatic a creature as Bierce dead.
+
+Ambrose Bierce, whom a good many critics have regarded as the foremost
+master of the American short story after Poe, was born in Ohio in
+1841. He joined the Union armies as a private in 1861, when he was in
+his twenty-first year, rose quickly through the ranks to the grade
+of lieutenant, fought and was wounded at Chickamauga as a captain of
+engineers under Thomas, and retired with the brevet rank of major.
+After the war he took up writing for a living, and soon went to London,
+where his early short stories, sketches and criticisms attracted
+attention. His cutting wit and ironic spirit soon won him the popular
+name “Bitter Bierce.”
+
+After 1870, the banished Empress Eugénie of France, alarmed at the
+escape of her implacable journalistic enemy, Henri Rochette, and the
+impending revival in London of his paper, _La Lanterne_, in which she
+had been intolerably lampooned, sought to forestall the French writer
+by establishing an English paper called _The Lantern_, thus taking
+advantage of the law which forbade a duplication of titles. For this
+purpose she employed Bierce, purely on his polemical reputation, and
+Bierce straightway began the publication of _The Lantern_, and devoted
+his most vitriolic explosions to the baffled Rochette, who saw that he
+could not succeed in England without the name which he had made famous
+at the head of his paper and could not return to France, whence he was
+a political exile.
+
+In this employment Bierce exhibited one of his peculiarities. His
+assaults on her old enemy greatly pleased the banished empress, and she
+finally sent for Bierce. Following the imperial etiquette, which she
+still sought to maintain, she “commanded” his presence. Bierce, who
+understood and obeyed military commands, did not like that manner of
+wording an invitation from a dethroned empress. He did not attend and
+_The Lantern_ soon disappeared from the scene of politics and letters.
+
+Bierce returned to America and went to San Francisco, where he in time
+became the “dean of Western writers.” His journalistic work in San
+Francisco and later in Washington set him apart as a satirist of the
+bitterest strain. His literary productions marked him as a man of the
+most independent thought and distinctive taste. Most of his tales are
+Poe plus sulphur. He reveled in the mysterious, the dark, the terrible
+and the bizarre.
+
+Between intervals of writing his tales, criticisms and epigrams, Bierce
+found time to manage ranches and mining properties, to fight bad men
+and frontier highwaymen, to grill politicians, and to write verse.
+
+Bierce went through life seeking combat, weathering storm after storm,
+by some regarded as the foremost American literary man of his time,
+by others denounced as a brute, a pedant, even as a scoundrel. In the
+West he was generally lionized, in the East neglected. One man called
+him the last of the satirists, another considered him a strutting
+dunce. Bierce contributed to the confusion by making something of a
+riddle of himself. He loved mystery and indirection. He liked the
+fabulous stories which grew up about him and encouraged them by his
+own silence and air of concealment. In the essentials, however, he was
+no more than an intelligent and perspicacious man of high talent, who
+hated sentiment, reveled in the assault on popular prejudices, liked
+nothing so much as to throw himself upon the clay idols of the day with
+ferocious claws, and yet had a tender and humble heart.
+
+Toward the end of 1913, Mexico was in another of its torments. The
+visionary Madero had been assassinated. Huerta was in the dictator’s
+chair, Wilson had inaugurated his “watchful waiting,” and the new
+rebels were moving in the north--Carranza and Villa. At the time
+Ambrose Bierce was living, more or less retired, in Washington,
+probably convinced that he had had his last fling, for he was already
+past seventy-two and “not so spry as he once had been.” But along came
+the order for the mobilization along the border. General Funston and
+his little army took up the patrol along the Rio Grande, the newspapers
+began to hint at a possible invasion of Mexico, and there was a stir of
+martial blood among the many.
+
+Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth is born again.
+Everything that belonged to the dawn becomes hallowed in the sunset of
+manhood. It must have been so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm
+than he fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpets of
+Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent for fifty years, called him
+out again and he set out for Mexico, saying little to any one about
+his plans or intentions. Some believed that he was going down to the
+Rio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he planned to join the
+Constitutionalists as a military adviser. Either might have been true,
+for Bierce was as good an officer as a writer. He knew both games from
+the roots up.
+
+Even the preliminary movements of the man are a little hazy, but
+apparently he went first to his old home in California and then down
+to the border. He did not stop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was
+reported to have crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretary
+in Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letter from him
+postmarked in Chihuahua.
+
+Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expected to hear
+again within a month. When no letter came, she wondered, but was not
+alarmed. Bierce was a man of irregular habits. He was down there in a
+war-torn country, moving about in the wilderness with armies and bands
+of insurgents; he might not be able to get a letter through the
+lines. There was no reason to feel special apprehension. In September,
+1914, however, Bierce’s daughter, Mrs. H. D. Cowden of Bloomington,
+Illinois, decided that something must be amiss, no word having come
+from her father in eight months. She appealed to the State Department
+at Washington, saying that she feared for his life.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE BIERCE ~~]
+
+The Department quickly notified the American chargé d’affaires in
+Mexico to make inquiries and the War Department shortly afterwards
+instructed General Funston to send word along his lines and to
+communicate with the Mexican commanders opposite him, asking for
+Bierce. The Washington officials soon notified Mrs. Cowden that a
+search was being made. General Funston also answered that he was
+proceeding with an inquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both the
+diplomatic and the military forces reported that they had been unable
+to find Bierce or any trace of him. Probably, it was added, he was with
+one of the independent rebel commands in the mountains and out of touch
+with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.
+
+Now the rumoring began. First came the report that Bierce had really
+gone to Mexico to join Villa, whose reputation as a guerrilla fighter
+had attracted the veteran, and whose emissaries were said to have
+asked Bierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide. Bierce,
+it was reported, had joined Villa and had been with that commander in
+Chihuahua just before the battle there, in which the rebel forces were
+unsuccessful. Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story was soon
+discarded on the ground that Villa, had Bierce been on his staff,
+would certainly have reported the death of so widely-known a man and
+one so close to himself.
+
+A little later came a second report, this time backed by what seemed
+to be more credible evidence. It was said that Bierce had been at the
+later battle of Torreon in command of the Villista artillery, that he
+had taken part in the running campaign through the province of Sonora
+and that he had probably died of hardships and exposure in those trying
+days.
+
+A California friend now came forward with the report of a talk with
+Bierce, said to have been held just before the author set out for
+Mexico. The old satirist was reported to have said that he had grown
+weary of the stodgy life of literature and journalism, that he wanted
+to wind up his career with some more glorious end than death in bed and
+that he had decided to go down into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave
+or crawl off into some cave and die like a free beast.”
+
+It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’s other friends
+immediately declared that it was entirely out of character. Bierce had
+gone to Mexico to fight and see another war. He had not gone to die. He
+was a fatalist. He would take whatever came, but he would not go out
+and seek a conclusion.
+
+So the talk went on and the months went by. There were no scare
+headlines in the papers. After all, Bierce was only a distinguished man
+of letters.
+
+But there was a still better reason for the lack of attention. The
+absence of Bierce had not yet been reported officially when the vast
+black cloud of war rolled up in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to
+the Atlantic and the fields of Flanders. The American adventure along
+the Mexican border seemed trivial and grotesque. The little puff of
+wind in the South was forgotten before the menacing tornado in the
+East. What did a poet matter when the armies of the great powers were
+caught in their bloody embrace?
+
+Yet Bierce was not altogether forgotten. In April, 1915, more than a
+year after his last letter from Chihuahua, another note, supposedly
+from him, was received by his daughter. It said that Major Bierce was
+in England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he was taking a prominent
+part in the recruiting movement in Britain. This sensation lasted ten
+days. Then, inquiry having been made of the British War Office, the
+sober report was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear on the rolls
+and that he certainly was not attached to Lord Kitchener’s staff.
+
+Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put the touch of disaster
+to the fable. Miss Christianson announced in Washington that careful
+investigation abroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting with the
+Allies, and that she and his family had been forced to the melancholy
+conclusion that he was dead.
+
+But how and where? The State Department continued its inquiries in
+Mexico, but many private individuals also began to investigate.
+Journalists at the southern front tried to get trace or rumor of the
+man. Old friends went into the troubled region to seek what they could
+find. The literary world was touched both with curiosity and grief and
+with a romantic interest in the man’s fate. Bierce became a later
+Byron, and it was held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressed and
+found himself another Missolonghi.
+
+Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Bierce was dead, though
+even this was by no means certain. There was no evidence save the fact
+that he had not written for more than a year, which, in view of the
+man’s character and the situation in which he was caught, might be
+no evidence at all. But, granting that he was dead, how had his end
+come? Where was his body? It was impossible to escape the impression
+that one whose life had been touched with such extraordinary color
+should have died without a flame. The men and women who knew and loved
+Bierce--and they were a considerable number--kept saying over and over
+to themselves that this heroic fellow could not have passed out without
+some signal. Surely some one had seen him die and could tell of his end
+and place of repose. So the quest began again.
+
+For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico, where Bierce had
+certainly met his end, if indeed, he was dead, was no place for a
+hunter after bits of literary history to go wandering in. First there
+was the constant fighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists.
+Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza became president. There
+followed the various campaigns of pacification. Next Villa rebelled
+against his old ally, leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies.
+Finally the whole region was infested by marauding bands of irregular
+and rebellious militia, part soldiers and part bandits. To cap the
+climax came the invasion of Mexico by the expedition under Pershing.
+
+In 1918 was heard the first report on Bierce which seemed to have some
+basis in fact. A traveler had heard in Mexico City and at several
+points along the railroad that an aged American, who was supposed to
+have been fighting with either Villa or Carranza, had been executed by
+order of a field commander. From descriptions, this man was supposed
+to have been Bierce. At any rate, he might have been Bierce as well as
+another, and, since Bierce was both conspicuous and missing, there was
+some reason for credence. But no one could get any details or give the
+scene of the execution. The report was finally discarded as no more
+reliable than several others.
+
+Another year went by. In February, 1919, however, came a report which
+carries some of the marks of credibility.
+
+One of the several persons who set out to clear up the Bierce enigma
+was Mr. George F. Weeks, an old friend and close associate of the old
+writer’s, who went to Mexico City and later visited the various towns
+in northern Mexico where Bierce was supposed to have been seen shortly
+before his death. Weeks went up and down and across northern Mexico
+without finding anything definite. Then he returned to Mexico City and
+by chance encountered a Mexican officer who had been with Villa in his
+campaigns and had known Bierce well. Weeks mentioned Bierce to this
+soldier and was told this story:
+
+Bierce actually did join the Villista forces soon after January, 1914,
+when he wrote his last letter from Chihuahua. He said to those who were
+not supposed to know his affairs too intimately that he, like other
+American journalists and writers, had gone to Mexico to get material
+for a book on conditions in that unhappy country. In reality, however,
+he was acting as adviser and military observer with Villa, though not
+attached to the eminent guerilla in person. The Mexican officer related
+that Bierce could speak hardly any Spanish and Villa’s staff hardly any
+English. On the other hand, this particular man spoke English fluently.
+Naturally, he and Bierce had been thrown together a great deal and had
+held numerous conversations. So much for showing that he had known
+Bierce well, and how and why.
+
+After Chihuahua, the officer continued, he and Bierce had parted
+company, due to the exigencies of military affairs, and he had never
+seen the American alive again. He had often wondered about him and had
+made inquiries from time to time as he encountered various commandos
+of the Constitutionalist army. Finally, about a year later, which is
+to say some time toward the end of 1915, the relating officer met a
+Mexican army surgeon, who also had been with Villa, and this surgeon
+had told him a tale.
+
+Soon after the breach between Villa and Carranza in 1915, a small
+detachment of Carranza troops occupied the village of Icamole, east of
+Chihuahua State in the direction of Monterey and Saltillo. The Villista
+forces in that quarter, commanded by General Tomas Urbina, one of the
+most ruthless of all the Villa subcommanders, who was himself later put
+to death, were encamped not far from Icamole, attempting to beleaguer
+the town or, at least, to cut the Carranza garrison off from its base
+of supplies and the main command. Neither side was strong enough to
+risk an engagement and the whole thing settled down into a waiting and
+sniping campaign.
+
+In the gray of one oppressive morning toward the end of 1915, according
+to the surgeon who was with Urbina, one of that commander’s scouts
+gave an alarm, having seen four mules and two men on the horizon,
+making toward Icamole. A mounted detachment was at once sent out and
+the strangers were brought in. They turned out to be an American of
+advanced years but military bearing, a nondescript Mexican, and four
+mules laden with the parts of a machine gun and a large quantity of its
+ammunition.
+
+Both men were immediately taken before General Urbina, according to the
+surgeon’s story, and subjected to questioning. The Mexican said that
+he had been employed by another Mexican, whose name he did not know,
+to conduct the American and his convoy to Icamole and the Carranza
+commander. Urbina turned to the American and started to question him,
+but found that the man could speak hardly any Spanish and was therefore
+unable to explain his actions or to defend himself.
+
+It may be as well to note the first objections to the credibility of
+the story here. Bierce had been in Mexico almost two years, according
+to these dates. He was a man of the keenest intelligence and the
+quickest perceptions. He had also lived in California for many years,
+where Spanish names are common and Spanish is spoken by many. It
+seems hard to believe that such a man could have survived to the end
+of 1915 in such ignorance of the speech of the Mexican people as to
+be unable to explain what he was doing or to tell his name and who
+he was. It seems hard to believe, also, that Bierce would have been
+doing any gun-running or that he could have been alive twenty months
+after the Chihuahua letter without communicating with some one in the
+United States, without being found or heard of by the military and
+diplomatic agents who had then already been seeking him for more than
+a year. Also, it is necessary to explain how the man who went down to
+fight with Villa happened suddenly to be taking a gun and ammunition
+to Villa’s enemies, though this might be reconciled on the theory that
+Bierce had gone to fight with the Constitutionalists and had remained
+with them when Villa rebelled. But we may disregard these minor
+discrepancies as possibly capable of reconciliation or correction, and
+proceed further with the surgeon’s story.
+
+Urbina, after questioning the captives for a little while, lost
+patience, concluded that they must be enemies at best and took no half
+measures. Life was cheap in northern Mexico in those days, judgments
+were swift and harsh, and Urbina was savage by nature. He took away the
+lives of these two with a wave of the hand. Immediate execution was
+their fate.
+
+Ambrose Bierce and the unknown Mexican were led out and placed against
+the wall of a building, in this case a stable. Faced with the terrible
+sight, the Mexican fell to his knees and began to pray, refusing to
+rise and face his executioners. Bierce, following the example of his
+companion, also knelt but did not pray. Instead, he refused the cloth
+over his eyes and asked the soldiers not to mutilate his face. And so
+he died.
+
+“I was much interested in the whole affair,” the nameless Mexican
+officer told Mr. Weeks, “and I asked my surgeon friend many questions.
+He did not know Bierce at all and did not know he was describing the
+death of some one in whom I was deeply concerned. But I had known
+Bierce well and asked the surgeon for detail after detail of the
+murdered American’s appearance, age, bearing, and manner. From what he
+told me, I have not the slightest doubt that this was Ambrose Bierce
+and that he died in this manner at the hands of the butcher, Urbina.”
+
+Following the reports of Mr. Weeks, the San Francisco _Bulletin_ sent
+one of its special writers, Mr. U. H. Wilkins, down into Mexico, to
+further examine and confirm or discredit the report of the Mexican
+officer. Mr. Wilkins reported in March, 1920, confirming the Weeks
+report and adding what seems to be direct testimony. Mr. Wilkins says
+that he found a Mexican soldier who had been in Urbina’s command at
+Icamole and who was a member of the firing squad. This man showed Mr.
+Wilkins a picture of Bierce which, he said, he had taken from the
+pocket of the dead man just after the execution had taken place.
+
+Still the doubt perseveres. No one has been able to find the grave of
+Bierce. The picture which the soldier said he took from the pocket of
+the dead man was not produced and has never, so far as I can discover,
+been shown.
+
+Personally, I find in this material more elements for skepticism than
+for belief. Would Ambrose Bierce have been carrying a picture of
+himself about the wastes of Mexico? Perhaps, if it was on a passport or
+other credentials. In that case General Urbina must have known whom
+he was shooting. And would a guerilla leader, with much more of the
+brigand about him than the soldier, have shot a man like Bierce, who
+certainly was worth a fortune living and nothing dead? I must beg to
+doubt.
+
+Nor do the other details ring true. If the captured Americano was
+Ambrose Bierce, one of two things must have happened. Either he would
+have resorted, to save his life, to invective and persuasiveness, for
+which he was remarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned.
+This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tired of living and
+pretending for valedictory heroics. And he was too much of a soldier to
+wince. For this and another reason the story of his execution will not
+go down.
+
+Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of the firing squad
+asking that his face be not disfigured is a piece of standard Mexican
+romance. According to the tradition of that country, the Emperor
+Maximilian, when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, begged that
+he be shot through the body, so that his mother might look upon his
+face again. Hence, I suspect the soldierly Mexican _raconteur_ of
+having been guilty of a romantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious
+substitution. If the man whom Urbina shot had been Ambrose Bierce, he
+would neither have knelt, nor made the pitiful gesture of asking the
+inviolateness of his face.
+
+Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compelling the publishers
+of a collected edition of Bierce’s writings to recognize him as the
+co-author of “The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within the
+year published a version of Bierce’s end[11] that has some of the same
+elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, was shot by Villa’s soldiers at
+the guerilla leader’s command. Here is the story condensed:
+
+[11] “Ambrose Bierce as He Really Was,” _The American Parade_, October,
+1926.
+
+Bierce was with Villa at the taking of Chihuahua in 1913. After this
+fight there was nothing for the novelist-soldier to do and he took
+to drinking _tequila_, a liquor which causes those who drink it any
+length of time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him a peon who
+understood a little English and acted as valet and cup companion. When
+he was in his mugs Bierce talked too much, complained of inactivity and
+criticised Villa. One drunken night he suggested to the peon that they
+desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattle and carried it to
+Villa, who had the peon tortured till he confessed the truth. He was
+released and instructed to carry out the plan with the Gringo. That
+night, as they started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peon were
+overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left for the vultures.”
+
+Though Vincent Starrett[12] records that Villa flew into a rage
+when questioned about Bierce, a reaction looked upon by some as
+confirming Villa’s guilt, others have pointed out objections that seem
+insuperable. The break between Carranza and Villa did not follow until
+a long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they point out, and Bierce
+must have been alive all the while without writing a letter or sending
+a word of news to anyone. Possible but improbable, is the verdict of
+those who knew him most intimately.
+
+[12] “Ambrose Bierce,” by V. Starrett.
+
+So, applying the critical acid to the whole affair, there is still the
+mystery, as dark as in the beginning. We may have our delight with the
+dramatic or poetic accounts of his end if that be our taste, but really
+we are no closer to any satisfactory solution than we were in 1914.
+
+Bierce is dead, past doubt. That much needs no additional proof.
+His fierce spirit has traveled. His bitter pen will scrawl no more
+denunciations across the page; neither will he sit in his study weaving
+mysteries and ironies for the delectation of those who love abstraction
+as beauty, and doubt as something better than truth.
+
+My own guess is that he started out to fight battles and shoulder
+hardships as he had done when a boy, somehow believing that a tough
+spirit would carry him through. Wounded or stricken with disease, he
+probably lay down in some pesthouse of a hospital, some troop train
+filled with other stricken men; or he may have crawled off to some
+water hole and died, with nothing more articulate than the winds and
+stars for witness.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY
+
+
+No account of disappearances under curious and romantic circumstances,
+or of the enigmatic fates of forthfaring men in our times, would
+approach completeness without some narration of one of the boldest and
+maddest projects ever undertaken by human beings, in many ways the
+crowning adventure of the nineteenth century. Particularly now, when
+a circumnavigation of the earth by airplane has been accomplished,
+when the Atlantic has been bridged by a dirigible flight, and men have
+flown over the North Pole in plane and airship, the heroic and pathetic
+story of Doctor Andrée and his attempt to reach the top of the world by
+balloon is of fresh and abiding interest.
+
+No one who was not alive in the late nineties of the last century
+and of age to read and be thrilled, can have any conception of the
+wonder and excitement this man and his voyage caused, of the cloud of
+doubt and mystery which hung about his still unexplained end, of the
+rumors and tales that came out of the North year after year, of the
+expeditions that started out to solve the riddle, of the whole decade
+of slowly abating preoccupation with the terrible romance of this
+singular man and his undiscoverable end.
+
+In the summer of 1895, at the International Geographical Congress in
+London, Doctor Salomon August Andrée, a noted engineer, and chief
+examiner of the Royal Swedish Patent Office in Stockholm, let it be
+known that he was planning for a flight to the pole in a balloon, and
+that active preparations were under way. At first the public regarded
+the whole thing with an interested incredulity, though geographers,
+meteorologists, geodesists, and some students of aëronautics had been
+discussing the possibilities of such a voyage for much longer than a
+generation, and many had expressed the belief in its feasibility. Sivel
+and Silbermann, of the University of Paris, had declared as early as
+1870 that this was the practical way of attaining the pole.
+
+Even so, they had not by long anticipated Doctor Andrée. His first
+inquiries into the possibility of such a flight had been made in the
+course of a voyage to the United States in 1876 to visit the Centennial
+Exposition at Philadelphia. On shipboard he had made numerous
+observations of the winds and air currents, which led him to the belief
+that there was a general suction or drift of air toward the pole
+from the direction of the northern coast of Europe and from the pole
+southward along the Siberian or Alaskan coasts.
+
+With this belief in mind, Andrée had gone back to Sweden and begun a
+series of experiments in ballooning. He built various gas bags and
+made a considerable number of voyages in them, on several occasions
+with nearly fatal results. Mishaps, however, did not daunt him, and
+he became, in the course of the following twenty years, perhaps the
+best versed aëronaut on earth. He was not, of course, an ordinary
+balloonist, but a scientific experimenter, busy with an attempt to work
+out a serious, and to him a practical, problem. In the early nineties
+Andrée succeeded in making a flight of four hundred kilometers in a
+comparatively small balloon, and it was on the observations taken in
+the course of this voyage that he based mathematical calculations which
+formed his guide in the polar undertaking.
+
+If, as I have said, the first public announcement of the Andrée
+project was received by the rank and file of men as an entertaining,
+but impossible, speculation, there was a rapid change of mind in the
+course of the following months. News came that Andrée had opened a
+subscription for funds, and that the hundred thousand dollars he
+believed necessary had been quickly provided by the enthusiastic
+members of the Swedish Academy of Science, by King Oscar from his
+private purse, and by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of nitroglycerin and
+provider of the prizes which bear his name. Evidently this fellow meant
+business.
+
+In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party of scientists and
+workmen, including two friends who had decided to make the desperate
+essay with him, sailed from Gothenburg in the little steamer _Virgo_
+for Spitzbergen. They had on board a balloon made by Lachambre of
+Paris, the foremost designer of that day, with a gas capacity of
+more than six thousand cubic meters, the largest bag which had been
+constructed at that time. The gas container was of triple varnished
+silk, and there was a specially designed gondola, whose details are of
+surviving interest.
+
+This compartment, in which three men hoped to live through such
+temperatures as might be expected in the air currents fanning the North
+Pole, was made of wicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas and
+inside with oiled silk, these two substances being considered capable
+of making the big basket practically air and weather proof. The gondola
+was about six and one half feet long inside and about five feet wide.
+It contained a sleeping mattress for one, with provision for a second
+bed, though the plan was to keep two of the three men constantly on
+deck, while the third took two hours of sleep at a time. This basket
+was covered, to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, through
+which the voyagers could come up to the deck. Inside and outside the
+gondola, in various pockets and bags, were fixed the provisions and
+supplies, while the various nautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’
+paraphernalia, and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or were
+fixed to the gondola by specially invented devices. Everything had been
+thought out in great detail, most of the apparatus had been designed
+for the occasion, and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from
+all the foremost flyers and scientific theorists in Europe. His was
+anything but a haphazard or ill-prepared expedition.
+
+Toward the end of June, Andrée and his party landed on the obscure
+Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group, where he found a log cottage
+built some years before by Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter.
+Here a large octagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloon
+from the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finally all was
+ready, the chemicals were put to work, and the great bag slowly filled
+with hydrogen. Everything was in shape for flying by the middle of
+July, but now various mishaps and delays came to foil the eager
+adventurer, the worst of all being the fact that the wind steadily
+refused to blow from the south, as Andrée had anticipated. He waited
+until the middle of August, and then returned somewhat crestfallen
+to Sweden, where he was received with that ready and heartbreaking
+ridicule which often greets a brave man set out upon some undertaking
+whose difficulties and perils the fickle and callous public little
+understands.
+
+Andrée himself was nothing damped by his reverses, and even felt that
+he had learned something that would be of benefit. For one thing, he
+had the gas bag of his balloon enlarged to contain about two hundred
+thousand cubic feet, and made some changes in its coating, which was
+expected to prevent the seepage of the hydrogen, a problem which much
+more modern aircraft builders have had difficulty in meeting.
+
+If the delay in Andrée’s sailing had lost him a little of the
+public’s confidence and alienated a few lay admirers, his prestige
+with scientific bodies had not suffered, and his popularity with the
+subscribers of his fund was undiminished. King Oscar again met the
+additional expenses with a subscription from his own funds, and Andrée
+was accordingly able to set out for the second essay in June of 1897.
+His goods and the reconstructed balloon were sent as far as Tromsoe
+by rail, and there loaded into the _Virgo_ and taken to Danes Island,
+accompanied by a small group of friends and interested scientists.
+
+Almost at the last moment came a desertion, a happening that is looked
+upon by all explorers and adventurers as something of most evil omen.
+Doctor Ekholm, who had made the first trip to Danes Island and intended
+to be one of the three making the flight, had married in the course
+of the delay, the lady of his choice being fully aware of his perilous
+project. When it came time for him to start north in 1897, however, she
+had a not unnatural change of heart, and finally forced her husband to
+quit the expedition. Another man stepped into the gap without a day’s
+delay, and so the party started north.
+
+The enlarged bag was attached to the gondola and its fittings, and the
+process of inflation began anew in that strange eight-sided building
+on that barren arctic island. The bag was fully distended at the end
+of the first week in July, and Andrée impatiently waited for just the
+right currents of air before casting off.
+
+In those last few days of waiting a good deal of foreboding advice
+was given the daring aëronauts by the group of admirers who had made
+the voyage to Danes Island with them. It is even said that one of the
+leading scientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spent a
+night with him, and tried to convince the man that his theories and
+calculations were mistaken; that the air currents were inconstant, and
+could not be depended on to sweep the balloon across the pole and down
+on the other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperatures at
+the pole might readily cause the hydrogen to shrink and thus bring the
+balloon to earth; and that the whole region was full of such doubts and
+surprises as to forbid the adventure.
+
+To all this Andrée is said to have answered simply that he had made his
+decision and must stand by it.
+
+Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most thoroughly
+matured in his own mind. In twenty years of aëronautics he had worked
+out his ideas and theories in the greatest detail. He had not been
+blind to the problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air,
+but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction that might lend
+itself to guidance through the air, had evidently not struck him as
+feasible, and was not brought to any kind of success until several
+years later under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to steer his
+balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as already said, oblong, with
+a front and back. The front was provided with two portholes fitted with
+heavy glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations in
+the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist, he knew that,
+once his car was in the air, the great bag was almost certain to begin
+spinning and to travel through the air at various speeds, increasing
+the rate of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater.
+That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow for the gondola
+seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée had his own ideas as to this.
+
+The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to any great heights,
+or to subject himself to the rotating action which is one of the
+unpleasantnesses and perils of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern
+of his gondola three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long,
+which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen pigtails. In the
+center of each hundred-yard length of rope was a thinner spot or safety
+escapement, by means of which the lower half of any one of the ropes
+could be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for releasing
+all of the rope or ropes.
+
+These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s steering gear and
+antiwhirling apparatus. His intention was to fly at an elevation of
+somewhat less than one hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his
+three ropes trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of any
+open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was expected to keep
+his gondola pointed forward by means of its dragging effect. Realizing
+that one or all of the ropes might become entangled in some manner with
+objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might wreck the
+gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements to let go the lower half
+or all the ropes.
+
+Just what the man expected to do, may be read from his own articles
+in the New York and European papers. He hoped to fly low over a great
+part of the arctic regions, make photographs and maps, study the land
+and water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological, geological,
+geographical, and other information that came his way, cross the pole,
+if he could, and find his way back on the other side of the earth
+to some point within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said that he
+might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles from Danes Island to the
+pole in anywhere from two days to two weeks, depending on the force
+and direction of the surface wind. He did not expect to consume more
+than three weeks to a month for the entire trip, but his ship carried
+condensed emergency provisions for three years.
+
+While a widely known French balloonist, who had planned a rival
+expedition and then abandoned it, had intended to take along a
+team of dogs, Andrée’s balloon had not sufficient lifting power or
+accommodations for anything of this kind, and he was content to carry
+two light collapsible sleds on which he expected to carry the
+provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.
+
+[Illustration: ~~ DOCTOR ANDRÉE ~~]
+
+When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before he set out, what
+provisions he had made for a mishap, and just what he would do if his
+balloon were to come down in open water, the explorer showed his spirit
+in the tersest of responses: “Drown.”
+
+Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination, it is not
+quite certain in what spirit Andrée set forth. It has often been said
+that he was a stubborn, self-willed, and self-esteeming enthusiast,
+who had worked up a vast confidence in himself and an overweening
+passion for his project through his flying and experimenting. Others
+have pictured him as an infatuated scientific theorist, bound to prove
+himself right, or die in the attempt. And there is still the other
+possibility that the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt, in
+spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule of the public and the
+skepticism of some critics. He felt that he would be a laughingstock
+before the world and a discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to
+set out, it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remains
+a fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausible to engage
+the attention and credence of a considerable number of scientists, and
+his enthusiasm bright enough to attach two others to him in his great
+emprise.
+
+In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andrée got into
+the gondola of his car, tested the ropes and other apparatus, and
+was quickly joined by his two assistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H.
+F. Frankel, the latter having been chosen to take the place of the
+defected Ekholm.
+
+At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off, after Andrée
+had sent his farewell message, “a greeting to friends and countrymen at
+home.” The great bag hesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shot
+up to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowly about, with its
+three ropes dragging first on the ice and then in the water of the sea,
+and set out majestically for the northwest, carried by a steady slow
+breeze.
+
+The little group of men on the desolate arctic island stood late
+through the afternoon, with eyes straining into the distance, where the
+balloon hung, an ever-diminishing ball against the northern horizon.
+What doubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculating crowd,
+what burnings of the heart and moistenings of the eyes overcame
+its members, as they watched the intrepid trio put off upon their
+unprecedented adventure, the subsequent accounts reveal. But the
+imagination of the reader will need no promptings on this score. A
+little more than an hour the ship of the air remained in sight. Then,
+at last, it floated off into the mist, and the doubt from which it
+never emerged.
+
+Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sending back word of his
+situation and progress. For early communication he carried a coop of
+homing pigeons. In addition, he had provided himself with a series of
+specially designed buoys, lined with copper and coated with cork. They
+were hollow inside and so fashioned as to contain a written message and
+preserve it indefinitely from the sea water, like a manuscript in a
+bottle. To the top of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, with
+a little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release one of the small
+buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, thus marking
+out, by the longitude observations as well, the precise route taken by
+the balloon in its drift toward or away from the pole.
+
+About a week after Andrée’s departure one of the carrier pigeons
+returned to Danes Island, with this message in the little cylinder
+attached to its legs:
+
+ “July 13, 10.30 P. M.--82.20 north latitude; 15.5 east longitude. Good
+ progress toward north. All goes well on board. This message is the
+ third by carrier pigeon.
+
+                                                          “ANDRÉE.”
+
+The earlier birds and any the balloonists may have released after the
+night of the thirteenth, about fifty-five hours out from Danes Island,
+must have been overcome by the distance and the excruciating cold. None
+except the one mentioned ever reached either Danes Island or any cotes
+in the civilized world.
+
+All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaper accounts of
+Andrée’s daring undertaking, waited with something like bated breath
+for further news of the adventuring three. It was not expected that the
+brave Swedes could reach civilization again, even with every turn of
+luck in their favor, in less than two months. Even six months or a year
+were elapsed periods not considered too long, for the chances were that
+the balloon would land in some far northern and difficult spot, out of
+which the three men would not be able to make their way before winter.
+That being so, they would be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then,
+very likely, they could find their way to some outpost and bring back
+the tidings of their monumental feat.
+
+Meantime the world got to work on its preparations. The Czar,
+foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and his two companions might
+alight somewhere in upper Siberia, sent a communication by various
+agencies to the wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains,
+explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andrée and his men were,
+and admonishing the natives to treat any such wayfarers with kindness
+and respect, aiding them in every way and sending them south as
+speedily as possible, the special guests of the imperial government
+and the great white father. In other northern countries similar
+precautions were taken, with the result that the news of Andrée and his
+expedition was circulated far up beyond the circle, among the Indians
+and adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters of Labrador and
+interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos, and scores of other tribes and
+peoples.
+
+But the fall of 1897 passed without any further sign from Andrée, and
+1898 died into its winter, with the pole voyagers still unreported. By
+this time there was a feeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among
+the optimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange that no further
+messages of any kind had been received. Another significant thing was
+that one of the copper-and-cork buoys had been picked up in the arctic
+current--empty. Still, it might have been dropped by accident, and it
+was yet possible that Andrée had reached a safe, if distant, anchorage
+somewhere, and he might turn up the following summer.
+
+Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing except one or two more
+of the empty buoys, and the definite feeling of despair. Expeditions
+began to organize for the purpose of starting north in search of the
+balloonists, and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in a
+dirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in getting under way,
+and the summer of 1900 came along with nothing accomplished.
+
+On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however, another, if
+not very satisfactory, bit of news was picked up. It was, once more,
+one of the buoys from the balloon. This time, to the delight of the
+finders, there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:
+
+ “Buoy No. 4. The first to be thrown out. July 11, 10 P. M., Greenwich
+ mean time.
+
+ “All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an altitude of
+ about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction at first northerly, ten
+ degrees east; later northerly, forty-five degrees east. Four carrier
+ pigeons were dispatched at 5.40 P.M. They flew westward. We are
+ now above the ice, which is very cut up in all directions. Weather
+ splendid. In excellent spirits.
+
+                                   “ANDRÉE, STRINDBERG, FRANKEL.”
+
+  “Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”
+
+It will be noted at once that the body of this communication was
+written the night after the departure from Danes Island, and the
+postscript probably at seven forty-five o’clock the next morning, so
+that it must have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before
+the single returning pigeon was released. No light of hope in such a
+communication.
+
+The North was by this time resonant with rumors and fables. Almost
+every traveler who came down from the boreal regions brought some
+fancy or report, sometimes supporting the product of his or another’s
+imagination with scraps of what purported to be evidence. A prospector
+came down from the upper Alaskan gold claims with a bit of tarred and
+oiled cloth which had been given him by the chief of some remote Indian
+tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the Andrée balloon? For a
+time there was a thrill of credulity. Then the thing turned out to be
+hide, instead of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.
+
+In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin that Andrée and his party
+had been killed by Eskimos in upper Canada, when they descended from
+the clouds and started to shoot caribou. But why go into details? Month
+after month came other reports of all kinds, most of them of similar
+import. They came from all points, beginning at Kamtchatka and running
+around the world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and they were
+all more or less fiction.
+
+Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece. A long dispatch
+from Winnipeg announced that C. C. Chipman, head commissioner of
+the Hudson’s Bay Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the
+northernmost outpost of the company, several letters from the local
+factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate of Doctor Andrée and his
+comrades was contained. The news had been received at Fort Churchill
+from wandering Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw
+mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great ship descend
+from the sky and had followed it many miles till it settled on the ice.
+Three men had got out and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally
+unacquainted with white men, and far less with balloons, believed the
+intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked them, eventually
+killing all with their bows and arrows, though the white men were armed
+with repeating rifles and put up a good fight. There were many other
+confirmatory details in the report. The mushers were found with modern
+Swedish rifles and with cooking and other utensils salvaged from the
+wrecked balloon.
+
+These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to the commissioner
+of the Hudson’s Bay Company for confirmation, with the result that the
+story was at once exploded in these words:
+
+“There is no probability of there being any truth in the report
+regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s balloon. The chief
+officer of the company on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself
+interviewed the natives on the matter, has reported as his firm
+conviction that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon
+imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the story was given.
+The sketches of the balloon which the company has been careful to
+distribute throughout northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much
+talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly to be wondered
+at that some such tale might be given out by natives peculiarly cunning
+and prone to practice upon the credulity of those not familiar with
+them, or easily imposed upon.”
+
+But the imagination of the world was nothing daunted by such cold
+douches of fact, and more reports of Andrée’s death, of his survival
+in the igloos of detached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his
+balloon, of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of his party,
+and of many fancies came down from the northern sectors of the
+world, season after season. There was a great revival of these yarns
+in 1905, once more due to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and
+in 1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was an even more
+belated group of rumors, all centering about the fact that one Father
+Turquotille, a Roman Catholic missionary residing at Reindeer Lake,
+and often making long treks farther into the arctic, had found a party
+of nomadic natives in possession of a revolver and some rope, which
+fact they explained to him by telling the story of the Andrée balloon,
+which was supposed to have landed somewhere in their territory. The
+good priest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal, of Prince
+Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmitted the report to Ottawa,
+whence it was spread broadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having
+made a special journey to confirm the rumors, was obliged to discredit
+them. And so another end to gossip.
+
+Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirty years after
+that heroic launching out from Danes Island, after the pole has long
+been attained, and all the regions of the Far North traversed back and
+forth by countless expeditions and hunting parties, no sure knowledge
+of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is that he never returned, and
+all that can be asserted as beyond reasonable doubt is that he and his
+companions perished somewhere in the North. The probabilities are more
+interesting, though they cannot be termed more than inductions from the
+scattered bits of fact.
+
+The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, which were picked up from
+time to time between the spring of 1899 and the late summer of 1912,
+when the Norwegian steamer _Beta_, outward bound on September 1st,
+from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoe on the fourteenth,
+with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, which had been picked up on the eighth in
+the open ocean. This buoy, like all the others, except the one already
+described, was empty and had its top unsecured. It rests with the
+others in the royal museum at Stockholm. When Andrée flew from Danes
+Island he took twelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he
+expected to drop as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, and
+one larger float, which was to be dropped in triumph at the North Pole.
+This biggest buoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899, and
+identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessed the preparation
+for the flight. In all, seven of these floats have been retrieved from
+the northern seas.
+
+We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on the morning of July 12, 1897,
+less than sixteen hours from his base, and that he liberated a pigeon
+on the following night, after an elapsed time of about fifty-five
+hours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northern latitude
+and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. Since Danes Island lies above the
+seventy-ninth parallel, and in about 12 degrees of eastern longitude,
+the balloon had drifted about three degrees north and three east in
+fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundred and fifty miles,
+as the crow flies. His net rate of progress toward the pole was thus
+no better than seven to eight miles an hour, and he was being carried
+northeast instead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidently he was
+disillusioned as to the correctness of his theories before he was far
+from his starting point.
+
+The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to what must have happened
+thereafter. When the big North Pole buoy was brought back to Sweden,
+the great explorer Nansen shook his head in dismay and said the
+emptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous of disaster. Andrée
+would never have cast his largest and best buoy adrift, except in an
+emergency, or until he had reached the pole, in which case it would
+surely have contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoy had been
+thrown overboard as ballast, when the ship seemed about to settle into
+the sea. But even then, it would seem, Andrée would have scribbled some
+message and put it into the float, had there been time.
+
+The fact that this main buoy and five others were picked up, with their
+tops unfastened and barren of the least scrap of writing, seems to
+argue that some sudden disaster overtook the balloon and its horrified
+passengers. Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidly toward the
+sea or an ice floe, that everything was thrown out in an attempt to
+arrest its fall, or there was an explosion, and the whole great air
+vessel, with all its human and mechanical freight, was dropped into the
+icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would have floated off and been
+found scattered about the northern ocean, while the explorer and his
+men must have met the fate he had so briefly described--“drowned.”
+
+The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearing any message later
+than that carried by the solitary homing pigeon would seem also to
+indicate that death overcame the party soon after the night of July
+13th, with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs and ice packs
+of the North.
+
+In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of the most splendid and
+mad adventures of any time came to its dark and mysterious conclusion,
+leaving the world an enigma and a legend.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SPECTRAL SHIPS
+
+
+We have not yet lost that sense of terror before the vast power and
+wrath of the waters that wrought strange gods and monsters from the
+fancy of our ancestors. It is this fright and helplessness in us
+that gives disappearances at sea their special quality. In spite of
+all progress, all inventiveness, all the power of man’s engines,
+every putting forth to sea is still an adventure. The same fate that
+overcomes the little catboat caught in a squall may overtake the
+greatest liner--the Titanic to note a trite example.
+
+As a matter of fact, never a year passes without the loss of some ship
+somewhere in the wild expanse of the world’s waters. Boats go down,
+leaving usually at least some indirect evidence of their fate. Now
+and again, as in the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s _Santa
+Margarita_ and Roger Tichborne’s schooner _Bella_, not a survivor lives
+to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckage found to give indication.
+Here we have the genuine marine mystery. The marvel lies in the number
+of such completely vanished ships. A most casual survey of the records
+turns up this generous list, from the American naval records alone:
+
+The brig _Reprisal_, 1777; the _General Gates_, 1777; the _Saratoga_,
+1781; the _Insurgent_, 1800; the _Pickering_, 1800; the _Hamilton_,
+1813; the _Wasp III_, 1814; the _Epervier_, 1815; the _Lynx_, 1821; the
+_Wildcat_, 1829; the _Hornet_, 1829; the _Sylph II_ and the _Seagull_,
+both in 1839; the _Grampus_, in 1843; the _Jefferson_, 1850; the
+_Albany_, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; and _Levant II_, with
+exactly the same number aboard, in 1860. In 1910 the tug _Nina_ steamed
+out of Norfolk and was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoing
+tug _Conestoga_ put out from Mare Island, Cal., bound for Pearl Harbor,
+Hawaii, with four officers and fifty-two men aboard, and was never
+again reported. These are not mere marine disasters[13] but complete
+mysteries. No one knows precisely what happened to any of these ships
+and their people.
+
+[13] For a handy list of these see The World Almanac, 1927 Edition,
+pages 691-95.
+
+No account of sea riddles would be complete without mention of the
+American brigantine _Marie Celeste_, of New York, Captain Briggs, which
+was found floating abandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity of
+Gibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. She had sailed from New
+York late in October with a cargo of alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the
+morning mentioned the British bark _Dei Gratia_, Captain Boyce, found
+the _Marie Celeste_ in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15 W. with sails set
+but acting queerly, yawing and falling up into the wind. Captain Boyce
+ran up the urgent hoist but got no answer from the brigantine. The day
+being almost windless and the sea beautifully calm, Captain Boyce put
+off in a boat with his mate, Mr. Adams, and two sailors, reached the
+_Marie Celeste_ and managed to board her. There was not a soul to be
+seen, not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indication of any
+preparations for abandonment, not a boat gone from the davits.
+
+Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, made a careful inspection
+of the ship and wrote full reports of what they had found. In the cabin
+a breakfast had been laid for four persons and only partly eaten. One
+of these four was a child, whose half empty bowl of porridge stood on
+the table. A hard boiled egg, peeled and cut in two but not bitten
+into, lay near one of the other places. There were biscuits and other
+food on the table.
+
+Investigation showed that the cargo had not shifted and was completely
+intact. None of the food, water or other supplies had been carried
+off, the captain’s funds, of considerable amount, were safe and his
+gold watch hung in his bunk, as did the watches of two of the seamen.
+There was no evidence whatever of any struggle, and a report published
+by irresponsible papers, to the effect that a bloody sword had been
+found was officially denied. Neither was there any leak or any defect,
+except that there were two square cuts at the bow on the outside. They
+had been made with an axe or similar tool and might have been there for
+some time.
+
+The _Dei Gratia_ towed her prize into Gibraltar and notified the
+American consul, who again examined the brigantine with all care and
+reported to Washington. It was found that the _Marie Celeste_ had set
+sail with a crew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife and their
+eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of six hundred tons.
+
+Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the region near the
+finding place of the abandoned vessel resulted in nothing and a
+general quest throughout the world brought no better results. The
+British ship _Highlander_ reported that she had passed the _Marie
+Celeste_ and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December 4th, the
+day before she was picked up, and that the brigantine had answered “All
+well.” This is obviously a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores
+lies about five hundred miles from the place where the ship was found
+or about twice as far as she was likely to have sailed in twenty-four
+hours.
+
+There are conflicting statements as to the actual state of affairs on
+the _Marie Celeste_ when found. One report says the ship’s clock was
+still ticking. On the other hand the log, which was found, had not
+been brought up beyond ten days prior to the discovery. One statement
+says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were gone, another
+that everything was intact. All indications are, however, that the
+crew had not been long away. A bottle of cough medicine stood upright
+and uncorked on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough
+weather or continued yawing and twisting before the wind with a loose
+rudder would have upset it. Again, on a sewing machine, which stood
+near the table in the cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off
+to the floor if there had been any specially active dipping or lurching
+of the brigantine.
+
+Many theories have been propounded to explain the disappearance of the
+crew, not the least fantastic of which is the giant cuttlefish yarn.
+Those who spin this tale affect to believe that there are squidlike
+monsters in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and bold
+enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship and snatch off fourteen
+persons one after the other. Personally, I like much better the idea
+that Sinbad’s roc had come back to life and carried the crew off to the
+Valley of Diamonds on his back.
+
+As in other mysteries, men have turned up from time to time who
+asserted that they knew the fate of the crew of the _Marie Celeste_,
+that they were the one and only survivor, that murder and foul crime
+had been committed on the brigantine and more in the same strain.
+
+In 1913, the _Strand Magazine_ (London) printed a tale which has about
+it some elements of credibility. The article was written by A. Howard
+Linford, head master of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable
+British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically disowned
+responsibility for what he narrated, saying that he had no first hand
+knowledge. His story was, he said, based on some papers left him in
+three boxes by an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.
+
+This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as one of the ten members
+of the crew--the steward in fact. He recounts that the carpenter had
+built a little platform in the bows, where the child of the captain
+might play in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’s quarterdeck,
+and upon this structure the child played daily in the sun, while its
+mother sat beside it, reading or sewing. The good woman had been ill
+the first part of the trip and was now greatly worried because of the
+nervous health of her husband, who had suffered a breakdown.
+
+One morning, according to the supposed Fosdyk papers, the captain
+determined to swim about the ship in his clothes, possibly as the
+result of a challenge from the mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her
+husband but he was obdurate and she prompted the mate to swim with
+him. They plunged in and the whole crew, with the commander’s wife and
+child, crowded on the little platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly
+there was a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell into the
+sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine, with sail set,
+rapidly ran away from the swimmers and the hopeless strugglers in the
+water. Fosdyk alone managed to cling to the platform and was washed to
+the African shore, where he was restored to health by some friendly
+blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874 Marseilles. Later on he got to
+London and was employed by Mr. Linford’s father.
+
+Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm of possibility. We
+may believe it if we like, without risking the suspicious glances of
+our better balanced brothers, but----
+
+Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervous state, have gone
+swimming hundreds of miles from land, leaving his vessel with sail
+set and expecting, even in a calm, to keep pace with her? Would the
+helmsman have left his post under such circumstances to stand on the
+baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captain and mate have got up
+without finishing their breakfast to engage in such folly? Finally, why
+did this Abel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on his return to
+Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when there was a great hue and cry
+still in the air and sure information would have been rewarded? Or why
+did he not tell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapers
+again and again revived the mystery and sought to solve it? Why did he
+leave papers to be published by another after his death?
+
+My answer is that the mystery of the _Marie Celeste_ is no nearer
+solution since the so-called Fosdyk papers were published. Moreover, I
+cannot find that worthy’s name on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.
+
+A more credible explanation has recently been put forth by a writer
+in the New York _Times_, who says that the whole case rested upon a
+conspiracy. The captain and crew of the _Marie Celeste_ had agreed
+with the personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted in
+the region where she was found, her men to put off in a longboat which
+had previously been supplied by the conspirators in order that none of
+the _Marie Celeste’s_ boats should be missing. The other vessel was to
+come along presently, pick up the derelict and collect the prize money,
+while the owners were to profit by the insurance. The deserting crew
+was to get its share of the proceeds and then disappear.
+
+There are objections to this explanation also. Would a set of sailors
+and a captain, the latter with his wife and little girl, venture
+upon the sea in an open boat some hundreds of miles from land? Would
+the captain have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him if
+such a trick had been planned? And why was no member of the crew
+ever discovered in the course of the feverish search or through the
+persistent curiosity that followed? On the other hand, such tricks
+have been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit crimes
+often attempt and accomplish the perilous and seemingly impossible. The
+doubts are by no means dispelled by this theory but here is at least a
+rational version of the affair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the long roster that
+stand out with a special and tormenting character. The war had hardly
+opened when the British navy set out to destroy a small number of
+German cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and
+Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral Cradock and
+his ships to the bottom at the battle of Coronel and was subsequently
+destroyed by a force of British off the Falkland Islands. There was the
+_Emden_, that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for Allied
+shipping for month after month, until she was overtaken, beaten and
+beached. Finally, there was the _Karlsruhe_.
+
+This modern light cruiser, completed only the year before the war
+began, did exactly what she was designed for--commerce raiding.
+With her light armament of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed
+(25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning) she
+was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen. Since there was no
+considerable German fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few
+hot weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic. One vessel
+after another fell to her hunting pouch, while crews taken off the
+captured or sunken merchantmen began to arrive at American, West Indian
+and South American ports.
+
+These refugees told, one and all, the same story. There would be a
+smudge of smoke on the horizon and within minutes the long slender
+German cruiser would come churning up out of the distance with the
+speed of an express train, firing a shot across the bows and signalling
+for the surrender of the trader. The prize crew came aboard, always
+acting with the most punctilious politeness and treating crew and
+passengers with apologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow,
+her coal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred, her
+crew and passengers removed to safety and the craft sent to the bottom
+with bombs or by opening the sea cocks. If, on the other hand, the
+captured ship was modern and swift, she was manned from the cruiser,
+loaded with coal and other needed supplies, crowded with the captives
+and made to form an escort. At one time the cruiser is said to have had
+six such vessels in her train, at another four. When there got to be
+too many passengers and other captives, the least worthy of the vessels
+was detached and ordered to steam to a given port, being allowed just
+enough coal to get there.
+
+As early as October 4, 1914, two months after the opening of
+hostilities, it was announced that the _Karlsruhe_ had captured
+thirteen British merchantmen in the Atlantic, including four hundred
+prisoners. She did much better than that before she was through and
+the chances are she had then already put about twenty ships out of
+business, for this was a conservative announcement from the British
+Admiralty, which let it be known soon afterwards that all of seventy
+British war vessels were hunting the _Karlsruhe_ and her sister raider,
+the _Emden_.
+
+Shipping in the Atlantic was in a perilous way and excitement was high
+among newspaper readers ashore, who watched the game of hide and seek
+with all the interest of spectators at some magnificent sporting event.
+Nor was the sympathy all against the German, for the odds were too
+heavy. The wildest rumors were floating in by every craft that reached
+port from the Southern Atlantic, by radio and by cable. On October
+27, a Ward Line boat came into New York with the report that she had
+observed a night battle off the Virginia Capes between the German
+raider and British men-of-war. On November 3 came the report that the
+_Karlsruhe_ had captured a big Lamport and Holt liner off the coast of
+Brazil as late as October 26. On November 10 an officer of a British
+freighter captured by the raider reached Edinburgh and told the story
+that the _Karlsruhe_ was using Bocas Reef, off the north Brazilian
+coast, as a base.
+
+Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the forays of the modern corsair
+ceased. The first belief was, of course, that the pursuing British had
+found her and sent her to Davy Jones. But as the weeks went by without
+any announcement to that effect, doubts crept in. Soon the British
+government, without making a formal declaration, revealed the untruth
+of this report by keeping its searching vessels at sea. It was the
+theory that the _Karlsruhe_ had run up the Amazon or the Orinoco for
+repairs and rest. The expectation was that she would soon be at her old
+tricks again.
+
+The battle and sinking story persisted in the British press, the
+wish being evidently father to the thought. On January, 12, 1915,
+for instance, the Montreal _Gazette_ published an unverified (and
+afterwards disproved) report from a correspondent at Grenada, British
+West Indies, giving a detailed description of a four hour battle in
+which the raider was destroyed. This story was allegedly verified by
+the washing ashore of wreckage and the finding of sailors’ corpses. All
+moonshine.
+
+On January 21, an American steamer captain announced having sighted the
+_Karlsruhe_ off Porto Rico. On other dates in January and February she
+was also falsely reported off La Guayra, the Canary Islands, Port au
+Prince and other places. On March 17, the Brooklyn _Eagle_ published a
+tale to the effect that the hulk of the raider lay off the Grenadines,
+a little string of islets that stretch north from Grenada in the
+Windwards. This report said there had been no battle. The cruiser had
+been self-wrecked or broken up in a storm. Again wreckage was said to
+have been found, but here once more was falsehood.
+
+On March 18, the _Stifts-Tidende_ of Copenhagen reported that the
+_Karlsruhe_ had been blown up by an internal explosion one evening
+as the officers and men were having tea. One half of the wreck sank
+immediately, the report went on to say, while the other floated for
+some time, enabling between 150 and 200 of the crew to be rescued by
+one of the accompanying auxiliaries. The survivors, it was added, had
+been sworn to secrecy before reaching port--why this, no one can guess.
+
+The following day, the _National Tidende_ published corroboration from
+a German merchant captain then in Denmark, to the effect that the “crew
+of the Karlsruhe had been brought home early in December, 1914, by the
+German liner, Rio Negro, one of the Karlsruhe’s escort ships.”
+
+Somewhat later, a Brooklyn man, wintering at Nassau, in the Bahamas,
+reported finding the raider’s motor pinnace on the shore of Abaco
+Island, north of Nassau.
+
+To this there is little to add. Admiral von Tirpitz, then the head of
+the German navy, says in his memoirs just this and no more:
+
+ “The commander of the _Karlsruhe_, Captain Köhler, never dreamt of
+ taking advantage of the permission to make his way homeward; working
+ with the auxiliary vessels in the Atlantic, surrounded by the English
+ cruisers, but relying on his superior speed, he sought ever further
+ successes, until he was destroyed with his ship by an explosion, the
+ probable cause of which was some unstable explosive brought aboard.”
+
+It is obvious from this that the _Karlsruhe_ was given the option of
+returning home, having gained enough glory and sunk enough ships to
+satisfy a dozen admirals. But the main fact to be gleaned from Tirpit’s
+statement is that an internal explosion was the thing officially
+accepted by the head of the German admiralty as the cause of her
+disappearance. And this is the most likely of all the theories that
+have been or can be proposed. But, that said, we are still a long way
+from any satisfaction of our deeper curiosity. Where and when did the
+explosion take place? Under what circumstances? Did any escape and
+return to Germany to tell the tale?
+
+To these queries there are no positive answers. If the _Karlsruhe_
+was, as so often stated, accompanied by one or more auxiliaries or
+coaling ships, it seems incredible that all the crew can have been
+lost and quite beyond imagination that there was not even a distant
+witnessing of the accident. Yet this seems to have been the case. In
+spite of the report that a large part of the famous raider’s crew got
+safely home after the supposed explosion, I have searched and scouted
+through the German press and the German book lists for an account of
+the affair--all in vain. Not only that, but I am assured by reliable
+correspondents of the American press in Germany that nothing credible
+or authoritative has appeared. We have von Mücke’s book “The Emden,”
+published in the United States as early as 1917, and previously in
+Germany. We have the exploits of the _Moewe_, and we have the lesser
+adventures of the popular von Luckner and his craft. But of the famous
+_Karlsruhe_ we have nothing at all, save rumors and gossip.
+
+The conclusion must be that the ship did break up somewhere in the
+deepest ocean, as the result of an explosion, while she was altogether
+unattended. She must have gone down with all her men, for not even the
+reports of finding bits of her wreckage have ever been verified. The
+mystery of her end is still much discussed among seafaring men and
+William McFee, in one of his tales, suggests that she lay hid up one of
+the South American rivers and came to grief there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even more fantastic than this, however, is the story of the great
+United States collier _Cyclops_. This vessel, of nineteen thousand tons
+displacement, five hundred and eighteen feet long, of sixty-five foot
+beam and twenty-seven foot draught, with a cargo capacity of twelve
+thousand five hundred tons, was built by the Cramps in Philadelphia
+in 1910. She was designed to coal the first-line fighting ships of our
+fleet while at sea and under way, by means of traveling cables from her
+arm-like booms. She had frequently accompanied our battleships abroad,
+had transported the marines to Cuba and the refugees from Vera Cruz to
+Galveston in April 1914. On a trip to Kiel in 1911, she was wonderingly
+examined by the German naval critics and builders, who declared her to
+be a marvel of design and structure.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+                                                          _Wide World._
+
+                       ~~ _U. S. S. CYCLOPS_ ~~]
+
+On March 4, 1918, the _Cyclops_ sailed from Barbados for an unnamed
+Atlantic port (Norfolk, as it proved), with a crew of 221 and 57
+passengers, including Alfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States Consul
+General at Rio de Janeiro. She was due to arrive on March 13. When that
+date had come and nothing had been heard from her, it was announced
+that one of her two engines had been injured and she was proceeding
+slowly with the other engine compounded. But on April 14 the news came
+out in the press that the great ship was a month overdue and totally
+unaccounted for.
+
+For a whole month the story had been veiled under the censorship while
+the Navy Department had been making every conceivable effort to find
+the ship or some evidence of her fate. There had been no news through
+her radio equipment since her departure from Barbados. There had
+been no heavy weather in that vicinity. She had been steaming in the
+well-traveled lane of ships passing between North and South America,
+yet not a vessel had spoken her, heard her radio call or seen her at
+any distance. Destroyers had been searching the whole Gulf, Caribbean,
+North and South Atlantic regions for three frantic weeks. They had not
+found so much as a life preserver belonging to the missing ship.
+
+The public mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that a German
+submarine had done this dirty piece of business, if an attack on an
+enemy naval vessel in time of war may be so listed. Alas, there were
+no German submarines so far from their home bases at that time or
+any proximate period. None had been reported by other vessels and
+the German admiralty has long since confirmed the understood fact
+that there was none abroad. A floating mine was next suspected, but
+the lower West Indies are a long distance from any mine field then
+in existence and a ship of the size of the _Cyclops_, even if mined,
+probably would have had time to use her radio, lower some boats and
+put some of her people afloat. At the very least, she must have left
+some flotsam to reach the beaches of the archipelago with its tragic
+meanings.
+
+The mystery was soon complicated. On May 6 a British steamer from
+Brazil brought news that two weeks after the due date of the _Cyclops_
+but still two weeks before her disappearance was announced, an
+advertisement had been published in a Portuguese newspaper at Rio
+announcing requiem mass for the repose of the soul of A. L. M.
+Gottschalk “lost when the _Cyclops_ was sunk at sea.” Efforts were
+made by the secret agents of the American and Brazilian governments to
+discover the identity of the persons responsible for the advertisement,
+but nothing of worth was ever discovered. The notice was signed with
+the names of several prominent Brazilians, all of whom denied that they
+had the least knowledge of the matter. The rector of the church denied
+that any arrangement had been made for the mass and said he had not
+known Gottschalk. Some chose to believe that the advertisement had been
+inserted by German secret agents for the purpose of notifying the large
+number of Germans in Brazil that the Fatherland was still active in
+American waters.
+
+A rumor having no substance whatever was to the effect that the crew
+of the ship had revolted, overcome the officers and converted the ship
+into a German raider. A companion tale said the ship had sailed for
+Germany to deliver her cargo of manganese to the enemy, by whom this
+valuable metal was sorely needed. The only foundation for this rumor
+was the fact that the _Cyclops_ was indeed carrying a load of manganese
+ore to the United States.
+
+It was not until August 30, 1918, that Secretary of the Navy Josephus
+Daniels announced that the ship was officially recorded as lost.
+At that time he notified the relatives of the officers, crew and
+passengers. More than three months later, on December 9th, Mr. Daniels
+supplemented this official notice with the statement, given to the
+newspaper correspondents, that “no reasonable explanation” of the
+_Cyclops_ case could be given. And here the official news ends. At this
+writing, inquiry at the official source in Washington brings the answer
+that nothing has since been learned to alter the then issued statement.
+
+The _Cyclops_ case naturally excited and disturbed the public mind,
+with the result of an unusual crop of fancies, lies, false alarms and
+hoaxes. On May 8, 1923, for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh
+reported that she had found a bottle at Atlantic City containing the
+message “_Cyclops_ wrecked at Sea.--H.” This note was written on a
+piece of note paper torn from a memorandum book and was yellowed with
+age. The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealing wax--a
+substance which shipwrecked sailors do not have in their pockets at the
+moment of peril.
+
+Other such messages were found from time to time. One floated ashore at
+Velasco, Tex., also in a bottle. It read:
+
+ “U. S. S. _Cyclops_, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25, Long. 35.11.
+ All on board when German submarine fired on us. Lifeboats going to
+ pieces. No one to be left to tell the tale.”
+
+The position indicated is midway between Hatteras and the Azores, where
+the _Cyclops_ had no business and probably never was. It was found
+after the war, as already suggested, that no German submarine had been
+in any so distant region at the time. We may accordingly look upon this
+bottle as another flagon of disordered fancy, another press from the
+old “_spurlos versenkt_” madness.
+
+Finally, in their search for something that might explain this dark and
+baffling affair, the hunters came upon a suggestive fact. The commander
+of the _Cyclops_ was Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It now came
+to light--and it struck many persons like a revelation--that this man
+was really G. W. Wichtman, that he was born a German; ergo, that he
+was the man responsible for this disaster to our navy. It proved true
+that Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, but he had been brought
+to the United States as a child and had spent twenty-six years in
+the American navy. No one in official position suspected him, but the
+professional Hun _strafers_ insisted that this was the typical act of a
+German, no matter how long separated from his native land, how little
+acquainted with it or how long and faithfully attached to the service
+of his adopted country. It is only fair to the memory of a blameless
+officer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worley could not have done
+such a complete job had he wished to and that his record is officially
+without the least blemish.
+
+We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanations of
+the fate of the big collier. One possibility is that the manganese
+developed dangerous gases in the hold and caused a terrific explosion,
+which blew the ship out of the water without warning, killed almost all
+on board and so wrecked the boats that none could reach land. The only
+trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand ton ship, when destroyed
+by an explosion, is certain to leave a great mass of surface wreckage,
+which will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing
+vessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vessels sent out by the
+Navy Department visited every ness and cove and bay along the coast
+from Brazil to Hatteras, every island in the West Indies and every
+quarter of the circling seas without ever finding so much as a splinter
+belonging to the collier. Fishermen and boatmen in all the great region
+were questioned, encouraged with promises of reward and sent seeking,
+but they, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that great ship.
+
+This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disaster at the
+hands of a German raider or submarine. Besides, to emphasize the
+matter once more, the German records show that there is no possibility
+of anything of this sort. The suspicion has been officially and
+categorically denied and there is no reason for concealment now.
+
+There remains one further possibility, which probably conceals the
+truth. The _Cyclops_, like her sister ships, the _Neptune_ and
+_Jupiter_, was topheavy. She carried, like them, six big steel derricks
+on a superstructure fifty feet from her main deck. This great weight
+aloft made it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she could not
+roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing. We have
+but to suppose that with her one crippled engine she ran into heavy
+weather or perhaps a tidal wave, that she heeled over suddenly, her
+cargo shifted and her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a few
+seconds. In that event there would have been no time for using the
+wireless, no chance to launch any boats. Also, with everything battened
+and tied down, ship-shape for a naval vessel travelling in time of
+war, especially if the weather was a little heavy, there is the strong
+possibility that nothing could have been loose to float free. In this
+manner the whole big ship with all her parts and all who rode upon her
+may have been dumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One of the
+floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in the previous year by
+the U 121 may have done the fatal rocking, it is true.
+
+There is no better explanation, and I have reason to know that an
+upset of this sort is the theory held by naval builders and naval
+officials generally. But certainly there is none and a satisfying
+answer is not likely to come from the graveyard of the deep.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+ Note--the number in parenthesis after each reference indicates the
+ chapter of this volume concerned.
+
+ “American Versus Italian Brigandage.--Life, Trial and Conviction of W.
+ H. Westervelt,” Philadelphia, 1875. (1)
+
+ Atlay, James Beresford; “The Tichborne Case,” London, 1916. (5)
+
+ Austrian Archives, Letters from the, quoted in the New York _World_,
+ Jan. 10 and 17, 1926. (3)
+
+ Bierce, Ambrose; “Collected Works.” (15)
+
+ Bierce, Ambrose; “Letters of,” Edited by Bertha Pope, San Francisco,
+ 1922. (15)
+
+ Crowe, Pat; “His Story, Confessions and Reformation,” New York, 1906.
+ (8)
+
+ Crowe, Pat; “Spreading Evil,” New York, 1927. (8)
+
+ Faucigny-Lucigne, Mme. de.; “L’Archiduc Jean Salvator,” Paris. (3)
+
+ Faustini, Arnaldo; “Gli Esploratori,” Turin, 1913. (16)
+
+ Faustini, Arnaldo; “Le Memorie dell’ ingegniere Andrée,” Milan, 1914.
+ (16)
+
+ Felstead, Sidney Theodore (and Lady Muir); “Famous Criminals and their
+ Trials,” London and New York, 1926. (5)
+
+ Fisher, H. W.; “The Story of Louise,” New York, 1912. (3)
+
+ Garzon, Eugenio; “Jean Orth,” Paris, 1906. (3)
+
+ Griffiths, Arthur; “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” London, 1902. (5)
+
+ Kenealy, Maurice Edward; “The Tichborne Tragedy,” London, 1913. (5)
+
+ Lachmabre, Henri, and Machuron, A.; “Andrée’s Balloon Expedition in
+ Search of the North Pole,” New York, 1898. (16)
+
+ Larisch, Countess Marie; “My Past,” London and New York, 1913. (3)
+
+ “Letters from Andrée’s Party,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian
+ Institution for 1897. (16)
+
+ Louise of Belgium, Princess; “My Own Affairs,” New York, (3)
+
+ Louise Marie Amélie, Princess of Belgium; “Autour des trônes que j’ai
+ vu tomber,” Paris, 1921. (3)
+
+ Louisa of Tuscany, ex-Crown Princess of Saxony; “My Own Story,” London
+ and New York, 1911. (3)
+
+ McWatters, George S.; “Detectives of Europe and America,” Hartford,
+ 1877-1883. (11)
+
+ Minnigerode, Meade; “Lives and Times.” (2)
+
+ Orton, Arthur; “Confessions of,” London, 1908. (5)
+
+ Parry, Edward Abbott; “Vagabonds All,” London, 1926. (5)
+
+ Parton, James; “Life and Times of Aaron Burr,” Boston and New York,
+ 1898. (2)
+
+ Parton, James; “Famous Americans of Recent Times.” (2)
+
+ Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Blennerhassett, or the Decree of Fate,”
+ Boston, 1901. (2)
+
+ Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Theodosia, the First Gentlewoman of her
+ Times,” Boston, 1907. (2)
+
+ Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, V. 14, 1916. (2)
+
+ Report of the Select Committee of the Parliament of New South Wales on
+ the Case of William Creswell, Sydney, 1900. (5)
+
+ Ross, Christian K.; “Charley Ross,” etc., Philadelphia, 1876; London,
+ 1877. (1)
+
+ Safford, W. H.; “Life of Harman Blennerhassett,” 1850. (2)
+
+ Safford, W. H.; “The Blennerhassett Papers,” Ed. by, Cincinnati, 1864.
+ (2)
+
+ Starrett, Vincent; “Ambrose Bierce,” Chicago, 1920.
+
+ Stoker, Bram; “Famous Impostors,” London. (5)
+
+ Tod, Charles Burr; “Life of Col. Aaron Burr,” etc., pamph., New York,
+ 1879. (2)
+
+ Torelli, Enrico; “Mari d’Altesse,” Paris, 1913. (3)
+
+ Wandell, Samuel and Minnigerode, Meade; “Life of Aaron Burr,” New
+ York, 1925. (2)
+
+ Walling, George W.; “Recollections of a New York Chief of Police,” New
+ York, 1888. (1)
+
+ Westervelt, “Life Trial and Conviction of,” pamph., Philadelphia,
+ 1879. (1)
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+
+Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+Some questionable spellings (e.g. Monterey instead of Monterrey) are
+retained from the original.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***
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-<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***</div>

-

-

-

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp47" id="cover" style="max-width: 112.0625em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">

-</figure>

-

-<h1>MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING</h1>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter"></div>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i004" style="max-width: 122.0625em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i004.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption">

-    <p class="center">~~ SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS ~~</p>

-    <p class="center">The Ross house, Washington Lane, Germantown, Pa.</p>

-    <p class="center"><i>From a sketch by W. P. Snyder</i></p>

-  </figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter"></div>

-

-

-

-<div class="double-border">

-<h2>MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING</h2>

-

-<p class="p2 center"><i>By</i>

-EDWARD H. SMITH</p>

-

-<p class="p2 center small"><i>Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc.</i></p>

-

-<p class="p4 center"></p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp91" id="i005" style="max-width: 5em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i005.jpg" alt="">

-</figure>

-

-

-<p class="p4 center"><span class="small">LINCOLN MAC VEAGH</span><br>

-THE DIAL PRESS<br>

-<span class="small">NEW YORK · MCMXXVII</span>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p class="center">

-Copyright, 1924, by<br>

-<span class="smcap">Street and Smith Corporation</span><br>

-<br>

-Copyright, 1927, by<br>

-<span class="smcap">The Dial Press, Inc.</span></p>

-<p class="p6 center">

-MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br>

-BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p class="center">

-To<br>

-<br>

-JOSEPH A. FAUROT<br>

-<br>

-<span class="small">A GREAT FINDER OF WANTED MEN</span><br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>

-</div>

-

-

-<table>

-<tr><th class="small">CHAPTER</th><th></th><th class="small">PAGE</th></tr>

-<tr><td></td><td><a href="#A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING"><span class="smcap">A Note on Disappearing</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING">xi</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td><a href="#I"><span class="smcap">The Charlie Ross Enigma</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#I">1</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td><a href="#II">“<span class="smcap">Severed from the Race</span>”</a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#II">23</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td><a href="#III"><span class="smcap">The Vanished Archduke</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#III">40</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td><a href="#IV"><span class="smcap">The Stolen Conway Boy</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#IV">65</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td><a href="#V"><span class="smcap">The Lost Heir of Tichborne</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#V">82</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td><a href="#VI"><span class="smcap">The Kidnappers of Central Park</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VI">101</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td><a href="#VII"><span class="smcap">Dorothy Arnold</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VII">120</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td><a href="#VIII"><span class="smcap">Eddie Cudahy and Pat Crowe</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VIII">133</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td><td><a href="#IX"><span class="smcap">The Whitla Kidnapping</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#IX">153</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td><td><a href="#X"><span class="smcap">The Mystery at Highbridge</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#X">171</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td><td><a href="#XI"><span class="smcap">A Nun in Vivisepulture</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XI">187</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td><td><a href="#XII"><span class="smcap">The Return of Jimmie Glass</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XII">203</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td><td><a href="#XIII"><span class="smcap">The Fates and Joe Varotta</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XIII">219</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td><td><a href="#XIV"><span class="smcap">The Lost Millionaire</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XIV">237</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td><td><a href="#XV"><span class="smcap">The Ambrose Bierce Irony</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XV">257</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td><td><a href="#XVI"><span class="smcap">The Adventure of the Century</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XVI">273</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td><td><a href="#XVII"><span class="smcap">Spectral Ships</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XVII">292</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td></td><td><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY"><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY">313</a></td></tr>

-</table>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>

-</div>

-

-

-<table>

-<tr><td><a href="#i004"><span class="smcap">Scene of the Abduction of Charlie Ross</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i004"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>

-<tr><th colspan="2" class="tdr small">TO FACE PAGE</th></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i031"><span class="smcap">Charlie Ross</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i031">10</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i055"><span class="smcap">Theodosia Burr</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i055">32</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i069"><span class="smcap">Millie Stübel</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i069">44</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i083"><span class="smcap">Archduke Johann Salvator</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i083">56</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i123"><span class="smcap">Arthur Orton</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i123">94</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i141"><span class="smcap">Marion Clarke</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i141">110</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i159"><span class="smcap">Dorothy Arnold</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i159">126</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i181"><span class="smcap">Pat Crowe</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i181">146</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i241"><span class="smcap">Jimmie Glass</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i241">204</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i259"><span class="smcap">Joe Varotta</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i259">220</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i281"><span class="smcap">Ambrose J. Small</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i281">240</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i303"><span class="smcap">Ambrose Bierce</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i303">260</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i325"><span class="smcap">Doctor Andrée</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i325">280</a></td></tr>

-<tr><td><a href="#i351"><span class="smcap"><i>U. S. S. Cyclops</i></span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i351">304</a></td></tr>

-</table>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter"></div>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,</i></div>

-    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;</i></div>

-    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And lo, between the nightfall and the light,</i></div>

-    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.</i></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p class="attribution">

-—<i>Laus Veneris.</i><br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING">A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING</h2>

-</div>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit

-wished to bring tidings back no more and never to leave the

-place; there with the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed

-on lotus and forget the homeward way.”</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-<span class="smcap">The Odyssey</span>, Book IX.<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-

-<p>The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand

-and the Sirens from their Campanian isle, but still the

-sons of men go forth to strangeness and forgetfulness.

-What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds

-them in absence, we must try to read from their history,

-their psyche and the chemistry of their wandering souls.

-Some urgent whip of that divine vice, our curiosity,

-drives us to the exploration and will not relent until we

-discover whether they have been devoured by the Polyphemus

-of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or

-simply made drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.</p>

-

-<p>The unreturning adventurer—the man whose destiny

-is hid in doubt—has tormented the imagination in every

-century. In life the lost comrade wakes a more poignant

-curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of the

-true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the

-Etruscans slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila

-die of apoplexy in the arms of Hilda or shall we believe

-the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen and Volsunga sagas or

-the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it the genuine

-Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what

-of the two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of

-Dandhu Panth after he fled into Nepal in 1859; did he

-perish soon or is there truth in the tale of the finger

-burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died

-at Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege

-of the barn at Bloomfield?</p>

-

-<p>These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than

-any other minor facet of history, and the patient searching

-of scholars seems but to add to the popular confusion

-and to the charm of our doubts. Even where research

-seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling

-to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always

-sweeter than a sordid fact.</p>

-

-<p>Even in the modern world, so closely organized, so

-completely explored and so prodigiously policed, those

-enigmas continue to pile up. In our day it is an axiom

-that nothing is harder to lose sight of than a ship at sea

-or a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a paradox.

-It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name from

-a vessel, change her gear and peculiarities a little, paint

-a fresh word upon her side and so conceal her. Simpler

-still, why can’t any man, not too conspicuous or individual,

-step out of the crowd, alter the cut of his

-hair and clothes, assume another name and immediately

-be draped in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annual

-expenditure for ship registry and all sorts of marine

-policing on the one side, and an even greater sum for

-the land police, on the other, to prevent such things?

-Truly enough, and it is the police power of the earth,

-backed by certain plain or obscure motivations in mankind,

-that makes it next to impossible for a ship or a

-man to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.</p>

-

-<p>Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part of

-our argument, we may note that, for all the difficulty,

-thousands of human beings try to vanish every year.

-Plainly there are many circumstances, many crises in

-the lives of men, women and children, that make a

-complete detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay,

-imperative. Yet, of the twenty-five thousand persons

-reported missing to the police of the City of New York

-every year, to take an instance, only a few remain permanently

-undiscovered. Most are mere stayouts or

-young runaways and are returned to their inquiring relatives

-within a few hours or days. Others are deserting

-spouses—husbands who have wearied or wives who have

-found new loves. These sometimes lead long chases before

-they are reported and identified, at which time the

-police have no more to do with the matter unless there

-is action from the domestic courts. A number are suicides,

-whose bodies soon or late rise from the city-engirdling

-waters and are, almost without fail, identified

-by the marvelously efficient police detectives in charge

-of the morgues. Some are pretended amnesics and a few

-are true ones. But in the end the police of the cities

-clear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in the year

-1924, the New York police department had on its books

-only one male and one female uncleared case originating

-in the year of 1918, or six years earlier. At the same

-time there were four male and six female cases dating

-from 1919, three male and one female cases that had

-originated in 1920, no male and three female cases that

-originated in 1921, three male and two female cases of

-the date of 1922, but in 1924 there were still pending,

-as the police say, twenty-eight male and sixty-three

-female cases of the year preceding, 1923.</p>

-

-<p>The point here is that only one man and one woman

-could stay hid from the searching eyes of the law as long

-as six years. Evidently the business of vanishing presents

-some formidable difficulties.</p>

-

-<p>However, it is not even these solitary absentees that

-engage our interest most sharply, for usually we know

-why they went and have some indication that they are

-alive and merely skulking. There is another and far

-rarer genus of the family of the missing, however, that

-does strike hard upon that explosive chemical of human

-curiosity. Here we have those few and detached inexplicable

-affairs that neither astuteness nor diligence, time

-nor patience, frenzy nor faith can penetrate—the true

-romances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment. A man

-goes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he is

-gone from all that knew him, all that was familiar.

-There is a gap in the environment and many lives are

-affected, nearly or remotely. No one knows the why or

-where or how of his going and all the power of men

-and materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass and

-these tales of puzzlement become legends. They are

-then things to brood about before the fire, when the

-moving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness of

-life.</p>

-

-<p>Again, there are those strange instances of the theft

-of human beings by human beings—kidnappings, in the

-usual term. Nothing except a natural cataclysm is so

-excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion that there

-are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the

-public temper may result from such crimes will be seen

-from some of what follows. The most celebrated instance

-is, of course, the affair of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia,

-which carries us back more than half a century.

-We have here the classic American kidnapping case,

-already a tradition, rich in all the elements that make

-the perfect abduction tale.</p>

-

-<p>This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, as

-old as the races. From the Phoenicians who stole babes

-to feed to their bloody divinities, the Minoans who

-raped the youth of Greece for their bull-fights, and the

-priests of many lands who demanded maidens to satisfy

-the wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, down

-to the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or are

-said to steal, children for bridal gifts, we have this dread

-vein running through the body of our history. We need,

-accordingly, no going back into our phylogeny or biology,

-to understand the frenzy of the mother when

-the shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. The

-women of Normandy are said still to whisper with

-trembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or Retz), that

-bold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanne

-d’Arc, who seems to have been a stealer and killer of

-children, instead of the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard,

-as many believe. What terror other kidnappers

-have sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from the

-text.</p>

-

-<p>This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries,

-for such works exist in numbers. The author has

-limited himself to problems of disappearance and cases

-of kidnapping, thereby excluding many twice-told

-wonders—the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,

-Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s

-<i>Femme sans nom</i>, the changeling of Louis Philippe and

-the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair at Mayerling.</p>

-

-<p>Neither have I attempted any technical exploration

-of the conduct and motives of vanishers and kidnappers.

-It must be sufficiently clear that a man unpursued

-who flees and hides is out of tune with his environment,

-ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accent

-again the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included,

-are creatures of disease or defect.</p>

-

-<p>A general bibliography will be found at the end of

-the book. The information to be had from these volumes

-has been liberally supported and amplified from

-the files of contemporary newspapers in the countries

-and cities where these dramas of doubt were played.

-The records of legal trials have been consulted in instances

-where trials took place and I have talked with

-the accessible officials having knowledge of the cases or

-persons here treated.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-E. H. S.<br>

-</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>New York, August, 1927.</p>

-</div>

-

-

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2>MYSTERIES OF THE

-MISSING

-</h2>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA</p>

-

-

-<p>Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh

-of June, 1874, two men in a shabby-covered

-buggy stopped their horse under the venerable

-elms of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy

-suburb of Philadelphia, with its grave-faced revolutionary

-houses and its air of lavendered maturity. All about

-these intruders was historic ground. Near at hand was

-the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington

-and his tattered command in their famous encounter.

-Yonder stood the old Morris Mansion, where

-the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his

-troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous

-Agnew fell before a backwoods rifleman, and

-there Mad Anthony Wayne was forced to decamp by

-the fire of his confused left. Not far away the first

-American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous

-house on the ridge had once been the American Capitol.

-The whole region was a hive of memories.</p>

-

-<p>Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign

-of interest in all these things. Instead, they devoted their

-attention to the two young sons of a grocer who happened

-to be playing among the bushes on their father’s

-property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence

-by the strangers, who offered them sweets and

-asked them who they were, where their parents were

-staying, how old they might be, and how they might

-like to go riding.</p>

-

-<p>The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary,

-tried to respond manfully, as his parents had taught

-him. He said that he was Walter Ross, and that his companion

-was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His mother,

-he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older

-daughters, and his father was busy at the store in the

-business section of the settlement. Yes, that big, white

-house on the knoll behind them was where they lived.

-All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled off

-to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their

-buggy he demurred. The men got pieces of candy from

-their pockets, filled the hands of both children, and

-drove away.</p>

-

-<p>When the father of the boys came home a little later,

-he found his sons busy with their candy, and he was

-told where they had got it. He smiled and felt that the

-two men in the buggy must be very fond of children.

-Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless

-incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was

-the prelude to the most famous of American abduction

-cases and the introduction to one of the abiding mysteries

-of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness

-came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide

-notoriousness—a case of kidnapping that stands firm in

-popular memory after the confusions of fifty-odd years.</p>

-

-<p>On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again.

-This time they had no difficulty in getting the children

-into their wagon.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Saying that they were going to buy

-fire crackers for the approaching Fourth of July, they

-carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and Richmond

-Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was

-given a silver quarter and told to go into a shop and buy

-what he wanted. At the end of five or ten minutes the

-boy emerged to find his brother, his benefactors and

-their buggy gone.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial, the following

-year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this seems unlikely.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his

-home in the toils of a strange city, stood on the curb and

-gave childish vent to his feelings. The sight of the boy

-with his hands full of fireworks and his eyes full of tears,

-soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock finally

-took charge of the youngster and got from him the

-name and address of his father. At about eight o’clock

-that evening he arrived at the Ross dwelling and delivered

-the child, to find that the younger boy had not

-been brought home, and that the father was out visiting

-the police stations in quest of his sons.</p>

-

-<p>In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping

-was not immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile

-reception when the circumstances forced its entertainment.

-The father of the missing Charlie was Christian

-K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was popularly

-supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a

-prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and

-master of a competence. His flourishing trade, the big

-house in which he lived with his wife and seven children,

-and the fine grounds about his home naturally caused

-many to believe that he was a man of large means. In

-view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should

-have been considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited

-the details of his adventure with the men in a

-faithful and detailed way, telling enough about the talk

-and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.

-Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of

-the strangers. Finally, the manœuver of deserting the

-older boy and disappearing with his brother should have

-been sufficiently suggestive for the most lethargic policeman.

-Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the

-skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves

-in the following advertisement, which I take from

-the <i>Philadelphia Ledger</i> of July 3:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age,

-light complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will

-be paid on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner

-of Fifth and Chestnut streets.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal

-the fact of the child’s vanishment from his mother,

-who was not called from her summer resort until some

-days later.</p>

-

-<p>The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on

-their comfortable assumption that the boy had been lost.

-On the fifth, Mr. Ross received a letter which had been

-dated and posted on the day before in Philadelphia. It

-stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the writer,

-that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for

-him through the police, and that the father would hear

-more in a few days. The note was scrawled by some one

-who was trying to conceal his natural handwriting and

-any literate attainments he may have possessed. Punctuation

-and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest

-words were so crazily misspelled as to betray

-purposiveness. The unfortunate father was addressed as

-“Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was later contracted

-to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that

-followed were signed “John.”</p>

-

-<p>Even this communication did not mean much to the

-police, though they had not, at that early stage of the

-mystery, the troublesome flood of crank letters to plead

-as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter of fact, this

-first letter came before there had been anything but

-the briefest and most conservative announcements in the

-newspapers, and it should have been apparent to any one

-that there was nothing fraudulent about it. Yet the police

-officials dawdled. A second message from the

-mysterious John wakened them at last to action.</p>

-

-<p>On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer

-communication, unquestionably from the writer of the

-first, in which he was told that his appeal to the detectives

-would be vain. He must meet the terms of the

-ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the

-murderer of his own child. The writer declared that no

-power in the universe would discover the boy, or restore

-him to his father, without payment of the money, and

-he added that if the father sent detectives too near the

-hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the

-doom of his son. The letter closed with most terrifying

-threats. The kidnappers were frankly out to get money,

-and they would have it, either from Ross or from others.

-If he failed to yield, his child would be slain as an example

-to others, so that they would act more wisely

-when their children were taken. Ross would see his child

-either alive or dead. If he paid, the boy would be brought

-back alive; if not, his father would behold his corpse.

-Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified by

-the insertion of these words into the <i>Ledger</i>: “Ros, we

-be willing to negotiate.”</p>

-

-<p>Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie

-Ross terror burst upon Philadelphia and surrounding

-communities the following morning in full virulence.

-The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going

-road, searched the trains and boats, went through all

-the craft lying in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all

-the known criminals in town and immediately began a

-house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented proceeding

-in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory

-with every fresh edition. At once the mad

-pack of anonymous letter writers took up the cry,

-writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents,

-who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever

-came to their door, a most insulting and disheartening

-array of fulminations which caused the collapse of the

-already overburdened mother.</p>

-

-<p>In the fever which attacked the city any child was

-likely to be seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent,

-to the nearest police station, there to answer the suspicion

-of being Charlie Ross. Mothers with golden-haired

-boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted to

-Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that

-he give them written attestation of the fact that their

-children were not his, and the poor beladen man actually

-wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The madness of the

-public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the

-age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before

-the officials by unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with

-black hair were apprehended by the score at the demand

-of citizens who pleaded that they might be the missing

-boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought

-before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed

-seekers for the missing boy had to be driven

-from the station houses with threats and blows.</p>

-

-<p>Following the command of the child snatchers with

-literal fidelity, Mr. Ross had published in the <i>Ledger</i>

-the words I have quoted. The result was a third epistle

-from the robbers. It recognized his reply, but made no

-definite proposition and gave no further orders, save

-the command that he reply in the <i>Ledger</i>, stating

-whether or not he was ready to pay the twenty thousand

-dollars. On the other hand, the letter continued the

-ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed

-at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked

-whether “Ros” cared more for money or his son. In this

-letter was the same labored effort to appear densely unlettered.

-One new note was added. The writer asked

-whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand

-pounds for the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer

-was, or wanted to seem, a Briton, used to speaking of

-money in British terms. This pretension was continued

-in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search

-for the missing boy in England.</p>

-

-<p>In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross

-relied absolutely on the police and put himself into their

-hands. He asked how he was to reply to the third letter

-and was told that he should pretend to acquiesce in the

-demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding

-them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy.

-But this subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors,

-with the result that a warning letter came to

-Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was told that he

-was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives

-could not help him, and that he must choose at once between

-his money and the life of his child.</p>

-

-<p>Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to

-yield to the demands of the extortioners, and several

-men of means offered him loans or gifts of such funds

-as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he signified

-his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the

-mysterious John wrote him two or three well-veiled

-letters which were intended to test his good faith. At

-this point the father and the abductors seemed about to

-agree, when the officials again intervened and caused

-the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement

-that he would not compound a felony by

-paying money for the return of his child. But this stand

-had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful anxiety

-caused another change of front.</p>

-

-<p>Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effect

-in more than one direction. Its most serious consequence

-was that it gave the abductors the impression

-that they were dealing with a man who did not know

-his own mind, could not be relied upon to keep his

-promises, and was obviously in the control of the officers.

-Accordingly they moved with supercaution and

-began to impose impossible conditions. By this time they

-had written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozen

-letters, each containing more terrifying threats than its

-antecedents. To look this correspondence over at this

-late day is to see the nervousness of the abductors, slowly

-mounting to the point of extreme danger to the child.

-But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was overpersuaded

-by official opinion.</p>

-

-<p>At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunder

-of all blunders was made. Philadelphia was tremulous

-with excitement. The police of every American city

-were looking for the apparition of the boy or his kidnappers.

-Officials in the chief British and Continental

-ports were watching arriving ships for the fugitives,

-and millions of newspaper readers were following the

-case in eager suspense. Naturally the police and the other

-officials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the world

-were upon them. They quite humanly decided on a

-course calculated to bring them celebrity in case of

-success and ample justification in case of failure. In

-other words, they made the gesture typical of baffled

-officialdom, without respect to the safety of the missing

-child or the real interests of its parents. At a meeting

-presided over by the mayor, attended by leading citizens

-and advised by the chiefs of the police, a reward of

-twenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransom

-demanded, was subscribed and advertised. The

-terms called for “evidence leading to the capture and

-conviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross and the

-safe return of the child,” conditions which may be

-cynically viewed as incongruous. The following day the

-chief of police announced that his men, should they

-participate in the successful coup, would claim no part

-of the reward.</p>

-

-<p>All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducement

-to informers, the hope being, apparently, that some

-one inside the kidnapping conspiracy would be bribed

-into revelations. But the actual result was quite the opposite.

-A sudden hush fell upon the writer of the letters.

-Also, there were no more communications in the <i>Ledger</i>.

-A week passed without further word, and the parents

-of the boy were thrown into utter hopelessness. Finally

-another letter came, this time from New York, whereas

-all previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It was

-clear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductors

-to leave the city, and their letter showed that

-they had slipped away with their prisoner, in spite of the

-vaunted precautions.</p>

-

-<p>The next note from the criminals warned Ross in

-terms of impressive finality that he must at once abandon

-the detectives and come to terms. He signified his

-intention of complying by inserting an advertisement in

-the <i>New York Herald</i>, as directed by the abductors.

-They wrote him that they would shortly inform him of

-the manner in which the money was to be paid over.

-Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Ross

-to procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes of

-small denomination. These he was to place in a leather

-traveling bag, which was to be painted white so that it

-might be visible at night. With this bag of money, Ross

-was to board the midnight train for New York on the

-night of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform,

-ready to toss the bag to the track. As soon as he should

-see a bright light and a white flag being waved, he was

-to let go the money, but the train was not to stop until

-the next station was reached. In case these conditions

-were fully and faithfully met, the child would be restored,

-safe and sound, within a few hours.</p>

-

-<p>Ross, after consultation with the police, decided to

-temporize once more. He got the white painted bag, as

-commanded, and took the midnight train, prepared to

-change to a Hudson River train in New York and continue

-his journey to Albany, as the abductors had further

-instructed. But there was no money in the valise.

-Instead, it contained a letter in which Ross said that

-he could not pay until he saw the child before him. He

-insisted that the exchange be made simultaneously and

-suggested that communication through the newspapers

-was not satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed all

-plans to the police. Some closer and secret way of communicating

-must be devised, he wrote.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i031" style="max-width: 81.75em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i031.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ CHARLIE ROSS ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode to

-New York on the rear platform of one train and to

-Albany on another. But the agent of the kidnappers did

-not appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia crestfallen,

-only to find that a false newspaper report had

-caused the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announced

-that Ross was going West to follow up a clew.

-The kidnappers had seen this and decided that their man

-was not going to make the trip to New York and Albany.

-Consequently there was no one along the track to

-receive the valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductors

-would have laughed at the empty police dodge

-of suggesting a closer and secret method of communication—for

-the purpose of betraying the malefactors, of

-course.</p>

-

-<p>From this point on, Ross and the abductors continued

-to argue, through the <i>New York Herald</i>, the question of

-simultaneous exchange of the boy and money. Ross naturally

-took the position that he could not risk being imposed

-on by men who perhaps did not have the child at

-all. The robbers, on their side, contended that they

-could not see any safe way of making a synchronous exchange.

-So the negotiations dragged along.</p>

-

-<p>The New York police entered the case on August 2,

-when Chief Walling sent to Philadelphia for the letters

-received by Mr. Ross from the abductors. They were

-taken to New York by Captain Heins of the Philadelphia

-police, and “Chief Walling’s informant identified

-the writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”</p>

-

-<p>In order to draw the line between fact and fable as

-clearly as possible at this point, I quote from official police

-sources, namely, “Celebrated Criminal Cases of

-America,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain of police, San

-Francisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says that

-his facts have been “verified with the assistance of police

-officials throughout the country.” He continues with

-respect to the Ross case:</p>

-

-<p>“The informant then stated that in April, 1874—the

-year in question—Mosher and Joseph Douglas, alias

-Clark, endeavored to persuade him to participate in the

-kidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt children, while the

-child was playing on the lawn surrounding the family

-residence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)

-The child was to be held until a ransom of fifty

-thousand dollars was obtained, and the informant’s part

-of the plot would be to take the child on a small launch

-and keep it in seclusion until the money was received,

-but he declined to enter into the conspiracy.”</p>

-

-<p>With all due respect to the police and to official versions,

-this report smells strongly of fabrication after the

-fact, as we shall see. It is, however, true that the New

-York police had some sort of information early in August,

-and it may even be true that they had suspicions

-of Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A history

-of subsequent events will give the surest light on this

-disputed point.</p>

-

-<p>The negotiations between Ross and the abductors

-continued in a desultory fashion, without any attempt

-to deliver the child or get the ransom, until toward the

-middle of November. At this time the kidnappers arranged

-a meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.

-Mr. Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousand

-dollars in a package. A messenger was to call for

-this some time during the day. His approach and departure

-had been carefully planned. In case he was

-watched or followed, he would not find the abductors

-on his return, and the child would be killed. Only good

-faith could succeed. Mr. Ross was to insert in the <i>New

-York Herald</i> a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus, Fifth

-Avenue Hotel—instant.” This would indicate his decision

-to pay the money and signify the day he would

-be at the hotel.</p>

-

-<p>Accordingly the father of the missing boy had the

-advertisement published, saying that he would be at the

-hotel with the money “Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.”

-Ross’ brother and nephew kept the tryst, but no messenger

-came for the money, and the last hope of the

-family seemed broken.</p>

-

-<p>The Rosses had long since given up the detectives and

-recognized the futility of police promises. The father of

-the boy had, in his distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentary

-sentiments pertaining to the guardians of

-the law, with the result that the unhappy man was subjected

-to taunt and insult and the questioning of his

-motives. Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkerton

-detectives, who evidently counseled Mr. Ross to act in

-secret. In any event, the appointment at the Fifth Avenue

-Hotel was the last of its kind to be made, though

-Ross and the abductors seemed to have been in contact

-at later dates. Whatever the precise facts may be on this

-point, five months had soon gone by without the recovery

-of the boy, or the apprehension of the kidnappers,

-while search was apparently being made in many countries.

-If, as claimed, Chief Walling of the New York

-police had direct information bearing on the identity

-of the abductors the first week in August, he managed

-a veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and his men failed,

-in four months, to find a widely known criminal who

-was afterward shown to have been in and about New

-York all of that time. Not the police, but a stroke of

-destiny, intervened to break the impasse.</p>

-

-<p>On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglars

-entered the summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt,

-presiding justice of the appellate division of the New

-York supreme court. This mansion stood overlooking

-New York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge section

-of Brooklyn. The villa was then unoccupied, but in the

-course of the preceding summer Justice Van Brunt had

-installed a burglar alarm system which connected with

-a gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt,

-about two hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hot

-weather residence. Holmes Van Brunt occupied his

-house the year around. He was at home on the night in

-question, and the sounding of the gong brought him out

-of bed. He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the young

-man came back with the report that there was a light

-moving in his uncle’s place.</p>

-

-<p>Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men from

-their quarters, armed them with revolvers or shotguns

-and went out to trap the intruders. The house of Justice

-Van Brunt was surrounded by the four men, who

-waited for the burglars to emerge. After half an hour

-two figures were seen to issue from the cellar door and

-were challenged. They answered by opening fire. The

-first was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The second

-ran around the house, only to be intercepted by young

-Van Brunt and shot down, dying instantly.</p>

-

-<p>When the Van Brunts and their servants gathered

-about the wounded man, who was lying on the sodden

-ground in the agony of death, he signified that he wished

-to make a statement. An umbrella was held over him to

-keep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences,

-that he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companion

-was William Mosher. He understood he was dying

-and therefore wished to tell the truth. He and

-Mosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He did

-not know where the child was, but Mosher could tell.

-Mr. Van Brunt told him that Mosher was dead, and the

-body of the other burglar was carried over and exhibited

-to the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the child

-would be returned safely in a few days. On hearing one

-of the party express doubt about his story, Douglas is

-said to have remarked:</p>

-

-<p>“Chief Walling knows all about us and was after us,

-and now he has us.”</p>

-

-<p>Douglas died there on the lawn, with the rain drenching

-his tortured body. Both he and Mosher were identified

-from the police records by officers who had known

-them and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man who had

-seen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantown

-with the two boys, were taken to New York.

-The brother of the kidnapped child, though he was purposely

-kept in the dark as to his mission, immediately

-recognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,

-saying that Douglas was the one who gave the

-candy, and that Mosher had driven the horse. This identification

-was confirmed by the other witness.</p>

-

-<p>The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously

-and hourly expected. But he had not arrived at the end

-of a week, and the police officials immediately moved

-in new directions.</p>

-

-<p>Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt,

-of New York, a former police officer, who was later

-convicted of complicity in the abduction. Westervelt

-and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time

-policeman made a rambling statement containing little

-information, but his sister admitted that she had been

-privy to the matter of the kidnapping. She had known

-for several months, she said, that her husband had kidnapped

-Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted

-in his planning, and did not know where he had kept

-the child hidden, and was unable to give any information.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the

-child to be alive and stated her reasons. She did not believe

-her husband, burglar and kidnapper though he was,

-capable of injuring a child. He had four of his own

-and had always been a good father. The poverty of his

-family had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs.

-Mosher related, she had pleaded with her husband to

-return the stolen boy to his parents, saying that it was

-cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be little

-chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the

-danger to the abductors was becoming greater every

-day. This conversation, she said, had taken place only a

-few days before the Van Brunt burglary and Mosher’s

-death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that

-the child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still

-living.</p>

-

-<p>But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his

-abductors only intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives

-were sent to Europe, to Mexico, to the Pacific

-coast, and to various other places, whither false clews

-pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross

-himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds

-of journeys to look at suspected children in all

-parts of the United States. He spent, according to his

-own account, more than sixty thousand dollars on these

-hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted

-as had all the others. At last, after more than twenty

-years of seeking, Christian K. Ross gave up in despair,

-saying he felt sure the boy must be dead.</p>

-

-<p>For some time after the kidnappers had been killed

-and identified, a large part of the American public suspected

-that Westervelt or Mrs. Mosher, or some one

-connected with them, was detaining the missing child

-for fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its return

-home. The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enough

-to observe, remember and talk. He might, if released,

-give information that would lead to the imprisonment

-of Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,

-steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise.

-The Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, in

-February, 1875, which fixed the penalty for abducting

-or detaining a child at twenty-five years’ imprisonment,

-but the new law contained a proviso that any person or

-persons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriff

-on or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875,

-should be immune from any punishment. At the same

-time Mr. Ross offered a cash reward of five thousand

-dollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no questions

-asked. He named more than half a dozen responsible

-firms at whose places of business the child

-might be left for identification, announcing that all

-these business houses were prepared to pay the reward

-on the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in the

-boy would not be detained.</p>

-

-<p>All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last to

-be reached that the boy was beyond human powers of

-restoration.</p>

-

-<p>To tell what seems to have been the truth—though it

-was suspected at the time—the New York police had

-fairly reliable information on Mosher and Douglas

-soon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though he

-never openly said so, to have been informed by a brother

-of Mosher’s who was on bad terms with the kidnapper.

-Not long afterwards he had Westervelt brought in for

-questioning. That worthy had been dismissed from the

-New York police force a few months earlier for neglect

-of duty or shielding a policy room. His sister was

-Bill Mosher’s (the suspected man’s) wife and it was

-known that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia about

-the time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying,

-by every device, to get himself reinstated as a

-policeman, and Walling held out to him the double bait

-of renewed employment and the whole of the twenty

-thousand dollars of reward offered for the return of

-the boy and the capture of the kidnappers.</p>

-

-<p>Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidity

-seems to have been committed, for though Westervelt

-visited the chief of police no fewer than twenty

-times, he was never trailed to his scores of appointments

-with his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neither

-did the astute guardians of the law get wind of the fact

-that Mosher and Douglas were in and about New York

-most of the time. They failed to find out that Westervelt

-and probably one of the others had been seen with

-the little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed to

-make the least progress in the case, though they had

-definite information concerning the names of the kidnappers,

-both of them experienced criminals with long

-records. It might be hard to discover a more dreadful

-piece of police bluffing and blundering. First the Philadelphia

-and then the New York forces gave the poorest

-possible advice, made the most egregious boasts and

-promises and then proceeded to show the most incredible

-stupidity and lack of organization. A later prosecutor

-summed it all up when he said the police had

-been, at least, honest.</p>

-

-<p>But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed at

-Judge Van Brunt’s house and Douglas had made his dying

-statements, it was easy to lure Westervelt to Philadelphia,

-arrest him, charge him with aiding the kidnappers

-and his wife with having been an accessory. Walter

-Ross had identified Mosher and Douglas as the men who

-had been in the buggy but had never seen Westervelt.

-A neighboring merchant appeared, however, and picked

-him out as the man who had spent half an hour in his

-shop a few weeks after the kidnapping, asking many

-questions about the Rosses, especially as to their financial

-position and the rumor that Christian K. Ross was bankrupt.

-Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge the

-day before Mosher and Douglas broke into the Van

-Brunt house and were killed. A woman appeared who

-had seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn horse-car with

-a child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon reasonably

-clear that the one-time New York policeman had

-conspired with his brother-in-law and the other man to

-seize the boy and get the ransom. Westervelt’s motives

-were rancor at being caught at his tricks and dismissed

-and financial necessity, for he was almost in want after

-his discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparations

-for the kidnapping, had the boy in his charge for

-a time and used his standing as a former officer to hoodwink

-the New York police. He had also had to do with

-some of the ransom letters.</p>

-

-<p>On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trial

-in the Court of Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, Judge

-Elcock presiding. Theodore V. Burgin and George J.

-Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Brunts

-waylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’

-dying story. The witnesses above mentioned told

-their versions of what they had heard and observed. A

-porter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking resort at 74

-Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestial

-hordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Tavern

-drinking and consulting with Mosher and Douglas,

-that he had boasted he could name the kidnappers and

-that he had arranged for secret signals to reveal the

-presence of the two confederates now dead. Chief

-Walling also testified against the man. The jury returned

-a verdict of guilty on three counts of the indictment,

-reaching its decision on September 20, after long deliberation.

-On October 9, Judge Elcock sentenced the

-disgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinement

-at labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.</p>

-

-<p>Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admit

-that the decision against him was just, confess that he

-had taken any part in the kidnapping or yield the least

-hint as to the fate of the unfortunate little boy.</p>

-

-<p>Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearful

-vigil of the parents in such a case. In his book, Christian

-K. Ross recites, without improper emotion, that,

-not counting the cases looked into for him by the Pinkertons,

-he personally or through others investigated two

-hundred and seventy-three children reported to be the

-lost Charlie. In every case there was a mistake or a deception.

-Some of the lads put forward were old enough

-to have been conventional uncles to him.</p>

-

-<p>In the following decades many strange rumors were

-bruited, many false trails followed to their empty endings,

-and many spurious or unbalanced claimants investigated

-and exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did not

-die down for a full generation, and even to-day mothers

-in the outlying States frighten their children into

-obedience with the name and rumor of this stolen boy.

-He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of pathos

-and terror for the generations.</p>

-

-<p>As recently as June 5 of the current year, the <i>Los

-Angeles Times</i>, a journal staid to reaction, printed long

-and credulous sticks of type to the effect that John W.

-Brown, ill in the General Hospital of Los Angeles, was

-really the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue “confessed”

-that he had remained silent for fifty years in

-order to “guard the honor of my mother” and said he

-had been kidnapped by his “foster-father, William

-Henry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross “declined

-to have anything further to do with him.”</p>

-

-<p>Comment upon such caddism can be clinical only.

-The fact that the wretch who uttered it was sick and

-dying alone explains the fevered hallucination.</p>

-

-<p>As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind of

-an item suggesting the discovery of Charlie Ross is always

-good copy and will be telegraphed about the

-country from end to end, and printed at greater or

-lesser length. If the thing has the least aura of credibility

-about it, Sunday features will follow, remarkable

-mainly for their inaccuracies. In other words, that sad

-little boy of Washington Lane long since became a classic

-to the American press.</p>

-

-<p>At the end of more than fifty years the commentator

-can hazard no safer opinion on the probable fate of

-Charlie Ross than did his contemporaries. The popular

-theories then were that he had died of grief and privation,

-that Mosher had drowned him in New York Bay

-when he felt the police were near at hand, or that he

-had been adopted by some distant family and taught to

-forget his home and parents. Of these hollow guesses,

-the reader may take his choice now as then.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”</p>

-

-

-<p>Headless horsemen and other strange ghostly

-figures march nightly on the beach at Nag’s

-Head. For more than two years these shades

-and spectres have been seen and Coast Guardsman

-Steve Basnight has been trying vainly to convince his

-fellows. They have laughed upon him with sepulchral

-laughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. They

-have chided him as a seer of visions, a mad hallucinant.</p>

-

-<p>But now there are others who have seen and fled. Mrs.

-Alice Grice, passing the lonely sands in her motor, had

-trouble with the engine and saw or thought she saw

-a man standing there, brooding across the waters. She

-called to him and he, as one shaken from some immortal

-reverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seeming

-quite to walk, but floating into the fog, silent and serene.</p>

-

-<p>Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglers

-or rum runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyes

-of terror. But that cannot be so, for the coast guard is

-staunch and active. This is no ordinary visitor, no thing

-of flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restless

-spirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave and

-come to haunt this wild and forlorn region.</p>

-

-<p>George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelled

-being most closely and accurately. It is a tall,

-great man, clad in purest white, strolling along the

-beach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer than

-the sad and dreaming face.</p>

-

-<p>It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter,

-whose wrecked ship is believed by many to have been

-driven ashore at this point.</p>

-

-<p>So much for the lasting charm of doubt, since I take

-my substance here, and most of my mystery, from the

-<i>New York World</i> of June 9, 1927, contained in a dispatch

-from Manteo, N. C., bearing the date of the previous

-day—one hundred and fifteen years after the

-happening.</p>

-

-<p>But if we see Aaron Burr ghostwalking in the moonlight

-as once he trod in the tortured flesh at the Battery,

-looking out upon those bitter waters that denied him

-hope, or if we believe, with many writers, that he fell

-upon his knees and cried out, “By this blow I am severed

-from the human race!” we are still not much nearer to

-the pathos or the mystery of that old incident in 1812,

-when Theodosia Burr set out for New York by sea

-and never reached it.</p>

-

-<p>“By and by,” says Parton in his “The Life and Times

-of Aaron Burr,” “some idle tales were started in the

-newspapers, that the <i>Patriot</i> had been captured by pirates

-and all on board murdered except Theodosia, who

-was carried on shore as a captive.”</p>

-

-<p>Idle tales they may have been, but their vitality has

-outlived the pathetic facts. Indeed, unless probability

-be false and romance true, “the most brilliant woman of

-her day in America” perished at sea a little more than

-a hundred and fifteen years ago, caught off the Virginia

-Capes in a hurricane that scattered the British war fleet

-and crushed the “miserable little pilot boat” that was

-trying to bear her to New York. In that more than

-a century of intervening time, however, a tradition of

-doubt has clouded itself about the quietus of Aaron

-Burr’s celebrated daughter which puts her story immovably

-upon the roster of the great mysteries of disappearance.

-The various accounts of piratical atrocities

-connected with her death may be fanciful or even

-studiedly fictive, but even this realization does nothing

-to dispel the fog.</p>

-

-<p>Theodosia Burr was born in New York in 1783 and

-educated under the unflagging solicitude and careful

-personal direction of her distinguished father, who

-wanted her to be, as he testifies in his letters, the equal

-of any woman on earth. To this enlightened training

-the precious girl responded with notable spirit and intellectual

-acquisitiveness, mastering French as a child

-and becoming proficient in Latin and Greek before she

-was adolescent. At fourteen, her mother having died

-some years earlier, she was already mistress of the house

-of the New York senator and a figure in the best political

-society of the times. As a slip of a girl she played

-hostess to Volney, Talleyrand, Jerome Bonaparte and

-numberless other notables, and bore, in addition to her

-repute as a bluestocking, the name of a most beautiful

-and charming young woman. Something of her quality

-may be read from her numerous extant letters, two of

-which are quoted below.</p>

-

-<p>In 1801, just after her father had received the famous

-tied vote for the Presidency and declined to enter into

-the conspiracy which aimed to prefer him to Jefferson,

-recipient of the popular majority, Theodosia Burr was

-married to Joseph Alston, a young Carolina lawyer and

-planter who later became governor of his state. Thus,

-about the time her father was being installed as Vice-President,

-his happy and adoring daughter, his friend

-and confidante to the end, was making her twenty days’

-journey to her new home in South Carolina, where her

-husband owned a residence in Charleston and several

-rice plantations in the northern part of the state.</p>

-

-<p>At the time of the famous duel with Hamilton, in

-1804, Burr was still Vice-President, still one of the chief

-political figures and at the very height of his popularity

-and fortune, an elevation from which that unfortunate

-encounter began his dislodgment. Theodosia

-was in the South with her husband at the time and knew

-nothing either of the challenge or of the duel itself until

-weeks after Hamilton was dead.</p>

-

-<p>Of the merits of the Burr-Hamilton controversy or

-the right and wrong of either man’s conduct little need

-be said here. As time goes on it becomes more and more

-apparent that Burr in no way exceeded becoming conduct

-or violated the gentlemanly code as then practised.

-Hamilton had been his persistent and by no means always

-honorable enemy. He had attacked and not infrequently

-belied his opponent, thwarting him where

-he could politically and even resorting to the use of his

-personal connections for the private humiliation of his

-foe. The answer in 1804 to such tactics was the challenge.

-Burr gave it and insisted on satisfaction. Hamilton

-met him on the heights at Weehawken, across the

-Hudson from New York, and fell mortally wounded

-at the first exchange, dying thirty-one hours later.</p>

-

-<p>It is evident from a reading of the newspapers of the

-time and from the celebrated sermon on Hamilton’s

-death delivered by Dr. Nott, later president of Union

-College, that duelling was then so common that there

-existed “a preponderance of opinion in favor of it,”

-and that the spot at which Hamilton fell was so much

-in use for affairs of honor that Dr. Nott apostrophized

-it as “ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned with the

-richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record against

-us, the annual register of murders which you keep and

-send up to God!” Nevertheless, the town was shocked

-by the death of Hamilton, and Burr’s enemies seized the

-moment to circulate all manner of absurd calumnies

-which gained general credence and served to undo the

-victorious antagonist.</p>

-

-<p>It was reported that Hamilton had not fired at all, a

-story which was refuted by his powder-stained empty

-pistol. Next it was charged that Burr had coldly shot his

-opponent down after he had fired into the air. The fact

-seems to be that Hamilton discharged his weapon a

-fraction of a second after Burr, just as he was struck by

-his adversary’s ball. Hamilton’s bullet cut a twig over

-Burr’s head. The many yarns to the general effect that

-Burr was a dead shot and had practised secretly for

-months before he sent the challenge seem also to belong

-to the realm of fiction. Burr was never an expert with

-fire-arms, but he was courageous, collected and determined.

-He had every right to believe, from Hamilton’s

-past conduct, that his opponent would show him no

-mercy on the field. Both men were soldiers and acquainted

-with the code and with the use of weapons.</p>

-

-<p>But Hamilton’s friends were numerous, powerful and

-bitter. They left nothing undone that might bring

-upon Burr the fullest measure of public and private

-reprehension. The results of their campaign were peculiar,

-inasmuch as Burr lost his influence in the states

-which had formerly been the seat of his power and

-gained a high popularity in the comparatively weak new

-western states, where Hamilton and the Federalist leaders

-were regarded with hostility. At the expiration of his

-term of office Burr found himself politically dead and

-practically exiled by the charges of murder which had

-been lodged against him both in New York and New

-Jersey.</p>

-

-<p>The duel and its consequences marked the beginning

-of the Burr misfortunes. Undoubtedly the ostracism

-which greeted him after his retirement from office was

-the immediate fact which moved him to undertake his

-famous enterprise against the West and Mexico, an

-adventure that resulted in his trial for treason. The fact

-that he was acquitted, even with the weight of the

-government and the personal influence of President

-Jefferson, his onetime friend, thrown against him, did

-not save him from still further popular dislike, and he

-was at length forced to leave the country. It was in the

-course of this exile in Europe that Theodosia wrote him

-the well known letter from which I quote an illuminating

-extract:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder

-at every new misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,

-you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other

-men; I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,

-admiration, reverence, love and pride, that very little

-superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a

-superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite

-in me. When I afterwards revert to myself, how insignificant

-my best qualities appear. My vanity would be greater if I

-had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is our

-relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter

-of such a man.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Burr remained abroad for four years, trying vainly to

-interest the British government and then Napoleon in

-various schemes of privateering. The net result of his

-activities in England was an order to leave the country.

-Nor did Burr fare any better in France. Napoleon

-simply refused to receive him and the American’s past

-acquaintance with and hospitable treatment of the emperor’s

-brother, once king of Westphalia, failed to avail

-him. Consequently, Burr slipped back into the United

-States in 1812, quite like a thief in the night, not certain

-what reception he might get and even fearful lest Hamilton’s

-wildest partisans might actually undertake to

-throw him into jail and try him for the shooting of their

-chief. The reception he got was hostile and suspicious

-enough, but there was no attempt to proceed legally.</p>

-

-<p>Theodosia, who had never ceased to work in her

-father’s interest, writing to everyone she knew and beseeching

-all those who had been her friends in the days

-of Burr’s ascendancy, in an effort to clear the way for

-his return to his native land, was overjoyed at the homecoming

-of her parent and expressed her pleasure in various

-charmingly written letters, wherein she promised

-herself the excitement of a trip to New York as soon

-as arrangements could be made.</p>

-

-<p>But the Burr cup of misfortune was not yet full.

-That summer Theodosia’s only child, Aaron Burr Alston,

-sickened and died in his twelfth year, leaving the

-mother prostrated and the grandfather, who had doted

-on the boy, supervised his education and centered all

-his hopes upon him, bereft of his composure and optimism,

-possibly for the first time in his varied and

-tempestuous life. Mrs. Alston’s letters at this time deserve

-at least quotation:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“A few miserable days past, my dear father, and your late

-letters would have gladdened my soul; and even now I rejoice

-in their contents as much as it is possible for me to

-rejoice at anything; but there is no more joy for me; the

-world is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child is gone for

-ever. He expired on the thirtieth of June. My head is not

-sufficiently collected to say any thing further. May Heaven,

-by other blessings, make you some amends for the noble

-grandson you have lost.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>And again:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Whichever way I turn the same anguish still assails me.

-You talk of consolation. Ah! you know not what you have

-lost. I think Omnipotence could give me no equivalent for

-my boy; no, none—none.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>This was the woman who set out a few months later,

-sadly emaciated and very weak, to join her father in

-New York, hoping that she might gain strength and

-hope again from the burdened but undaunted man who

-never yet had failed her.</p>

-

-<p>The second war with England was in progress. Theodosia’s

-husband was governor of South Carolina, general

-of the state militia and active in the field. He could

-not leave his post. Accordingly, the plan of making the

-trip overland in her own coach was abandoned and

-Mrs. Alston decided to set sail in the <i>Patriot</i>, a small

-schooner which had put into Charleston after a privateering

-enterprise. Parton says that “she was commanded

-by an experienced captain and had for a sailing

-master an old New York pilot, noted for his skill and

-courage. The vessel was famous for her sailing qualities

-and it was confidently expected she would perform the

-voyage to New York in five or six days.” On the other

-hand, Burr himself referred to the ship bitterly as “the

-miserable little pilot boat.”</p>

-

-<p>Whatever the precise facts, the <i>Patriot</i> was made

-ready and Theodosia went aboard with her maid and

-a personal physician, whom Burr had sent south from

-New York to attend his daughter on the voyage. The

-guns of the <i>Patriot</i> had been dismounted and stored

-below. To give her further ballast and to defray the

-expenses of the trip, Governor Alston filled the hold

-with tierces of rice from his plantations. The captain

-carried a letter from Governor Alston addressed to the

-commander of the British fleet, which was lying off the

-Capes, explaining the painful circumstances under

-which the little schooner was voyaging and requesting

-safe passage to New York. Thus occupied, the <i>Patriot</i>

-put out from Charleston on the afternoon of December

-30th and crossed the bar on the following morning.

-Here fact ends and conjecture begins.</p>

-

-<p>When, after the elapse of a week, the <i>Patriot</i> had not

-reached New York, Burr began to worry and to make

-inquiries, but nothing was to be discovered. He could

-not even be sure until the arrival of his son-in-law’s

-letter, that Theodosia had set sail. Even then, he hoped

-there might be some mistake. When a second letter

-from the South made it plain that she had gone on the

-<i>Patriot</i>, Burr still did not abandon hope and we see the

-picture of this sorely punished man walking every day

-from his law office in Nassau street to the fashionable

-promenade at the Battery, where he strolled up and

-down, oblivious to the hostile or impertinent glances of

-the vulgar, staring out toward the Narrows—in vain.</p>

-

-<p>The poor little schooner was never seen again nor did

-any member of her crew reach safety and send word of

-her end. In due time came the report of the hurricane

-off Cape Hatteras, three days after the departure of the

-<i>Patriot</i>. Later still it was found that the storm had

-been of sufficient power to scatter the British fleet and

-send other vessels to the bottom. In all probability the

-craft which bore Theodosia had foundered with all

-hands.</p>

-

-<p>Naturally, every other possibility came to be considered.

-It was at first believed that the <i>Patriot</i> might

-have been taken by a British man-of-war and held on

-account of her previous activities. Before this could be

-disproved it was suggested that the schooner might

-readily have been attacked by pirates, since her guns

-were stored below decks, and Mrs. Alston taken

-prisoner. Since there were still a few buccaneers in

-Southern waters, who sporadically took advantage of

-the preoccupation of the maritime powers with their

-wars, this theory of Theodosia Alston’s disappearance

-gained many adherents, chiefly among the romantics,

-it is true. But the possibility of such a thing was also

-seriously considered by the husband and for a time by

-the father, who hoped the unfortunate woman might

-have been taken to one of the lesser West Indies by some

-not unfeeling corsair. Surely, she would soon or late

-make her escape and win her way back to her dear ones.

-In the end Burr rejected this idea, too.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i055" style="max-width: 82.5em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i055.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ THEODOSIA BURR ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>“No, no,” he said to a friend who revived the fable

-of the pirates, “she is indeed dead. Were she alive all

-the prisons in the world could not keep her from her

-father.”</p>

-

-<p>But the mystery persisted and so the rumors and

-stories would not down. For a number of years after

-1813 the newspapers contained, from time to time, reports

-from various parts of the world, generally to the

-effect that a beautiful and cultured woman had been

-seen aboard a ship supposed to be manned by pirates,

-that such a woman had been found in a colony of sea

-refugees in some vaguely described West Indian or

-South American retreat, or that a woman of English

-or American characteristics was being detained in an

-island prison, whither she had been consigned along with

-a captured piratical crew. The woman was always, by

-inference at least, Theodosia Burr.</p>

-

-<p>Nor were the persevering Burr calumniators idle, a

-circumstance which seems to testify to the fear his

-enemies must have had of this strange and greatly mistaken

-man. Theodosia Burr had been seen in Europe in

-company with a British naval officer who was paying

-her marked attentions; she had been located on an island

-off Panama, where she was living in contentment

-as the wife of a buccaneer; she was known to be in

-Mexico with a new husband who had first been her

-captor, then her lover and now was in the southern Republic

-trying to revive Burr’s dream of empire.</p>

-

-<p>The death of Governor Alston in 1816 caused a fresh

-crop of the old stories to blossom forth and the long

-deferred demise of Aaron Burr in 1836 released a still

-more formidable crop of rumors, fables and speculations.

-It was not until Burr had passed into the grave

-that there appeared on the American scene a type of

-romantic who made the next fifty years delightful. He

-was the old reformed pirate who desecrated his exit into

-eternity with a Theodosia Burr yarn. The great celebrity

-of the woman in her lifetime, the tragic fame of her

-father and the circumstances of her death naturally

-conspired to promote this kind of aberrant activity in

-many idle or unsettled minds. The result was that “pirates”

-who had been present at the capture of the <i>Patriot</i>

-in the first days of 1813 began to appear in many

-parts of the country and even in England, where they

-told, usually on their deathbeds, the most engaging and

-conflicting tales. It took, as I have remarked, half a

-century for all of them to die off.</p>

-

-<p>The accounts given by these various confessors differed

-in details only. All agreed that the <i>Patriot</i> had

-been captured by sea rovers off the Carolina coast and

-that the entire crew had been forced to walk the plank

-or been cut down by the pirates. Thus the fabulists accounted

-for the fact that nothing had ever been heard

-from any of Mrs. Alston’s shipmates. Nearly all accounts

-agreed that Theodosia had been carried captive

-to an unnamed island where she had first been a rebellious

-prisoner but later the docile and devoted mate

-of the pirate chief. A few of the relators gave their

-narratives the spice of novelty by insisting that she, too,

-had been made to walk the plank into the heaving sea,

-after she had witnessed all her shipmates consigned to

-the same fate. The names of the pirate ships and pirate

-captains supposed to have caught the <i>Patriot</i> and disposed

-of Theodosia Burr Alston ranged through all the

-lists of shipping. No two dying corsairs ever agreed on

-this point.</p>

-

-<p>Forty years after the disappearance of Mrs. Alston

-this typical yarn appeared in the <i>Pennsylvania Enquirer</i>:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“An item of news just now going the rounds relates that

-a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on his death bed that

-he was one of the crew of mutineers who, some forty years

-ago, took possession of a brig on its passage from Charleston

-to New York and caused all the officers and passengers to

-walk the gang plank. For forty years the wretched man had

-carried about the dreadful secret and died at last in an agony

-of despair.</p>

-

-<p>“What gives the story additional interest is the fact that

-the vessel referred to is the one in which Mrs. Theodosia

-Alston, the beloved daughter of Aaron Burr, took passage

-for New York, for the purpose of meeting her parent in the

-darkest days of his existence, and which, never having been

-heard of, was supposed to have been foundered at sea.</p>

-

-<p>“The dying sailor professed to remember her well and said

-she was the last who perished, and that he never forgot her

-look of despair as she took the last step from the fatal plank.

-On reading this account, I regarded it as fiction; but on conversing

-with an officer of the navy he assured me of its probable

-truth and stated that on one of his passages home

-several years ago, his vessel brought two pirates in irons who

-were subsequently executed at Norfolk for recent offenses,

-and who, before their execution, confessed that they had been

-members of the same crew and had participated in the murder

-of Mrs. Alston and her companions.</p>

-

-<p>“Whatever opinion may be entertained of the father, the

-memory of the daughter must be revered as one of the loveliest

-and most excellent of American woman, and the revelation

-of her untimely fate can only serve to invest that

-memory with a more tender and melancholy interest.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and their

-obvious conflict with known facts, the public took the

-dying confessions seriously and the editors of Sunday

-supplements printed them with a gay air of credence

-and a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was accomplished

-by this complicity with a most unashamed

-and unregenerate band of downright liars, the pirate

-legend came to be disseminated in every civilized country

-and there was gradually built up the great false

-tradition which hedges the name and fame of Theodosia

-Burr. She has even appeared in novels, American, British

-and Continental, in the shape of a mysterious queen

-of freebooters.</p>

-

-<p>The celebrity of her case came to be such that it was

-in time seized upon by the art fakers—perhaps an inevitable

-step toward genuine famosity. Several authentic

-likenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant, notably the

-painting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery,

-Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston,

-N. Y., whom Burr discovered, apprenticed to

-Gilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for study. He painted

-the landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of the

-Capitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neither

-restrained nor satisfied the freebooters of the arts. On

-the other hand, the pirate tales inspired them to profitable

-activity.</p>

-

-<p>In the nineties of the last century the New York

-newspapers contained accounts of a painting of Theodosia

-Burr which had been found in an old seashore cottage

-near Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwards

-made famous by the gliding experiments of the brothers

-Wright, and the scene of their first successful airplane

-flights. The printed accounts said that this picture had

-been found on an old schooner which had been wrecked

-off the coast many years before and various inconclusive

-and roundabout devices were employed for identifying

-it as a likeness of the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.</p>

-

-<p>Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most florid

-publicity in New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently,

-given out by one of the prominent Fifth Avenue

-art dealers. A woman client, it was said, had become interested

-in the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr,

-recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of North

-Carolina. Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken a

-search for the missing work of art and had at length

-recovered it, together with a most fascinating history.</p>

-

-<p>In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of Elizabeth

-City, N. C., spent the summer at Nag’s Head, a resort

-on the outer barrier of sand which protects the North

-Carolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape Hatteras.

-While there he was called to visit an aged woman

-who lived in an ancient cabin about two miles out of

-the town. His ministrations served to recover her health

-and she expressed the wish to pay him in some way

-other than with money, of which useful commodity she

-had none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerable

-curiosity, a most beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful,

-proud and intelligent lady of high social standing.”

-He immediately coveted this picture and asked his

-patient for it, since she wanted to give him something in

-return for his leechcraft. She not only gave him the

-portrait but she told him how she had come by it. Many

-years before, when she was still a girl, the old woman’s

-admirer and subsequent first husband had, with some

-others, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, which

-had stranded with all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfast

-served but undisturbed in the cabin. The pilot boat

-was empty and several trunks had been broken open,

-their contents being scattered about. Among the salvaged

-goods was this portrait, which had fallen to the

-lot of the old woman’s swain and come through him to

-her.</p>

-

-<p>From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture had

-passed to others without ever having left Elizabeth

-City. There the enterprising dealer had found it in the

-possession of a substantial widow, and she had consented

-to part with it. The rest of the story—the essentials—was

-to be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to be

-sure, the <i>Patriot</i>, the date of its stranding agreed with

-the beclouded incidents of January, 1813, and the “intelligent

-lady of high social standing” was none other

-than Theodosia Burr.</p>

-

-<p>It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelous

-and romantic work do not show the least resemblance

-to the known portrait of Theodosia, and it is

-also lamentable to find that the art dealer, in his sweet

-account of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptions

-and blunders as regards his subject and the tales of

-her demise. But, while both these portrait yarns may be

-dismissed without further attention, they have undoubtedly

-served to keep the old and enchanting story

-before modern eyes.</p>

-

-<p>In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of the

-Theodosia Burr case seems to be the acceptable one. The

-boat on which she embarked was small and frail. At

-the very time it must have been passing the treacherous

-region of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficient

-violence to scatter the heavy British frigates and

-ships of the line. The fate of a little schooner in such

-weather is almost a matter for assurance. Yet of certainty

-there can be none. The famous daughter of the

-traditional American villain—the devil incarnate to all

-the melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers and

-propagandists—went down to sea in her cockleshell and

-returned no more. Eleven decades have lighted no

-candle in the darkness that engulfed her.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE</p>

-

-

-<p>One of the most engrossing of modern mysteries

-is that which hides the final destination

-of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, better

-known to a generation of newspaper readers as John

-Orth. In the dawn of July 13, 1890, the bark <i>Santa

-Margarita</i>,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> flying the flag of an Austrian merchantman,

-though her owner and skipper was none other

-than this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs,

-set sail from Ensenada, on the southern shore of the

-great estuary of the Plata, below Buenos Aires, and

-forthwith vanished from the earth. With her went Johann

-Salvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew of

-twenty-six. Though search has been made in every

-thinkable port, through the distant archipelagoes of the

-Pacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and though

-emissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missing

-men, from time to time, over a period of nearly forty

-years, no sight of any one connected with the lost ship

-has ever been got, and no man knows with certainty

-what fate befell her and her princely master.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>The enigma of his passing is not the only circumstance

-of curious doubt and romantic coloration that

-hedges the career of this imperial adventurer. His story,

-from the beginning, is one marked with dramatic incidents.

-As much of it as bears upon the final episode

-will have to be related.</p>

-

-<p>The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florence

-on the twenty-fifth day of November, 1852, the youngest

-son of Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany, and

-Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly,

-a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef of

-Austria-Hungary. At the baptismal font young Johann

-received enough names to carry any man blissfully

-through life, his full array having been Johann

-Nepomuk Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand Balthazar

-Louis Gonzaga Peter Alexander Zenobius Antonin.</p>

-

-<p>Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italian

-revolutionists drove out his father and later united Tuscany

-to the growing kingdom of Victor Emanuel. So

-the hero of this account was reared in Austria and educated

-for the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he rose

-rapidly in rank for reasons quite other than his family

-connections. The young prince was endowed with a

-good mind and notable for independence of thought.

-He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn his

-pay, an opinion which led to indefatigable military

-studies and some well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings.

-First, the young archduke discovered what he considered

-faults in the artillery, and he wrote a brochure

-on the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and had

-him disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of military

-organization and wrote a well-known pamphlet

-called “Education or Drill,” wherein he attacked the

-old method of training soldiers as automatons and advised

-the mental development of the rank and file, in

-line with policies now generally adopted. But such advanced

-ideas struck the military masters of fifty years

-ago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johann

-was disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawal

-of his commission. At thirty-five he had reached

-next to the highest possible rank and been cashiered

-from it. This in 1887.</p>

-

-<p>Johann Salvator had, however, been much more than

-a progressive soldier man. He was an accomplished musician,

-composer of popular waltzes, an oratorio and the

-operetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and publicist,

-of eminent official standing at least, having collaborated

-with Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributed

-work, “The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in

-Word and Picture,” which was published in 1886. He

-was also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena,

-his library on this subject having been the most

-complete in Europe—a fact suggestive of something

-abnormal.</p>

-

-<p>Personally the man was both handsome and charming.

-He was, in spite of imperial rank and military habitude,

-democratic, simple, friendly, and unaffected. He

-liked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse interests

-in life, now playing the gallant in Vienna—to

-the high world of the court and the half world of the

-theater by turns; again retiring to his library and his

-studies, sometimes vegetating at his country estates and

-working on his farms. Official trammels and the rigid

-etiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still,

-he seems to have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissal

-from the army.</p>

-

-<p>Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a close

-personal friend of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacy

-had extended even to participation in some of

-the personal and sentimental escapades for which the ill-starred

-Rudolf was remarkable. Apparently the two

-men hardly held an opinion apart, and it was accepted

-that, with the death of the aging emperor and the accession

-of his son, Johann Salvator would be a most

-powerful personage.</p>

-

-<p>Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promises

-came to earth. After some rumblings and rumorings at

-Schoenbrunn, it was announced that Johann Salvator

-had petitioned the emperor for permission to resign all

-rank and title, sever his official connection with the

-royal house, and even give up his knighthood in the

-Order of the Golden Fleece. The petitioner also asked

-for the right to call himself Johann Orth, after the

-estate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was the

-favorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother.

-All these requests were officially granted and confirmed

-by the emperor, and so the man John Orth came into

-being.</p>

-

-<p>The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behind

-the official records of this strange resignation from

-rank and honor. Even to-day, after Orth has been

-missing for a whole generation, after all those who

-might have been concerned in keeping secret the motives

-and measures of those times have been gathered to

-the dust, and after the empire itself has been dissolved

-into its defeated components, the facts in the matter

-cannot be stated with any confidence. There are two

-principal versions of the affair, and both will have to

-be given so that the reader may make his own choice.

-The popular or romantic account deserves to be considered

-first.</p>

-

-<p>In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced by

-several handsome young women of the name Stübel.

-One of them, Lori, achieved considerable operatic distinction.

-Another sailed to New York with her brother

-and appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at the

-old Casino. The youngest of these sisters was Ludmilla

-Stübel, commonly called Millie, and on that account

-sometimes, erroneously, Emilie.</p>

-

-<p>This daring and charming girl began her career in a

-Viennese operetta chorus and rose to the rank of

-principal. She was not, so far as I can gather from the

-contemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice or

-dramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuous

-beauty and piquant manners” won her almost limitless

-attention and gave her a popularity that reached across

-the Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein Stübel appeared

-at the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York,

-then the shrine of German comic opera in the United

-States, creating the rôles of <i>Bettina</i> in “The Mascot”

-and <i>Violette</i> in “The Merry War.”</p>

-

-<p>The <i>New York Herald</i>, reviewing her American

-career a few years later, said: “In New York she became

-somewhat notorious for her risqué costumes. On one

-occasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in male

-costume, and created a scene when ejected. This conduct

-seems to have ended her career in the United

-States.”</p>

-

-<p>This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into the

-ken of Johann Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888,

-when that impetuous prince had already been dismissed

-from the army and his other affairs were gathering to

-the storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophic

-events followed rapidly.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i069" style="max-width: 82.0625em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i069.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ MILLIE STÜBEL ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead in

-the hunting lodge at Mayerling, with the Baroness

-Marie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a hundred kings is

-said to have been passionately devoted, and with whom

-he may have died in a suicide pact, though it has been

-said the crown prince and his sweetheart were murdered

-by persons whose identity has been sedulously concealed.

-This mysterious fatality robbed the dispirited Johann

-Salvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It may

-have had a good deal to do with what followed.</p>

-

-<p>A few months later Johann Salvator married morganatically

-his stage beauty. It was now, after the lapse

-of a few months, that he resigned all rank, title, and

-privileges, left Austria with his wife, and married her

-civilly in London.</p>

-

-<p>Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the

-death of the crown prince and the romance with the

-singer explained everything. The archduke, in disgrace

-with the army, bereft of his truest and most illustrious

-friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could

-not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the

-purple of his birth, had decided to “surrender all for

-love” and seek solace in foreign lands with the lady of

-his choice. This interpretation has all the elements of

-color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds

-of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to

-bear skeptical examination.</p>

-

-<p>Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was

-a man of independent mind and quixotic temperament,

-that he was embittered by his demotion from military

-rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by

-the death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend

-and his most powerful intercessor at court, no such extreme

-proceeding as the renunciation of all rank and

-the severing of family ties was called for.</p>

-

-<p>It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an

-affair with a woman of inferior rank, had embittered

-Franz Josef and probably caused the monarch to look

-with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among

-the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the

-morganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shining

-moth of the theater displeased the monarch and

-widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but

-it must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only

-a distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in line

-for succession to the throne; that he had already been

-deprived of military or other official connection with

-the government; and that affairs of this kind have been

-by no means rare among Hapsburg scions.</p>

-

-<p>Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been,

-he was no Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had

-not been quite free of sentimental episodes, and he was,

-after all, the heir to the proudest tradition in all Europe,

-head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and a

-believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have

-looked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommon

-or specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciation

-of rank and privilege can only have struck him as

-a precedent of the gravest kind.</p>

-

-<p>Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme

-step because of his histrionic wife. He might have

-remained in Austria happily enough, aside from a few

-snubs and the exclusion from further official participation

-in politics. He might have gone to any country in

-Europe and become the center of a distinguished society.

-His children would probably have been ennobled,

-and even his wife eventually given the same sort of

-recognition that was accorded the consorts of other

-princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz

-Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitated

-the World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the most

-complete and unprecedented severance from all that

-seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to

-interpret this action in another light, and their explanation

-forms the second version of the incident, probably

-the true one.</p>

-

-<p>In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles

-for hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

-had been elected Prince of Bulgaria, but

-Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and the

-other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise

-refrained from giving their approval. Austria was in a

-specially delicate position as regards this matter. She was

-the natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans,

-but her statesmen did not feel strong enough

-openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had

-their eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand

-had been an officer in the Austrian army. He was well

-liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regard

-of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the

-present question is that he was the friend of Johann

-Salvator.</p>

-

-<p>In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia

-attempted to drive the unwelcome German princeling

-from the Bulgarian throne by various military cabals,

-acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues, and the like.

-Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries

-rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It

-is known that he interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand,

-and he may have approached the emperor. Failing to get

-action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a plan of

-a military character which was calculated to force the

-hands of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing

-them into the field against Russia, to the end that Ferdinand

-might be recognized and more firmly seated.

-The plot was discovered in time, according to those

-who hold this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator

-came under the most severe displeasure of the

-emperor.</p>

-

-<p>It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately,

-that Johann Salvator’s rash course was one

-that came very near involving Austria in a Russian war,

-and that the most emphatic exhibitions of the emperor’s

-reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly,

-it is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of

-all rank and privileges by his cousin and exiled him from

-the empire for life. Here, at least, is a story of a more

-probable character, inasmuch as it presents provocation

-for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke

-Johann Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic

-marriage and his other conflicts with higher

-authority were seized upon as disguises under which to

-hide the secret diplomatic motive.</p>

-

-<p>Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony,

-started a tale to the effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator,

-had torn the Order of the Golden Fleece from his

-breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor, which

-thing can not have happened since the negotiations between

-the emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted

-at a distance through official emissaries or by

-mail.</p>

-

-<p>Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress

-Elizabeth, recounts even more fantastic yarns.

-She says in so many words that Crown Prince Rudolf

-was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others to

-seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor

-and so establish Rudolf as king before his time. It was

-fear of discovery in this plot, she continues, that led to

-the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after Mayerling, she

-recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box

-(apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade

-in the mist and he kissed her hand, exclaimed that she

-had saved his life—and more in the same strain.</p>

-

-<p>Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wrote

-or talked in self-justification and with the usual stupidity

-of the guilty. We may dismiss their yarns as mere

-women’s gabble and return to the solid fact that Johann

-Salvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under his

-military humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politics

-with the result that he found himself in the position of

-a bungling interloper, almost a betrayer of his country’s

-interests.</p>

-

-<p>Less than two years ago some further light was

-thrown upon the affair of the missing archduke through

-what have passed as letters taken from the Austrian

-archives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These letters

-were published in various European and American

-newspapers and journals and they may be, as asserted,

-the veritable official documents. The portions I quote

-are taken from the Sunday Magazine of the <i>New York

-World</i> of January 10 and January 17, 1926. I must

-remark that I regard them with suspicion.</p>

-

-<p>The first letter purports to be a report on the violent

-misconduct of Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister

-of Foreign Affairs, Count Kalnoky:</p>

-

-<p>“I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about

-the relations and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am

-sorry to have to report to Your Excellency that, <i>in a rather

-unworthy manner</i>, he had intercourse on board and in public

-with a <i>lady lodged on board of the yacht</i>, which intercourse

-has not remained unobserved and which he could not be induced

-to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the President

-of the Chamber) Baron de Fin—Baron de Fin was so offended

-that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill,

-he left the ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part,

-reported to His Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is

-said to have, after five months of silence, written for the

-first time to His Majesty in order to complain of his Chamberlain.

-This unpleasant situation, still more troublesome

-abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved

-last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field

-Marshal Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial

-Order that His Imperial Highness immediately return to

-Orth at the Sea of Gmünden—to which he immediately submitted.</p>

-

-<p>“Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly

-terms with me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that

-would be bad enough. According to his experience and observation,

-His Highness does not know any other interests in

-the world than those of his person, and even this only in the

-common sense; that he, for instance, wished to ascend the

-throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people or

-for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after

-a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence

-of His Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that

-there would be no other means to cure that completely undisciplined

-and immoral character but by dismissing him

-formally from the imperial family and by allowing him, as

-it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name, that liberty

-that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes him

-(the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would

-return with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated

-according to his new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness

-of the Prince despite his talks of liberalism.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Then follows what may well have been the recreant

-archduke’s letter of abdication, thus:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Your Majesty:</p>

-

-<p>“My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced

-Your Majesty that, abstaining from all interests that did not

-concern me, I have lived in retirement in the endeavor to

-remove Your Majesty’s displeasure with me.</p>

-

-<p>“Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as

-a paid idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable,

-to me. Checked by a justified pride from asking for

-re-employment in the army, I had the alternative either to

-continue the unworthy existence of a princely idler or—as

-an ordinary human being, to seek a new existence, a new

-profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the latter

-sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of

-my position and my personal independence must be compensation

-for what I have lost.</p>

-

-<p>“I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the

-titles and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title

-into the hands of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty

-submissively to deign to grant me a civil name.</p>

-

-<p>“Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and

-my livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but

-honorable position. If, however, Your Majesty should call

-your subjects to arms, Your Highness will permit me to return

-home and—though only as a common soldier—to devote

-my life to Your Majesty.</p>

-

-<p>“Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was

-only impeded by the thought of giving offense to Your

-Majesty—Your Majesty to whose Highness I am particularly

-and infinitely indebted and devoted from the bottom of my

-heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly enough—with

-my entire social existence, with all that means hope and

-future—Your Majesty will pardon</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,<br>

-“<span class="smcap">Archduke Johann, Fml.</span>”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another,

-even an emperor, is a question which every reader

-must consider for himself, quite as he must decide

-whether grown sons of kings were capable of such

-middle-class sentiment.</p>

-

-<p>There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has the

-ring of genuineness:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>

-“<span class="smcap">Dear Archduke Johann</span>:<br>

-</p>

-

-<p>“In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel

-induced to decide the following:</p>

-

-<p>“1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded

-and treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and

-permit you to adopt a civil name, which you are to bring to

-my notice after you have made your choice.</p>

-

-<p>“2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer

-and relieve you at the same time of your responsibility

-for the Corps Artillery Regiment No. 2.</p>

-

-<p>“3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out

-of the 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’</p>

-

-<p>“4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil

-List) from my court donation, I will inform your brother

-Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany of the suspension of your

-share out of the family funds proceeds.</p>

-

-<p>“5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to

-pass the frontiers of the monarchy from your residence

-abroad for a permanent or even a temporary stay in Austria.

-Finally,</p>

-

-<p>“6. You are to sign the written declaration which the

-bearer of this, my manuscript will submit to you for this

-purpose and which he is charged to return to me after the

-signature is affixed.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“<span class="smcap">Franz Josef.</span>”</p>

-

-<p>

-“Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Some correspondence followed on the subject of John

-Orth’s retention of his Austrian citizenship, which the

-emperor wished at first to deny him.</p>

-

-<p>In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria,

-and Prince of Tuscany, became John Orth, left

-Austria in the winter of 1889, purchased and refitted

-the bark <i>Santa Margarita</i>, had her taken to England, and

-there joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed for

-Buenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement,

-and reached the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife went

-ahead by steamer to join him at Buenos Aires.</p>

-

-<p>I quote here, from the same source as the preceding,

-part of a last letter from John Orth to his mother at

-Gmünden:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“The country here is not very beautiful. Vast plains—the

-grazing grounds for flocks of bullocks, horses and ostriches.

-The towns are much more vivid. Everything is to be found

-here even at the smaller places—electric lights, telephone,

-all comforts of modern civilization. The population, however,

-is not very sympathetic, a combination of doubtful elements

-from all countries, striving to become rich as soon as

-possible; corruption, fraud, theft, are the order of the day.</p>

-

-<p>“I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer

-is a certain Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The

-Honorary Consul is Mihanovich, a man who—a few years

-ago was a porter—and now is a millionaire. Social obligations

-have caused much loss of time, which could have been

-better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing can

-be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos

-Aires. And we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo,

-negotiations about a new cargo, which I could have accepted

-if my merchant had not prevented me, changes of the board

-staff, purchase of supplies, work on board, the collection and

-despatch of money, &amp;c., &amp;c. The staff-officers have all to be

-changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by

-the fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’

-toward whom he was too indulgent and who was a man

-of bad reputation. He has given me to understand, in the

-most impolite manner, that he could not remain under such

-circumstances, that he did not permit himself to be treated

-as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and therefore

-he resigned the command, &amp;c. I, of course, accepted his

-resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned

-to excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has

-shown the insolence to deceive the consignee and by calculating

-forty-eight tons more in favor of the ship, believing

-to do me a favor by such an action. I have given to the consignee

-the necessary indemnification—and to restore the compromised

-honor of the ship, have dismissed the lieutenant.

-The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and quit

-voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain

-Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened

-him.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> There had been a fire on the <i>Santa Margarita</i> on the way to Buenos Aires.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>“As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts

-as Captain and has the command—a man of forty-five

-years, very quiet, experienced and practical. Further, a Second

-Lieutenant, Mayer, Austro-German, very fit for accounts

-and writings; a boatswain, Vranich, who is a real jewel.

-Thus I hope—with the aid of God—to get on at least as well

-as under the command of Sodich.</p>

-

-<p>“Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has

-been a Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change

-of personnel, with whom alone I shall have intercourse for

-months and months.</p>

-

-<p>“In the first days of July, when everything will be ready,

-the journey will be continued. Now comes the most difficult

-part of the passage, i. e., the sailing around the dreadful

-Cape Horn, which is always exposed to howling storms. If

-all ends well, we shall be in two months at Valparaiso, which

-has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God willing,

-we shall return from there in good health.</p>

-

-<p>“I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly

-speaking, no letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in

-La Plata nor in Buenos Aires, neither poste restante nor in

-the Consulate, have I found your letters, and still I believe

-that you have been so good as to write me. I have found

-letters of Luise, that have been despatched by a German

-steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the Swiss

-Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter

-from Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome,

-and your dear telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg.

-I was sorry to see from the newspapers that Karl has

-been ill in Baden; I should be happy if this were not true.

-Then I have read the many nonsensical articles written about

-myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has remained in

-communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am

-also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young

-woman is now likely to come to an end. I know nothing

-about Vienna and Gmünden. But I repeat that I am disappointed

-at not having received your letters. I hope to God

-you are well and remain in good health.</p>

-

-<p>“My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you

-to address letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste

-restante.</p>

-

-<p>“Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the

-whole family and asking you for your blessing, I respectfully

-kiss your hands.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-<span style="margin-right: 5em;">“Your tenderly loving son,</span><br>

-<span class="allsmcap">GIOVANNI</span>.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada,

-and on July 12, 1890, John Orth wrote what proved to

-be the last communication ever sent by him. It was addressed

-to his attorney in Vienna and said that he was

-leaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, which

-might consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orth

-wrote, had been taken ill, and his first officer had proved

-incompetent, so that it had been necessary to discharge

-him. Accordingly Orth was personally in command of

-his vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experienced

-seaman. This is a somewhat altered version,

-to be sure.</p>

-

-<p>The apparent intention of the renegade archduke at

-this time was to follow the sea. He had caused the <i>Santa

-Margarita</i> to be elaborately refitted inside, had insured

-her for two hundred and thirty thousand marks with

-the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he had

-written his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determination

-to make his living as a mariner and an honest

-man, instead of existing like an idler on his comfortable

-private means. There is nothing in the record

-to indicate that he intended to go into hiding.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i083" style="max-width: 81.75em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i083.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>The <i>Santa Margarita</i> accordingly sailed on the thirteenth

-of July. With good fortune she should have

-been in the Straits of Magellan the first week in August,

-and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expected

-not later than the first of September. But the ship did

-not reach port. The middle of September passed without

-word of her. When she had still not been reported by

-the first week in October the alarm was given.</p>

-

-<p>As the result of diplomatic representations from the

-Austrian minister, the Argentine government soon

-made elaborate arrangements for a search. On December

-the second the gunboat <i>Bermejo</i>, Captain Don Mensilla,

-put out from Buenos Aires and made a four

-months’ cruise of the Argentine coast, visiting every

-conceivable anchorage where a vessel of the <i>Santa Margarita’s</i>

-size might possibly have found refuge. Don

-Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20,

-and continuing intermittently for nearly a month,

-there had been storms of the greatest violence in the

-region of Cape Blanco and the southern extremity of

-Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had

-been in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances

-had been of unusual character and duration,

-more than sufficient to overwhelm a sailing bark in the

-tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.</p>

-

-<p>Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a

-vessel answering to the general description of the <i>Santa

-Margarita</i> had been wrecked off the little island of

-Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course of a hurricane

-which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at

-which dates the <i>Santa Margarita</i> was very likely in this

-vicinity. The Argentine commander could find no trace

-of the wreck and no clew to any survivors. He continued

-his search for more than two months longer and

-then returned to base with his melancholy report.</p>

-

-<p>At the same time the Chilean government had sent

-out the small steamer <i>Toro</i> to search the Pacific coast

-from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her captain returned

-after several months with no word of the archduke or

-any member of his crew.</p>

-

-<p>These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports

-at the Hamburg maritime observatory, soon convinced

-most authorities that John Orth and his vessel

-were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as in

-that of Roger Tichborne,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> an old mother’s fond devotion

-refused to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance.

-The Grand Duchess Maria Antonia could not bring

-herself to believe that winds and waves had swallowed

-up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna

-with her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef

-finally sent out the corvette <i>Saida</i>, with instructions to

-make a fresh search, including the islands of the South

-Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report, John

-Orth had made his way.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> See <a href="#V">page 82</a>.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope

-Leo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in

-South America and all over the world to search for

-John Orth and send immediate news of his presence to

-the Holy See.</p>

-

-<p>The <i>Saida</i> returned to Fiume at the end of a year

-without having been able to accomplish anything beyond

-confirming the report of Don Mensilla. And in

-response to the pope’s letter many reports came back,

-but none of them resulted in the finding of John

-Orth.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after the return of the <i>Saida</i> the Austrian

-heirs of John Orth moved for the payment of his insurance,

-and the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company,

-after going through the formality of a court proceeding,

-paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on

-two banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen,

-Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by the

-archduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. One

-of these banks raised the question of the death proof,

-claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an

-unproved death. The courts decided against the bank,

-thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the end

-of the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated.

-About two million crowns were accordingly paid over

-to the Austrian custodians.</p>

-

-<p>In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to

-hand over the property of John Orth to his nephew and

-heir, and this high authority then declared that the

-missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane of

-August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme

-court of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and a

-decision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which the

-archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the day

-on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts

-began. His property was ordered distributed, and his

-goods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments,

-art collection and furniture, which had long been preserved

-in the various villas and castles of the absent

-prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during

-the months of October and November, 1912.</p>

-

-<p>In spite of the great care that was taken to discover

-the facts in this case, and in the face of the various

-official reports and court decisions, a great romantic

-tradition grew up about John Orth and his mysterious

-destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his

-abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly

-much to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as it

-may, the world has for more than thirty years been

-feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and

-his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war

-the story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato

-was in reality the missing archduke. The story was

-credited by many, but there proved to be no foundation

-for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their

-heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the

-archduke in that old monograph which had got him

-disciplined.</p>

-

-<p>Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief

-authority for one of the most plausible and insistent of

-all the John Orth stories. According to this politician

-and man of letters, there was present at Concordia, in

-the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in the

-years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished

-looking stranger of military habit and bearing,

-who had few friends, received few visits, always

-spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an Austrian merchant

-of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself

-in a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch

-treated the stranger with marked respect and deference.</p>

-

-<p>Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of

-the <i>Jefe de Policia</i> of Concordia, an official who firmly

-believed the man of mystery to be John Orth. On the

-other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey, the closest friend

-and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway,

-denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the

-whole tale. At the same time, say Garzon and the chief

-of police, Señor de Villa Rey tried to conceal the presence

-of the man, and it was the activity of the police

-authorities, executing the law authorizing them to investigate

-and keep records of the identity of all strangers,

-that frightened the “archduke” away. He went to

-Paraguay and worked in a sawmill belonging to Villa

-Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese

-war he left for Japan.</p>

-

-<p>This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion.

-Senator Garzon’s book is full of doubtful corroboration

-and too subtle reasoning, but it is rewarding and entertaining

-for those who like romance and read Spanish.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> See Bibliography.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>The missing John Orth has likewise been reported

-alive from many other unlikely parts of the world and

-under the most incredible circumstances. Austrian, German,

-British, French, and American newspapers have

-been full of such stories every few years. The much

-sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running

-a pearl fishery in the Paumotus, working in a factory

-in Ohio, fighting with the Boers in South Africa,

-prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in

-Texas—what not and where not?</p>

-

-<p>One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth

-happened in New York. On the last day of March,

-1924, a death certificate was filed with the Department

-of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator

-of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early

-that morning of heart disease in Columbus Hospital,

-one of the smaller semi-public institutions. Doctor

-John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital, signed the

-certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s

-identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society

-photographer,” confirmed the story, and said she had

-discovered the identity of the man the year before and

-admitted some of her friends to the secret. He had

-lately been receiving some code cables from Europe

-which came collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied

-the money with which to pay for these mysterious

-messages. The dead man, said Mrs. Fairchild, had been

-living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a lecturer

-in Sanscrit and general scholar.</p>

-

-<p>“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on

-Sanscrit,” she recounted. “In his delirium he talked

-Sanscrit, and it was very beautiful.”</p>

-

-<p>According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,”

-he had furnished her with the true version of his

-irruption from the Austrian court in 1889. The emperor

-Franz Josef had applied a vile name to John Salvator’s

-mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his

-sword, broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his

-decorations and medals, flung them into the imperial

-face and finally blacked the emperor’s eye. Striding

-from the palace to the barracks, the archduke had found

-his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!”

-and offer him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the

-emperor then and there, he said, but he elected to quit

-the country and have done with the social life which

-disgusted him.</p>

-

-<p>This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the

-world over. Aside from the preposterousness of the yarn

-as a whole, one needs only to remember that Johann

-Salvator was an artillery officer and never held either

-an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was,

-at the time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed

-from the army and without military rank, and that

-striking the emperor would have been an offense that

-must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it is

-obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the

-legs of his friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams.

-Except in cases where special prearrangements

-have been made, as in the instances of great newspapers,

-large business houses, banks, and the departments of

-government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid.

-An imperial government would hardly thus impose on

-a wandering scion. The imposture is thus apparent.</p>

-

-<p>On the day after the death of the supposed archduke,

-however, a note of real drama was injected into

-the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was said to have

-been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the

-dead “archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on

-East Fifty-ninth Street that afternoon. She had

-drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she had got

-into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries

-of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death.

-Despondency over “John Orth’s” death was given as

-the explanation.</p>

-

-<p>These tales have all had their charm, much as they

-have lacked probability. Each and all they rest upon

-the single fact that the man was never seen dead. There

-is, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perished

-in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but

-it is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive.

-For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appeals

-of his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and to

-whom he had written every few days whenever he had

-been separated from her. He would have been found by

-the papal missionaries in some part of the world, and

-the three vessels sent upon his final course must surely

-have discovered some trace of the man. It should be

-remembered that, except for letters that were traced

-back to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like

-a communication was ever received from Orth or Ludmilla

-Stübel, or from any member of the crew of the

-<i>Santa Margarita</i>.</p>

-

-<p>In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not

-profound. All evidence and all reason point to the probability

-that Johann Salvator and his ship went down to

-darkness in some wild torment of waters and winds,

-leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit,

-but only a void in which the idle minds of romantics

-could spin their fabulations.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY</p>

-

-

-<p>At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August

-16, 1897, a small, barefoot boy appeared

-in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of

-Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a

-crumpled letter in one grimy hand and stopped at one

-door after another, inquiring where Mrs. Conway lived.

-The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to him

-that several of them later estimated his age at from ten

-years to seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99

-and handed his note to the woman he sought, the wife

-of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train dispatcher. With

-that he was gone.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter

-by a special messenger, tore open the envelope, sat

-down in the big rocking chair in her front room, and

-began to read this appalling communication:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped

-and when you receive this word, he will be a safe distance

-from Albany and where he could not be found in a hundred

-years. Your child will be returned to you on payment of

-<i>three thousand dollars</i>, $3000, <i>provided</i> you pay the money

-<i>to-day and strictly obey the following directions</i>:</p>

-

-<p>“put the money in a package and send it by a man you

-can depend on to the lane going up the hill a few feet south

-of the <i>Troy road first tollgate</i>, just off the road on this lane

-here is a tree with a big trunk have the man put the package

-on the <i>south</i> side of the tree and <i>at once come away and come

-back to your house</i>.</p>

-

-<p>“We want the money left at this spot at <i>exactly 8:15

-o’clock to-night</i>.</p>

-

-<p>“See that no one is with the man you send and that no

-one follows him or you will <i>never look upon your little boy

-again</i></p>

-

-<p>“If you say a word of this to any one outside <i>your</i> family

-and the man you send with the money or if you take any

-steps to bring it to the attention <i>of the police you will never

-see your child</i> again, for if <i>any one</i> knows of it we will not

-take the risk of returning him, but will leave him <i>to his fate</i>.</p>

-

-<p>“If you obey our instructions in every point you will have

-word <i>within two hours</i> after the money has been left where

-you can go and get your boy safe and sound</p>

-

-<p>“We have been after this thing for a <i>long time</i> we <i>know

-our business</i> and can beat all the police in America</p>

-

-<p>“we are after the money and if you do what you are <i>told</i>,

-<i>no harm will come to your little boy</i>. but if you fail to do

-what we tell you or do what we tell you not to do <i>you will

-never look upon your child again as sure as there is a god in

-heaven we know you have the money in the bank</i> and that

-the bank closes at 2 o’clock and we <i>must</i> have it <i>to-night

-so get in time</i>. don’t tell them why you draw it out. You

-can say you are buying property if you wish for this thing

-must be <i>between you and us</i> if you want your boy back alive.</p>

-

-<p>“<i>Remember</i> the case of <i>Charley Ross</i> of Philadelphia. His

-father <i>did not do</i> as <i>he was told</i> but went to the police and

-then spent five times as much as he could have got him back

-for but never saw his little boy <i>to the day of his death a word

-to the wise man is enough</i></p>

-

-<p>“<i>Now understand us plainly</i> get the money from the bank

-<i>in time</i> don’t open your lips to any one and send the money

-by a trusty man to the place we say at 8:15 a <i>quarter past

-eight to-night</i> He wants to <i>be sure that no one else sees him

-put the package there</i>, so there is no possible danger of any

-one <i>else</i> getting it, then within two hours you shall have

-word from us where your boy is.</p>

-

-<p>“Every move you make will be known to us and if you

-attempt <i>any crooked work</i> with us <i>say good-by to your boy</i>

-and look out for <i>yourself</i> for we will <i>meet you again when

-you least expect it</i> Do as we tell you and all will be well and

-we will deal straight with you if you make the <i>least crooked

-move</i> you will <i>regret it to the day of your death</i>.</p>

-

-<p>“If you want to have your little boy back <i>safe and sound</i>.

-Keep your lips closed and do <i>exactly as you are told</i></p>

-

-<p>“If you fail to obey <i>every direction</i> you will have <i>one

-child less</i>.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-<span style="margin-right: 7em;">“Yours truly</span><br>

-“The Captain of the Gang.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she had

-got past the first few sentences and ran into the street,

-screaming for her boy. He did not answer. None of the

-neighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when he

-had been let out to play in the sun. It was true.</p>

-

-<p>The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistle

-in her hand, ran to summon her husband. He read the

-letter, set his jaw, and sent for the police. No one was

-going to extort three thousand dollars from him without

-a fight.</p>

-

-<p>Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to ask

-questions in the neighborhood and see whether there

-had been any witnesses to the abduction. The others

-began an examination of the strange letter in the hope

-of recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yielded

-nothing and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Here

-the first blunder was made, for I have yet to examine a

-kidnapper’s letter more revealingly written.</p>

-

-<p>The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long,

-prolix, and anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuation

-in part, wrongly punctuated at other points,

-miscapitalized or not capitalized at all, strangely underlined,

-curiously paragraphed, often without even

-the use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structure

-and yet contradictory on this very point. The facsimile

-copy which I have before me shows that in spite

-of all the solecisms and blunders, there is not a misspelled

-word in the long missive, a thing not always to

-be said in favor of the writings of educated and even

-eminent men. Also, there are several cheap literary

-echoes in the letter, such as “never look upon your

-child again” and “leave him to his fate.”</p>

-

-<p>The following deductions should have been made

-from the letter:</p>

-

-<p>That it was written or dictated by some one familiar

-with Albany and with the affairs of the Conways, since

-the writer knows Conway has the money in the bank,

-knows the closing hour, is familiar with the surrounding

-terrain, is precise in all directions, and knows there

-are other and older children, since he constantly refers

-to “your little boy” and says that Conway will have

-“one child less.”</p>

-

-<p>That the writer of the letter is not a professional

-criminal. Otherwise he would not have written at

-length.</p>

-

-<p>That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious to

-have the thing done at once.</p>

-

-<p>That he is a man without formal education, who has

-read a good deal, especially romances and inferior verse.</p>

-

-<p>That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, he

-is a man between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.</p>

-

-<p>That the kidnappers are anxious to have the money

-intrusted to some man known to them, to whom they

-repeatedly refer and whom they believe likely to be

-selected by Conway.</p>

-

-<p>That the child is in no danger, since the letter writer

-doth threaten too much.</p>

-

-<p>That the search for the kidnappers should begin close

-at home.</p>

-

-<p>Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of what

-the dialect calls hindsight, it may be well to say that

-these conclusions were made from the facsimile of the

-letter by an associate who is not familiar with the case

-and does not know the subsequent developments.</p>

-

-<p>The detective sciences had, however, reached no special

-developments in Albany thirty years ago and little

-of this vital information was extracted from the tell-tale

-letter. Instead of making some deductions from it

-and going quietly to work upon them, the officers chose

-the time-honored methods. They decided to send a man

-to the big tree with a package of paper, meantime concealing

-some members of the force near by to pounce

-upon any one who might call for the decoy. The whole

-proceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police went

-to the place at night and used lanterns, which must

-have revealed them to any watchers. They were not

-careful about concealing their plan and they even chose

-the wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!</p>

-

-<p>So the second day of the kidnapping mystery opened

-upon prostrated parents, who were only too willing

-to believe that their boy had been done away with, an

-excited community which locked the doors and feared

-to let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfited

-and abused police department.</p>

-

-<p>The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, the

-police made a fresh start. For one thing they searched

-the country round about the big tree on the Troy

-road, which may have been good training for adipose

-officers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such as

-police departments always make when the public is

-aroused. For another thing, they spread the dragnet and

-hauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to be

-stopping in Albany. They also searched the known

-criminal resorts, chased down a crop of the usual rumors,

-and wound up the day in breathless and futile

-excitement.</p>

-

-<p>Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. These

-energetic young men, whose repeated discomfitures of

-the police were one of the interesting facts of American

-city government in the last generation, had gone to

-work on the Conway case themselves. A young man

-named John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albany

-papers, began his investigations by interviewing the

-father of the missing child. One of the things the reporter

-wanted to know was whether any one had ever

-tried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. The

-train dispatcher replied with some reluctance that his

-brother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy, husband of one of

-Conway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed small

-amounts from the railroad man and once made a demand

-for a thousand dollars, which he failed to get,

-though he used threatening tactics.</p>

-

-<p>The reporter said nothing, but set about investigating

-Hardy. He found that the man was in Albany, that

-he was showing no signs of fright, and that he was

-indeed going about with much energy, apparently devoting

-himself to the quest for the stolen boy and

-threatening dire vengeance upon the kidnappers. Reporter

-Farrell and his associates took this business under

-suspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections and

-financial situation. They found the latter to be precarious.

-They also discovered that Hardy was the bosom

-friend of a man named H. G. Blake, who had operated

-a small furniture store in Albany, but was known to

-be an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no very

-definite social grade, means of livelihood, or character.

-In the middle of the afternoon, when this connection

-was first discovered, Blake could not be found in Albany,

-but late in the evening he was discovered, and the

-reporters took him in hand.</p>

-

-<p>At the time they had nothing to go upon except

-Blake’s firm friendship with Hardy, the relative of the

-missing child, who had once tried to extort a thousand

-dollars and presumably knew the money affairs of his

-brother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail.

-In the course of the day they had canvassed all the

-livery stables in and about Albany. They found that

-early on Monday morning a man had rented a horse and

-light wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. This

-signature was compared with that of Blake, taken from

-a hotel register and some tax declarations. The handwriting

-seemed to be identical, and the reporters suspected

-that Blake had rented the rig under an assumed

-name.</p>

-

-<p>While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulled

-into the belief that he was under no suspicion and allowed

-to go to his home and to bed, Blake was taken to

-the newspaper office by the reporters and there asked

-what he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He denied

-all knowledge until he was assured that the paper

-wished to score a “scoop” on the story and was willing

-to pay $2,500 cash for information that would lead to

-the recovery of the boy.</p>

-

-<p>A large wallet was shown him, containing a wadding

-of paper with several bank notes on the outside. Apparently

-the man was a bit feeble-minded. At any rate,

-he fell into the trap, abandoning all caution and reaching

-greedily for the money. He said, of course, that

-he knew nothing directly about the affair, but that he

-could find out. Later, when the money was withdrawn

-from his sight he began to boast of what he could do.

-Under various incitements and provocations he talked

-along until it became apparent that he was one of the

-kidnappers. When it was too late the man realized that

-he had talked too much, and then he tried to retract.

-When he attempted to leave the office he was met by

-two officers who had been quietly summoned by the reporters

-and appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet was

-once more held out to Blake, and his greed so far overcame

-him that he agreed to guide the reporters to the

-spot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference with

-his captain, and see that the child was delivered.</p>

-

-<p>The little party, consisting of two reporters, the two

-disguised officers, and Blake set out late at night and

-arrived at a place on the Schenectady road, about eight

-miles from Albany, shortly before midnight. Blake here

-demanded the cash, but was told that it would not be

-handed over until he produced the boy. He then said

-that he thought the purse did not contain the money. A

-long argument followed. Once more the glib talking of

-the reporters prevailed, and Blake went into the dense

-woods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly to

-find the boy.</p>

-

-<p>After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer,

-whom he still believed to be a driver, to remain

-behind, and proceeded farther into the forest. More

-than an hour passed before he returned, and the party

-was about to drive off, thinking the man had played a

-clever trick. Blake, however, came back querulous and

-suspicious. He demanded once more to see the money,

-and being refused, said the trick was up. One of the

-men, however, persuaded him to take him to the other

-members of the gang, promising that the money would

-be delivered the moment the boy was seen alive. Apparently

-Blake was once more befooled, for he allowed

-the supposed driver to accompany him and made off

-again into the heart of the woods. One of the reporters

-and the other disguised policeman followed secretly.</p>

-

-<p>When the two pairs of men had proceeded about

-three hundred yards, the second lurking in the van of

-the first, not daring to strike a light, slashed by the

-underbrush and in evident danger of being shot down,

-the smoky light of a camp fire appeared suddenly ahead.

-In another minute a childish voice could be heard, and

-the gruff tones of a man trying to silence it. Blake and

-his companion made for the fire and were met by a

-masked man with a leveled revolver who informed them

-that they were surrounded and would be killed if they

-made a false move. There was a parley, which lasted till

-the second pair came up.</p>

-

-<p>Just what happened at this interesting moment is not

-easy to say. The witnesses do not agree. Apparently,

-however, the little boy, momentarily released by his

-captor, ran away. The three hunters thereupon made a

-rush for him and there was an exchange of shots in the

-darkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy and

-dragged him to the road, closely followed by the reporter

-and the other officer, leaving Blake, the masked

-man, and whatever other kidnappers there might be to

-flee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into the

-wagon, the reporter and officers sprang in after him,

-and the horses were lashed into a gallop. Apparently, the

-midnight adventure had been a little trying on the

-nerves of the party.</p>

-

-<p>After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furious

-speed, it became apparent that there was no pursuit on

-part of the kidnappers and the drive was slowed to a

-more comfortable pace while the reporters questioned

-the child.</p>

-

-<p>Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that he

-had been playing in the street before his father’s house

-when a dray wagon came by. He had run and caught on

-to the rear of this for a ride down the block. As he

-dropped off the wagon, he had been met by a stranger

-who smiled, patted his head and offered to buy him

-candy. The child was readily beguiled and taken to the

-light wagon in which he was driven several miles into

-the country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacant

-cabin. The next night he and his captors spent in

-a church until they moved out into the woods and began

-to camp. At this spot the rescuers had found him.</p>

-

-<p>According to the child, the kidnappers had not been

-cruel or threatening. They had provided plenty of food.

-They had even played games with the little boy and

-tried to keep him amused. The only complaint Johnny

-Conway had to make was against the mosquitoes, which

-had cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly for

-the two nights and one day he and his captors spent in

-the woods.</p>

-

-<p>Very early on the morning of August 19th, just three

-days after the kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagon

-turned into Colonia Street and proceeded slowly up that

-quiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In spite

-of the unseasonable hour there was a crowd in the street,

-some of whose members had been on watch all night.

-Albany had been seized with terror and morbid curiosity.

-The Conway house was never without a few straggling

-watchers, eager for the first news or crumbs of

-gossip. Reporters from the New York newspapers were

-on the scene, and special officers from the great city

-were on their way. Everything was being prepared for

-another breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seated

-wagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that early

-morning.</p>

-

-<p>As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, and

-some of the stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensing

-something unusual, one of the reporters rose in the

-rear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in his arms.</p>

-

-<p>“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor called

-anxiously.</p>

-

-<p>“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspaper

-sleuth.</p>

-

-<p>There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighbors

-came running from their houses in night garb. The

-Conways came forth from a sleepless vigil and caught

-the child in their arms. So the mystery of the boy’s

-fate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lasting

-enigma immediately succeeded.</p>

-

-<p>Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediately

-seized at his home and dragged to the nearest station

-house. The rumor of his connection with the kidnapping

-got abroad within a few hours, and the police

-building was immediately besieged by a crowd which

-demanded to see the prisoner. The police drove the

-crowd off, but it returned after an hour, much augmented

-in numbers and provided with a rope for a

-lynching. After several exciting hours, the mob was

-finally cowed and driven away by the mayor of Albany

-and a platoon of police with drawn revolvers.</p>

-

-<p>One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, but

-at least two others were known, Blake and the man in

-the mask. Several posses set out at once and surrounded

-the woods in which the child had been found. After

-beating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepy

-night in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, the

-citizenry lost its pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albany

-only to find that the police of Schenectady had

-arrested Blake in that city late the preceding evening

-and that the man was lodged in another precinct house

-where he could not communicate with Hardy. Another

-abortive lynching bee was started. Once more the mayor

-and the police drove off the howling gangs.</p>

-

-<p>The man in the mask, however, was still at large.

-Both Hardy and Blake at first refused to name him, and

-the police were at sea. Then a curious thing happened.</p>

-

-<p>William N. Loew, a New York attorney, reading

-of the kidnapping affair at Albany, which appeared in

-the metropolitan newspapers under black headlines,

-went to the office of one of the journals and said he

-believed he could give valuable information.</p>

-

-<p>On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, Bernard

-Myers, a clothing merchant of West Third Street,

-New York, had flirted on a Broadway car with a handsome

-young woman, who had given him her name and

-address as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourth

-Street, and invited him to write her. Myers, more avid

-than cautious, wrote the woman a fervid letter, asking

-for an appointment. A few days later two men appeared

-in the Myers store. One of them, who carried

-a heavy cane, said that he was the husband of Mrs.

-Warner, brandished the guilty letter in one hand, the

-cane in the other, and demanded that Myers give him

-a check for three hundred dollars on the spot or take

-the consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave a

-check for one hundred dollars, and then, as soon as the

-men had left his store, rushed to his bank and stopped

-payment. He then visited the district attorney and

-caused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraigned

-and released on bail.</p>

-

-<p>Loew had been summoned to act as attorney for

-Warner. He now told the newspapers of disclosures his

-client had made to him in consultation. Warner, who

-was himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway,

-had told Loew that he was interested in a plot to

-organize kidnapping on a commercial scale, and that

-the first jobs would be attempted in up-State New

-York. He gave Loew many details and talked plausibly

-of the ease with which parents could be stripped of

-considerable sums. Loew, who considered his client and

-fellow attorney slightly demented, had paid little attention

-to this sinister talk at the time. Now, however,

-he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that he

-probably was the man in the mask.</p>

-

-<p>Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliant

-Blake admitted that he was a friend of Warner’s, that

-they had indeed been schoolmates in their youth. He

-also admitted that he had been in New York a few days

-before the abduction of Johnny Conway and had then

-visited Warner. So the chase began.</p>

-

-<p>The police discovered that Warner had been at his

-office a day ahead of them and slipped out of New York

-again. They also found that he had been at Albany the

-three days that Johnny Conway had been detained.

-Their investigations showed also that Warner, though

-he had the reputation of being a particularly shrewd

-and energetic counselor, had never adhered very closely

-to the law himself, but had again and again been implicated

-in shady or criminal transactions, though he

-had always escaped prison, probably through legal acumen.</p>

-

-<p>It was soon apparent that the man had got well away,

-and an alarm was sent across the country. The police

-circulars that went out to all parts of America and the

-chief British and continental ports, described a man

-between forty and forty-five years old, more than six

-feet tall, slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over a

-very high forehead. That Warner was a bicycle enthusiast

-was the only added detail.</p>

-

-<p>The quest for Warner was one of the most exciting

-in memory. The first person sought and found was the

-Mrs. Warner who had given her name and address to

-Bernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in the

-subsequent blackmail charges. She was found living

-quietly at a boarding house in one of the adjacent New

-Jersey towns and said that she had not seen Warner for

-some weeks, a claim which turned out to be very near

-the truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before he

-started to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confided

-to the girl, who was not in truth his wife, any

-of his plans or intentions.</p>

-

-<p>It was then discovered that Attorney Warner was

-married and had a wife, from whom he had long been

-separated, living in a small town in upper New York.

-The detectives also visited this woman, but she had not

-seen her husband in years and could supply no information.</p>

-

-<p>Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in

-ten places on the same day. His presence was reported

-from every corner of the country. Clews and reports

-led weary officers thousands of miles on empty pursuits.

-Finally, when no real information as to the man developed,

-the public wearied of him, and news of the

-case dropped out of the papers.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake

-made an attempt to mitigate his case by turning State’s

-evidence, and Hardy pleaded that he had only been an

-intermediary, whose motivation was his brother-in-law’s

-closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the

-evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even

-without the admissions of either one, the prosecutor

-decided to reject their pleas and force them to stand

-trial. The cases were quickly heard and verdicts of

-guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once

-sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years

-in the State prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly

-removed to that gloomy house of pain in the Adirondack

-Mountains.</p>

-

-<p>All this happened before the first of October. The

-prisoners, having been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary,

-and the kidnapped boy being safely in his

-parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly forgotten.</p>

-

-<p>But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of

-December 12, two men entered the farm lot of William

-Goodrich near the little village of Riley in central Kansas,

-about two thousand miles from Albany and the

-scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm

-hand, one George Johnson, was milking in the cow

-stable by lantern light.</p>

-

-<p>As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and

-straw, horny of hand and tanned by the prairie winds,

-rose from his stool and started to leave the stable with

-his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside and approached

-him. One of them laid a rough hand on the

-farmer’s shoulder and said soberly:</p>

-

-<p>“Warner, I want you. Come along.”</p>

-

-<p>“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious

-Western drawl. “My name is Gawge Johnson.”</p>

-

-<p>“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New

-York it’s Albert S. Warner. I have a warrant for your

-arrest in connection with the Conway kidnapping.

-You’ll have to come.”</p>

-

-<p>The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to

-change his clothes, and loaded upon the next eastbound

-train. When he reached Kansas City he refused to go

-farther without extradition formalities. After the officers

-had telegraphed to New York, the man changed

-his mind again and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany,

-where he was placed in jail and soon brought to

-trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment,

-the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.</p>

-

-<p>The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann

-of the Albany police force. He had trailed the man

-about five thousand miles, partly on false scents. In his

-wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota,

-New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas,

-where he had satisfied himself that Warner was working

-on the Goodrich farm. McCann had then called a

-Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest office

-and made the arrest as already described.</p>

-

-<p>The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seems

-to have been that Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage,

-had been scheming for some time to get a thousand dollars

-out of his brother-in-law. He had confided his ideas

-to Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion of

-his friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer and

-clever schemer. Warner had then acted as organizer and

-leader, with what success the reader will judge.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE</p>

-

-

-<p>On the afternoon of the twentieth of April,

-1854, the schooner <i>Bella</i> cast off her moorings

-at the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked her

-way down the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for her

-home port, New York. She was partly in ballast, because

-of slack commerce, and carried a single passenger.

-About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grew

-up a strange mystery and a stranger history.</p>

-

-<p>When the last glint of the <i>Bella’s</i> sails was seen from

-Rio’s island anchorages, that vessel passed forever out

-of worldly cognizance. She never reached any port save

-the ultimate, and of those that rode in her, nothing came

-back but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs was

-veiled in a storm and hidden among unknown waters.

-The epitaph was written at Lloyd’s in the familiar syllables:

-“Foundered with all hands.”</p>

-

-<p>Of the <i>Bella’s</i> master, or the forty members of her

-crew, there is no surviving memory, and only a grimy

-hunt through the old shipping records could avail in

-the discovery of anything concerning them. But the

-lone passenger happened to be the son of a British

-baronet and heir to a great estate—Roger Charles

-Doughty Tichborne. The succession and the inheritance

-of the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof of

-this young man’s death. There was, accordingly, some

-formal inquiry as to the <i>Bella</i> and her wreck. The required

-months were allowed to pass; the usual reports

-from all ports were scanned. On account of the insistence

-of the Tichborne family, some additional care was

-taken. But in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formally

-declared lost at sea, his insurance paid, and the

-question of succession taken before the court in chancery,

-which determined such matters.</p>

-

-<p>Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of young

-Tichborne would have ended, had it not been for the

-peculiar insistence of his mother. Lady Tichborne would

-not, and probably could not, bring herself to believe

-that her beloved elder son had met his end in this dark

-and mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnesses

-to his death and objective proofs of the end, she

-clung obstinately to hope and continued to advertise

-for the “lost” young man for many years after the

-courts had solved the problem—or believed they had.</p>

-

-<p>There had already been the cloud of pathos about the

-head of Roger Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessary

-to an understanding of subsequent events. Born

-in Paris on January 5, 1829—his mother being the

-natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire,

-and a beautiful French woman—Roger was the

-descendant of very ancient Hampshire stock. His father,

-the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne and his

-grandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of that

-line.</p>

-

-<p>Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country,

-Lady Tichborne decided that her son should be reared

-as a Frenchman, and the lad spent the first fourteen

-years of his life in France, with the result that he never

-afterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief English

-schooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough to

-get the young man out of the habit of thinking in

-French and translating his Gallic idioms into English, a

-fault that appears in his letters to the very end, and

-one that caused him considerable suffering as a boy in

-England.</p>

-

-<p>Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joined

-the Sixth Dragoon Guards at Dublin, as a subaltern.

-But in 1852 he sold out his commission and went home.

-His peculiarities of manner and appearance, his accent

-and strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness for

-soldiering had made him miserable in the army. The

-constant cruel, if thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of his

-fellows found him a sensitive mark.</p>

-

-<p>But the unhappy termination of the young man’s

-military career was only a minor factor in an almost

-desperate state of mind that possessed him at this time.

-He had fallen in love with his cousin, Kate Doughty,

-afterward Lady Radcliffe, and she had found herself

-unable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and storms

-the young heir of the Tichbornes set sail from Havre

-in March, 1853, and reached Valparaiso, Chile, about

-three months later, evidently determined to seek forgetfulness

-in stranger latitudes. In the course of the southern

-summer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reached

-Rio in March or early April. Here he embarked on the

-<i>Bella</i> for New York, as recited, his further plans remaining

-unknown. In letters to his mother he had, however,

-spoken vaguely of an intention to go to Australia,

-a hint upon which much of the following romance was

-erected.</p>

-

-<p>When, in the following year, the insurance was paid,

-and the will proved, the Tichbornes accepted the death

-of the traveler as practically beyond question. But not

-so his mother. She began, after an interval, to advertise

-in many parts of the world for trace of her son. Such

-notices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental,

-and Australian journals without effect. Only

-one thing is to be learned from them, the appearance

-of the lost heir. He is described as being rather undersized,

-delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes, and

-straight black hair. These personal specifications will

-prove of importance later on.</p>

-

-<p>In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and a

-younger son succeeded to the baronetcy and estates.

-This event stirred the dowager Lady Tichborne to fresh

-activities, and her advertisements began to appear again

-in newspapers and shipping journals over half the world.

-As a result of these injudicious clamorings for information,

-many a seaspawned adventurer was received by the

-grieving mother at Tichborne House, and many a common

-liar imposed on her for money and other favors.

-Repeated misadventures of this sort might have been

-considered sufficient experience to cause the dowager

-to desist from her folly, but nothing seemed to move

-her from her fixed idea, and the fantastic reports and

-rumors brought her by every wandering sharper had

-the effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.</p>

-

-<p>Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to

-restore her son, had not been without its collateral effects.

-Among them was the wide dissemination of a romantic

-story and the enlistment of public sympathy. A

-large part of the newspaper-reading British populace

-soon came to look upon the lady as a high example of

-motherly devotion, to sympathize with her point of

-view, and gradually to conclude that she was right, and

-that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere in

-the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to

-emotional strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate

-Doughty, the object of the young nobleman’s bootless

-love, refused various offers of marriage and steadfastly

-remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as

-to the fate of her hapless lover.</p>

-

-<p>Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew

-up. The Tichborne case came to be looked upon in some

-quarters as another of the great mysteries of disappearance.

-In various distant lands volunteer seekers took up

-the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by

-the fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by

-the hope of reward.</p>

-

-<p>In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing

-friends’ bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, a fact

-which he advertised in the London newspapers. Lady

-Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw

-the notice in <i>The Times</i> and communicated with Cubitt.

-As a result of this contact, Lady Tichborne was notified,

-in November, 1865, that a man had been discovered

-who answered the description of her missing

-“boy.” This fellow had been found keeping a small

-butcher shop in the town of Wagga Wagga, New South

-Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas

-Castro, which he admitted to be assumed.</p>

-

-<p>Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated

-at once and did not fail to give the impression that the

-discovery and return of her eldest son would be a feat

-to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir to a

-large property, and since she was herself “most anxious

-to hear.” Australia was then, to be sure, much farther

-away than to-day. There were no cables and only occasional

-steamers. It often took months for a letter to

-pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady

-Tichborne received a second communication in which

-she was told that there could be little doubt about the

-identification, as the butcher of Wagga Wagga had

-owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas

-Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at

-least one person that he was none other than Roger

-Tichborne.</p>

-

-<p>Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her first

-letter from her missing “son”. He addressed her as “Dear

-Mama,” misspelled the Tichborne name by inserting a

-“t” after the “i,” spelled common words abominably,

-and handled the English language with a fine show of

-ignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incident

-at Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had not

-the slightest recollection. At first she was considerably

-damped by these discrepancies and mistakes of the claimant,

-as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to be

-termed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from her

-doubts and asserted her absolute confidence in the genuineness

-of the far-away pretender to the baronetcy.</p>

-

-<p>Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, even

-when it is recalled that subsequent letters from Australia

-revealed the claimant to be ignorant of common

-family traditions and totally confused about himself,

-even going so far as to say that he had been a common

-soldier in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne had

-been an officer, and referring to his schooling at Winchester,

-whereas the Roman Catholic Tichbornes had,

-of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborne

-apparently ascribed such lapses to the “terrible

-ordeal” her boy had suffered, and she was not the only

-one to recognize that Roger Tichborne had himself,

-because of his early French training and the meagerness

-of his subsequent education, misspelled just such words

-as appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misused

-his English in a very similar fashion.</p>

-

-<p>These details are interesting rather than important.

-Whatever their final significance, Lady Tichborne sent

-money to Australia to pay for the claimant’s passage

-home. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the last

-month of 1866, and visited several localities, among

-them Wapping, a London district which played a vital

-part in what was to come. He also visited the vicinity of

-Tichborne Park and made numerous inquiries there.

-Only after these preliminaries did he cross to Paris,

-where he summoned Lady Tichborne to meet him.

-When she called at his hotel she found him in bed

-complaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted,

-and she recounted afterward that he kept his face

-turned to the wall most of the time she spent with him.</p>

-

-<p>What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this

-man is an interesting matter for speculation. She had

-sent away, thirteen years before, a slight, delicate, poetic

-aristocrat, whose chief characteristic was an excessive

-refinement that made him quite unfit for the common

-stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short,

-gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults

-and vocal solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the

-young man who knew his French and did not know

-his English, here was a fellow who could speak not a

-word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.</p>

-

-<p>None of these things appeared to make any difference

-to Lady Tichborne. She received the claimant

-without reservation, said publicly that she had recovered

-her darling boy, and went so far as to announce

-her reasons for accepting him as her son.</p>

-

-<p>The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, an

-exciting topic of the newspapers of the time, with the

-result that the romantic story of his voyage, the shipwreck

-of the <i>Bella</i>, his rescue, his wanderings, his final

-discovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return to his

-mother’s arms became known to millions of people,

-many of whom accepted the legend for its charm and

-color alone, without reference to its probability. Indeed,

-the tale had all the elements that make for popularity

-and credibility. The opening incident of unrequited

-love, the journey in quest of forgetfulness, the

-crossing of the Andes, the ordeal of shipwreck, the adventures

-in the Australian bush, and the intervention

-of the hand of Providence to drag him back to his native

-land, his title and his inheritance! Was there lacking

-any element of pathetic grace?</p>

-

-<p>For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichborne

-family affairs and his sad illiteracy sober objections to

-the pretensions of the claimant, there was triple evidence

-of identification. Not only had Lady Tichborne

-recognized this wanderer as her son, but two old Tichborne

-servants had preceded her in their approval. It

-happened that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who had

-been intimate with Roger Tichborne as a boy, was living

-in New South Wales when the first claim was put

-forward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the request

-of the dowager this man went to see the pretender and

-talked with him at length, first in the presence of those

-who were pressing the claim and later alone. The servant

-and the claimant reviewed a number of incidents

-in Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported that

-he was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servant

-and subsequently accompanied him to England. Later

-a former Tichborne gardener, Grillefoyle by name, who

-also had gone out to Australia, was sent to interview

-the Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. He

-reported favorably to his former mistress, and it seems

-to have been mainly on the opinion of these two men

-that Lady Tichborne based her decision to disregard

-the difficulties inherent in the letters and to finance the

-return of the man to England. Their testimony, backed

-by the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubt

-swayed her to credence when she finally stood face to

-face with the improbable apparition that pretended to

-be her son.</p>

-

-<p>The claimant, though he had arrived in England

-in December, 1866, made various claims and went to

-court once or twice but did not make the definitive legal

-move to establish his position or to retrieve the baronetcy

-and estates until more than three years later. Suit

-was finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trial

-came on before the court of common pleas in London

-on the eleventh of May, 1871. This was the beginning

-of one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trial

-dramas to be found in the records of modern nations.</p>

-

-<p>The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delay

-for the purpose of gathering evidence and consolidating

-his case. He had sought out and won over to

-his side the trusted servants of the house, the family

-solicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineers

-and many others. The school, the officers’ mess,

-the Tichborne seat, and many other localities connected

-with the youth and young manhood of Roger Tichborne

-had all been visited. In addition, the obese claimant

-had further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who came

-to have more and more faith in him. Originally she

-had written:</p>

-

-<p>“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it will

-not prevent me from recognizing him, though his

-statements differ from mine.”</p>

-

-<p>Before the suit was filed, and the case came to be

-tried, his memory improved remarkably; he corrected

-the many errors in his earlier statements, and his recollection

-quickly assimilated itself to that of Lady Tichborne.

-After he had been in England for a time even

-his handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealed

-in the letters written by Roger Tichborne before

-his disappearance.</p>

-

-<p>There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidence

-in favor of the man from Australia. I have already

-said that the public accepted the stranger. It

-needs to be recorded that every new shred of similarity

-or circumstance that could be brought out only added

-to the conviction of the people. This was unquestionably

-Roger Tichborne and none other. Some elements

-asserted their opinion with a passion that was not far

-from violence, and the public generally regarded the

-hostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based on

-selfish motives. Naturally the other Tichbornes did not

-want to be dispossessed in favor of a man who had

-been confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted among

-the dead for more than fifteen years. The man in the

-street regarded the family position as natural, but

-reprehensible. How, it was asked, could there be any

-doubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was there

-anything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubt

-seemed almost monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher of

-Wagga Wagga became a public idol, and the Tichborne

-family an object of aversion.</p>

-

-<p>Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it became

-known that the claimant had no funds with which to

-prosecute his case, the suggestion of a public bond issue

-was made and promptly approved. Bonds, with no

-other backing than the promise to refund the advanced

-money when the claimant should come into possession

-of his property, were issued, and so extreme was the

-public confidence in the validity of the claim that they

-were bought up greedily. In addition, a number of

-wealthy individuals became so interested in the affair

-and so convinced of the rights of the stranger, that

-they made him large personal advances. One man, Mr.

-Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as

-75,000 pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow family

-advanced 30,000 pounds and Earl Rivers is believed to

-have wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on the impostor.</p>

-

-<p>Finally the civil trial of the suit took place. The proceedings

-began on the eleventh of May, 1871, and were

-not concluded until March, 1872. Sir John Coleridge,

-who defended for the Tichborne family and later became

-lord chief justice, cross-questioned the claimant

-for twenty-two days, and his speech in summing up is

-said to have been the longest ever delivered before a

-court in England. The actual taking of evidence required

-more than one hundred court days, and at least

-a hundred witnesses identified the claimant as Roger

-Tichborne. To quote from Major Arthur Griffiths’ account:</p>

-

-<p>“These witnesses included Lady Tichborne,<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Roger’s

-mother, the family solicitor, one baronet, six magistrates,

-one general, three colonels, one major, thirty non-commissioned

-officers and men, four clergymen, seven

-Tichborne tenants, and sixteen servants of the family.”</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> A mistake, for the dowager Lady Tichborne died on March 12, 1868. Her

-damage had been done before the trial.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>On the other hand, the defense produced only seventeen

-witnesses against the claimant, but it piled up a

-great deal of dark-looking evidence, and, in the course

-of his long and terrible interrogation of the plaintiff,

-Coleridge was able to bring out so many contradictions,

-such appalling blanks of memory, and such an accumulation

-of ignorances and blunders that the jury gave

-evidence of its inclination. Thereupon Serjeant Ballantine,

-the claimant’s leading counsel, abandoned the case.</p>

-

-<p>On the order of the judge the claimant was immediately

-seized, charged with three counts of perjury,

-and remanded for criminal trial. This case was not called

-until April, 1873, and it proved a more formidable

-legal contest than the unprecedented civil action. The

-proceedings lasted more than a year, and it took the

-judge eighteen days to charge the jury; this in spite of

-the usual despatch of British trials. How long such a

-case might have hung on in the notoriously slow American

-courts is a matter for painful speculation.</p>

-

-<p>This long and dramatic trial, full of emotional

-scenes and stirring incidents, moving slowly along to

-the accompaniment of popular unrest and violent partisanship

-in the newspapers, ended as did the civil action.

-The claimant was convicted of having impersonated

-Roger Tichborne, of having sullied the name of

-Miss Kate Doughty, and of having denied his true identity

-as Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping butcher.

-The infant nephew of the real Roger Tichborne was,

-by this verdict, confirmed in his rights, and the claimant

-was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment.

-Thus ended one of the most magnificent impostures

-ever attempted. Lady Tichborne did not live to witness

-this collapse of the fraud, or the humiliation of the man

-she had so freely accepted as her own son. The poor

-lady was shown to be a monomaniac, whose judgment

-had been unseated by the shipwreck of her beloved eldest

-boy.</p>

-

-<p>I have purposely reserved the story, as brought out in

-the two trials, for direct narration, since it embraces the

-major romance connected with this celebrated case and

-needs to be told with regard to chronology and climax.</p>

-

-<p>Arthur Orton, the true name of the claimant, was

-born to a Wapping butcher, at 69 High Street, in June,

-1834, and was thus nearly five years younger than

-Roger Tichborne. He had been afflicted with St. Vitus’

-dance as a boy and had been delinquent. As a result of

-this, he had been sent from home when fourteen years

-old, and he had taken a sea voyage which landed him,

-by a strange coincidence, at Valparaiso, Chile, in 1848,

-five years before Tichborne reached that port. Orton

-remained in Chile for several years, living with a family

-named Castro, at the small inland city of Melipillo, until

-1851, when he returned to England and visited his

-parents at Wapping. In the following year he sailed for

-Tasmania and settled at Hobart Town.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i123" style="max-width: 80.75em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i123.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption">

-

-<p class="right small">

-<i>Copyright, Maull &amp; Fox</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">~~ ARTHUR ORTON ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>He operated a butcher shop in that place for some

-years, but made a failure of business and “disappeared

-into the brush,” owing every one. Trace of his movements

-then grew vague, but it is known that he was suspected

-of complicity in several highway robberies,

-which were staged in New South Wales a few years

-afterward, and he was certainly charged with horse

-stealing on one occasion. Later he appeared in Wagga

-Wagga and opened a small butcher shop under the name

-of Thomas Castro, which he had adopted from the family

-in Chile.</p>

-

-<p>In a confession which Orton wrote and sold to a London

-newspaper<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> years after his release from prison in

-1884, he gives an account of the origin of the fraud.

-He says that some time before Cubitt, of the missing-friends

-bureau, found him and induced him to write to

-Lady Tichborne, he and his chum at Wagga Wagga,

-one Slade, had seen some of the advertisements which

-the distraught lady was having published in antipodean

-newspapers. Orton soon adopted the pose of superior

-station, told Slade that he was, in fact, a nobleman incognito,

-and finally let his friends understand that he

-was Roger Tichborne. The whole thing had been begun

-in a spirit of innocent acting, for the purpose of noting

-the effect of such a revelation upon his friend. In view

-of what followed we cannot escape the conclusion that

-the swinishly fat butcher undertook this adventure because

-he was mentally disturbed, in the sense of being

-a pathological liar. A talent for impersonation and imposture

-is one of the marked characteristics displayed

-by this common type of mental defective, and Orton

-certainly possessed it, almost to the point of genius.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> <i>The People</i>, 1898.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Whatever the explanation of Orton’s original motive,

-the fact remains that his friend Slade was impressed by

-the butcher’s tale and thus encouraged Orton to proceed

-with the fraud, as did a lawyer to whom Orton-Castro

-was in debt. He soon went swaggering about,

-trying to talk like a gentleman and giving what must

-have been a most painful imitation of the manners of

-a lord. His rude neighbors can have had no better discrimination

-in such matters than the British public and

-Lady Tichborne herself, so it was not a difficult feat to

-play upon local credulity.</p>

-

-<p>In the last month of 1865, when Cubitt sent an agent

-to Wagga Wagga, as a result of his correspondence with

-Lady Tichborne, the legend of Orton’s identity as Roger

-Tichborne was already firmly established in the minds

-of his townspeople, and the rumor thus gained its initial

-confirmation. The reader is asked to remember that

-Orton was known as Castro, and that his identification

-as Orton was a difficult feat, which remained unperformed

-until the final trial, more than eight years

-later.</p>

-

-<p>Lady Tichborne herself supplied Castro and his backers

-in Australia with their first vital information. In

-seeking to identify her son she quite guilelessly wrote to

-Cubitt and others many details of her son’s appearance,

-history, education, and peculiarities. She also mentioned

-a number of intimate happenings. All these were seized

-upon by the butcher and used in framing his letters to

-the dowager. In spite of this fact, he made the many

-stupid blunders already referred to. Lady Tichborne

-saw the discrepancies, as has been remarked, but her

-monomania urged her to credence, and she sent the ex-servants,

-Bogle and Grillefoyle to investigate. How

-Orton-Castro managed to win them over is not easy to

-determine. For a time it was suspected that perhaps

-these men had been corrupted by those interested in

-having the claimant recognized; but the facts seem to

-discountenance any such belief. One of the outstanding

-characteristics of Orton was his ability to make friends

-and gain their confidence, of which fact there can be

-no more eloquent testimony than the long list of witnesses

-who appeared for him at his trials. The man who

-was able to persuade a mother, a sharp-witted solicitor,

-half a dozen higher army officers, six magistrates, and

-numberless soldiers and tenants who had known Roger

-Tichborne well, to accept and support him in his preposterous

-claim, did not need money to befool an old

-gardener and a negro valet.</p>

-

-<p>Indeed, it was this personal gift, backed by the man’s

-abnormal histrionic bent and capacity for mimicry,

-that carried him so far and won him the support of so

-many individuals and almost the solid public. How far

-he was able to carry things has been suggested, but the

-details are so remarkable as to demand recounting.</p>

-

-<p>Orton had almost no schooling. He quite naturally

-misspelled the commonest words and was normally

-guilty of the most appalling grammatical and rhetorical

-solecisms. He knew not a word of French, Latin, or of

-any other language, save a smattering of Spanish, picked

-up from the Castros while at Melipillo. He had never

-associated with any one who remotely approached the

-position of a gentleman, and the best imitation he can

-have contrived, must have been patterned after performances

-witnessed on the stages of cheap variety

-houses. Moreover he knew absolutely nothing about the

-Tichbornes, not even the fact that they were Catholics.

-He did not know where their estates were, nor where

-Roger had gone to school; yet he carried his imposture

-within an inch of success. Indeed, it was the opinion of

-disinterested observers at the trial of his civil action that

-he must have won the case had he stayed off the stand

-himself.</p>

-

-<p>The feat of substitution this man almost succeeded

-in accomplishing was palpably an enormous one. He

-went to England, familiarized himself with the places

-Roger Tichborne had visited, studied French without

-managing to learn it, practiced the handwriting of the

-young Tichborne heir till it deceived even the experts,

-and likewise learned, in spite of his own lack of schooling,

-to imitate the English of Tichborne, and to misspell

-just those words on which the original Roger was

-weak. He crammed his memory with incidents and details

-picked up at every hand. He learned to talk almost

-like a gentleman. He worked with his voice until he

-got out of it most of the earthy harshness that belonged

-to it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtly

-behavior, gentle ways, and a certain charming deference

-which went far toward convincing those who took him

-seriously and gave him their support. In short, he was

-able to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness,

-but he could not, with all his talent, quite project himself

-into the personality and mentality of another and

-very different man. That, perhaps, is a simulation beyond

-human capacity.</p>

-

-<p>So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificent

-impersonation, went to prison for fourteen years,

-having made quite too grand a gesture and much too

-sad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and was

-then released in view of good conduct. Thereafter he

-wrote several confessions and retracted them all in turn.

-Finally, toward the end of his life, he changed his mind

-once more and prepared a final and fairly complete account

-of his life and misdeeds, from which some of the

-facts here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898.</p>

-

-<p>The extent to which he had moved the public may

-be judged from an incident the year following Orton’s

-conviction and imprisonment. His chief counsel at the

-criminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy, who

-was himself scathingly denounced by the court in connection

-with a misdirected attempt to have Orton identified

-as a castaway from the <i>Bella</i> by a seaman who

-swore he had performed the rescue, but was shown to be

-a perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was elected

-to Parliament, so great was his popularity and that of

-his client. When Kenealy, soon after taking his seat,

-moved that the Tichborne case be referred to a royal

-commission, the House of Commons rejected the motion

-unanimously. This action inflamed the populace.

-There were angry street meetings, inflammatory

-speeches, and symptoms of a general riot. The troops

-had to be called and kept in readiness for instant action.

-Fortunately the sight of the soldiers sobered the mob,

-and the matter passed off with only minor bloodshed.</p>

-

-<p>But ten years later, when Orton emerged from

-prison, there was almost no one to greet him. The fickle

-public, that had once been ready to storm the Houses

-of Parliament for him, had utterly forgotten the man.

-Nor was there any sign of public interest, when he died

-in obscurity and poverty fourteen years later. A few

-of his persistent followers gave him honorable burial as

-“Sir Roger Tichborne.”</p>

-

-<p>The original enigma of the fate of Roger Tichborne,

-upon which this colossal structure of fraud and legal

-intricacy was founded, received, to be sure, not the

-slightest clarification from all the pother and feverish

-investigating. If ever there had been any good reason

-to doubt that the young Hampshire aristocrat went

-helplessly down with the stricken <i>Bella</i> and her fated

-crew, none remained after the trials and the stupendous

-publicity they invoked.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK</p>

-

-

-<p>On the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1899, Mrs.

-Arthur W. Clarke, the young wife of a British

-publisher’s agent residing at 159 East Sixty-fifth

-Street, New York, found this advertisement in

-the <i>New York Herald</i>, under the heading, “Employment

-Wanted:”</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>GIRL (20) as child’s nurse; no experience in city. Nurse,

-274 <i>Herald</i>, Twenty-third Street.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The following Tuesday Mrs. Clarke took into her employment,

-as attendant for her little daughter, Marion,

-twenty months old, a pretty young woman, who gave

-the name of Carrie Jones and said she had come only two

-weeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upper

-New York State. The fact explained her lack of references.

-Mrs. Clarke, far from being suspicious because of

-the absence of employment papers, was impressed with

-the new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled,

-even-tempered young woman, considerably above her

-station, devoted to children, and, what was particularly

-noted, gentle in voice and demeanor—a jewel among

-servants.</p>

-

-<p>Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby Marion

-Clarke had become the center of one of the celebrated

-abduction cases and, for a little while, the nucleus of a

-dark and appalling mystery. To-day, after the lapse

-of twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affair

-are still to be read in the precautions hedging the employment

-of nursemaids in American cities and in the

-timidity of parents everywhere. It was one of those occasional

-and impressive crimes which leave their mark

-on social habits and public behavior long after the details

-or the incidents themselves have been forgotten.</p>

-

-<p>The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifth

-Street is about two squares from the city’s great

-playground, Central Park, a veritable warren of children

-and their maids on every sunny day. Here Marion

-Clarke went almost every afternoon with her new

-nurse, and here the first scene of the ensuing drama was

-played.</p>

-

-<p>At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of the

-next Sunday, May 21, Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarke

-and asked if she might not take the little girl to the

-Park then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine inviting.

-In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarke

-and her husband consented, and the maid set off a little

-before eleven o’clock with Baby Marion tucked into a

-wicker carriage. She was told to return by one o’clock,

-so that the child might have her luncheon at the usual

-hour.</p>

-

-<p>At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk in

-the Park, also tempted from his home by the enchantments

-of the day. Mrs. Clarke did not accompany him,

-since she had borne a second baby only two or three

-months before, and she was still confined to the house.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Street

-entrance and followed the paths idly along toward the

-old arsenal. Without especially seeking his daughter and

-her nurse, he nevertheless kept an eye out. A short distance

-from the arsenal he saw his child’s cart standing

-in front of the rest room; he approached, expecting to

-see the child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and the

-attendant explained that the child’s vehicle had been

-left in her care, while the nurse bore the baby to the

-menagerie.</p>

-

-<p>“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to be

-here any minute now,” prattled the public employee.</p>

-

-<p>The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatient

-and went off to wander through the animal gardens.

-In half an hour he was back at the rest room to find the

-attendant about to move the cart indoors and make her

-departure, her tour of duty being over.</p>

-

-<p>Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to the

-nearest policeman, who smiled, with the confidence of

-long experience, and advised him to go home. It was a

-common thing for a green country girl to get lost

-among the winding drives and walks of Central Park.

-No doubt the nurse would find her way home with the

-child in a little while.</p>

-

-<p>Clarke went back to his house and waited. At two

-o’clock he went excitedly back to the Park and consulted

-the captain of police, with the same results. The

-officers were ordered to look for the nurse and child,

-but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He was

-once more told to go home and wait. At the same time

-he was rather pointedly told not to return with his annoying

-inquiries. Such temporary disappearances of

-children happened every day.</p>

-

-<p>The harried father went home and paced the floor.

-His enervated wife wept and trembled with apprehension.

-At four o’clock the doorbell rang, and the

-father rushed excitedly to answer.</p>

-

-<p>A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibule

-and asked if Mr. Clarke lived here. Then he handed over

-a letter in a plain white envelope, lingering a moment, as

-if expecting a tip.</p>

-

-<p>Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quaking

-fingers and read:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“<span class="smcap">Mrs Clark</span>: Do not look for your nurse and baby. They

-are safe in our possession, where they will remain for the

-present. If the matter is kept out of the hands of the police

-and newspapers, you will get your baby back, safe and sound.</p>

-

-<p>“If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it

-all over, we will see to it that you never see her alive again.

-We are driven to this by the fact that we cannot get work,

-and one of us has a child dying through want of proper

-treatment and nourishment.</p>

-

-<p>“Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is

-still with her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us

-Monday or Tuesday.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“<span class="smcap">Three.</span>”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed,

-punctuated, and printed with a fine pen in a somewhat

-laborious simulation of writing-machine type. It also

-bore several markings characteristic of the journalist or

-publisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel lines

-drawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicate

-capitals. The envelope was the common plain white

-kind, but the sheet of paper on which the note had been

-penned was of the white unglazed and uncalendared

-kind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper offices

-as copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspected

-that the kidnapper must have been a newspaper man,

-printer, reader, or some one connected with a publishing

-house.</p>

-

-<p>The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alone

-the preceding Friday evening and had been writing.

-Evidently she had prepared the note at that time and

-had been planning the abduction with foresight and

-care. People at once reached the conclusion that she

-was one of the agents of a great band of professional

-kidnappers. Accordingly every child and every mother

-in the city stood in peril.</p>

-

-<p>To indicate the nature of the official search, we may

-as well reproduce Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Arrest for abduction—Carrie Jones, twenty-one years of

-age, five feet two inches tall, dark hair and eyes, pale face,

-high check bones, teeth prominent in lower jaw, American

-by birth; wore a white straw sailor hat with black band, military

-pin on side, blue-check shirt waist, black brilliantine

-skirt, black lace bicycle boots, white collar and black tie.</p>

-

-<p>“Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke,

-daughter of Arthur W. Clarke, of this city, and described as

-follows: twenty months old, light complexion, blue eyes,

-light hair, had twelve teeth, four in upper jaw, four in lower

-jaw, and four in back. There is a space between two upper

-front teeth, and red birthmark on back. Wore rose-colored

-dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black buttoned

-shoes.</p>

-

-<p>“Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in

-all institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children

-of the above age are received.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>A photograph of the missing child accompanied the

-description.</p>

-

-<p>So the quest began. It was, however, by no means

-confined to Carrie Jones and the child. The New York

-newspaper reporters were early convinced that some

-one else stood behind the transaction, and they sought

-night and day for a man or woman connected either

-directly or distantly with their own profession. It was

-the day when the reporter prided himself especially on

-his superior acumen as a sleuth, with the result that

-every effort was made to give a fresh demonstration of

-journalistic enterprise and shrewdness.</p>

-

-<p>Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompanied

-by a sharp rise in public emotionalism and the incipience

-of panic among parents, failed, however, to

-produce even the most shadowy results. Rumors and

-suspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, but

-there came forth nothing that had the earmarks of the

-genuine clew. The arrests of innocent young women

-were many, and numerous little girls were dragged to

-police stations by the usual crop of fanatics.</p>

-

-<p>Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from all

-parts of the surrounding country and even from the

-most distant places. One report had her on her way to

-England, another showed her as having sailed for

-Sweden, a third report was that she had been taken to

-Australia by a childless couple. All the other common

-hypotheses were, of course, entertained. A bereaved

-mother had taken little Marion to fill the void of her

-own loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girl

-and was using her to present as her own offspring, probably

-to comply with the provisions of some freak will.</p>

-

-<p>But the hard fact remained that a letter had come

-within four hours after the abduction of the child,

-and before there had been the first note of alarm or

-publicity. Such an epistle could only have been written

-by the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy to

-the fact that the girl was gone. In that communication

-the writer had stated his or her case very definitely and,

-while not actually demanding ransom or naming a sum,

-had clearly indicated the intention of making such a

-subsequent demand.</p>

-

-<p>Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be it

-said to their credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spun

-hypotheses, but clung to the main track and

-sought the kidnappers. The <i>New York World</i> offered

-a reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficient

-reportorial workers into the search. The other newspapers

-also kept their men going in shifts. Every possible

-trail was followed to its end, every promising part

-of the city searched. Even the most inane reports were

-investigated with diligence.</p>

-

-<p>Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bits

-of information which they, no doubt, considered suggestive

-or important. The well-known Captain McClusky,

-then chief of detectives, received these often

-wearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigation

-of their reports, and often remained at his desk

-late into the night.</p>

-

-<p>Among a large number of women who reported to

-the detective chief was a Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and voluble

-Irishwoman, who maintained a rooming house in

-Twenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff asserted

-that two women with a little girl of Marion

-Clarke’s age and general appearance had rented a room

-from her on the evening of the eventful Sunday and

-spent the night there. The next morning one of them

-had got the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secluded

-with the other woman and child for a time, and

-had then come out to announce that they would not remain

-another day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detected

-excitement in the manner of both women, but she

-had to admit that the child had made no complaint or

-outcry. Nevertheless, she felt that these were the wanted

-people.</p>

-

-<p>Had she noted anything of special interest about the

-child, any peculiarity by which the parents might

-recognize her? Or had she heard the women mention

-any town or place to which they might have gone?</p>

-

-<p>The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessed

-that her curiosity had led her to do a little spying,

-and recalled that she had heard one of the women

-mention a town. Either she had not heard the name

-distinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it was

-a name ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that.

-Fitchburg, Pittsburg, Williamsburg, Plattsburg—something

-like that. She did not know the reason for her

-feeling, but she was sure it was a place not very far

-from New York.</p>

-

-<p>As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothing

-except that it seemed good-humored, healthy, and

-clever. She had heard one of the women say: “Come

-on, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently the

-little girl had done some sort of impersonation.</p>

-

-<p>Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credence

-in Mrs. Cosgriff’s account, but he saw no special

-promise in her revelations till he repeated the details to

-the agonized parents. At the mention of the childish

-impersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.</p>

-

-<p>“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of her

-little tricks!”</p>

-

-<p>It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spent

-hours playing with the child, teaching it to walk and

-pose like a certain affected woman friend of its mother.

-Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie Jones, and another

-woman had been in South Brooklyn the evening

-after the abduction and spent the night and part of

-the next day at Mrs. Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoon

-for a town whose name ended in burg or berg.</p>

-

-<p>Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives made

-a list of towns with the burg termination, and one or

-two men were sent to each, with instructions to make

-a quiet, but thorough, search. Information of a confidential

-kind was also forwarded to the police departments

-of other cities, near and far. As a result a

-number of suspected young women were picked up.

-Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a short

-time when a girl answering to the description of Carrie

-Jones was seized in Connecticut and held for the

-arrival of the New York detectives, when she began to

-act mysteriously and failed to give a clear account of

-herself. It was found, however, that she had other substantial

-reasons for being cryptic, and that she was,

-moreover, enjoying her little joke on the officials.</p>

-

-<p>Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who would

-neither affirm nor deny that she was Carrie Jones, but

-let the local police have the very definite impression that

-they had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper. She

-turned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatory

-type. Her one real link with the affair was

-that her name happened to be Jones, a circumstance

-which got the members of this large and popular family

-of citizens no little discomfort during the pendency of

-the Clarke mystery.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime no further communication had been received

-from the abductors. They had said, in the single

-note received from them, that they would communicate

-Monday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything,

-far from being quiet, had been in a most plangent

-uproar, which circumstances alone should have been

-recognized as the reason for silence. But, as is usual,

-the clear and patent explanation seemed not to contain

-enough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretations

-were put forward in the usual variety of

-forms. The note had been sent merely to misguide, and

-one might be sure the abductors did not intend to return

-Baby Marion. If the abductors were looking for

-ransom, why had no more been heard? Why had they

-chosen the daughter of a man who had slender means

-and from whom no large ransom could be expected?

-No, it was something more sinister still. Probably Little

-Marion was dead.</p>

-

-<p>As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusive

-developments, the public sympathy toward the

-stricken couple became expressive and dramatic.

-Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth Street in

-hope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. The

-father was greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressions

-whenever he came or went. Many offers of aid

-were received, and some came forward who wanted to

-pay whatever ransom might be demanded.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i141" style="max-width: 80.6875em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i141.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ MARION CLARKE ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>In these various ways the Marion Clarke case came

-to be a national and even an international sensation in

-the brief course of a week. Sympathy with the parents

-was instant and widespread, and passion against the abductors

-filled the newspaper correspondence columns

-with suggestions in favor of more stringent laws, plans

-for cruel vengeance on the kidnappers, complaints

-against the police, fulminations directed at quite every

-one connected with the unfortunate affair—all the

-usual expressions of helplessness and bafflement.</p>

-

-<p>On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven days

-after the disappearance, a woman with a little girl entered

-the general store at the little hamlet of St. John,

-N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided as postmistress

-to the community. The child was a little petulant

-and noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous.

-Both were strangers. The woman gave her name as

-Beauregard and took one or two letters which had come

-for her. With these and the little girl she made a quick

-departure.</p>

-

-<p>Because of the great excitement and wide publicity

-of the Clarke case, nothing of the sort could happen so

-near the city of New York without one inevitable result.

-The postmistress immediately notified Deputy

-Sheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, who

-had his office in St. John. Charleston was able to locate

-the woman and child before they could leave town, and

-he covertly followed them to the farmhouse of Frank

-Oakley, in the heart of the Ramapo Mountain region,

-near Sloatsburg, about nineteen miles from Haverstraw,

-on the Hudson River.</p>

-

-<p>The rural officer discovered, by making a few inquiries,

-that this Mrs. Beauregard had been known in

-the vicinity for some months, and she had been occupying

-the Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously,

-however, she had appeared with another woman

-and the little girl.</p>

-

-<p>The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; there

-were, or had been, two women; the place was ideal for

-hiding, and the child was of the proper age and description.

-Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned some

-other officers, descended on the place, seized the woman,

-the child, and the husband, locked them into the nearest

-jail, and sent word to Captain McClusky.</p>

-

-<p>New York detectives and reporters arrived by the

-next train, and Mr. Clarke came a short time later. As

-soon as he was on the ground, the party proceeded to

-the jail, and the weeping father caught his wandering

-girl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke.

-Within ten minutes every available telephone and telegraph

-wire was humming the triumphant message back

-to New York.</p>

-

-<p>But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mystery

-of the case only began to unfold itself. The woman

-seized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie Jones. Neither had

-the Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name of

-Mrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned about

-this matter, later “admitted” that she was really Mrs.

-Jennie Wilson. Her story was that a couple had brought

-the child to her, saying that it needed to remain in the

-mountains for the summer. They had paid her for the

-little girl’s board and care. She declared she did not

-know their address, but they would certainly be on

-hand in the fall to reclaim their baby.</p>

-

-<p>The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he was

-James Wilson; that he had no employment at the time,

-except working on the farm, and that he knew nothing

-of the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. He

-didn’t interfere in such affairs.</p>

-

-<p>Both were returned to New York after some slight

-delay. The detectives and the newspapers at once went

-to work on the problem of discovering who they were,

-and what had become of Carrie Jones.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the abducted child was being brought

-home to her distracted mother. A crowd of several

-thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth Street,

-apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening

-newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded

-with presents, saluted by the public officials, and treated

-as the heroine that circumstance and good police work

-had made her. Photographs of her crowded the journals,

-and she was altogether the most famous youngster

-of the day. Her parents later removed to Boston with

-her, and they were heard of in the succeeding years

-when attempts were made to release the imprisoned kidnappers,

-or whenever there was another kidnapping or

-missing-child case. In time they passed back into obscurity,

-and Marion Clarke disappeared from the glare

-of notoriety.</p>

-

-<p>The work of identifying the man and woman caught

-in the Sloatsburg farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy

-Lang, the boy who had brought the note to the Clarke

-door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately

-recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who

-had handed him the missive and a five-cent piece in

-Second Avenue and asked him to deliver the note to

-Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and

-said that the prisoner was one of the two women who

-had stayed at her house on that Sunday night. It was

-apparent then that one of the active kidnappers, and not

-an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman and her

-husband, however, denied everything and refused to

-give any information about themselves.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in

-an attempt to make the identification complete, discover

-just who the prisoners were, and establish their

-connections with others believed to have financed the

-kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than

-mere abduction for ransom was suspected, and it seemed

-to be indicated by certain facts that will appear presently.

-Accordingly the reporters and journalistic investigators

-were conducting a fresh search on very broad

-lines.</p>

-

-<p>On the evening of the second of June this hunt came

-to an abrupt close, when a reporter traced the mysterious

-Carrie Jones to the home of an aunt at White Oak

-Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the

-admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country

-girl who had been for no long period a waitress in

-the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, New York. Bella

-Anderson readily told who the captive man and woman

-were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted

-and carried out. Her story may be summarized to clear

-the ground.</p>

-

-<p>Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of

-a retired soldier who had seen service in India and Africa.

-At the age of fourteen, her parents being dead, she

-and her brother, Samuel, had set out for America and

-been received by relatives in the States of New York

-and New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled

-and aided financially both by her brother and other relatives.

-The year before the kidnapping she had gone to

-New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel,

-in the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs.

-George Beauregard Barrow. They had been kind to her

-and become her intimates, nursing her through an illness

-and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.</p>

-

-<p>The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested

-pair, had persuaded her that the work of waiting

-on table in a hotel was too arduous and advised her to

-seek employment in a private family as nurse to a child.

-In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity

-to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a

-heavy ransom for its return. All this part of the business

-they would manage for her. All she needed to do

-was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this she

-was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be

-collected.</p>

-

-<p>Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a

-place as child’s nurse. Several parents answered. At the

-first two homes she was just too late to procure employment,

-other applicants having anticipated her. So it

-was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and

-determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.</p>

-

-<p>The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had

-coached her carefully. They had instructed her in the

-matter of her lack of references, in the manner of taking

-the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in the

-details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on

-through the list. They had been the mentors and the

-“master minds.”</p>

-

-<p>After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few

-days and had taken little Marion to the Park the first

-time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted with the nurse and

-instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the next

-excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many

-qualms and been unable to bring herself to the deed for

-several visits. Each time Mrs. Barrow met her in the

-Park and was ready to flee with the little girl. Finally

-the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon

-she found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They

-left the baby’s cart at the rest room, carried the child

-to a remote place, changed its coat and cap, and then

-set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they took

-the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to,

-the women exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned

-to Manhattan, gave the note to the boy, and

-turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had

-seen the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the

-game was dangerous, and set out quickly for Sloatsburg,

-where the farmhouse had been rented in advance by

-Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent

-away because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly

-sought and might be recognized in the neighborhood.</p>

-

-<p>This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows

-naturally sought to shield themselves. It was also discovered

-that Mrs. Barrow had been an Addie McNally,

-born and reared in up-State New York, and that she,

-with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment,

-thus explaining the chirographical characteristics

-of the Clarke abduction note. She was about

-twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not unattractive.</p>

-

-<p>Investigation brought out romantic and pathetic

-facts concerning the husband. He had apparently had

-no better employment in New York than that of motorman

-in the hire of an electric cab company then operating

-in that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguished

-parents. His father was Judge John C. Barrow

-of the superior court of Little Rock, Arkansas, and

-the descendant of other persons politically well known in

-the South. George Beauregard Barrow—his middle name

-being that of the famous Confederate commander at the

-first battle of Bull Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationship

-was claimed—had been incorrigible from

-childhood. In early manhood he had been connected

-with kidnapping threats and plots in his home city and

-with assaults on his enemies, with the result that he was

-finally sent away, cut off and told to make his own

-berth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his unfortunate

-son at the trial, but public feeling was too

-sorely aroused.</p>

-

-<p>George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried before

-Judge Fursman and quickly convicted. Barrow was sentenced

-to fourteen years and ten months, and the Anderson

-girl to four years, both judge and jury accepting

-her statement that she had been no more than a pawn

-in the hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs.

-Barrow, sensing the direction of the wind, took a plea

-of guilty before Judge Werner, hoping for clemency.

-The court, however, said that her crime merited the

-gravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixed

-her term at twelve years and ten months.</p>

-

-<p>These trials were had, and the sentences imposed

-within six weeks of the kidnapping, the courts having

-acted with despatch. While the cases were pending,

-Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had again

-and again been asked to reveal the names of others who

-had induced them to their crime or had financed them.

-All said there had been no other conspirators, but the

-feeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the support

-of professional criminals, or of some enemy of the

-Clarkes, either of whom had supplied him with considerable

-sums of money.</p>

-

-<p>This belief, which was specially strong with some of

-the newspapers, was predicated upon two facts.</p>

-

-<p>On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four days

-after the abduction of Marion Clarke, there had appeared

-in the <i>New York Herald</i> the following advertisement:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in Baby

-Clarke case. Write again and let me know when and where

-I can meet you Thursday evening. Don’t fail—strictly confidential.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any persons

-acting for them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-reward

-offer or had communicated with any one

-who had been promised such a sum. Hence there were

-only two possible explanations of the advertisement.

-Either it had been inserted by some unbalanced person

-who wanted to create a stir—the kind of restless neurotic

-who projects his unwelcome apparition into every

-sensation—or there was really some dark force moving

-behind the kidnapping.</p>

-

-<p>A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion.

-In spite of the fact that George Barrow had been disowned

-at home and driven from his town, and opposed

-to the circumstances that he had worked at common

-and ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent for

-eleven months, had been seen in the shabbiest clothes

-and was known to be in need—the only force that

-might have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping—he

-was found to have a considerable sum in his pockets

-when searched at the jail; he informed his wife that he

-would get plenty of cash for their defense, and he was

-shown to have expended a fairly large sum on the planning

-of the crime, the traveling and other expenses, the

-rent of the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, and

-for his own amusement. Where had this come from?</p>

-

-<p>Not only the public and the newspapers, but Detective

-Chief McClusky were long occupied with this

-enigma. Barrow himself gave various specious explanations

-and finally refused to say more. Hints and bruits

-of all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarke

-could furnish the answer if he would, an accusation

-which the harried father indignantly rejected.</p>

-

-<p>In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkes

-removed to Boston, the public interest flagged, and the

-mystery remained unsolved.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">DOROTHY ARNOLD</p>

-

-

-<p>On the afternoon of Monday, December 12,

-1910, a young woman of the upper social

-world vanished from the pavement of Fifth

-Avenue. Not only did she disappear from the center of

-one of the busiest streets on earth, at the sunniest hour

-of a brilliant winter afternoon, with thousands within

-sight and reach, with men and women who knew her at

-every side, and with officers of the law thickly strewn

-about her path; but she went without discernible motives,

-without preparation, and, so far as the public has

-ever been permitted to read, without leaving the dimmest

-clew to her possible destination.</p>

-

-<p>These are the peculiarities which mark the Dorothy

-Arnold case as one of the most irritating puzzles of

-modern police history, a true mystery of the missing.</p>

-

-<p>It is one of the maxims in the administration of absent-persons

-bureaus that disappearing men and women,

-no matter how carefully they may plan, regardless of

-all natural astuteness, invariably leave behind some token

-of their premeditation. Similarly, it is a truism that,

-barring purposeful self-occultation, the departure of an

-adult human being from so crowded a thoroughfare

-can be set down only to abduction or to mnemonic aberration.

-Remembering that a crime must have its motivation,

-and that cases of amnesia almost always are

-marked by previous symptoms and by fairly early recovery,

-the recondite and baffling aspects of this affair

-become manifest; for there was never the least hint of

-a ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuous

-for rugged physical and mental health.</p>

-

-<p>Thus, to sum up the affair, a disappearance which

-had from the beginning no standing in rationality, being

-logically both impenetrable and irreconcilable, remains,

-at the end of nearly a score of years, as obstinate

-and perplexing as ever—publicly a gall to human curiosity,

-an impossible problem for reason and analytical

-power.</p>

-

-<p>Dorothy Arnold was past twenty-five when she

-walked out of her father’s house into darkness that shining

-winter’s day. She was at the summit of her youth,

-rich, socially preferred, blessed with prospects, and to

-every outer eye, uncloudedly happy. Her father, a

-wealthy importer of perfumes, occupied a dignified

-house on East Seventy-ninth Street, in the center of

-one of the best residential districts, with his wife and

-four children—two sons and two daughters. Mr. Arnold’s

-sister was the wife of Justice Peckham of the

-United States Supreme Court, and the entire family

-was socially well known in Washington, Philadelphia,

-and New York. His missing daughter had been educated

-at Bryn Mawr and figured prominently in the activities

-of “the younger set” in all these cities. All descriptions

-set her down as having been active, cheerful,

-intelligent, and talented.</p>

-

-<p>The accepted story is that Miss Arnold left her father’s

-home at about half past eleven on the morning

-of her disappearance, apparently to go shopping for an

-evening gown. She appears to have had an appointment

-with a girl friend, which she broke earlier in the morning,

-saying that she was to go shopping with her mother.

-A few minutes before she left the house, the young

-woman went to her mother’s room and said she was going

-out to look for the dress. Her mother remarked that

-if her daughter would wait till she might finish dressing,

-she would go along. The girl demurred quietly, saying

-that it wasn’t worth the bother, and that she would

-telephone if she found anything to her liking. So far

-as her parent could make out, the girl was not anxious

-to be alone. She was no more than casual and seemed

-especially happy and well.</p>

-

-<p>At noon, half an hour after she had left her home,

-Miss Arnold went into a shop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth

-Street, where she bought a box of candy and had

-it charged on her father’s account. At about half past

-one she was at Brentano’s bookshop, Twenty-seventh

-Street and Fifth Avenue. Here she bought a volume of

-fiction, also charging the item to her father.</p>

-

-<p>Whether she was recognized again at a later hour is

-in doubt. She met a girl chum and her mother in the

-street some time during the early part of the afternoon

-and stopped to gossip for a few moments; but whether

-this incident occurred just before or after her visit to

-the bookstore could not be made certain. At any rate,

-she was not seen later than two o’clock.</p>

-

-<p>When the young woman failed to appear at home

-for dinner, there was a little irritation, but no concern.

-Her family decided that she had probably come across

-friends and forgotten to telephone her intention of dining

-out. But when midnight came, and there was still

-no word from the young woman, her father began to

-feel uneasy and communicated by telephone with the

-homes of various friends, where his daughter might

-have been visiting. When he failed to discover her in

-this way, Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney,

-and a search was begun.</p>

-

-<p>The reader is asked to note that there was no public

-announcement of the young woman’s absence for more

-than six weeks. Just why it was considered wise to proceed

-discreetly and privately cannot be more than surmised.

-This action on the part of her family has always

-been considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicion

-and a determination to prevent its publication. At any

-rate, it was not until January 26, that revelation was

-made to the newspapers, at the strong urging of W. J.

-Flynn, then in charge of the New York detectives.</p>

-

-<p>In those six weeks, however, there had been no idleness.

-As soon as it was apparent that the girl could not

-be merely visiting, private detectives were summoned,

-and a formal quest begun. Her room and its contents

-revealed nothing of a positive character. She had left the

-house in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat and

-street shoes, carrying a silver-fox muff and satin bag,

-probably containing less than thirty dollars in money.

-Her checkbook had been left behind; nor had there

-been any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts.

-No part of the girl’s clothing had been packed or taken

-along; none of her more valuable jewelry was missing;

-no letter had been left, and nothing pointed to preparation

-of any sort.</p>

-

-<p>A search of her correspondence revealed, however, a

-packet of letters from a man of a well-known family in

-another city. When, somewhat later, Mr. Arnold was

-summoned by the district attorney and asked to produce

-the letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, but

-added that they contained nothing of significance.</p>

-

-<p>It developed, too, that, while her parents were in

-Maine in the preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold had

-gone to Boston on the pretext of visiting a school chum,

-resident in the university suburb of Cambridge; whereas

-she had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and had

-pawned about five hundred dollars’ worth of personal

-jewelry with a local lender, taking no trouble, however

-to conceal her name or home address. It was shown

-that the man of the letters was registered at another

-Boston hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he denied

-having seen her or been with her on this occasion,

-and there was no way of proving to the contrary. The

-date of this Boston visit was September 23, about two

-and a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance.

-The police were never able to establish any connection

-between the Boston visit, the pawning of the jewels, and

-the subsequent events, so that the reader must rely at

-this point upon his own conjecture.</p>

-

-<p>Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment

-of the young heiress, both her mother and

-brother and the man of the letters had returned from

-Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her.

-He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of

-Miss Arnold’s plans, proclaimed that he knew of no

-reason why she should have left home, announced that

-he had considered himself engaged to marry her, and

-he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly

-appear. Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained

-over the young man and all his movements for

-many months. In the end, however, the police seemed

-satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of

-Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out

-of the case almost as suddenly as he had entered it.</p>

-

-<p>In the six weeks before the public was acquainted

-with the facts, private detectives, and later the public

-police, had worked unremittingly on the several possible

-theories covering the case. There were naturally a

-number of possibilities: First, that the girl had met with

-a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital;

-second, that she had been run down by some

-reckless motorist, killed, and carried off by the frightened

-driver and secretly buried; third, that she had been

-kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that she

-had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering

-about the country, unable to give any clew to her

-identity; sixth, that she had quarreled with her parents

-and chosen this method of bringing them to terms by

-the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested

-as a shoplifter and was concealing her identity for

-shame.</p>

-

-<p>As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded.

-The hospitals and morgues were searched in vain; the

-records of traffic accidents were scanned with the utmost

-care; the roadhouses and resorts in all directions

-from the city were visited, and their owners closely

-questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected,

-the passenger lists of all departing ships examined, and

-later sailings observed. The authorities in European and

-other ports were notified by cable, and the captains of

-ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the

-first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and

-prisons were visited and every female prisoner noted.

-Similar precautions were taken in other American cities,

-where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues were also

-subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of

-physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and

-all manner of possible and impossible retreats were made

-the objects of detective attention—all without result.</p>

-

-<p>The notion that the girl might have been abducted

-and held for ransom was discarded at the end of a few

-weeks, when no word had come from possible kidnappers.

-The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, with

-the most emphatic denials coming from all the near and

-distant members of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea of

-an elopement also had to be discarded after a time, and

-so also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic attack.</p>

-

-<p>After the police finally insisted on the publication of

-the facts and the summoning of public aid, and after

-the various early hypotheses had one and all failed to

-stand the test of scrutiny and time, various more and

-more fantastic or improbable conjectures came into

-currency. One was that the girl might have been carried

-off to some distant American town or foreign port.

-Another was that some secret enemy, whose name and

-grievance her parents were loath to reveal, had made

-away with the young woman, or was holding her to satisfy

-his spite. The public excitement was nigh boundless,

-and ingenious fabulations or diseased imaginings

-came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted

-parents with every mail.</p>

-

-<p>Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. As

-the story of the young woman’s disappearance continued

-to occupy the leading columns of the daily papers,

-day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstable

-elements of the population came into vigorous

-play. Dorothy Arnold was reported from all parts of

-the country, and both the members of her family and

-numberless detectives were kept on the jump, running

-down the most absurd reports on the meager possibility

-that there might be a grain of truth in one of them. Soon

-there appeared the pathological liars and self-accusers,

-with whose peculiarities neither the police nor the public

-were then sufficiently acquainted. In more than a

-hundred cities—judging from a tabulation of the newspaper

-reports of that day—women of the most diverse

-ages and types came forward with the suggestion that

-they concealed within themselves the person of the missing

-heiress. Girls of fourteen made the claim and women

-of fifty. Such absurdities soon had the police in a state

-of weary skepticism, but the Arnold family and the

-newspaper-reading public were still upset by every fresh

-report.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i159" style="max-width: 81.6875em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i159.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ DOROTHY ARNOLD ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>Naturally enough, the fact that a prominent young

-woman, enjoying the full protection of wealth and social

-distinction, could apparently be snatched away

-from the most populous quarter of a world city, struck

-terror to the hearts of many. If a Dorothy Arnold could

-be ravished from the familiar sidewalks of her home

-city, what fate waited for the obscure stranger? Was it

-not possible that some new and strange kind of criminal,

-equipped with diabolic cunning and actuated by impenetrable

-motives, was launched upon a campaign of

-woman stealing? Who was safe?</p>

-

-<p>One of the popular beliefs of the time was that Miss

-Arnold might have gone into some small and obscure

-shop at a time when there was no other customer in the

-place and been there seized, bound, gagged, and made

-ready for abduction. The notion was widely accepted

-for the dual reason that it provided a set of circumstances

-under which it was possible to explain the totally

-unwitnessed snatching of the young woman and,

-at the same time, set a likely locale, since there are thousands

-of such little shops in New York. As a result of

-the currency of this story, many women hesitated to

-enter the establishments of cobblers, bootblacks, stationers,

-confectioners, tobacconists, and other petty

-tradesmen, especially in the more outlying parts of the

-city. Many bankruptcies of these minor business people

-resulted, as one may read from the court records.</p>

-

-<p>A similar fabulation, to the effect that the girl might

-have entered a cruising taxicab, operated by a sinister

-ex-convict, and been whisked off to some secret den of

-crime and vice, was almost as popular, with the result

-that cabs did a poor business with women clients for

-more than a year afterward. An old hackman, who was

-arrested in that feverish time because of the hysteria of

-a woman passenger, tells me that even to-day he encounters

-women who grow suspicious and excited, if he

-happens to drive by some unaccustomed route, a thing

-often done in these days to avoid the congestion on the

-main streets.</p>

-

-<p>While all this popular burning and sweating was going

-on, the police and many thousands of private investigators,

-professional and amateur, were busy with

-the problem of elucidating some motive to fit the case.

-Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to

-reason, the possibilities became a very general preoccupation.

-The deductive steps may be briefly set down.

-First, there were the alternative propositions of voluntary

-or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction.

-Second, if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained,

-there were only two general possibilities—abduction

-for ransom or kidnapping by some maniac. The

-ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like,

-come under the latter head. The notion of a fatal accident

-had been eliminated.</p>

-

-<p>The proposition of voluntary absence presented a

-more complex picture. Suicide, elopement, amnesia,

-personal rebellion, an unrevealed family situation, a forbidden

-love affair, the desire to hide some social lapse—any

-of these might be the basis of a self-willed absence

-of a permanent or temporary kind.</p>

-

-<p>The failure, after months of quest, to find any trace

-of a body, seemed to have rendered the propositions of

-murder and of suicide alike improbable. Elopement and

-amnesia were likewise rendered untenable theories by

-time, nor was it long before the conceit of a disagreement

-was relegated to the improbabilities.</p>

-

-<p>Justly or unjustly, a good many practical detectives

-came after a time to the opinion that the case demanded

-a masculinizing of the familiar adage into <i>cherchez

-l’homme</i>. More seasoned officers inclined to the idea that

-there must have been some man, possibly one whose

-identity had been successfully concealed by the distraught

-girl. Again, as is common in such cases, there

-was the very general feeling that Miss Arnold’s family

-knew a good deal more than had been revealed either to

-the police or the public, and there was something about

-the long delay in reporting the case and the subsequent

-guarded attitude of the girl’s relatives that seemed to

-confirm this perhaps idle suspicion.</p>

-

-<p>The trouble with a great many of the theories evolved

-in the first months following the disappearance of Dorothy

-Arnold, was that they fitted only a part of the

-facts and probabilities. After all, here was an intricate

-and baffling situation, involving a person who, because

-of position, antecedents, and social situation, might be

-expected to act in a conventional manner. Accordingly,

-any explanation that fitted the physical facts and was

-still characterized by extraordinary details might reasonably

-be discarded.</p>

-

-<p>It was several years before the girl’s father finally declared

-his belief in her death, and it is a fact that a sum

-of not less than a hundred thousand dollars was expended,

-first and last, in running down all sorts of rumors

-and clews. The search extended to England, Italy,

-France, Switzerland, Canada—even to the Far East and

-Australia. But all trails led to vacancy, and all speculations

-were at length empty. No dimmest trace of the

-girl was ever found, and no genuinely satisfactory explanation

-of the strange story has ever been put forward.</p>

-

-<p>It is true there have been, at times in the intervening

-dozen or more years, rumors of a solution. Persons more

-or less closely connected with the official investigation

-have on several occasions been reported as voicing the

-opinion that the Arnold family was in possession of the

-facts, but denials have followed every such declaration.

-On April 8, 1921, for instance, Captain John H. Ayers,

-in charge of the Missing Persons Bureau of the New

-York Police Department, told an audience at the High

-School of Commerce that the fate of Miss Arnold had

-at that time been known to the police for many months,

-and that the case was regarded as closed. This pronouncement

-received the widest publicity in the New

-York and other American newspapers, but Captain

-Ayers’ statement was immediately and vigorously controverted

-by John S. Keith, the personal attorney of the

-girl’s father, who declared that the police official had

-told a “damned lie,” and that the mystery was as deep as

-ever it had been. The police chiefs later issued interviews

-full of dubiety and qualifications, the general tenor being

-that Captain Ayers had spoken without sufficient

-knowledge of the facts.</p>

-

-<p>Just a year later the father of this woman of mysterious

-tragedy died, the last decade of his life beclouded by

-the sorrowful story and painful doubt. In his will was

-this pathetic clause:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“I make no provision in this will for my beloved daughter,

-H. C. Dorothy Arnold, as I am satisfied that she is dead.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The death of Miss Arnold’s father once more set the

-rumor mongers to work and a variety of tales, bolder

-than had been uttered before, were circulated through

-the demi-world of New York and hinted in the newspapers.

-These rumors have not been printed directly

-and there has thus been no need of denial on part of the

-family. It must be said at once that they are mere bruits,

-mere attempts on the part of the cynical town to invent

-a set of circumstances to fit what few facts and alleged

-facts are known.</p>

-

-<p>On the other hand, the newspapers have been only too

-ready to take seriously the most absurd fabulations. In

-1916, for instance, a thief arrested at Providence, R. I.,

-for motives best known to himself, declared that he had

-helped to bury Dorothy Arnold’s body in the cellar of

-a house about ten miles below West Point, near the J. P.

-Morgan estate. Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, Captain

-Grant Williams and a number of detectives provided

-with digging tools set out for the place in motor

-cars, closely pursued by other cars containing the newspaper

-reporters. The police managed to shake off the

-newspaper men and reached the house. There they dug

-till they ached and found nothing whatever.</p>

-

-<p>Returning to New York, the detectives left their

-shovels, some of which were rusty or covered with a red

-clay, at a station house and there the reporters caught

-a glimpse of them. The result was that a bit of rust or

-ferrous earth translated itself into blood and thence into

-headlines in the morning papers, declaring that Dorothy

-Arnold’s body had been found. Denials followed within

-hours, to be sure.</p>

-

-<p>So the case rests.</p>

-

-<p>Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death will

-open the lips of one or another who knows the secret and

-has been sealed to silence by the fears and needs of life.

-But it is just as likely that the words of her dying parent

-contain as much as can be known of the truth about

-the missing Dorothy Arnold.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE</p>

-

-

-<p>At seven o’clock on the bright winter evening of

-December 18, 1900, Edward A. Cudahy, the

-multimillionaire meat packer, sent his fifteen-year-old

-son to the home of a friend, with a pile of periodicals.

-The boy, Edward A., junior, but shortly to be

-known over two continents as Eddie Cudahy, left his

-father’s elaborate house at No. 518 South Thirty-seventh

-Street, Omaha, walked three blocks to the home of

-Doctor Fred Rustin, also in South Thirty-seventh Street,

-delivered the magazines, turned on his heel and disappeared.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly before nine o’clock the rich packer noticed

-that his son had not returned, and he observed to his wife

-that the Rustins must have invited the boy to stay. Mrs.

-Cudahy felt a little nervous and urged her husband to

-make sure. He telephoned to the Rustin home and was

-promptly told that Eddie had been there, left the papers

-and departed immediately, almost two hours before.</p>

-

-<p>The Cudahys were instantly alarmed and convinced

-that something out of the ordinary had befallen the

-boy. He had promised to return immediately to consult

-with his father over a Christmas list. He was known to

-have no more than a few cents in his pockets, and unexplained

-absences from home at night were unprecedented

-with him.</p>

-

-<p>The beef magnate notified the Omaha police without

-long hesitation, and the quest for the missing rich boy

-was on. All that night detectives, patrolmen, servants,

-and friends of the family went up and down the streets

-and alleys of the overgrown Nebraska packing town,

-with its strange snortings from the cattle pens, its grunting

-railroad engines, its colonies of white and black laborers

-from distant lands, its brawling night life and its

-pretentious new avenues where the brash and sudden

-rich resided. At dawn the searchers congregated, sleepless,

-at the police headquarters or the Cudahy mansion,

-baffled and affrighted. Not the first clew to the boy had

-been found, and no one dared to whisper the clearest

-suspicions.</p>

-

-<p>By noon all Omaha was in turmoil. The great packing

-houses had practically stopped their activity; the police

-had been called in from their usual assignments and put

-to searching the city, district by district; the resorts

-and gambling houses were combed by the detectives; the

-anxious father had telegraphed to Chicago for twenty

-Pinkerton men, and the usual flight of mad rumors was

-in the air.</p>

-

-<p>One man reported that he had seen two boys, one

-of them with a broken arm, leave a street car at the city

-limits on the preceding night. The fact that the car line

-passed near the Cudahy home was enough to lead people

-to think one of the boys must have been Eddie Cudahy.

-As a result, his known young friends were sought out

-and questioned; the schools were gone over for the boy

-with a broken arm, and all the street-car crews in town

-were examined by the police.</p>

-

-<p>By the middle of the afternoon, the newspapers issued

-special editions, which bore the news that a letter

-had been received from kidnappers. According to this

-account, a man on horseback had ridden swiftly past the

-Cudahy home at nine o’clock that morning and tossed

-a letter to the lawn. This had been picked up by one of

-the servants, and it read as follows:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“We have your son. He is safe. We will take good care of

-him and return him for a consideration of twenty-five thousand

-dollars. We mean business.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“Jack.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>With the publication of this alleged communication,

-even more fantastic reports began to reach the police

-and the parents. One young intimate of the family came

-in and reported in all seriousness that he had seen a horse

-and trap standing in Thirty-seventh Street, near the

-Cudahy home on several occasions in the course of the

-preceding week. The fact that it looked like any one of

-a hundred smart rigs then in common use did not seem

-to detract from its fancied significance.</p>

-

-<p>Another neighbor reported that three days before the

-kidnapping he had seen a covered light wagon standing

-at the curb in the street, a block to the rear of the Cudahy

-home. One man on the seat was talking with another,

-who was standing on the walk, and, as the narrator

-passed, they had lowered their voices to a whisper.

-He had not thought the incident suggestive until

-after the report of the kidnapping. And the police, quite

-forgetting the instinctive universal habit of lowering

-the voice when strangers pass, sent out squads of men

-to find the wagon and the whisperers!</p>

-

-<p>In short, the town was excited out of all sanity, and

-the very forces which should have maintained calmness

-and acted with all possible self-possession seemed the

-most headless. All the officials accomplished was the brief

-detention of several innocent persons, the theatrical

-raiding of a few gambling houses, and the further excitation

-of the citizenry, always ready to respond to

-police histrionism.</p>

-

-<p>To add an amusing exhibit to the already heavy store

-of evidence on this last point, it may be noted with

-amusement, not to say amazement, that the kidnapping

-letter, which had so agitated the public, was itself a police

-fake, and the rider who had thrown it on the lawn

-was a clumsy invention.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime, however, a genuine kidnapping letter had

-reached the hands of Mr. Cudahy. A little before nine

-o’clock on the morning of the nineteenth, after he too

-had been up all night, the family coachman was walking

-across the front lawn when he saw a piece of red cloth

-tied to a stout wooden stick about two feet long. He

-approached it, looked at it suspiciously, and finally

-picked it up, to find that an envelope was wrapped

-about the stick and addressed in pencil to Mr. Cudahy.

-Evidently some one had thrown this curiously prepared

-missive into the yard in the course of the preceding

-night, for there had been numbers of policemen, detectives,

-and neighbors on the lawn and on the walks in

-front of the property since dawn.</p>

-

-<p>The letter, with its staff and red cloth, was immediately

-carried to the packer, who read with affrighted

-eyes this remarkable and characteristic communication:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>

-“<span class="smcap">Omaha</span>, December 19, 1900.<br>

-<br>

-“Mr. Cudahy:<br>

-</p>

-

-<p>“We have kidnapped your child and demand twenty-five

-thousand dollars for his safe return. If you give us the

-money, the child will be returned as safe as when you last

-saw him; but if you refuse, we will put acid in his eyes and

-blind him. Then we will immediately kidnap another millionaire’s

-child that we have spotted, and we will demand

-one hundred thousand dollars, and we will get it, for he will

-see the condition of your child and realize the fact that we

-mean business and will not be monkeyed with or captured.</p>

-

-<p>“Get the money all in gold—five, ten, and twenty-dollar

-pieces—put it in a grip in a white wheat sack, get in your

-buggy alone on the night of December 19, at seven o’clock

-p.m., and drive south from your house to Center Street; turn

-west on Center Street and drive back to Ruser’s Park and

-follow the paved road toward Fremont.</p>

-

-<p>“When you come to a lantern that is lighted by the side

-of the road, place your money by the lantern and immediately

-turn your horse around and return home. You will

-know our lantern, for it will have two ribbons, black and

-white, tied on the handle. You must place a red lantern on

-your buggy where it can be plainly seen, so we will know

-you a mile away.</p>

-

-<p>“This letter and every part of it must be returned with

-the money, and any attempt at capture will be the saddest

-thing you ever done. <i>Caution! For Here Lies Danger.</i></p>

-

-<p>“If you remember, some twenty years ago Charley Ross

-was kidnapped in New York City, and twenty thousand

-dollars ransom asked. Old man Ross was willing to give up

-the money, but Byrnes<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> the great detective, with others,

-persuaded the old man not to give up the money, assuring

-him that the thieves would be captured. Ross died of a

-broken heart, sorry that he allowed the detectives to dictate

-to him.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> Mr. Crowe had his criminal history somewhat vaguely in mind.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>“This letter must not be seen by any one but you. If the

-police or some stranger knew its contents, they might attempt

-to capture us, although entirely against your wish; or

-some one might use a lantern and represent us, thus the

-wrong party would secure the money, and this would be as

-fatal to you as if you refused to give up the money. So you

-see the danger if you let the letter be seen.</p>

-

-<p>“Mr. Cudahy, you are up against it, and there is only one

-way out. Give up the coin. Money we want, and money we

-will get. If you don’t give it up, the next man will, for he

-will see that we mean business, and you can lead your boy

-around blind the rest of your days, and all you will have is

-the damn copper’s sympathy.</p>

-

-<p>“Do the right thing by us, and we will do the same by

-you. If you refuse you will soon see the saddest sight you

-ever seen.</p>

-

-<p>“Wednesday, December 19th. This night or never. Follow

-these instructions, or harm will befall you or yours.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>There was no signature. I have quoted the letter exactly,

-with the lapses in grammar and spelling preserved.

-It was written in pencil on five separate pieces of cheap

-note paper and in a small, but firm, masculine hand. It

-was read to the chief police authorities soon after its

-receipt. Just why they felt compelled to announce that

-it had come, and to invent the absurd draft they issued,

-remains for every man’s own intuitions.</p>

-

-<p>In this case, as in other abduction affairs, the police

-advised the father not to comply with the demand of

-the criminals, but to rely upon their efforts. No doubt

-their sense of duty to the public is as much responsible

-for this invariable position as any confidence in their

-own powers. An officer must feel, after all, that he cannot

-counsel bargaining with dangerous criminals, and

-that to pay them is only to encourage other kidnappers

-and further kidnappings.</p>

-

-<p>In spite of the menacing terms of the rather garrulous

-letter, which betrayed by its very length the fervor

-of its persuasive threats, and the darkness of its reminders,

-the nervousness of its composer, Mr. Cudahy

-was minded to listen to the advice of the officers and

-defy the abductors of his son. In this frame of mind he

-delayed action until toward the close of the afternoon,

-meantime sitting by the telephone and hearing reports

-from police headquarters and his own private officers

-every half hour. By four o’clock he and his attorney began

-to realize that there was no clew of any kind; that

-the whole Omaha police force and all the men his wealth

-had been able to supply in addition, had been able to

-make not even the first promising step, and that the

-hour for a decision that might be fatal was fast approaching.

-Still, he hesitated to take a step in direct violation

-of official policy and counsel.</p>

-

-<p>In this dilemma Mrs. Cudahy came forward with a

-demand for action to meet the immediate emergency

-and protect her only son. She refused to listen to talk of

-remoter considerations, declared that the amount of ransom

-was a trifle to a man of her husband’s fortune, and

-weepingly insisted that she would not sacrifice her boy

-to any mad plans of outsiders, who felt no such poignant

-concern as her own.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly before five o’clock Mr. Cudahy telephoned

-the First National Bank, which had, of course, closed

-for the day, and asked the cashier to make ready the

-twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. A little later the

-Cudahy attorney called at the bank and received the

-specie in five bags and in the denominations asked by

-the abductors. The money was taken at once to the

-Cudahy house and deposited inside, without the knowledge

-of the servants or outsiders.</p>

-

-<p>At half past six Mr. Cudahy ordered his driving mare

-hitched to the buggy in which he made the rounds of

-his yards and plants. At seven o’clock he slipped quietly

-out of his house, without letting his wife, the servants,

-or any one but his attorney know his errand. He carried

-a satchel containing the five bags of gold, which weighed

-more than one hundred pounds, to the stable, put the

-precious stuff into the bottom of his vehicle, took up the

-reins, and set out on his perilous and ill-boding adventure.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Cudahy had not been allowed to leave home without

-warnings from the police and his attorney. They had

-told him that he might readily expect to find himself

-trapped by the kidnappers, who would then hold both

-him and his son for still higher ransom. So he drove toward

-the appointed place along the dim, night-hidden

-roads, with more than ordinary misgiving. Once or

-twice, after he had proceeded six or seven miles into the

-blackness of the open prairie, without seeing any signs

-from the abductors, he came near turning back; but the

-danger to his son and the thought that the criminals

-could have no object in sending him on a fruitless expedition,

-held him to his course.</p>

-

-<p>About ten miles out of town, still jogging anxiously

-along behind his horse, Mr. Cudahy saw a passenger

-train on one of the two transcontinental lines that converge

-at that point, coiling away into the infinite blackness,

-like some vast phosphorescent serpent. The beauty

-and mystery of the spectacle meant nothing to him, but

-it served to raise his hopes. No doubt the kidnappers

-would soon appear now. They had probably chosen this

-locality, with the swift trains running by, for their

-rendezvous. Once possessed of the gold, they would

-catch the next flyer for either coast and be gone out of

-the reach of local police. Perhaps they would even have

-the missing boy with them and surrender him as soon

-as they had been paid the ransom.</p>

-

-<p>Thus buoyed and heartened, the father drove on. Suddenly

-the road entered a cleft between two abrupt hills

-or butts. A sense of impendency oppressed the lonely

-driver. He took up a revolver beside him on the seat,

-clutching it near him, with some protective instinct. At

-the same moment he turned higher the flame in his red

-lantern, which swung from the whip socket of his

-buggy, and peered out into the gulch. Everything was

-pit-black and grave-silent. He lay back disappointed

-and spoke to the horse, debating whether to turn back.

-Once more he decided to go on. The cleft between the

-two eminences grew narrower. The horse turned a swift

-sharp corner. Cudahy sat up with startled alertness.</p>

-

-<p>There in the road before him, not ten rods away, was

-a smoky lantern, throwing but a pallid radiance about

-it in the thick darkness, but lighting a great hope in the

-father’s heart. He approached directly, drew up his

-horse a few yards away, found that the lantern, tied to a

-twig by the roadside, was decorated with the specified

-ribbons of black and white, returned to his buggy, carried

-the bags of gold to the lantern, put them down in

-the roadside, waited a few moments for any sign that

-might be given, turned his horse about, and started for

-home, driving slowly and listening intently for any

-sound from his expected son.</p>

-

-<p>The ten miles back to Omaha were covered in this

-slow and tense way, with eyes and ears open, and a mind

-fluctuating between hope and despair. But no lost boy

-came out of the darkness, and Cudahy reached his house

-without the least further encouragement. It was then

-past eleven o’clock. His attorney and his wife were still

-in the drawing-room, sleepless, tense, and terrified. They

-greeted the boy’s father with swift questions and relapsed

-into hopelessness when he related what he had

-done. An hour passed, while Cudahy tried to keep up the

-courage of his wife by argument and reasoning. Then

-came one o’clock. Now half past one. Surely there was

-no longer any need of waiting now. Either the kidnappers

-had hoaxed the suffering parents, or that note

-had not come from kidnappers at all, but from impostors—or—something

-far worse. At best, nothing would

-be heard till morning.</p>

-

-<p>“It’s no use, Mrs. Cudahy,” said the lawyer. “You’d

-better get what sleep you can, and——”</p>

-

-<p>“Hs-s-sh!” said the mother, laying her finger on her

-lips and listening like a hunted doe.</p>

-

-<p>In an instant she sprang out of her chair, ran into

-the hall, out of the door, down the walk to the street,

-and out of the gate. The two men sprang up and followed

-in time to see her catch the missing boy into her

-arms. She had heard his footfall.</p>

-

-<p>The news of the boy’s return was flashed to police

-headquarters within a few minutes, and the detective

-chief went at once to the Cudahy home to hear the returning

-boy’s story. It was simple and brief enough.</p>

-

-<p>Eddie Cudahy had left Doctor Rustin’s house the

-night before, and gone directly homeward. Three or

-four doors from his parents’ house Eddie Cudahy was

-suddenly confronted by two men who faced him with

-revolvers, called him Eddie McGee, declared that he was

-wanted for theft, that they were officers, and that he

-must come to the police station. He protested that he

-was not Eddie McGee, and that he could be identified in

-the house yonder; but his captors forced him into their

-buggy and drove off, warning him to make no outcry.

-They had gone only a few blocks when they changed

-their tone, tied the lad’s arms behind him, and put a

-bandage over his eyes and another over his mouth, so

-that he could not cry out. He understood that he had

-been kidnapped.</p>

-

-<p>Thus trussed up and prevented from either seeing

-where he was being taken, or making any outcry, the

-young fellow was driven about for an hour, and finally

-delivered to an old house, which he believed to be unfurnished,

-judging from the hollow sound of the footsteps,

-as he and his captors were going up the stairs. He

-was taken into a room on the second floor, seated in a

-chair, and handcuffed to it. His gag was removed, but

-not the bandage on his eyes. He was supplied with cigarettes

-and offered food, but he could not eat. One of the

-two men stood guard, the other departing at once, but

-returning later on.</p>

-

-<p>All that night and the next day the boy was unable

-to sleep. But he sensed that his captor seemed to be imbibing

-whisky with great regularity. Finally, about an

-hour before he had been set free, Eddie heard the other

-man return and hold a whispered conversation with his

-guard. The boy was then taken from the house, put back

-into the same buggy, driven to within a quarter of a

-mile of his father’s home, and released. He ran for home,

-and his captors drove off.</p>

-

-<p>Eddie Cudahy could not give any working description

-of the criminals. He had not got a good look at

-them in the street when they seized him, because it was

-dark, and they had the brims of their large hats pulled

-down over their eyes. Immediately afterward he had

-been bandaged and deprived of all further chance of observation.

-One man was tall, and the other short. The

-tall man seemed to be in command. The short man had

-been his guard. He thought there was a third man who

-was bringing in reports.</p>

-

-<p>There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation.

-First, it would surely be possible to find the

-house in which the boy had been held captive, for

-Omaha was not so large that there were many empty

-houses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides,

-the time at which any such house had been rented

-would offer evidence. It might be possible to get a clew

-to the identity of the kidnappers through the description

-of the person or persons who had done the renting.</p>

-

-<p>Second, the kidnappers must have got the horse and

-buggy somewhere; most likely from a local livery stable.

-If its source could be found, the liveryman also would

-be able to describe the persons with whom he had done

-business.</p>

-

-<p>So the police set to work, searching the town again

-for house and for stable. They found several deserted

-two-story cottages that fitted the picture well enough,

-and in each instance there were circumstances which

-seemed to indicate that the kidnappers had been there.

-Finally, however, all were eliminated, except a crude

-two-story cabin at 3604 Grover Street. This turned

-out to be the place, situated near the outskirts, on the

-top of a hill, with the nearest neighbors a block away.

-Cigarette ends, burned matches, empty whisky bottles,

-and windows covered with newspapers gave silent, but

-conclusive, testimony.</p>

-

-<p>The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It had

-not been hired at any stable in Omaha or in Council

-Bluffs, across the Missouri River. Advertising and police

-calls brought out no private owner who had rented such

-a rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer living

-about twenty miles out of town who had sold a bay

-pony to a tall stranger several weeks before. Another

-man was found who had sold a second-hand buggy to

-a man of the same general description. At last the police

-began to realize that they were dealing with a criminal

-of genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man had

-not blundered in any of the usual ways, and he had

-made the trail so confused that more than a week had

-passed before there were any positive indications as to

-his possible identity.</p>

-

-<p>In the end several indications pointed in the same direction.

-It seemed highly probable that the kidnapper

-chieftain had been some one acquainted with the packing

-business and probably with the Cudahys. He was

-also familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commanding

-voice, was accompanied by a shorter man, who

-seemed to be older, but was still dominated by his companion.

-More important still, this chief of abductors

-was an experienced and clever criminal. He gave every

-evidence of knowing all the ropes. These specifications

-seemed to fit just one man whose name now began to be

-used on all sides—the thrice perilous and ill-reputed

-Pat Crowe.</p>

-

-<p>It was recalled that this man had begun life as a

-butcher, been a trusted employee of the Cudahys ten

-years before, and had been dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequently

-he had turned his hand to crime, and achieved

-a startling reputation in the western United States as an

-intrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handy

-man with a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in a

-corner. He had been in prison more than once, had lately

-made what seemed an effort at reform, knew Edward A.

-Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors and

-gratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactly

-the man to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeks

-and evidence only strengthened the suspicion against

-him. Crowe, though he had been seen in Omaha the day

-before the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered.

-Even this fact added to the general belief that he and

-none other had done the deed. In a short time the Cudahy

-kidnapping mystery resolved itself into a quest for

-this notorious fellow.</p>

-

-<p>The alarm was spread throughout the United States

-and Canada, to the British Isles, and the Continental

-ports, and to Mexico and the Central American border

-and port cities, where it was believed the fugitive might

-make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended,

-and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases,

-with occasional lapses back into exciting alarms. Every

-little while the capture of Pat Crowe was reported, and

-on at least a dozen occasions men turned up with confessions

-and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping.

-These apparitions and alleged captures took place in

-such diffused spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil,

-San Francisco, and various obscure towns in the

-United States and Canada. The genuine and authentic

-Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the

-captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i181" style="max-width: 81.6875em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i181.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption">

-

-<p class="small right">

-<i>Wide World</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">~~ PAT CROWE ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on

-the Union Pacific Railroad, had been taken and brought

-to trial. His name was James Callahan, and there was

-then and is now no question about his connection with

-the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on April

-29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the

-presiding tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of

-duty, saying that never had evidence more clearly indicated

-guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on other

-counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be

-released.</p>

-

-<p>In the same year, 1901, word was received from

-Crowe through an attorney he had employed in an earlier

-difficulty. Crowe had sent this barrister a draft from

-Capetown, South Africa, in payment of an old debt. The

-much sought desperado had got through the lines to the

-Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting

-against the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated

-for distinguished courage, and was, according to

-his own statement, done with crime and living a different

-life—adventurous, but honest. So many canards had

-been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story,

-albeit time proved it to be true.</p>

-

-<p>At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five

-thousand dollars had been offered for the capture

-and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty thousand by Cudahy

-and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha.

-This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man

-had, of course, contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide

-interest in the case. Yet even these fat inducements

-accomplished nothing.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, in 1906, when Crowe had been hunted in

-vain for more than five years, he suddenly opened negotiations

-with Omaha’s chief of police through an attorney,

-offering to come in and surrender, in case all

-the rewards were immediately and honestly withdrawn,

-so that there would be no money inducement which

-might cause officers or others to manufacture a case

-against him. After some preliminaries, these terms were

-met, but not until an attempt to capture the desperado

-had been made and failed, with the net result of three

-badly wounded officers.</p>

-

-<p>In February, 1906, Crowe was at last brought to

-trial and, to the utter astoundment and chagrin of the

-entire country, promptly acquitted, though he offered

-no defense and tacitly admitted that he had taken the

-boy. One bit of conclusive evidence that had been offered

-by the prosecution and admitted by the court,

-was a letter written by Crowe to his parish priest in the

-little Iowa town of his boyhood. In the course of this

-letter, which had been written to the priest in the hope

-that he might make peace with Cudahy, the desperado

-admitted that “I am solely responsible for the Cudahy

-kidnapping. No one else is to blame.”</p>

-

-<p>No matter. The jury would not consider the evidence

-and brought in the verdict already indicated. Crowe,

-after six years of being hunted with a price of fifty-five

-thousand dollars on his head, was a free man.</p>

-

-<p>The acquittals of Crowe and Callahan have furnished

-material for a good deal of amused and some angry speculation.

-The local situation in Omaha at the time furnishes

-the key to the puzzle. First of all, there was the

-bitter anti-beef trust agitation, founded on the fact that

-many small independent butchers had been put out of

-business by the great packing-house combination, of

-which Cudahy was a member; and that meat prices had

-everywhere been rapidly advanced to almost double

-their earlier prices. Next, there was the circumstance of

-Cudahy’s abundant and flaunting wealth. The common

-man considered that these millions had been gouged out

-of his pocket and cut from off his dinner plate. Cudahy

-had also begun the introduction of cheap negro labor

-into Omaha to break a strike of his packing-house employees,

-and the city was bitterly angry at him. Also,

-Crowe was himself popular and well known. Many considered

-him a hero. But there was still another strange

-cause of the state of the public mind.</p>

-

-<p>In the very beginning a not inconsiderable part of

-Omaha’s people had somehow come to the curious conclusion

-that there had been no Cudahy kidnapping. One

-story said that Eddie Cudahy was a wild youth, and that

-he himself had conspired with Crowe and Callahan to

-abduct him and get the ransom, since he needed a share

-of it for his own purpose, and he saw in this plan an easy

-method to mulct his unsuspecting father. A later version

-denied the boy’s guilt, but still insisted that the

-whole story, as told by the father and confirmed by the

-police, was a piece of fiction. What motive the rich

-packer could have had for such a fraud, no one could

-say. The best explanation given was that he saw in it

-a plan to get worldwide advertising for the Cudahy

-name. How this could have sold any additional hams or

-beeves, is a bit hard to imagine, but the story was so

-generally believed that two jurors at one of the trials

-voiced it in the jury room and scoffed at all the evidence.

-All this rumor is, of course, absurd.</p>

-

-<p>Crowe, after his acquittal, went straight, as the word

-goes. He has committed no more crimes, unless one

-wants to rate under this heading a book of highly romantic

-confessions, which he had published the following

-year. In this book he set forth the circumstances of

-the crime in great, but unreliable, detail. He made it

-very plain, however, that he and Callahan alone planned

-the crime and carried it out.</p>

-

-<p>Crowe personally conceived the whole plan and took

-Callahan into the conspiracy only because he needed

-help. The two held up the boy, as already related. As

-soon as they had him safe in the old house, Crowe drove

-back to the Cudahy home in his buggy and threw the

-note, wrapped about the stick and decorated with the

-red cloth, upon the lawn, where it was found the next

-morning by the coachman. Of the twenty-five thousand

-dollars in gold, Crowe gave his assistant only three

-thousand dollars, used one thousand for expenses, and

-buried the rest, recovering it later when the coast was

-clear. He selected Cudahy for a victim because he knew

-that the packer was a fond father, had a nervous wife,

-and would be strong enough to resist any mad police

-advice.</p>

-

-<p>A few years later I first encountered Crowe in New

-York, when he came to see me with a petty favor to ask

-and an article of his reminiscences to sell. He had meantime

-become a kind of peregrine reformer, lecturer,

-pamphlet seller and semi-mendicant, now blessed with

-a little evanescent prosperity, again sleeping in Bowery

-flops and eking out a miserable living by any device

-short of lawbreaking. And he has called upon me or

-crossed my wanderings repeatedly in the intervening

-years, always voluble, plausible and a trifle pathetic.

-Now he is off to call upon the President, to memorialize

-a governor or to address a provincial legislature. He

-is bent on abolishing prisons, has a florid set-speech,

-which he delivers in a big sententious voice, and perhaps

-he impresses his rural hearers, though the tongue in

-the cheek and the twinkle in the eye never escape those

-who know him of old.</p>

-

-<p>This grand rascal is no longer young—rising sixty, I

-should say—and life has treated him shabbily in the last

-twenty years. Yet neither poverty nor age has quite

-taken from him a certain leonine robustness, a kind of

-ruined strength and power that shines a little sadly

-through his charlatanry.</p>

-

-<p>Only once or twice, when he has lost himself in the

-excited recounting of his adventures, of his hardy old

-crimes, of the Cudahy kidnapping, have I ever caught

-in him the quality that must once have been his—the

-force, the fire that made his name shudder around the

-world. Convention has beaten him as it beats them all,

-these brave and baneful men. It has made a sidling apologist

-of a great rogue in Crowe’s case—and what a sad

-declension!</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING</p>

-

-

-<p>Abduction is always a puzzling crime. The

-risks are so great, the punishment, of late years,

-so severe, and the chances of profit so slight

-that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary

-motive on the part of the criminal. It is true

-that kidnapping is one of the easiest crimes to commit.

-It is also a fact that it seems to offer a quick and

-promising way of extorting large sums of money without

-physical risk. But every offender must know that

-the chances of success are of the most meager.</p>

-

-<p>A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses

-the public as nothing else can, not even murder. This

-state of general alarm, indignation, and alertness is the

-first peril of the kidnapper. Again, the problem of getting

-the ransom from even the most willing victim

-without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most

-intricate and unpromising one. It is well known that

-child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of

-the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually

-got the ransom and made off without being

-caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the

-long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble

-to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses.

-Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers

-that professional criminals usually are aware of this

-fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.</p>

-

-<p>The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these

-recognized discouragements probably accounts for the

-proneness of policemen and citizens to interpret into

-every abduction case some moving force other than

-mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs

-of action, whether real or surmised, are often the inner

-penetralia of child stealing mysteries. So with the

-famous Whitla case.</p>

-

-<p>At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909,

-a short, stocky man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse,

-in the little steel town of Sharon, in western

-Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned to

-Wesley Sloss, the janitor.</p>

-

-<p>“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right

-away,” said the stranger.</p>

-

-<p>It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to

-be summoned from his classes in this way, but in Sharon

-no one questioned vagaries having to do with this particular

-child. Willie Whitla was the eight-year-old son

-of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla, who

-was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was

-also, and more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of

-Frank M. Buhl, the multimillionaire iron master and

-industrial overlord of the region.</p>

-

-<p>Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside

-to Room 2, told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that

-the boy was wanted, helped bundle him into his coat,

-and led him out to the buggy. The man in the conveyance

-tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his

-thanks, and drove off in the direction of the town’s

-center, where the father’s office was situated.</p>

-

-<p>When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for

-luncheon at the noon recess, there was no special apprehension.

-Probably he had gone to a chum’s house

-and would be along at the close of the afternoon session.

-His mother was vexed, but not worried.</p>

-

-<p>At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla

-veranda, blew his whistle, and left a note which had

-been posted in the town some hours before. It was addressed

-to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of

-the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand,

-read:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if you

-comply with our instructions. If you give this letter to the

-newspapers, or divulge any of its contents, you will never

-see your boy again. We demand ten thousand dollars in

-twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar bills. If you attempt

-to mark the money, or place counterfeit money, you

-will be sorry. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead boys.

-You may answer at the following addresses: <i>Cleveland Press</i>,

-<i>Youngstown Vindicator</i>, <i>Indianapolis News</i>, and <i>Pittsburgh

-Dispatch</i> in the personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do as

-you requested. J. P. W.’”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>A few minutes later the whole town was searching,

-and the alarm had been broadcast by telegraph and telephone.

-Before nightfall a hundred thousand officers were

-on the lookout in a thousand cities and towns through

-the eastern United States.</p>

-

-<p>At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard of

-the abduction, a boy named Morris was found, who had

-seen Willie Whitla get out of a buggy at the edge of the

-town, drop a letter into the mail box, and get back into

-the vehicle, which was driven away.</p>

-

-<p>This discovery had hardly been made when it was

-also learned that a stranger had rented a horse and

-buggy, fitting the description of those used by the kidnapper,

-in South Sharon early in the morning. At five

-o’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rented

-buggy, was found tied to a post in Warren, Ohio,

-twenty-five miles from Sharon.</p>

-

-<p>The search immediately began in the northern or

-lake cities and towns of Ohio, the trend of the search

-running strongly toward Cleveland, where it was believed

-the abductor or abductors would try the hiding

-properties of urban crowds.</p>

-

-<p>The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense and

-caution. They were sufficiently well informed to know

-that the police are doubtful agencies for the safe recovery

-of snatched children. They were rich to the

-point of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meant

-nothing. The safety and speedy return of the child were

-the only considerations that could have swayed them.

-Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents of the

-note, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide to

-the police any other details, or the direction of their

-intentions. The fact of the kidnapping could, of course,

-not be concealed, but all else was guarded from official

-or public intrusion.</p>

-

-<p>On the advice of friends the parents did employ private

-detectives, but even their advice was disregarded,

-and Mr. Whitla without delay signified his willingness

-to capitulate by inserting the dictated notice into all

-the four mentioned newspapers.</p>

-

-<p>The answer of the abductors came very promptly

-through the mails, reaching Whitla on the morning of

-the twentieth, less than forty-eight hours after the boy

-had been taken.</p>

-

-<p>Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicate

-to the police the contents of this note or his

-plans. Instead, he set off quietly for Cleveland, evidently

-to mislead the public officers, who seemed to take delight

-in their efforts to seize control of the case. At

-eight o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompanied

-by one private detective, and went to the neighboring

-city of Ashtabula. Here the detective was left

-at the White Hotel, and the father of the missing boy

-set out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.</p>

-

-<p>They, it appears, had written him that he must go at

-ten o’clock at night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip of

-land on the outskirts of Ashtabula, and there deposit

-under a certain stone the package of bills. He was told

-what route to follow, commanded to go alone, and

-warned not to communicate with the police. Having

-left the money as commanded, Whitla was to return to

-the hotel and wait there for the coming of his son, who

-would be restored as soon as the abductors were safely

-in possession of the money.</p>

-

-<p>So the father set out in the dark of the night, followed

-the route given him by the abductors, deposited

-the money in the park, and returned forthwith to the

-hotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock. Here he sat with

-his bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition of

-his little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’s

-nervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in the

-morning, some local officers appeared and notified the

-frenzied lawyer that they had been watching the park

-all night, and that no one had appeared to claim the

-package of money.</p>

-

-<p>Police interference had ruined the plan.</p>

-

-<p>The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnappers

-were to call for the money in the park, they

-must be in Ashtabula. They accordingly set out,

-searched all night, invaded the houses of sleeping citizens,

-turned the hotels and rooming houses inside out,

-prowled their way through cars in the railroad yards

-and boats in the harbor, watched the roads leading in

-and out of the city, searched the street cars and generally

-played the devil. But all in vain. There were no

-suspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.</p>

-

-<p>The following morning the father of the boy visited

-the mayor and requested that the police cease their activities.

-He pointed out that there were no clews of

-definite promise, and the peril in which the child stood

-ought to command official coöperation instead of dangerous

-interference. Whitla finally managed to convince

-the officers that they stood no worse chance of catching

-the criminals after the recovery of the boy, and the Ashtabula

-officers were immediately called off.</p>

-

-<p>The disappointed and harried father was forced to

-return to Sharon in defeat and bring the disappointing

-news to his prostrated wife. The little steel town had

-got the definite impression that news of the child had

-been got, and preparations for the boy’s return had been

-made. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receive

-the little wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation.

-Crowds besieged the Whitla home, and policemen had

-to be kept on guard to turn away a stream of well-meaning

-friends and curious persons, who would have

-kept the breaking mother from such little sleep as was

-possible under the circumstances.</p>

-

-<p>The excitement of the vicinity had by this time

-spread to all the country. As is always the case, arrests

-on suspicion were made of the most unlikely persons in

-the most impossible situations. Men, women, and children

-were stopped in the streets, dragged from their

-rooms, questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and

-even locked into jails for investigation, while the missing

-boy and his abductors succeeded in eluding completely

-the large army of pursuers now in the field.</p>

-

-<p>Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers on

-the twenty-first, and the hearts of the bewildered parents

-and relatives sank with apprehension, but the

-morning mail of the twenty-second again contained a

-note which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate that

-the business of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabula

-may have been a test maneuver, to find out whether

-Whitla would keep the faith and act without the police.

-This note read:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“A mistake was made at Ashtabula Saturday night. You

-come to Cleveland on the Erie train leaving Youngstown at

-11:10 a. m. Leave the train at Wilson Avenue. Take a car

-to Wilson and St. Clair. At Dunbar’s drug store you will

-find a letter addressed to William Williams.</p>

-

-<p>“We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt

-to catch us you will never see your boy again.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. He

-accordingly had his representatives announce that all

-activities would cease for the time being, in the hope

-that the kidnappers would regain their confidence and

-reopen communications. At the same time he told the

-Ashtabula police to resume their activities. With these

-two false leads given out, Whitla slipped away from his

-home, caught the train, and went straight to Cleveland.</p>

-

-<p>Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that he

-had eluded the overzealous officers, Whitla went to

-Dunbar’s drug store and found the note waiting, as

-promised. It contained nothing but further directions.

-He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by a

-Mrs. Hendricks at 1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliver

-the ransom, carefully done into a package, to the

-woman in charge. He was to tell her the package should

-be held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.</p>

-

-<p>Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned over

-the package of ten thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks,

-and was given a note in return. This missive instructed

-him to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel, where he

-was to wait for his boy. The promise was made that the

-child would be returned within three hours.</p>

-

-<p>It was about five o’clock when this exchange was

-made. The tortured father turned and went immediately

-to the Hollenden, one of the chief hostelries

-of Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hour

-passed. His anxiety became intolerable. He went down

-to the lobby and began walking back and forth, in and

-out of the doors, up and down the walk, back into the

-hotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several noticed

-his nervousness and preoccupation, but only a

-lone newspaper man identified him and kept him under

-watch.</p>

-

-<p>Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seven

-the worn lawyer’s agitation increased to the point of

-frenzy. He could do no more than retire to a quiet

-corner of the lobby, huddle himself into a big chair,

-and sink into the half stupor of exhaustion.</p>

-

-<p>A few minutes before eight o’clock the motorman of

-a Payne Avenue street car saw a man and a small boy

-come out of the gloom at a street corner in East Cleveland

-and motion him to stop. The man put the child

-aboard and gave the conductor some instructions, paying

-its fare, and immediately vanished in the darkness.

-The little boy, wearing a pair of dark goggles and a

-large yellow cap that was pulled far down over his ears,

-sat quietly in the back seat and made not a sound.</p>

-

-<p>A few squares further along the line two boys of

-seventeen or eighteen years boarded the car and were

-immediately intrigued by the glum little figure. The

-newcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney and

-Thomas W. Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspicious

-that this might be the much-sought Willie

-Whitla. When they asked his name the lad said he was

-Willie Jones. In response to other questions he told that

-he was on his way to meet his father at the Hollenden.</p>

-

-<p>The two young men said no more till the hotel was

-reached. Here they insisted on leaving the car with the

-boy and at once called a policeman to whom they voiced

-their suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and the

-child thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. In

-response to further interrogation, the little fellow still

-insisted that he was Jones, but, being deprived of his big

-cap and goggles and called Willie Whitla, he asked:</p>

-

-<p>“How did you know me? Where is my daddy?”</p>

-

-<p>The gloomy man in the corner chair got one tinkle

-of the childish voice, ran across the big room, caught up

-the child and rushed hysterically to his own apartment,

-where he telephoned at once to the boy’s mother. By the

-time the attorney could be persuaded to come back

-down stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father and

-child were welcomed with cheers.</p>

-

-<p>The boy shortly gave his father and the police his

-story. The man who had taken him from school in

-the buggy had told him that he was being taken out of

-town to the country at his father’s request, because there

-was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors

-would lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly

-gone willingly to Cleveland, where he had

-been taken to what he believed to be a hospital. A man

-and woman had taken care of him and treated him well.

-They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused

-him in any way. In fact, he liked them, except for the

-fact that they made him hide under the kitchen sink

-when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him

-candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the

-boy said, had put him aboard the street car, paid his

-fare, instructed him to tell any inquirers that his name

-was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to the

-hotel and join his father. The only additional information

-got from the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions

-of the abductors, was to the effect that he had been

-taken to the “hospital” the night following his abduction

-and had not left the place till he was led out to be

-sent to the hotel.</p>

-

-<p>The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed

-with music and a salute from the local militia

-company, displayed before the serenading citizens, and

-photographed for the American and foreign press.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under

-way. The private detectives in the employ of the Whitlas

-were immediately withdrawn when the boy was recovered,

-but the police of Cleveland and other cities

-plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with

-whom the note had been left, and the woman confectioner,

-who had received the package of ransom money,

-were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the

-transaction they had aided was concerned with the

-Whitla case, and both were frightened and astonished.

-They could give little information that has not already

-been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy

-store, however, was able to particularize the description

-of the man who had come to her place, left the note for

-Mr. Whitla, and returned later for the package of

-money. He was, she said, about thirty years old, with

-dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face,

-weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, and

-seemed to be Irish.</p>

-

-<p>Considering the car line which had brought the boy

-to the Hollenden Hotel, the point at which he had

-boarded the car, and the description he gave of the

-place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were

-certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house

-somewhere in the southeast quarter of the city, and detectives

-were accordingly sent to comb that part of the

-city in quest of a furnished suite in which the kidnappers

-might still be hiding.</p>

-

-<p>Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday

-night. Tuesday evening, about twenty-two hours after

-the boy had made his dramatic entry into the Hollenden,

-the detectives went through a three-story flat

-building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a

-couple answering the general descriptions furnished by

-Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks had rented a furnished

-apartment there on the night following the kidnapping

-and had departed only a few hours ahead of the

-detectives. They had conducted themselves very quietly

-while in the place, and the woman who had sublet the

-rooms to them was not even sure there had been a

-child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this

-place as the scene of his captivity.</p>

-

-<p>The discovery of this apartment might have been

-less significant for the moment, had the building not

-been but a few squares from the point at which Willie

-had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join

-his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot

-on the trail. Reserves were rushed to that part of town,

-patrolmen were not relieved at the end of their tours

-of duty, and the extra men were stationed at the exits

-from the city, with instructions to stop and question all

-suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the

-quarry was by no means in sight.</p>

-

-<p>At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far

-broader forces than the police were thrown upon the

-stage. The governor of Pennsylvania signed a proclamation

-in the course of the afternoon, offering to continue

-the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been

-posted by the State for the recovery of the boy

-and the arrest and conviction of his abductors. Since

-the boy had been returned, the money was to go to

-those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly,

-the people of several States were watching with

-no perfunctory alertness. High hopes of immediate capture

-were thus based on more than one consideration;

-but the night was aging without result.</p>

-

-<p>At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman

-of the most inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of

-Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario Street, Cleveland, sat down

-at a table in the rear room, and ordered drink. The

-liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar

-bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling

-the proprietor to include the other patrons then in

-the place. Again he offered a new bill of the same denomination,

-and once again he commanded that all

-present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the

-woman drank rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the

-effects of the liquor and becoming more and more loquacious,

-spendthrift and effusive.</p>

-

-<p>There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such

-conduct. Men came in often enough who drank heavily,

-spent freely, and insisted on “buying for the house.” But

-it was a little unusual for a man to let go of thirty dollars

-in little more than an hour, and it was still more

-unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar

-note after the other.</p>

-

-<p>O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew

-that there had been a kidnapping; that there was a

-reward of fifteen thousand dollars outstanding; that a

-man and woman were supposed to have held the boy

-captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon.

-Also he had read about the package of five, ten, and

-twenty dollar bills. His brows lifted. O’Reilly waited for

-an opportune moment and went to his cash drawer. The

-bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new;

-that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all

-of the same issue, even of the same series and in consequent

-numbers. If so——</p>

-

-<p>The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When

-his suspect callers had their attention on something else,

-he slipped the money from the till and moved to the

-end of the bar near the window, where he was out of

-their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar

-case, adjusted his glasses, and stared.</p>

-

-<p>In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly

-urged them to stay, insisted on supplying them with a

-free drink, did what he could, without arousing suspicion,

-to detain them, hoping that an officer would

-saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With

-an exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of

-the door and gone into the night, whose shadows had

-yielded them up an hour before.</p>

-

-<p>O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a

-telephone. In response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck

-and Detective Woods were hurried to the place and

-set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and description.

-They had no more than moved from the saloon when

-the rollicking pair was seen returning.</p>

-

-<p>The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark

-about the weather and the lateness of the hour.

-Instantly the man took to his heels, with Captain Shattuck

-in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the officer

-drew and fired high.</p>

-

-<p>The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman

-ran to him, marveling that his aim had been so

-unintentionally good. He found, however, that the fugitive

-had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at flight.</p>

-

-<p>Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest

-police station and subjected to questioning. They

-were inarticulately drunk, or determinedly reticent and

-pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half assured

-that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers,

-Captain Shattuck ordered them searched.</p>

-

-<p>At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing,

-still in the neat packages in which it had been

-taken from the bank, were nine thousand, seven hundred

-and ninety dollars.</p>

-

-<p>The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and

-Helen McDermott Boyle—he a floating adventurer

-known to the cities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, she the

-daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she

-had quit several years before to go venturing on her

-own account.</p>

-

-<p>From the beginning both the police and the public

-held the opinion that these two people had not been

-alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigation

-failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of

-the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in

-Cleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possibly

-been the sole active agents, but the opinion was

-retained that some one else must have plotted the crime.</p>

-

-<p>Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure

-little town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla,

-when there were tens of thousands of boys with

-wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives?

-Who had acquainted them with the particularities of the

-Whitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, the

-child’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it not

-obvious that some one close to the family had supplied

-the information and laid the plans?</p>

-

-<p>James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of

-May, faced with his accusers, and swiftly encircled with

-the accusing evidence, which was complete and unequivocal.

-He accepted it without display of emotion

-and offered no defense. After brief argument the case

-went to the jury, which reached an affirmative verdict

-within a few minutes.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward

-and also presented no defense. A verdict was found

-against her with equal expedition on May 10, and she

-was remanded for sentence.</p>

-

-<p>On the following day both defendants were called

-before the court. The judge imposed the life sentence

-on Boyle and a term of twenty-five years on his wife. A

-few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper reporters

-to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them

-a written statement.</p>

-

-<p>Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895,

-when the body of Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying

-on the sidewalk on East Federal Street, Youngstown,

-Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There

-had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached

-to Reeble’s end.</p>

-

-<p>Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble,

-but he said in his statement that he and one Daniel

-Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper, who had died in 1907,

-had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs. James

-P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a

-number of letters from the pockets of the dead man, as

-his body lay on the walk. Boyle recited that not only

-had he and Shay found Forker in this compromising

-position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked

-by Forker, in which were found four letters

-from women, two from a girl in New York State and

-the other two from a Cleveland woman. The contents

-were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure

-that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.</p>

-

-<p>Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently

-written Forker, told him about the letters,

-and suggested that they were for sale. Forker had immediately

-replied and made various efforts to recover

-the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and

-continued to extort money from Forker for years,

-threatening to reveal the letters unless paid.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to

-recite, a demand for five thousand dollars had been

-made on Forker, who said he could not raise the money,

-but would come into an inheritance later and would

-then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When

-Forker failed in this undertaking, fresh threats were

-made, with the result that Forker suggested the kidnapping

-of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand dollars’

-ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to

-get the five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.</p>

-

-<p>Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping

-and attended to the matter of having the boy

-taken from the school. He said that some one else had

-done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle,

-in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found.</p>

-

-<p>This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning

-as it did, created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately

-and indignantly denied the accusation and

-brought to their support a Youngstown police officer,

-Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of

-Dan Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking

-to Reeble on the walk before the building in which

-Reeble resided, early in the morning of June 8, 1895.

-Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking

-slowly down the street when he heard a thump and

-groans behind him. Returning to the spot where he had

-left Reeble, he found his companion of a few minutes

-before, dying on the walk.</p>

-

-<p>Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting

-on his window sill, and that the man had apparently

-fallen out to his death. He swore that neither Forker,

-Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when Reeble

-died.</p>

-

-<p>There are, to be sure, some elements which verge

-upon improbability in this account, but the denials of

-Forker and Whitla were strongly reinforced by the

-testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the livery

-where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly

-identified Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt

-with, thus refuting the latter part of Boyle’s accusative

-statement.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years

-of her long term. Her husband, on the other hand, continued

-his servitude and died of pneumonia in Riverside

-Penitentiary on January 23, 1920.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE</p>

-

-

-<p>A few minutes past seven o’clock, on the evening

-of March 27, 1901, Willie McCormick,

-a ten-year-old schoolboy, started to attend

-vespers in the little Church of the Sacred Heart, in the

-Highbridge section of New York City. His mother gave

-him a copper cent for the collection plate, and he ran

-out of the door, struggling into his short brown overcoat,

-in great haste to overtake two of his elder sisters

-who had started ahead of him. Three doors down the

-street he stopped and blew a toy whistle to attract the

-attention of a playmate. This boy’s mother called from

-the porch that her son was to take a music lesson and

-could not go to church. So Willie McCormick lifted his

-cap and went his way.</p>

-

-<p>It was a cold spring evening, and cutting winds were

-piping through the woods and across the open spaces of

-that then sparsely settled district of the American

-metropolis. Dusk had fallen, and the thinly planted electric

-lights along Ogden Avenue threw the shadows of

-the curbside trees across the walks in moving arabesques.

-The boy buttoned his coat closely about him, running

-away into the gloom, while the neighbor woman

-watched him disappear. In that moment the profounder

-darkness enveloped him, swallowed him into a void

-from which he never emerged alive, and made him the

-chief figure of another of the abiding problems of vanishment.</p>

-

-<p>Highbridge is an outlying section of New York,

-fringing the eastern bank of the Harlem River and

-centering about one approach to the old and beautiful

-stone bridge from which it takes its name. The tracks of

-the New York Central Railroad skirt the edge of the

-river on their way up-state. Further back from the

-stream the ground rises, and along the ridge, paralleling

-the river, is Ogden Avenue. Near the southern foot of

-this thoroughfare, at One Hundred and Sixty-first

-Street, the steel skeleton of the McComb’s Dam bridge

-thrust itself across the Harlem, with its eastern arch

-spanning high above the muddy mouth of Cromwell

-Creek,<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which empties into the Harlem at this point.

-At the shore level, under the great bridge approach, a

-hinged steel platform span, raised and lowered by means

-of balance weights to permit the passage of minor shipping

-up and down the creek, carried the tracks across

-the lesser stream. Three blocks to the north of this confluence,

-which plays an important part in the mystery,

-stood the McCormick home, a comfortable brick and

-frame house of the villa type, set back from the highest

-point of Ogden Avenue in a lawn.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> This creek has since been filled in and a playground marks its site.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Twenty-five and more years ago, when Willie McCormick

-disappeared, the vicinity bore, as it still bears

-to a lesser degree, the air of suburbia. Then houses were

-few and rather far apart. Some of the side streets were

-unpaved, and all about were patches of unimproved

-land, where clumps of trees, that once were part of the

-Bronx Woods, still flourished in dense order. The first

-apartment houses of the district were building, and

-gangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of native

-mechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections.</p>

-

-<p>Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of Cromwell

-Creek, while a factory, a coal dump, and two

-lumber yards sprawled along the other. Five squares to

-the north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to the

-west is the Highbridge police station. The Church of

-the Sacred Heart, then in charge of the wealthy and

-venerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands two blocks to the

-east of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same cross

-street with the police building. Neither of these places

-is more than a third of a mile from the McCormick

-home.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after nine o’clock on the important evening

-already noted, the two young daughters of William

-McCormick returned from church without their

-brother. He had not overtaken them on the way, or

-joined them at the services. They had not seen him and

-supposed he had either remained at home, or played

-truant from church and gone to romp with other boys.

-The father was immediately alarmed. It was not like

-Willie to stay out in the dark. He was the eleventh of

-twelve children, all the others being girls, and he was

-accordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine. He had

-an especially strong dread of the dark and had never

-been known to venture out in the night without his

-older sisters or other boys. Besides, there had been kidnapping

-rumors in the neighborhood. It was not long

-after the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, and

-parents in all parts of the United States were still

-nervous and watchful.</p>

-

-<p>Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or because

-of the general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhood

-had gone to almost ludicrous extremes in his

-precautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer named

-Oscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundred

-yards from that of the McCormicks. He had a

-young son, also ten years old. His apprehensions for the

-safety of this lad, who was a playmate of Willie McCormick,

-resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across the

-front of his property, with an ornamental iron gate

-that was kept padlocked at night, though this step invalidated

-the fire insurance, an eight-foot iron fence

-about the sides and rear of the property, topped with

-strands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogs

-that ran at large day and night.</p>

-

-<p>The fears of the neighborhood rich man had naturally

-communicated themselves to other parents, and they

-seethed in William McCormick’s mind, as he hurried

-from his home to seek the absent boy. Willie was not to

-be found at the home of any of his chums; he was not

-playing at a near-by street corner, where some older

-boys were congregated, and apparently no one had seen

-him since the neighbor woman, Mrs. Tierney, had told

-him that her son could not go to church. The father,

-growing more and more excited, stormed about the

-Highbridge district half the night and then set out to

-visit relatives, to whose homes the boy might have gone.

-But Willie McCormick was not to be traced anywhere.

-On the following morning, when he did not appear, his

-father summoned the police.</p>

-

-<p>What followed provides an excellent exposition of

-the phenomenon of public unconcern being gradually

-rallied to excitement and finally driven to hysteria. The

-police listened to the statements of the missing boy’s

-parents and sisters, made some perfunctory investigations,

-and said that Willie McCormick had evidently

-run away from home. Many boys did that. Moreover,

-it was spring, and such vagaries were to be expected in

-youngsters. The newspapers noted the case with short

-routine paragraphs. A street-car conductor brought in

-the information that he had carried a boy, whom he

-was willing to identify as Willie McCormick, judging

-from nothing better than photographs, to a site in

-South Brooklyn, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

-was encamped. Another conductor reported that he had

-taken a boy answering the description of Willie McCormick

-to the Gravesend race course, where the horses

-were tuning up for the spring meeting. But the police

-found no trace of the wanderer at either place, nor at

-several others that were suggested.</p>

-

-<p>The McCormicks took the attitude at once that their

-son had not gone away voluntarily. He was, they said,

-far too timid for adventuring, much too beloved and

-pampered at home to seek other environment, and too

-young to be troubled with the dromomania that attacks

-adolescents. To these objections one of the police

-officials responded with the charge that the McCormicks

-were not telling all they knew, and that he was satisfied

-they had an idea what had happened to the runaway, as

-he insisted on terming him.</p>

-

-<p>At this point two interventions brought the McCormick

-case out of obscurity. Father Mullin, having been

-appealed to by the McCormicks, pointed out to the

-police in an interview that Willie McCormick had vanished

-with one cent in his pocket, that he could have

-taken a sum which must have seemed sufficient for long

-wanderings to a childish mind from his mother’s purse,

-which lay at hand; that he had started to church with

-his sisters and returned for his overcoat, and that the

-departure was wholly unprepared and assuredly unpremeditated.

-The astute priest said that every runaway

-made preparations for flight, and that, no matter how

-carefully the plans might be laid, there always remained

-behind the evidence of intent to disappear. A child, he

-said, could not have planned more cunningly than

-many clever men, and he insisted that there must be another

-explanation for the absence of the boy.</p>

-

-<p>Naturally the newspapers paid more attention to the

-priest, and they began printing pictures of the boy, with

-scare headlines. Father Mullin had just taken in hand

-the affair when Oscar Willgerodt, the man of the stone

-wall and iron fences, came forward with an offer of a

-thousand dollars’ reward for information leading to the

-discovery of the missing boy. He said that he felt sure

-kidnappers had been at work, and that they had taken

-the McCormick boy in mistake for his own son. He

-added that he had received threats of abduction at intervals

-for more than a year.</p>

-

-<p>A few days later, the boy’s uncle appeared in the

-press with an offer of five thousand dollars for the

-safe return of the child and the production of his abductors.

-By this time the newspapers were flaming with

-accounts of the disappearance in every edition. Their

-reporters and detectives swarmed over Highbridge, and

-that quiet district was immediately thrown into the

-wildest excitement, which rose as the days succeeded.</p>

-

-<p>Father Mullin next offered ten thousand dollars for

-the apprehension of the kidnappers and return of the

-boy. Then a restaurant keeper of the neighborhood,

-whose nephew had been threatened by anonymous letter

-writers, offered two thousand dollars more for the

-return of the McCormick boy, and he said he would pay

-an additional thousand for evidence against kidnappers.

-Thus the total of fees offered was nineteen thousand

-dollars. Still no word came from the absent lad, and

-the efforts of a thousand officers failed to disclose any

-abductors.</p>

-

-<p>The constant appearance of these articles in the newspapers

-and the offers of such high rewards succeeded,

-however, in throwing a city of five or six million people

-into general hysteria. Parents refused to allow their

-children out of doors without escort; rich men called

-up at all hours of the day and night, demanding special

-police to protect their homes; excited women throughout

-the city and later throughout the State and surrounding

-communities proceeded to interpret the

-apparition of every stranger as evidence of kidnappers

-and to bombard the police of a hundred towns and cities

-with frantic appeals. The absence of this obscure child

-had become a public catastrophe.</p>

-

-<p>Developments in the investigation came not at all.

-The police, the reporters, and numberless private officers,

-who were attracted to the case by the possibility

-of achieving celebrity and rich reward, all bogged down

-precisely where they started. Willie McCormick had

-vanished within a hundred feet of his father’s door. The

-night had simply swallowed him up, and all efforts failed

-to penetrate a step into the gloom.</p>

-

-<p>Only two suggestive bits of information could be

-got from the McCormicks and the missing boy’s friends.

-The father, being closely interrogated as to possible enemies,

-could recall only one person who might have had

-a grievance. This was a mechanic, who lived a few

-squares away, and with whom there had been a disagreement

-as to pay. But this man was at home and going

-steadily about his work; he was vouched for by

-neighbors and his employers, and he came out of a police

-grilling completely absolved.</p>

-

-<p>Launcelot Tierney, the playmate for whom Willie

-McCormick had blown his whistle a minute or two before

-he vanished, supplied the information that Willie

-had tormented an Italian laborer on the morning before

-the disappearance, and that this man had nursed his

-grudge until the afternoon, when the boys were returning

-home from school. Then, said the Tierney boy, this

-workman had lain in wait behind a pile of lumber and

-dashed out after Willie, as the children passed. Willie

-had run for safety and proved fleeter than his pursuer,

-who gave up the attempt after running a few rods.

-Investigation showed that none of the laborers employed

-at the indicated building was absent. However

-the Tierney boy was unable to identify the man he had

-accused, when the workmen were lined up for his inspection.

-A good deal was made of this circumstance.</p>

-

-<p>The public police, however, always came back to

-their original attitude. Kidnappers were actuated by

-the hope of extorting money, they said. Since William

-McCormick was a poor man, there could have been no

-motive for the abduction of his son. Consequently it

-was almost certain that the boy had gone away.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. McCormick replied that while he was now poor,

-he had formerly been well to do. He reasoned that the

-kidnapper might very well have been ignorant of his

-decline in fortune and taken the boy in the belief that

-his parent was still wealthy. Others joined the controversy

-by pointing out in the newspapers that abductions

-were sometimes motivated by revenge or spite on the

-part of persons quite unknown or unsuspected by the

-parents; that children were often stolen by irrational

-or demented men or women, and that there was at

-least some basis for faith in the abduction theory, but

-no evidence to support the idea of a runaway.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime events had added their spice of immediate

-drama. A few nights after the disappearance of Willie

-McCormick, Doctor D. A. McLeod, a surgeon occupying

-the next house but one to the McCormick’s, had

-found a masked man skulking about the rear of his

-property just after nightfall, and tried to grapple with

-the intruder. A week later, from a house two blocks

-away, another neighbor reported that he, too, had found

-the masked man prowling about his place and had followed

-him into the woods, where he had been lost. This

-informant said that the mysterious stranger was a negro.

-Detectives were posted in hiding throughout the district,

-but the visitant did not appear again.</p>

-

-<p>Next two Gypsy girls visited a photographer in

-Washington, and one of them showed the camera man

-a slip of paper with some childish scrawl. Somehow this

-bit of writing came to be identified as that of one of

-Willie McCormick’s sisters. It was said the scrap of

-paper must have been taken from the McCormick

-house. The two Gypsy children were seized and held in

-jail, while detectives hurried off to interrogate their

-elders and search through the Romany camps up and

-down the Atlantic seaboard. No trace of the missing

-boy was found, and the girls were quickly released.</p>

-

-<p>Finally the expected note from the kidnapper

-reached William McCormick. It was scrawled awkwardly

-on a piece of nondescript paper by some illiterate

-person who was apparently trying to conceal his

-normal handwriting. It said that Willie was being held

-for ransom; that he was well; that he would be safe so

-long as no attempt was made to bring the police into

-the negotiations, and that disaster would follow if the

-father played false. The writer then demanded the absurdly

-small sum of two hundred dollars for the release

-of the boy and directed that the money be taken at

-night to the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundred

-and Thirty-fifth Street, and there placed in an old tin

-bucket which would be found inside an abandoned

-steam boiler. The missive bore the signature “Kid.”</p>

-

-<p>The police immediately denounced the letter as the

-work of some mental defective, but instructed the

-father to go to the rendezvous at the appointed time

-and deposit a bundle of paper which might look like

-the demanded sum in bank notes.</p>

-

-<p>McCormick did as commanded. He found the corner

-of Third Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth

-Street to be a half-abandoned spot near the east

-bank of the Harlem, at its juncture with the East

-River. A low barroom, a disused manufacturing plant,

-and some rookeries of dubious tenantry ornamented the

-place, while coarsely dressed men, the dregs of the river

-quarter, lounged about and robbed the stranger of any

-gathered reassurance. The old boiler was there, standing

-in the center of open, flat ground that sloped down

-to the railroad tracks and the river under the Third

-Avenue bridge. Plainly the writer of the letter had

-chosen a likely spot, which might be kept under observation

-from a considerable distance and could not

-be surrounded or approached without the certain

-knowledge of a watcher posted in any one of a hundred

-windows commanding the view. McCormick deposited

-the package and went his way, while disguised

-detectives lay in various vantages and watched the

-boiler for days. No one went near it, and the game

-was abandoned.</p>

-

-<p>But, at the end of ten days, McCormick received a

-second letter from Kid, in which he was reproached

-for having enlisted the police; he was told that such

-crude tactics would not work, and he was ordered to

-place two thousand dollars in cash under a certain stone,

-which he was directed to find under the approach of

-the McComb’s Dam bridge, a few rods from the mouth

-of Cromwell Creek. He was told that the amount of the

-ransom had been increased because of his association

-with the police, and the letter closed with the solemn

-warning that the demand must be met if McCormick

-hoped to see his son again. A postscript said that if the

-police appeared again the boy’s ears would be thrown

-upon his father’s porch.</p>

-

-<p>Relatives, friends, and neighbors were at hand to

-furnish the demanded money, and the father was more

-than willing to deposit it according to the stipulation,

-but the police again intervened and had McCormick

-leave another dummy packet. Once more he saw, and

-the police should have noted, that the spot selected by

-the letter writer was most suited to the purpose. Once

-more it was an open area in the formidable shadow of a

-great bridge, freely observable from all sides and impossible

-to surround effectively.</p>

-

-<p>No one was baited to the trap, but McCormick got

-a third letter from Kid, in which he was told that his

-silly tactics would avail him nothing; that his boy had

-been taken out to sea, and that he would not hear again

-until he reached England. He was told to blame his own

-folly if he never beheld his child alive.</p>

-

-<p>It must be said in favor of the police point of view

-that these were not the only letters from supposed kidnappers

-which reached the distraught parents. Indeed,

-there was a steady accumulation of all sorts of missives

-of this type, most of them quite obviously the work of

-lunatics. These were easily distinguishable, however. An

-experienced officer ought to be able to choose between

-such vaporings of disjointed intelligences and letters

-which bore some evidence of reason, some mark of

-plausibility. The police who handled this case committed

-the common blunder of lumping them all together.

-They had determined that the boy was a runaway and

-were naturally inhospitable to contrary evidences.</p>

-

-<p>But others were as firmly convinced on the other

-side. The father now became genuinely alarmed and

-feared that further activity by the police might indeed

-lead to the murder of the child. Accordingly Father

-Mullin withdrew his ten-thousand-dollar offer for the

-apprehension of the criminals, and Michael McCormick,

-the lost boy’s uncle, moved swiftly to change the terms

-of his five-thousand-dollar reward. In seeking for a

-way to make an appeal directly to the abductors and

-assure them of their personal safety, he brought into

-the case at this point the redoubtable Pat Sheedy.</p>

-

-<p>Sheedy had just achieved worldwide notoriety by recovering

-from the thieves’ fence, Adam Worth, the famous

-Gainsborough painting of Elizabeth, Duchess of

-Devonshire, which had been stolen from Agnew’s Art

-Rooms in London in 1876, and which had been hunted

-over half the earth for twenty-five years. This successful

-intermediacy between the police and the underworld

-gave the New York and Buffalo “honest gambler” a

-tremendous reputation for confidential dealing, and the

-McCormicks counted on Sheedy’s trusted position

-among criminals to convince the kidnappers that they

-could deliver the boy, collect five thousand dollars, and

-be safe from arrest or betrayal. So Sheedy came forward,

-announced that he was prepared to pay over the money

-on the spot and without question, the moment the boy

-was delivered and identified.</p>

-

-<p>The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension,

-disgusted by the police failures and thrilled by

-Sheedy’s performance in the matter of the stolen painting,

-received the news of his intervention in the case

-with signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s return

-was breathlessly expected, and many believed the feat as

-good as accomplished. But this time the task was beyond

-the powers of even the man who enjoyed the

-confidence of the foremost professional criminals of the

-day, counted the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli,

-as an intimate, forced the celebrated international

-fence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam Worth, to

-leave London and follow him across the ocean after the

-lost Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar of

-the American Express office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>

-and seemed able to compel the most abandoned

-lawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, but

-Sheedy got no word and could find no trace.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> Or so says one of the most persistent of underworld legends.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>On the rain-drenched afternoon of May 10, John

-Garfield, bridge tender for the New York Central Railroad

-at Cromwell Creek, worked the levers and lifted

-the steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighter

-bound up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. After

-he had lowered the platform again he observed that a

-large floating object had worked its way to the shore

-and threatened to get caught in the machinery which

-operated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkhead

-with a boat hook, intending to dislodge it. At the extreme

-end he leaned over and bent down, prodding

-the object with his pole. The thing turned in the

-stream and swam into better view. It was the body of a

-boy.</p>

-

-<p>Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawled

-back to the bridge, called to two boys and a man, who

-were angling near by, and soon put out with them in a

-rowboat. In five minutes the body had been brought

-to shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it had

-been identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectives

-had been seeking him thousands of miles away,

-and European port authorities had been watching the

-in-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had lain

-dead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares from

-his home. The churning propeller of the steam lighter

-had brought the body to the surface.</p>

-

-<p>A coroner’s autopsy revealed that the body had been

-in the water for a period which could not be fixed with

-any degree of precision. It might have been two weeks,

-but the coroner felt unable to state that the body had

-not been in the creek for six weeks, the full length of

-time since the disappearance. There was no way to

-make sure. Again, it was not possible to determine if

-the boy had been choked to death before being cast

-into the waters. There was no skull fracture, no breakage

-of bones, and no discernible wound. There was also

-no evidence of poison—no abnormal condition of the

-lungs. The official physicians were inclined to believe

-that death had been caused by drowning, but they

-would not make a definite declaration.</p>

-

-<p>The police dismissed the case with the assertion that

-they had been vindicated. It was clear that the boy had

-played truant from church, wandered away, fallen into

-the river, probably on the night of his disappearance,

-and lain under the water for six weeks.</p>

-

-<p>But to this conclusion the McCormicks and many

-others, among them several distinguished private officers,

-took exception, and it must be said that the police

-explanation leaves some important questions suspended.

-Why did the boy turn and go three blocks to the south

-of his home, when he had last been seen hurrying northward

-toward church? What could have led this timid

-and dark-frightened boy to go voluntarily down to the

-sinister and gloomy river bank on the edge of night?

-How did it happen that the Kid directed William McCormick

-to deposit the two-thousand-dollar ransom

-within a few score yards of the spot where the body was

-recovered? Who was the mysterious masked man?</p>

-

-<p>We shall never know, and neither shall we be able

-to answer whether accident or foul design lurks in the

-shadow of this mystery.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE</p>

-

-

-<p>Whoever is familiar with Central European

-popular literature has tucked away

-in his memory some part or parcel of the

-story of Barbara Ubrik. The romance of her life and

-parentage has furnished material for countless novels,

-plays, short stories, tales and poems of the imaginative

-kind. Bits of her history appear in more serious literature,

-in religious and social polemics, even in the memoirs

-of personages. And more than one of the tragic

-incidents of opera may be, if diligence and intuition are

-not lacking, traced back to this forgotten Polish woman

-and her exorbitant adventures. Time and creative interpretation

-have fashioned her case into one of the classic

-legends of disappearance.</p>

-

-<p>In the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, a certain Alexander

-Ubrik played a part sufficiently noteworthy to

-get himself exiled to Siberia for life, leaving behind him

-a wife and four young daughters, the third of whom,

-Barbara, was the chief figure of the subsequent affair.

-But the Ubrik family had already known the feel of

-the romantic fabric and there had already been a remarkable

-disappearance mystery involving a relative no

-more remote than the mother of Barbara and wife of

-the banished Alexander. It is with this part of the family

-history that much of the literary offspring deals.</p>

-

-<p>About the year 1800, according to the account of

-the celebrated Polish detective Masilewski, extensively

-quoted by his American friend and compeer, the late

-George S. McWatters of the United States Secret Service,

-the first of the series of astonishing scenes involving

-the Ubrik family was played in Warsaw. There was

-then resident in the Polish capital one Jaromir Ubrik,

-the profligate son of an old and noble Polish house who

-had wasted his substance in gambling and roistering.

-Ubrik, though fallen into disrepute among his former

-friends, was still intimate with a few of the aristocratic

-families, among them that of Count Michael Satorin.</p>

-

-<p>The Countess Satorin had borne her lord several

-daughters but no son to succeed to the title. When, in

-the year mentioned, Mme. Satorin yielded still another

-daughter, her husband being then absent in Russia, she

-sought to forestall the wrath and disappointment of

-her spouse by substituting a male child. It happened

-that the wife of Jaromir Ubrik had borne a son only

-two days earlier and died in childbirth. For the consideration

-of ten thousand florins, Ubrik consented to

-exchange children with the countess, who said she was

-additionally persuaded to the arrangement by the fact

-that the Ubrik blood was as good as her own and the

-boy thus fit to wear a title. The little Ubrik boy was,

-accordingly, delivered to the countess and her little

-daughter turned over to Jaromir Ubrik, nestled in a

-down lined basket with a fine gold chain and cross about

-her neck.</p>

-

-<p>The elements of a thousand plots will be apparent

-even at this early stage of the story. But far more fabulous-seeming

-things followed immediately.</p>

-

-<p>Ubrik took the basket containing the little girl and

-started home. On the way, following his unhappy

-weakness, he entered a tavern and began to spend some

-of the money he had been paid. He got drunk, staggered

-home without the little girl in her basket and returned

-the following day to find that a nameless Jew had

-claimed this strange parcel and disappeared.</p>

-

-<p>Not long afterwards, it seems, Countess Satorin,

-plagued by her natural feelings, came to see her daughter

-and had to be told the story. The outraged mother

-finally exacted an oath that he devote his worthless life

-to the quest for the stolen child. Ubrik began his work,

-apparently sobered by the death of his wife, the theft

-of the little girl and the charge her mother had laid

-upon him. After several years he rose in the ranks of the

-Russian intelligence service and was made captain of

-the Warsaw police.</p>

-

-<p>About this time the keeper of the inn where Ubrik

-had lost the little girl was seized with a mortal disease

-and called the police captain to his bedside, confessing

-that he had turned the little girl over to a Jewish adventurer

-named Aaron Koenigsberger, whose address

-in Germany the dying man supplied. Captain Ubrik

-proceeded to Germany, confronted Koenigsberger with

-the confession of his accomplice and dragged the abductor

-back to Poland to face the courts. Koenigsberger,

-to avoid punishment, assisted in the search for the little

-girl and guided Captain Ubrik to Kiev, where he had

-sold the child to another Jew named Gerson. The Gersons

-appeared to be respectable people, who had taken

-the little girl to console them in their own childlessness.

-They deplored that she had been stolen several years

-earlier by a band of Gypsies. Captain Ubrik, at length

-satisfied that this story was true, set out on an Odyssean

-journey in quest of the child. For more than eleven years

-he followed Gypsy bands through all parts of western

-and southern Russia and into Austria and Germany. At

-last, in a village not an hour’s journey from Warsaw, he

-discovered the missing daughter of the Countess Satorin

-and returned her to her mother, as a grown

-woman who believed herself to be a Jewess and could

-now at last explain why her supposed people had always

-said she looked like a “Goy.”</p>

-

-<p>The woman recovered as Judith Gerson seems to have

-been satisfactorily documented as the missing daughter

-of the countess. At any rate, she was taken into the Satorin

-family and christened Elka Satorin. Her father

-had meantime died, leaving the bulk of his fortune and

-the title to his supposed son, Alexander. Elka Satorin,

-however, inherited her mother’s property and, a few

-years later, married the boy who had been substituted

-for her in the cradle.</p>

-

-<p>This was the strange match from which Barbara

-Ubrik was spawned into a life that was to be darkened

-with more sinister adventures. The year of her birth is

-given as 1828, so that she was a tot of three when her

-father was dragged away to the marshes and mines of

-Russia in Asia.</p>

-

-<p>I must confess that I set down so fantastic a tale only

-after hesitation and skeptical misgiving. It, and what

-is to follow, reads like a piece of motion picture fustian,

-an old wives’ tale. The meter of reasonableness and

-probability is not there. The whole yarn is too crudely

-colored. It is sensation; it is melodrama. But it seems

-also to be the truth. My sources are old books by reputable

-chroniclers, containing long quotations from

-the story of Masilewski, the detective, from the testimony

-of Wolcech Zarski, the lover who appeared in

-Barbara Ubrik’s life at a disastrous moment, from the

-proceedings of an ecclesiastical trial. Indeed, the whole

-thing seems to be a matter of court record in Warsaw

-and in Cracow, the old Polish capital. This being so, we

-must conclude that fiction has been once more detected

-in the act of going to life even for its ultimate extravagances.</p>

-

-<p>The years following the great revolt of 1831 were

-full of torment for Poland. Nicholas I, weary of what

-he termed the obstinacy of the people, began a series of

-the most dire repressions, including the closing of the

-Polish universities, the revocation of the constitution,

-the persecution of the Roman priests and a general

-effort to abolish the Polish language and national culture.

-The old nobility, made up of devout Roman Catholics

-and chauvinistic patriots, was especially sought out

-for the reactionary discipline of the czar, and a family

-like that of Barbara Ubrik, whose chief had been sent

-to Siberia for treason, was naturally among the worst

-afflicted.</p>

-

-<p>The attempt from St. Petersburg to uproot the

-church of Rome was the cause of an intense devotionalism

-among the Poles, with the result that many men

-and women of distinguished families gave themselves up

-to the religious life and entered the monasteries and

-convents. This passion touched the Ubriks as well as

-others and Barbara, naturally of a passionate and enthusiastic

-nature, decided as a girl that she would retire

-from the world and devote herself to her forbidden

-faith. Her mother, Elka Satorin-Ubrik, once a

-ward of the Jewish family in Kiev and later the prisoner

-of the Gypsies, strongly opposed such a course, but in

-1844, when she was 16 years old, the girl could no

-longer be restrained. She presented herself to the Carmelite

-cloister of St. Theresa in Warsaw in the spring

-of that year and was admitted to the novitiate.</p>

-

-<p>From the beginning, however, the spirited young

-noblewoman seems to have been most ill-adapted to the

-stern regulations hedging life in a monastery of the unshod

-cenobite Carmelites. She had brought into the

-austere atmosphere of the nunnery something that

-has played havoc with rules and good intentions under

-far happier environments than that of the cloister;

-namely, young beauty. The older and less favored nuns

-saw it first with misgiving and soon with envy, a sin

-which seems not altogether foreign to the holiest places.

-What was more directly in line with evil consequences,

-Father Gratian, the still youthful confessor of the

-cloister, also saw and appraised the charms of the youthful

-sister and was quite humanly moved.</p>

-

-<p>The official story is silent as to details but it appears

-that in 1846 Sister Jovita, as Barbara Ubrik had been

-named in the convent, bore a child. Very naturally,

-she was called before the abbess, who appears in the

-accounts as Zitta, confronted with her sin and sentenced

-to the usual and doubtless severe punishments.

-In the progress of her chastisement she seems to have declared

-that Father Gratian was the guilty man.</p>

-

-<p>This was the beginning of the young man’s troubles.

-Detective Masilewski, in his report on the investigation

-of the case, says that the motivation of the nun’s

-subsequent mistreatment was complex. Father Gratian

-naturally wanted to defend himself from the serious

-charge. The abbess, Zitta, was quite as anxious both to

-discipline the nun and to prevent the airing of a scandal,

-especially in times of suspicion and persecution,

-when the imperial attitude toward the holy orders was

-far from friendly and any pretext might have been

-seized for the closing of a nunnery and the expropriation

-of church property. Masilewski says, also, that Sister

-Jovita possessed a considerable property which was

-to belong to the cloister and that there was, thus, a further

-material motive.</p>

-

-<p>But, whatever else may have actuated either the priest

-or the abbess, Sister Jovita aggravated matters by her

-own conduct. The severity of her punishment led her

-to desire liberty and she sought to renounce her vows

-and return to her family. Such a course would probably

-have been followed by a public repetition of the

-charges made by the young nun, and every effort was

-accordingly made to prevent her from leaving the order.

-She was locked into her cell, loaded with penances

-and almost unbelievably severe punishments and prevented

-from communicating with her mother and

-sisters.</p>

-

-<p>Not long afterwards love again intruded itself into

-the story of Sister Jovita and further complicated the

-situation. This was in the last months of 1847. It appears

-that a young lay brother whose worldly name was

-Wolcech Zarski happened about this time to meet the

-beautiful young nun, while occupied at the convent

-with some official duties, and straightway fell in love

-with her. She told him of her experiences and sufferings

-and he, a spirited young man and not yet a monk,

-immediately laid plans to elope. Owing to the stringent

-discipline and the careful watch kept over the offending

-sister, this departure was not quickly or easily accomplished.

-Finally, however, on the night of May

-25th, 1848, Zarski managed to pull his beloved to the

-top of the convent wall by means of a rope. In trying

-to descend outside, she fell and was injured, with the

-result that flight was impeded.</p>

-

-<p>Zarski seems, however, to have had the strength to

-carry his precious burden to the nearest inn. Here

-friends and human nature failed him. The friends did

-not appear with a coach and change of feminine clothing,

-as they had promised, and the superstitious dread

-of the innkeeper’s wife led her to send immediate word

-to the convent. Before he could move from the neighborhood,

-Zarski was overcome by a bevy of stout friars

-and Sister Jovita carried back to the nunnery.</p>

-

-<p>The monasteries and nunneries of Poland had still

-their own judicial jurisdiction, so Zarski could not enter

-St. Theresa’s by legal means. He tried again and again

-to communicate with his beloved by stealth, but the

-Abbess Zitta was now fully awake to the danger and

-every effort was defeated. The young lover tried one

-measure after another, appealed to ecclesiastical authorities,

-consulted lawyers, besieged officials. At length

-he was told that the object of all this devotion was no

-longer in St. Theresa’s but had been removed to another

-Carmelite seat, the name of which was, of course,

-refused.</p>

-

-<p>Here political events intervened. Nicholas I had

-grown slowly but surely relentless in his attitude toward

-the Roman clergy in Poland, whom he considered to be

-the chief fomenters and supporters of the continued Polish

-resistance. Nicholas simply closed the monasteries

-and cloisters and drove the clergy out of Poland. It

-was the kind of drastic step always taken in the past

-in response to religious interference in political matters.</p>

-

-<p>Now the unfortunate Zarski was at his dark hour.

-The nuns were scattered into foreign lands where he,

-as a foreigner, could have little chance of either legal

-or official aid, where he knew nothing of the ways,

-was acquainted with no one, could count on no encouragement.

-Worse yet, he was not rich. He had to

-stop for months and even years at a time and earn more

-money with which to press his quest. His tenacity seems

-to have been heroic; his faith tragic.</p>

-

-<p>One evening in the summer of 1868, twenty years

-after Sister Jovita had last been seen, Detective Masilewski

-was driving homeward toward Warsaw, after a

-day’s hunt, when an old peasant stepped before the

-horse, doffed his hat and asked:</p>

-

-<p>“Are you the secret detective, Mr. Masilewski?”</p>

-

-<p>On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigator

-a letter, explaining that an unknown man

-had handed it to him with a tip to pay for its delivery.

-The note said simply:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Dear Sir: In the convent of St. Mary of the Carmelites at

-Cracow, a nun by the name of Jovita, her real name being

-Barbara Ubrik, has been held a captive for twenty years,

-which imprisonment has made her a lunatic. I do not care

-to mention my name but vouch for the truth of my assertion.

-Seek and you will find.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“Your correspondent.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not a

-little incredulous. True, he had heard of this nun and

-her disappearance, but she had vanished long ago and

-surely death had sealed the lid of this mystery, as of

-others. No doubt this was another of those romantic

-reappearances of the famous missing. Still—what if

-there were truth in it. But no, it must be a figment, else

-why had the informant hidden himself? It was an attempt

-to make a fool of an honest detective.</p>

-

-<p>So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remote

-possibility of something grotesque and extraordinary

-plagued him and drove him at last to action. Even when

-he had determined to move, however, he knew that he

-must act with caution. If he were to go to the bishop

-of the diocese, for instance, and ask for permission to

-search the nunnery of St. Mary’s, the very possible result

-might be the transfer of the unfortunate nun to

-some new hiding place and the infliction of worse penalties

-and tortures.</p>

-

-<p>If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austria

-having annexed the province of Cracow in 1846),

-he might enter the convent and find himself the victim

-of a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate humiliation

-for a detective. There was no possible course except

-cautious investigation.</p>

-

-<p>So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowly

-he traced back the stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother,

-the exchanged babies, the theft by the old Jew and the

-captivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the record

-of Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’s

-birth certificate, learned about her admittance to the

-convent, the part played in her life by Father Gratian

-and the early chastisement. How he did these things

-one needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care and

-watchful judgment were necessary. He must never let

-the enemies of the nun know that a detective was at

-work. All he did had to be handled through intermediaries.

-Probably it would even be a thankless job,

-but it was an enigma, a temptation. He went ahead.</p>

-

-<p>Finally Masilewski stumbled upon the fact that the

-convent of St. Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiastical

-library. The inspiration came to him at once.

-He or someone else must play the part of a learned

-student of religious and local ecclesiastical matters and

-get permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. After

-some seeking, Masilewski came upon a renegade theological

-student and sent this man first to the bishop and

-then to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the diocese

-apparently approved the student, he was permitted to

-enter and use the rare old books and records.</p>

-

-<p>Under instructions from Masilewski, the man worked

-with caution. The detective invented a subject with

-which the man busied himself for days before a chance

-question, skillfully introduced into his research problem,

-called for an inspection of the old church law

-records of the convent. There was a moment of suspense

-and the investigator feared that he had been suspected

-or that the abbess would rule against any such liberty.

-But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decided

-that so holy and studious a young man might well

-be permitted to see the secret papers.</p>

-

-<p>Once the records were in his hands, the mock student

-turned immediately to the date of the nun’s escape

-and found under date of June 3, 1848, this remarkable

-record:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Barbara Ubrik, known under the name of Jovita, is accused

-of immoral actions, continued disturbances in the convent,

-manifold irregularities and trespasses of the rules of

-the convent, even of theft and cunningly plotted crime; she

-has refused the mercy of baptism and given her soul to the

-devil, for which cause she was unworthy of the holy Lord’s

-Supper, and by this act she has calumniated God; she has

-clandestinely broken the vows of purity, in so far that she

-held a love correspondence with the novice, Zarski, and allowed

-herself to elope with him; at last she has offended

-against the law of obedience of poverty and seclusion, and

-on the 25th of May, 1848, she has accomplished an escape

-from the convent.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>Trial was held before the abbess and judgment was

-thus rendered:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“The criminal has to do three days’ expiation of sins in

-the church, afterwards she will be lashed by all the sisters

-of the order and be forfeited of her clerical dignity; she herself

-will be considered as dead and her name will be taken

-from the list of the order. At last, she has forfeited the right

-to the holy Mass and the Lord’s Supper, and is condemned

-to perpetual imprisonment.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The reader is warned not to take this as a sample

-of monastic life or justice as it might be discovered to-day

-or even as it generally existed then. Sister Jovita

-had simply got herself involved in one of those sad

-tangles of scandal which had to be kept hid at any and

-every price. She was the victim not of monasticism or

-of any form of religion but of a political situation and

-of her relations with other men and women, some of

-whom have been hard and evil from the beginning of

-the world, respectless of vows or trust.</p>

-

-<p>In one particular, however, her treatment was a

-definite result of certain religious beliefs then prevalent

-in all strict churches. She was accused of being devil

-ridden or possessed by the fiend and many of her cries

-of anguish, screams of madness and acts of defiance were

-attributed to such a possession. It was then customary

-in certain parts of Europe to drive the devil out by

-means of torture. This was in no sense a belief peculiar

-to Catholics. Martin Luther held it, and so did John

-Wesley, as any historian must tell you. Therefore many

-of Jovita’s sufferings were the result of beliefs general in

-those days except among the exceptionally enlightened.</p>

-

-<p>With this record copied and safely in his hand, Masilewski

-moved immediately and directly. One morning

-he and a squad of Gallician gendarmes appeared before

-the convent of St. Mary’s and demanded admittance in

-the name of the emperor. The abbess, certain what was

-about to happen, tried to temporize, but Masilewski

-entered, arrested the abbess with an imperial warrant

-and commanded a search of the place. The mother superior,

-seeing that there was nothing to be gained by

-resistance led the company down to the lowest cellars

-of the building and turned over to Masilewski a key to

-a damp cell.</p>

-

-<p>The detective opened the door, felt rats run across

-his shoes as he stepped inside and found, crouched in

-a corner on a pile of wet straw, the shrunken form of

-what had been the beautiful Barbara Ubrik. She was

-brought forth to the light of day, to see the sheen upon

-the autumn trees once more and the clouds sailing in

-the skies. Alas, she was no Bonnivard. Life had lost its

-colors and symmetries for her. She had long been hopelessly

-mad.</p>

-

-<p>There is still a detail of this famous case of mystery

-and detection to be told. Father Gratian had disappeared

-when Russia drove out the clergy. Masilewski

-was determined to complete his work and bring the

-malefactor back to answer for his crimes. After the ruin

-of Barbara Ubrik had been lodged in an asylum, Masilewski

-set out to find the priest. After seven months of

-wandering through Austria, Prussia and Poland, the

-detective was rewarded with the information that

-Father Gratian had gone to Hamburg. He went immediately

-to the great German seaboard town, searched

-there for months and found that the man he sought had

-gone to London years before.</p>

-

-<p>The quest began anew in the British capital. It was

-like seeking a flea in a hayloft, but success came at last.

-Masilewski was passing through one of the obscure

-streets when he noticed a man with the peculiar gait

-and bearing of priests, which seems to mark them apart

-to the expert eye, no matter what their physique or

-dress, going into a bookstall where foreign books were

-sold.</p>

-

-<p>The detective, who was, of course, totally unknown

-to Father Gratian, followed into the shop and found to

-his delight that the priestly person was the owner of the

-shop. Many of the books dealt in were German or Polish.

-Masilewski rummaged for a long time, made a few purchases

-and ingratiated himself with the bibliophile.

-When he left he went directly to the first book expert

-he could find, stuffed himself with the terms and general

-knowledge of the book dealer and soon returned

-to the little shop.</p>

-

-<p>On his second visit he let drop a few Polish terms

-which made the shopkeeper prick up his ears. As Masilewski

-learned more and more of the new rôle he was

-to play he gradually revealed that he was himself a great

-continental expert. Later he informed the shopkeeper

-of a huge sale of famous libraries that was about to be

-held in Hamburg and invited the London dealer to accompany

-him. The priestly man was too much interested

-and beguiled to refuse a man who could speak his

-own language and loved his own subject.</p>

-

-<p>On the trip to Hamburg the London bookseller told,

-after skillful questioning, that he had once been a priest,

-that he had lived in Warsaw, that a love affair had

-driven him from the church—in short, that he was

-Father Gratian.</p>

-

-<p>Masilewski waited until he got his man safely on the

-continent and then, knowing the extradition agreements

-in force between Austria and the various German

-states, placed his man under arrest, not without

-a feeling of pain and regret. Father Gratian, like one

-relieved of a strange weight, immediately accompanied

-Masilewski to Cracow and faced his accusers without

-denying the facts. He could offer no extenuation save

-that nature had not ordained him to be a priest and

-“the devil had been too strong for his weak flesh.” He

-confessed his part in the whole transaction and even

-added that he had given the unfortunate nun drugs to

-bereave her of her reason. He made every attempt to

-shield the abbess, but she, too, face to face with the authority

-of the empire and the church, refused to deny or

-extenuate.</p>

-

-<p>For once the courts were more merciful than their

-victims. Mother Zitta was sentenced to expulsion from

-the order, imprisonment for five years and exile from

-the empire. Father Gratian was likewise expelled from

-the church, which he had long deserted, put to prison

-for ten years and exiled.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS</p>

-

-

-<p>In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, long

-employed as an auditor by the Erie Railroad and

-living in Jersey City, was grievously ill. In May,

-when he had recovered to the point of convalescence,

-it was decided he should go to the country to recuperate.

-For several years he and his family had been spending

-their vacations in the little hamlet of Greeley, five miles

-from Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in the pleasant hill

-country. So Glass bundled his wife and three small children

-to a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and the

-Frazer farm, where he had arranged for rooms and

-board. This on May eleventh.</p>

-

-<p>The Frazer farmhouse was one of those country

-establishments which take boarders for the season. Before

-it ran the main road leading to the larger towns

-along the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and beyond

-the road began the tangle of wild woods and hilly

-ground rising up to the wrinkle of mountains.</p>

-

-<p>Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play,

-and Mrs. Glass started for the post office, about two

-hundred yards up the road, to mail some post cards to

-her parents, noting the safe arrival of the family. She

-called to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook his

-head and went out into the field beside the house, interested

-in a hired man who was plowing in the far

-corner. The elder girl went with her up the road. The

-baby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on the

-porch watching his son. The little boy, just past four

-years old, was running about in the young green of

-the field.</p>

-

-<p>Charles Glass got up from the porch and went inside

-for a glass of water. He stayed there a minute or two.

-When he came out he saw his wife and little girl coming

-back down the road from the post office. They had

-been gone from the house not more than ten minutes.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about,

-and asked: “Where’s Jimmie?”</p>

-

-<p>Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and

-surmised: “Maybe he went up the road after you.”</p>

-

-<p>The road was scanned and then the field. Then the

-farm hand was called and questioned. He had seen the

-youngster crawling through a break in the fence a few

-minutes before, but had paid no attention.</p>

-

-<p>One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely

-missing of recent history had begun. This hunt, which

-extended over years and covered a continent, taking

-advantage of several modern inventions never before

-employed in the quest of a human being, started off with

-alarmed calls on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent

-woods, gullies, and thickets. In the course of the

-evening, however, the organized quest began. It is interesting

-to note some of the confusion that overcame

-the people most concerned and the little town of a

-hundred souls. The suspicion of abduction was not slow

-in forming, and the question as to who might have

-done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was

-sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road

-going to or coming from the post office. William Losky,

-the farm hand who was plowing in the field, and Fred

-Lindloff, who was working on the road, felt sure they

-had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road, occupied

-by one man and one woman who had a plush

-lap robe pulled up about their knees to protect them

-from the May breezes.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i241" style="max-width: 122em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i241.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three

-miles down the road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands

-all of seven hundred feet back, saw a one-seated car

-stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she might be

-of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the

-car saw her approaching and at once drove off.</p>

-

-<p>Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs.

-Konwickie noted a one-seated motor car with a sobbing

-child, a woman and two men inside, the child crouching

-on the floor against the woman’s knees and being

-covered with the same black plush lap robe.</p>

-

-<p>All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see,

-and I cite them only to show how unreliable is the human

-mind and how quickly panic and forensic imagination

-get hold of people and cause them to see the unseen.</p>

-

-<p>On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was

-brought from near by—just what kind of bloodhound

-the record does not show. The dog was given a scent of

-the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out

-through the break in the fence to the far side of the

-road, passed a little distance into the woods, and there

-stopped still, whined, and quit.</p>

-

-<p>The following morning word of the disappearance

-or kidnapping had been flashed to surrounding towns

-and many came to aid in the search. A committee was

-formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding

-terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the

-fourteenth. On the fifteenth of May a much larger

-committee undertook the work and the surrounding

-mountains were searched foot after foot. This work

-took several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about,

-whose members worked slowly inward, covering all the

-ground as they came to a center at Greeley. This

-maneuver also failed to yield hail or trail of the child.

-At last the weary and foot-sore hunters gave it up.</p>

-

-<p>The search was now begun in a more methodical way.

-The State constabulary took charge of a systematic review

-of the ground. Ponds were drained, culverts blown

-up, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves of the preceding

-autumn raked out of hollows or from the depths of

-quarries—all in vain.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime, the mayor and director of public safety

-in Jersey City, appealed to by the distracted parents,

-began the official quest. Descriptions of the boy were

-broadcast. He was four years old, blond, with blue eyes,

-had good teeth, a double crown or cowlick in his hair,

-weighed about thirty-five pounds, and wore new shoes,

-tan overalls with a pink trimming, but no hat. Every

-town and hamlet in the United States, Canada, and the

-West Indies was sooner or later placarded with the picture

-and description of the boy. The film distributors

-were prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for the

-first notable occasion, at least, the movies were used

-to search for a missing person, more than ten thousand

-theaters having shown Jimmie Glass’ lineaments and

-flashed his description.</p>

-

-<p>A few years later the radio broadcasting stations

-spread through the air the story of his disappearance

-and the particulars of his description.</p>

-

-<p>To understand the drama of the hunt for Jimmie

-Glass, one must, however, begin with events closely

-following his vanishment and try to trace their succession

-through more than eight years. When once the

-idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors

-whose interest in the affair was partly sympathetic but

-more morbid, sat about shaking their heads and sagely

-talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a demand

-for ransom in a few days. When the few days had

-passed without the receipt of any request for money,

-the wiseacres shook their heads more gravely and

-opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some

-safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in

-coming. But time gave the soft quietus to all these

-speculations. Except for an obvious extortion letter

-received the following year, no ransom demand ever

-came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.</p>

-

-<p>Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead

-body could be found, and since there seemed to be no

-sustenance for the idea of kidnapping for ransom, the

-theorists were forced into another position, one full of

-the ripe color of centuries.</p>

-

-<p>On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling

-carnival show had been at Lackawaxen, and with it had

-toured a band of Gypsy fortune tellers. Later on, Mr.

-John Bentley, the director of public safety in Jersey

-City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police,

-found that these Gypsies, two or three men and one

-woman, known sometimes as Cruze and sometimes as

-Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It could

-be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there

-had been Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to

-give fresh life to the old fable. Gypsies stole children

-to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they had taken Jimmie

-Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads

-to earth and force them to give up the child.</p>

-

-<p>Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain

-Rooney that she had seen a swart man and woman

-in an automobile on the day of the kidnapping, not

-far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.</p>

-

-<p>Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and

-many other officers engaged in a systematic investigation

-of Gypsy camps wherever they were found, following

-the nomads south in the winter and north again with

-the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were

-found about the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners,

-with the result that Mrs. Glass, now fairly set

-out upon her travels in quest for her son, visited one

-tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought

-Jimmie.</p>

-

-<p>The discovery of blond or blondish children in

-Tzigane encampments always stirred the finders and

-the public to the same emotions, to the indignant

-belief that such children must have been stolen. All

-this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany

-people and the American Gypsies in especial. No

-one knows just what the original Gypsies were or

-whence they came. The only hint is contained in the

-fact that their language contains strong Aryan and

-Sanscrit connections and suggestions. They appeared in

-Eastern Europe, probably in the thirteenth century and

-in France somewhat later, being there mistaken for

-Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks

-were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or

-brown eyed. But several Gypsy clans appeared in England

-all of five hundred years ago and there soon began

-to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of Tzigane

-blood. In the course of the generations the English

-Gypsy came to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall,

-straight, dark men, with piercing eyes and the more or

-less typical Gypsy facial characteristics appeared among

-them, but these usually occur in cases where there has

-been marriage with strains from the Continent, from

-Hungary and Roumania. For instance, Richard

-Burton, the great traveler and anthropologist, was

-half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the last century.</p>

-

-<p>The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English

-origin, though there are a good many from Eastern

-Europe. Among both kinds there is frequent intermarriage

-with American girls from the mountain countries

-of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies

-pure blond children are of frequent occurrence and

-one often sees the charming contradiction of light hair

-and dark, emotive eyes.</p>

-

-<p>Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children.

-Nomads have very little sense of the property rights of

-others and may take anything, animal, mineral or vegetable,

-that strikes their fancy. But so much for the facts

-on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.</p>

-

-<p>Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps

-kept the police and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the

-move. The Cruze party gave them especial trouble and

-contributed one of the high dramatic moments of the

-eight years of search and suspense.</p>

-

-<p>When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman

-called Rose Cruze had been near Greeley on the day the

-child vanished, he set out to trace her down with her

-male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at

-the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more,

-a most puzzling matter to one who does not understand

-the motives and habits of nomads. Rose Cruze and

-the blond boy she was supposed to have with her kept

-just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into

-Mexico and continued southward with her band, having

-meantime married Lister Costello, the head of another

-clan. Later she was heard of in Venezuela, then in

-Brazil.</p>

-

-<p>One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram

-was brought to Director Bentley in Jersey City. It came

-from Porto Rico, was signed with the mysterious name

-Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy

-answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies

-encamped near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram

-also gave the information that the men were

-Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and the

-woman was Costello’s wife.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities,

-probably a good deal more skeptical about

-Gypsy stories than are Americans, questioned whether

-the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously. By

-the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late

-by the American officials on the island, the band had

-moved on into the mountains.</p>

-

-<p>Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of

-no special standing, and he was severely questioned. But

-this time there was no foolery. He stuck to his story

-very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate practically

-everything he said, and firmly established the

-fact that among the Gypsies were the much-sought

-Costello-Cruze family.</p>

-

-<p>The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went

-out that the hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba.

-In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made ready to sail.

-Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused

-him to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him

-to packing his bags. He was almost ready to embark

-when the thing dropped with sudden and sad deflation.

-The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not

-Jimmie Glass.</p>

-

-<p>This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of

-the eight years of quest. Ever and again, not ten times

-but ten hundred, came reports that Jimmy Glass had

-been found. Many of them came from irresponsible

-enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest

-but mistaken. A few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the

-marked egg.</p>

-

-<p>One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City

-grocery store with the following scrawled on the shell:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The police chased themselves in excited circles. One

-of them was off to Richmond at once. The eggs were

-carefully traced back to the nests of their origin. It

-was found that they came from a place much nearer

-than Richmond, and that the inscription was the work

-of a fifteen-year-old boy.</p>

-

-<p>Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated

-by the final running down of the much-sought band,

-another form of thrill had played its fullest ravages

-with the unhappy parents and given the public its

-crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the

-boy, the showing of his picture on the screens and the

-repeated newspaper summations of the strange case,

-all had the effect of putting idle brains and fevered

-imaginations to work. From almost every part of the

-country came reports of missing children who looked

-as though they might be Jimmie Glass.</p>

-

-<p>The distracted mother, suffering like any other

-woman in a similar predicament from the idea that her

-child could not fail to be restored, traveled from one

-part of the country to the other under the lash of these

-reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the

-newspapers have estimated that she traveled more than

-forty thousand miles in all, seeking what she never

-found.</p>

-

-<p>As happens in many excitements of this kind, the

-hunt for James Glass resulted in the finding of many

-other strayed or stolen children, from San Diego to

-Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in the

-possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to

-show that the child had been left with them, and they

-readily gave it up to the authorities for lodgment in an

-institution. But, alas, none of these was Jimmie Glass.</p>

-

-<p>The affair of the one demand for money came near

-ending in a tragedy. The blackmail note demanded that

-five thousand dollars be placed in a milk bottle near a

-shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses filled

-the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the

-agreed spot, after the police had taken up watch near

-by. The bottle stayed where it had been placed for

-hours. Finally the proprietor of the stand saw the thing.

-His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the bottle,

-and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police

-headquarters, protesting that he did not mean to steal

-anything. It developed that this honest workman knew

-nothing about the whole affair. The real extortioners

-had, of course, been much too alert for the police.</p>

-

-<p>One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited

-before the end. The quest for Jimmy Glass was at its

-height when news came from the little town of Norman,

-Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a

-shoe store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long

-trip in vain, asked that photographs be sent, and they

-were received at the end of the week. What they

-thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they

-caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City,

-and motored to Norman.</p>

-

-<p>Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the

-town had suspended business and hung the streets and

-houses with flags in their honor.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately

-to one of the houses of the town, where the child was

-being kept, and ushered into the parlor, while a large

-crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the streets,

-giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy

-was brought in. Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and

-held out her arms. The child rushed to her and was

-showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child

-promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother,

-choking with sobs, clasped the little fellow closely to

-her. He struggled, and she released him. He ran to sit

-on Mr. Glass’ lap.</p>

-

-<p>“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I

-was convinced. Surely this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He

-had his every feature. For the time there was no doubt

-in either of our minds. We were too happy for

-words.”</p>

-

-<p>But then the examination of the child began and

-the discrepancies appeared. The child was Jimmie’s

-size and age. His hair and eyes were of the same color

-and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.

-This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of

-Jimmie’s peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of

-Mr. Glass’ son; there was an old scar on one foot that

-was unlike anything that had disfigured Jimmie, and

-there were other slight differences.</p>

-

-<p>Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs.

-Glass could make up her mind, and the crowd stood outside

-crying for news and being told to wait, that the

-child was still being examined. Finally the negative word

-was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully

-away. Even then the Glasses stayed two days

-longer in the town, eager to find other evidence that

-might yet change their minds.</p>

-

-<p>A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child

-was found. She confessed that her husband had abandoned

-and would not support her, that she had been

-unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and that

-in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe

-store, hoping that some one would adopt him. The

-little boy had learned to say he was Jimmie Glass

-through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and

-other local emotionals.</p>

-

-<p>So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous

-man who had gone to the country to recover and

-been struck with this fatality, and for the sorrowing

-mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses

-seemed about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire

-of doubt and grief that took in the Rosses years before.</p>

-

-<p>One morning on the first days of December of 1923,

-Otto Winckler, of Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits

-not far from Greeley, where Jimmie Glass had disappeared.

-There had been a very dry autumn and the

-marshy ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse,

-ordinarily not to be crossed afoot, was caked and

-firm. A light snow had powdered the accumulations of

-brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for

-a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.</p>

-

-<p>Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter

-fashion, his shotgun ready in his hands, his eyes fixed

-ahead, covering the ground for some sudden flurry of

-a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a

-round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped

-after it; picked it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s

-memory fled back over the eight and one half years

-to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too, had

-taken part. Could this be—— He did not stop to ponder

-much, but looked about. Very near the spot from

-which he had kicked the skull were a pair of child’s

-shoes. He picked them up carefully and found them

-to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was

-missing, carried away in those long seasons by beasts and

-birds, no doubt.</p>

-

-<p>Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen

-and telegraphed to Charles Glass. The father responded

-at once and went over the ground with the hunter and

-with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the

-relative positions of the shoes and the skull, that the

-little boy must have lain down on his side and wakened

-no more.</p>

-

-<p>Little was found in addition to the shoes and the

-skull, except a few bone buttons, the metal clasps from

-a child’s garters and such like. The skull and shoes furnished

-the evidence needed. The former, examined by

-experts, revealed the double crown which had caused

-the upstanding of the missing boy’s back hair. The

-shoes, washed free of the encasing mud, showed the

-maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole. All

-the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have

-retained the mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn

-a brand new pair the morning he strayed out.</p>

-

-<p>Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered

-away that seductive May morning, gone on and on, as

-children sometimes do, got into the boggy ground and

-been unable to get out. Exhaustion had overtaken him,

-and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again,

-this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring

-of 1915, and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in

-and been drowned, only to have his bones cast up again

-by the droughty fall eight years later.</p>

-

-<p>With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain

-Rooney refused absolutely to entertain them. He had

-been over the ground many times. It was of the most

-difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally

-strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he

-tried to do more than creep among them, absolutely

-impassable to a child. Again, there was the matter of

-distance. How could a child of four years, none too firm

-a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and

-scar will testify, have made its way for more than two

-miles over this hellish terrain into a morass? Must it

-not have fallen exhausted long before and rested till

-the voices of the searchers in that first night had wakened

-it?</p>

-

-<p>And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney

-asks us. Of what leather were they made to have lain

-for eight and one half years in that impassable bog and

-yet to have been so well preserved as to retain the maker’s

-imprint?</p>

-

-<p>“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may

-be the bones of Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one

-must have taken him there.”</p>

-

-<p>Perhaps—and then again? How far a lost and desperate

-child will stray is not too simple a question. If,

-as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie Glass probably

-would have tired and lain down to rest, would he

-not also have risen again and blundered on? As

-for the durability of the leather, any one may go to

-any well-stocked museum and find hides of the sixteenth

-century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took

-the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that

-morass, who was it?</p>

-

-<p>It is much easier to believe with the parents. The

-enchantment of spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited

-and undreamed places unfolding before a child’s

-eyes, and straying from flower to flower, wonder to

-wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,

-disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness

-that clouds all living. It is more pleasant to think

-of the matter so, to believe that Jimmy Glass, four years

-in the world, was but a forthfarer into the mysteries,

-who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and

-went to sleep—a Babe in the Woods.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA</p>

-

-

-<p>On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, Salvatore

-Varotta took his eldest son for a ride on

-Long Island. Perhaps it was not quite the right

-thing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him.

-His employers might not like the idea of a child being

-carted about the countryside in their delivery van. Still,

-what did it matter? The day had been hot. Little Adolfo

-had begged to go. No one would ever know the difference,

-and the boy would be happy. So this simple-hearted

-Italian motor driver set out from the reeks and

-throngs of New York’s lower East Side on what was to

-be a pilgrimage of pleasure.</p>

-

-<p>There was a cool wind in the country and the landscape

-was still green. The truck chauffeur enjoyed his

-drive as he rolled by fields where farmers were at their

-late plowing. The nine-year-old Adolfo sat beside him,

-chattering with curiosity or musing in pure delight.

-After all, it was a bright and perfect world, for all men’s

-groans and growls.</p>

-

-<p>Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Another

-truck lurched drunkenly across his path. There was a

-horrid shriek of collision, the shattering tinkle of glass,

-the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore Varotta was tossed

-aside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He picked

-himself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreck

-and little Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flame

-as one of the tanks blew up. The undaunted father

-plunged into the smoke and managed to draw out the

-boy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions,

-but breathing and alive.</p>

-

-<p>Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering

-from a frightfully cut and burned face and a crushed

-leg. The surgeons looked at the mangled child and

-shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that

-wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it

-might be possible to restore that ruined face to human

-semblance, but the work would take many months.

-It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free

-hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of

-the doctors.</p>

-

-<p>The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a

-rookery on East Thirteenth Street, the father, the

-mother and five children, of whom the injured boy

-was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as truck

-driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such

-a family an accident like that which had overtaken

-Adolfo means about what a broken leg does to a horse:

-Death is the greatest mercy. In this case, however, some

-one with connections got interested either in the boy or

-in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and

-charitable woman for aid. This lady came down from

-her apartment on Park Avenue and stood by the bedside

-of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that

-he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested

-not only in the boy but his family.</p>

-

-<p>One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were

-appalled to see the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress

-drive up to their tenement. They watched her

-enter the humble home, pat the children, talk with the

-burdened mother, and then drive away perilously

-through the swarms of children screaming and pranking

-in the street. The “great lady” came again and again.

-It was understood that she had paid much money to help

-little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.

-That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his

-son had brought him the patronage of the rich. Surely,

-he would know how to make something of his good

-fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness

-is no more than weakness and must be taken advantage

-of accordingly. The neighbors of Salvatore Varotta

-were such men and women.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i259" style="max-width: 79.9375em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i259.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption">

-

-<p class="small right">

-<i>Pacific &amp; Atlantic Photo.</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched

-and mended, when his father sued the owner of the

-colliding truck for fifty thousand dollars, alleging carelessness,

-permanent injury to the child, and so on. The

-neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore

-<i>was</i> a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he

-would get it, too. Did he not have a rich and powerful

-patroness?</p>

-

-<p>Thus, through the intervention of a charitable

-woman and a lawsuit, Varotta became a dignitary in

-his block, a person of special and consuming interest. He

-had or would soon have money. In that case he would

-be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and

-guileless fellow. A way would be found.</p>

-

-<p>In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from

-the hospital with his leg partly restored but with his

-face still in need of skin grafting and other treatments,

-Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap, second-hand

-automobile. He could make money with it and also use

-it to give his family an airing once in a while. The car,

-for which only one hundred and fifty dollars had been

-paid, attracted the attention of the East Thirteenth

-Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an

-automobile? Then there must have been a settlement

-in the damage suit over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore

-had money, then. So, so!</p>

-

-<p>One of the neighbor women happened to pass when

-the rickety car was standing at the curb, and Mrs.

-Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest child in her

-arms.</p>

-

-<p>“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buys

-you a hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked the

-woman.</p>

-

-<p>“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if he

-wanted to,” said the wife with a surge of false pride.</p>

-

-<p>That was enough. That was confirmation. The damage

-suit had been settled. Salvatore Varotta had the

-money. He could have bought an expensive car, but he

-had spent only a hundred and fifty. The niggardly old

-rascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So the

-word fled up and down the street, to the amusement of

-some and the closer interest of others.</p>

-

-<p>As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not been

-settled. It was even doubtful whether Salvatore would

-ever get a cent for all his son’s injuries and suffering.

-The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s had

-no means and could not be made to give what he did

-not possess. So it was an entirely false rumor of prosperity

-and a word of bragging from a sensitive wife

-that brought about many things.</p>

-

-<p>At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24,

-1921, Giuseppe Varotta, five years old, the younger

-brother of the wounded Adolfo, put on his clean sailor

-suit and his new shoes and went out into East Thirteenth

-Street to wait for the homecoming of his father and

-the automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did not

-know or care whether the car had cost a hundred or a

-thousand dollars. It was a car, it belonged to his father,

-and Joe intended to have a ride in it.</p>

-

-<p>For some minutes Joe played about the doorstep.

-Then his childish patience forsook him, and he ran

-down the block to spend a penny which a passer-by had

-given him. Other children playing in the street observed

-him by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, and

-watched him go down the walk to the confectioner’s.

-They did not mark his further progress.</p>

-

-<p>At half past three, Salvatore Varotta came home in

-his car. He ran up the steps into the house to his wife.

-She greeted him and asked immediately:</p>

-

-<p>“Where’s Joe?”</p>

-

-<p>Varotta had not seen his little son. No doubt he was

-playing in the street and would be in soon.</p>

-

-<p>The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe

-did not appear, and twenty minutes had passed, his

-mother went out to the stoop to call him. She could

-not find him in the street, and he did not respond to

-her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and

-another looking up and down the street. Then Salvatore

-Varotta was forced to yield to his wife’s anxious

-entreaties and set out after the lad.</p>

-

-<p>He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends

-and neighbors, questioned the children, circled the

-blocks, looked into cellars and areaways, visited the

-kindergarten where the child was a pupil, implored the

-aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at

-night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and

-told his story to the captain, who was sympathetic but

-busy and inclined to take the matter lightly. The child

-would turn up. Lots of children strayed away in New

-York every day. They were almost always found again.

-It was very seldom that anything happened.</p>

-

-<p>So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife

-and told her what the “big chief policeman” had said.

-No doubt, the officer spoke from experience. They had

-better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn up in the

-morning.</p>

-

-<p>On the afternoon of the following day the postman

-brought a letter to Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver

-read it and trembled with fear and apprehension. His

-wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a candle

-before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began

-endless prayers and protestations.</p>

-

-<p>The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one

-habited to the Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer

-was a member of a powerful society, too secret and too

-strong to be afraid of the police. The society had taken

-little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price of

-his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars.

-Varotta was to get the money at once in cash and

-have it ready in his home, so that he could hand it over

-to a messenger who would call for it. If the money were

-promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored

-safe and sound, but if the police were notified and any

-attempt were made to catch the kidnappers, the powerful

-society would destroy the child and take further

-vengeance upon the family.</p>

-

-<p>There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this

-forbidding missive with a dripping dagger at its side.</p>

-

-<p>Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair.

-They did not know whom they might trust, or whether

-they dared speak of the matter at all. But necessity

-finally decided their course for them. Varotta did not

-have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have

-it ready when the fateful footfall of the messenger

-would sound on the stairs. In his extremity he had to

-seek aid. He went to the police again and showed the

-letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.</p>

-

-<p>The same evening the case was placed in the hands of

-the veteran head of the New York Italian Squad, Sergeant

-Michael Fiaschetti, successor of the murdered

-Petrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin killers

-to the chair and the prison house than any other officer

-in the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clear

-vision that this job was probably not the work of any

-organized or powerful society. He knew that professional

-criminals act with more caution and better information. They

-would never have made the blunder

-of assuming that Varotta had money when he had none.

-The detective also saw that the plan of sending a messenger

-to the house for the ransom was the plan of resourceless

-amateurs. He reasoned that the work had been

-done by relatives or neighbors, who knew something but

-not enough of Varotta’s affairs, and he also concluded

-that the child was not far from its home.</p>

-

-<p>Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordance

-with these conclusions. His first work was to

-get a detective into the Varotta house unobserved or

-unsuspected. For this work he chose a woman officer,

-Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage and

-could speak the Sicilian dialect.</p>

-

-<p>The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping and

-inquiring after her child, let it be known that she had

-telegraphed to her cousin in Detroit, who had a little

-money. The cousin was coming to aid her in her difficulties.</p>

-

-<p>That night the cousin came. She drove up to the house

-in a station taxicab with two heavy suit cases for baggage.

-After inquiring the correct address from a bystander,

-the visiting cousin made her way into the Varotta

-home. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introduced

-herself to her assignment.</p>

-

-<p>The young woman was not long in the house before

-things began to happen. First of all, she observed that

-the Varotta tenement was being constantly watched

-from the windows across the street. Next she noted that

-she was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do a

-little shopping for the house, but really to telephone to

-Fiaschetti. Finally came visitors.</p>

-

-<p>The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant,

-who dwelt across the street from the Varottas

-and knew Salvatore and the whole family well.</p>

-

-<p>Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedly

-the best thing to do was to pay the money.

-The Black Handers were terrible people, not to be trifled

-with. What? Varotta had no money? He could raise

-only five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructed

-Varotta to mention this sum. The Black Handers

-would laugh at such an amount. Varotta must get

-more. He must meet the terms of the kidnappers. As

-for the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easy

-on that point, but they must get the money quickly.</p>

-

-<p>The following day there were other callers from

-across the street. Antonio Marino came with his wife

-and his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary Pogano, née Ruggieri.

-The Marinos, too, were full of tender human kindness

-and advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta had

-reported the kidnapping to the police he shook his head

-in alarm. That was bad; very bad. The police could do

-nothing against a powerful society of Black Handers.

-It was folly. If the police were really to interfere, the

-Black Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio had

-known of other cases. There was but one thing to do—pay

-the money. Another man he had known had done

-so promptly and without making any fuss. He had got

-his son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.</p>

-

-<p>Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for news

-and said that perhaps the Black Handers would take

-five hundred dollars if that was really all Varotta could

-raise. He did not know, but Varotta had better have

-that sum ready for the messenger when he came. As

-he left the house, Cusamano accidentally made what

-seemed a suggestive statement.</p>

-

-<p>“You will hear from me soon,” he remarked to Varotta.</p>

-

-<p>While these conversations were being held, Mrs. Nicoletti,

-the detective, was bustling about the house, listening

-to every word she could catch. She had taken up the

-rôle of visiting cousin, was busy preparing meals, working

-about the house, and generally assisting the sorrowing

-mother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existed

-was soon allayed. She even sat in on the council with

-Cusamano and told him she had saved about six hundred

-dollars and would advance Varotta five hundred of

-it if that would save the child.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almost

-certain that their original theory of the crime was correct.

-The neighbors were certainly a party to the matter,

-and it seemed that a capture of the whole band and the

-quick recovery of the child were to be expected. Plans

-were accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming for

-the money and any one who might be with him or near

-the place when he came.</p>

-

-<p>On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seen

-before came to the house late at night and asked in

-hushed accents for the father of the missing boy. The

-caller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, who

-thus had every opportunity to look at him and hear his

-voice. He was led upstairs to a room where Varotta was

-waiting.</p>

-

-<p>When the dark and midnight emissary of the terrible

-Black Hand strode across the threshold, the tortured

-father could hold back his emotion no longer.

-He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, lifted

-his clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots,

-begging that his child be sent safely home and pleading

-that he had only five hundred dollars to pay. It was

-not true that he had received any money. It was impossible

-for him to ask his rich patroness who had befriended

-Adolfo for anything. All he had was the little

-money his wife’s good cousin was willing to lend him

-for the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would the Black

-Hand not take the five hundred dollars and send back

-the child, who was so innocent and so pretty that his

-teacher had taken his picture in the kindergarten?</p>

-

-<p>The grim caller had very little to say. He would report

-to the society what Varotta had told him and he

-would return later with the answer. Meantime, Varotta

-had better get ready all the money he could raise. The

-messenger might come again the next night.</p>

-

-<p>The detectives were ready when the time came. In

-the course of the next day Varotta went to the bank

-as if to get the money. While there he was handed five

-hundred dollars in bills which had previously been

-marked by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decided

-that Mrs. Nicoletti would need help in dealing with the

-kidnappers’ messenger, who might not come alone. Varotta

-himself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly, Detective

-John Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, supplied

-with kit and tools, and sent to the Varotta house

-to mend a leaking faucet and repair some broken pipes.

-He came and went several times, bringing with him

-some new tools or part when he returned. In this way he

-hoped to confuse the watchers as to his final position.

-The trick was again successful. Pellegrino remained in

-the house at last, and the lookouts for the kidnappers

-evidently thought him gone.</p>

-

-<p>A little after ten o’clock on the night of June second

-there was a knocking at the Varotta door. Two men

-were there, one of them the emissary of the Black Hand

-who had called the night before. This man curtly announced

-the purpose of his visit and sent his companion

-up to get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairs

-himself.</p>

-

-<p>Varotta received the stranger in the same room where

-he had kissed the boots of the first messenger the night

-before, talked over the details with him, inquired anxiously

-as to the safety of Joe, and was told that he need

-not worry. Joe had been playing happily with other

-children and would be home about midnight if the

-money were paid. This time Varotta managed to retain

-some composure. He counted out the five hundred dollars

-to the messenger, asked this man to count the money

-again, saw that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’s

-pocket and then gave the agreed signal.</p>

-

-<p>Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery,

-sprang into the room with drawn revolver, covered the

-intruder, handcuffed him and immediately communicated

-with the street by signal from a window. Other

-detectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissary

-who was waiting there. On the near-by corner,

-Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of his staff clapped the

-wristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and James

-Ruggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamano

-was dragged from the bakeshop where he worked.

-Five of the gang were in the toils and five more were

-seized before the night was over.</p>

-

-<p>Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out to

-be Roberto Raffaelo, made admissions which were later

-shown in court as confessions. All the prisoners were

-locked into separate and distant cells in the Tombs, and

-the search for Joe Varotta was begun. Sergeant Fiaschetti,

-amply fortified by the correctness of his surmises,

-took the position that the child was not far away and

-would be released within a few hours now that the members

-of the gang were in custody.</p>

-

-<p>Here, however, the shrewd detective counted without

-a full consideration of the desperateness and deadliness

-of the amateur criminal, characteristics that have

-repeatedly upset and baffled those who know crime professionally

-and are conversant with the habits and conduct

-of experienced offenders. There can be no doubt

-that professionals would, in this situation, have released

-the boy and sent him home, though the Ross case furnishes

-a fearful exception. The whole logic of the situation

-was on this side of the scale. Once the boy was

-safely at home, his parents would probably have lost

-interest in the prosecution, and the police, busy with

-many graver matters, would probably have been content

-with convicting the actual messengers, the only ones

-against whom there was direct evidence. These men

-might have expected moderate terms of imprisonment

-and the whole affair would have been soon forgotten.</p>

-

-<p>But Little Joe was not released. The days dragged by,

-while the men in the Tombs were questioned, threatened,

-cajoled and besought. One and all they pretended

-to know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.

-More than a week went by while the parents of the

-child grew more and more hysterical and finally gave up

-all but their prayers, convinced that only divine intervention

-could avail them. Was little Joe alive or dead?

-They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’s

-aid and probably he would give them his answer

-soon.</p>

-

-<p>At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh,

-John Derahica, a Polish laborer, went down to the beach

-near Piermont, a settlement just below Nyack, in quest

-of driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson, and

-Derahica had no trouble reaching the end of a small

-pier which extended out into the stream at this point.

-Just beyond, in about three feet of water, he found the

-body of a little boy, caught hold of the loose clothing

-with a stick, and brought it out.</p>

-

-<p>Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned the

-local police chief, E. H. Stebbins. The body was carried

-to a local undertaker’s and was at once suspected of

-being that of the missing Italian child. The next night

-Sergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived at

-Piermont and went to see the body, which had meantime

-been buried and then exhumed when the coming of

-the New York officer was announced.</p>

-

-<p>The remains were already sorely decomposed and the

-face past recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked at

-the swollen little hands and feet and the blue sailor suit.

-He knelt by the slab where this childish wreck lay prone

-and sobbed his recognition and his grief.</p>

-

-<p>A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had been

-thrown alive into the stream and drowned. Calculating

-the probable results of the reaction of tides and currents,

-it was decided that Giuseppe had been cast to his

-death somewhere above the point at which the recovery

-of the corpse was made.</p>

-

-<p>Long and tedious investigations followed. When had

-the child been killed and by whom? Was the little boy

-still alive when the two messengers arrived at the Varotta

-home for the ransom and the trap was sprung

-which gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposed

-accessories? If so, who was the confederate who

-had committed the final deed of murderous desperation?

-Who had done the actual kidnapping? Where had the

-child been concealed while the negotiations were proceeding?</p>

-

-<p>Some of these questions have never been answered,

-but it is now possible, from the confession of one of the

-men, from the evidence presented at four ensuing murder

-trials, and from the subsequent drift of police information,

-to reconstruct the story of the crime in

-greater part.</p>

-

-<p>On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when little

-Joe Varotta went into the candy store with his

-penny, he was engaged in talk by one of the men from

-across the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend of

-his father’s. The child was enticed into a back room,

-seized, gagged, stuffed into a barrel and then loaded into

-a delivery wagon. Thus effectively concealed, the little

-prisoner was driven through the streets to another

-part of town and there held in a house by some member

-of the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up to

-this point were all either neighbors or their relatives

-and friends.</p>

-

-<p>On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, Roberto

-Raffaelo was sitting despondently on a bench in Union

-Square when a stranger sat down beside him and accosted

-him in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance acquaintance,

-it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelo

-was down on his luck and had found work hard to

-get. He was, as a matter of fact, washing dishes in a

-Bowery lunch room for five dollars a week and meals.

-Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informed

-that they might be better, he told Raffaelo of a

-chance to make some real money, explaining the facts

-about the kidnapping, saying that a powerful society

-was back of the thing, and representing that Varotta

-was a craven and an easy mark. All that was required

-of Raffaelo was that he go to the Varotta house and get

-the money. For his pains he was to have five hundred

-dollars.</p>

-

-<p>Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamano

-and Marino. The next night he went to visit Varotta

-with the result already described.</p>

-

-<p>After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to be

-better tactics to send some one else to do the actual taking

-of the money. This man had to be a stranger, so

-Raffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old acquaintance.

-Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fifty

-dollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaelo

-to the Varotta home on the night of June second, to

-get the money. Melchione went upstairs and took the

-marked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the vestibule.

-It was the former whom Detective Pellegrino

-caught in the act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seen

-little Joe and both so maintained to the end, nor is there

-much doubt on this point.</p>

-

-<p>On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione,

-Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were caught and the

-others arrested a little later, Raffaelo made some statements

-to Detective Fiaschetti which sent the officers

-off the right track for the time being. This prevarication,

-which was done to shield himself and his confederates,

-he came to regret most bitterly later on.</p>

-

-<p>On June third, as soon as the word got abroad that the

-five men and their five friends had been arrested and

-lodged in jail, another confederate, perhaps more than

-one, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and threw him

-in, having first strangled the little fellow so that he

-might not scream. The boy was destroyed because the

-confederates who had him in charge were frightened

-into panic by the sudden collapse of their scheme and

-feared they would either be caught with the boy in

-their possession or that the arrested men might “squeal”

-and be supported by the identification from the little

-victim’s lips were he allowed to live.</p>

-

-<p>Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quickly

-convicted of murder in the first degree. He was committed

-to the death house at Sing Sing and there waited

-to be joined by his fellows. When the hour for his execution

-had almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seized

-with remorse and declared that he was willing to tell

-all he knew. He was reprieved and appeared at the trials

-of the others, where he told his story substantially as

-recited above. Largely as a result of his testimony, Cusamano,

-Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentenced

-to electrocution while Melchione went mad in

-the Tombs and was sent to Matteawan to end his life

-among the criminal insane. Governor Smith finally

-granted commutations to life imprisonment in each of

-these cases, because it was fairly well established that

-all the convicted men had been in the Tombs at the

-time Joe Varotta was drowned and had probably nothing

-to do with his actual murder. They are still in prison

-and will very likely stay there a great many years before

-there can be any question of pardon.</p>

-

-<p>In spite of every effort on the part of the police and

-every inducement held out to the convicted men, no

-information could ever be got as to the identity of the

-man or men who threw the little boy into the river.

-The arrested and convicted men, except for Raffaelo,

-who evidently did not know any more than he told, absolutely

-refused to talk, saying it would be certain death

-if they did so. They tried all along to create the impression

-that they were only the minor tools of some

-great and mysterious organization, but this claim may

-be dismissed as fiction and romance.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE LOST MILLIONAIRE</p>

-

-

-<p>Some time before three o’clock on the afternoon

-of December 2, 1919, Ambrose Joseph Small deposited

-in the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, a

-check for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clock

-that evening the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadian

-playhouses bought his habitual newspapers from

-the familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide Street,

-before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, and

-strode off into the night, to return no more.</p>

-

-<p>In the intervening years men have ferreted in all

-corners of the world for the missing rich man; rewards

-up to fifty thousand dollars have been offered for his

-return, or the discovery of his body; reports of his presence

-have chased detectives into distant latitudes, and

-the alarm for him has been spread to all the trails and

-tides without result. By official action of the Canadian

-courts, Amby Small, as he was known, is dead, and his

-fortune has been distributed to his heirs. To the romantic

-speculation he must still exist, however. And

-whatever the fact, his case presents one of the strangest

-stories of mysterious absenteeism to be found upon the

-books.</p>

-

-<p>Men disappear every day. The police records of any

-great city and of many smaller places bear almost interminable

-lists of fellows who have suddenly and curiously

-dropped out of their grooves and placements.

-Some are washed up as dead bodies—the slain and self-slain.

-Some return after long wanderings, to make needless

-excuses to their friends and families. And others

-pass from their regular haunts into new fields. These

-latter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary of

-life’s routine.</p>

-

-<p>Ambrose Small, however, was a person of different

-kidney. He was rich, for one thing. Thirty-five years

-earlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of his tours to Canada

-had found the youthful Small taking tickets in a Toronto

-theater. Attracted by some unusual quality in

-the youngster, Irving shrewdly advised him to quit the

-study of law and devote himself to the theatrical business.

-Following this counsel, Small had risen slowly and

-surely until he controlled theaters in all parts of the

-Dominion and was rated at several millions. On the

-afternoon before his disappearance he had consummated

-a deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters, Limited, by

-which he was to receive nearly two millions in money

-and a share of the profits, in return for his theatrical

-holdings. The million-dollar check he deposited had been

-the first payment.</p>

-

-<p>Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canada

-and almost as well acquainted in New York, Boston,

-Philadelphia, and other cities of the United States. Figuratively,

-at least, everybody knew him—thousands of

-actors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men,

-promoters, newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, all

-the Wandering Jews and Gentiles of the profession of

-make-believe, with which he had been connected so long

-and profitably. With such a list of acquaintances, whose

-rovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almost

-impossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out of

-sight.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and most

-deeply interested relatives. Entirely aside from the questions

-of inheritance and the division of his estate, which

-netted about two millions, as was determined later on,

-Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether she

-was a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters would

-certainly suspect everything and everybody, leaving

-nothing undone that would bring the man back to his

-home, or punish those who might have been responsible

-for any evil termination of his life.</p>

-

-<p>Thus the Small case presents very different factors

-from those governing the ordinary disappearance case.

-It is full of the elements which make for mystery and

-bafflement, and it may be set down at once as an enigma

-of the most arresting and irritating type, upon whose

-darknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.</p>

-

-<p>So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies and

-felt no apprehensions. He was totally immersed for

-some months before his disappearance in the negotiations

-for the sale of his interests to the Trans-Canada

-Company, and apparently he devoted all his energies to

-this project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusion

-for some time and looked upon the signing of the

-agreements and writing of the check on December 2

-as nothing more than a formality.</p>

-

-<p>Late in the morning of the day in question, Small

-met his attorney and the representatives of the Trans-Canada

-Company in his offices, and the formalities were

-concluded. Some time after noon he deposited the check

-in the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small to

-luncheon. Afterward he visited a Catholic children’s

-institution with her and left her at about three o’clock

-to return to his desk in the Grand Theater, where he

-had sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling up

-his fortune.</p>

-

-<p>There seems to be not the slightest question that

-Small went directly to his office and spent the remainder

-of the afternoon there. Not only his secretary, John

-Doughty, who had been Small’s confidential man for

-nineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysterious

-part in the disappearance drama, but several other

-employees of the Grand Theater saw their retiring master

-at his usual post that afternoon. Small not only

-talked with these workers, but he called business associates

-on the telephone and made at least two appointments

-for the following day. He also was in conference

-with his solicitor as late as five o’clock.</p>

-

-<p>According to Doughty, his employer left the Grand

-Theater at about five thirty o’clock and this time of

-departure coincided perfectly with what is known of

-Small’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be at

-home for dinner at six thirty o’clock.</p>

-

-<p>There is also confirmation at this point. For years

-Small had been in the habit of dropping into Lamb’s

-Hotel, next door to his theater, before going home in

-the evening. He was intimately acquainted there, often

-met his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generally

-chatted a few minutes before leaving for his residence.

-The proprietor of the hotel came forward after Small’s

-disappearance and recalled that he had seen the theater

-man in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock. He

-was also under the impression that Small had stayed for

-some time, but he could not be sure.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i281" style="max-width: 82.375em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i281.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ AMBROSE J. SMALL ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>The next and final point of time that can be fixed is

-seven fifteen o’clock. At that time Small approached the

-newsboy in Adelaide Street, who knew the magnate well,

-and bought his usual evening papers. The boy believed

-that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure

-he had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said

-nothing but the usual things, seemed in no way different

-from his ordinary mood, and tarried only long enough

-to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.</p>

-

-<p>Probably there is something significant about the

-fact that Small did not leave the vicinity of his office

-until seven fifteen o’clock, when he was due at home by

-half past six. What happened to him after he had left

-his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment

-with his wife? That something turned up to change his

-plan is obvious. Whether he merely encountered some

-one and talked longer than he realized, or whether something

-arrested him that had a definite bearing on his

-disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to

-be the reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of

-man lightly to neglect his agreements, particularly those

-of a domestic kind.</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when

-her husband failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew

-he had been going through a busy day, and she reasoned

-that probably something pressing had come up to detain

-him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient

-and telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited

-two hours longer before she telephoned to the home of

-John Doughty’s sister. She found her husband’s secretary

-there and was assured that Doughty had been there

-all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty

-said his employer had left the theater at five thirty

-o’clock, and that he knew no more. He could not explain

-Small’s absence from home, but took the matter

-lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got

-ready.</p>

-

-<p>At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s

-various theaters in eastern Canada, asking for her husband.

-In the course of the next twenty-four hours she

-got responses from all of them. No one had seen Small

-or knew anything about his movements.</p>

-

-<p>Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting.

-Mrs. Small did not go to the police; neither did she

-employ private detectives until later. For two weeks she

-evidently waited, believing that her husband had gone

-off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of

-his intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of

-the secret of his absence took the same attitude. It was

-explained later that there was nothing unprecedented

-about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt for

-some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and

-self-centered individual. He had gone off before in this

-way and come back when he got ready. He might have

-gone to New York suddenly on some business. Probably

-he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared

-this view, and her reasons for so doing developed a good

-deal later. In fact, she refused for months to believe

-that anything had befallen her husband, and it was

-only when there was no remaining alternative that she

-changed her position.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’s

-disappearance, his wife and attorneys went to the Dominion

-police and laid the case before them. Even then

-the quest was undertaken in a cautious and skeptical

-way. This attitude was natural. The police could find

-not the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea that

-such a man had been kidnapped seemed preposterous.

-Besides, what could have been the object? There had

-been no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small had

-gone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probably

-his wife understood these impulsions better than she

-would say. There were rumors of infelicity in the Small

-home, and these proved later to be well grounded. The

-police simply felt that they would not be made ridiculous.

-Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, only

-to have Small return and spill his wrath upon their

-innocent heads.</p>

-

-<p>But the days spun out, and still there was no news of

-the missing man. Many began to turn from their original

-attitude of knowing skepticism. Other rumors began

-to fly about. Gradually the conviction gained

-ground that something sinister had befallen the master

-of theaters. Could it not be possible that Small had been

-entrapped in some blackmailing plot and perhaps killed

-when he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but such

-things did happen. How about his finances? Was his

-money intact in the bank? Had he drawn any checks

-against his account? It was soon discovered that no

-funds had been withdrawn either on December 2 or

-subsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had only

-a few dollars in his pockets when he vanished, unless,

-as was suggested, he kept a secret cache of ready money.</p>

-

-<p>Attention was now directed toward every one who

-had been close to the theater owner. One of the most

-obvious marks for this kind of inquiry was John

-Doughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as already

-remarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearly

-two decades. He knew his employer’s secrets, was close

-to all his business affairs, and was even known to have

-been Small’s companion on occasional drinking bouts.

-At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a niggardly

-way as regards pay. The secretary had been receiving

-forty-five dollars a week for years, never more.

-At the same time, probably through other bits of income

-which his position brought him, Doughty had

-saved some money, bought property in Toronto, and

-established himself with a small competence.</p>

-

-<p>That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly and

-was careful to provide for him, is shown by the fact

-that Small had got Doughty a new and better place

-as manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,

-which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his new

-job Doughty received seventy-five dollars a week. He

-had left to assume his new duties a day or two after the

-consolidation of the interests, which is to say a day or

-two after Small vanished.</p>

-

-<p>Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it

-seemed obvious that this time he knew nothing of his

-old employer’s movements. He had accordingly stayed

-on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and paying

-very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three

-weeks after Small had gone, and one week after the

-case had been taken to the police, however, new attention

-began to be paid to Doughty, and there were some

-unpleasant whisperings.</p>

-

-<p>On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks

-after Small had walked off into the void, came the dramatic

-break. Doughty, as was his habit, left Montreal

-the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto

-with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning,

-instead of appearing at his desk, he telephoned from

-Toronto that he was ill and might not be at work for

-some days. His employers took him at his word and paid

-no further attention until, three days having elapsed,

-they telephoned to the home of Doughty’s sister. She

-had not seen him since Monday. The man was gone!</p>

-

-<p>If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been

-considered a somewhat dubious jest, it now became a

-genuine sensation. For the first time the Canadian and

-American newspapers began to treat the matter under

-scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began

-to move with force and alacrity.</p>

-

-<p>An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where

-Small was now said to have kept a large total of securities,

-showed that Doughty had visited this place twice on

-December 2, the day of Small’s disappearance, and he

-had on each occasion either put in, or taken away, some

-bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have

-revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand

-dollars.</p>

-

-<p>Even this discovery did not change the minds of the

-skeptics, in whose ranks the missing magnate’s wife still

-remained. It was now believed that Doughty had received

-a secret summons from Small, and that he had

-taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside,

-at Small’s instruction, and gone to join his chief in some

-hidden retreat. A good part of Toronto believed that

-Small had gone on a protracted “party,” or that he had

-seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his

-business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in

-disagreement.</p>

-

-<p>When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion

-gradually veered about to the opposite side. After

-all, it was possible that Small had not gone away voluntarily,

-that he was the victim of some criminal conspiracy,

-and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion

-turning its face toward him. The absence of the supposed

-one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bonds

-provided sufficient motivation to fit almost any criminal

-hypothesis.</p>

-

-<p>As this attitude became general, Toronto came to

-examine the relationship between Small and Doughty. It

-was recalled that the secretary had, on more than one

-occasion when he was in his cups, spoken bitterly of

-Small’s exaggerated wealth and his cold niggardliness.

-Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,

-and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibility

-of kidnapping Small for ransom; though the

-man who reported this conversation admitted Doughty

-had seemed to be joking. The conclusion reached by the

-police was not clear. Doughty, they found, had been

-faithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to conclude

-that he was careful and substantial, and they could

-not discover that he had ever had the slightest connection

-with the underworld or with suspect characters. At

-the same time they decided that the man was unstable,

-emotional, imaginative, and probably not hard to mislead.

-In short, they came to the definite suspicion that

-Doughty had figured as the tool of conspirators, in the

-disappearance of Small. They soon brought Mrs. Small

-around to this view. Now the hunt began.</p>

-

-<p>A reward of five hundred dollars, which had been

-perfunctorily offered as payment for information concerning

-Small’s whereabouts, was withdrawn, and three

-new rewards were offered by the wife—fifty thousand

-dollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteen

-thousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousand

-dollars for the capture of Doughty.</p>

-

-<p>The Toronto chief constable immediately assigned

-a squad of detectives to the case, and Mrs. Small employed

-a firm of Canadian private detectives to pursue

-a line of investigation which she outlined. Later on

-she employed four more widely known investigating

-firms in the United States to continue the quest. Small’s

-sisters also summoned American officers to carry out

-their special inquiries. Thus there were no fewer than

-seven distinct bodies of police working at the mystery.</p>

-

-<p>Circulars containing pictures of Small and Doughty,

-with their descriptions, and announcement of the rewards,

-were circulated throughout Canada and the

-United States; then from Scotland Yard they were sent

-to all the police offices in the British Empire, and, finally,

-from the American, Canadian, and British capitals to

-every known postmaster and police head on earth. More

-than half a million copies of the circulars were printed,

-it is said, and translations into more than twenty languages

-were distributed. I am told by eminent police

-authorities that this campaign, supported as it was by

-advertisements and news items in the press of almost

-every nation, some of them containing pictures of the

-missing millionaire, has never been approached in any

-other absent person case. Mrs. Small and her advisers

-set out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearance

-and the rewards should reach to the most remote

-places, and they spent a small fortune for printing

-bills and postage. Even the quest for the lost Archduke

-John Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a special

-letter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representatives

-of the Roman Catholic Church in every

-part of the world, seems to have been less far-reaching.</p>

-

-<p>Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began to

-come in soon after the first alarms. Small and Doughty

-were reported seen in Paris, on the Italian Riviera, at

-the Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at Calcutta,

-aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, at

-Zanzibar, and where not? A skeleton was found in a

-ravine not far from Toronto, and for a time the fate

-of Small was believed to be understood. But physicians

-and anatomists soon determined that the bones could

-not have been those of the theatrical man for a variety

-of conclusive reasons. So the hunt began again.</p>

-

-<p>Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, and

-results failed to show themselves, the private detective

-firms were dismissed, one after the other, and the task

-of running down rumors in this clewless case was left

-to the Toronto police. The usual sums of money and

-of time were wasted in following blind leads. The usual

-failures and absurdities were recorded. One Canadian

-officer, however, Detective Austin R. Mitchell, began to

-develop a theory of the case and was allowed to follow

-his ideas logically toward their conclusion. Working

-in silence, when the public had long come to believe

-that the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchell

-plugged away, month after month, without definite accomplishment.

-He was not able to get more than an

-occasional scrap of information which seemed to bear

-out his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundreds

-of investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless,

-the Toronto authorities permitted him to go

-on with his work, and he is probably still occupied at

-times with the Small mystery.</p>

-

-<p>Detective Mitchell was actively following his course

-toward the end of November, 1920, eleven months

-after the flight of Doughty, when a telegram arrived

-at police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,

-a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small town

-far out near the Pacific. Once more the weary detective

-took a train West, arriving in Oregon City on the evening

-of November 22.</p>

-

-<p>Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the

-train and told him his story. He had seen one of the circulars

-a few months earlier and had carried the images

-of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had

-observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill,

-and he had been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The

-man had been there for some time and risen from the

-meanest work to the position of foreman in one of the

-shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even

-indirectly, and he failed on various occasions to get a

-view of the worker without his hat on. Because the

-picture on the circular showed Doughty bare-headed,

-the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected

-man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had

-sent his telegram.</p>

-

-<p>Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously.

-He had made a hundred trips of the same sort, he said.

-Probably there was another mistake. But Constable Fortune

-seemed certain of his game, and he was right.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to

-a modest house, where some of the mill workers boarded.

-They entered, and Mitchell was immediately confronted

-with Doughty, whom he had known intimately in Toronto.</p>

-

-<p>“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as

-the fugitive. “How could you do it?”</p>

-

-<p>In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest

-came to an end.</p>

-

-<p>Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the

-officer a voluntary statement. He admitted without

-reservation that he had taken Canadian Victory bonds

-to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars

-from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done

-after the millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely

-and firmly any knowledge of Small’s whereabouts;

-pleaded that he had never had any knowledge

-of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he

-had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past

-five on the evening of the disappearance. To this account

-he adhered doggedly and unswervingly. Doughty

-was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the next

-day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his

-sister’s house, where he had made his home with his two

-small sons, since the death of his wife several years

-before.</p>

-

-<p>In April of the following year Doughty was brought

-to trial on a charge of having stolen the bonds, a second

-indictment for complicity in the kidnapping remaining

-for future disposal. The trial was a formal and, in

-some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping

-and all hints which might have indicated the direction

-of Doughty’s ideas on the central mystery were

-rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and one correction

-of accepted statements came out. It was revealed

-that Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars

-in bonds to be used for charitable purposes on the day

-before his disappearance. This fact had not been hinted

-before, and some interpreted the testimony as a concealed

-way of stating the fact that Small had made

-some kind of settlement with his wife on the first of

-December.</p>

-

-<p>Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement

-that he had taken the bonds after Small’s disappearance.

-He testified that he had been sent to the vault on the

-second of December, and that he had then extracted

-the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds.

-He had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he

-had no notion that Small would disappear. He explained

-his act by saying that Small had long promised him some

-reward for his many years of service, and had repeatedly

-stated that he would arrange the matter when

-the deal with the Trans-Canada Company had been

-concluded. Knowing that the papers had been signed

-that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,

-Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds

-in his hands and suggest that these might serve as a fitting

-reward for his contribution to the success of the

-Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this action

-and fled.</p>

-

-<p>The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the

-ground that it was incredible, but nothing was brought

-out to show what opposing theory might fit the facts.

-Doughty was convicted of larceny and sentenced

-to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge

-was never brought to trial. Instead, the police let

-it be known that they believed Doughty had not

-played any part in the “actual murder” of Amby

-Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally,

-it was admitted that the police believed Small to

-be dead. That was the only point on which any information

-was given, and even here not the first detail was

-supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected

-of having kidnapped and killed Small was in

-progress, and the officials were being careful to reveal

-nothing of their information or intentions.</p>

-

-<p>Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against

-him, but abandoned the fight later in the spring of 1921,

-and was sent to prison. Here the unravelling of the

-Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year passed,

-then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty

-was in prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive.

-Perhaps they had abandoned the hunt. Possibly they

-knew what had befallen the theater owner and were

-refraining from making revelations for reasons of public

-policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers,

-there were persons of influence involved in the mess,

-persons powerful enough to hush the officials.</p>

-

-<p>But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance,

-and there were indications of a bitter contest between

-the wife and Small’s two sisters, who had apparently

-been hostile for years. This struggle promised

-to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the

-public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.</p>

-

-<p>Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved

-formally to protect his property by having a measure

-introduced into the Dominion Parliament declaring

-Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank in

-control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with

-the result that the Small fortune, amounting to about

-two million dollars, net, continued to be profitably

-administered.</p>

-

-<p>Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years

-in prison, and all rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance

-mystery had died down, Mrs. Small appeared

-in court with a petition to have her husband declared

-dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal

-will made on September 6, 1903. This document was

-written on a single small sheet of paper and devised to

-Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was of

-modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.</p>

-

-<p>The court refused to declare the missing magnate

-dead, saying that insufficient evidence had been presented,

-and that the police were apparently not satisfied.

-Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the reviewing

-court reversed the decision and declared Small legally

-dead. Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and

-was immediately attacked by Small’s sisters, who declared

-that they had in their possession a will made in

-1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited

-Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never

-produced.</p>

-

-<p>There followed a series of hearings. At one of these,

-opposing counsel began a line of cross-questioning

-which suggested that Mrs. Small had been guilty of

-a liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in the

-records merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramatically

-in court, indignantly denied these imputations as well

-as the induced theory that her misbehavior had led to

-an estrangement from her husband and, perhaps, to his

-disappearance. The widow declared that this suspicion

-was diametrically opposed to the truth, and that if

-Small were in court he would be the first to reject it. As

-a matter of fact, she testified, it was Small who had

-been guilty. He had confessed his fault to her, promised

-to be done with the woman in the matter, and had been

-forgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation,

-she said, and Small had agreed that one half of the

-million-dollar check which he received on the day of

-his disappearance should be hers.</p>

-

-<p>To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Small

-soon after obtained permission of the court to file certain

-letters which had been found among Small’s effects

-after his disappearance. In this manner the secret

-love affair in the theater magnate’s last years came to

-be spread upon the books. The letters presented by

-the wife had all come from a certain married woman

-who, according to the testimony of her own writings

-and of others who knew of the connection, had been

-associated with Amby Small since 1915. It appears that

-Mrs. Small discovered the attachment in 1918 and

-forced her husband to cause his inamorata to leave Toronto.

-The letters, which need not be reprinted here,

-contained only one significant strain.</p>

-

-<p>A letter, which reached Small two or three days before

-he disappeared, concluded thus: “Write me often,

-dear heart, for I just live for your letters. God bless you,

-dearest.”</p>

-

-<p>Three weeks earlier, evidently with reference to the

-impending close of his big deal and his retirement from

-active business, the same lady wrote: “I am the most unhappy

-girl in the world. I want you. Can’t you suggest

-something after the first of December? You will be

-free, practically. Let’s beat it away from our troubles.”</p>

-

-<p>And five days later she amended this in another note:

-“Some day, perhaps, if you want me, we can be together

-all the time. Let’s pray for that time to come,

-when we can have each other legitimately.”</p>

-

-<p>Mrs. Small declared that she had found these letters

-immediately after her husband’s departure, and that

-they had kept her from turning the case over to the

-police until two weeks after the disappearance. Meantime

-the other woman had been summoned, interrogated

-by the police, and released. She had not seen Small

-nor had she heard from him either directly or indirectly.

-It was apparent that, while she had been corresponding

-with Small up to the very week of his last appearance,

-he had not gone to see her.</p>

-

-<p>Finally the will contest was settled out of court,

-Small’s sisters receiving four hundred thousand dollars,

-and the widow retaining the balance.</p>

-

-<p>And here the darkness closes in again. Even in the

-progress of the will controversy no hint was given of the

-official or family beliefs as to the mystery. There are

-only two tenable conclusions. Either there is a further

-skeleton to be guarded, or the police have some

-kind of information which promises the eventual solution

-of the case and the apprehension of suspected criminals.

-How slender this promise must be, every reader

-will judge for himself, remembering the years of fruitless

-attack on this extraordinary and complex enigma.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY</p>

-

-

-<p>Some time in his middle career, Ambrose Bierce

-wrote three short tales of vanishment—weird

-and supernatural things in one of his favorite

-veins. The three sketches—for they are no more—he

-classed under the heading, “Mysterious Disappearances,”

-a subject which occupied his speculations from time to

-time. Herein lies a complete irony. Bierce himself was

-later to disappear as mysteriously as any of his heroes.</p>

-

-<p>No one will understand his story, with its many implications,

-or get from it the full flavor of romance

-and sardonics without some brief glance at the man and

-his history. Nor need one make apology for intruding a

-short account of him in a story of mystery, for Bierce

-alive was almost as strange and enigmatic a creature as

-Bierce dead.</p>

-

-<p>Ambrose Bierce, whom a good many critics have regarded

-as the foremost master of the American short

-story after Poe, was born in Ohio in 1841. He joined the

-Union armies as a private in 1861, when he was in his

-twenty-first year, rose quickly through the ranks to

-the grade of lieutenant, fought and was wounded at

-Chickamauga as a captain of engineers under Thomas,

-and retired with the brevet rank of major. After the

-war he took up writing for a living, and soon went to

-London, where his early short stories, sketches and criticisms

-attracted attention. His cutting wit and ironic

-spirit soon won him the popular name “Bitter Bierce.”</p>

-

-<p>After 1870, the banished Empress Eugénie of France,

-alarmed at the escape of her implacable journalistic

-enemy, Henri Rochette, and the impending revival in

-London of his paper, <i>La Lanterne</i>, in which she had

-been intolerably lampooned, sought to forestall the

-French writer by establishing an English paper called

-<i>The Lantern</i>, thus taking advantage of the law which

-forbade a duplication of titles. For this purpose she

-employed Bierce, purely on his polemical reputation,

-and Bierce straightway began the publication of <i>The

-Lantern</i>, and devoted his most vitriolic explosions to the

-baffled Rochette, who saw that he could not succeed

-in England without the name which he had made famous

-at the head of his paper and could not return to

-France, whence he was a political exile.</p>

-

-<p>In this employment Bierce exhibited one of his peculiarities.

-His assaults on her old enemy greatly pleased

-the banished empress, and she finally sent for Bierce.

-Following the imperial etiquette, which she still sought

-to maintain, she “commanded” his presence. Bierce,

-who understood and obeyed military commands, did

-not like that manner of wording an invitation from a

-dethroned empress. He did not attend and <i>The Lantern</i>

-soon disappeared from the scene of politics and letters.</p>

-

-<p>Bierce returned to America and went to San Francisco,

-where he in time became the “dean of Western

-writers.” His journalistic work in San Francisco and

-later in Washington set him apart as a satirist of the

-bitterest strain. His literary productions marked him as

-a man of the most independent thought and distinctive

-taste. Most of his tales are Poe plus sulphur. He reveled

-in the mysterious, the dark, the terrible and the bizarre.</p>

-

-<p>Between intervals of writing his tales, criticisms and

-epigrams, Bierce found time to manage ranches and

-mining properties, to fight bad men and frontier highwaymen,

-to grill politicians, and to write verse.</p>

-

-<p>Bierce went through life seeking combat, weathering

-storm after storm, by some regarded as the foremost

-American literary man of his time, by others denounced

-as a brute, a pedant, even as a scoundrel. In

-the West he was generally lionized, in the East neglected.

-One man called him the last of the satirists,

-another considered him a strutting dunce. Bierce contributed

-to the confusion by making something of a

-riddle of himself. He loved mystery and indirection. He

-liked the fabulous stories which grew up about him

-and encouraged them by his own silence and air of

-concealment. In the essentials, however, he was no more

-than an intelligent and perspicacious man of high talent,

-who hated sentiment, reveled in the assault on popular

-prejudices, liked nothing so much as to throw himself

-upon the clay idols of the day with ferocious claws,

-and yet had a tender and humble heart.</p>

-

-<p>Toward the end of 1913, Mexico was in another of its

-torments. The visionary Madero had been assassinated.

-Huerta was in the dictator’s chair, Wilson had inaugurated

-his “watchful waiting,” and the new rebels

-were moving in the north—Carranza and Villa. At

-the time Ambrose Bierce was living, more or less retired,

-in Washington, probably convinced that he had had

-his last fling, for he was already past seventy-two and

-“not so spry as he once had been.” But along came the

-order for the mobilization along the border. General

-Funston and his little army took up the patrol along

-the Rio Grande, the newspapers began to hint at a

-possible invasion of Mexico, and there was a stir of martial

-blood among the many.</p>

-

-<p>Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth is

-born again. Everything that belonged to the dawn becomes

-hallowed in the sunset of manhood. It must have

-been so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm than

-he fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpets

-of Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent for

-fifty years, called him out again and he set out for

-Mexico, saying little to any one about his plans or intentions.

-Some believed that he was going down to the

-Rio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he planned

-to join the Constitutionalists as a military adviser.

-Either might have been true, for Bierce was as good

-an officer as a writer. He knew both games from the

-roots up.</p>

-

-<p>Even the preliminary movements of the man are a

-little hazy, but apparently he went first to his old home

-in California and then down to the border. He did not

-stop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was reported to

-have crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretary

-in Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letter

-from him postmarked in Chihuahua.</p>

-

-<p>Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expected

-to hear again within a month. When no letter

-came, she wondered, but was not alarmed. Bierce was

-a man of irregular habits. He was down there in a

-war-torn country, moving about in the wilderness with

-armies and bands of insurgents; he might not be able

-to get a letter through the lines. There was no reason

-to feel special apprehension. In September, 1914, however,

-Bierce’s daughter, Mrs. H. D. Cowden of Bloomington,

-Illinois, decided that something must be amiss,

-no word having come from her father in eight months.

-She appealed to the State Department at Washington,

-saying that she feared for his life.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i303" style="max-width: 81em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i303.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ AMBROSE BIERCE ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>The Department quickly notified the American

-chargé d’affaires in Mexico to make inquiries and the

-War Department shortly afterwards instructed General

-Funston to send word along his lines and to communicate

-with the Mexican commanders opposite him,

-asking for Bierce. The Washington officials soon notified

-Mrs. Cowden that a search was being made. General

-Funston also answered that he was proceeding with an

-inquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both the

-diplomatic and the military forces reported that they

-had been unable to find Bierce or any trace of him.

-Probably, it was added, he was with one of the independent

-rebel commands in the mountains and out of

-touch with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.</p>

-

-<p>Now the rumoring began. First came the report that

-Bierce had really gone to Mexico to join Villa, whose

-reputation as a guerrilla fighter had attracted the

-veteran, and whose emissaries were said to have asked

-Bierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide.

-Bierce, it was reported, had joined Villa and had been

-with that commander in Chihuahua just before the

-battle there, in which the rebel forces were unsuccessful.

-Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story was

-soon discarded on the ground that Villa, had Bierce

-been on his staff, would certainly have reported the

-death of so widely-known a man and one so close to

-himself.</p>

-

-<p>A little later came a second report, this time backed

-by what seemed to be more credible evidence. It was

-said that Bierce had been at the later battle of Torreon

-in command of the Villista artillery, that he had

-taken part in the running campaign through the province

-of Sonora and that he had probably died of hardships

-and exposure in those trying days.</p>

-

-<p>A California friend now came forward with the report

-of a talk with Bierce, said to have been held just

-before the author set out for Mexico. The old satirist

-was reported to have said that he had grown weary of

-the stodgy life of literature and journalism, that he

-wanted to wind up his career with some more glorious

-end than death in bed and that he had decided to go

-down into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave or crawl

-off into some cave and die like a free beast.”</p>

-

-<p>It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’s

-other friends immediately declared that it was entirely

-out of character. Bierce had gone to Mexico to fight and

-see another war. He had not gone to die. He was a

-fatalist. He would take whatever came, but he would

-not go out and seek a conclusion.</p>

-

-<p>So the talk went on and the months went by. There

-were no scare headlines in the papers. After all, Bierce

-was only a distinguished man of letters.</p>

-

-<p>But there was a still better reason for the lack of

-attention. The absence of Bierce had not yet been reported

-officially when the vast black cloud of war rolled

-up in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to the Atlantic

-and the fields of Flanders. The American adventure

-along the Mexican border seemed trivial and

-grotesque. The little puff of wind in the South was

-forgotten before the menacing tornado in the East.

-What did a poet matter when the armies of the great

-powers were caught in their bloody embrace?</p>

-

-<p>Yet Bierce was not altogether forgotten. In April,

-1915, more than a year after his last letter from Chihuahua,

-another note, supposedly from him, was received

-by his daughter. It said that Major Bierce was

-in England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he was

-taking a prominent part in the recruiting movement in

-Britain. This sensation lasted ten days. Then, inquiry

-having been made of the British War Office, the sober

-report was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear on

-the rolls and that he certainly was not attached to Lord

-Kitchener’s staff.</p>

-

-<p>Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put the

-touch of disaster to the fable. Miss Christianson announced

-in Washington that careful investigation

-abroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting with

-the Allies, and that she and his family had been forced

-to the melancholy conclusion that he was dead.</p>

-

-<p>But how and where? The State Department continued

-its inquiries in Mexico, but many private individuals

-also began to investigate. Journalists at the

-southern front tried to get trace or rumor of the man.

-Old friends went into the troubled region to seek what

-they could find. The literary world was touched both

-with curiosity and grief and with a romantic interest

-in the man’s fate. Bierce became a later Byron, and it

-was held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressed

-and found himself another Missolonghi.</p>

-

-<p>Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Bierce

-was dead, though even this was by no means certain.

-There was no evidence save the fact that he had not

-written for more than a year, which, in view of the

-man’s character and the situation in which he was

-caught, might be no evidence at all. But, granting that

-he was dead, how had his end come? Where was his

-body? It was impossible to escape the impression that

-one whose life had been touched with such extraordinary

-color should have died without a flame. The

-men and women who knew and loved Bierce—and they

-were a considerable number—kept saying over and

-over to themselves that this heroic fellow could not

-have passed out without some signal. Surely some one

-had seen him die and could tell of his end and place of

-repose. So the quest began again.</p>

-

-<p>For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico,

-where Bierce had certainly met his end, if indeed, he

-was dead, was no place for a hunter after bits of literary

-history to go wandering in. First there was the constant

-fighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists.

-Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza became

-president. There followed the various campaigns of

-pacification. Next Villa rebelled against his old ally,

-leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies. Finally

-the whole region was infested by marauding bands of

-irregular and rebellious militia, part soldiers and part

-bandits. To cap the climax came the invasion of Mexico

-by the expedition under Pershing.</p>

-

-<p>In 1918 was heard the first report on Bierce which

-seemed to have some basis in fact. A traveler had heard

-in Mexico City and at several points along the railroad

-that an aged American, who was supposed to have been

-fighting with either Villa or Carranza, had been executed

-by order of a field commander. From descriptions,

-this man was supposed to have been Bierce. At

-any rate, he might have been Bierce as well as another,

-and, since Bierce was both conspicuous and missing,

-there was some reason for credence. But no one could

-get any details or give the scene of the execution. The

-report was finally discarded as no more reliable than

-several others.</p>

-

-<p>Another year went by. In February, 1919, however,

-came a report which carries some of the marks of credibility.</p>

-

-<p>One of the several persons who set out to clear up the

-Bierce enigma was Mr. George F. Weeks, an old friend

-and close associate of the old writer’s, who went to

-Mexico City and later visited the various towns in

-northern Mexico where Bierce was supposed to have

-been seen shortly before his death. Weeks went up and

-down and across northern Mexico without finding anything

-definite. Then he returned to Mexico City and by

-chance encountered a Mexican officer who had been

-with Villa in his campaigns and had known Bierce well.

-Weeks mentioned Bierce to this soldier and was told

-this story:</p>

-

-<p>Bierce actually did join the Villista forces soon after

-January, 1914, when he wrote his last letter from Chihuahua.

-He said to those who were not supposed to

-know his affairs too intimately that he, like other

-American journalists and writers, had gone to Mexico

-to get material for a book on conditions in that unhappy

-country. In reality, however, he was acting as

-adviser and military observer with Villa, though not attached

-to the eminent guerilla in person. The Mexican

-officer related that Bierce could speak hardly any Spanish

-and Villa’s staff hardly any English. On the other

-hand, this particular man spoke English fluently.

-Naturally, he and Bierce had been thrown together a

-great deal and had held numerous conversations. So

-much for showing that he had known Bierce well, and

-how and why.</p>

-

-<p>After Chihuahua, the officer continued, he and Bierce

-had parted company, due to the exigencies of military

-affairs, and he had never seen the American alive again.

-He had often wondered about him and had made inquiries

-from time to time as he encountered various

-commandos of the Constitutionalist army. Finally,

-about a year later, which is to say some time toward the

-end of 1915, the relating officer met a Mexican army

-surgeon, who also had been with Villa, and this surgeon

-had told him a tale.</p>

-

-<p>Soon after the breach between Villa and Carranza in

-1915, a small detachment of Carranza troops occupied

-the village of Icamole, east of Chihuahua State in the

-direction of Monterey and Saltillo. The Villista forces

-in that quarter, commanded by General Tomas Urbina,

-one of the most ruthless of all the Villa subcommanders,

-who was himself later put to death, were encamped not

-far from Icamole, attempting to beleaguer the town or,

-at least, to cut the Carranza garrison off from its base

-of supplies and the main command. Neither side was

-strong enough to risk an engagement and the whole

-thing settled down into a waiting and sniping campaign.</p>

-

-<p>In the gray of one oppressive morning toward the end

-of 1915, according to the surgeon who was with Urbina,

-one of that commander’s scouts gave an alarm,

-having seen four mules and two men on the horizon,

-making toward Icamole. A mounted detachment was

-at once sent out and the strangers were brought in.

-They turned out to be an American of advanced years

-but military bearing, a nondescript Mexican, and four

-mules laden with the parts of a machine gun and a large

-quantity of its ammunition.</p>

-

-<p>Both men were immediately taken before General

-Urbina, according to the surgeon’s story, and subjected

-to questioning. The Mexican said that he had been employed

-by another Mexican, whose name he did not

-know, to conduct the American and his convoy to

-Icamole and the Carranza commander. Urbina turned

-to the American and started to question him, but found

-that the man could speak hardly any Spanish and was

-therefore unable to explain his actions or to defend

-himself.</p>

-

-<p>It may be as well to note the first objections to the

-credibility of the story here. Bierce had been in Mexico

-almost two years, according to these dates. He was a

-man of the keenest intelligence and the quickest perceptions.

-He had also lived in California for many years,

-where Spanish names are common and Spanish is spoken

-by many. It seems hard to believe that such a man could

-have survived to the end of 1915 in such ignorance of

-the speech of the Mexican people as to be unable to

-explain what he was doing or to tell his name and who

-he was. It seems hard to believe, also, that Bierce would

-have been doing any gun-running or that he could have

-been alive twenty months after the Chihuahua letter

-without communicating with some one in the United

-States, without being found or heard of by the military

-and diplomatic agents who had then already been seeking

-him for more than a year. Also, it is necessary to

-explain how the man who went down to fight with

-Villa happened suddenly to be taking a gun and ammunition

-to Villa’s enemies, though this might be reconciled

-on the theory that Bierce had gone to fight with

-the Constitutionalists and had remained with them

-when Villa rebelled. But we may disregard these minor

-discrepancies as possibly capable of reconciliation or

-correction, and proceed further with the surgeon’s

-story.</p>

-

-<p>Urbina, after questioning the captives for a little

-while, lost patience, concluded that they must be enemies

-at best and took no half measures. Life was cheap

-in northern Mexico in those days, judgments were swift

-and harsh, and Urbina was savage by nature. He took

-away the lives of these two with a wave of the hand.

-Immediate execution was their fate.</p>

-

-<p>Ambrose Bierce and the unknown Mexican were led

-out and placed against the wall of a building, in this

-case a stable. Faced with the terrible sight, the Mexican

-fell to his knees and began to pray, refusing to rise and

-face his executioners. Bierce, following the example of

-his companion, also knelt but did not pray. Instead, he

-refused the cloth over his eyes and asked the soldiers

-not to mutilate his face. And so he died.</p>

-

-<p>“I was much interested in the whole affair,” the

-nameless Mexican officer told Mr. Weeks, “and I asked

-my surgeon friend many questions. He did not know

-Bierce at all and did not know he was describing the

-death of some one in whom I was deeply concerned.

-But I had known Bierce well and asked the surgeon for

-detail after detail of the murdered American’s appearance,

-age, bearing, and manner. From what he told

-me, I have not the slightest doubt that this was Ambrose

-Bierce and that he died in this manner at the

-hands of the butcher, Urbina.”</p>

-

-<p>Following the reports of Mr. Weeks, the San Francisco

-<i>Bulletin</i> sent one of its special writers, Mr. U. H.

-Wilkins, down into Mexico, to further examine and

-confirm or discredit the report of the Mexican officer.

-Mr. Wilkins reported in March, 1920, confirming the

-Weeks report and adding what seems to be direct testimony.

-Mr. Wilkins says that he found a Mexican soldier

-who had been in Urbina’s command at Icamole

-and who was a member of the firing squad. This man

-showed Mr. Wilkins a picture of Bierce which, he said,

-he had taken from the pocket of the dead man just after

-the execution had taken place.</p>

-

-<p>Still the doubt perseveres. No one has been able to

-find the grave of Bierce. The picture which the soldier

-said he took from the pocket of the dead man was not

-produced and has never, so far as I can discover, been

-shown.</p>

-

-<p>Personally, I find in this material more elements for

-skepticism than for belief. Would Ambrose Bierce

-have been carrying a picture of himself about the

-wastes of Mexico? Perhaps, if it was on a passport

-or other credentials. In that case General Urbina must

-have known whom he was shooting. And would a

-guerilla leader, with much more of the brigand about

-him than the soldier, have shot a man like Bierce,

-who certainly was worth a fortune living and nothing

-dead? I must beg to doubt.</p>

-

-<p>Nor do the other details ring true. If the captured

-Americano was Ambrose Bierce, one of two things must

-have happened. Either he would have resorted, to save

-his life, to invective and persuasiveness, for which he was

-remarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned.

-This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tired

-of living and pretending for valedictory heroics. And

-he was too much of a soldier to wince. For this and

-another reason the story of his execution will not go

-down.</p>

-

-<p>Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of the

-firing squad asking that his face be not disfigured is

-a piece of standard Mexican romance. According to the

-tradition of that country, the Emperor Maximilian,

-when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, begged

-that he be shot through the body, so that his mother

-might look upon his face again. Hence, I suspect the

-soldierly Mexican <i>raconteur</i> of having been guilty of a

-romantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious substitution.

-If the man whom Urbina shot had been Ambrose

-Bierce, he would neither have knelt, nor made

-the pitiful gesture of asking the inviolateness of his

-face.</p>

-

-<p>Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compelling

-the publishers of a collected edition of Bierce’s

-writings to recognize him as the co-author of “The

-Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within the

-year published a version of Bierce’s end<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> that has some

-of the same elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, was

-shot by Villa’s soldiers at the guerilla leader’s command.

-Here is the story condensed:</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> “Ambrose Bierce as He Really Was,” <i>The American Parade</i>, October, 1926.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Bierce was with Villa at the taking of Chihuahua in

-1913. After this fight there was nothing for the

-novelist-soldier to do and he took to drinking <i>tequila</i>,

-a liquor which causes those who drink it any length

-of time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him a

-peon who understood a little English and acted as valet

-and cup companion. When he was in his mugs Bierce

-talked too much, complained of inactivity and criticised

-Villa. One drunken night he suggested to the peon that

-they desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattle

-and carried it to Villa, who had the peon tortured till

-he confessed the truth. He was released and instructed

-to carry out the plan with the Gringo. That night, as

-they started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peon

-were overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left for

-the vultures.”</p>

-

-<p>Though Vincent Starrett<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> records that Villa flew

-into a rage when questioned about Bierce, a reaction

-looked upon by some as confirming Villa’s guilt, others

-have pointed out objections that seem insuperable. The

-break between Carranza and Villa did not follow until

-a long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they point

-out, and Bierce must have been alive all the while without

-writing a letter or sending a word of news to anyone.

-Possible but improbable, is the verdict of those who

-knew him most intimately.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> “Ambrose Bierce,” by V. Starrett.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>So, applying the critical acid to the whole affair,

-there is still the mystery, as dark as in the beginning.

-We may have our delight with the dramatic or poetic

-accounts of his end if that be our taste, but really we are

-no closer to any satisfactory solution than we were in

-1914.</p>

-

-<p>Bierce is dead, past doubt. That much needs no additional

-proof. His fierce spirit has traveled. His bitter

-pen will scrawl no more denunciations across the page;

-neither will he sit in his study weaving mysteries and

-ironies for the delectation of those who love abstraction

-as beauty, and doubt as something better than truth.</p>

-

-<p>My own guess is that he started out to fight battles

-and shoulder hardships as he had done when a boy,

-somehow believing that a tough spirit would carry

-him through. Wounded or stricken with disease, he

-probably lay down in some pesthouse of a hospital, some

-troop train filled with other stricken men; or he may

-have crawled off to some water hole and died, with

-nothing more articulate than the winds and stars for

-witness.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY</p>

-

-

-<p>No account of disappearances under curious and

-romantic circumstances, or of the enigmatic

-fates of forthfaring men in our times, would

-approach completeness without some narration of one

-of the boldest and maddest projects ever undertaken

-by human beings, in many ways the crowning adventure

-of the nineteenth century. Particularly now, when

-a circumnavigation of the earth by airplane has been

-accomplished, when the Atlantic has been bridged by a

-dirigible flight, and men have flown over the North

-Pole in plane and airship, the heroic and pathetic story

-of Doctor Andrée and his attempt to reach the top of

-the world by balloon is of fresh and abiding interest.</p>

-

-<p>No one who was not alive in the late nineties of the

-last century and of age to read and be thrilled, can

-have any conception of the wonder and excitement this

-man and his voyage caused, of the cloud of doubt and

-mystery which hung about his still unexplained end,

-of the rumors and tales that came out of the North

-year after year, of the expeditions that started out to

-solve the riddle, of the whole decade of slowly abating

-preoccupation with the terrible romance of this singular

-man and his undiscoverable end.</p>

-

-<p>In the summer of 1895, at the International Geographical

-Congress in London, Doctor Salomon August

-Andrée, a noted engineer, and chief examiner of

-the Royal Swedish Patent Office in Stockholm, let it be

-known that he was planning for a flight to the pole

-in a balloon, and that active preparations were under

-way. At first the public regarded the whole thing with

-an interested incredulity, though geographers, meteorologists,

-geodesists, and some students of aëronautics

-had been discussing the possibilities of such a voyage

-for much longer than a generation, and many had expressed

-the belief in its feasibility. Sivel and Silbermann,

-of the University of Paris, had declared as early as 1870

-that this was the practical way of attaining the pole.</p>

-

-<p>Even so, they had not by long anticipated Doctor Andrée.

-His first inquiries into the possibility of such a

-flight had been made in the course of a voyage to the

-United States in 1876 to visit the Centennial Exposition

-at Philadelphia. On shipboard he had made numerous

-observations of the winds and air currents, which led

-him to the belief that there was a general suction or

-drift of air toward the pole from the direction of the

-northern coast of Europe and from the pole southward

-along the Siberian or Alaskan coasts.</p>

-

-<p>With this belief in mind, Andrée had gone back to

-Sweden and begun a series of experiments in ballooning.

-He built various gas bags and made a considerable number

-of voyages in them, on several occasions with nearly

-fatal results. Mishaps, however, did not daunt him, and

-he became, in the course of the following twenty years,

-perhaps the best versed aëronaut on earth. He was not,

-of course, an ordinary balloonist, but a scientific experimenter,

-busy with an attempt to work out a serious,

-and to him a practical, problem. In the early nineties

-Andrée succeeded in making a flight of four hundred

-kilometers in a comparatively small balloon, and it was

-on the observations taken in the course of this voyage

-that he based mathematical calculations which formed

-his guide in the polar undertaking.</p>

-

-<p>If, as I have said, the first public announcement of

-the Andrée project was received by the rank and file of

-men as an entertaining, but impossible, speculation,

-there was a rapid change of mind in the course of the

-following months. News came that Andrée had opened

-a subscription for funds, and that the hundred thousand

-dollars he believed necessary had been quickly provided

-by the enthusiastic members of the Swedish Academy

-of Science, by King Oscar from his private purse,

-and by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of nitroglycerin and

-provider of the prizes which bear his name. Evidently

-this fellow meant business.</p>

-

-<p>In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party of

-scientists and workmen, including two friends who had

-decided to make the desperate essay with him, sailed

-from Gothenburg in the little steamer <i>Virgo</i> for Spitzbergen.

-They had on board a balloon made by Lachambre

-of Paris, the foremost designer of that day,

-with a gas capacity of more than six thousand cubic meters,

-the largest bag which had been constructed at that

-time. The gas container was of triple varnished silk,

-and there was a specially designed gondola, whose details

-are of surviving interest.</p>

-

-<p>This compartment, in which three men hoped to

-live through such temperatures as might be expected

-in the air currents fanning the North Pole, was made of

-wicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas and

-inside with oiled silk, these two substances being considered

-capable of making the big basket practically

-air and weather proof. The gondola was about six and

-one half feet long inside and about five feet wide. It

-contained a sleeping mattress for one, with provision

-for a second bed, though the plan was to keep two of

-the three men constantly on deck, while the third took

-two hours of sleep at a time. This basket was covered,

-to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, through

-which the voyagers could come up to the deck. Inside

-and outside the gondola, in various pockets and bags,

-were fixed the provisions and supplies, while the various

-nautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’ paraphernalia,

-and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or were

-fixed to the gondola by specially invented devices.

-Everything had been thought out in great detail, most

-of the apparatus had been designed for the occasion,

-and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from all

-the foremost flyers and scientific theorists in Europe.

-His was anything but a haphazard or ill-prepared expedition.</p>

-

-<p>Toward the end of June, Andrée and his party landed

-on the obscure Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group,

-where he found a log cottage built some years before

-by Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter. Here a large

-octagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloon

-from the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finally

-all was ready, the chemicals were put to work, and

-the great bag slowly filled with hydrogen. Everything

-was in shape for flying by the middle of July, but now

-various mishaps and delays came to foil the eager adventurer,

-the worst of all being the fact that the wind

-steadily refused to blow from the south, as Andrée had

-anticipated. He waited until the middle of August, and

-then returned somewhat crestfallen to Sweden, where

-he was received with that ready and heartbreaking

-ridicule which often greets a brave man set out upon

-some undertaking whose difficulties and perils the fickle

-and callous public little understands.</p>

-

-<p>Andrée himself was nothing damped by his reverses,

-and even felt that he had learned something that would

-be of benefit. For one thing, he had the gas bag of his

-balloon enlarged to contain about two hundred thousand

-cubic feet, and made some changes in its coating,

-which was expected to prevent the seepage of the hydrogen,

-a problem which much more modern aircraft

-builders have had difficulty in meeting.</p>

-

-<p>If the delay in Andrée’s sailing had lost him a little of

-the public’s confidence and alienated a few lay admirers,

-his prestige with scientific bodies had not suffered,

-and his popularity with the subscribers of his fund was

-undiminished. King Oscar again met the additional expenses

-with a subscription from his own funds, and Andrée

-was accordingly able to set out for the second essay

-in June of 1897. His goods and the reconstructed balloon

-were sent as far as Tromsoe by rail, and there

-loaded into the <i>Virgo</i> and taken to Danes Island, accompanied

-by a small group of friends and interested scientists.</p>

-

-<p>Almost at the last moment came a desertion, a happening

-that is looked upon by all explorers and adventurers

-as something of most evil omen. Doctor Ekholm,

-who had made the first trip to Danes Island and intended

-to be one of the three making the flight, had

-married in the course of the delay, the lady of his choice

-being fully aware of his perilous project. When it came

-time for him to start north in 1897, however, she had

-a not unnatural change of heart, and finally forced her

-husband to quit the expedition. Another man stepped

-into the gap without a day’s delay, and so the party

-started north.</p>

-

-<p>The enlarged bag was attached to the gondola and

-its fittings, and the process of inflation began anew in

-that strange eight-sided building on that barren arctic

-island. The bag was fully distended at the end of the

-first week in July, and Andrée impatiently waited for

-just the right currents of air before casting off.</p>

-

-<p>In those last few days of waiting a good deal of foreboding

-advice was given the daring aëronauts by the

-group of admirers who had made the voyage to Danes

-Island with them. It is even said that one of the leading

-scientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spent

-a night with him, and tried to convince the man that

-his theories and calculations were mistaken; that the

-air currents were inconstant, and could not be depended

-on to sweep the balloon across the pole and down on

-the other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperatures

-at the pole might readily cause the hydrogen

-to shrink and thus bring the balloon to earth; and that

-the whole region was full of such doubts and surprises as

-to forbid the adventure.</p>

-

-<p>To all this Andrée is said to have answered simply

-that he had made his decision and must stand by it.</p>

-

-<p>Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most

-thoroughly matured in his own mind. In twenty years

-of aëronautics he had worked out his ideas and theories

-in the greatest detail. He had not been blind to the

-problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air,

-but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction

-that might lend itself to guidance through the air, had

-evidently not struck him as feasible, and was not

-brought to any kind of success until several years later

-under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to

-steer his balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as

-already said, oblong, with a front and back. The front

-was provided with two portholes fitted with heavy

-glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations

-in the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist,

-he knew that, once his car was in the air, the great

-bag was almost certain to begin spinning and to travel

-through the air at various speeds, increasing the rate

-of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater.

-That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow

-for the gondola seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée

-had his own ideas as to this.</p>

-

-<p>The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to

-any great heights, or to subject himself to the rotating

-action which is one of the unpleasantnesses and perils

-of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern of his gondola

-three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long,

-which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen

-pigtails. In the center of each hundred-yard length of

-rope was a thinner spot or safety escapement, by means

-of which the lower half of any one of the ropes could

-be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for

-releasing all of the rope or ropes.</p>

-

-<p>These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s

-steering gear and antiwhirling apparatus. His intention

-was to fly at an elevation of somewhat less than one

-hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his three ropes

-trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of

-any open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was

-expected to keep his gondola pointed forward by means

-of its dragging effect. Realizing that one or all of the

-ropes might become entangled in some manner with

-objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might

-wreck the gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements

-to let go the lower half or all the ropes.</p>

-

-<p>Just what the man expected to do, may be read from

-his own articles in the New York and European papers.

-He hoped to fly low over a great part of the arctic regions,

-make photographs and maps, study the land

-and water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological,

-geological, geographical, and other information

-that came his way, cross the pole, if he could, and find

-his way back on the other side of the earth to some

-point within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said that

-he might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles from

-Danes Island to the pole in anywhere from two days

-to two weeks, depending on the force and direction of

-the surface wind. He did not expect to consume more

-than three weeks to a month for the entire trip, but

-his ship carried condensed emergency provisions for

-three years.</p>

-

-<p>While a widely known French balloonist, who had

-planned a rival expedition and then abandoned it, had

-intended to take along a team of dogs, Andrée’s balloon

-had not sufficient lifting power or accommodations for

-anything of this kind, and he was content to carry two

-light collapsible sleds on which he expected to carry

-the provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i325" style="max-width: 82.5625em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i325.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ DOCTOR ANDRÉE ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before he

-set out, what provisions he had made for a mishap, and

-just what he would do if his balloon were to come

-down in open water, the explorer showed his spirit in

-the tersest of responses: “Drown.”</p>

-

-<p>Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination,

-it is not quite certain in what spirit Andrée set

-forth. It has often been said that he was a stubborn, self-willed,

-and self-esteeming enthusiast, who had worked

-up a vast confidence in himself and an overweening

-passion for his project through his flying and experimenting.

-Others have pictured him as an infatuated

-scientific theorist, bound to prove himself right, or die

-in the attempt. And there is still the other possibility

-that the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt,

-in spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule of

-the public and the skepticism of some critics. He felt

-that he would be a laughingstock before the world and

-a discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to set out,

-it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remains

-a fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausible

-to engage the attention and credence of a considerable

-number of scientists, and his enthusiasm bright

-enough to attach two others to him in his great emprise.</p>

-

-<p>In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andrée

-got into the gondola of his car, tested the ropes

-and other apparatus, and was quickly joined by his two

-assistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H. F. Frankel, the

-latter having been chosen to take the place of the defected

-Ekholm.</p>

-

-<p>At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off,

-after Andrée had sent his farewell message, “a greeting

-to friends and countrymen at home.” The great bag

-hesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shot

-up to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowly

-about, with its three ropes dragging first on the ice

-and then in the water of the sea, and set out majestically

-for the northwest, carried by a steady slow breeze.</p>

-

-<p>The little group of men on the desolate arctic island

-stood late through the afternoon, with eyes straining

-into the distance, where the balloon hung, an ever-diminishing

-ball against the northern horizon. What

-doubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculating

-crowd, what burnings of the heart and moistenings

-of the eyes overcame its members, as they watched the

-intrepid trio put off upon their unprecedented adventure,

-the subsequent accounts reveal. But the imagination

-of the reader will need no promptings on this score.

-A little more than an hour the ship of the air remained

-in sight. Then, at last, it floated off into the mist, and

-the doubt from which it never emerged.</p>

-

-<p>Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sending

-back word of his situation and progress. For early communication

-he carried a coop of homing pigeons. In

-addition, he had provided himself with a series of

-specially designed buoys, lined with copper and coated

-with cork. They were hollow inside and so fashioned as

-to contain a written message and preserve it indefinitely

-from the sea water, like a manuscript in a bottle. To the

-top of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, with

-a little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release one

-of the small buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitude

-was crossed, thus marking out, by the longitude observations

-as well, the precise route taken by the balloon

-in its drift toward or away from the pole.</p>

-

-<p>About a week after Andrée’s departure one of the

-carrier pigeons returned to Danes Island, with this message

-in the little cylinder attached to its legs:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“July 13, 10.30 <span class="allsmcap">P. M.</span>—82.20 north latitude; 15.5 east longitude.

-Good progress toward north. All goes well on board.

-This message is the third by carrier pigeon.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“<span class="smcap">Andrée.</span>”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The earlier birds and any the balloonists may have

-released after the night of the thirteenth, about fifty-five

-hours out from Danes Island, must have been overcome

-by the distance and the excruciating cold. None

-except the one mentioned ever reached either Danes

-Island or any cotes in the civilized world.</p>

-

-<p>All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaper

-accounts of Andrée’s daring undertaking, waited

-with something like bated breath for further news of

-the adventuring three. It was not expected that the

-brave Swedes could reach civilization again, even with

-every turn of luck in their favor, in less than two

-months. Even six months or a year were elapsed periods

-not considered too long, for the chances were that the

-balloon would land in some far northern and difficult

-spot, out of which the three men would not be able

-to make their way before winter. That being so, they

-would be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then,

-very likely, they could find their way to some outpost

-and bring back the tidings of their monumental

-feat.</p>

-

-<p>Meantime the world got to work on its preparations.

-The Czar, foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and his

-two companions might alight somewhere in upper

-Siberia, sent a communication by various agencies to

-the wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains,

-explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andrée

-and his men were, and admonishing the natives to treat

-any such wayfarers with kindness and respect, aiding

-them in every way and sending them south as speedily

-as possible, the special guests of the imperial government

-and the great white father. In other northern

-countries similar precautions were taken, with the result

-that the news of Andrée and his expedition was

-circulated far up beyond the circle, among the Indians

-and adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters of

-Labrador and interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos,

-and scores of other tribes and peoples.</p>

-

-<p>But the fall of 1897 passed without any further sign

-from Andrée, and 1898 died into its winter, with the

-pole voyagers still unreported. By this time there was a

-feeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among the

-optimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange that

-no further messages of any kind had been received. Another

-significant thing was that one of the copper-and-cork

-buoys had been picked up in the arctic current—empty.

-Still, it might have been dropped by accident,

-and it was yet possible that Andrée had reached a safe,

-if distant, anchorage somewhere, and he might turn up

-the following summer.</p>

-

-<p>Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing except

-one or two more of the empty buoys, and the definite

-feeling of despair. Expeditions began to organize for the

-purpose of starting north in search of the balloonists,

-and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in a

-dirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in getting

-under way, and the summer of 1900 came along with

-nothing accomplished.</p>

-

-<p>On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however,

-another, if not very satisfactory, bit of news was

-picked up. It was, once more, one of the buoys from

-the balloon. This time, to the delight of the finders,

-there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“Buoy No. 4. The first to be thrown out. July 11, 10

-<span class="allsmcap">P. M.</span>, Greenwich mean time.</p>

-

-<p>“All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an

-altitude of about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction

-at first northerly, ten degrees east; later northerly, forty-five

-degrees east. Four carrier pigeons were dispatched at 5.40

-<span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> They flew westward. We are now above the ice, which

-is very cut up in all directions. Weather splendid. In excellent

-spirits.</p>

-

-<p class="attribution">

-“<span class="smcap">Andrée, Strindberg, Frankel.</span>”<br>

-</p><p>

-“Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”<br>

-</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>It will be noted at once that the body of this communication

-was written the night after the departure

-from Danes Island, and the postscript probably at seven

-forty-five o’clock the next morning, so that it must

-have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before

-the single returning pigeon was released. No light

-of hope in such a communication.</p>

-

-<p>The North was by this time resonant with rumors

-and fables. Almost every traveler who came down from

-the boreal regions brought some fancy or report, sometimes

-supporting the product of his or another’s imagination

-with scraps of what purported to be evidence.

-A prospector came down from the upper Alaskan

-gold claims with a bit of tarred and oiled cloth

-which had been given him by the chief of some remote

-Indian tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the

-Andrée balloon? For a time there was a thrill of

-credulity. Then the thing turned out to be hide, instead

-of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.</p>

-

-<p>In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin that

-Andrée and his party had been killed by Eskimos in

-upper Canada, when they descended from the clouds

-and started to shoot caribou. But why go into details?

-Month after month came other reports of all kinds,

-most of them of similar import. They came from all

-points, beginning at Kamtchatka and running around

-the world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and they

-were all more or less fiction.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece.

-A long dispatch from Winnipeg announced that C. C.

-Chipman, head commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay

-Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the northernmost

-outpost of the company, several letters from

-the local factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate

-of Doctor Andrée and his comrades was contained. The

-news had been received at Fort Churchill from wandering

-Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw

-mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great

-ship descend from the sky and had followed it many

-miles till it settled on the ice. Three men had got out

-and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally unacquainted

-with white men, and far less with balloons,

-believed the intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked

-them, eventually killing all with their bows and

-arrows, though the white men were armed with repeating

-rifles and put up a good fight. There were many

-other confirmatory details in the report. The mushers

-were found with modern Swedish rifles and with cooking

-and other utensils salvaged from the wrecked

-balloon.</p>

-

-<p>These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to

-the commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company for

-confirmation, with the result that the story was at once

-exploded in these words:</p>

-

-<p>“There is no probability of there being any truth in

-the report regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s

-balloon. The chief officer of the company on the west

-coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself interviewed the natives

-on the matter, has reported as his firm conviction

-that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon

-imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the

-story was given. The sketches of the balloon which the

-company has been careful to distribute throughout

-northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much

-talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly

-to be wondered at that some such tale might be given

-out by natives peculiarly cunning and prone to practice

-upon the credulity of those not familiar with them, or

-easily imposed upon.”</p>

-

-<p>But the imagination of the world was nothing

-daunted by such cold douches of fact, and more reports

-of Andrée’s death, of his survival in the igloos of

-detached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his balloon,

-of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of his

-party, and of many fancies came down from the northern

-sectors of the world, season after season. There

-was a great revival of these yarns in 1905, once more

-due to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and in

-1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was an

-even more belated group of rumors, all centering about

-the fact that one Father Turquotille, a Roman Catholic

-missionary residing at Reindeer Lake, and often making

-long treks farther into the arctic, had found a party of

-nomadic natives in possession of a revolver and some

-rope, which fact they explained to him by telling the

-story of the Andrée balloon, which was supposed to

-have landed somewhere in their territory. The good

-priest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal,

-of Prince Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmitted

-the report to Ottawa, whence it was spread

-broadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having made

-a special journey to confirm the rumors, was obliged

-to discredit them. And so another end to gossip.</p>

-

-<p>Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirty

-years after that heroic launching out from Danes Island,

-after the pole has long been attained, and all the

-regions of the Far North traversed back and forth by

-countless expeditions and hunting parties, no sure

-knowledge of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is that

-he never returned, and all that can be asserted as beyond

-reasonable doubt is that he and his companions

-perished somewhere in the North. The probabilities are

-more interesting, though they cannot be termed more

-than inductions from the scattered bits of fact.</p>

-

-<p>The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, which

-were picked up from time to time between the spring

-of 1899 and the late summer of 1912, when the Norwegian

-steamer <i>Beta</i>, outward bound on September 1st,

-from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoe

-on the fourteenth, with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, which

-had been picked up on the eighth in the open ocean.

-This buoy, like all the others, except the one already

-described, was empty and had its top unsecured. It

-rests with the others in the royal museum at Stockholm.

-When Andrée flew from Danes Island he took

-twelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he expected

-to drop as each succeeding degree of latitude

-was crossed, and one larger float, which was to be

-dropped in triumph at the North Pole. This biggest

-buoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899,

-and identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessed

-the preparation for the flight. In all, seven of

-these floats have been retrieved from the northern seas.</p>

-

-<p>We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on the

-morning of July 12, 1897, less than sixteen hours from

-his base, and that he liberated a pigeon on the following

-night, after an elapsed time of about fifty-five

-hours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northern

-latitude and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. Since

-Danes Island lies above the seventy-ninth parallel, and

-in about 12 degrees of eastern longitude, the balloon

-had drifted about three degrees north and three east

-in fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundred

-and fifty miles, as the crow flies. His net rate of

-progress toward the pole was thus no better than seven

-to eight miles an hour, and he was being carried northeast

-instead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidently

-he was disillusioned as to the correctness of his

-theories before he was far from his starting point.</p>

-

-<p>The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to what

-must have happened thereafter. When the big North

-Pole buoy was brought back to Sweden, the great explorer

-Nansen shook his head in dismay and said the

-emptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous of

-disaster. Andrée would never have cast his largest and

-best buoy adrift, except in an emergency, or until he

-had reached the pole, in which case it would surely

-have contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoy

-had been thrown overboard as ballast, when the ship

-seemed about to settle into the sea. But even then, it

-would seem, Andrée would have scribbled some message

-and put it into the float, had there been time.</p>

-

-<p>The fact that this main buoy and five others were

-picked up, with their tops unfastened and barren of

-the least scrap of writing, seems to argue that some sudden

-disaster overtook the balloon and its horrified passengers.

-Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidly

-toward the sea or an ice floe, that everything was

-thrown out in an attempt to arrest its fall, or there

-was an explosion, and the whole great air vessel, with

-all its human and mechanical freight, was dropped into

-the icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would have

-floated off and been found scattered about the northern

-ocean, while the explorer and his men must have

-met the fate he had so briefly described—“drowned.”</p>

-

-<p>The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearing

-any message later than that carried by the solitary

-homing pigeon would seem also to indicate that death

-overcame the party soon after the night of July 13th,

-with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs and

-ice packs of the North.</p>

-

-<p>In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of the

-most splendid and mad adventures of any time came

-to its dark and mysterious conclusion, leaving the world

-an enigma and a legend.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII">XVII</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center">SPECTRAL SHIPS</p>

-

-

-<p>We have not yet lost that sense of terror

-before the vast power and wrath of the

-waters that wrought strange gods and

-monsters from the fancy of our ancestors. It is this

-fright and helplessness in us that gives disappearances at

-sea their special quality. In spite of all progress, all inventiveness,

-all the power of man’s engines, every putting

-forth to sea is still an adventure. The same fate

-that overcomes the little catboat caught in a squall

-may overtake the greatest liner—the Titanic to note a

-trite example.</p>

-

-<p>As a matter of fact, never a year passes without the

-loss of some ship somewhere in the wild expanse of the

-world’s waters. Boats go down, leaving usually at least

-some indirect evidence of their fate. Now and again, as

-in the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s <i>Santa

-Margarita</i> and Roger Tichborne’s schooner <i>Bella</i>, not a

-survivor lives to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckage

-found to give indication. Here we have the genuine

-marine mystery. The marvel lies in the number of such

-completely vanished ships. A most casual survey of the

-records turns up this generous list, from the American

-naval records alone:</p>

-

-<p>The brig <i>Reprisal</i>, 1777; the <i>General Gates</i>, 1777; the

-<i>Saratoga</i>, 1781; the <i>Insurgent</i>, 1800; the <i>Pickering</i>,

-1800; the <i>Hamilton</i>, 1813; the <i>Wasp III</i>, 1814; the

-<i>Epervier</i>, 1815; the <i>Lynx</i>, 1821; the <i>Wildcat</i>, 1829;

-the <i>Hornet</i>, 1829; the <i>Sylph II</i> and the <i>Seagull</i>, both

-in 1839; the <i>Grampus</i>, in 1843; the <i>Jefferson</i>, 1850; the

-<i>Albany</i>, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; and

-<i>Levant II</i>, with exactly the same number aboard, in

-1860. In 1910 the tug <i>Nina</i> steamed out of Norfolk

-and was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoing

-tug <i>Conestoga</i> put out from Mare Island, Cal.,

-bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with four officers

-and fifty-two men aboard, and was never again reported.

-These are not mere marine disasters<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> but complete

-mysteries. No one knows precisely what happened

-to any of these ships and their people.</p>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> For a handy list of these see The World Almanac, 1927 Edition, pages 691-95.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>No account of sea riddles would be complete without

-mention of the American brigantine <i>Marie Celeste</i>,

-of New York, Captain Briggs, which was found floating

-abandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity of

-Gibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. She

-had sailed from New York late in October with a cargo

-of alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the morning mentioned

-the British bark <i>Dei Gratia</i>, Captain Boyce,

-found the <i>Marie Celeste</i> in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15

-W. with sails set but acting queerly, yawing and falling

-up into the wind. Captain Boyce ran up the urgent

-hoist but got no answer from the brigantine. The

-day being almost windless and the sea beautifully calm,

-Captain Boyce put off in a boat with his mate, Mr.

-Adams, and two sailors, reached the <i>Marie Celeste</i> and

-managed to board her. There was not a soul to be seen,

-not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indication

-of any preparations for abandonment, not a boat gone

-from the davits.</p>

-

-<p>Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, made

-a careful inspection of the ship and wrote full reports

-of what they had found. In the cabin a breakfast had

-been laid for four persons and only partly eaten. One

-of these four was a child, whose half empty bowl of

-porridge stood on the table. A hard boiled egg, peeled

-and cut in two but not bitten into, lay near one of the

-other places. There were biscuits and other food on

-the table.</p>

-

-<p>Investigation showed that the cargo had not shifted

-and was completely intact. None of the food, water or

-other supplies had been carried off, the captain’s funds,

-of considerable amount, were safe and his gold watch

-hung in his bunk, as did the watches of two of the seamen.

-There was no evidence whatever of any struggle,

-and a report published by irresponsible papers, to the

-effect that a bloody sword had been found was officially

-denied. Neither was there any leak or any defect, except

-that there were two square cuts at the bow on the

-outside. They had been made with an axe or similar

-tool and might have been there for some time.</p>

-

-<p>The <i>Dei Gratia</i> towed her prize into Gibraltar and

-notified the American consul, who again examined the

-brigantine with all care and reported to Washington.

-It was found that the <i>Marie Celeste</i> had set sail with a

-crew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife and

-their eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of six

-hundred tons.</p>

-

-<p>Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the

-region near the finding place of the abandoned vessel

-resulted in nothing and a general quest throughout the

-world brought no better results. The British ship <i>Highlander</i>

-reported that she had passed the <i>Marie Celeste</i>

-and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December

-4th, the day before she was picked up, and that the

-brigantine had answered “All well.” This is obviously

-a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores lies about

-five hundred miles from the place where the ship was

-found or about twice as far as she was likely to have

-sailed in twenty-four hours.</p>

-

-<p>There are conflicting statements as to the actual state

-of affairs on the <i>Marie Celeste</i> when found. One report

-says the ship’s clock was still ticking. On the other hand

-the log, which was found, had not been brought up beyond

-ten days prior to the discovery. One statement

-says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were

-gone, another that everything was intact. All indications

-are, however, that the crew had not been long away. A

-bottle of cough medicine stood upright and uncorked

-on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough

-weather or continued yawing and twisting before the

-wind with a loose rudder would have upset it. Again,

-on a sewing machine, which stood near the table in the

-cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off to the

-floor if there had been any specially active dipping or

-lurching of the brigantine.</p>

-

-<p>Many theories have been propounded to explain the

-disappearance of the crew, not the least fantastic of

-which is the giant cuttlefish yarn. Those who spin this

-tale affect to believe that there are squidlike monsters

-in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and

-bold enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship

-and snatch off fourteen persons one after the other.

-Personally, I like much better the idea that Sinbad’s roc

-had come back to life and carried the crew off to the

-Valley of Diamonds on his back.</p>

-

-<p>As in other mysteries, men have turned up from

-time to time who asserted that they knew the fate of

-the crew of the <i>Marie Celeste</i>, that they were the one

-and only survivor, that murder and foul crime had

-been committed on the brigantine and more in the

-same strain.</p>

-

-<p>In 1913, the <i>Strand Magazine</i> (London) printed a

-tale which has about it some elements of credibility. The

-article was written by A. Howard Linford, head master

-of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable

-British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically

-disowned responsibility for what he narrated, saying

-that he had no first hand knowledge. His story was, he

-said, based on some papers left him in three boxes by

-an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.</p>

-

-<p>This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as one

-of the ten members of the crew—the steward in fact.

-He recounts that the carpenter had built a little platform

-in the bows, where the child of the captain might

-play in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’s

-quarterdeck, and upon this structure the child played

-daily in the sun, while its mother sat beside it, reading

-or sewing. The good woman had been ill the first part

-of the trip and was now greatly worried because of the

-nervous health of her husband, who had suffered a

-breakdown.</p>

-

-<p>One morning, according to the supposed Fosdyk

-papers, the captain determined to swim about the ship

-in his clothes, possibly as the result of a challenge from

-the mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her husband

-but he was obdurate and she prompted the mate to

-swim with him. They plunged in and the whole crew,

-with the commander’s wife and child, crowded on the

-little platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly there

-was a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell into

-the sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine,

-with sail set, rapidly ran away from the swimmers

-and the hopeless strugglers in the water. Fosdyk alone

-managed to cling to the platform and was washed to

-the African shore, where he was restored to health by

-some friendly blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874

-Marseilles. Later on he got to London and was employed

-by Mr. Linford’s father.</p>

-

-<p>Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm of

-possibility. We may believe it if we like, without risking

-the suspicious glances of our better balanced

-brothers, but——</p>

-

-<p>Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervous

-state, have gone swimming hundreds of miles from land,

-leaving his vessel with sail set and expecting, even in a

-calm, to keep pace with her? Would the helmsman

-have left his post under such circumstances to stand

-on the baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captain

-and mate have got up without finishing their breakfast

-to engage in such folly? Finally, why did this

-Abel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on his

-return to Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when there

-was a great hue and cry still in the air and sure information

-would have been rewarded? Or why did he not

-tell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapers

-again and again revived the mystery and sought

-to solve it? Why did he leave papers to be published

-by another after his death?</p>

-

-<p>My answer is that the mystery of the <i>Marie Celeste</i>

-is no nearer solution since the so-called Fosdyk papers

-were published. Moreover, I cannot find that worthy’s

-name on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.</p>

-

-<p>A more credible explanation has recently been put

-forth by a writer in the New York <i>Times</i>, who says

-that the whole case rested upon a conspiracy. The captain

-and crew of the <i>Marie Celeste</i> had agreed with the

-personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted

-in the region where she was found, her men to

-put off in a longboat which had previously been supplied

-by the conspirators in order that none of the

-<i>Marie Celeste’s</i> boats should be missing. The other vessel

-was to come along presently, pick up the derelict and

-collect the prize money, while the owners were to profit

-by the insurance. The deserting crew was to get its

-share of the proceeds and then disappear.</p>

-

-<p>There are objections to this explanation also. Would

-a set of sailors and a captain, the latter with his wife

-and little girl, venture upon the sea in an open boat

-some hundreds of miles from land? Would the captain

-have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him

-if such a trick had been planned? And why was no

-member of the crew ever discovered in the course of

-the feverish search or through the persistent curiosity

-that followed? On the other hand, such tricks have

-been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit

-crimes often attempt and accomplish the perilous

-and seemingly impossible. The doubts are by no means

-dispelled by this theory but here is at least a rational

-version of the affair.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the

-long roster that stand out with a special and tormenting

-character. The war had hardly opened when the British

-navy set out to destroy a small number of German

-cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and

-Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral

-Cradock and his ships to the bottom at the battle

-of Coronel and was subsequently destroyed by a force of

-British off the Falkland Islands. There was the <i>Emden</i>,

-that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for

-Allied shipping for month after month, until she was

-overtaken, beaten and beached. Finally, there was the

-<i>Karlsruhe</i>.</p>

-

-<p>This modern light cruiser, completed only the year

-before the war began, did exactly what she was designed

-for—commerce raiding. With her light armament

-of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed

-(25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning)

-she was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen.

-Since there was no considerable German

-fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few hot

-weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic.

-One vessel after another fell to her hunting pouch,

-while crews taken off the captured or sunken merchantmen

-began to arrive at American, West Indian and

-South American ports.</p>

-

-<p>These refugees told, one and all, the same story.

-There would be a smudge of smoke on the horizon and

-within minutes the long slender German cruiser would

-come churning up out of the distance with the speed

-of an express train, firing a shot across the bows and

-signalling for the surrender of the trader. The prize

-crew came aboard, always acting with the most punctilious

-politeness and treating crew and passengers with

-apologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow, her

-coal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred,

-her crew and passengers removed to safety and

-the craft sent to the bottom with bombs or by opening

-the sea cocks. If, on the other hand, the captured ship

-was modern and swift, she was manned from the

-cruiser, loaded with coal and other needed supplies,

-crowded with the captives and made to form an escort.

-At one time the cruiser is said to have had six

-such vessels in her train, at another four. When there

-got to be too many passengers and other captives, the

-least worthy of the vessels was detached and ordered to

-steam to a given port, being allowed just enough coal

-to get there.</p>

-

-<p>As early as October 4, 1914, two months after the

-opening of hostilities, it was announced that the <i>Karlsruhe</i>

-had captured thirteen British merchantmen in

-the Atlantic, including four hundred prisoners. She

-did much better than that before she was through and

-the chances are she had then already put about twenty

-ships out of business, for this was a conservative announcement

-from the British Admiralty, which let it

-be known soon afterwards that all of seventy British

-war vessels were hunting the <i>Karlsruhe</i> and her sister

-raider, the <i>Emden</i>.</p>

-

-<p>Shipping in the Atlantic was in a perilous way and

-excitement was high among newspaper readers ashore,

-who watched the game of hide and seek with all the

-interest of spectators at some magnificent sporting

-event. Nor was the sympathy all against the German,

-for the odds were too heavy. The wildest rumors were

-floating in by every craft that reached port from the

-Southern Atlantic, by radio and by cable. On October

-27, a Ward Line boat came into New York with the report

-that she had observed a night battle off the Virginia

-Capes between the German raider and British

-men-of-war. On November 3 came the report that the

-<i>Karlsruhe</i> had captured a big Lamport and Holt liner

-off the coast of Brazil as late as October 26. On November

-10 an officer of a British freighter captured by the

-raider reached Edinburgh and told the story that the

-<i>Karlsruhe</i> was using Bocas Reef, off the north Brazilian

-coast, as a base.</p>

-

-<p>Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the forays of

-the modern corsair ceased. The first belief was, of

-course, that the pursuing British had found her and

-sent her to Davy Jones. But as the weeks went by

-without any announcement to that effect, doubts

-crept in. Soon the British government, without making

-a formal declaration, revealed the untruth of this report

-by keeping its searching vessels at sea. It was the

-theory that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> had run up the Amazon

-or the Orinoco for repairs and rest. The expectation

-was that she would soon be at her old tricks

-again.</p>

-

-<p>The battle and sinking story persisted in the British

-press, the wish being evidently father to the thought.

-On January, 12, 1915, for instance, the Montreal <i>Gazette</i>

-published an unverified (and afterwards disproved)

-report from a correspondent at Grenada, British

-West Indies, giving a detailed description of a four

-hour battle in which the raider was destroyed. This story

-was allegedly verified by the washing ashore of wreckage

-and the finding of sailors’ corpses. All moonshine.</p>

-

-<p>On January 21, an American steamer captain announced

-having sighted the <i>Karlsruhe</i> off Porto Rico.

-On other dates in January and February she was also

-falsely reported off La Guayra, the Canary Islands,

-Port au Prince and other places. On March 17, the

-Brooklyn <i>Eagle</i> published a tale to the effect that the

-hulk of the raider lay off the Grenadines, a little string

-of islets that stretch north from Grenada in the Windwards.

-This report said there had been no battle. The

-cruiser had been self-wrecked or broken up in a storm.

-Again wreckage was said to have been found, but here

-once more was falsehood.</p>

-

-<p>On March 18, the <i>Stifts-Tidende</i> of Copenhagen reported

-that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> had been blown up by an internal

-explosion one evening as the officers and men

-were having tea. One half of the wreck sank immediately,

-the report went on to say, while the other

-floated for some time, enabling between 150 and 200

-of the crew to be rescued by one of the accompanying

-auxiliaries. The survivors, it was added, had been sworn

-to secrecy before reaching port—why this, no one can

-guess.</p>

-

-<p>The following day, the <i>National Tidende</i> published

-corroboration from a German merchant captain then

-in Denmark, to the effect that the “crew of the Karlsruhe

-had been brought home early in December, 1914,

-by the German liner, Rio Negro, one of the Karlsruhe’s

-escort ships.”</p>

-

-<p>Somewhat later, a Brooklyn man, wintering at Nassau,

-in the Bahamas, reported finding the raider’s motor

-pinnace on the shore of Abaco Island, north of Nassau.</p>

-

-<p>To this there is little to add. Admiral von Tirpitz,

-then the head of the German navy, says in his memoirs

-just this and no more:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“The commander of the <i>Karlsruhe</i>, Captain Köhler, never

-dreamt of taking advantage of the permission to make his

-way homeward; working with the auxiliary vessels in the

-Atlantic, surrounded by the English cruisers, but relying on

-his superior speed, he sought ever further successes, until he

-was destroyed with his ship by an explosion, the probable

-cause of which was some unstable explosive brought aboard.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>It is obvious from this that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> was given

-the option of returning home, having gained enough

-glory and sunk enough ships to satisfy a dozen admirals.

-But the main fact to be gleaned from Tirpit’s statement

-is that an internal explosion was the thing officially accepted

-by the head of the German admiralty as the cause

-of her disappearance. And this is the most likely of all

-the theories that have been or can be proposed. But, that

-said, we are still a long way from any satisfaction of

-our deeper curiosity. Where and when did the explosion

-take place? Under what circumstances? Did any escape

-and return to Germany to tell the tale?</p>

-

-<p>To these queries there are no positive answers. If the

-<i>Karlsruhe</i> was, as so often stated, accompanied by one

-or more auxiliaries or coaling ships, it seems incredible

-that all the crew can have been lost and quite beyond

-imagination that there was not even a distant witnessing

-of the accident. Yet this seems to have been the case.

-In spite of the report that a large part of the famous

-raider’s crew got safely home after the supposed explosion,

-I have searched and scouted through the German

-press and the German book lists for an account of the

-affair—all in vain. Not only that, but I am assured by

-reliable correspondents of the American press in Germany

-that nothing credible or authoritative has appeared.

-We have von Mücke’s book “The Emden,” published

-in the United States as early as 1917, and previously

-in Germany. We have the exploits of the

-<i>Moewe</i>, and we have the lesser adventures of the popular

-von Luckner and his craft. But of the famous <i>Karlsruhe</i>

-we have nothing at all, save rumors and gossip.</p>

-

-<p>The conclusion must be that the ship did break up

-somewhere in the deepest ocean, as the result of an explosion,

-while she was altogether unattended. She must

-have gone down with all her men, for not even the reports

-of finding bits of her wreckage have ever been

-verified. The mystery of her end is still much discussed

-among seafaring men and William McFee, in one of his

-tales, suggests that she lay hid up one of the South

-American rivers and came to grief there.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Even more fantastic than this, however, is the story

-of the great United States collier <i>Cyclops</i>. This vessel,

-of nineteen thousand tons displacement, five hundred

-and eighteen feet long, of sixty-five foot beam and

-twenty-seven foot draught, with a cargo capacity of

-twelve thousand five hundred tons, was built by the

-Cramps in Philadelphia in 1910. She was designed to

-coal the first-line fighting ships of our fleet while at sea

-and under way, by means of traveling cables from her

-arm-like booms. She had frequently accompanied our

-battleships abroad, had transported the marines to Cuba

-and the refugees from Vera Cruz to Galveston in April

-1914. On a trip to Kiel in 1911, she was wonderingly

-examined by the German naval critics and builders, who

-declared her to be a marvel of design and structure.</p>

-

-<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i351" style="max-width: 121.4375em;">

-  <img class="w100" src="images/i351.jpg" alt="">

-  <figcaption class="caption">

-

-<p class="small right">

-<i>Wide World.</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="center">~~ <i>U. S. S. CYCLOPS</i> ~~</p></figcaption>

-</figure>

-

-<p>On March 4, 1918, the <i>Cyclops</i> sailed from Barbados

-for an unnamed Atlantic port (Norfolk, as it proved),

-with a crew of 221 and 57 passengers, including

-Alfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States Consul

-General at Rio de Janeiro. She was due to arrive on

-March 13. When that date had come and nothing had

-been heard from her, it was announced that one of her

-two engines had been injured and she was proceeding

-slowly with the other engine compounded. But on April

-14 the news came out in the press that the great ship

-was a month overdue and totally unaccounted for.</p>

-

-<p>For a whole month the story had been veiled under

-the censorship while the Navy Department had been

-making every conceivable effort to find the ship or some

-evidence of her fate. There had been no news through

-her radio equipment since her departure from Barbados.

-There had been no heavy weather in that vicinity. She

-had been steaming in the well-traveled lane of ships

-passing between North and South America, yet not a

-vessel had spoken her, heard her radio call or seen

-her at any distance. Destroyers had been searching the

-whole Gulf, Caribbean, North and South Atlantic regions

-for three frantic weeks. They had not found so

-much as a life preserver belonging to the missing ship.</p>

-

-<p>The public mind immediately jumped to the conclusion

-that a German submarine had done this dirty piece

-of business, if an attack on an enemy naval vessel in

-time of war may be so listed. Alas, there were no German

-submarines so far from their home bases at that

-time or any proximate period. None had been reported

-by other vessels and the German admiralty has long

-since confirmed the understood fact that there was

-none abroad. A floating mine was next suspected, but

-the lower West Indies are a long distance from any

-mine field then in existence and a ship of the size of

-the <i>Cyclops</i>, even if mined, probably would have had

-time to use her radio, lower some boats and put some of

-her people afloat. At the very least, she must have left

-some flotsam to reach the beaches of the archipelago

-with its tragic meanings.</p>

-

-<p>The mystery was soon complicated. On May 6 a British

-steamer from Brazil brought news that two weeks

-after the due date of the <i>Cyclops</i> but still two weeks

-before her disappearance was announced, an advertisement

-had been published in a Portuguese newspaper at

-Rio announcing requiem mass for the repose of the soul

-of A. L. M. Gottschalk “lost when the <i>Cyclops</i> was

-sunk at sea.” Efforts were made by the secret agents

-of the American and Brazilian governments to discover

-the identity of the persons responsible for the advertisement,

-but nothing of worth was ever discovered. The

-notice was signed with the names of several prominent

-Brazilians, all of whom denied that they had the least

-knowledge of the matter. The rector of the church denied

-that any arrangement had been made for the mass

-and said he had not known Gottschalk. Some chose to

-believe that the advertisement had been inserted by German

-secret agents for the purpose of notifying the

-large number of Germans in Brazil that the Fatherland

-was still active in American waters.</p>

-

-<p>A rumor having no substance whatever was to the

-effect that the crew of the ship had revolted, overcome

-the officers and converted the ship into a German raider.

-A companion tale said the ship had sailed for Germany

-to deliver her cargo of manganese to the enemy, by

-whom this valuable metal was sorely needed. The only

-foundation for this rumor was the fact that the <i>Cyclops</i>

-was indeed carrying a load of manganese ore to the

-United States.</p>

-

-<p>It was not until August 30, 1918, that Secretary of

-the Navy Josephus Daniels announced that the ship was

-officially recorded as lost. At that time he notified the

-relatives of the officers, crew and passengers. More than

-three months later, on December 9th, Mr. Daniels supplemented

-this official notice with the statement, given

-to the newspaper correspondents, that “no reasonable

-explanation” of the <i>Cyclops</i> case could be given. And

-here the official news ends. At this writing, inquiry at

-the official source in Washington brings the answer that

-nothing has since been learned to alter the then issued

-statement.</p>

-

-<p>The <i>Cyclops</i> case naturally excited and disturbed the

-public mind, with the result of an unusual crop of

-fancies, lies, false alarms and hoaxes. On May 8, 1923,

-for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh reported

-that she had found a bottle at Atlantic City

-containing the message “<i>Cyclops</i> wrecked at Sea.—H.”

-This note was written on a piece of note paper torn

-from a memorandum book and was yellowed with age.

-The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealing

-wax—a substance which shipwrecked sailors do not have

-in their pockets at the moment of peril.</p>

-

-<p>Other such messages were found from time to time.

-One floated ashore at Velasco, Tex., also in a bottle. It

-read:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>“U. S. S. <i>Cyclops</i>, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25,

-Long. 35.11. All on board when German submarine fired on

-us. Lifeboats going to pieces. No one to be left to tell the

-tale.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The position indicated is midway between Hatteras

-and the Azores, where the <i>Cyclops</i> had no business and

-probably never was. It was found after the war, as already

-suggested, that no German submarine had been in

-any so distant region at the time. We may accordingly

-look upon this bottle as another flagon of disordered

-fancy, another press from the old “<i>spurlos versenkt</i>”

-madness.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, in their search for something that might explain

-this dark and baffling affair, the hunters came

-upon a suggestive fact. The commander of the <i>Cyclops</i>

-was Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It now

-came to light—and it struck many persons like a revelation—that

-this man was really G. W. Wichtman, that

-he was born a German; ergo, that he was the man responsible

-for this disaster to our navy. It proved true

-that Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, but

-he had been brought to the United States as a child and

-had spent twenty-six years in the American navy. No

-one in official position suspected him, but the professional

-Hun <i>strafers</i> insisted that this was the typical act

-of a German, no matter how long separated from his native

-land, how little acquainted with it or how long

-and faithfully attached to the service of his adopted

-country. It is only fair to the memory of a blameless

-officer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worley

-could not have done such a complete job had he wished

-to and that his record is officially without the least blemish.</p>

-

-<p>We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanations

-of the fate of the big collier. One possibility is

-that the manganese developed dangerous gases in the

-hold and caused a terrific explosion, which blew the ship

-out of the water without warning, killed almost all on

-board and so wrecked the boats that none could reach

-land. The only trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand

-ton ship, when destroyed by an explosion, is certain

-to leave a great mass of surface wreckage, which

-will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing

-vessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vessels

-sent out by the Navy Department visited every

-ness and cove and bay along the coast from Brazil to

-Hatteras, every island in the West Indies and every

-quarter of the circling seas without ever finding so

-much as a splinter belonging to the collier. Fishermen

-and boatmen in all the great region were questioned, encouraged

-with promises of reward and sent seeking, but

-they, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that great

-ship.</p>

-

-<p>This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disaster

-at the hands of a German raider or submarine.

-Besides, to emphasize the matter once more, the German

-records show that there is no possibility of anything

-of this sort. The suspicion has been officially and

-categorically denied and there is no reason for concealment

-now.</p>

-

-<p>There remains one further possibility, which probably

-conceals the truth. The <i>Cyclops</i>, like her sister

-ships, the <i>Neptune</i> and <i>Jupiter</i>, was topheavy. She carried,

-like them, six big steel derricks on a superstructure

-fifty feet from her main deck. This great weight aloft

-made it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she could

-not roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing.

-We have but to suppose that with her one crippled

-engine she ran into heavy weather or perhaps a tidal

-wave, that she heeled over suddenly, her cargo shifted

-and her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a few

-seconds. In that event there would have been no time

-for using the wireless, no chance to launch any boats.

-Also, with everything battened and tied down, ship-shape

-for a naval vessel travelling in time of war, especially

-if the weather was a little heavy, there is the

-strong possibility that nothing could have been loose

-to float free. In this manner the whole big ship with all

-her parts and all who rode upon her may have been

-dumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One of

-the floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in the

-previous year by the U 121 may have done the fatal

-rocking, it is true.</p>

-

-<p>There is no better explanation, and I have reason to

-know that an upset of this sort is the theory held by

-naval builders and naval officials generally. But certainly

-there is none and a satisfying answer is not likely to

-come from the graveyard of the deep.</p>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY">BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>

-</div>

-

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-

-<p>Note—the number in parenthesis after each reference indicates

-the chapter of this volume concerned.</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">“American Versus Italian Brigandage.—Life, Trial and Conviction

-of W. H. Westervelt,” Philadelphia, 1875. (1)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Atlay, James Beresford; “The Tichborne Case,” London,

-1916. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Austrian Archives, Letters from the, quoted in the New

-York <i>World</i>, Jan. 10 and 17, 1926. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Bierce, Ambrose; “Collected Works.” (15)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Bierce, Ambrose; “Letters of,” Edited by Bertha Pope, San

-Francisco, 1922. (15)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Crowe, Pat; “His Story, Confessions and Reformation,” New

-York, 1906. (8)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Crowe, Pat; “Spreading Evil,” New York, 1927. (8)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Faucigny-Lucigne, Mme. de.; “L’Archiduc Jean Salvator,”

-Paris. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Faustini, Arnaldo; “Gli Esploratori,” Turin, 1913. (16)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Faustini, Arnaldo; “Le Memorie dell’ ingegniere Andrée,”

-Milan, 1914. (16)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Felstead, Sidney Theodore (and Lady Muir); “Famous

-Criminals and their Trials,” London and New York,

-1926. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Fisher, H. W.; “The Story of Louise,” New York, 1912. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Garzon, Eugenio; “Jean Orth,” Paris, 1906. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Griffiths, Arthur; “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” London,

-1902. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Kenealy, Maurice Edward; “The Tichborne Tragedy,” London,

-1913. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Lachmabre, Henri, and Machuron, A.; “Andrée’s Balloon

-Expedition in Search of the North Pole,” New York,

-1898. (16)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Larisch, Countess Marie; “My Past,” London and New York,

-1913. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">“Letters from Andrée’s Party,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian

-Institution for 1897. (16)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Louise of Belgium, Princess; “My Own Affairs,” New York,

-(3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Louise Marie Amélie, Princess of Belgium; “Autour des

-trônes que j’ai vu tomber,” Paris, 1921. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Louisa of Tuscany, ex-Crown Princess of Saxony; “My

-Own Story,” London and New York, 1911. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">McWatters, George S.; “Detectives of Europe and America,”

-Hartford, 1877-1883. (11)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Minnigerode, Meade; “Lives and Times.” (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Orton, Arthur; “Confessions of,” London, 1908. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Parry, Edward Abbott; “Vagabonds All,” London, 1926. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Parton, James; “Life and Times of Aaron Burr,” Boston and

-New York, 1898. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Parton, James; “Famous Americans of Recent Times.” (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Blennerhassett, or the Decree of

-Fate,” Boston, 1901. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Theodosia, the First Gentlewoman

-of her Times,” Boston, 1907. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, V. 14,

-1916. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Report of the Select Committee of the Parliament of New

-South Wales on the Case of William Creswell, Sydney,

-1900. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Ross, Christian K.; “Charley Ross,” etc., Philadelphia, 1876;

-London, 1877. (1)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Safford, W. H.; “Life of Harman Blennerhassett,” 1850. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Safford, W. H.; “The Blennerhassett Papers,” Ed. by, Cincinnati,

-1864. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Starrett, Vincent; “Ambrose Bierce,” Chicago, 1920.</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Stoker, Bram; “Famous Impostors,” London. (5)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Tod, Charles Burr; “Life of Col. Aaron Burr,” etc., pamph.,

-New York, 1879. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Torelli, Enrico; “Mari d’Altesse,” Paris, 1913. (3)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Wandell, Samuel and Minnigerode, Meade; “Life of Aaron

-Burr,” New York, 1925. (2)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Walling, George W.; “Recollections of a New York Chief of

-Police,” New York, 1888. (1)</p>

-

-<p class="hangingindent">Westervelt, “Life Trial and Conviction of,” pamph., Philadelphia,

-1879. (1)</p>

-</div>

-

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-<div class="transnote">

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes:</h2>

-</div>

-

-

-<p>Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

-</p>

-

-<p>Some questionable spellings (e.g. Monterey instead of Monterrey) are

-retained from the original.</p>

-

-</div>

-<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***</div>

-</body>

-</html>

-

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+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Mysteries of the Missing, by Edward H. Smith—A Project Gutenberg eBook
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+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***</div>
+
+
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp47" id="cover" style="max-width: 112.0625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<h1>MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i004" style="max-width: 122.0625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i004.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+    <p class="center">~~ SCENE OF THE ABDUCTION OF CHARLIE ROSS ~~</p>
+    <p class="center">The Ross house, Washington Lane, Germantown, Pa.</p>
+    <p class="center"><i>From a sketch by W. P. Snyder</i></p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="double-border">
+<h2>MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING</h2>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><i>By</i>
+EDWARD H. SMITH</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center small"><i>Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc.</i></p>
+
+<p class="p4 center"></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp91" id="i005" style="max-width: 5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i005.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+
+<p class="p4 center"><span class="small">LINCOLN MAC VEAGH</span><br>
+THE DIAL PRESS<br>
+<span class="small">NEW YORK · MCMXXVII</span>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1924, by<br>
+<span class="smcap">Street and Smith Corporation</span><br>
+<br>
+Copyright, 1927, by<br>
+<span class="smcap">The Dial Press, Inc.</span></p>
+<p class="p6 center">
+MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br>
+BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">
+To<br>
+<br>
+JOSEPH A. FAUROT<br>
+<br>
+<span class="small">A GREAT FINDER OF WANTED MEN</span><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table>
+<tr><th class="small">CHAPTER</th><th></th><th class="small">PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td><a href="#A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING"><span class="smcap">A Note on Disappearing</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING">xi</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td><a href="#I"><span class="smcap">The Charlie Ross Enigma</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#I">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td><a href="#II">“<span class="smcap">Severed from the Race</span>”</a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#II">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td><a href="#III"><span class="smcap">The Vanished Archduke</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#III">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td><a href="#IV"><span class="smcap">The Stolen Conway Boy</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#IV">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td><a href="#V"><span class="smcap">The Lost Heir of Tichborne</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#V">82</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td><a href="#VI"><span class="smcap">The Kidnappers of Central Park</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VI">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td><a href="#VII"><span class="smcap">Dorothy Arnold</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VII">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td><a href="#VIII"><span class="smcap">Eddie Cudahy and Pat Crowe</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#VIII">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td><td><a href="#IX"><span class="smcap">The Whitla Kidnapping</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#IX">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td><td><a href="#X"><span class="smcap">The Mystery at Highbridge</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#X">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td><td><a href="#XI"><span class="smcap">A Nun in Vivisepulture</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XI">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td><td><a href="#XII"><span class="smcap">The Return of Jimmie Glass</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XII">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td><td><a href="#XIII"><span class="smcap">The Fates and Joe Varotta</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XIII">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td><td><a href="#XIV"><span class="smcap">The Lost Millionaire</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XIV">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td><td><a href="#XV"><span class="smcap">The Ambrose Bierce Irony</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XV">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td><td><a href="#XVI"><span class="smcap">The Adventure of the Century</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XVI">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td><td><a href="#XVII"><span class="smcap">Spectral Ships</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#XVII">292</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY"><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY">313</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table>
+<tr><td><a href="#i004"><span class="smcap">Scene of the Abduction of Charlie Ross</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i004"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2" class="tdr small">TO FACE PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i031"><span class="smcap">Charlie Ross</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i031">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i055"><span class="smcap">Theodosia Burr</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i055">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i069"><span class="smcap">Millie Stübel</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i069">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i083"><span class="smcap">Archduke Johann Salvator</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i083">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i123"><span class="smcap">Arthur Orton</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i123">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i141"><span class="smcap">Marion Clarke</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i141">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i159"><span class="smcap">Dorothy Arnold</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i159">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i181"><span class="smcap">Pat Crowe</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i181">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i241"><span class="smcap">Jimmie Glass</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i241">204</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i259"><span class="smcap">Joe Varotta</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i259">220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i281"><span class="smcap">Ambrose J. Small</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i281">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i303"><span class="smcap">Ambrose Bierce</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i303">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i325"><span class="smcap">Doctor Andrée</span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i325">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#i351"><span class="smcap"><i>U. S. S. Cyclops</i></span></a></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#i351">304</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And lo, between the sundawn and the sun,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His day’s work and his night’s work are undone;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And lo, between the nightfall and the light,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="attribution">
+—<i>Laus Veneris.</i><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_NOTE_ON_DISAPPEARING">A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit
+wished to bring tidings back no more and never to leave the
+place; there with the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed
+on lotus and forget the homeward way.”</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+<span class="smcap">The Odyssey</span>, Book IX.<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand
+and the Sirens from their Campanian isle, but still the
+sons of men go forth to strangeness and forgetfulness.
+What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds
+them in absence, we must try to read from their history,
+their psyche and the chemistry of their wandering souls.
+Some urgent whip of that divine vice, our curiosity,
+drives us to the exploration and will not relent until we
+discover whether they have been devoured by the Polyphemus
+of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or
+simply made drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.</p>
+
+<p>The unreturning adventurer—the man whose destiny
+is hid in doubt—has tormented the imagination in every
+century. In life the lost comrade wakes a more poignant
+curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of the
+true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the
+Etruscans slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila
+die of apoplexy in the arms of Hilda or shall we believe
+the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen and Volsunga sagas or
+the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it the genuine
+Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what
+of the two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of
+Dandhu Panth after he fled into Nepal in 1859; did he
+perish soon or is there truth in the tale of the finger
+burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died
+at Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege
+of the barn at Bloomfield?</p>
+
+<p>These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than
+any other minor facet of history, and the patient searching
+of scholars seems but to add to the popular confusion
+and to the charm of our doubts. Even where research
+seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling
+to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always
+sweeter than a sordid fact.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the modern world, so closely organized, so
+completely explored and so prodigiously policed, those
+enigmas continue to pile up. In our day it is an axiom
+that nothing is harder to lose sight of than a ship at sea
+or a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a paradox.
+It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name from
+a vessel, change her gear and peculiarities a little, paint
+a fresh word upon her side and so conceal her. Simpler
+still, why can’t any man, not too conspicuous or individual,
+step out of the crowd, alter the cut of his
+hair and clothes, assume another name and immediately
+be draped in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annual
+expenditure for ship registry and all sorts of marine
+policing on the one side, and an even greater sum for
+the land police, on the other, to prevent such things?
+Truly enough, and it is the police power of the earth,
+backed by certain plain or obscure motivations in mankind,
+that makes it next to impossible for a ship or a
+man to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part of
+our argument, we may note that, for all the difficulty,
+thousands of human beings try to vanish every year.
+Plainly there are many circumstances, many crises in
+the lives of men, women and children, that make a
+complete detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay,
+imperative. Yet, of the twenty-five thousand persons
+reported missing to the police of the City of New York
+every year, to take an instance, only a few remain permanently
+undiscovered. Most are mere stayouts or
+young runaways and are returned to their inquiring relatives
+within a few hours or days. Others are deserting
+spouses—husbands who have wearied or wives who have
+found new loves. These sometimes lead long chases before
+they are reported and identified, at which time the
+police have no more to do with the matter unless there
+is action from the domestic courts. A number are suicides,
+whose bodies soon or late rise from the city-engirdling
+waters and are, almost without fail, identified
+by the marvelously efficient police detectives in charge
+of the morgues. Some are pretended amnesics and a few
+are true ones. But in the end the police of the cities
+clear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in the year
+1924, the New York police department had on its books
+only one male and one female uncleared case originating
+in the year of 1918, or six years earlier. At the same
+time there were four male and six female cases dating
+from 1919, three male and one female cases that had
+originated in 1920, no male and three female cases that
+originated in 1921, three male and two female cases of
+the date of 1922, but in 1924 there were still pending,
+as the police say, twenty-eight male and sixty-three
+female cases of the year preceding, 1923.</p>
+
+<p>The point here is that only one man and one woman
+could stay hid from the searching eyes of the law as long
+as six years. Evidently the business of vanishing presents
+some formidable difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>However, it is not even these solitary absentees that
+engage our interest most sharply, for usually we know
+why they went and have some indication that they are
+alive and merely skulking. There is another and far
+rarer genus of the family of the missing, however, that
+does strike hard upon that explosive chemical of human
+curiosity. Here we have those few and detached inexplicable
+affairs that neither astuteness nor diligence, time
+nor patience, frenzy nor faith can penetrate—the true
+romances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment. A man
+goes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he is
+gone from all that knew him, all that was familiar.
+There is a gap in the environment and many lives are
+affected, nearly or remotely. No one knows the why or
+where or how of his going and all the power of men
+and materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass and
+these tales of puzzlement become legends. They are
+then things to brood about before the fire, when the
+moving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there are those strange instances of the theft
+of human beings by human beings—kidnappings, in the
+usual term. Nothing except a natural cataclysm is so
+excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion that there
+are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the
+public temper may result from such crimes will be seen
+from some of what follows. The most celebrated instance
+is, of course, the affair of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia,
+which carries us back more than half a century.
+We have here the classic American kidnapping case,
+already a tradition, rich in all the elements that make
+the perfect abduction tale.</p>
+
+<p>This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, as
+old as the races. From the Phoenicians who stole babes
+to feed to their bloody divinities, the Minoans who
+raped the youth of Greece for their bull-fights, and the
+priests of many lands who demanded maidens to satisfy
+the wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, down
+to the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or are
+said to steal, children for bridal gifts, we have this dread
+vein running through the body of our history. We need,
+accordingly, no going back into our phylogeny or biology,
+to understand the frenzy of the mother when
+the shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. The
+women of Normandy are said still to whisper with
+trembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or Retz), that
+bold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanne
+d’Arc, who seems to have been a stealer and killer of
+children, instead of the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard,
+as many believe. What terror other kidnappers
+have sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from the
+text.</p>
+
+<p>This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries,
+for such works exist in numbers. The author has
+limited himself to problems of disappearance and cases
+of kidnapping, thereby excluding many twice-told
+wonders—the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,
+Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s
+<i>Femme sans nom</i>, the changeling of Louis Philippe and
+the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair at Mayerling.</p>
+
+<p>Neither have I attempted any technical exploration
+of the conduct and motives of vanishers and kidnappers.
+It must be sufficiently clear that a man unpursued
+who flees and hides is out of tune with his environment,
+ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accent
+again the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included,
+are creatures of disease or defect.</p>
+
+<p>A general bibliography will be found at the end of
+the book. The information to be had from these volumes
+has been liberally supported and amplified from
+the files of contemporary newspapers in the countries
+and cities where these dramas of doubt were played.
+The records of legal trials have been consulted in instances
+where trials took place and I have talked with
+the accessible officials having knowledge of the cases or
+persons here treated.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+E. H. S.<br>
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>New York, August, 1927.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2>MYSTERIES OF THE
+MISSING
+</h2>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA</p>
+
+
+<p>Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh
+of June, 1874, two men in a shabby-covered
+buggy stopped their horse under the venerable
+elms of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepy
+suburb of Philadelphia, with its grave-faced revolutionary
+houses and its air of lavendered maturity. All about
+these intruders was historic ground. Near at hand was
+the Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washington
+and his tattered command in their famous encounter.
+Yonder stood the old Morris Mansion, where
+the British commander stood cursing the fog, while his
+troops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuous
+Agnew fell before a backwoods rifleman, and
+there Mad Anthony Wayne was forced to decamp by
+the fire of his confused left. Not far away the first
+American Bible had been printed, and that ruinous
+house on the ridge had once been the American Capitol.
+The whole region was a hive of memories.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, the men in the buggy gave no sign
+of interest in all these things. Instead, they devoted their
+attention to the two young sons of a grocer who happened
+to be playing among the bushes on their father’s
+property. The children were gradually attracted to confidence
+by the strangers, who offered them sweets and
+asked them who they were, where their parents were
+staying, how old they might be, and how they might
+like to go riding.</p>
+
+<p>The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary,
+tried to respond manfully, as his parents had taught
+him. He said that he was Walter Ross, and that his companion
+was his brother, Charlie, aged four. His mother,
+he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her older
+daughters, and his father was busy at the store in the
+business section of the settlement. Yes, that big, white
+house on the knoll behind them was where they lived.
+All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled off
+to his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into their
+buggy he demurred. The men got pieces of candy from
+their pockets, filled the hands of both children, and
+drove away.</p>
+
+<p>When the father of the boys came home a little later,
+he found his sons busy with their candy, and he was
+told where they had got it. He smiled and felt that the
+two men in the buggy must be very fond of children.
+Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmless
+incident of that forgotten summer afternoon was
+the prelude to the most famous of American abduction
+cases and the introduction to one of the abiding mysteries
+of disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftness
+came soon to be a matter of almost worldwide
+notoriousness—a case of kidnapping that stands firm in
+popular memory after the confusions of fifty-odd years.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of July 1, the strangers came again.
+This time they had no difficulty in getting the children
+into their wagon.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Saying that they were going to buy
+fire crackers for the approaching Fourth of July, they
+carried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and Richmond
+Streets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross was
+given a silver quarter and told to go into a shop and buy
+what he wanted. At the end of five or ten minutes the
+boy emerged to find his brother, his benefactors and
+their buggy gone.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial, the following
+year, that he had seen the men twice before, but this seems unlikely.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from his
+home in the toils of a strange city, stood on the curb and
+gave childish vent to his feelings. The sight of the boy
+with his hands full of fireworks and his eyes full of tears,
+soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peacock finally
+took charge of the youngster and got from him the
+name and address of his father. At about eight o’clock
+that evening he arrived at the Ross dwelling and delivered
+the child, to find that the younger boy had not
+been brought home, and that the father was out visiting
+the police stations in quest of his sons.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnapping
+was not immediately conceived, and it even got a hostile
+reception when the circumstances forced its entertainment.
+The father of the missing Charlie was Christian
+K. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was popularly
+supposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of a
+prosperous business at Third and Market streets, and
+master of a competence. His flourishing trade, the big
+house in which he lived with his wife and seven children,
+and the fine grounds about his home naturally caused
+many to believe that he was a man of large means. In
+view of these facts alone the theory of abduction should
+have been considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recited
+the details of his adventure with the men in a
+faithful and detailed way, telling enough about the talk
+and manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.
+Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit of
+the strangers. Finally, the manœuver of deserting the
+older boy and disappearing with his brother should have
+been sufficiently suggestive for the most lethargic policeman.
+Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took the
+skeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselves
+in the following advertisement, which I take from
+the <i>Philadelphia Ledger</i> of July 3:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Lost, on July 1st, a small boy, about four years of age,
+light complexion, and light curly hair. A suitable reward will
+be paid on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, corner
+of Fifth and Chestnut streets.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The advertisement was worded in this fashion to conceal
+the fact of the child’s vanishment from his mother,
+who was not called from her summer resort until some
+days later.</p>
+
+<p>The police were, however, not long allowed to rest on
+their comfortable assumption that the boy had been lost.
+On the fifth, Mr. Ross received a letter which had been
+dated and posted on the day before in Philadelphia. It
+stated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the writer,
+that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look for
+him through the police, and that the father would hear
+more in a few days. The note was scrawled by some one
+who was trying to conceal his natural handwriting and
+any literate attainments he may have possessed. Punctuation
+and capitals were almost absent, and the commonest
+words were so crazily misspelled as to betray
+purposiveness. The unfortunate father was addressed as
+“Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was later contracted
+to “Ros.” This missive and some of those that
+followed were signed “John.”</p>
+
+<p>Even this communication did not mean much to the
+police, though they had not, at that early stage of the
+mystery, the troublesome flood of crank letters to plead
+as an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter of fact, this
+first letter came before there had been anything but
+the briefest and most conservative announcements in the
+newspapers, and it should have been apparent to any one
+that there was nothing fraudulent about it. Yet the police
+officials dawdled. A second message from the
+mysterious John wakened them at last to action.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longer
+communication, unquestionably from the writer of the
+first, in which he was told that his appeal to the detectives
+would be vain. He must meet the terms of the
+ransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be the
+murderer of his own child. The writer declared that no
+power in the universe would discover the boy, or restore
+him to his father, without payment of the money, and
+he added that if the father sent detectives too near the
+hiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing the
+doom of his son. The letter closed with most terrifying
+threats. The kidnappers were frankly out to get money,
+and they would have it, either from Ross or from others.
+If he failed to yield, his child would be slain as an example
+to others, so that they would act more wisely
+when their children were taken. Ross would see his child
+either alive or dead. If he paid, the boy would be brought
+back alive; if not, his father would behold his corpse.
+Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified by
+the insertion of these words into the <i>Ledger</i>: “Ros, we
+be willing to negotiate.”</p>
+
+<p>Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the Charlie
+Ross terror burst upon Philadelphia and surrounding
+communities the following morning in full virulence.
+The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-going
+road, searched the trains and boats, went through all
+the craft lying in the rivers, spread the dragnet for all
+the known criminals in town and immediately began a
+house-to-house search, an almost unprecedented proceeding
+in a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatory
+with every fresh edition. At once the mad
+pack of anonymous letter writers took up the cry,
+writing to the police and to the unfortunate parents,
+who were forced to read with an anxious eye whatever
+came to their door, a most insulting and disheartening
+array of fulminations which caused the collapse of the
+already overburdened mother.</p>
+
+<p>In the fever which attacked the city any child was
+likely to be seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent,
+to the nearest police station, there to answer the suspicion
+of being Charlie Ross. Mothers with golden-haired
+boys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted to
+Christian Ross in an unending stream, demanding that
+he give them written attestation of the fact that their
+children were not his, and the poor beladen man actually
+wrote hundreds of such testimonials. The madness of the
+public went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice the
+age and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged before
+the officials by unbalanced busybodies. Little boys with
+black hair were apprehended by the score at the demand
+of citizens who pleaded that they might be the missing
+boy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were brought
+before the scornful police, and some of the self-appointed
+seekers for the missing boy had to be driven
+from the station houses with threats and blows.</p>
+
+<p>Following the command of the child snatchers with
+literal fidelity, Mr. Ross had published in the <i>Ledger</i>
+the words I have quoted. The result was a third epistle
+from the robbers. It recognized his reply, but made no
+definite proposition and gave no further orders, save
+the command that he reply in the <i>Ledger</i>, stating
+whether or not he was ready to pay the twenty thousand
+dollars. On the other hand, the letter continued the
+ferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughed
+at the police efforts as “children’s play,” and asked
+whether “Ros” cared more for money or his son. In this
+letter was the same labored effort to appear densely unlettered.
+One new note was added. The writer asked
+whether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousand
+pounds for the ransom of yu child.” Either the writer
+was, or wanted to seem, a Briton, used to speaking of
+money in British terms. This pretension was continued
+in some of the later letters and led eventually to a search
+for the missing boy in England.</p>
+
+<p>In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Ross
+relied absolutely on the police and put himself into their
+hands. He asked how he was to reply to the third letter
+and was told that he should pretend to acquiesce in the
+demand of the abductors, meantime actually holding
+them off and relying on the detectives to find the boy.
+But this subterfuge was quickly recognized by the abductors,
+with the result that a warning letter came to
+Mr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was told that he
+was pursuing the course of folly, that the detectives
+could not help him, and that he must choose at once between
+his money and the life of his child.</p>
+
+<p>Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors to
+yield to the demands of the extortioners, and several
+men of means offered him loans or gifts of such funds
+as he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he signified
+his intention of arriving at a bargain, and the
+mysterious John wrote him two or three well-veiled
+letters which were intended to test his good faith. At
+this point the father and the abductors seemed about to
+agree, when the officials again intervened and caused
+the grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisement
+that he would not compound a felony by
+paying money for the return of his child. But this stand
+had hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful anxiety
+caused another change of front.</p>
+
+<p>Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effect
+in more than one direction. Its most serious consequence
+was that it gave the abductors the impression
+that they were dealing with a man who did not know
+his own mind, could not be relied upon to keep his
+promises, and was obviously in the control of the officers.
+Accordingly they moved with supercaution and
+began to impose impossible conditions. By this time they
+had written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozen
+letters, each containing more terrifying threats than its
+antecedents. To look this correspondence over at this
+late day is to see the nervousness of the abductors, slowly
+mounting to the point of extreme danger to the child.
+But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was overpersuaded
+by official opinion.</p>
+
+<p>At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunder
+of all blunders was made. Philadelphia was tremulous
+with excitement. The police of every American city
+were looking for the apparition of the boy or his kidnappers.
+Officials in the chief British and Continental
+ports were watching arriving ships for the fugitives,
+and millions of newspaper readers were following the
+case in eager suspense. Naturally the police and the other
+officials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the world
+were upon them. They quite humanly decided on a
+course calculated to bring them celebrity in case of
+success and ample justification in case of failure. In
+other words, they made the gesture typical of baffled
+officialdom, without respect to the safety of the missing
+child or the real interests of its parents. At a meeting
+presided over by the mayor, attended by leading citizens
+and advised by the chiefs of the police, a reward of
+twenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransom
+demanded, was subscribed and advertised. The
+terms called for “evidence leading to the capture and
+conviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross and the
+safe return of the child,” conditions which may be
+cynically viewed as incongruous. The following day the
+chief of police announced that his men, should they
+participate in the successful coup, would claim no part
+of the reward.</p>
+
+<p>All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducement
+to informers, the hope being, apparently, that some
+one inside the kidnapping conspiracy would be bribed
+into revelations. But the actual result was quite the opposite.
+A sudden hush fell upon the writer of the letters.
+Also, there were no more communications in the <i>Ledger</i>.
+A week passed without further word, and the parents
+of the boy were thrown into utter hopelessness. Finally
+another letter came, this time from New York, whereas
+all previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It was
+clear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductors
+to leave the city, and their letter showed that
+they had slipped away with their prisoner, in spite of the
+vaunted precautions.</p>
+
+<p>The next note from the criminals warned Ross in
+terms of impressive finality that he must at once abandon
+the detectives and come to terms. He signified his
+intention of complying by inserting an advertisement in
+the <i>New York Herald</i>, as directed by the abductors.
+They wrote him that they would shortly inform him of
+the manner in which the money was to be paid over.
+Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Ross
+to procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes of
+small denomination. These he was to place in a leather
+traveling bag, which was to be painted white so that it
+might be visible at night. With this bag of money, Ross
+was to board the midnight train for New York on the
+night of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform,
+ready to toss the bag to the track. As soon as he should
+see a bright light and a white flag being waved, he was
+to let go the money, but the train was not to stop until
+the next station was reached. In case these conditions
+were fully and faithfully met, the child would be restored,
+safe and sound, within a few hours.</p>
+
+<p>Ross, after consultation with the police, decided to
+temporize once more. He got the white painted bag, as
+commanded, and took the midnight train, prepared to
+change to a Hudson River train in New York and continue
+his journey to Albany, as the abductors had further
+instructed. But there was no money in the valise.
+Instead, it contained a letter in which Ross said that
+he could not pay until he saw the child before him. He
+insisted that the exchange be made simultaneously and
+suggested that communication through the newspapers
+was not satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed all
+plans to the police. Some closer and secret way of communicating
+must be devised, he wrote.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i031" style="max-width: 81.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i031.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ CHARLIE ROSS ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode to
+New York on the rear platform of one train and to
+Albany on another. But the agent of the kidnappers did
+not appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia crestfallen,
+only to find that a false newspaper report had
+caused the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announced
+that Ross was going West to follow up a clew.
+The kidnappers had seen this and decided that their man
+was not going to make the trip to New York and Albany.
+Consequently there was no one along the track to
+receive the valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductors
+would have laughed at the empty police dodge
+of suggesting a closer and secret method of communication—for
+the purpose of betraying the malefactors, of
+course.</p>
+
+<p>From this point on, Ross and the abductors continued
+to argue, through the <i>New York Herald</i>, the question of
+simultaneous exchange of the boy and money. Ross naturally
+took the position that he could not risk being imposed
+on by men who perhaps did not have the child at
+all. The robbers, on their side, contended that they
+could not see any safe way of making a synchronous exchange.
+So the negotiations dragged along.</p>
+
+<p>The New York police entered the case on August 2,
+when Chief Walling sent to Philadelphia for the letters
+received by Mr. Ross from the abductors. They were
+taken to New York by Captain Heins of the Philadelphia
+police, and “Chief Walling’s informant identified
+the writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”</p>
+
+<p>In order to draw the line between fact and fable as
+clearly as possible at this point, I quote from official police
+sources, namely, “Celebrated Criminal Cases of
+America,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain of police, San
+Francisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says that
+his facts have been “verified with the assistance of police
+officials throughout the country.” He continues with
+respect to the Ross case:</p>
+
+<p>“The informant then stated that in April, 1874—the
+year in question—Mosher and Joseph Douglas, alias
+Clark, endeavored to persuade him to participate in the
+kidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt children, while the
+child was playing on the lawn surrounding the family
+residence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)
+The child was to be held until a ransom of fifty
+thousand dollars was obtained, and the informant’s part
+of the plot would be to take the child on a small launch
+and keep it in seclusion until the money was received,
+but he declined to enter into the conspiracy.”</p>
+
+<p>With all due respect to the police and to official versions,
+this report smells strongly of fabrication after the
+fact, as we shall see. It is, however, true that the New
+York police had some sort of information early in August,
+and it may even be true that they had suspicions
+of Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A history
+of subsequent events will give the surest light on this
+disputed point.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations between Ross and the abductors
+continued in a desultory fashion, without any attempt
+to deliver the child or get the ransom, until toward the
+middle of November. At this time the kidnappers arranged
+a meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.
+Mr. Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousand
+dollars in a package. A messenger was to call for
+this some time during the day. His approach and departure
+had been carefully planned. In case he was
+watched or followed, he would not find the abductors
+on his return, and the child would be killed. Only good
+faith could succeed. Mr. Ross was to insert in the <i>New
+York Herald</i> a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus, Fifth
+Avenue Hotel—instant.” This would indicate his decision
+to pay the money and signify the day he would
+be at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly the father of the missing boy had the
+advertisement published, saying that he would be at the
+hotel with the money “Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.”
+Ross’ brother and nephew kept the tryst, but no messenger
+came for the money, and the last hope of the
+family seemed broken.</p>
+
+<p>The Rosses had long since given up the detectives and
+recognized the futility of police promises. The father of
+the boy had, in his distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentary
+sentiments pertaining to the guardians of
+the law, with the result that the unhappy man was subjected
+to taunt and insult and the questioning of his
+motives. Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkerton
+detectives, who evidently counseled Mr. Ross to act in
+secret. In any event, the appointment at the Fifth Avenue
+Hotel was the last of its kind to be made, though
+Ross and the abductors seemed to have been in contact
+at later dates. Whatever the precise facts may be on this
+point, five months had soon gone by without the recovery
+of the boy, or the apprehension of the kidnappers,
+while search was apparently being made in many countries.
+If, as claimed, Chief Walling of the New York
+police had direct information bearing on the identity
+of the abductors the first week in August, he managed
+a veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and his men failed,
+in four months, to find a widely known criminal who
+was afterward shown to have been in and about New
+York all of that time. Not the police, but a stroke of
+destiny, intervened to break the impasse.</p>
+
+<p>On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglars
+entered the summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt,
+presiding justice of the appellate division of the New
+York supreme court. This mansion stood overlooking
+New York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge section
+of Brooklyn. The villa was then unoccupied, but in the
+course of the preceding summer Justice Van Brunt had
+installed a burglar alarm system which connected with
+a gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt,
+about two hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hot
+weather residence. Holmes Van Brunt occupied his
+house the year around. He was at home on the night in
+question, and the sounding of the gong brought him out
+of bed. He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the young
+man came back with the report that there was a light
+moving in his uncle’s place.</p>
+
+<p>Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men from
+their quarters, armed them with revolvers or shotguns
+and went out to trap the intruders. The house of Justice
+Van Brunt was surrounded by the four men, who
+waited for the burglars to emerge. After half an hour
+two figures were seen to issue from the cellar door and
+were challenged. They answered by opening fire. The
+first was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The second
+ran around the house, only to be intercepted by young
+Van Brunt and shot down, dying instantly.</p>
+
+<p>When the Van Brunts and their servants gathered
+about the wounded man, who was lying on the sodden
+ground in the agony of death, he signified that he wished
+to make a statement. An umbrella was held over him to
+keep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences,
+that he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companion
+was William Mosher. He understood he was dying
+and therefore wished to tell the truth. He and
+Mosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He did
+not know where the child was, but Mosher could tell.
+Mr. Van Brunt told him that Mosher was dead, and the
+body of the other burglar was carried over and exhibited
+to the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the child
+would be returned safely in a few days. On hearing one
+of the party express doubt about his story, Douglas is
+said to have remarked:</p>
+
+<p>“Chief Walling knows all about us and was after us,
+and now he has us.”</p>
+
+<p>Douglas died there on the lawn, with the rain drenching
+his tortured body. Both he and Mosher were identified
+from the police records by officers who had known
+them and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man who had
+seen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantown
+with the two boys, were taken to New York.
+The brother of the kidnapped child, though he was purposely
+kept in the dark as to his mission, immediately
+recognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,
+saying that Douglas was the one who gave the
+candy, and that Mosher had driven the horse. This identification
+was confirmed by the other witness.</p>
+
+<p>The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiously
+and hourly expected. But he had not arrived at the end
+of a week, and the police officials immediately moved
+in new directions.</p>
+
+<p>Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt,
+of New York, a former police officer, who was later
+convicted of complicity in the abduction. Westervelt
+and Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-time
+policeman made a rambling statement containing little
+information, but his sister admitted that she had been
+privy to the matter of the kidnapping. She had known
+for several months, she said, that her husband had kidnapped
+Charlie Ross, but she had not been consulted
+in his planning, and did not know where he had kept
+the child hidden, and was unable to give any information.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed the
+child to be alive and stated her reasons. She did not believe
+her husband, burglar and kidnapper though he was,
+capable of injuring a child. He had four of his own
+and had always been a good father. The poverty of his
+family had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs.
+Mosher related, she had pleaded with her husband to
+return the stolen boy to his parents, saying that it was
+cruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be little
+chance of collecting the ransom safely, and that the
+danger to the abductors was becoming greater every
+day. This conversation, she said, had taken place only a
+few days before the Van Brunt burglary and Mosher’s
+death. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed that
+the child should be sent home, she felt sure it was still
+living.</p>
+
+<p>But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of his
+abductors only intensified the quest for the boy. Detectives
+were sent to Europe, to Mexico, to the Pacific
+coast, and to various other places, whither false clews
+pointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Ross
+himself, in the course of the next few years, made hundreds
+of journeys to look at suspected children in all
+parts of the United States. He spent, according to his
+own account, more than sixty thousand dollars on these
+hopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resulted
+as had all the others. At last, after more than twenty
+years of seeking, Christian K. Ross gave up in despair,
+saying he felt sure the boy must be dead.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after the kidnappers had been killed
+and identified, a large part of the American public suspected
+that Westervelt or Mrs. Mosher, or some one
+connected with them, was detaining the missing child
+for fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its return
+home. The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enough
+to observe, remember and talk. He might, if released,
+give information that would lead to the imprisonment
+of Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,
+steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise.
+The Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, in
+February, 1875, which fixed the penalty for abducting
+or detaining a child at twenty-five years’ imprisonment,
+but the new law contained a proviso that any person or
+persons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriff
+on or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875,
+should be immune from any punishment. At the same
+time Mr. Ross offered a cash reward of five thousand
+dollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no questions
+asked. He named more than half a dozen responsible
+firms at whose places of business the child
+might be left for identification, announcing that all
+these business houses were prepared to pay the reward
+on the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in the
+boy would not be detained.</p>
+
+<p>All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last to
+be reached that the boy was beyond human powers of
+restoration.</p>
+
+<p>To tell what seems to have been the truth—though it
+was suspected at the time—the New York police had
+fairly reliable information on Mosher and Douglas
+soon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though he
+never openly said so, to have been informed by a brother
+of Mosher’s who was on bad terms with the kidnapper.
+Not long afterwards he had Westervelt brought in for
+questioning. That worthy had been dismissed from the
+New York police force a few months earlier for neglect
+of duty or shielding a policy room. His sister was
+Bill Mosher’s (the suspected man’s) wife and it was
+known that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia about
+the time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying,
+by every device, to get himself reinstated as a
+policeman, and Walling held out to him the double bait
+of renewed employment and the whole of the twenty
+thousand dollars of reward offered for the return of
+the boy and the capture of the kidnappers.</p>
+
+<p>Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidity
+seems to have been committed, for though Westervelt
+visited the chief of police no fewer than twenty
+times, he was never trailed to his scores of appointments
+with his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neither
+did the astute guardians of the law get wind of the fact
+that Mosher and Douglas were in and about New York
+most of the time. They failed to find out that Westervelt
+and probably one of the others had been seen with
+the little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed to
+make the least progress in the case, though they had
+definite information concerning the names of the kidnappers,
+both of them experienced criminals with long
+records. It might be hard to discover a more dreadful
+piece of police bluffing and blundering. First the Philadelphia
+and then the New York forces gave the poorest
+possible advice, made the most egregious boasts and
+promises and then proceeded to show the most incredible
+stupidity and lack of organization. A later prosecutor
+summed it all up when he said the police had
+been, at least, honest.</p>
+
+<p>But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed at
+Judge Van Brunt’s house and Douglas had made his dying
+statements, it was easy to lure Westervelt to Philadelphia,
+arrest him, charge him with aiding the kidnappers
+and his wife with having been an accessory. Walter
+Ross had identified Mosher and Douglas as the men who
+had been in the buggy but had never seen Westervelt.
+A neighboring merchant appeared, however, and picked
+him out as the man who had spent half an hour in his
+shop a few weeks after the kidnapping, asking many
+questions about the Rosses, especially as to their financial
+position and the rumor that Christian K. Ross was bankrupt.
+Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge the
+day before Mosher and Douglas broke into the Van
+Brunt house and were killed. A woman appeared who
+had seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn horse-car with
+a child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon reasonably
+clear that the one-time New York policeman had
+conspired with his brother-in-law and the other man to
+seize the boy and get the ransom. Westervelt’s motives
+were rancor at being caught at his tricks and dismissed
+and financial necessity, for he was almost in want after
+his discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparations
+for the kidnapping, had the boy in his charge for
+a time and used his standing as a former officer to hoodwink
+the New York police. He had also had to do with
+some of the ransom letters.</p>
+
+<p>On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trial
+in the Court of Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, Judge
+Elcock presiding. Theodore V. Burgin and George J.
+Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Brunts
+waylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’
+dying story. The witnesses above mentioned told
+their versions of what they had heard and observed. A
+porter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking resort at 74
+Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestial
+hordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Tavern
+drinking and consulting with Mosher and Douglas,
+that he had boasted he could name the kidnappers and
+that he had arranged for secret signals to reveal the
+presence of the two confederates now dead. Chief
+Walling also testified against the man. The jury returned
+a verdict of guilty on three counts of the indictment,
+reaching its decision on September 20, after long deliberation.
+On October 9, Judge Elcock sentenced the
+disgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinement
+at labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.</p>
+
+<p>Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admit
+that the decision against him was just, confess that he
+had taken any part in the kidnapping or yield the least
+hint as to the fate of the unfortunate little boy.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearful
+vigil of the parents in such a case. In his book, Christian
+K. Ross recites, without improper emotion, that,
+not counting the cases looked into for him by the Pinkertons,
+he personally or through others investigated two
+hundred and seventy-three children reported to be the
+lost Charlie. In every case there was a mistake or a deception.
+Some of the lads put forward were old enough
+to have been conventional uncles to him.</p>
+
+<p>In the following decades many strange rumors were
+bruited, many false trails followed to their empty endings,
+and many spurious or unbalanced claimants investigated
+and exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did not
+die down for a full generation, and even to-day mothers
+in the outlying States frighten their children into
+obedience with the name and rumor of this stolen boy.
+He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of pathos
+and terror for the generations.</p>
+
+<p>As recently as June 5 of the current year, the <i>Los
+Angeles Times</i>, a journal staid to reaction, printed long
+and credulous sticks of type to the effect that John W.
+Brown, ill in the General Hospital of Los Angeles, was
+really the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue “confessed”
+that he had remained silent for fifty years in
+order to “guard the honor of my mother” and said he
+had been kidnapped by his “foster-father, William
+Henry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross “declined
+to have anything further to do with him.”</p>
+
+<p>Comment upon such caddism can be clinical only.
+The fact that the wretch who uttered it was sick and
+dying alone explains the fevered hallucination.</p>
+
+<p>As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind of
+an item suggesting the discovery of Charlie Ross is always
+good copy and will be telegraphed about the
+country from end to end, and printed at greater or
+lesser length. If the thing has the least aura of credibility
+about it, Sunday features will follow, remarkable
+mainly for their inaccuracies. In other words, that sad
+little boy of Washington Lane long since became a classic
+to the American press.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of more than fifty years the commentator
+can hazard no safer opinion on the probable fate of
+Charlie Ross than did his contemporaries. The popular
+theories then were that he had died of grief and privation,
+that Mosher had drowned him in New York Bay
+when he felt the police were near at hand, or that he
+had been adopted by some distant family and taught to
+forget his home and parents. Of these hollow guesses,
+the reader may take his choice now as then.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”</p>
+
+
+<p>Headless horsemen and other strange ghostly
+figures march nightly on the beach at Nag’s
+Head. For more than two years these shades
+and spectres have been seen and Coast Guardsman
+Steve Basnight has been trying vainly to convince his
+fellows. They have laughed upon him with sepulchral
+laughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. They
+have chided him as a seer of visions, a mad hallucinant.</p>
+
+<p>But now there are others who have seen and fled. Mrs.
+Alice Grice, passing the lonely sands in her motor, had
+trouble with the engine and saw or thought she saw
+a man standing there, brooding across the waters. She
+called to him and he, as one shaken from some immortal
+reverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seeming
+quite to walk, but floating into the fog, silent and serene.</p>
+
+<p>Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglers
+or rum runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyes
+of terror. But that cannot be so, for the coast guard is
+staunch and active. This is no ordinary visitor, no thing
+of flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restless
+spirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave and
+come to haunt this wild and forlorn region.</p>
+
+<p>George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelled
+being most closely and accurately. It is a tall,
+great man, clad in purest white, strolling along the
+beach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer than
+the sad and dreaming face.</p>
+
+<p>It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter,
+whose wrecked ship is believed by many to have been
+driven ashore at this point.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the lasting charm of doubt, since I take
+my substance here, and most of my mystery, from the
+<i>New York World</i> of June 9, 1927, contained in a dispatch
+from Manteo, N. C., bearing the date of the previous
+day—one hundred and fifteen years after the
+happening.</p>
+
+<p>But if we see Aaron Burr ghostwalking in the moonlight
+as once he trod in the tortured flesh at the Battery,
+looking out upon those bitter waters that denied him
+hope, or if we believe, with many writers, that he fell
+upon his knees and cried out, “By this blow I am severed
+from the human race!” we are still not much nearer to
+the pathos or the mystery of that old incident in 1812,
+when Theodosia Burr set out for New York by sea
+and never reached it.</p>
+
+<p>“By and by,” says Parton in his “The Life and Times
+of Aaron Burr,” “some idle tales were started in the
+newspapers, that the <i>Patriot</i> had been captured by pirates
+and all on board murdered except Theodosia, who
+was carried on shore as a captive.”</p>
+
+<p>Idle tales they may have been, but their vitality has
+outlived the pathetic facts. Indeed, unless probability
+be false and romance true, “the most brilliant woman of
+her day in America” perished at sea a little more than
+a hundred and fifteen years ago, caught off the Virginia
+Capes in a hurricane that scattered the British war fleet
+and crushed the “miserable little pilot boat” that was
+trying to bear her to New York. In that more than
+a century of intervening time, however, a tradition of
+doubt has clouded itself about the quietus of Aaron
+Burr’s celebrated daughter which puts her story immovably
+upon the roster of the great mysteries of disappearance.
+The various accounts of piratical atrocities
+connected with her death may be fanciful or even
+studiedly fictive, but even this realization does nothing
+to dispel the fog.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosia Burr was born in New York in 1783 and
+educated under the unflagging solicitude and careful
+personal direction of her distinguished father, who
+wanted her to be, as he testifies in his letters, the equal
+of any woman on earth. To this enlightened training
+the precious girl responded with notable spirit and intellectual
+acquisitiveness, mastering French as a child
+and becoming proficient in Latin and Greek before she
+was adolescent. At fourteen, her mother having died
+some years earlier, she was already mistress of the house
+of the New York senator and a figure in the best political
+society of the times. As a slip of a girl she played
+hostess to Volney, Talleyrand, Jerome Bonaparte and
+numberless other notables, and bore, in addition to her
+repute as a bluestocking, the name of a most beautiful
+and charming young woman. Something of her quality
+may be read from her numerous extant letters, two of
+which are quoted below.</p>
+
+<p>In 1801, just after her father had received the famous
+tied vote for the Presidency and declined to enter into
+the conspiracy which aimed to prefer him to Jefferson,
+recipient of the popular majority, Theodosia Burr was
+married to Joseph Alston, a young Carolina lawyer and
+planter who later became governor of his state. Thus,
+about the time her father was being installed as Vice-President,
+his happy and adoring daughter, his friend
+and confidante to the end, was making her twenty days’
+journey to her new home in South Carolina, where her
+husband owned a residence in Charleston and several
+rice plantations in the northern part of the state.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the famous duel with Hamilton, in
+1804, Burr was still Vice-President, still one of the chief
+political figures and at the very height of his popularity
+and fortune, an elevation from which that unfortunate
+encounter began his dislodgment. Theodosia
+was in the South with her husband at the time and knew
+nothing either of the challenge or of the duel itself until
+weeks after Hamilton was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Of the merits of the Burr-Hamilton controversy or
+the right and wrong of either man’s conduct little need
+be said here. As time goes on it becomes more and more
+apparent that Burr in no way exceeded becoming conduct
+or violated the gentlemanly code as then practised.
+Hamilton had been his persistent and by no means always
+honorable enemy. He had attacked and not infrequently
+belied his opponent, thwarting him where
+he could politically and even resorting to the use of his
+personal connections for the private humiliation of his
+foe. The answer in 1804 to such tactics was the challenge.
+Burr gave it and insisted on satisfaction. Hamilton
+met him on the heights at Weehawken, across the
+Hudson from New York, and fell mortally wounded
+at the first exchange, dying thirty-one hours later.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident from a reading of the newspapers of the
+time and from the celebrated sermon on Hamilton’s
+death delivered by Dr. Nott, later president of Union
+College, that duelling was then so common that there
+existed “a preponderance of opinion in favor of it,”
+and that the spot at which Hamilton fell was so much
+in use for affairs of honor that Dr. Nott apostrophized
+it as “ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned with the
+richest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record against
+us, the annual register of murders which you keep and
+send up to God!” Nevertheless, the town was shocked
+by the death of Hamilton, and Burr’s enemies seized the
+moment to circulate all manner of absurd calumnies
+which gained general credence and served to undo the
+victorious antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>It was reported that Hamilton had not fired at all, a
+story which was refuted by his powder-stained empty
+pistol. Next it was charged that Burr had coldly shot his
+opponent down after he had fired into the air. The fact
+seems to be that Hamilton discharged his weapon a
+fraction of a second after Burr, just as he was struck by
+his adversary’s ball. Hamilton’s bullet cut a twig over
+Burr’s head. The many yarns to the general effect that
+Burr was a dead shot and had practised secretly for
+months before he sent the challenge seem also to belong
+to the realm of fiction. Burr was never an expert with
+fire-arms, but he was courageous, collected and determined.
+He had every right to believe, from Hamilton’s
+past conduct, that his opponent would show him no
+mercy on the field. Both men were soldiers and acquainted
+with the code and with the use of weapons.</p>
+
+<p>But Hamilton’s friends were numerous, powerful and
+bitter. They left nothing undone that might bring
+upon Burr the fullest measure of public and private
+reprehension. The results of their campaign were peculiar,
+inasmuch as Burr lost his influence in the states
+which had formerly been the seat of his power and
+gained a high popularity in the comparatively weak new
+western states, where Hamilton and the Federalist leaders
+were regarded with hostility. At the expiration of his
+term of office Burr found himself politically dead and
+practically exiled by the charges of murder which had
+been lodged against him both in New York and New
+Jersey.</p>
+
+<p>The duel and its consequences marked the beginning
+of the Burr misfortunes. Undoubtedly the ostracism
+which greeted him after his retirement from office was
+the immediate fact which moved him to undertake his
+famous enterprise against the West and Mexico, an
+adventure that resulted in his trial for treason. The fact
+that he was acquitted, even with the weight of the
+government and the personal influence of President
+Jefferson, his onetime friend, thrown against him, did
+not save him from still further popular dislike, and he
+was at length forced to leave the country. It was in the
+course of this exile in Europe that Theodosia wrote him
+the well known letter from which I quote an illuminating
+extract:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder
+at every new misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
+you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other
+men; I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
+admiration, reverence, love and pride, that very little
+superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
+superior being; such enthusiasm does your character excite
+in me. When I afterwards revert to myself, how insignificant
+my best qualities appear. My vanity would be greater if I
+had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is our
+relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter
+of such a man.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Burr remained abroad for four years, trying vainly to
+interest the British government and then Napoleon in
+various schemes of privateering. The net result of his
+activities in England was an order to leave the country.
+Nor did Burr fare any better in France. Napoleon
+simply refused to receive him and the American’s past
+acquaintance with and hospitable treatment of the emperor’s
+brother, once king of Westphalia, failed to avail
+him. Consequently, Burr slipped back into the United
+States in 1812, quite like a thief in the night, not certain
+what reception he might get and even fearful lest Hamilton’s
+wildest partisans might actually undertake to
+throw him into jail and try him for the shooting of their
+chief. The reception he got was hostile and suspicious
+enough, but there was no attempt to proceed legally.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosia, who had never ceased to work in her
+father’s interest, writing to everyone she knew and beseeching
+all those who had been her friends in the days
+of Burr’s ascendancy, in an effort to clear the way for
+his return to his native land, was overjoyed at the homecoming
+of her parent and expressed her pleasure in various
+charmingly written letters, wherein she promised
+herself the excitement of a trip to New York as soon
+as arrangements could be made.</p>
+
+<p>But the Burr cup of misfortune was not yet full.
+That summer Theodosia’s only child, Aaron Burr Alston,
+sickened and died in his twelfth year, leaving the
+mother prostrated and the grandfather, who had doted
+on the boy, supervised his education and centered all
+his hopes upon him, bereft of his composure and optimism,
+possibly for the first time in his varied and
+tempestuous life. Mrs. Alston’s letters at this time deserve
+at least quotation:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“A few miserable days past, my dear father, and your late
+letters would have gladdened my soul; and even now I rejoice
+in their contents as much as it is possible for me to
+rejoice at anything; but there is no more joy for me; the
+world is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child is gone for
+ever. He expired on the thirtieth of June. My head is not
+sufficiently collected to say any thing further. May Heaven,
+by other blessings, make you some amends for the noble
+grandson you have lost.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Whichever way I turn the same anguish still assails me.
+You talk of consolation. Ah! you know not what you have
+lost. I think Omnipotence could give me no equivalent for
+my boy; no, none—none.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This was the woman who set out a few months later,
+sadly emaciated and very weak, to join her father in
+New York, hoping that she might gain strength and
+hope again from the burdened but undaunted man who
+never yet had failed her.</p>
+
+<p>The second war with England was in progress. Theodosia’s
+husband was governor of South Carolina, general
+of the state militia and active in the field. He could
+not leave his post. Accordingly, the plan of making the
+trip overland in her own coach was abandoned and
+Mrs. Alston decided to set sail in the <i>Patriot</i>, a small
+schooner which had put into Charleston after a privateering
+enterprise. Parton says that “she was commanded
+by an experienced captain and had for a sailing
+master an old New York pilot, noted for his skill and
+courage. The vessel was famous for her sailing qualities
+and it was confidently expected she would perform the
+voyage to New York in five or six days.” On the other
+hand, Burr himself referred to the ship bitterly as “the
+miserable little pilot boat.”</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the precise facts, the <i>Patriot</i> was made
+ready and Theodosia went aboard with her maid and
+a personal physician, whom Burr had sent south from
+New York to attend his daughter on the voyage. The
+guns of the <i>Patriot</i> had been dismounted and stored
+below. To give her further ballast and to defray the
+expenses of the trip, Governor Alston filled the hold
+with tierces of rice from his plantations. The captain
+carried a letter from Governor Alston addressed to the
+commander of the British fleet, which was lying off the
+Capes, explaining the painful circumstances under
+which the little schooner was voyaging and requesting
+safe passage to New York. Thus occupied, the <i>Patriot</i>
+put out from Charleston on the afternoon of December
+30th and crossed the bar on the following morning.
+Here fact ends and conjecture begins.</p>
+
+<p>When, after the elapse of a week, the <i>Patriot</i> had not
+reached New York, Burr began to worry and to make
+inquiries, but nothing was to be discovered. He could
+not even be sure until the arrival of his son-in-law’s
+letter, that Theodosia had set sail. Even then, he hoped
+there might be some mistake. When a second letter
+from the South made it plain that she had gone on the
+<i>Patriot</i>, Burr still did not abandon hope and we see the
+picture of this sorely punished man walking every day
+from his law office in Nassau street to the fashionable
+promenade at the Battery, where he strolled up and
+down, oblivious to the hostile or impertinent glances of
+the vulgar, staring out toward the Narrows—in vain.</p>
+
+<p>The poor little schooner was never seen again nor did
+any member of her crew reach safety and send word of
+her end. In due time came the report of the hurricane
+off Cape Hatteras, three days after the departure of the
+<i>Patriot</i>. Later still it was found that the storm had
+been of sufficient power to scatter the British fleet and
+send other vessels to the bottom. In all probability the
+craft which bore Theodosia had foundered with all
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, every other possibility came to be considered.
+It was at first believed that the <i>Patriot</i> might
+have been taken by a British man-of-war and held on
+account of her previous activities. Before this could be
+disproved it was suggested that the schooner might
+readily have been attacked by pirates, since her guns
+were stored below decks, and Mrs. Alston taken
+prisoner. Since there were still a few buccaneers in
+Southern waters, who sporadically took advantage of
+the preoccupation of the maritime powers with their
+wars, this theory of Theodosia Alston’s disappearance
+gained many adherents, chiefly among the romantics,
+it is true. But the possibility of such a thing was also
+seriously considered by the husband and for a time by
+the father, who hoped the unfortunate woman might
+have been taken to one of the lesser West Indies by some
+not unfeeling corsair. Surely, she would soon or late
+make her escape and win her way back to her dear ones.
+In the end Burr rejected this idea, too.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i055" style="max-width: 82.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i055.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ THEODOSIA BURR ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>“No, no,” he said to a friend who revived the fable
+of the pirates, “she is indeed dead. Were she alive all
+the prisons in the world could not keep her from her
+father.”</p>
+
+<p>But the mystery persisted and so the rumors and
+stories would not down. For a number of years after
+1813 the newspapers contained, from time to time, reports
+from various parts of the world, generally to the
+effect that a beautiful and cultured woman had been
+seen aboard a ship supposed to be manned by pirates,
+that such a woman had been found in a colony of sea
+refugees in some vaguely described West Indian or
+South American retreat, or that a woman of English
+or American characteristics was being detained in an
+island prison, whither she had been consigned along with
+a captured piratical crew. The woman was always, by
+inference at least, Theodosia Burr.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were the persevering Burr calumniators idle, a
+circumstance which seems to testify to the fear his
+enemies must have had of this strange and greatly mistaken
+man. Theodosia Burr had been seen in Europe in
+company with a British naval officer who was paying
+her marked attentions; she had been located on an island
+off Panama, where she was living in contentment
+as the wife of a buccaneer; she was known to be in
+Mexico with a new husband who had first been her
+captor, then her lover and now was in the southern Republic
+trying to revive Burr’s dream of empire.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Governor Alston in 1816 caused a fresh
+crop of the old stories to blossom forth and the long
+deferred demise of Aaron Burr in 1836 released a still
+more formidable crop of rumors, fables and speculations.
+It was not until Burr had passed into the grave
+that there appeared on the American scene a type of
+romantic who made the next fifty years delightful. He
+was the old reformed pirate who desecrated his exit into
+eternity with a Theodosia Burr yarn. The great celebrity
+of the woman in her lifetime, the tragic fame of her
+father and the circumstances of her death naturally
+conspired to promote this kind of aberrant activity in
+many idle or unsettled minds. The result was that “pirates”
+who had been present at the capture of the <i>Patriot</i>
+in the first days of 1813 began to appear in many
+parts of the country and even in England, where they
+told, usually on their deathbeds, the most engaging and
+conflicting tales. It took, as I have remarked, half a
+century for all of them to die off.</p>
+
+<p>The accounts given by these various confessors differed
+in details only. All agreed that the <i>Patriot</i> had
+been captured by sea rovers off the Carolina coast and
+that the entire crew had been forced to walk the plank
+or been cut down by the pirates. Thus the fabulists accounted
+for the fact that nothing had ever been heard
+from any of Mrs. Alston’s shipmates. Nearly all accounts
+agreed that Theodosia had been carried captive
+to an unnamed island where she had first been a rebellious
+prisoner but later the docile and devoted mate
+of the pirate chief. A few of the relators gave their
+narratives the spice of novelty by insisting that she, too,
+had been made to walk the plank into the heaving sea,
+after she had witnessed all her shipmates consigned to
+the same fate. The names of the pirate ships and pirate
+captains supposed to have caught the <i>Patriot</i> and disposed
+of Theodosia Burr Alston ranged through all the
+lists of shipping. No two dying corsairs ever agreed on
+this point.</p>
+
+<p>Forty years after the disappearance of Mrs. Alston
+this typical yarn appeared in the <i>Pennsylvania Enquirer</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“An item of news just now going the rounds relates that
+a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on his death bed that
+he was one of the crew of mutineers who, some forty years
+ago, took possession of a brig on its passage from Charleston
+to New York and caused all the officers and passengers to
+walk the gang plank. For forty years the wretched man had
+carried about the dreadful secret and died at last in an agony
+of despair.</p>
+
+<p>“What gives the story additional interest is the fact that
+the vessel referred to is the one in which Mrs. Theodosia
+Alston, the beloved daughter of Aaron Burr, took passage
+for New York, for the purpose of meeting her parent in the
+darkest days of his existence, and which, never having been
+heard of, was supposed to have been foundered at sea.</p>
+
+<p>“The dying sailor professed to remember her well and said
+she was the last who perished, and that he never forgot her
+look of despair as she took the last step from the fatal plank.
+On reading this account, I regarded it as fiction; but on conversing
+with an officer of the navy he assured me of its probable
+truth and stated that on one of his passages home
+several years ago, his vessel brought two pirates in irons who
+were subsequently executed at Norfolk for recent offenses,
+and who, before their execution, confessed that they had been
+members of the same crew and had participated in the murder
+of Mrs. Alston and her companions.</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever opinion may be entertained of the father, the
+memory of the daughter must be revered as one of the loveliest
+and most excellent of American woman, and the revelation
+of her untimely fate can only serve to invest that
+memory with a more tender and melancholy interest.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and their
+obvious conflict with known facts, the public took the
+dying confessions seriously and the editors of Sunday
+supplements printed them with a gay air of credence
+and a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was accomplished
+by this complicity with a most unashamed
+and unregenerate band of downright liars, the pirate
+legend came to be disseminated in every civilized country
+and there was gradually built up the great false
+tradition which hedges the name and fame of Theodosia
+Burr. She has even appeared in novels, American, British
+and Continental, in the shape of a mysterious queen
+of freebooters.</p>
+
+<p>The celebrity of her case came to be such that it was
+in time seized upon by the art fakers—perhaps an inevitable
+step toward genuine famosity. Several authentic
+likenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant, notably the
+painting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery,
+Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston,
+N. Y., whom Burr discovered, apprenticed to
+Gilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for study. He painted
+the landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of the
+Capitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neither
+restrained nor satisfied the freebooters of the arts. On
+the other hand, the pirate tales inspired them to profitable
+activity.</p>
+
+<p>In the nineties of the last century the New York
+newspapers contained accounts of a painting of Theodosia
+Burr which had been found in an old seashore cottage
+near Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwards
+made famous by the gliding experiments of the brothers
+Wright, and the scene of their first successful airplane
+flights. The printed accounts said that this picture had
+been found on an old schooner which had been wrecked
+off the coast many years before and various inconclusive
+and roundabout devices were employed for identifying
+it as a likeness of the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most florid
+publicity in New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently,
+given out by one of the prominent Fifth Avenue
+art dealers. A woman client, it was said, had become interested
+in the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr,
+recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of North
+Carolina. Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken a
+search for the missing work of art and had at length
+recovered it, together with a most fascinating history.</p>
+
+<p>In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of Elizabeth
+City, N. C., spent the summer at Nag’s Head, a resort
+on the outer barrier of sand which protects the North
+Carolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape Hatteras.
+While there he was called to visit an aged woman
+who lived in an ancient cabin about two miles out of
+the town. His ministrations served to recover her health
+and she expressed the wish to pay him in some way
+other than with money, of which useful commodity she
+had none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerable
+curiosity, a most beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful,
+proud and intelligent lady of high social standing.”
+He immediately coveted this picture and asked his
+patient for it, since she wanted to give him something in
+return for his leechcraft. She not only gave him the
+portrait but she told him how she had come by it. Many
+years before, when she was still a girl, the old woman’s
+admirer and subsequent first husband had, with some
+others, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, which
+had stranded with all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfast
+served but undisturbed in the cabin. The pilot boat
+was empty and several trunks had been broken open,
+their contents being scattered about. Among the salvaged
+goods was this portrait, which had fallen to the
+lot of the old woman’s swain and come through him to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture had
+passed to others without ever having left Elizabeth
+City. There the enterprising dealer had found it in the
+possession of a substantial widow, and she had consented
+to part with it. The rest of the story—the essentials—was
+to be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to be
+sure, the <i>Patriot</i>, the date of its stranding agreed with
+the beclouded incidents of January, 1813, and the “intelligent
+lady of high social standing” was none other
+than Theodosia Burr.</p>
+
+<p>It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelous
+and romantic work do not show the least resemblance
+to the known portrait of Theodosia, and it is
+also lamentable to find that the art dealer, in his sweet
+account of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptions
+and blunders as regards his subject and the tales of
+her demise. But, while both these portrait yarns may be
+dismissed without further attention, they have undoubtedly
+served to keep the old and enchanting story
+before modern eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of the
+Theodosia Burr case seems to be the acceptable one. The
+boat on which she embarked was small and frail. At
+the very time it must have been passing the treacherous
+region of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficient
+violence to scatter the heavy British frigates and
+ships of the line. The fate of a little schooner in such
+weather is almost a matter for assurance. Yet of certainty
+there can be none. The famous daughter of the
+traditional American villain—the devil incarnate to all
+the melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers and
+propagandists—went down to sea in her cockleshell and
+returned no more. Eleven decades have lighted no
+candle in the darkness that engulfed her.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE</p>
+
+
+<p>One of the most engrossing of modern mysteries
+is that which hides the final destination
+of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, better
+known to a generation of newspaper readers as John
+Orth. In the dawn of July 13, 1890, the bark <i>Santa
+Margarita</i>,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> flying the flag of an Austrian merchantman,
+though her owner and skipper was none other
+than this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs,
+set sail from Ensenada, on the southern shore of the
+great estuary of the Plata, below Buenos Aires, and
+forthwith vanished from the earth. With her went Johann
+Salvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew of
+twenty-six. Though search has been made in every
+thinkable port, through the distant archipelagoes of the
+Pacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and though
+emissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missing
+men, from time to time, over a period of nearly forty
+years, no sight of any one connected with the lost ship
+has ever been got, and no man knows with certainty
+what fate befell her and her princely master.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The enigma of his passing is not the only circumstance
+of curious doubt and romantic coloration that
+hedges the career of this imperial adventurer. His story,
+from the beginning, is one marked with dramatic incidents.
+As much of it as bears upon the final episode
+will have to be related.</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florence
+on the twenty-fifth day of November, 1852, the youngest
+son of Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany, and
+Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly,
+a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef of
+Austria-Hungary. At the baptismal font young Johann
+received enough names to carry any man blissfully
+through life, his full array having been Johann
+Nepomuk Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand Balthazar
+Louis Gonzaga Peter Alexander Zenobius Antonin.</p>
+
+<p>Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italian
+revolutionists drove out his father and later united Tuscany
+to the growing kingdom of Victor Emanuel. So
+the hero of this account was reared in Austria and educated
+for the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he rose
+rapidly in rank for reasons quite other than his family
+connections. The young prince was endowed with a
+good mind and notable for independence of thought.
+He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn his
+pay, an opinion which led to indefatigable military
+studies and some well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings.
+First, the young archduke discovered what he considered
+faults in the artillery, and he wrote a brochure
+on the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and had
+him disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of military
+organization and wrote a well-known pamphlet
+called “Education or Drill,” wherein he attacked the
+old method of training soldiers as automatons and advised
+the mental development of the rank and file, in
+line with policies now generally adopted. But such advanced
+ideas struck the military masters of fifty years
+ago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johann
+was disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawal
+of his commission. At thirty-five he had reached
+next to the highest possible rank and been cashiered
+from it. This in 1887.</p>
+
+<p>Johann Salvator had, however, been much more than
+a progressive soldier man. He was an accomplished musician,
+composer of popular waltzes, an oratorio and the
+operetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and publicist,
+of eminent official standing at least, having collaborated
+with Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributed
+work, “The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in
+Word and Picture,” which was published in 1886. He
+was also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena,
+his library on this subject having been the most
+complete in Europe—a fact suggestive of something
+abnormal.</p>
+
+<p>Personally the man was both handsome and charming.
+He was, in spite of imperial rank and military habitude,
+democratic, simple, friendly, and unaffected. He
+liked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse interests
+in life, now playing the gallant in Vienna—to
+the high world of the court and the half world of the
+theater by turns; again retiring to his library and his
+studies, sometimes vegetating at his country estates and
+working on his farms. Official trammels and the rigid
+etiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still,
+he seems to have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissal
+from the army.</p>
+
+<p>Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a close
+personal friend of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacy
+had extended even to participation in some of
+the personal and sentimental escapades for which the ill-starred
+Rudolf was remarkable. Apparently the two
+men hardly held an opinion apart, and it was accepted
+that, with the death of the aging emperor and the accession
+of his son, Johann Salvator would be a most
+powerful personage.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promises
+came to earth. After some rumblings and rumorings at
+Schoenbrunn, it was announced that Johann Salvator
+had petitioned the emperor for permission to resign all
+rank and title, sever his official connection with the
+royal house, and even give up his knighthood in the
+Order of the Golden Fleece. The petitioner also asked
+for the right to call himself Johann Orth, after the
+estate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was the
+favorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother.
+All these requests were officially granted and confirmed
+by the emperor, and so the man John Orth came into
+being.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behind
+the official records of this strange resignation from
+rank and honor. Even to-day, after Orth has been
+missing for a whole generation, after all those who
+might have been concerned in keeping secret the motives
+and measures of those times have been gathered to
+the dust, and after the empire itself has been dissolved
+into its defeated components, the facts in the matter
+cannot be stated with any confidence. There are two
+principal versions of the affair, and both will have to
+be given so that the reader may make his own choice.
+The popular or romantic account deserves to be considered
+first.</p>
+
+<p>In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced by
+several handsome young women of the name Stübel.
+One of them, Lori, achieved considerable operatic distinction.
+Another sailed to New York with her brother
+and appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at the
+old Casino. The youngest of these sisters was Ludmilla
+Stübel, commonly called Millie, and on that account
+sometimes, erroneously, Emilie.</p>
+
+<p>This daring and charming girl began her career in a
+Viennese operetta chorus and rose to the rank of
+principal. She was not, so far as I can gather from the
+contemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice or
+dramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuous
+beauty and piquant manners” won her almost limitless
+attention and gave her a popularity that reached across
+the Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein Stübel appeared
+at the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York,
+then the shrine of German comic opera in the United
+States, creating the rôles of <i>Bettina</i> in “The Mascot”
+and <i>Violette</i> in “The Merry War.”</p>
+
+<p>The <i>New York Herald</i>, reviewing her American
+career a few years later, said: “In New York she became
+somewhat notorious for her risqué costumes. On one
+occasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in male
+costume, and created a scene when ejected. This conduct
+seems to have ended her career in the United
+States.”</p>
+
+<p>This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into the
+ken of Johann Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888,
+when that impetuous prince had already been dismissed
+from the army and his other affairs were gathering to
+the storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophic
+events followed rapidly.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i069" style="max-width: 82.0625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i069.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ MILLIE STÜBEL ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead in
+the hunting lodge at Mayerling, with the Baroness
+Marie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a hundred kings is
+said to have been passionately devoted, and with whom
+he may have died in a suicide pact, though it has been
+said the crown prince and his sweetheart were murdered
+by persons whose identity has been sedulously concealed.
+This mysterious fatality robbed the dispirited Johann
+Salvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It may
+have had a good deal to do with what followed.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later Johann Salvator married morganatically
+his stage beauty. It was now, after the lapse
+of a few months, that he resigned all rank, title, and
+privileges, left Austria with his wife, and married her
+civilly in London.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the
+death of the crown prince and the romance with the
+singer explained everything. The archduke, in disgrace
+with the army, bereft of his truest and most illustrious
+friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could
+not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the
+purple of his birth, had decided to “surrender all for
+love” and seek solace in foreign lands with the lady of
+his choice. This interpretation has all the elements of
+color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds
+of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to
+bear skeptical examination.</p>
+
+<p>Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was
+a man of independent mind and quixotic temperament,
+that he was embittered by his demotion from military
+rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by
+the death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend
+and his most powerful intercessor at court, no such extreme
+proceeding as the renunciation of all rank and
+the severing of family ties was called for.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an
+affair with a woman of inferior rank, had embittered
+Franz Josef and probably caused the monarch to look
+with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among
+the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the
+morganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shining
+moth of the theater displeased the monarch and
+widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but
+it must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only
+a distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in line
+for succession to the throne; that he had already been
+deprived of military or other official connection with
+the government; and that affairs of this kind have been
+by no means rare among Hapsburg scions.</p>
+
+<p>Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been,
+he was no Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had
+not been quite free of sentimental episodes, and he was,
+after all, the heir to the proudest tradition in all Europe,
+head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and a
+believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have
+looked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommon
+or specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciation
+of rank and privilege can only have struck him as
+a precedent of the gravest kind.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme
+step because of his histrionic wife. He might have
+remained in Austria happily enough, aside from a few
+snubs and the exclusion from further official participation
+in politics. He might have gone to any country in
+Europe and become the center of a distinguished society.
+His children would probably have been ennobled,
+and even his wife eventually given the same sort of
+recognition that was accorded the consorts of other
+princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz
+Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitated
+the World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the most
+complete and unprecedented severance from all that
+seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to
+interpret this action in another light, and their explanation
+forms the second version of the incident, probably
+the true one.</p>
+
+<p>In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles
+for hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
+had been elected Prince of Bulgaria, but
+Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and the
+other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise
+refrained from giving their approval. Austria was in a
+specially delicate position as regards this matter. She was
+the natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans,
+but her statesmen did not feel strong enough
+openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had
+their eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand
+had been an officer in the Austrian army. He was well
+liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regard
+of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the
+present question is that he was the friend of Johann
+Salvator.</p>
+
+<p>In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia
+attempted to drive the unwelcome German princeling
+from the Bulgarian throne by various military cabals,
+acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues, and the like.
+Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries
+rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It
+is known that he interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand,
+and he may have approached the emperor. Failing to get
+action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a plan of
+a military character which was calculated to force the
+hands of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing
+them into the field against Russia, to the end that Ferdinand
+might be recognized and more firmly seated.
+The plot was discovered in time, according to those
+who hold this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator
+came under the most severe displeasure of the
+emperor.</p>
+
+<p>It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately,
+that Johann Salvator’s rash course was one
+that came very near involving Austria in a Russian war,
+and that the most emphatic exhibitions of the emperor’s
+reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly,
+it is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of
+all rank and privileges by his cousin and exiled him from
+the empire for life. Here, at least, is a story of a more
+probable character, inasmuch as it presents provocation
+for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke
+Johann Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic
+marriage and his other conflicts with higher
+authority were seized upon as disguises under which to
+hide the secret diplomatic motive.</p>
+
+<p>Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony,
+started a tale to the effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator,
+had torn the Order of the Golden Fleece from his
+breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor, which
+thing can not have happened since the negotiations between
+the emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted
+at a distance through official emissaries or by
+mail.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress
+Elizabeth, recounts even more fantastic yarns.
+She says in so many words that Crown Prince Rudolf
+was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others to
+seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor
+and so establish Rudolf as king before his time. It was
+fear of discovery in this plot, she continues, that led to
+the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after Mayerling, she
+recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box
+(apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade
+in the mist and he kissed her hand, exclaimed that she
+had saved his life—and more in the same strain.</p>
+
+<p>Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wrote
+or talked in self-justification and with the usual stupidity
+of the guilty. We may dismiss their yarns as mere
+women’s gabble and return to the solid fact that Johann
+Salvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under his
+military humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politics
+with the result that he found himself in the position of
+a bungling interloper, almost a betrayer of his country’s
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>Less than two years ago some further light was
+thrown upon the affair of the missing archduke through
+what have passed as letters taken from the Austrian
+archives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These letters
+were published in various European and American
+newspapers and journals and they may be, as asserted,
+the veritable official documents. The portions I quote
+are taken from the Sunday Magazine of the <i>New York
+World</i> of January 10 and January 17, 1926. I must
+remark that I regard them with suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>The first letter purports to be a report on the violent
+misconduct of Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Consul General Alexander, Baron Warsberg, to the Minister
+of Foreign Affairs, Count Kalnoky:</p>
+
+<p>“I regarded it to be my duty to obtain information about
+the relations and meetings of Archduke Johann, and am
+sorry to have to report to Your Excellency that, <i>in a rather
+unworthy manner</i>, he had intercourse on board and in public
+with a <i>lady lodged on board of the yacht</i>, which intercourse
+has not remained unobserved and which he could not be induced
+to veil in spite of the remonstrances of (the President
+of the Chamber) Baron de Fin—Baron de Fin was so offended
+that, after much quarrel and trouble which made him ill,
+he left the ship and lodged in a little inn. He, on his part,
+reported to His Majesty the Emperor, and the Archduke is
+said to have, after five months of silence, written for the
+first time to His Majesty in order to complain of his Chamberlain.
+This unpleasant situation, still more troublesome
+abroad than it would have been at home, has been solved
+last Sunday, the 20th inst, by the sudden advent of Field
+Marshal Lieut. Count Uxküll, who brought the Imperial
+Order that His Imperial Highness immediately return to
+Orth at the Sea of Gmünden—to which he immediately submitted.</p>
+
+<p>“Baron de Fin, who is still living here and is on friendly
+terms with me, can give to the Archduke no certificate that
+would be bad enough. According to his experience and observation,
+His Highness does not know any other interests in
+the world than those of his person, and even this only in the
+common sense; that he, for instance, wished to ascend the
+throne of Bulgaria, not out of enthusiasm for the people or
+for the political idea but only in order to lose the throne after
+a short time and in this way to be freed from the influence
+of His Majesty, the Emperor. Baron de Fin pretends that
+there would be no other means to cure that completely undisciplined
+and immoral character but by dismissing him
+formally from the imperial family and by allowing him, as
+it is his desire, to enjoy under an adopted name, that liberty
+that he pretends to deem as the highest good. He believes him
+(the Archduke) to have such a 'dose’ of pride that he would
+return with a penitent heart, if he then would be treated
+according to his new rank. I also have observed this haughtiness
+of the Prince despite his talks of liberalism.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then follows what may well have been the recreant
+archduke’s letter of abdication, thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Your Majesty:</p>
+
+<p>“My behavior for nearly two years will have convinced
+Your Majesty that, abstaining from all interests that did not
+concern me, I have lived in retirement in the endeavor to
+remove Your Majesty’s displeasure with me.</p>
+
+<p>“Being too young to rest forever and too proud to live as
+a paid idler, my situation has become painful, even intolerable,
+to me. Checked by a justified pride from asking for
+re-employment in the army, I had the alternative either to
+continue the unworthy existence of a princely idler or—as
+an ordinary human being, to seek a new existence, a new
+profession. I was finally urged to a decision in the latter
+sense, as my whole nature refused to fit into the frame of
+my position and my personal independence must be compensation
+for what I have lost.</p>
+
+<p>“I therefore resign voluntarily, and respectfully return the
+titles and rights of an Archduke, as well as my military title
+into the hands of Your Majesty, but request Your Majesty
+submissively to deign to grant me a civil name.</p>
+
+<p>“Far from my fatherland, I shall seek a purpose in life, and
+my livelihood probably at sea, and try to find a humble but
+honorable position. If, however, Your Majesty should call
+your subjects to arms, Your Highness will permit me to return
+home and—though only as a common soldier—to devote
+my life to Your Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>“Your Majesty may deign to believe me that this step was
+only impeded by the thought of giving offense to Your
+Majesty—Your Majesty to whose Highness I am particularly
+and infinitely indebted and devoted from the bottom of my
+heart. But as I have to pay for this step dearly enough—with
+my entire social existence, with all that means hope and
+future—Your Majesty will pardon</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“Your Majesty’s Most Loyally Obedient Servant,<br>
+“<span class="smcap">Archduke Johann, Fml.</span>”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another,
+even an emperor, is a question which every reader
+must consider for himself, quite as he must decide
+whether grown sons of kings were capable of such
+middle-class sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has the
+ring of genuineness:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+“<span class="smcap">Dear Archduke Johann</span>:<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>“In compliance with your request addressed to me, I feel
+induced to decide the following:</p>
+
+<p>“1. I sanction your renunciation of the right of being regarded
+and treated as a Prince of the Imperial House, and
+permit you to adopt a civil name, which you are to bring to
+my notice after you have made your choice.</p>
+
+<p>“2. I consent to your resigning your commission as an officer
+and relieve you at the same time of your responsibility
+for the Corps Artillery Regiment No. 2.</p>
+
+<p>“3. I decide at the same time that you are to be struck out
+of the 'Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece.’</p>
+
+<p>“4. In disposing the suspension of your appenage (Civil
+List) from my court donation, I will inform your brother
+Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany of the suspension of your
+share out of the family funds proceeds.</p>
+
+<p>“5. Without my express permission you are forbidden to
+pass the frontiers of the monarchy from your residence
+abroad for a permanent or even a temporary stay in Austria.
+Finally,</p>
+
+<p>“6. You are to sign the written declaration which the
+bearer of this, my manuscript will submit to you for this
+purpose and which he is charged to return to me after the
+signature is affixed.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“<span class="smcap">Franz Josef.</span>”</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vienna, Oct. 12, 1889.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Some correspondence followed on the subject of John
+Orth’s retention of his Austrian citizenship, which the
+emperor wished at first to deny him.</p>
+
+<p>In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria,
+and Prince of Tuscany, became John Orth, left
+Austria in the winter of 1889, purchased and refitted
+the bark <i>Santa Margarita</i>, had her taken to England, and
+there joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed for
+Buenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement,
+and reached the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife went
+ahead by steamer to join him at Buenos Aires.</p>
+
+<p>I quote here, from the same source as the preceding,
+part of a last letter from John Orth to his mother at
+Gmünden:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“The country here is not very beautiful. Vast plains—the
+grazing grounds for flocks of bullocks, horses and ostriches.
+The towns are much more vivid. Everything is to be found
+here even at the smaller places—electric lights, telephone,
+all comforts of modern civilization. The population, however,
+is not very sympathetic, a combination of doubtful elements
+from all countries, striving to become rich as soon as
+possible; corruption, fraud, theft, are the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>“I have made the acquaintance of our Consul. The officer
+is a certain Mikulicz, a cultured, most amiable man. The
+Honorary Consul is Mihanovich, a man who—a few years
+ago was a porter—and now is a millionaire. Social obligations
+have caused much loss of time, which could have been
+better used for business affairs. Imagine that nothing can
+be done in Ensenada, but we have always to go to Buenos
+Aires. And we have to hurry. The unloading of the cargo,
+negotiations about a new cargo, which I could have accepted
+if my merchant had not prevented me, changes of the board
+staff, purchase of supplies, work on board, the collection and
+despatch of money, &amp;c., &amp;c. The staff-officers have all to be
+changed. I have the command. Capt. Sodich is offended by
+the fact that I have sent away here in Plata a certain 'Sensal,’
+toward whom he was too indulgent and who was a man
+of bad reputation. He has given me to understand, in the
+most impolite manner, that he could not remain under such
+circumstances, that he did not permit himself to be treated
+as a mere zero with regard to the business on land, and therefore
+he resigned the command, &amp;c. I, of course, accepted his
+resignation, and also remained firm when he afterward returned
+to excuse himself. The second lieutenant, Lucich, has
+shown the insolence to deceive the consignee and by calculating
+forty-eight tons more in favor of the ship, believing
+to do me a favor by such an action. I have given to the consignee
+the necessary indemnification—and to restore the compromised
+honor of the ship, have dismissed the lieutenant.
+The third lieutenant, Leva, took fright of the sea and quit
+voluntarily to seek his fortune on land. Also the boatswain
+Giaconi asked for his dismissal, so much the fire had frightened
+him.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> There had been a fire on the <i>Santa Margarita</i> on the way to Buenos Aires.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“As present I have First Lieutenant, Jellecich, who acts
+as Captain and has the command—a man of forty-five
+years, very quiet, experienced and practical. Further, a Second
+Lieutenant, Mayer, Austro-German, very fit for accounts
+and writings; a boatswain, Vranich, who is a real jewel.
+Thus I hope—with the aid of God—to get on at least as well
+as under the command of Sodich.</p>
+
+<p>“Imagine: Sodich and Lucich were atheists, and Leva has
+been a Spiritualist. I am happy to have made this change
+of personnel, with whom alone I shall have intercourse for
+months and months.</p>
+
+<p>“In the first days of July, when everything will be ready,
+the journey will be continued. Now comes the most difficult
+part of the passage, i. e., the sailing around the dreadful
+Cape Horn, which is always exposed to howling storms. If
+all ends well, we shall be in two months at Valparaiso, which
+has been so beautifully described by Ludwig. God willing,
+we shall return from there in good health.</p>
+
+<p>“I am very sorry to have received no news or, strictly
+speaking, no letters of yours. Neither in Ensenada nor in
+La Plata nor in Buenos Aires, neither poste restante nor in
+the Consulate, have I found your letters, and still I believe
+that you have been so good as to write me. I have found
+letters of Luise, that have been despatched by a German
+steamer, and also letters from London, as well as of the Swiss
+Bank, with which I am in communication, but not one letter
+from Austria. Luise informed me that she has been in Rome,
+and your dear telegram advised me that she has passed Salzburg.
+I was sorry to see from the newspapers that Karl has
+been ill in Baden; I should be happy if this were not true.
+Then I have read the many nonsensical articles written about
+myself, and am glad that the Consul, who has remained in
+communication with me, was able to state the truth. I am
+also glad of the marriage of Franz, the dream of the young
+woman is now likely to come to an end. I know nothing
+about Vienna and Gmünden. But I repeat that I am disappointed
+at not having received your letters. I hope to God
+you are well and remain in good health.</p>
+
+<p>“My next stay will be at Valparaiso. I, therefore, ask you
+to address letters: Giovanni Orth, Valparaiso (Chile) poste
+restante.</p>
+
+<p>“Requesting you to give my kind remembrances to the
+whole family and asking you for your blessing, I respectfully
+kiss your hands.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+<span style="margin-right: 5em;">“Your tenderly loving son,</span><br>
+<span class="allsmcap">GIOVANNI</span>.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada,
+and on July 12, 1890, John Orth wrote what proved to
+be the last communication ever sent by him. It was addressed
+to his attorney in Vienna and said that he was
+leaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, which
+might consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orth
+wrote, had been taken ill, and his first officer had proved
+incompetent, so that it had been necessary to discharge
+him. Accordingly Orth was personally in command of
+his vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experienced
+seaman. This is a somewhat altered version,
+to be sure.</p>
+
+<p>The apparent intention of the renegade archduke at
+this time was to follow the sea. He had caused the <i>Santa
+Margarita</i> to be elaborately refitted inside, had insured
+her for two hundred and thirty thousand marks with
+the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he had
+written his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determination
+to make his living as a mariner and an honest
+man, instead of existing like an idler on his comfortable
+private means. There is nothing in the record
+to indicate that he intended to go into hiding.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i083" style="max-width: 81.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i083.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ ARCHDUKE JOHANN SALVATOR ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The <i>Santa Margarita</i> accordingly sailed on the thirteenth
+of July. With good fortune she should have
+been in the Straits of Magellan the first week in August,
+and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expected
+not later than the first of September. But the ship did
+not reach port. The middle of September passed without
+word of her. When she had still not been reported by
+the first week in October the alarm was given.</p>
+
+<p>As the result of diplomatic representations from the
+Austrian minister, the Argentine government soon
+made elaborate arrangements for a search. On December
+the second the gunboat <i>Bermejo</i>, Captain Don Mensilla,
+put out from Buenos Aires and made a four
+months’ cruise of the Argentine coast, visiting every
+conceivable anchorage where a vessel of the <i>Santa Margarita’s</i>
+size might possibly have found refuge. Don
+Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20,
+and continuing intermittently for nearly a month,
+there had been storms of the greatest violence in the
+region of Cape Blanco and the southern extremity of
+Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had
+been in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances
+had been of unusual character and duration,
+more than sufficient to overwhelm a sailing bark in the
+tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a
+vessel answering to the general description of the <i>Santa
+Margarita</i> had been wrecked off the little island of
+Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course of a hurricane
+which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at
+which dates the <i>Santa Margarita</i> was very likely in this
+vicinity. The Argentine commander could find no trace
+of the wreck and no clew to any survivors. He continued
+his search for more than two months longer and
+then returned to base with his melancholy report.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the Chilean government had sent
+out the small steamer <i>Toro</i> to search the Pacific coast
+from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her captain returned
+after several months with no word of the archduke or
+any member of his crew.</p>
+
+<p>These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports
+at the Hamburg maritime observatory, soon convinced
+most authorities that John Orth and his vessel
+were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as in
+that of Roger Tichborne,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> an old mother’s fond devotion
+refused to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance.
+The Grand Duchess Maria Antonia could not bring
+herself to believe that winds and waves had swallowed
+up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna
+with her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef
+finally sent out the corvette <i>Saida</i>, with instructions to
+make a fresh search, including the islands of the South
+Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report, John
+Orth had made his way.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> See <a href="#V">page 82</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope
+Leo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in
+South America and all over the world to search for
+John Orth and send immediate news of his presence to
+the Holy See.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Saida</i> returned to Fiume at the end of a year
+without having been able to accomplish anything beyond
+confirming the report of Don Mensilla. And in
+response to the pope’s letter many reports came back,
+but none of them resulted in the finding of John
+Orth.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the return of the <i>Saida</i> the Austrian
+heirs of John Orth moved for the payment of his insurance,
+and the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company,
+after going through the formality of a court proceeding,
+paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on
+two banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen,
+Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by the
+archduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. One
+of these banks raised the question of the death proof,
+claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an
+unproved death. The courts decided against the bank,
+thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the end
+of the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated.
+About two million crowns were accordingly paid over
+to the Austrian custodians.</p>
+
+<p>In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to
+hand over the property of John Orth to his nephew and
+heir, and this high authority then declared that the
+missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane of
+August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme
+court of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and a
+decision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which the
+archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the day
+on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts
+began. His property was ordered distributed, and his
+goods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments,
+art collection and furniture, which had long been preserved
+in the various villas and castles of the absent
+prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during
+the months of October and November, 1912.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the great care that was taken to discover
+the facts in this case, and in the face of the various
+official reports and court decisions, a great romantic
+tradition grew up about John Orth and his mysterious
+destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his
+abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly
+much to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as it
+may, the world has for more than thirty years been
+feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and
+his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war
+the story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato
+was in reality the missing archduke. The story was
+credited by many, but there proved to be no foundation
+for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their
+heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the
+archduke in that old monograph which had got him
+disciplined.</p>
+
+<p>Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief
+authority for one of the most plausible and insistent of
+all the John Orth stories. According to this politician
+and man of letters, there was present at Concordia, in
+the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in the
+years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished
+looking stranger of military habit and bearing,
+who had few friends, received few visits, always
+spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an Austrian merchant
+of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself
+in a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch
+treated the stranger with marked respect and deference.</p>
+
+<p>Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of
+the <i>Jefe de Policia</i> of Concordia, an official who firmly
+believed the man of mystery to be John Orth. On the
+other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey, the closest friend
+and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway,
+denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the
+whole tale. At the same time, say Garzon and the chief
+of police, Señor de Villa Rey tried to conceal the presence
+of the man, and it was the activity of the police
+authorities, executing the law authorizing them to investigate
+and keep records of the identity of all strangers,
+that frightened the “archduke” away. He went to
+Paraguay and worked in a sawmill belonging to Villa
+Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese
+war he left for Japan.</p>
+
+<p>This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion.
+Senator Garzon’s book is full of doubtful corroboration
+and too subtle reasoning, but it is rewarding and entertaining
+for those who like romance and read Spanish.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> See Bibliography.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The missing John Orth has likewise been reported
+alive from many other unlikely parts of the world and
+under the most incredible circumstances. Austrian, German,
+British, French, and American newspapers have
+been full of such stories every few years. The much
+sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running
+a pearl fishery in the Paumotus, working in a factory
+in Ohio, fighting with the Boers in South Africa,
+prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in
+Texas—what not and where not?</p>
+
+<p>One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth
+happened in New York. On the last day of March,
+1924, a death certificate was filed with the Department
+of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator
+of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early
+that morning of heart disease in Columbus Hospital,
+one of the smaller semi-public institutions. Doctor
+John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital, signed the
+certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s
+identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society
+photographer,” confirmed the story, and said she had
+discovered the identity of the man the year before and
+admitted some of her friends to the secret. He had
+lately been receiving some code cables from Europe
+which came collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied
+the money with which to pay for these mysterious
+messages. The dead man, said Mrs. Fairchild, had been
+living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a lecturer
+in Sanscrit and general scholar.</p>
+
+<p>“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on
+Sanscrit,” she recounted. “In his delirium he talked
+Sanscrit, and it was very beautiful.”</p>
+
+<p>According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,”
+he had furnished her with the true version of his
+irruption from the Austrian court in 1889. The emperor
+Franz Josef had applied a vile name to John Salvator’s
+mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his
+sword, broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his
+decorations and medals, flung them into the imperial
+face and finally blacked the emperor’s eye. Striding
+from the palace to the barracks, the archduke had found
+his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!”
+and offer him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the
+emperor then and there, he said, but he elected to quit
+the country and have done with the social life which
+disgusted him.</p>
+
+<p>This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the
+world over. Aside from the preposterousness of the yarn
+as a whole, one needs only to remember that Johann
+Salvator was an artillery officer and never held either
+an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was,
+at the time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed
+from the army and without military rank, and that
+striking the emperor would have been an offense that
+must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it is
+obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the
+legs of his friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams.
+Except in cases where special prearrangements
+have been made, as in the instances of great newspapers,
+large business houses, banks, and the departments of
+government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid.
+An imperial government would hardly thus impose on
+a wandering scion. The imposture is thus apparent.</p>
+
+<p>On the day after the death of the supposed archduke,
+however, a note of real drama was injected into
+the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was said to have
+been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the
+dead “archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on
+East Fifty-ninth Street that afternoon. She had
+drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she had got
+into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries
+of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death.
+Despondency over “John Orth’s” death was given as
+the explanation.</p>
+
+<p>These tales have all had their charm, much as they
+have lacked probability. Each and all they rest upon
+the single fact that the man was never seen dead. There
+is, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perished
+in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but
+it is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive.
+For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appeals
+of his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and to
+whom he had written every few days whenever he had
+been separated from her. He would have been found by
+the papal missionaries in some part of the world, and
+the three vessels sent upon his final course must surely
+have discovered some trace of the man. It should be
+remembered that, except for letters that were traced
+back to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like
+a communication was ever received from Orth or Ludmilla
+Stübel, or from any member of the crew of the
+<i>Santa Margarita</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not
+profound. All evidence and all reason point to the probability
+that Johann Salvator and his ship went down to
+darkness in some wild torment of waters and winds,
+leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit,
+but only a void in which the idle minds of romantics
+could spin their fabulations.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY</p>
+
+
+<p>At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August
+16, 1897, a small, barefoot boy appeared
+in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of
+Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a
+crumpled letter in one grimy hand and stopped at one
+door after another, inquiring where Mrs. Conway lived.
+The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to him
+that several of them later estimated his age at from ten
+years to seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99
+and handed his note to the woman he sought, the wife
+of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train dispatcher. With
+that he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter
+by a special messenger, tore open the envelope, sat
+down in the big rocking chair in her front room, and
+began to read this appalling communication:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped
+and when you receive this word, he will be a safe distance
+from Albany and where he could not be found in a hundred
+years. Your child will be returned to you on payment of
+<i>three thousand dollars</i>, $3000, <i>provided</i> you pay the money
+<i>to-day and strictly obey the following directions</i>:</p>
+
+<p>“put the money in a package and send it by a man you
+can depend on to the lane going up the hill a few feet south
+of the <i>Troy road first tollgate</i>, just off the road on this lane
+here is a tree with a big trunk have the man put the package
+on the <i>south</i> side of the tree and <i>at once come away and come
+back to your house</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“We want the money left at this spot at <i>exactly 8:15
+o’clock to-night</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“See that no one is with the man you send and that no
+one follows him or you will <i>never look upon your little boy
+again</i></p>
+
+<p>“If you say a word of this to any one outside <i>your</i> family
+and the man you send with the money or if you take any
+steps to bring it to the attention <i>of the police you will never
+see your child</i> again, for if <i>any one</i> knows of it we will not
+take the risk of returning him, but will leave him <i>to his fate</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“If you obey our instructions in every point you will have
+word <i>within two hours</i> after the money has been left where
+you can go and get your boy safe and sound</p>
+
+<p>“We have been after this thing for a <i>long time</i> we <i>know
+our business</i> and can beat all the police in America</p>
+
+<p>“we are after the money and if you do what you are <i>told</i>,
+<i>no harm will come to your little boy</i>. but if you fail to do
+what we tell you or do what we tell you not to do <i>you will
+never look upon your child again as sure as there is a god in
+heaven we know you have the money in the bank</i> and that
+the bank closes at 2 o’clock and we <i>must</i> have it <i>to-night
+so get in time</i>. don’t tell them why you draw it out. You
+can say you are buying property if you wish for this thing
+must be <i>between you and us</i> if you want your boy back alive.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Remember</i> the case of <i>Charley Ross</i> of Philadelphia. His
+father <i>did not do</i> as <i>he was told</i> but went to the police and
+then spent five times as much as he could have got him back
+for but never saw his little boy <i>to the day of his death a word
+to the wise man is enough</i></p>
+
+<p>“<i>Now understand us plainly</i> get the money from the bank
+<i>in time</i> don’t open your lips to any one and send the money
+by a trusty man to the place we say at 8:15 a <i>quarter past
+eight to-night</i> He wants to <i>be sure that no one else sees him
+put the package there</i>, so there is no possible danger of any
+one <i>else</i> getting it, then within two hours you shall have
+word from us where your boy is.</p>
+
+<p>“Every move you make will be known to us and if you
+attempt <i>any crooked work</i> with us <i>say good-by to your boy</i>
+and look out for <i>yourself</i> for we will <i>meet you again when
+you least expect it</i> Do as we tell you and all will be well and
+we will deal straight with you if you make the <i>least crooked
+move</i> you will <i>regret it to the day of your death</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“If you want to have your little boy back <i>safe and sound</i>.
+Keep your lips closed and do <i>exactly as you are told</i></p>
+
+<p>“If you fail to obey <i>every direction</i> you will have <i>one
+child less</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+<span style="margin-right: 7em;">“Yours truly</span><br>
+“The Captain of the Gang.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she had
+got past the first few sentences and ran into the street,
+screaming for her boy. He did not answer. None of the
+neighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when he
+had been let out to play in the sun. It was true.</p>
+
+<p>The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistle
+in her hand, ran to summon her husband. He read the
+letter, set his jaw, and sent for the police. No one was
+going to extort three thousand dollars from him without
+a fight.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to ask
+questions in the neighborhood and see whether there
+had been any witnesses to the abduction. The others
+began an examination of the strange letter in the hope
+of recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yielded
+nothing and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Here
+the first blunder was made, for I have yet to examine a
+kidnapper’s letter more revealingly written.</p>
+
+<p>The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long,
+prolix, and anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuation
+in part, wrongly punctuated at other points,
+miscapitalized or not capitalized at all, strangely underlined,
+curiously paragraphed, often without even
+the use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structure
+and yet contradictory on this very point. The facsimile
+copy which I have before me shows that in spite
+of all the solecisms and blunders, there is not a misspelled
+word in the long missive, a thing not always to
+be said in favor of the writings of educated and even
+eminent men. Also, there are several cheap literary
+echoes in the letter, such as “never look upon your
+child again” and “leave him to his fate.”</p>
+
+<p>The following deductions should have been made
+from the letter:</p>
+
+<p>That it was written or dictated by some one familiar
+with Albany and with the affairs of the Conways, since
+the writer knows Conway has the money in the bank,
+knows the closing hour, is familiar with the surrounding
+terrain, is precise in all directions, and knows there
+are other and older children, since he constantly refers
+to “your little boy” and says that Conway will have
+“one child less.”</p>
+
+<p>That the writer of the letter is not a professional
+criminal. Otherwise he would not have written at
+length.</p>
+
+<p>That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious to
+have the thing done at once.</p>
+
+<p>That he is a man without formal education, who has
+read a good deal, especially romances and inferior verse.</p>
+
+<p>That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, he
+is a man between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.</p>
+
+<p>That the kidnappers are anxious to have the money
+intrusted to some man known to them, to whom they
+repeatedly refer and whom they believe likely to be
+selected by Conway.</p>
+
+<p>That the child is in no danger, since the letter writer
+doth threaten too much.</p>
+
+<p>That the search for the kidnappers should begin close
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of what
+the dialect calls hindsight, it may be well to say that
+these conclusions were made from the facsimile of the
+letter by an associate who is not familiar with the case
+and does not know the subsequent developments.</p>
+
+<p>The detective sciences had, however, reached no special
+developments in Albany thirty years ago and little
+of this vital information was extracted from the tell-tale
+letter. Instead of making some deductions from it
+and going quietly to work upon them, the officers chose
+the time-honored methods. They decided to send a man
+to the big tree with a package of paper, meantime concealing
+some members of the force near by to pounce
+upon any one who might call for the decoy. The whole
+proceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police went
+to the place at night and used lanterns, which must
+have revealed them to any watchers. They were not
+careful about concealing their plan and they even chose
+the wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!</p>
+
+<p>So the second day of the kidnapping mystery opened
+upon prostrated parents, who were only too willing
+to believe that their boy had been done away with, an
+excited community which locked the doors and feared
+to let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfited
+and abused police department.</p>
+
+<p>The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, the
+police made a fresh start. For one thing they searched
+the country round about the big tree on the Troy
+road, which may have been good training for adipose
+officers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such as
+police departments always make when the public is
+aroused. For another thing, they spread the dragnet and
+hauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to be
+stopping in Albany. They also searched the known
+criminal resorts, chased down a crop of the usual rumors,
+and wound up the day in breathless and futile
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. These
+energetic young men, whose repeated discomfitures of
+the police were one of the interesting facts of American
+city government in the last generation, had gone to
+work on the Conway case themselves. A young man
+named John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albany
+papers, began his investigations by interviewing the
+father of the missing child. One of the things the reporter
+wanted to know was whether any one had ever
+tried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. The
+train dispatcher replied with some reluctance that his
+brother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy, husband of one of
+Conway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed small
+amounts from the railroad man and once made a demand
+for a thousand dollars, which he failed to get,
+though he used threatening tactics.</p>
+
+<p>The reporter said nothing, but set about investigating
+Hardy. He found that the man was in Albany, that
+he was showing no signs of fright, and that he was
+indeed going about with much energy, apparently devoting
+himself to the quest for the stolen boy and
+threatening dire vengeance upon the kidnappers. Reporter
+Farrell and his associates took this business under
+suspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections and
+financial situation. They found the latter to be precarious.
+They also discovered that Hardy was the bosom
+friend of a man named H. G. Blake, who had operated
+a small furniture store in Albany, but was known to
+be an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no very
+definite social grade, means of livelihood, or character.
+In the middle of the afternoon, when this connection
+was first discovered, Blake could not be found in Albany,
+but late in the evening he was discovered, and the
+reporters took him in hand.</p>
+
+<p>At the time they had nothing to go upon except
+Blake’s firm friendship with Hardy, the relative of the
+missing child, who had once tried to extort a thousand
+dollars and presumably knew the money affairs of his
+brother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail.
+In the course of the day they had canvassed all the
+livery stables in and about Albany. They found that
+early on Monday morning a man had rented a horse and
+light wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. This
+signature was compared with that of Blake, taken from
+a hotel register and some tax declarations. The handwriting
+seemed to be identical, and the reporters suspected
+that Blake had rented the rig under an assumed
+name.</p>
+
+<p>While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulled
+into the belief that he was under no suspicion and allowed
+to go to his home and to bed, Blake was taken to
+the newspaper office by the reporters and there asked
+what he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He denied
+all knowledge until he was assured that the paper
+wished to score a “scoop” on the story and was willing
+to pay $2,500 cash for information that would lead to
+the recovery of the boy.</p>
+
+<p>A large wallet was shown him, containing a wadding
+of paper with several bank notes on the outside. Apparently
+the man was a bit feeble-minded. At any rate,
+he fell into the trap, abandoning all caution and reaching
+greedily for the money. He said, of course, that
+he knew nothing directly about the affair, but that he
+could find out. Later, when the money was withdrawn
+from his sight he began to boast of what he could do.
+Under various incitements and provocations he talked
+along until it became apparent that he was one of the
+kidnappers. When it was too late the man realized that
+he had talked too much, and then he tried to retract.
+When he attempted to leave the office he was met by
+two officers who had been quietly summoned by the reporters
+and appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet was
+once more held out to Blake, and his greed so far overcame
+him that he agreed to guide the reporters to the
+spot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference with
+his captain, and see that the child was delivered.</p>
+
+<p>The little party, consisting of two reporters, the two
+disguised officers, and Blake set out late at night and
+arrived at a place on the Schenectady road, about eight
+miles from Albany, shortly before midnight. Blake here
+demanded the cash, but was told that it would not be
+handed over until he produced the boy. He then said
+that he thought the purse did not contain the money. A
+long argument followed. Once more the glib talking of
+the reporters prevailed, and Blake went into the dense
+woods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly to
+find the boy.</p>
+
+<p>After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer,
+whom he still believed to be a driver, to remain
+behind, and proceeded farther into the forest. More
+than an hour passed before he returned, and the party
+was about to drive off, thinking the man had played a
+clever trick. Blake, however, came back querulous and
+suspicious. He demanded once more to see the money,
+and being refused, said the trick was up. One of the
+men, however, persuaded him to take him to the other
+members of the gang, promising that the money would
+be delivered the moment the boy was seen alive. Apparently
+Blake was once more befooled, for he allowed
+the supposed driver to accompany him and made off
+again into the heart of the woods. One of the reporters
+and the other disguised policeman followed secretly.</p>
+
+<p>When the two pairs of men had proceeded about
+three hundred yards, the second lurking in the van of
+the first, not daring to strike a light, slashed by the
+underbrush and in evident danger of being shot down,
+the smoky light of a camp fire appeared suddenly ahead.
+In another minute a childish voice could be heard, and
+the gruff tones of a man trying to silence it. Blake and
+his companion made for the fire and were met by a
+masked man with a leveled revolver who informed them
+that they were surrounded and would be killed if they
+made a false move. There was a parley, which lasted till
+the second pair came up.</p>
+
+<p>Just what happened at this interesting moment is not
+easy to say. The witnesses do not agree. Apparently,
+however, the little boy, momentarily released by his
+captor, ran away. The three hunters thereupon made a
+rush for him and there was an exchange of shots in the
+darkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy and
+dragged him to the road, closely followed by the reporter
+and the other officer, leaving Blake, the masked
+man, and whatever other kidnappers there might be to
+flee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into the
+wagon, the reporter and officers sprang in after him,
+and the horses were lashed into a gallop. Apparently, the
+midnight adventure had been a little trying on the
+nerves of the party.</p>
+
+<p>After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furious
+speed, it became apparent that there was no pursuit on
+part of the kidnappers and the drive was slowed to a
+more comfortable pace while the reporters questioned
+the child.</p>
+
+<p>Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that he
+had been playing in the street before his father’s house
+when a dray wagon came by. He had run and caught on
+to the rear of this for a ride down the block. As he
+dropped off the wagon, he had been met by a stranger
+who smiled, patted his head and offered to buy him
+candy. The child was readily beguiled and taken to the
+light wagon in which he was driven several miles into
+the country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacant
+cabin. The next night he and his captors spent in
+a church until they moved out into the woods and began
+to camp. At this spot the rescuers had found him.</p>
+
+<p>According to the child, the kidnappers had not been
+cruel or threatening. They had provided plenty of food.
+They had even played games with the little boy and
+tried to keep him amused. The only complaint Johnny
+Conway had to make was against the mosquitoes, which
+had cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly for
+the two nights and one day he and his captors spent in
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Very early on the morning of August 19th, just three
+days after the kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagon
+turned into Colonia Street and proceeded slowly up that
+quiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In spite
+of the unseasonable hour there was a crowd in the street,
+some of whose members had been on watch all night.
+Albany had been seized with terror and morbid curiosity.
+The Conway house was never without a few straggling
+watchers, eager for the first news or crumbs of
+gossip. Reporters from the New York newspapers were
+on the scene, and special officers from the great city
+were on their way. Everything was being prepared for
+another breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seated
+wagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that early
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, and
+some of the stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensing
+something unusual, one of the reporters rose in the
+rear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor called
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspaper
+sleuth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighbors
+came running from their houses in night garb. The
+Conways came forth from a sleepless vigil and caught
+the child in their arms. So the mystery of the boy’s
+fate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lasting
+enigma immediately succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediately
+seized at his home and dragged to the nearest station
+house. The rumor of his connection with the kidnapping
+got abroad within a few hours, and the police
+building was immediately besieged by a crowd which
+demanded to see the prisoner. The police drove the
+crowd off, but it returned after an hour, much augmented
+in numbers and provided with a rope for a
+lynching. After several exciting hours, the mob was
+finally cowed and driven away by the mayor of Albany
+and a platoon of police with drawn revolvers.</p>
+
+<p>One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, but
+at least two others were known, Blake and the man in
+the mask. Several posses set out at once and surrounded
+the woods in which the child had been found. After
+beating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepy
+night in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, the
+citizenry lost its pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albany
+only to find that the police of Schenectady had
+arrested Blake in that city late the preceding evening
+and that the man was lodged in another precinct house
+where he could not communicate with Hardy. Another
+abortive lynching bee was started. Once more the mayor
+and the police drove off the howling gangs.</p>
+
+<p>The man in the mask, however, was still at large.
+Both Hardy and Blake at first refused to name him, and
+the police were at sea. Then a curious thing happened.</p>
+
+<p>William N. Loew, a New York attorney, reading
+of the kidnapping affair at Albany, which appeared in
+the metropolitan newspapers under black headlines,
+went to the office of one of the journals and said he
+believed he could give valuable information.</p>
+
+<p>On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, Bernard
+Myers, a clothing merchant of West Third Street,
+New York, had flirted on a Broadway car with a handsome
+young woman, who had given him her name and
+address as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourth
+Street, and invited him to write her. Myers, more avid
+than cautious, wrote the woman a fervid letter, asking
+for an appointment. A few days later two men appeared
+in the Myers store. One of them, who carried
+a heavy cane, said that he was the husband of Mrs.
+Warner, brandished the guilty letter in one hand, the
+cane in the other, and demanded that Myers give him
+a check for three hundred dollars on the spot or take
+the consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave a
+check for one hundred dollars, and then, as soon as the
+men had left his store, rushed to his bank and stopped
+payment. He then visited the district attorney and
+caused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraigned
+and released on bail.</p>
+
+<p>Loew had been summoned to act as attorney for
+Warner. He now told the newspapers of disclosures his
+client had made to him in consultation. Warner, who
+was himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway,
+had told Loew that he was interested in a plot to
+organize kidnapping on a commercial scale, and that
+the first jobs would be attempted in up-State New
+York. He gave Loew many details and talked plausibly
+of the ease with which parents could be stripped of
+considerable sums. Loew, who considered his client and
+fellow attorney slightly demented, had paid little attention
+to this sinister talk at the time. Now, however,
+he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that he
+probably was the man in the mask.</p>
+
+<p>Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliant
+Blake admitted that he was a friend of Warner’s, that
+they had indeed been schoolmates in their youth. He
+also admitted that he had been in New York a few days
+before the abduction of Johnny Conway and had then
+visited Warner. So the chase began.</p>
+
+<p>The police discovered that Warner had been at his
+office a day ahead of them and slipped out of New York
+again. They also found that he had been at Albany the
+three days that Johnny Conway had been detained.
+Their investigations showed also that Warner, though
+he had the reputation of being a particularly shrewd
+and energetic counselor, had never adhered very closely
+to the law himself, but had again and again been implicated
+in shady or criminal transactions, though he
+had always escaped prison, probably through legal acumen.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon apparent that the man had got well away,
+and an alarm was sent across the country. The police
+circulars that went out to all parts of America and the
+chief British and continental ports, described a man
+between forty and forty-five years old, more than six
+feet tall, slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over a
+very high forehead. That Warner was a bicycle enthusiast
+was the only added detail.</p>
+
+<p>The quest for Warner was one of the most exciting
+in memory. The first person sought and found was the
+Mrs. Warner who had given her name and address to
+Bernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in the
+subsequent blackmail charges. She was found living
+quietly at a boarding house in one of the adjacent New
+Jersey towns and said that she had not seen Warner for
+some weeks, a claim which turned out to be very near
+the truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before he
+started to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confided
+to the girl, who was not in truth his wife, any
+of his plans or intentions.</p>
+
+<p>It was then discovered that Attorney Warner was
+married and had a wife, from whom he had long been
+separated, living in a small town in upper New York.
+The detectives also visited this woman, but she had not
+seen her husband in years and could supply no information.</p>
+
+<p>Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in
+ten places on the same day. His presence was reported
+from every corner of the country. Clews and reports
+led weary officers thousands of miles on empty pursuits.
+Finally, when no real information as to the man developed,
+the public wearied of him, and news of the
+case dropped out of the papers.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake
+made an attempt to mitigate his case by turning State’s
+evidence, and Hardy pleaded that he had only been an
+intermediary, whose motivation was his brother-in-law’s
+closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the
+evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even
+without the admissions of either one, the prosecutor
+decided to reject their pleas and force them to stand
+trial. The cases were quickly heard and verdicts of
+guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once
+sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years
+in the State prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly
+removed to that gloomy house of pain in the Adirondack
+Mountains.</p>
+
+<p>All this happened before the first of October. The
+prisoners, having been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary,
+and the kidnapped boy being safely in his
+parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of
+December 12, two men entered the farm lot of William
+Goodrich near the little village of Riley in central Kansas,
+about two thousand miles from Albany and the
+scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm
+hand, one George Johnson, was milking in the cow
+stable by lantern light.</p>
+
+<p>As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and
+straw, horny of hand and tanned by the prairie winds,
+rose from his stool and started to leave the stable with
+his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside and approached
+him. One of them laid a rough hand on the
+farmer’s shoulder and said soberly:</p>
+
+<p>“Warner, I want you. Come along.”</p>
+
+<p>“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious
+Western drawl. “My name is Gawge Johnson.”</p>
+
+<p>“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New
+York it’s Albert S. Warner. I have a warrant for your
+arrest in connection with the Conway kidnapping.
+You’ll have to come.”</p>
+
+<p>The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to
+change his clothes, and loaded upon the next eastbound
+train. When he reached Kansas City he refused to go
+farther without extradition formalities. After the officers
+had telegraphed to New York, the man changed
+his mind again and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany,
+where he was placed in jail and soon brought to
+trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment,
+the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.</p>
+
+<p>The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann
+of the Albany police force. He had trailed the man
+about five thousand miles, partly on false scents. In his
+wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota,
+New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas,
+where he had satisfied himself that Warner was working
+on the Goodrich farm. McCann had then called a
+Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest office
+and made the arrest as already described.</p>
+
+<p>The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seems
+to have been that Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage,
+had been scheming for some time to get a thousand dollars
+out of his brother-in-law. He had confided his ideas
+to Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion of
+his friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer and
+clever schemer. Warner had then acted as organizer and
+leader, with what success the reader will judge.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE</p>
+
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the twentieth of April,
+1854, the schooner <i>Bella</i> cast off her moorings
+at the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked her
+way down the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for her
+home port, New York. She was partly in ballast, because
+of slack commerce, and carried a single passenger.
+About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grew
+up a strange mystery and a stranger history.</p>
+
+<p>When the last glint of the <i>Bella’s</i> sails was seen from
+Rio’s island anchorages, that vessel passed forever out
+of worldly cognizance. She never reached any port save
+the ultimate, and of those that rode in her, nothing came
+back but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs was
+veiled in a storm and hidden among unknown waters.
+The epitaph was written at Lloyd’s in the familiar syllables:
+“Foundered with all hands.”</p>
+
+<p>Of the <i>Bella’s</i> master, or the forty members of her
+crew, there is no surviving memory, and only a grimy
+hunt through the old shipping records could avail in
+the discovery of anything concerning them. But the
+lone passenger happened to be the son of a British
+baronet and heir to a great estate—Roger Charles
+Doughty Tichborne. The succession and the inheritance
+of the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof of
+this young man’s death. There was, accordingly, some
+formal inquiry as to the <i>Bella</i> and her wreck. The required
+months were allowed to pass; the usual reports
+from all ports were scanned. On account of the insistence
+of the Tichborne family, some additional care was
+taken. But in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formally
+declared lost at sea, his insurance paid, and the
+question of succession taken before the court in chancery,
+which determined such matters.</p>
+
+<p>Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of young
+Tichborne would have ended, had it not been for the
+peculiar insistence of his mother. Lady Tichborne would
+not, and probably could not, bring herself to believe
+that her beloved elder son had met his end in this dark
+and mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnesses
+to his death and objective proofs of the end, she
+clung obstinately to hope and continued to advertise
+for the “lost” young man for many years after the
+courts had solved the problem—or believed they had.</p>
+
+<p>There had already been the cloud of pathos about the
+head of Roger Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessary
+to an understanding of subsequent events. Born
+in Paris on January 5, 1829—his mother being the
+natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire,
+and a beautiful French woman—Roger was the
+descendant of very ancient Hampshire stock. His father,
+the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne and his
+grandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of that
+line.</p>
+
+<p>Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country,
+Lady Tichborne decided that her son should be reared
+as a Frenchman, and the lad spent the first fourteen
+years of his life in France, with the result that he never
+afterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief English
+schooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough to
+get the young man out of the habit of thinking in
+French and translating his Gallic idioms into English, a
+fault that appears in his letters to the very end, and
+one that caused him considerable suffering as a boy in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joined
+the Sixth Dragoon Guards at Dublin, as a subaltern.
+But in 1852 he sold out his commission and went home.
+His peculiarities of manner and appearance, his accent
+and strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness for
+soldiering had made him miserable in the army. The
+constant cruel, if thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of his
+fellows found him a sensitive mark.</p>
+
+<p>But the unhappy termination of the young man’s
+military career was only a minor factor in an almost
+desperate state of mind that possessed him at this time.
+He had fallen in love with his cousin, Kate Doughty,
+afterward Lady Radcliffe, and she had found herself
+unable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and storms
+the young heir of the Tichbornes set sail from Havre
+in March, 1853, and reached Valparaiso, Chile, about
+three months later, evidently determined to seek forgetfulness
+in stranger latitudes. In the course of the southern
+summer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reached
+Rio in March or early April. Here he embarked on the
+<i>Bella</i> for New York, as recited, his further plans remaining
+unknown. In letters to his mother he had, however,
+spoken vaguely of an intention to go to Australia,
+a hint upon which much of the following romance was
+erected.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the following year, the insurance was paid,
+and the will proved, the Tichbornes accepted the death
+of the traveler as practically beyond question. But not
+so his mother. She began, after an interval, to advertise
+in many parts of the world for trace of her son. Such
+notices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental,
+and Australian journals without effect. Only
+one thing is to be learned from them, the appearance
+of the lost heir. He is described as being rather undersized,
+delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes, and
+straight black hair. These personal specifications will
+prove of importance later on.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and a
+younger son succeeded to the baronetcy and estates.
+This event stirred the dowager Lady Tichborne to fresh
+activities, and her advertisements began to appear again
+in newspapers and shipping journals over half the world.
+As a result of these injudicious clamorings for information,
+many a seaspawned adventurer was received by the
+grieving mother at Tichborne House, and many a common
+liar imposed on her for money and other favors.
+Repeated misadventures of this sort might have been
+considered sufficient experience to cause the dowager
+to desist from her folly, but nothing seemed to move
+her from her fixed idea, and the fantastic reports and
+rumors brought her by every wandering sharper had
+the effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to
+restore her son, had not been without its collateral effects.
+Among them was the wide dissemination of a romantic
+story and the enlistment of public sympathy. A
+large part of the newspaper-reading British populace
+soon came to look upon the lady as a high example of
+motherly devotion, to sympathize with her point of
+view, and gradually to conclude that she was right, and
+that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere in
+the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to
+emotional strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate
+Doughty, the object of the young nobleman’s bootless
+love, refused various offers of marriage and steadfastly
+remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as
+to the fate of her hapless lover.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew
+up. The Tichborne case came to be looked upon in some
+quarters as another of the great mysteries of disappearance.
+In various distant lands volunteer seekers took up
+the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by
+the fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by
+the hope of reward.</p>
+
+<p>In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing
+friends’ bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, a fact
+which he advertised in the London newspapers. Lady
+Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw
+the notice in <i>The Times</i> and communicated with Cubitt.
+As a result of this contact, Lady Tichborne was notified,
+in November, 1865, that a man had been discovered
+who answered the description of her missing
+“boy.” This fellow had been found keeping a small
+butcher shop in the town of Wagga Wagga, New South
+Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas
+Castro, which he admitted to be assumed.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated
+at once and did not fail to give the impression that the
+discovery and return of her eldest son would be a feat
+to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir to a
+large property, and since she was herself “most anxious
+to hear.” Australia was then, to be sure, much farther
+away than to-day. There were no cables and only occasional
+steamers. It often took months for a letter to
+pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady
+Tichborne received a second communication in which
+she was told that there could be little doubt about the
+identification, as the butcher of Wagga Wagga had
+owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas
+Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at
+least one person that he was none other than Roger
+Tichborne.</p>
+
+<p>Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her first
+letter from her missing “son”. He addressed her as “Dear
+Mama,” misspelled the Tichborne name by inserting a
+“t” after the “i,” spelled common words abominably,
+and handled the English language with a fine show of
+ignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incident
+at Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had not
+the slightest recollection. At first she was considerably
+damped by these discrepancies and mistakes of the claimant,
+as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to be
+termed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from her
+doubts and asserted her absolute confidence in the genuineness
+of the far-away pretender to the baronetcy.</p>
+
+<p>Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, even
+when it is recalled that subsequent letters from Australia
+revealed the claimant to be ignorant of common
+family traditions and totally confused about himself,
+even going so far as to say that he had been a common
+soldier in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne had
+been an officer, and referring to his schooling at Winchester,
+whereas the Roman Catholic Tichbornes had,
+of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborne
+apparently ascribed such lapses to the “terrible
+ordeal” her boy had suffered, and she was not the only
+one to recognize that Roger Tichborne had himself,
+because of his early French training and the meagerness
+of his subsequent education, misspelled just such words
+as appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misused
+his English in a very similar fashion.</p>
+
+<p>These details are interesting rather than important.
+Whatever their final significance, Lady Tichborne sent
+money to Australia to pay for the claimant’s passage
+home. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the last
+month of 1866, and visited several localities, among
+them Wapping, a London district which played a vital
+part in what was to come. He also visited the vicinity of
+Tichborne Park and made numerous inquiries there.
+Only after these preliminaries did he cross to Paris,
+where he summoned Lady Tichborne to meet him.
+When she called at his hotel she found him in bed
+complaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted,
+and she recounted afterward that he kept his face
+turned to the wall most of the time she spent with him.</p>
+
+<p>What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this
+man is an interesting matter for speculation. She had
+sent away, thirteen years before, a slight, delicate, poetic
+aristocrat, whose chief characteristic was an excessive
+refinement that made him quite unfit for the common
+stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short,
+gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults
+and vocal solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the
+young man who knew his French and did not know
+his English, here was a fellow who could speak not a
+word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.</p>
+
+<p>None of these things appeared to make any difference
+to Lady Tichborne. She received the claimant
+without reservation, said publicly that she had recovered
+her darling boy, and went so far as to announce
+her reasons for accepting him as her son.</p>
+
+<p>The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, an
+exciting topic of the newspapers of the time, with the
+result that the romantic story of his voyage, the shipwreck
+of the <i>Bella</i>, his rescue, his wanderings, his final
+discovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return to his
+mother’s arms became known to millions of people,
+many of whom accepted the legend for its charm and
+color alone, without reference to its probability. Indeed,
+the tale had all the elements that make for popularity
+and credibility. The opening incident of unrequited
+love, the journey in quest of forgetfulness, the
+crossing of the Andes, the ordeal of shipwreck, the adventures
+in the Australian bush, and the intervention
+of the hand of Providence to drag him back to his native
+land, his title and his inheritance! Was there lacking
+any element of pathetic grace?</p>
+
+<p>For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichborne
+family affairs and his sad illiteracy sober objections to
+the pretensions of the claimant, there was triple evidence
+of identification. Not only had Lady Tichborne
+recognized this wanderer as her son, but two old Tichborne
+servants had preceded her in their approval. It
+happened that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who had
+been intimate with Roger Tichborne as a boy, was living
+in New South Wales when the first claim was put
+forward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the request
+of the dowager this man went to see the pretender and
+talked with him at length, first in the presence of those
+who were pressing the claim and later alone. The servant
+and the claimant reviewed a number of incidents
+in Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported that
+he was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servant
+and subsequently accompanied him to England. Later
+a former Tichborne gardener, Grillefoyle by name, who
+also had gone out to Australia, was sent to interview
+the Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. He
+reported favorably to his former mistress, and it seems
+to have been mainly on the opinion of these two men
+that Lady Tichborne based her decision to disregard
+the difficulties inherent in the letters and to finance the
+return of the man to England. Their testimony, backed
+by the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubt
+swayed her to credence when she finally stood face to
+face with the improbable apparition that pretended to
+be her son.</p>
+
+<p>The claimant, though he had arrived in England
+in December, 1866, made various claims and went to
+court once or twice but did not make the definitive legal
+move to establish his position or to retrieve the baronetcy
+and estates until more than three years later. Suit
+was finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trial
+came on before the court of common pleas in London
+on the eleventh of May, 1871. This was the beginning
+of one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trial
+dramas to be found in the records of modern nations.</p>
+
+<p>The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delay
+for the purpose of gathering evidence and consolidating
+his case. He had sought out and won over to
+his side the trusted servants of the house, the family
+solicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineers
+and many others. The school, the officers’ mess,
+the Tichborne seat, and many other localities connected
+with the youth and young manhood of Roger Tichborne
+had all been visited. In addition, the obese claimant
+had further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who came
+to have more and more faith in him. Originally she
+had written:</p>
+
+<p>“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it will
+not prevent me from recognizing him, though his
+statements differ from mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Before the suit was filed, and the case came to be
+tried, his memory improved remarkably; he corrected
+the many errors in his earlier statements, and his recollection
+quickly assimilated itself to that of Lady Tichborne.
+After he had been in England for a time even
+his handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealed
+in the letters written by Roger Tichborne before
+his disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidence
+in favor of the man from Australia. I have already
+said that the public accepted the stranger. It
+needs to be recorded that every new shred of similarity
+or circumstance that could be brought out only added
+to the conviction of the people. This was unquestionably
+Roger Tichborne and none other. Some elements
+asserted their opinion with a passion that was not far
+from violence, and the public generally regarded the
+hostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based on
+selfish motives. Naturally the other Tichbornes did not
+want to be dispossessed in favor of a man who had
+been confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted among
+the dead for more than fifteen years. The man in the
+street regarded the family position as natural, but
+reprehensible. How, it was asked, could there be any
+doubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was there
+anything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubt
+seemed almost monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher of
+Wagga Wagga became a public idol, and the Tichborne
+family an object of aversion.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it became
+known that the claimant had no funds with which to
+prosecute his case, the suggestion of a public bond issue
+was made and promptly approved. Bonds, with no
+other backing than the promise to refund the advanced
+money when the claimant should come into possession
+of his property, were issued, and so extreme was the
+public confidence in the validity of the claim that they
+were bought up greedily. In addition, a number of
+wealthy individuals became so interested in the affair
+and so convinced of the rights of the stranger, that
+they made him large personal advances. One man, Mr.
+Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as
+75,000 pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow family
+advanced 30,000 pounds and Earl Rivers is believed to
+have wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on the impostor.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the civil trial of the suit took place. The proceedings
+began on the eleventh of May, 1871, and were
+not concluded until March, 1872. Sir John Coleridge,
+who defended for the Tichborne family and later became
+lord chief justice, cross-questioned the claimant
+for twenty-two days, and his speech in summing up is
+said to have been the longest ever delivered before a
+court in England. The actual taking of evidence required
+more than one hundred court days, and at least
+a hundred witnesses identified the claimant as Roger
+Tichborne. To quote from Major Arthur Griffiths’ account:</p>
+
+<p>“These witnesses included Lady Tichborne,<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Roger’s
+mother, the family solicitor, one baronet, six magistrates,
+one general, three colonels, one major, thirty non-commissioned
+officers and men, four clergymen, seven
+Tichborne tenants, and sixteen servants of the family.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> A mistake, for the dowager Lady Tichborne died on March 12, 1868. Her
+damage had been done before the trial.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the defense produced only seventeen
+witnesses against the claimant, but it piled up a
+great deal of dark-looking evidence, and, in the course
+of his long and terrible interrogation of the plaintiff,
+Coleridge was able to bring out so many contradictions,
+such appalling blanks of memory, and such an accumulation
+of ignorances and blunders that the jury gave
+evidence of its inclination. Thereupon Serjeant Ballantine,
+the claimant’s leading counsel, abandoned the case.</p>
+
+<p>On the order of the judge the claimant was immediately
+seized, charged with three counts of perjury,
+and remanded for criminal trial. This case was not called
+until April, 1873, and it proved a more formidable
+legal contest than the unprecedented civil action. The
+proceedings lasted more than a year, and it took the
+judge eighteen days to charge the jury; this in spite of
+the usual despatch of British trials. How long such a
+case might have hung on in the notoriously slow American
+courts is a matter for painful speculation.</p>
+
+<p>This long and dramatic trial, full of emotional
+scenes and stirring incidents, moving slowly along to
+the accompaniment of popular unrest and violent partisanship
+in the newspapers, ended as did the civil action.
+The claimant was convicted of having impersonated
+Roger Tichborne, of having sullied the name of
+Miss Kate Doughty, and of having denied his true identity
+as Arthur Orton, the son of a Wapping butcher.
+The infant nephew of the real Roger Tichborne was,
+by this verdict, confirmed in his rights, and the claimant
+was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment.
+Thus ended one of the most magnificent impostures
+ever attempted. Lady Tichborne did not live to witness
+this collapse of the fraud, or the humiliation of the man
+she had so freely accepted as her own son. The poor
+lady was shown to be a monomaniac, whose judgment
+had been unseated by the shipwreck of her beloved eldest
+boy.</p>
+
+<p>I have purposely reserved the story, as brought out in
+the two trials, for direct narration, since it embraces the
+major romance connected with this celebrated case and
+needs to be told with regard to chronology and climax.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Orton, the true name of the claimant, was
+born to a Wapping butcher, at 69 High Street, in June,
+1834, and was thus nearly five years younger than
+Roger Tichborne. He had been afflicted with St. Vitus’
+dance as a boy and had been delinquent. As a result of
+this, he had been sent from home when fourteen years
+old, and he had taken a sea voyage which landed him,
+by a strange coincidence, at Valparaiso, Chile, in 1848,
+five years before Tichborne reached that port. Orton
+remained in Chile for several years, living with a family
+named Castro, at the small inland city of Melipillo, until
+1851, when he returned to England and visited his
+parents at Wapping. In the following year he sailed for
+Tasmania and settled at Hobart Town.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i123" style="max-width: 80.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i123.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+
+<p class="right small">
+<i>Copyright, Maull &amp; Fox</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">~~ ARTHUR ORTON ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>He operated a butcher shop in that place for some
+years, but made a failure of business and “disappeared
+into the brush,” owing every one. Trace of his movements
+then grew vague, but it is known that he was suspected
+of complicity in several highway robberies,
+which were staged in New South Wales a few years
+afterward, and he was certainly charged with horse
+stealing on one occasion. Later he appeared in Wagga
+Wagga and opened a small butcher shop under the name
+of Thomas Castro, which he had adopted from the family
+in Chile.</p>
+
+<p>In a confession which Orton wrote and sold to a London
+newspaper<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> years after his release from prison in
+1884, he gives an account of the origin of the fraud.
+He says that some time before Cubitt, of the missing-friends
+bureau, found him and induced him to write to
+Lady Tichborne, he and his chum at Wagga Wagga,
+one Slade, had seen some of the advertisements which
+the distraught lady was having published in antipodean
+newspapers. Orton soon adopted the pose of superior
+station, told Slade that he was, in fact, a nobleman incognito,
+and finally let his friends understand that he
+was Roger Tichborne. The whole thing had been begun
+in a spirit of innocent acting, for the purpose of noting
+the effect of such a revelation upon his friend. In view
+of what followed we cannot escape the conclusion that
+the swinishly fat butcher undertook this adventure because
+he was mentally disturbed, in the sense of being
+a pathological liar. A talent for impersonation and imposture
+is one of the marked characteristics displayed
+by this common type of mental defective, and Orton
+certainly possessed it, almost to the point of genius.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> <i>The People</i>, 1898.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Whatever the explanation of Orton’s original motive,
+the fact remains that his friend Slade was impressed by
+the butcher’s tale and thus encouraged Orton to proceed
+with the fraud, as did a lawyer to whom Orton-Castro
+was in debt. He soon went swaggering about,
+trying to talk like a gentleman and giving what must
+have been a most painful imitation of the manners of
+a lord. His rude neighbors can have had no better discrimination
+in such matters than the British public and
+Lady Tichborne herself, so it was not a difficult feat to
+play upon local credulity.</p>
+
+<p>In the last month of 1865, when Cubitt sent an agent
+to Wagga Wagga, as a result of his correspondence with
+Lady Tichborne, the legend of Orton’s identity as Roger
+Tichborne was already firmly established in the minds
+of his townspeople, and the rumor thus gained its initial
+confirmation. The reader is asked to remember that
+Orton was known as Castro, and that his identification
+as Orton was a difficult feat, which remained unperformed
+until the final trial, more than eight years
+later.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Tichborne herself supplied Castro and his backers
+in Australia with their first vital information. In
+seeking to identify her son she quite guilelessly wrote to
+Cubitt and others many details of her son’s appearance,
+history, education, and peculiarities. She also mentioned
+a number of intimate happenings. All these were seized
+upon by the butcher and used in framing his letters to
+the dowager. In spite of this fact, he made the many
+stupid blunders already referred to. Lady Tichborne
+saw the discrepancies, as has been remarked, but her
+monomania urged her to credence, and she sent the ex-servants,
+Bogle and Grillefoyle to investigate. How
+Orton-Castro managed to win them over is not easy to
+determine. For a time it was suspected that perhaps
+these men had been corrupted by those interested in
+having the claimant recognized; but the facts seem to
+discountenance any such belief. One of the outstanding
+characteristics of Orton was his ability to make friends
+and gain their confidence, of which fact there can be
+no more eloquent testimony than the long list of witnesses
+who appeared for him at his trials. The man who
+was able to persuade a mother, a sharp-witted solicitor,
+half a dozen higher army officers, six magistrates, and
+numberless soldiers and tenants who had known Roger
+Tichborne well, to accept and support him in his preposterous
+claim, did not need money to befool an old
+gardener and a negro valet.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it was this personal gift, backed by the man’s
+abnormal histrionic bent and capacity for mimicry,
+that carried him so far and won him the support of so
+many individuals and almost the solid public. How far
+he was able to carry things has been suggested, but the
+details are so remarkable as to demand recounting.</p>
+
+<p>Orton had almost no schooling. He quite naturally
+misspelled the commonest words and was normally
+guilty of the most appalling grammatical and rhetorical
+solecisms. He knew not a word of French, Latin, or of
+any other language, save a smattering of Spanish, picked
+up from the Castros while at Melipillo. He had never
+associated with any one who remotely approached the
+position of a gentleman, and the best imitation he can
+have contrived, must have been patterned after performances
+witnessed on the stages of cheap variety
+houses. Moreover he knew absolutely nothing about the
+Tichbornes, not even the fact that they were Catholics.
+He did not know where their estates were, nor where
+Roger had gone to school; yet he carried his imposture
+within an inch of success. Indeed, it was the opinion of
+disinterested observers at the trial of his civil action that
+he must have won the case had he stayed off the stand
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The feat of substitution this man almost succeeded
+in accomplishing was palpably an enormous one. He
+went to England, familiarized himself with the places
+Roger Tichborne had visited, studied French without
+managing to learn it, practiced the handwriting of the
+young Tichborne heir till it deceived even the experts,
+and likewise learned, in spite of his own lack of schooling,
+to imitate the English of Tichborne, and to misspell
+just those words on which the original Roger was
+weak. He crammed his memory with incidents and details
+picked up at every hand. He learned to talk almost
+like a gentleman. He worked with his voice until he
+got out of it most of the earthy harshness that belonged
+to it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtly
+behavior, gentle ways, and a certain charming deference
+which went far toward convincing those who took him
+seriously and gave him their support. In short, he was
+able to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness,
+but he could not, with all his talent, quite project himself
+into the personality and mentality of another and
+very different man. That, perhaps, is a simulation beyond
+human capacity.</p>
+
+<p>So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificent
+impersonation, went to prison for fourteen years,
+having made quite too grand a gesture and much too
+sad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and was
+then released in view of good conduct. Thereafter he
+wrote several confessions and retracted them all in turn.
+Finally, toward the end of his life, he changed his mind
+once more and prepared a final and fairly complete account
+of his life and misdeeds, from which some of the
+facts here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898.</p>
+
+<p>The extent to which he had moved the public may
+be judged from an incident the year following Orton’s
+conviction and imprisonment. His chief counsel at the
+criminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy, who
+was himself scathingly denounced by the court in connection
+with a misdirected attempt to have Orton identified
+as a castaway from the <i>Bella</i> by a seaman who
+swore he had performed the rescue, but was shown to be
+a perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was elected
+to Parliament, so great was his popularity and that of
+his client. When Kenealy, soon after taking his seat,
+moved that the Tichborne case be referred to a royal
+commission, the House of Commons rejected the motion
+unanimously. This action inflamed the populace.
+There were angry street meetings, inflammatory
+speeches, and symptoms of a general riot. The troops
+had to be called and kept in readiness for instant action.
+Fortunately the sight of the soldiers sobered the mob,
+and the matter passed off with only minor bloodshed.</p>
+
+<p>But ten years later, when Orton emerged from
+prison, there was almost no one to greet him. The fickle
+public, that had once been ready to storm the Houses
+of Parliament for him, had utterly forgotten the man.
+Nor was there any sign of public interest, when he died
+in obscurity and poverty fourteen years later. A few
+of his persistent followers gave him honorable burial as
+“Sir Roger Tichborne.”</p>
+
+<p>The original enigma of the fate of Roger Tichborne,
+upon which this colossal structure of fraud and legal
+intricacy was founded, received, to be sure, not the
+slightest clarification from all the pother and feverish
+investigating. If ever there had been any good reason
+to doubt that the young Hampshire aristocrat went
+helplessly down with the stricken <i>Bella</i> and her fated
+crew, none remained after the trials and the stupendous
+publicity they invoked.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE KIDNAPPERS OF CENTRAL PARK</p>
+
+
+<p>On the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1899, Mrs.
+Arthur W. Clarke, the young wife of a British
+publisher’s agent residing at 159 East Sixty-fifth
+Street, New York, found this advertisement in
+the <i>New York Herald</i>, under the heading, “Employment
+Wanted:”</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>GIRL (20) as child’s nurse; no experience in city. Nurse,
+274 <i>Herald</i>, Twenty-third Street.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The following Tuesday Mrs. Clarke took into her employment,
+as attendant for her little daughter, Marion,
+twenty months old, a pretty young woman, who gave
+the name of Carrie Jones and said she had come only two
+weeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upper
+New York State. The fact explained her lack of references.
+Mrs. Clarke, far from being suspicious because of
+the absence of employment papers, was impressed with
+the new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled,
+even-tempered young woman, considerably above her
+station, devoted to children, and, what was particularly
+noted, gentle in voice and demeanor—a jewel among
+servants.</p>
+
+<p>Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby Marion
+Clarke had become the center of one of the celebrated
+abduction cases and, for a little while, the nucleus of a
+dark and appalling mystery. To-day, after the lapse
+of twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affair
+are still to be read in the precautions hedging the employment
+of nursemaids in American cities and in the
+timidity of parents everywhere. It was one of those occasional
+and impressive crimes which leave their mark
+on social habits and public behavior long after the details
+or the incidents themselves have been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifth
+Street is about two squares from the city’s great
+playground, Central Park, a veritable warren of children
+and their maids on every sunny day. Here Marion
+Clarke went almost every afternoon with her new
+nurse, and here the first scene of the ensuing drama was
+played.</p>
+
+<p>At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of the
+next Sunday, May 21, Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarke
+and asked if she might not take the little girl to the
+Park then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine inviting.
+In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarke
+and her husband consented, and the maid set off a little
+before eleven o’clock with Baby Marion tucked into a
+wicker carriage. She was told to return by one o’clock,
+so that the child might have her luncheon at the usual
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk in
+the Park, also tempted from his home by the enchantments
+of the day. Mrs. Clarke did not accompany him,
+since she had borne a second baby only two or three
+months before, and she was still confined to the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Street
+entrance and followed the paths idly along toward the
+old arsenal. Without especially seeking his daughter and
+her nurse, he nevertheless kept an eye out. A short distance
+from the arsenal he saw his child’s cart standing
+in front of the rest room; he approached, expecting to
+see the child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and the
+attendant explained that the child’s vehicle had been
+left in her care, while the nurse bore the baby to the
+menagerie.</p>
+
+<p>“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to be
+here any minute now,” prattled the public employee.</p>
+
+<p>The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatient
+and went off to wander through the animal gardens.
+In half an hour he was back at the rest room to find the
+attendant about to move the cart indoors and make her
+departure, her tour of duty being over.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to the
+nearest policeman, who smiled, with the confidence of
+long experience, and advised him to go home. It was a
+common thing for a green country girl to get lost
+among the winding drives and walks of Central Park.
+No doubt the nurse would find her way home with the
+child in a little while.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke went back to his house and waited. At two
+o’clock he went excitedly back to the Park and consulted
+the captain of police, with the same results. The
+officers were ordered to look for the nurse and child,
+but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He was
+once more told to go home and wait. At the same time
+he was rather pointedly told not to return with his annoying
+inquiries. Such temporary disappearances of
+children happened every day.</p>
+
+<p>The harried father went home and paced the floor.
+His enervated wife wept and trembled with apprehension.
+At four o’clock the doorbell rang, and the
+father rushed excitedly to answer.</p>
+
+<p>A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibule
+and asked if Mr. Clarke lived here. Then he handed over
+a letter in a plain white envelope, lingering a moment, as
+if expecting a tip.</p>
+
+<p>Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quaking
+fingers and read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Mrs Clark</span>: Do not look for your nurse and baby. They
+are safe in our possession, where they will remain for the
+present. If the matter is kept out of the hands of the police
+and newspapers, you will get your baby back, safe and sound.</p>
+
+<p>“If, instead, you make a big time about it and publish it
+all over, we will see to it that you never see her alive again.
+We are driven to this by the fact that we cannot get work,
+and one of us has a child dying through want of proper
+treatment and nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>“Your baby is safe and in good hands. The nurse girl is
+still with her. If everything is quiet, you will hear from us
+Monday or Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“<span class="smcap">Three.</span>”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed,
+punctuated, and printed with a fine pen in a somewhat
+laborious simulation of writing-machine type. It also
+bore several markings characteristic of the journalist or
+publisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel lines
+drawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicate
+capitals. The envelope was the common plain white
+kind, but the sheet of paper on which the note had been
+penned was of the white unglazed and uncalendared
+kind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper offices
+as copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspected
+that the kidnapper must have been a newspaper man,
+printer, reader, or some one connected with a publishing
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alone
+the preceding Friday evening and had been writing.
+Evidently she had prepared the note at that time and
+had been planning the abduction with foresight and
+care. People at once reached the conclusion that she
+was one of the agents of a great band of professional
+kidnappers. Accordingly every child and every mother
+in the city stood in peril.</p>
+
+<p>To indicate the nature of the official search, we may
+as well reproduce Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Arrest for abduction—Carrie Jones, twenty-one years of
+age, five feet two inches tall, dark hair and eyes, pale face,
+high check bones, teeth prominent in lower jaw, American
+by birth; wore a white straw sailor hat with black band, military
+pin on side, blue-check shirt waist, black brilliantine
+skirt, black lace bicycle boots, white collar and black tie.</p>
+
+<p>“Abducted on Sunday May 21, 1899, Marion Clarke,
+daughter of Arthur W. Clarke, of this city, and described as
+follows: twenty months old, light complexion, blue eyes,
+light hair, had twelve teeth, four in upper jaw, four in lower
+jaw, and four in back. There is a space between two upper
+front teeth, and red birthmark on back. Wore rose-colored
+dress, white silk cap, black stockings, and black buttoned
+shoes.</p>
+
+<p>“Make careful inquiry and distribute these circulars in
+all institutions, foundling asylums, and places where children
+of the above age are received.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A photograph of the missing child accompanied the
+description.</p>
+
+<p>So the quest began. It was, however, by no means
+confined to Carrie Jones and the child. The New York
+newspaper reporters were early convinced that some
+one else stood behind the transaction, and they sought
+night and day for a man or woman connected either
+directly or distantly with their own profession. It was
+the day when the reporter prided himself especially on
+his superior acumen as a sleuth, with the result that
+every effort was made to give a fresh demonstration of
+journalistic enterprise and shrewdness.</p>
+
+<p>Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompanied
+by a sharp rise in public emotionalism and the incipience
+of panic among parents, failed, however, to
+produce even the most shadowy results. Rumors and
+suspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, but
+there came forth nothing that had the earmarks of the
+genuine clew. The arrests of innocent young women
+were many, and numerous little girls were dragged to
+police stations by the usual crop of fanatics.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from all
+parts of the surrounding country and even from the
+most distant places. One report had her on her way to
+England, another showed her as having sailed for
+Sweden, a third report was that she had been taken to
+Australia by a childless couple. All the other common
+hypotheses were, of course, entertained. A bereaved
+mother had taken little Marion to fill the void of her
+own loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girl
+and was using her to present as her own offspring, probably
+to comply with the provisions of some freak will.</p>
+
+<p>But the hard fact remained that a letter had come
+within four hours after the abduction of the child,
+and before there had been the first note of alarm or
+publicity. Such an epistle could only have been written
+by the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy to
+the fact that the girl was gone. In that communication
+the writer had stated his or her case very definitely and,
+while not actually demanding ransom or naming a sum,
+had clearly indicated the intention of making such a
+subsequent demand.</p>
+
+<p>Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be it
+said to their credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spun
+hypotheses, but clung to the main track and
+sought the kidnappers. The <i>New York World</i> offered
+a reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficient
+reportorial workers into the search. The other newspapers
+also kept their men going in shifts. Every possible
+trail was followed to its end, every promising part
+of the city searched. Even the most inane reports were
+investigated with diligence.</p>
+
+<p>Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bits
+of information which they, no doubt, considered suggestive
+or important. The well-known Captain McClusky,
+then chief of detectives, received these often
+wearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigation
+of their reports, and often remained at his desk
+late into the night.</p>
+
+<p>Among a large number of women who reported to
+the detective chief was a Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and voluble
+Irishwoman, who maintained a rooming house in
+Twenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff asserted
+that two women with a little girl of Marion
+Clarke’s age and general appearance had rented a room
+from her on the evening of the eventful Sunday and
+spent the night there. The next morning one of them
+had got the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secluded
+with the other woman and child for a time, and
+had then come out to announce that they would not remain
+another day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detected
+excitement in the manner of both women, but she
+had to admit that the child had made no complaint or
+outcry. Nevertheless, she felt that these were the wanted
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Had she noted anything of special interest about the
+child, any peculiarity by which the parents might
+recognize her? Or had she heard the women mention
+any town or place to which they might have gone?</p>
+
+<p>The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessed
+that her curiosity had led her to do a little spying,
+and recalled that she had heard one of the women
+mention a town. Either she had not heard the name
+distinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it was
+a name ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that.
+Fitchburg, Pittsburg, Williamsburg, Plattsburg—something
+like that. She did not know the reason for her
+feeling, but she was sure it was a place not very far
+from New York.</p>
+
+<p>As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothing
+except that it seemed good-humored, healthy, and
+clever. She had heard one of the women say: “Come
+on, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently the
+little girl had done some sort of impersonation.</p>
+
+<p>Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credence
+in Mrs. Cosgriff’s account, but he saw no special
+promise in her revelations till he repeated the details to
+the agonized parents. At the mention of the childish
+impersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.</p>
+
+<p>“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of her
+little tricks!”</p>
+
+<p>It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spent
+hours playing with the child, teaching it to walk and
+pose like a certain affected woman friend of its mother.
+Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie Jones, and another
+woman had been in South Brooklyn the evening
+after the abduction and spent the night and part of
+the next day at Mrs. Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoon
+for a town whose name ended in burg or berg.</p>
+
+<p>Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives made
+a list of towns with the burg termination, and one or
+two men were sent to each, with instructions to make
+a quiet, but thorough, search. Information of a confidential
+kind was also forwarded to the police departments
+of other cities, near and far. As a result a
+number of suspected young women were picked up.
+Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a short
+time when a girl answering to the description of Carrie
+Jones was seized in Connecticut and held for the
+arrival of the New York detectives, when she began to
+act mysteriously and failed to give a clear account of
+herself. It was found, however, that she had other substantial
+reasons for being cryptic, and that she was,
+moreover, enjoying her little joke on the officials.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who would
+neither affirm nor deny that she was Carrie Jones, but
+let the local police have the very definite impression that
+they had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper. She
+turned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatory
+type. Her one real link with the affair was
+that her name happened to be Jones, a circumstance
+which got the members of this large and popular family
+of citizens no little discomfort during the pendency of
+the Clarke mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime no further communication had been received
+from the abductors. They had said, in the single
+note received from them, that they would communicate
+Monday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything,
+far from being quiet, had been in a most plangent
+uproar, which circumstances alone should have been
+recognized as the reason for silence. But, as is usual,
+the clear and patent explanation seemed not to contain
+enough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretations
+were put forward in the usual variety of
+forms. The note had been sent merely to misguide, and
+one might be sure the abductors did not intend to return
+Baby Marion. If the abductors were looking for
+ransom, why had no more been heard? Why had they
+chosen the daughter of a man who had slender means
+and from whom no large ransom could be expected?
+No, it was something more sinister still. Probably Little
+Marion was dead.</p>
+
+<p>As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusive
+developments, the public sympathy toward the
+stricken couple became expressive and dramatic.
+Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth Street in
+hope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. The
+father was greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressions
+whenever he came or went. Many offers of aid
+were received, and some came forward who wanted to
+pay whatever ransom might be demanded.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i141" style="max-width: 80.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i141.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ MARION CLARKE ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In these various ways the Marion Clarke case came
+to be a national and even an international sensation in
+the brief course of a week. Sympathy with the parents
+was instant and widespread, and passion against the abductors
+filled the newspaper correspondence columns
+with suggestions in favor of more stringent laws, plans
+for cruel vengeance on the kidnappers, complaints
+against the police, fulminations directed at quite every
+one connected with the unfortunate affair—all the
+usual expressions of helplessness and bafflement.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven days
+after the disappearance, a woman with a little girl entered
+the general store at the little hamlet of St. John,
+N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided as postmistress
+to the community. The child was a little petulant
+and noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous.
+Both were strangers. The woman gave her name as
+Beauregard and took one or two letters which had come
+for her. With these and the little girl she made a quick
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Because of the great excitement and wide publicity
+of the Clarke case, nothing of the sort could happen so
+near the city of New York without one inevitable result.
+The postmistress immediately notified Deputy
+Sheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, who
+had his office in St. John. Charleston was able to locate
+the woman and child before they could leave town, and
+he covertly followed them to the farmhouse of Frank
+Oakley, in the heart of the Ramapo Mountain region,
+near Sloatsburg, about nineteen miles from Haverstraw,
+on the Hudson River.</p>
+
+<p>The rural officer discovered, by making a few inquiries,
+that this Mrs. Beauregard had been known in
+the vicinity for some months, and she had been occupying
+the Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously,
+however, she had appeared with another woman
+and the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; there
+were, or had been, two women; the place was ideal for
+hiding, and the child was of the proper age and description.
+Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned some
+other officers, descended on the place, seized the woman,
+the child, and the husband, locked them into the nearest
+jail, and sent word to Captain McClusky.</p>
+
+<p>New York detectives and reporters arrived by the
+next train, and Mr. Clarke came a short time later. As
+soon as he was on the ground, the party proceeded to
+the jail, and the weeping father caught his wandering
+girl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke.
+Within ten minutes every available telephone and telegraph
+wire was humming the triumphant message back
+to New York.</p>
+
+<p>But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mystery
+of the case only began to unfold itself. The woman
+seized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie Jones. Neither had
+the Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name of
+Mrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned about
+this matter, later “admitted” that she was really Mrs.
+Jennie Wilson. Her story was that a couple had brought
+the child to her, saying that it needed to remain in the
+mountains for the summer. They had paid her for the
+little girl’s board and care. She declared she did not
+know their address, but they would certainly be on
+hand in the fall to reclaim their baby.</p>
+
+<p>The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he was
+James Wilson; that he had no employment at the time,
+except working on the farm, and that he knew nothing
+of the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. He
+didn’t interfere in such affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Both were returned to New York after some slight
+delay. The detectives and the newspapers at once went
+to work on the problem of discovering who they were,
+and what had become of Carrie Jones.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the abducted child was being brought
+home to her distracted mother. A crowd of several
+thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth Street,
+apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening
+newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded
+with presents, saluted by the public officials, and treated
+as the heroine that circumstance and good police work
+had made her. Photographs of her crowded the journals,
+and she was altogether the most famous youngster
+of the day. Her parents later removed to Boston with
+her, and they were heard of in the succeeding years
+when attempts were made to release the imprisoned kidnappers,
+or whenever there was another kidnapping or
+missing-child case. In time they passed back into obscurity,
+and Marion Clarke disappeared from the glare
+of notoriety.</p>
+
+<p>The work of identifying the man and woman caught
+in the Sloatsburg farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy
+Lang, the boy who had brought the note to the Clarke
+door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately
+recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who
+had handed him the missive and a five-cent piece in
+Second Avenue and asked him to deliver the note to
+Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and
+said that the prisoner was one of the two women who
+had stayed at her house on that Sunday night. It was
+apparent then that one of the active kidnappers, and not
+an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman and her
+husband, however, denied everything and refused to
+give any information about themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in
+an attempt to make the identification complete, discover
+just who the prisoners were, and establish their
+connections with others believed to have financed the
+kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than
+mere abduction for ransom was suspected, and it seemed
+to be indicated by certain facts that will appear presently.
+Accordingly the reporters and journalistic investigators
+were conducting a fresh search on very broad
+lines.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the second of June this hunt came
+to an abrupt close, when a reporter traced the mysterious
+Carrie Jones to the home of an aunt at White Oak
+Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the
+admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country
+girl who had been for no long period a waitress in
+the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, New York. Bella
+Anderson readily told who the captive man and woman
+were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted
+and carried out. Her story may be summarized to clear
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of
+a retired soldier who had seen service in India and Africa.
+At the age of fourteen, her parents being dead, she
+and her brother, Samuel, had set out for America and
+been received by relatives in the States of New York
+and New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled
+and aided financially both by her brother and other relatives.
+The year before the kidnapping she had gone to
+New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel,
+in the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs.
+George Beauregard Barrow. They had been kind to her
+and become her intimates, nursing her through an illness
+and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.</p>
+
+<p>The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested
+pair, had persuaded her that the work of waiting
+on table in a hotel was too arduous and advised her to
+seek employment in a private family as nurse to a child.
+In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity
+to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a
+heavy ransom for its return. All this part of the business
+they would manage for her. All she needed to do
+was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this she
+was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be
+collected.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a
+place as child’s nurse. Several parents answered. At the
+first two homes she was just too late to procure employment,
+other applicants having anticipated her. So it
+was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and
+determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.</p>
+
+<p>The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had
+coached her carefully. They had instructed her in the
+matter of her lack of references, in the manner of taking
+the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in the
+details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on
+through the list. They had been the mentors and the
+“master minds.”</p>
+
+<p>After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few
+days and had taken little Marion to the Park the first
+time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted with the nurse and
+instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the next
+excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many
+qualms and been unable to bring herself to the deed for
+several visits. Each time Mrs. Barrow met her in the
+Park and was ready to flee with the little girl. Finally
+the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon
+she found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They
+left the baby’s cart at the rest room, carried the child
+to a remote place, changed its coat and cap, and then
+set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they took
+the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to,
+the women exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned
+to Manhattan, gave the note to the boy, and
+turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had
+seen the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the
+game was dangerous, and set out quickly for Sloatsburg,
+where the farmhouse had been rented in advance by
+Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent
+away because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly
+sought and might be recognized in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows
+naturally sought to shield themselves. It was also discovered
+that Mrs. Barrow had been an Addie McNally,
+born and reared in up-State New York, and that she,
+with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment,
+thus explaining the chirographical characteristics
+of the Clarke abduction note. She was about
+twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not unattractive.</p>
+
+<p>Investigation brought out romantic and pathetic
+facts concerning the husband. He had apparently had
+no better employment in New York than that of motorman
+in the hire of an electric cab company then operating
+in that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguished
+parents. His father was Judge John C. Barrow
+of the superior court of Little Rock, Arkansas, and
+the descendant of other persons politically well known in
+the South. George Beauregard Barrow—his middle name
+being that of the famous Confederate commander at the
+first battle of Bull Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationship
+was claimed—had been incorrigible from
+childhood. In early manhood he had been connected
+with kidnapping threats and plots in his home city and
+with assaults on his enemies, with the result that he was
+finally sent away, cut off and told to make his own
+berth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his unfortunate
+son at the trial, but public feeling was too
+sorely aroused.</p>
+
+<p>George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried before
+Judge Fursman and quickly convicted. Barrow was sentenced
+to fourteen years and ten months, and the Anderson
+girl to four years, both judge and jury accepting
+her statement that she had been no more than a pawn
+in the hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs.
+Barrow, sensing the direction of the wind, took a plea
+of guilty before Judge Werner, hoping for clemency.
+The court, however, said that her crime merited the
+gravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixed
+her term at twelve years and ten months.</p>
+
+<p>These trials were had, and the sentences imposed
+within six weeks of the kidnapping, the courts having
+acted with despatch. While the cases were pending,
+Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had again
+and again been asked to reveal the names of others who
+had induced them to their crime or had financed them.
+All said there had been no other conspirators, but the
+feeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the support
+of professional criminals, or of some enemy of the
+Clarkes, either of whom had supplied him with considerable
+sums of money.</p>
+
+<p>This belief, which was specially strong with some of
+the newspapers, was predicated upon two facts.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four days
+after the abduction of Marion Clarke, there had appeared
+in the <i>New York Herald</i> the following advertisement:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in Baby
+Clarke case. Write again and let me know when and where
+I can meet you Thursday evening. Don’t fail—strictly confidential.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any persons
+acting for them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-reward
+offer or had communicated with any one
+who had been promised such a sum. Hence there were
+only two possible explanations of the advertisement.
+Either it had been inserted by some unbalanced person
+who wanted to create a stir—the kind of restless neurotic
+who projects his unwelcome apparition into every
+sensation—or there was really some dark force moving
+behind the kidnapping.</p>
+
+<p>A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion.
+In spite of the fact that George Barrow had been disowned
+at home and driven from his town, and opposed
+to the circumstances that he had worked at common
+and ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent for
+eleven months, had been seen in the shabbiest clothes
+and was known to be in need—the only force that
+might have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping—he
+was found to have a considerable sum in his pockets
+when searched at the jail; he informed his wife that he
+would get plenty of cash for their defense, and he was
+shown to have expended a fairly large sum on the planning
+of the crime, the traveling and other expenses, the
+rent of the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, and
+for his own amusement. Where had this come from?</p>
+
+<p>Not only the public and the newspapers, but Detective
+Chief McClusky were long occupied with this
+enigma. Barrow himself gave various specious explanations
+and finally refused to say more. Hints and bruits
+of all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarke
+could furnish the answer if he would, an accusation
+which the harried father indignantly rejected.</p>
+
+<p>In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkes
+removed to Boston, the public interest flagged, and the
+mystery remained unsolved.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">DOROTHY ARNOLD</p>
+
+
+<p>On the afternoon of Monday, December 12,
+1910, a young woman of the upper social
+world vanished from the pavement of Fifth
+Avenue. Not only did she disappear from the center of
+one of the busiest streets on earth, at the sunniest hour
+of a brilliant winter afternoon, with thousands within
+sight and reach, with men and women who knew her at
+every side, and with officers of the law thickly strewn
+about her path; but she went without discernible motives,
+without preparation, and, so far as the public has
+ever been permitted to read, without leaving the dimmest
+clew to her possible destination.</p>
+
+<p>These are the peculiarities which mark the Dorothy
+Arnold case as one of the most irritating puzzles of
+modern police history, a true mystery of the missing.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the maxims in the administration of absent-persons
+bureaus that disappearing men and women,
+no matter how carefully they may plan, regardless of
+all natural astuteness, invariably leave behind some token
+of their premeditation. Similarly, it is a truism that,
+barring purposeful self-occultation, the departure of an
+adult human being from so crowded a thoroughfare
+can be set down only to abduction or to mnemonic aberration.
+Remembering that a crime must have its motivation,
+and that cases of amnesia almost always are
+marked by previous symptoms and by fairly early recovery,
+the recondite and baffling aspects of this affair
+become manifest; for there was never the least hint of
+a ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuous
+for rugged physical and mental health.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, to sum up the affair, a disappearance which
+had from the beginning no standing in rationality, being
+logically both impenetrable and irreconcilable, remains,
+at the end of nearly a score of years, as obstinate
+and perplexing as ever—publicly a gall to human curiosity,
+an impossible problem for reason and analytical
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Arnold was past twenty-five when she
+walked out of her father’s house into darkness that shining
+winter’s day. She was at the summit of her youth,
+rich, socially preferred, blessed with prospects, and to
+every outer eye, uncloudedly happy. Her father, a
+wealthy importer of perfumes, occupied a dignified
+house on East Seventy-ninth Street, in the center of
+one of the best residential districts, with his wife and
+four children—two sons and two daughters. Mr. Arnold’s
+sister was the wife of Justice Peckham of the
+United States Supreme Court, and the entire family
+was socially well known in Washington, Philadelphia,
+and New York. His missing daughter had been educated
+at Bryn Mawr and figured prominently in the activities
+of “the younger set” in all these cities. All descriptions
+set her down as having been active, cheerful,
+intelligent, and talented.</p>
+
+<p>The accepted story is that Miss Arnold left her father’s
+home at about half past eleven on the morning
+of her disappearance, apparently to go shopping for an
+evening gown. She appears to have had an appointment
+with a girl friend, which she broke earlier in the morning,
+saying that she was to go shopping with her mother.
+A few minutes before she left the house, the young
+woman went to her mother’s room and said she was going
+out to look for the dress. Her mother remarked that
+if her daughter would wait till she might finish dressing,
+she would go along. The girl demurred quietly, saying
+that it wasn’t worth the bother, and that she would
+telephone if she found anything to her liking. So far
+as her parent could make out, the girl was not anxious
+to be alone. She was no more than casual and seemed
+especially happy and well.</p>
+
+<p>At noon, half an hour after she had left her home,
+Miss Arnold went into a shop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth
+Street, where she bought a box of candy and had
+it charged on her father’s account. At about half past
+one she was at Brentano’s bookshop, Twenty-seventh
+Street and Fifth Avenue. Here she bought a volume of
+fiction, also charging the item to her father.</p>
+
+<p>Whether she was recognized again at a later hour is
+in doubt. She met a girl chum and her mother in the
+street some time during the early part of the afternoon
+and stopped to gossip for a few moments; but whether
+this incident occurred just before or after her visit to
+the bookstore could not be made certain. At any rate,
+she was not seen later than two o’clock.</p>
+
+<p>When the young woman failed to appear at home
+for dinner, there was a little irritation, but no concern.
+Her family decided that she had probably come across
+friends and forgotten to telephone her intention of dining
+out. But when midnight came, and there was still
+no word from the young woman, her father began to
+feel uneasy and communicated by telephone with the
+homes of various friends, where his daughter might
+have been visiting. When he failed to discover her in
+this way, Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney,
+and a search was begun.</p>
+
+<p>The reader is asked to note that there was no public
+announcement of the young woman’s absence for more
+than six weeks. Just why it was considered wise to proceed
+discreetly and privately cannot be more than surmised.
+This action on the part of her family has always
+been considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicion
+and a determination to prevent its publication. At any
+rate, it was not until January 26, that revelation was
+made to the newspapers, at the strong urging of W. J.
+Flynn, then in charge of the New York detectives.</p>
+
+<p>In those six weeks, however, there had been no idleness.
+As soon as it was apparent that the girl could not
+be merely visiting, private detectives were summoned,
+and a formal quest begun. Her room and its contents
+revealed nothing of a positive character. She had left the
+house in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat and
+street shoes, carrying a silver-fox muff and satin bag,
+probably containing less than thirty dollars in money.
+Her checkbook had been left behind; nor had there
+been any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts.
+No part of the girl’s clothing had been packed or taken
+along; none of her more valuable jewelry was missing;
+no letter had been left, and nothing pointed to preparation
+of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>A search of her correspondence revealed, however, a
+packet of letters from a man of a well-known family in
+another city. When, somewhat later, Mr. Arnold was
+summoned by the district attorney and asked to produce
+the letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, but
+added that they contained nothing of significance.</p>
+
+<p>It developed, too, that, while her parents were in
+Maine in the preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold had
+gone to Boston on the pretext of visiting a school chum,
+resident in the university suburb of Cambridge; whereas
+she had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and had
+pawned about five hundred dollars’ worth of personal
+jewelry with a local lender, taking no trouble, however
+to conceal her name or home address. It was shown
+that the man of the letters was registered at another
+Boston hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he denied
+having seen her or been with her on this occasion,
+and there was no way of proving to the contrary. The
+date of this Boston visit was September 23, about two
+and a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance.
+The police were never able to establish any connection
+between the Boston visit, the pawning of the jewels, and
+the subsequent events, so that the reader must rely at
+this point upon his own conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment
+of the young heiress, both her mother and
+brother and the man of the letters had returned from
+Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her.
+He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of
+Miss Arnold’s plans, proclaimed that he knew of no
+reason why she should have left home, announced that
+he had considered himself engaged to marry her, and
+he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly
+appear. Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained
+over the young man and all his movements for
+many months. In the end, however, the police seemed
+satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of
+Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out
+of the case almost as suddenly as he had entered it.</p>
+
+<p>In the six weeks before the public was acquainted
+with the facts, private detectives, and later the public
+police, had worked unremittingly on the several possible
+theories covering the case. There were naturally a
+number of possibilities: First, that the girl had met with
+a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital;
+second, that she had been run down by some
+reckless motorist, killed, and carried off by the frightened
+driver and secretly buried; third, that she had been
+kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that she
+had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering
+about the country, unable to give any clew to her
+identity; sixth, that she had quarreled with her parents
+and chosen this method of bringing them to terms by
+the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested
+as a shoplifter and was concealing her identity for
+shame.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded.
+The hospitals and morgues were searched in vain; the
+records of traffic accidents were scanned with the utmost
+care; the roadhouses and resorts in all directions
+from the city were visited, and their owners closely
+questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected,
+the passenger lists of all departing ships examined, and
+later sailings observed. The authorities in European and
+other ports were notified by cable, and the captains of
+ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the
+first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and
+prisons were visited and every female prisoner noted.
+Similar precautions were taken in other American cities,
+where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues were also
+subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of
+physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and
+all manner of possible and impossible retreats were made
+the objects of detective attention—all without result.</p>
+
+<p>The notion that the girl might have been abducted
+and held for ransom was discarded at the end of a few
+weeks, when no word had come from possible kidnappers.
+The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, with
+the most emphatic denials coming from all the near and
+distant members of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea of
+an elopement also had to be discarded after a time, and
+so also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic attack.</p>
+
+<p>After the police finally insisted on the publication of
+the facts and the summoning of public aid, and after
+the various early hypotheses had one and all failed to
+stand the test of scrutiny and time, various more and
+more fantastic or improbable conjectures came into
+currency. One was that the girl might have been carried
+off to some distant American town or foreign port.
+Another was that some secret enemy, whose name and
+grievance her parents were loath to reveal, had made
+away with the young woman, or was holding her to satisfy
+his spite. The public excitement was nigh boundless,
+and ingenious fabulations or diseased imaginings
+came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted
+parents with every mail.</p>
+
+<p>Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. As
+the story of the young woman’s disappearance continued
+to occupy the leading columns of the daily papers,
+day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstable
+elements of the population came into vigorous
+play. Dorothy Arnold was reported from all parts of
+the country, and both the members of her family and
+numberless detectives were kept on the jump, running
+down the most absurd reports on the meager possibility
+that there might be a grain of truth in one of them. Soon
+there appeared the pathological liars and self-accusers,
+with whose peculiarities neither the police nor the public
+were then sufficiently acquainted. In more than a
+hundred cities—judging from a tabulation of the newspaper
+reports of that day—women of the most diverse
+ages and types came forward with the suggestion that
+they concealed within themselves the person of the missing
+heiress. Girls of fourteen made the claim and women
+of fifty. Such absurdities soon had the police in a state
+of weary skepticism, but the Arnold family and the
+newspaper-reading public were still upset by every fresh
+report.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i159" style="max-width: 81.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i159.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ DOROTHY ARNOLD ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Naturally enough, the fact that a prominent young
+woman, enjoying the full protection of wealth and social
+distinction, could apparently be snatched away
+from the most populous quarter of a world city, struck
+terror to the hearts of many. If a Dorothy Arnold could
+be ravished from the familiar sidewalks of her home
+city, what fate waited for the obscure stranger? Was it
+not possible that some new and strange kind of criminal,
+equipped with diabolic cunning and actuated by impenetrable
+motives, was launched upon a campaign of
+woman stealing? Who was safe?</p>
+
+<p>One of the popular beliefs of the time was that Miss
+Arnold might have gone into some small and obscure
+shop at a time when there was no other customer in the
+place and been there seized, bound, gagged, and made
+ready for abduction. The notion was widely accepted
+for the dual reason that it provided a set of circumstances
+under which it was possible to explain the totally
+unwitnessed snatching of the young woman and,
+at the same time, set a likely locale, since there are thousands
+of such little shops in New York. As a result of
+the currency of this story, many women hesitated to
+enter the establishments of cobblers, bootblacks, stationers,
+confectioners, tobacconists, and other petty
+tradesmen, especially in the more outlying parts of the
+city. Many bankruptcies of these minor business people
+resulted, as one may read from the court records.</p>
+
+<p>A similar fabulation, to the effect that the girl might
+have entered a cruising taxicab, operated by a sinister
+ex-convict, and been whisked off to some secret den of
+crime and vice, was almost as popular, with the result
+that cabs did a poor business with women clients for
+more than a year afterward. An old hackman, who was
+arrested in that feverish time because of the hysteria of
+a woman passenger, tells me that even to-day he encounters
+women who grow suspicious and excited, if he
+happens to drive by some unaccustomed route, a thing
+often done in these days to avoid the congestion on the
+main streets.</p>
+
+<p>While all this popular burning and sweating was going
+on, the police and many thousands of private investigators,
+professional and amateur, were busy with
+the problem of elucidating some motive to fit the case.
+Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to
+reason, the possibilities became a very general preoccupation.
+The deductive steps may be briefly set down.
+First, there were the alternative propositions of voluntary
+or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction.
+Second, if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained,
+there were only two general possibilities—abduction
+for ransom or kidnapping by some maniac. The
+ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like,
+come under the latter head. The notion of a fatal accident
+had been eliminated.</p>
+
+<p>The proposition of voluntary absence presented a
+more complex picture. Suicide, elopement, amnesia,
+personal rebellion, an unrevealed family situation, a forbidden
+love affair, the desire to hide some social lapse—any
+of these might be the basis of a self-willed absence
+of a permanent or temporary kind.</p>
+
+<p>The failure, after months of quest, to find any trace
+of a body, seemed to have rendered the propositions of
+murder and of suicide alike improbable. Elopement and
+amnesia were likewise rendered untenable theories by
+time, nor was it long before the conceit of a disagreement
+was relegated to the improbabilities.</p>
+
+<p>Justly or unjustly, a good many practical detectives
+came after a time to the opinion that the case demanded
+a masculinizing of the familiar adage into <i>cherchez
+l’homme</i>. More seasoned officers inclined to the idea that
+there must have been some man, possibly one whose
+identity had been successfully concealed by the distraught
+girl. Again, as is common in such cases, there
+was the very general feeling that Miss Arnold’s family
+knew a good deal more than had been revealed either to
+the police or the public, and there was something about
+the long delay in reporting the case and the subsequent
+guarded attitude of the girl’s relatives that seemed to
+confirm this perhaps idle suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble with a great many of the theories evolved
+in the first months following the disappearance of Dorothy
+Arnold, was that they fitted only a part of the
+facts and probabilities. After all, here was an intricate
+and baffling situation, involving a person who, because
+of position, antecedents, and social situation, might be
+expected to act in a conventional manner. Accordingly,
+any explanation that fitted the physical facts and was
+still characterized by extraordinary details might reasonably
+be discarded.</p>
+
+<p>It was several years before the girl’s father finally declared
+his belief in her death, and it is a fact that a sum
+of not less than a hundred thousand dollars was expended,
+first and last, in running down all sorts of rumors
+and clews. The search extended to England, Italy,
+France, Switzerland, Canada—even to the Far East and
+Australia. But all trails led to vacancy, and all speculations
+were at length empty. No dimmest trace of the
+girl was ever found, and no genuinely satisfactory explanation
+of the strange story has ever been put forward.</p>
+
+<p>It is true there have been, at times in the intervening
+dozen or more years, rumors of a solution. Persons more
+or less closely connected with the official investigation
+have on several occasions been reported as voicing the
+opinion that the Arnold family was in possession of the
+facts, but denials have followed every such declaration.
+On April 8, 1921, for instance, Captain John H. Ayers,
+in charge of the Missing Persons Bureau of the New
+York Police Department, told an audience at the High
+School of Commerce that the fate of Miss Arnold had
+at that time been known to the police for many months,
+and that the case was regarded as closed. This pronouncement
+received the widest publicity in the New
+York and other American newspapers, but Captain
+Ayers’ statement was immediately and vigorously controverted
+by John S. Keith, the personal attorney of the
+girl’s father, who declared that the police official had
+told a “damned lie,” and that the mystery was as deep as
+ever it had been. The police chiefs later issued interviews
+full of dubiety and qualifications, the general tenor being
+that Captain Ayers had spoken without sufficient
+knowledge of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Just a year later the father of this woman of mysterious
+tragedy died, the last decade of his life beclouded by
+the sorrowful story and painful doubt. In his will was
+this pathetic clause:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“I make no provision in this will for my beloved daughter,
+H. C. Dorothy Arnold, as I am satisfied that she is dead.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The death of Miss Arnold’s father once more set the
+rumor mongers to work and a variety of tales, bolder
+than had been uttered before, were circulated through
+the demi-world of New York and hinted in the newspapers.
+These rumors have not been printed directly
+and there has thus been no need of denial on part of the
+family. It must be said at once that they are mere bruits,
+mere attempts on the part of the cynical town to invent
+a set of circumstances to fit what few facts and alleged
+facts are known.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the newspapers have been only too
+ready to take seriously the most absurd fabulations. In
+1916, for instance, a thief arrested at Providence, R. I.,
+for motives best known to himself, declared that he had
+helped to bury Dorothy Arnold’s body in the cellar of
+a house about ten miles below West Point, near the J. P.
+Morgan estate. Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, Captain
+Grant Williams and a number of detectives provided
+with digging tools set out for the place in motor
+cars, closely pursued by other cars containing the newspaper
+reporters. The police managed to shake off the
+newspaper men and reached the house. There they dug
+till they ached and found nothing whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to New York, the detectives left their
+shovels, some of which were rusty or covered with a red
+clay, at a station house and there the reporters caught
+a glimpse of them. The result was that a bit of rust or
+ferrous earth translated itself into blood and thence into
+headlines in the morning papers, declaring that Dorothy
+Arnold’s body had been found. Denials followed within
+hours, to be sure.</p>
+
+<p>So the case rests.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death will
+open the lips of one or another who knows the secret and
+has been sealed to silence by the fears and needs of life.
+But it is just as likely that the words of her dying parent
+contain as much as can be known of the truth about
+the missing Dorothy Arnold.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE</p>
+
+
+<p>At seven o’clock on the bright winter evening of
+December 18, 1900, Edward A. Cudahy, the
+multimillionaire meat packer, sent his fifteen-year-old
+son to the home of a friend, with a pile of periodicals.
+The boy, Edward A., junior, but shortly to be
+known over two continents as Eddie Cudahy, left his
+father’s elaborate house at No. 518 South Thirty-seventh
+Street, Omaha, walked three blocks to the home of
+Doctor Fred Rustin, also in South Thirty-seventh Street,
+delivered the magazines, turned on his heel and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before nine o’clock the rich packer noticed
+that his son had not returned, and he observed to his wife
+that the Rustins must have invited the boy to stay. Mrs.
+Cudahy felt a little nervous and urged her husband to
+make sure. He telephoned to the Rustin home and was
+promptly told that Eddie had been there, left the papers
+and departed immediately, almost two hours before.</p>
+
+<p>The Cudahys were instantly alarmed and convinced
+that something out of the ordinary had befallen the
+boy. He had promised to return immediately to consult
+with his father over a Christmas list. He was known to
+have no more than a few cents in his pockets, and unexplained
+absences from home at night were unprecedented
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>The beef magnate notified the Omaha police without
+long hesitation, and the quest for the missing rich boy
+was on. All that night detectives, patrolmen, servants,
+and friends of the family went up and down the streets
+and alleys of the overgrown Nebraska packing town,
+with its strange snortings from the cattle pens, its grunting
+railroad engines, its colonies of white and black laborers
+from distant lands, its brawling night life and its
+pretentious new avenues where the brash and sudden
+rich resided. At dawn the searchers congregated, sleepless,
+at the police headquarters or the Cudahy mansion,
+baffled and affrighted. Not the first clew to the boy had
+been found, and no one dared to whisper the clearest
+suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>By noon all Omaha was in turmoil. The great packing
+houses had practically stopped their activity; the police
+had been called in from their usual assignments and put
+to searching the city, district by district; the resorts
+and gambling houses were combed by the detectives; the
+anxious father had telegraphed to Chicago for twenty
+Pinkerton men, and the usual flight of mad rumors was
+in the air.</p>
+
+<p>One man reported that he had seen two boys, one
+of them with a broken arm, leave a street car at the city
+limits on the preceding night. The fact that the car line
+passed near the Cudahy home was enough to lead people
+to think one of the boys must have been Eddie Cudahy.
+As a result, his known young friends were sought out
+and questioned; the schools were gone over for the boy
+with a broken arm, and all the street-car crews in town
+were examined by the police.</p>
+
+<p>By the middle of the afternoon, the newspapers issued
+special editions, which bore the news that a letter
+had been received from kidnappers. According to this
+account, a man on horseback had ridden swiftly past the
+Cudahy home at nine o’clock that morning and tossed
+a letter to the lawn. This had been picked up by one of
+the servants, and it read as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“We have your son. He is safe. We will take good care of
+him and return him for a consideration of twenty-five thousand
+dollars. We mean business.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“Jack.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>With the publication of this alleged communication,
+even more fantastic reports began to reach the police
+and the parents. One young intimate of the family came
+in and reported in all seriousness that he had seen a horse
+and trap standing in Thirty-seventh Street, near the
+Cudahy home on several occasions in the course of the
+preceding week. The fact that it looked like any one of
+a hundred smart rigs then in common use did not seem
+to detract from its fancied significance.</p>
+
+<p>Another neighbor reported that three days before the
+kidnapping he had seen a covered light wagon standing
+at the curb in the street, a block to the rear of the Cudahy
+home. One man on the seat was talking with another,
+who was standing on the walk, and, as the narrator
+passed, they had lowered their voices to a whisper.
+He had not thought the incident suggestive until
+after the report of the kidnapping. And the police, quite
+forgetting the instinctive universal habit of lowering
+the voice when strangers pass, sent out squads of men
+to find the wagon and the whisperers!</p>
+
+<p>In short, the town was excited out of all sanity, and
+the very forces which should have maintained calmness
+and acted with all possible self-possession seemed the
+most headless. All the officials accomplished was the brief
+detention of several innocent persons, the theatrical
+raiding of a few gambling houses, and the further excitation
+of the citizenry, always ready to respond to
+police histrionism.</p>
+
+<p>To add an amusing exhibit to the already heavy store
+of evidence on this last point, it may be noted with
+amusement, not to say amazement, that the kidnapping
+letter, which had so agitated the public, was itself a police
+fake, and the rider who had thrown it on the lawn
+was a clumsy invention.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, however, a genuine kidnapping letter had
+reached the hands of Mr. Cudahy. A little before nine
+o’clock on the morning of the nineteenth, after he too
+had been up all night, the family coachman was walking
+across the front lawn when he saw a piece of red cloth
+tied to a stout wooden stick about two feet long. He
+approached it, looked at it suspiciously, and finally
+picked it up, to find that an envelope was wrapped
+about the stick and addressed in pencil to Mr. Cudahy.
+Evidently some one had thrown this curiously prepared
+missive into the yard in the course of the preceding
+night, for there had been numbers of policemen, detectives,
+and neighbors on the lawn and on the walks in
+front of the property since dawn.</p>
+
+<p>The letter, with its staff and red cloth, was immediately
+carried to the packer, who read with affrighted
+eyes this remarkable and characteristic communication:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+“<span class="smcap">Omaha</span>, December 19, 1900.<br>
+<br>
+“Mr. Cudahy:<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>“We have kidnapped your child and demand twenty-five
+thousand dollars for his safe return. If you give us the
+money, the child will be returned as safe as when you last
+saw him; but if you refuse, we will put acid in his eyes and
+blind him. Then we will immediately kidnap another millionaire’s
+child that we have spotted, and we will demand
+one hundred thousand dollars, and we will get it, for he will
+see the condition of your child and realize the fact that we
+mean business and will not be monkeyed with or captured.</p>
+
+<p>“Get the money all in gold—five, ten, and twenty-dollar
+pieces—put it in a grip in a white wheat sack, get in your
+buggy alone on the night of December 19, at seven o’clock
+p.m., and drive south from your house to Center Street; turn
+west on Center Street and drive back to Ruser’s Park and
+follow the paved road toward Fremont.</p>
+
+<p>“When you come to a lantern that is lighted by the side
+of the road, place your money by the lantern and immediately
+turn your horse around and return home. You will
+know our lantern, for it will have two ribbons, black and
+white, tied on the handle. You must place a red lantern on
+your buggy where it can be plainly seen, so we will know
+you a mile away.</p>
+
+<p>“This letter and every part of it must be returned with
+the money, and any attempt at capture will be the saddest
+thing you ever done. <i>Caution! For Here Lies Danger.</i></p>
+
+<p>“If you remember, some twenty years ago Charley Ross
+was kidnapped in New York City, and twenty thousand
+dollars ransom asked. Old man Ross was willing to give up
+the money, but Byrnes<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> the great detective, with others,
+persuaded the old man not to give up the money, assuring
+him that the thieves would be captured. Ross died of a
+broken heart, sorry that he allowed the detectives to dictate
+to him.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> Mr. Crowe had his criminal history somewhat vaguely in mind.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“This letter must not be seen by any one but you. If the
+police or some stranger knew its contents, they might attempt
+to capture us, although entirely against your wish; or
+some one might use a lantern and represent us, thus the
+wrong party would secure the money, and this would be as
+fatal to you as if you refused to give up the money. So you
+see the danger if you let the letter be seen.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Cudahy, you are up against it, and there is only one
+way out. Give up the coin. Money we want, and money we
+will get. If you don’t give it up, the next man will, for he
+will see that we mean business, and you can lead your boy
+around blind the rest of your days, and all you will have is
+the damn copper’s sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>“Do the right thing by us, and we will do the same by
+you. If you refuse you will soon see the saddest sight you
+ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>“Wednesday, December 19th. This night or never. Follow
+these instructions, or harm will befall you or yours.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was no signature. I have quoted the letter exactly,
+with the lapses in grammar and spelling preserved.
+It was written in pencil on five separate pieces of cheap
+note paper and in a small, but firm, masculine hand. It
+was read to the chief police authorities soon after its
+receipt. Just why they felt compelled to announce that
+it had come, and to invent the absurd draft they issued,
+remains for every man’s own intuitions.</p>
+
+<p>In this case, as in other abduction affairs, the police
+advised the father not to comply with the demand of
+the criminals, but to rely upon their efforts. No doubt
+their sense of duty to the public is as much responsible
+for this invariable position as any confidence in their
+own powers. An officer must feel, after all, that he cannot
+counsel bargaining with dangerous criminals, and
+that to pay them is only to encourage other kidnappers
+and further kidnappings.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the menacing terms of the rather garrulous
+letter, which betrayed by its very length the fervor
+of its persuasive threats, and the darkness of its reminders,
+the nervousness of its composer, Mr. Cudahy
+was minded to listen to the advice of the officers and
+defy the abductors of his son. In this frame of mind he
+delayed action until toward the close of the afternoon,
+meantime sitting by the telephone and hearing reports
+from police headquarters and his own private officers
+every half hour. By four o’clock he and his attorney began
+to realize that there was no clew of any kind; that
+the whole Omaha police force and all the men his wealth
+had been able to supply in addition, had been able to
+make not even the first promising step, and that the
+hour for a decision that might be fatal was fast approaching.
+Still, he hesitated to take a step in direct violation
+of official policy and counsel.</p>
+
+<p>In this dilemma Mrs. Cudahy came forward with a
+demand for action to meet the immediate emergency
+and protect her only son. She refused to listen to talk of
+remoter considerations, declared that the amount of ransom
+was a trifle to a man of her husband’s fortune, and
+weepingly insisted that she would not sacrifice her boy
+to any mad plans of outsiders, who felt no such poignant
+concern as her own.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before five o’clock Mr. Cudahy telephoned
+the First National Bank, which had, of course, closed
+for the day, and asked the cashier to make ready the
+twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. A little later the
+Cudahy attorney called at the bank and received the
+specie in five bags and in the denominations asked by
+the abductors. The money was taken at once to the
+Cudahy house and deposited inside, without the knowledge
+of the servants or outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>At half past six Mr. Cudahy ordered his driving mare
+hitched to the buggy in which he made the rounds of
+his yards and plants. At seven o’clock he slipped quietly
+out of his house, without letting his wife, the servants,
+or any one but his attorney know his errand. He carried
+a satchel containing the five bags of gold, which weighed
+more than one hundred pounds, to the stable, put the
+precious stuff into the bottom of his vehicle, took up the
+reins, and set out on his perilous and ill-boding adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cudahy had not been allowed to leave home without
+warnings from the police and his attorney. They had
+told him that he might readily expect to find himself
+trapped by the kidnappers, who would then hold both
+him and his son for still higher ransom. So he drove toward
+the appointed place along the dim, night-hidden
+roads, with more than ordinary misgiving. Once or
+twice, after he had proceeded six or seven miles into the
+blackness of the open prairie, without seeing any signs
+from the abductors, he came near turning back; but the
+danger to his son and the thought that the criminals
+could have no object in sending him on a fruitless expedition,
+held him to his course.</p>
+
+<p>About ten miles out of town, still jogging anxiously
+along behind his horse, Mr. Cudahy saw a passenger
+train on one of the two transcontinental lines that converge
+at that point, coiling away into the infinite blackness,
+like some vast phosphorescent serpent. The beauty
+and mystery of the spectacle meant nothing to him, but
+it served to raise his hopes. No doubt the kidnappers
+would soon appear now. They had probably chosen this
+locality, with the swift trains running by, for their
+rendezvous. Once possessed of the gold, they would
+catch the next flyer for either coast and be gone out of
+the reach of local police. Perhaps they would even have
+the missing boy with them and surrender him as soon
+as they had been paid the ransom.</p>
+
+<p>Thus buoyed and heartened, the father drove on. Suddenly
+the road entered a cleft between two abrupt hills
+or butts. A sense of impendency oppressed the lonely
+driver. He took up a revolver beside him on the seat,
+clutching it near him, with some protective instinct. At
+the same moment he turned higher the flame in his red
+lantern, which swung from the whip socket of his
+buggy, and peered out into the gulch. Everything was
+pit-black and grave-silent. He lay back disappointed
+and spoke to the horse, debating whether to turn back.
+Once more he decided to go on. The cleft between the
+two eminences grew narrower. The horse turned a swift
+sharp corner. Cudahy sat up with startled alertness.</p>
+
+<p>There in the road before him, not ten rods away, was
+a smoky lantern, throwing but a pallid radiance about
+it in the thick darkness, but lighting a great hope in the
+father’s heart. He approached directly, drew up his
+horse a few yards away, found that the lantern, tied to a
+twig by the roadside, was decorated with the specified
+ribbons of black and white, returned to his buggy, carried
+the bags of gold to the lantern, put them down in
+the roadside, waited a few moments for any sign that
+might be given, turned his horse about, and started for
+home, driving slowly and listening intently for any
+sound from his expected son.</p>
+
+<p>The ten miles back to Omaha were covered in this
+slow and tense way, with eyes and ears open, and a mind
+fluctuating between hope and despair. But no lost boy
+came out of the darkness, and Cudahy reached his house
+without the least further encouragement. It was then
+past eleven o’clock. His attorney and his wife were still
+in the drawing-room, sleepless, tense, and terrified. They
+greeted the boy’s father with swift questions and relapsed
+into hopelessness when he related what he had
+done. An hour passed, while Cudahy tried to keep up the
+courage of his wife by argument and reasoning. Then
+came one o’clock. Now half past one. Surely there was
+no longer any need of waiting now. Either the kidnappers
+had hoaxed the suffering parents, or that note
+had not come from kidnappers at all, but from impostors—or—something
+far worse. At best, nothing would
+be heard till morning.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s no use, Mrs. Cudahy,” said the lawyer. “You’d
+better get what sleep you can, and——”</p>
+
+<p>“Hs-s-sh!” said the mother, laying her finger on her
+lips and listening like a hunted doe.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant she sprang out of her chair, ran into
+the hall, out of the door, down the walk to the street,
+and out of the gate. The two men sprang up and followed
+in time to see her catch the missing boy into her
+arms. She had heard his footfall.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the boy’s return was flashed to police
+headquarters within a few minutes, and the detective
+chief went at once to the Cudahy home to hear the returning
+boy’s story. It was simple and brief enough.</p>
+
+<p>Eddie Cudahy had left Doctor Rustin’s house the
+night before, and gone directly homeward. Three or
+four doors from his parents’ house Eddie Cudahy was
+suddenly confronted by two men who faced him with
+revolvers, called him Eddie McGee, declared that he was
+wanted for theft, that they were officers, and that he
+must come to the police station. He protested that he
+was not Eddie McGee, and that he could be identified in
+the house yonder; but his captors forced him into their
+buggy and drove off, warning him to make no outcry.
+They had gone only a few blocks when they changed
+their tone, tied the lad’s arms behind him, and put a
+bandage over his eyes and another over his mouth, so
+that he could not cry out. He understood that he had
+been kidnapped.</p>
+
+<p>Thus trussed up and prevented from either seeing
+where he was being taken, or making any outcry, the
+young fellow was driven about for an hour, and finally
+delivered to an old house, which he believed to be unfurnished,
+judging from the hollow sound of the footsteps,
+as he and his captors were going up the stairs. He
+was taken into a room on the second floor, seated in a
+chair, and handcuffed to it. His gag was removed, but
+not the bandage on his eyes. He was supplied with cigarettes
+and offered food, but he could not eat. One of the
+two men stood guard, the other departing at once, but
+returning later on.</p>
+
+<p>All that night and the next day the boy was unable
+to sleep. But he sensed that his captor seemed to be imbibing
+whisky with great regularity. Finally, about an
+hour before he had been set free, Eddie heard the other
+man return and hold a whispered conversation with his
+guard. The boy was then taken from the house, put back
+into the same buggy, driven to within a quarter of a
+mile of his father’s home, and released. He ran for home,
+and his captors drove off.</p>
+
+<p>Eddie Cudahy could not give any working description
+of the criminals. He had not got a good look at
+them in the street when they seized him, because it was
+dark, and they had the brims of their large hats pulled
+down over their eyes. Immediately afterward he had
+been bandaged and deprived of all further chance of observation.
+One man was tall, and the other short. The
+tall man seemed to be in command. The short man had
+been his guard. He thought there was a third man who
+was bringing in reports.</p>
+
+<p>There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation.
+First, it would surely be possible to find the
+house in which the boy had been held captive, for
+Omaha was not so large that there were many empty
+houses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides,
+the time at which any such house had been rented
+would offer evidence. It might be possible to get a clew
+to the identity of the kidnappers through the description
+of the person or persons who had done the renting.</p>
+
+<p>Second, the kidnappers must have got the horse and
+buggy somewhere; most likely from a local livery stable.
+If its source could be found, the liveryman also would
+be able to describe the persons with whom he had done
+business.</p>
+
+<p>So the police set to work, searching the town again
+for house and for stable. They found several deserted
+two-story cottages that fitted the picture well enough,
+and in each instance there were circumstances which
+seemed to indicate that the kidnappers had been there.
+Finally, however, all were eliminated, except a crude
+two-story cabin at 3604 Grover Street. This turned
+out to be the place, situated near the outskirts, on the
+top of a hill, with the nearest neighbors a block away.
+Cigarette ends, burned matches, empty whisky bottles,
+and windows covered with newspapers gave silent, but
+conclusive, testimony.</p>
+
+<p>The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It had
+not been hired at any stable in Omaha or in Council
+Bluffs, across the Missouri River. Advertising and police
+calls brought out no private owner who had rented such
+a rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer living
+about twenty miles out of town who had sold a bay
+pony to a tall stranger several weeks before. Another
+man was found who had sold a second-hand buggy to
+a man of the same general description. At last the police
+began to realize that they were dealing with a criminal
+of genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man had
+not blundered in any of the usual ways, and he had
+made the trail so confused that more than a week had
+passed before there were any positive indications as to
+his possible identity.</p>
+
+<p>In the end several indications pointed in the same direction.
+It seemed highly probable that the kidnapper
+chieftain had been some one acquainted with the packing
+business and probably with the Cudahys. He was
+also familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commanding
+voice, was accompanied by a shorter man, who
+seemed to be older, but was still dominated by his companion.
+More important still, this chief of abductors
+was an experienced and clever criminal. He gave every
+evidence of knowing all the ropes. These specifications
+seemed to fit just one man whose name now began to be
+used on all sides—the thrice perilous and ill-reputed
+Pat Crowe.</p>
+
+<p>It was recalled that this man had begun life as a
+butcher, been a trusted employee of the Cudahys ten
+years before, and had been dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequently
+he had turned his hand to crime, and achieved
+a startling reputation in the western United States as an
+intrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handy
+man with a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in a
+corner. He had been in prison more than once, had lately
+made what seemed an effort at reform, knew Edward A.
+Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors and
+gratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactly
+the man to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeks
+and evidence only strengthened the suspicion against
+him. Crowe, though he had been seen in Omaha the day
+before the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered.
+Even this fact added to the general belief that he and
+none other had done the deed. In a short time the Cudahy
+kidnapping mystery resolved itself into a quest for
+this notorious fellow.</p>
+
+<p>The alarm was spread throughout the United States
+and Canada, to the British Isles, and the Continental
+ports, and to Mexico and the Central American border
+and port cities, where it was believed the fugitive might
+make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended,
+and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases,
+with occasional lapses back into exciting alarms. Every
+little while the capture of Pat Crowe was reported, and
+on at least a dozen occasions men turned up with confessions
+and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping.
+These apparitions and alleged captures took place in
+such diffused spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil,
+San Francisco, and various obscure towns in the
+United States and Canada. The genuine and authentic
+Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the
+captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i181" style="max-width: 81.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i181.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+
+<p class="small right">
+<i>Wide World</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">~~ PAT CROWE ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on
+the Union Pacific Railroad, had been taken and brought
+to trial. His name was James Callahan, and there was
+then and is now no question about his connection with
+the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on April
+29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the
+presiding tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of
+duty, saying that never had evidence more clearly indicated
+guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on other
+counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be
+released.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year, 1901, word was received from
+Crowe through an attorney he had employed in an earlier
+difficulty. Crowe had sent this barrister a draft from
+Capetown, South Africa, in payment of an old debt. The
+much sought desperado had got through the lines to the
+Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting
+against the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated
+for distinguished courage, and was, according to
+his own statement, done with crime and living a different
+life—adventurous, but honest. So many canards had
+been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story,
+albeit time proved it to be true.</p>
+
+<p>At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five
+thousand dollars had been offered for the capture
+and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty thousand by Cudahy
+and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha.
+This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man
+had, of course, contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide
+interest in the case. Yet even these fat inducements
+accomplished nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in 1906, when Crowe had been hunted in
+vain for more than five years, he suddenly opened negotiations
+with Omaha’s chief of police through an attorney,
+offering to come in and surrender, in case all
+the rewards were immediately and honestly withdrawn,
+so that there would be no money inducement which
+might cause officers or others to manufacture a case
+against him. After some preliminaries, these terms were
+met, but not until an attempt to capture the desperado
+had been made and failed, with the net result of three
+badly wounded officers.</p>
+
+<p>In February, 1906, Crowe was at last brought to
+trial and, to the utter astoundment and chagrin of the
+entire country, promptly acquitted, though he offered
+no defense and tacitly admitted that he had taken the
+boy. One bit of conclusive evidence that had been offered
+by the prosecution and admitted by the court,
+was a letter written by Crowe to his parish priest in the
+little Iowa town of his boyhood. In the course of this
+letter, which had been written to the priest in the hope
+that he might make peace with Cudahy, the desperado
+admitted that “I am solely responsible for the Cudahy
+kidnapping. No one else is to blame.”</p>
+
+<p>No matter. The jury would not consider the evidence
+and brought in the verdict already indicated. Crowe,
+after six years of being hunted with a price of fifty-five
+thousand dollars on his head, was a free man.</p>
+
+<p>The acquittals of Crowe and Callahan have furnished
+material for a good deal of amused and some angry speculation.
+The local situation in Omaha at the time furnishes
+the key to the puzzle. First of all, there was the
+bitter anti-beef trust agitation, founded on the fact that
+many small independent butchers had been put out of
+business by the great packing-house combination, of
+which Cudahy was a member; and that meat prices had
+everywhere been rapidly advanced to almost double
+their earlier prices. Next, there was the circumstance of
+Cudahy’s abundant and flaunting wealth. The common
+man considered that these millions had been gouged out
+of his pocket and cut from off his dinner plate. Cudahy
+had also begun the introduction of cheap negro labor
+into Omaha to break a strike of his packing-house employees,
+and the city was bitterly angry at him. Also,
+Crowe was himself popular and well known. Many considered
+him a hero. But there was still another strange
+cause of the state of the public mind.</p>
+
+<p>In the very beginning a not inconsiderable part of
+Omaha’s people had somehow come to the curious conclusion
+that there had been no Cudahy kidnapping. One
+story said that Eddie Cudahy was a wild youth, and that
+he himself had conspired with Crowe and Callahan to
+abduct him and get the ransom, since he needed a share
+of it for his own purpose, and he saw in this plan an easy
+method to mulct his unsuspecting father. A later version
+denied the boy’s guilt, but still insisted that the
+whole story, as told by the father and confirmed by the
+police, was a piece of fiction. What motive the rich
+packer could have had for such a fraud, no one could
+say. The best explanation given was that he saw in it
+a plan to get worldwide advertising for the Cudahy
+name. How this could have sold any additional hams or
+beeves, is a bit hard to imagine, but the story was so
+generally believed that two jurors at one of the trials
+voiced it in the jury room and scoffed at all the evidence.
+All this rumor is, of course, absurd.</p>
+
+<p>Crowe, after his acquittal, went straight, as the word
+goes. He has committed no more crimes, unless one
+wants to rate under this heading a book of highly romantic
+confessions, which he had published the following
+year. In this book he set forth the circumstances of
+the crime in great, but unreliable, detail. He made it
+very plain, however, that he and Callahan alone planned
+the crime and carried it out.</p>
+
+<p>Crowe personally conceived the whole plan and took
+Callahan into the conspiracy only because he needed
+help. The two held up the boy, as already related. As
+soon as they had him safe in the old house, Crowe drove
+back to the Cudahy home in his buggy and threw the
+note, wrapped about the stick and decorated with the
+red cloth, upon the lawn, where it was found the next
+morning by the coachman. Of the twenty-five thousand
+dollars in gold, Crowe gave his assistant only three
+thousand dollars, used one thousand for expenses, and
+buried the rest, recovering it later when the coast was
+clear. He selected Cudahy for a victim because he knew
+that the packer was a fond father, had a nervous wife,
+and would be strong enough to resist any mad police
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>A few years later I first encountered Crowe in New
+York, when he came to see me with a petty favor to ask
+and an article of his reminiscences to sell. He had meantime
+become a kind of peregrine reformer, lecturer,
+pamphlet seller and semi-mendicant, now blessed with
+a little evanescent prosperity, again sleeping in Bowery
+flops and eking out a miserable living by any device
+short of lawbreaking. And he has called upon me or
+crossed my wanderings repeatedly in the intervening
+years, always voluble, plausible and a trifle pathetic.
+Now he is off to call upon the President, to memorialize
+a governor or to address a provincial legislature. He
+is bent on abolishing prisons, has a florid set-speech,
+which he delivers in a big sententious voice, and perhaps
+he impresses his rural hearers, though the tongue in
+the cheek and the twinkle in the eye never escape those
+who know him of old.</p>
+
+<p>This grand rascal is no longer young—rising sixty, I
+should say—and life has treated him shabbily in the last
+twenty years. Yet neither poverty nor age has quite
+taken from him a certain leonine robustness, a kind of
+ruined strength and power that shines a little sadly
+through his charlatanry.</p>
+
+<p>Only once or twice, when he has lost himself in the
+excited recounting of his adventures, of his hardy old
+crimes, of the Cudahy kidnapping, have I ever caught
+in him the quality that must once have been his—the
+force, the fire that made his name shudder around the
+world. Convention has beaten him as it beats them all,
+these brave and baneful men. It has made a sidling apologist
+of a great rogue in Crowe’s case—and what a sad
+declension!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING</p>
+
+
+<p>Abduction is always a puzzling crime. The
+risks are so great, the punishment, of late years,
+so severe, and the chances of profit so slight
+that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary
+motive on the part of the criminal. It is true
+that kidnapping is one of the easiest crimes to commit.
+It is also a fact that it seems to offer a quick and
+promising way of extorting large sums of money without
+physical risk. But every offender must know that
+the chances of success are of the most meager.</p>
+
+<p>A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses
+the public as nothing else can, not even murder. This
+state of general alarm, indignation, and alertness is the
+first peril of the kidnapper. Again, the problem of getting
+the ransom from even the most willing victim
+without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most
+intricate and unpromising one. It is well known that
+child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of
+the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually
+got the ransom and made off without being
+caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the
+long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble
+to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses.
+Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers
+that professional criminals usually are aware of this
+fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these
+recognized discouragements probably accounts for the
+proneness of policemen and citizens to interpret into
+every abduction case some moving force other than
+mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs
+of action, whether real or surmised, are often the inner
+penetralia of child stealing mysteries. So with the
+famous Whitla case.</p>
+
+<p>At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909,
+a short, stocky man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse,
+in the little steel town of Sharon, in western
+Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned to
+Wesley Sloss, the janitor.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right
+away,” said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to
+be summoned from his classes in this way, but in Sharon
+no one questioned vagaries having to do with this particular
+child. Willie Whitla was the eight-year-old son
+of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla, who
+was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was
+also, and more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of
+Frank M. Buhl, the multimillionaire iron master and
+industrial overlord of the region.</p>
+
+<p>Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside
+to Room 2, told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that
+the boy was wanted, helped bundle him into his coat,
+and led him out to the buggy. The man in the conveyance
+tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his
+thanks, and drove off in the direction of the town’s
+center, where the father’s office was situated.</p>
+
+<p>When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for
+luncheon at the noon recess, there was no special apprehension.
+Probably he had gone to a chum’s house
+and would be along at the close of the afternoon session.
+His mother was vexed, but not worried.</p>
+
+<p>At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla
+veranda, blew his whistle, and left a note which had
+been posted in the town some hours before. It was addressed
+to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of
+the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand,
+read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if you
+comply with our instructions. If you give this letter to the
+newspapers, or divulge any of its contents, you will never
+see your boy again. We demand ten thousand dollars in
+twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar bills. If you attempt
+to mark the money, or place counterfeit money, you
+will be sorry. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead boys.
+You may answer at the following addresses: <i>Cleveland Press</i>,
+<i>Youngstown Vindicator</i>, <i>Indianapolis News</i>, and <i>Pittsburgh
+Dispatch</i> in the personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do as
+you requested. J. P. W.’”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A few minutes later the whole town was searching,
+and the alarm had been broadcast by telegraph and telephone.
+Before nightfall a hundred thousand officers were
+on the lookout in a thousand cities and towns through
+the eastern United States.</p>
+
+<p>At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard of
+the abduction, a boy named Morris was found, who had
+seen Willie Whitla get out of a buggy at the edge of the
+town, drop a letter into the mail box, and get back into
+the vehicle, which was driven away.</p>
+
+<p>This discovery had hardly been made when it was
+also learned that a stranger had rented a horse and
+buggy, fitting the description of those used by the kidnapper,
+in South Sharon early in the morning. At five
+o’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rented
+buggy, was found tied to a post in Warren, Ohio,
+twenty-five miles from Sharon.</p>
+
+<p>The search immediately began in the northern or
+lake cities and towns of Ohio, the trend of the search
+running strongly toward Cleveland, where it was believed
+the abductor or abductors would try the hiding
+properties of urban crowds.</p>
+
+<p>The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense and
+caution. They were sufficiently well informed to know
+that the police are doubtful agencies for the safe recovery
+of snatched children. They were rich to the
+point of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meant
+nothing. The safety and speedy return of the child were
+the only considerations that could have swayed them.
+Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents of the
+note, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide to
+the police any other details, or the direction of their
+intentions. The fact of the kidnapping could, of course,
+not be concealed, but all else was guarded from official
+or public intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>On the advice of friends the parents did employ private
+detectives, but even their advice was disregarded,
+and Mr. Whitla without delay signified his willingness
+to capitulate by inserting the dictated notice into all
+the four mentioned newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>The answer of the abductors came very promptly
+through the mails, reaching Whitla on the morning of
+the twentieth, less than forty-eight hours after the boy
+had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicate
+to the police the contents of this note or his
+plans. Instead, he set off quietly for Cleveland, evidently
+to mislead the public officers, who seemed to take delight
+in their efforts to seize control of the case. At
+eight o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompanied
+by one private detective, and went to the neighboring
+city of Ashtabula. Here the detective was left
+at the White Hotel, and the father of the missing boy
+set out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.</p>
+
+<p>They, it appears, had written him that he must go at
+ten o’clock at night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip of
+land on the outskirts of Ashtabula, and there deposit
+under a certain stone the package of bills. He was told
+what route to follow, commanded to go alone, and
+warned not to communicate with the police. Having
+left the money as commanded, Whitla was to return to
+the hotel and wait there for the coming of his son, who
+would be restored as soon as the abductors were safely
+in possession of the money.</p>
+
+<p>So the father set out in the dark of the night, followed
+the route given him by the abductors, deposited
+the money in the park, and returned forthwith to the
+hotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock. Here he sat with
+his bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition of
+his little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’s
+nervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in the
+morning, some local officers appeared and notified the
+frenzied lawyer that they had been watching the park
+all night, and that no one had appeared to claim the
+package of money.</p>
+
+<p>Police interference had ruined the plan.</p>
+
+<p>The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnappers
+were to call for the money in the park, they
+must be in Ashtabula. They accordingly set out,
+searched all night, invaded the houses of sleeping citizens,
+turned the hotels and rooming houses inside out,
+prowled their way through cars in the railroad yards
+and boats in the harbor, watched the roads leading in
+and out of the city, searched the street cars and generally
+played the devil. But all in vain. There were no
+suspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning the father of the boy visited
+the mayor and requested that the police cease their activities.
+He pointed out that there were no clews of
+definite promise, and the peril in which the child stood
+ought to command official coöperation instead of dangerous
+interference. Whitla finally managed to convince
+the officers that they stood no worse chance of catching
+the criminals after the recovery of the boy, and the Ashtabula
+officers were immediately called off.</p>
+
+<p>The disappointed and harried father was forced to
+return to Sharon in defeat and bring the disappointing
+news to his prostrated wife. The little steel town had
+got the definite impression that news of the child had
+been got, and preparations for the boy’s return had been
+made. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receive
+the little wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation.
+Crowds besieged the Whitla home, and policemen had
+to be kept on guard to turn away a stream of well-meaning
+friends and curious persons, who would have
+kept the breaking mother from such little sleep as was
+possible under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of the vicinity had by this time
+spread to all the country. As is always the case, arrests
+on suspicion were made of the most unlikely persons in
+the most impossible situations. Men, women, and children
+were stopped in the streets, dragged from their
+rooms, questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and
+even locked into jails for investigation, while the missing
+boy and his abductors succeeded in eluding completely
+the large army of pursuers now in the field.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers on
+the twenty-first, and the hearts of the bewildered parents
+and relatives sank with apprehension, but the
+morning mail of the twenty-second again contained a
+note which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate that
+the business of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabula
+may have been a test maneuver, to find out whether
+Whitla would keep the faith and act without the police.
+This note read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“A mistake was made at Ashtabula Saturday night. You
+come to Cleveland on the Erie train leaving Youngstown at
+11:10 a. m. Leave the train at Wilson Avenue. Take a car
+to Wilson and St. Clair. At Dunbar’s drug store you will
+find a letter addressed to William Williams.</p>
+
+<p>“We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt
+to catch us you will never see your boy again.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. He
+accordingly had his representatives announce that all
+activities would cease for the time being, in the hope
+that the kidnappers would regain their confidence and
+reopen communications. At the same time he told the
+Ashtabula police to resume their activities. With these
+two false leads given out, Whitla slipped away from his
+home, caught the train, and went straight to Cleveland.</p>
+
+<p>Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that he
+had eluded the overzealous officers, Whitla went to
+Dunbar’s drug store and found the note waiting, as
+promised. It contained nothing but further directions.
+He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by a
+Mrs. Hendricks at 1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliver
+the ransom, carefully done into a package, to the
+woman in charge. He was to tell her the package should
+be held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.</p>
+
+<p>Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned over
+the package of ten thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks,
+and was given a note in return. This missive instructed
+him to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel, where he
+was to wait for his boy. The promise was made that the
+child would be returned within three hours.</p>
+
+<p>It was about five o’clock when this exchange was
+made. The tortured father turned and went immediately
+to the Hollenden, one of the chief hostelries
+of Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hour
+passed. His anxiety became intolerable. He went down
+to the lobby and began walking back and forth, in and
+out of the doors, up and down the walk, back into the
+hotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several noticed
+his nervousness and preoccupation, but only a
+lone newspaper man identified him and kept him under
+watch.</p>
+
+<p>Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seven
+the worn lawyer’s agitation increased to the point of
+frenzy. He could do no more than retire to a quiet
+corner of the lobby, huddle himself into a big chair,
+and sink into the half stupor of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes before eight o’clock the motorman of
+a Payne Avenue street car saw a man and a small boy
+come out of the gloom at a street corner in East Cleveland
+and motion him to stop. The man put the child
+aboard and gave the conductor some instructions, paying
+its fare, and immediately vanished in the darkness.
+The little boy, wearing a pair of dark goggles and a
+large yellow cap that was pulled far down over his ears,
+sat quietly in the back seat and made not a sound.</p>
+
+<p>A few squares further along the line two boys of
+seventeen or eighteen years boarded the car and were
+immediately intrigued by the glum little figure. The
+newcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney and
+Thomas W. Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspicious
+that this might be the much-sought Willie
+Whitla. When they asked his name the lad said he was
+Willie Jones. In response to other questions he told that
+he was on his way to meet his father at the Hollenden.</p>
+
+<p>The two young men said no more till the hotel was
+reached. Here they insisted on leaving the car with the
+boy and at once called a policeman to whom they voiced
+their suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and the
+child thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. In
+response to further interrogation, the little fellow still
+insisted that he was Jones, but, being deprived of his big
+cap and goggles and called Willie Whitla, he asked:</p>
+
+<p>“How did you know me? Where is my daddy?”</p>
+
+<p>The gloomy man in the corner chair got one tinkle
+of the childish voice, ran across the big room, caught up
+the child and rushed hysterically to his own apartment,
+where he telephoned at once to the boy’s mother. By the
+time the attorney could be persuaded to come back
+down stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father and
+child were welcomed with cheers.</p>
+
+<p>The boy shortly gave his father and the police his
+story. The man who had taken him from school in
+the buggy had told him that he was being taken out of
+town to the country at his father’s request, because there
+was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors
+would lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly
+gone willingly to Cleveland, where he had
+been taken to what he believed to be a hospital. A man
+and woman had taken care of him and treated him well.
+They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused
+him in any way. In fact, he liked them, except for the
+fact that they made him hide under the kitchen sink
+when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him
+candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the
+boy said, had put him aboard the street car, paid his
+fare, instructed him to tell any inquirers that his name
+was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to the
+hotel and join his father. The only additional information
+got from the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions
+of the abductors, was to the effect that he had been
+taken to the “hospital” the night following his abduction
+and had not left the place till he was led out to be
+sent to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed
+with music and a salute from the local militia
+company, displayed before the serenading citizens, and
+photographed for the American and foreign press.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under
+way. The private detectives in the employ of the Whitlas
+were immediately withdrawn when the boy was recovered,
+but the police of Cleveland and other cities
+plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with
+whom the note had been left, and the woman confectioner,
+who had received the package of ransom money,
+were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the
+transaction they had aided was concerned with the
+Whitla case, and both were frightened and astonished.
+They could give little information that has not already
+been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy
+store, however, was able to particularize the description
+of the man who had come to her place, left the note for
+Mr. Whitla, and returned later for the package of
+money. He was, she said, about thirty years old, with
+dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face,
+weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, and
+seemed to be Irish.</p>
+
+<p>Considering the car line which had brought the boy
+to the Hollenden Hotel, the point at which he had
+boarded the car, and the description he gave of the
+place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were
+certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house
+somewhere in the southeast quarter of the city, and detectives
+were accordingly sent to comb that part of the
+city in quest of a furnished suite in which the kidnappers
+might still be hiding.</p>
+
+<p>Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday
+night. Tuesday evening, about twenty-two hours after
+the boy had made his dramatic entry into the Hollenden,
+the detectives went through a three-story flat
+building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a
+couple answering the general descriptions furnished by
+Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks had rented a furnished
+apartment there on the night following the kidnapping
+and had departed only a few hours ahead of the
+detectives. They had conducted themselves very quietly
+while in the place, and the woman who had sublet the
+rooms to them was not even sure there had been a
+child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this
+place as the scene of his captivity.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of this apartment might have been
+less significant for the moment, had the building not
+been but a few squares from the point at which Willie
+had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join
+his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot
+on the trail. Reserves were rushed to that part of town,
+patrolmen were not relieved at the end of their tours
+of duty, and the extra men were stationed at the exits
+from the city, with instructions to stop and question all
+suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the
+quarry was by no means in sight.</p>
+
+<p>At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far
+broader forces than the police were thrown upon the
+stage. The governor of Pennsylvania signed a proclamation
+in the course of the afternoon, offering to continue
+the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been
+posted by the State for the recovery of the boy
+and the arrest and conviction of his abductors. Since
+the boy had been returned, the money was to go to
+those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly,
+the people of several States were watching with
+no perfunctory alertness. High hopes of immediate capture
+were thus based on more than one consideration;
+but the night was aging without result.</p>
+
+<p>At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman
+of the most inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of
+Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario Street, Cleveland, sat down
+at a table in the rear room, and ordered drink. The
+liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar
+bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling
+the proprietor to include the other patrons then in
+the place. Again he offered a new bill of the same denomination,
+and once again he commanded that all
+present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the
+woman drank rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the
+effects of the liquor and becoming more and more loquacious,
+spendthrift and effusive.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such
+conduct. Men came in often enough who drank heavily,
+spent freely, and insisted on “buying for the house.” But
+it was a little unusual for a man to let go of thirty dollars
+in little more than an hour, and it was still more
+unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar
+note after the other.</p>
+
+<p>O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew
+that there had been a kidnapping; that there was a
+reward of fifteen thousand dollars outstanding; that a
+man and woman were supposed to have held the boy
+captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon.
+Also he had read about the package of five, ten, and
+twenty dollar bills. His brows lifted. O’Reilly waited for
+an opportune moment and went to his cash drawer. The
+bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new;
+that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all
+of the same issue, even of the same series and in consequent
+numbers. If so——</p>
+
+<p>The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When
+his suspect callers had their attention on something else,
+he slipped the money from the till and moved to the
+end of the bar near the window, where he was out of
+their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar
+case, adjusted his glasses, and stared.</p>
+
+<p>In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly
+urged them to stay, insisted on supplying them with a
+free drink, did what he could, without arousing suspicion,
+to detain them, hoping that an officer would
+saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With
+an exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of
+the door and gone into the night, whose shadows had
+yielded them up an hour before.</p>
+
+<p>O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a
+telephone. In response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck
+and Detective Woods were hurried to the place and
+set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and description.
+They had no more than moved from the saloon when
+the rollicking pair was seen returning.</p>
+
+<p>The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark
+about the weather and the lateness of the hour.
+Instantly the man took to his heels, with Captain Shattuck
+in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the officer
+drew and fired high.</p>
+
+<p>The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman
+ran to him, marveling that his aim had been so
+unintentionally good. He found, however, that the fugitive
+had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at flight.</p>
+
+<p>Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest
+police station and subjected to questioning. They
+were inarticulately drunk, or determinedly reticent and
+pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half assured
+that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers,
+Captain Shattuck ordered them searched.</p>
+
+<p>At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing,
+still in the neat packages in which it had been
+taken from the bank, were nine thousand, seven hundred
+and ninety dollars.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and
+Helen McDermott Boyle—he a floating adventurer
+known to the cities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, she the
+daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she
+had quit several years before to go venturing on her
+own account.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning both the police and the public
+held the opinion that these two people had not been
+alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigation
+failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of
+the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in
+Cleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possibly
+been the sole active agents, but the opinion was
+retained that some one else must have plotted the crime.</p>
+
+<p>Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure
+little town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla,
+when there were tens of thousands of boys with
+wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives?
+Who had acquainted them with the particularities of the
+Whitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, the
+child’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it not
+obvious that some one close to the family had supplied
+the information and laid the plans?</p>
+
+<p>James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of
+May, faced with his accusers, and swiftly encircled with
+the accusing evidence, which was complete and unequivocal.
+He accepted it without display of emotion
+and offered no defense. After brief argument the case
+went to the jury, which reached an affirmative verdict
+within a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward
+and also presented no defense. A verdict was found
+against her with equal expedition on May 10, and she
+was remanded for sentence.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day both defendants were called
+before the court. The judge imposed the life sentence
+on Boyle and a term of twenty-five years on his wife. A
+few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper reporters
+to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them
+a written statement.</p>
+
+<p>Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895,
+when the body of Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying
+on the sidewalk on East Federal Street, Youngstown,
+Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There
+had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached
+to Reeble’s end.</p>
+
+<p>Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble,
+but he said in his statement that he and one Daniel
+Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper, who had died in 1907,
+had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs. James
+P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a
+number of letters from the pockets of the dead man, as
+his body lay on the walk. Boyle recited that not only
+had he and Shay found Forker in this compromising
+position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked
+by Forker, in which were found four letters
+from women, two from a girl in New York State and
+the other two from a Cleveland woman. The contents
+were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure
+that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.</p>
+
+<p>Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently
+written Forker, told him about the letters,
+and suggested that they were for sale. Forker had immediately
+replied and made various efforts to recover
+the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and
+continued to extort money from Forker for years,
+threatening to reveal the letters unless paid.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to
+recite, a demand for five thousand dollars had been
+made on Forker, who said he could not raise the money,
+but would come into an inheritance later and would
+then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When
+Forker failed in this undertaking, fresh threats were
+made, with the result that Forker suggested the kidnapping
+of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand dollars’
+ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to
+get the five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.</p>
+
+<p>Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping
+and attended to the matter of having the boy
+taken from the school. He said that some one else had
+done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle,
+in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found.</p>
+
+<p>This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning
+as it did, created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately
+and indignantly denied the accusation and
+brought to their support a Youngstown police officer,
+Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of
+Dan Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking
+to Reeble on the walk before the building in which
+Reeble resided, early in the morning of June 8, 1895.
+Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking
+slowly down the street when he heard a thump and
+groans behind him. Returning to the spot where he had
+left Reeble, he found his companion of a few minutes
+before, dying on the walk.</p>
+
+<p>Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting
+on his window sill, and that the man had apparently
+fallen out to his death. He swore that neither Forker,
+Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when Reeble
+died.</p>
+
+<p>There are, to be sure, some elements which verge
+upon improbability in this account, but the denials of
+Forker and Whitla were strongly reinforced by the
+testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the livery
+where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly
+identified Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt
+with, thus refuting the latter part of Boyle’s accusative
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years
+of her long term. Her husband, on the other hand, continued
+his servitude and died of pneumonia in Riverside
+Penitentiary on January 23, 1920.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE</p>
+
+
+<p>A few minutes past seven o’clock, on the evening
+of March 27, 1901, Willie McCormick,
+a ten-year-old schoolboy, started to attend
+vespers in the little Church of the Sacred Heart, in the
+Highbridge section of New York City. His mother gave
+him a copper cent for the collection plate, and he ran
+out of the door, struggling into his short brown overcoat,
+in great haste to overtake two of his elder sisters
+who had started ahead of him. Three doors down the
+street he stopped and blew a toy whistle to attract the
+attention of a playmate. This boy’s mother called from
+the porch that her son was to take a music lesson and
+could not go to church. So Willie McCormick lifted his
+cap and went his way.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cold spring evening, and cutting winds were
+piping through the woods and across the open spaces of
+that then sparsely settled district of the American
+metropolis. Dusk had fallen, and the thinly planted electric
+lights along Ogden Avenue threw the shadows of
+the curbside trees across the walks in moving arabesques.
+The boy buttoned his coat closely about him, running
+away into the gloom, while the neighbor woman
+watched him disappear. In that moment the profounder
+darkness enveloped him, swallowed him into a void
+from which he never emerged alive, and made him the
+chief figure of another of the abiding problems of vanishment.</p>
+
+<p>Highbridge is an outlying section of New York,
+fringing the eastern bank of the Harlem River and
+centering about one approach to the old and beautiful
+stone bridge from which it takes its name. The tracks of
+the New York Central Railroad skirt the edge of the
+river on their way up-state. Further back from the
+stream the ground rises, and along the ridge, paralleling
+the river, is Ogden Avenue. Near the southern foot of
+this thoroughfare, at One Hundred and Sixty-first
+Street, the steel skeleton of the McComb’s Dam bridge
+thrust itself across the Harlem, with its eastern arch
+spanning high above the muddy mouth of Cromwell
+Creek,<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which empties into the Harlem at this point.
+At the shore level, under the great bridge approach, a
+hinged steel platform span, raised and lowered by means
+of balance weights to permit the passage of minor shipping
+up and down the creek, carried the tracks across
+the lesser stream. Three blocks to the north of this confluence,
+which plays an important part in the mystery,
+stood the McCormick home, a comfortable brick and
+frame house of the villa type, set back from the highest
+point of Ogden Avenue in a lawn.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> This creek has since been filled in and a playground marks its site.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Twenty-five and more years ago, when Willie McCormick
+disappeared, the vicinity bore, as it still bears
+to a lesser degree, the air of suburbia. Then houses were
+few and rather far apart. Some of the side streets were
+unpaved, and all about were patches of unimproved
+land, where clumps of trees, that once were part of the
+Bronx Woods, still flourished in dense order. The first
+apartment houses of the district were building, and
+gangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of native
+mechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections.</p>
+
+<p>Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of Cromwell
+Creek, while a factory, a coal dump, and two
+lumber yards sprawled along the other. Five squares to
+the north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to the
+west is the Highbridge police station. The Church of
+the Sacred Heart, then in charge of the wealthy and
+venerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands two blocks to the
+east of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same cross
+street with the police building. Neither of these places
+is more than a third of a mile from the McCormick
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after nine o’clock on the important evening
+already noted, the two young daughters of William
+McCormick returned from church without their
+brother. He had not overtaken them on the way, or
+joined them at the services. They had not seen him and
+supposed he had either remained at home, or played
+truant from church and gone to romp with other boys.
+The father was immediately alarmed. It was not like
+Willie to stay out in the dark. He was the eleventh of
+twelve children, all the others being girls, and he was
+accordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine. He had
+an especially strong dread of the dark and had never
+been known to venture out in the night without his
+older sisters or other boys. Besides, there had been kidnapping
+rumors in the neighborhood. It was not long
+after the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, and
+parents in all parts of the United States were still
+nervous and watchful.</p>
+
+<p>Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or because
+of the general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhood
+had gone to almost ludicrous extremes in his
+precautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer named
+Oscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundred
+yards from that of the McCormicks. He had a
+young son, also ten years old. His apprehensions for the
+safety of this lad, who was a playmate of Willie McCormick,
+resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across the
+front of his property, with an ornamental iron gate
+that was kept padlocked at night, though this step invalidated
+the fire insurance, an eight-foot iron fence
+about the sides and rear of the property, topped with
+strands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogs
+that ran at large day and night.</p>
+
+<p>The fears of the neighborhood rich man had naturally
+communicated themselves to other parents, and they
+seethed in William McCormick’s mind, as he hurried
+from his home to seek the absent boy. Willie was not to
+be found at the home of any of his chums; he was not
+playing at a near-by street corner, where some older
+boys were congregated, and apparently no one had seen
+him since the neighbor woman, Mrs. Tierney, had told
+him that her son could not go to church. The father,
+growing more and more excited, stormed about the
+Highbridge district half the night and then set out to
+visit relatives, to whose homes the boy might have gone.
+But Willie McCormick was not to be traced anywhere.
+On the following morning, when he did not appear, his
+father summoned the police.</p>
+
+<p>What followed provides an excellent exposition of
+the phenomenon of public unconcern being gradually
+rallied to excitement and finally driven to hysteria. The
+police listened to the statements of the missing boy’s
+parents and sisters, made some perfunctory investigations,
+and said that Willie McCormick had evidently
+run away from home. Many boys did that. Moreover,
+it was spring, and such vagaries were to be expected in
+youngsters. The newspapers noted the case with short
+routine paragraphs. A street-car conductor brought in
+the information that he had carried a boy, whom he
+was willing to identify as Willie McCormick, judging
+from nothing better than photographs, to a site in
+South Brooklyn, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
+was encamped. Another conductor reported that he had
+taken a boy answering the description of Willie McCormick
+to the Gravesend race course, where the horses
+were tuning up for the spring meeting. But the police
+found no trace of the wanderer at either place, nor at
+several others that were suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The McCormicks took the attitude at once that their
+son had not gone away voluntarily. He was, they said,
+far too timid for adventuring, much too beloved and
+pampered at home to seek other environment, and too
+young to be troubled with the dromomania that attacks
+adolescents. To these objections one of the police
+officials responded with the charge that the McCormicks
+were not telling all they knew, and that he was satisfied
+they had an idea what had happened to the runaway, as
+he insisted on terming him.</p>
+
+<p>At this point two interventions brought the McCormick
+case out of obscurity. Father Mullin, having been
+appealed to by the McCormicks, pointed out to the
+police in an interview that Willie McCormick had vanished
+with one cent in his pocket, that he could have
+taken a sum which must have seemed sufficient for long
+wanderings to a childish mind from his mother’s purse,
+which lay at hand; that he had started to church with
+his sisters and returned for his overcoat, and that the
+departure was wholly unprepared and assuredly unpremeditated.
+The astute priest said that every runaway
+made preparations for flight, and that, no matter how
+carefully the plans might be laid, there always remained
+behind the evidence of intent to disappear. A child, he
+said, could not have planned more cunningly than
+many clever men, and he insisted that there must be another
+explanation for the absence of the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally the newspapers paid more attention to the
+priest, and they began printing pictures of the boy, with
+scare headlines. Father Mullin had just taken in hand
+the affair when Oscar Willgerodt, the man of the stone
+wall and iron fences, came forward with an offer of a
+thousand dollars’ reward for information leading to the
+discovery of the missing boy. He said that he felt sure
+kidnappers had been at work, and that they had taken
+the McCormick boy in mistake for his own son. He
+added that he had received threats of abduction at intervals
+for more than a year.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, the boy’s uncle appeared in the
+press with an offer of five thousand dollars for the
+safe return of the child and the production of his abductors.
+By this time the newspapers were flaming with
+accounts of the disappearance in every edition. Their
+reporters and detectives swarmed over Highbridge, and
+that quiet district was immediately thrown into the
+wildest excitement, which rose as the days succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Father Mullin next offered ten thousand dollars for
+the apprehension of the kidnappers and return of the
+boy. Then a restaurant keeper of the neighborhood,
+whose nephew had been threatened by anonymous letter
+writers, offered two thousand dollars more for the
+return of the McCormick boy, and he said he would pay
+an additional thousand for evidence against kidnappers.
+Thus the total of fees offered was nineteen thousand
+dollars. Still no word came from the absent lad, and
+the efforts of a thousand officers failed to disclose any
+abductors.</p>
+
+<p>The constant appearance of these articles in the newspapers
+and the offers of such high rewards succeeded,
+however, in throwing a city of five or six million people
+into general hysteria. Parents refused to allow their
+children out of doors without escort; rich men called
+up at all hours of the day and night, demanding special
+police to protect their homes; excited women throughout
+the city and later throughout the State and surrounding
+communities proceeded to interpret the
+apparition of every stranger as evidence of kidnappers
+and to bombard the police of a hundred towns and cities
+with frantic appeals. The absence of this obscure child
+had become a public catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>Developments in the investigation came not at all.
+The police, the reporters, and numberless private officers,
+who were attracted to the case by the possibility
+of achieving celebrity and rich reward, all bogged down
+precisely where they started. Willie McCormick had
+vanished within a hundred feet of his father’s door. The
+night had simply swallowed him up, and all efforts failed
+to penetrate a step into the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Only two suggestive bits of information could be
+got from the McCormicks and the missing boy’s friends.
+The father, being closely interrogated as to possible enemies,
+could recall only one person who might have had
+a grievance. This was a mechanic, who lived a few
+squares away, and with whom there had been a disagreement
+as to pay. But this man was at home and going
+steadily about his work; he was vouched for by
+neighbors and his employers, and he came out of a police
+grilling completely absolved.</p>
+
+<p>Launcelot Tierney, the playmate for whom Willie
+McCormick had blown his whistle a minute or two before
+he vanished, supplied the information that Willie
+had tormented an Italian laborer on the morning before
+the disappearance, and that this man had nursed his
+grudge until the afternoon, when the boys were returning
+home from school. Then, said the Tierney boy, this
+workman had lain in wait behind a pile of lumber and
+dashed out after Willie, as the children passed. Willie
+had run for safety and proved fleeter than his pursuer,
+who gave up the attempt after running a few rods.
+Investigation showed that none of the laborers employed
+at the indicated building was absent. However
+the Tierney boy was unable to identify the man he had
+accused, when the workmen were lined up for his inspection.
+A good deal was made of this circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>The public police, however, always came back to
+their original attitude. Kidnappers were actuated by
+the hope of extorting money, they said. Since William
+McCormick was a poor man, there could have been no
+motive for the abduction of his son. Consequently it
+was almost certain that the boy had gone away.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. McCormick replied that while he was now poor,
+he had formerly been well to do. He reasoned that the
+kidnapper might very well have been ignorant of his
+decline in fortune and taken the boy in the belief that
+his parent was still wealthy. Others joined the controversy
+by pointing out in the newspapers that abductions
+were sometimes motivated by revenge or spite on the
+part of persons quite unknown or unsuspected by the
+parents; that children were often stolen by irrational
+or demented men or women, and that there was at
+least some basis for faith in the abduction theory, but
+no evidence to support the idea of a runaway.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime events had added their spice of immediate
+drama. A few nights after the disappearance of Willie
+McCormick, Doctor D. A. McLeod, a surgeon occupying
+the next house but one to the McCormick’s, had
+found a masked man skulking about the rear of his
+property just after nightfall, and tried to grapple with
+the intruder. A week later, from a house two blocks
+away, another neighbor reported that he, too, had found
+the masked man prowling about his place and had followed
+him into the woods, where he had been lost. This
+informant said that the mysterious stranger was a negro.
+Detectives were posted in hiding throughout the district,
+but the visitant did not appear again.</p>
+
+<p>Next two Gypsy girls visited a photographer in
+Washington, and one of them showed the camera man
+a slip of paper with some childish scrawl. Somehow this
+bit of writing came to be identified as that of one of
+Willie McCormick’s sisters. It was said the scrap of
+paper must have been taken from the McCormick
+house. The two Gypsy children were seized and held in
+jail, while detectives hurried off to interrogate their
+elders and search through the Romany camps up and
+down the Atlantic seaboard. No trace of the missing
+boy was found, and the girls were quickly released.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the expected note from the kidnapper
+reached William McCormick. It was scrawled awkwardly
+on a piece of nondescript paper by some illiterate
+person who was apparently trying to conceal his
+normal handwriting. It said that Willie was being held
+for ransom; that he was well; that he would be safe so
+long as no attempt was made to bring the police into
+the negotiations, and that disaster would follow if the
+father played false. The writer then demanded the absurdly
+small sum of two hundred dollars for the release
+of the boy and directed that the money be taken at
+night to the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundred
+and Thirty-fifth Street, and there placed in an old tin
+bucket which would be found inside an abandoned
+steam boiler. The missive bore the signature “Kid.”</p>
+
+<p>The police immediately denounced the letter as the
+work of some mental defective, but instructed the
+father to go to the rendezvous at the appointed time
+and deposit a bundle of paper which might look like
+the demanded sum in bank notes.</p>
+
+<p>McCormick did as commanded. He found the corner
+of Third Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth
+Street to be a half-abandoned spot near the east
+bank of the Harlem, at its juncture with the East
+River. A low barroom, a disused manufacturing plant,
+and some rookeries of dubious tenantry ornamented the
+place, while coarsely dressed men, the dregs of the river
+quarter, lounged about and robbed the stranger of any
+gathered reassurance. The old boiler was there, standing
+in the center of open, flat ground that sloped down
+to the railroad tracks and the river under the Third
+Avenue bridge. Plainly the writer of the letter had
+chosen a likely spot, which might be kept under observation
+from a considerable distance and could not
+be surrounded or approached without the certain
+knowledge of a watcher posted in any one of a hundred
+windows commanding the view. McCormick deposited
+the package and went his way, while disguised
+detectives lay in various vantages and watched the
+boiler for days. No one went near it, and the game
+was abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>But, at the end of ten days, McCormick received a
+second letter from Kid, in which he was reproached
+for having enlisted the police; he was told that such
+crude tactics would not work, and he was ordered to
+place two thousand dollars in cash under a certain stone,
+which he was directed to find under the approach of
+the McComb’s Dam bridge, a few rods from the mouth
+of Cromwell Creek. He was told that the amount of the
+ransom had been increased because of his association
+with the police, and the letter closed with the solemn
+warning that the demand must be met if McCormick
+hoped to see his son again. A postscript said that if the
+police appeared again the boy’s ears would be thrown
+upon his father’s porch.</p>
+
+<p>Relatives, friends, and neighbors were at hand to
+furnish the demanded money, and the father was more
+than willing to deposit it according to the stipulation,
+but the police again intervened and had McCormick
+leave another dummy packet. Once more he saw, and
+the police should have noted, that the spot selected by
+the letter writer was most suited to the purpose. Once
+more it was an open area in the formidable shadow of a
+great bridge, freely observable from all sides and impossible
+to surround effectively.</p>
+
+<p>No one was baited to the trap, but McCormick got
+a third letter from Kid, in which he was told that his
+silly tactics would avail him nothing; that his boy had
+been taken out to sea, and that he would not hear again
+until he reached England. He was told to blame his own
+folly if he never beheld his child alive.</p>
+
+<p>It must be said in favor of the police point of view
+that these were not the only letters from supposed kidnappers
+which reached the distraught parents. Indeed,
+there was a steady accumulation of all sorts of missives
+of this type, most of them quite obviously the work of
+lunatics. These were easily distinguishable, however. An
+experienced officer ought to be able to choose between
+such vaporings of disjointed intelligences and letters
+which bore some evidence of reason, some mark of
+plausibility. The police who handled this case committed
+the common blunder of lumping them all together.
+They had determined that the boy was a runaway and
+were naturally inhospitable to contrary evidences.</p>
+
+<p>But others were as firmly convinced on the other
+side. The father now became genuinely alarmed and
+feared that further activity by the police might indeed
+lead to the murder of the child. Accordingly Father
+Mullin withdrew his ten-thousand-dollar offer for the
+apprehension of the criminals, and Michael McCormick,
+the lost boy’s uncle, moved swiftly to change the terms
+of his five-thousand-dollar reward. In seeking for a
+way to make an appeal directly to the abductors and
+assure them of their personal safety, he brought into
+the case at this point the redoubtable Pat Sheedy.</p>
+
+<p>Sheedy had just achieved worldwide notoriety by recovering
+from the thieves’ fence, Adam Worth, the famous
+Gainsborough painting of Elizabeth, Duchess of
+Devonshire, which had been stolen from Agnew’s Art
+Rooms in London in 1876, and which had been hunted
+over half the earth for twenty-five years. This successful
+intermediacy between the police and the underworld
+gave the New York and Buffalo “honest gambler” a
+tremendous reputation for confidential dealing, and the
+McCormicks counted on Sheedy’s trusted position
+among criminals to convince the kidnappers that they
+could deliver the boy, collect five thousand dollars, and
+be safe from arrest or betrayal. So Sheedy came forward,
+announced that he was prepared to pay over the money
+on the spot and without question, the moment the boy
+was delivered and identified.</p>
+
+<p>The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension,
+disgusted by the police failures and thrilled by
+Sheedy’s performance in the matter of the stolen painting,
+received the news of his intervention in the case
+with signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s return
+was breathlessly expected, and many believed the feat as
+good as accomplished. But this time the task was beyond
+the powers of even the man who enjoyed the
+confidence of the foremost professional criminals of the
+day, counted the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli,
+as an intimate, forced the celebrated international
+fence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam Worth, to
+leave London and follow him across the ocean after the
+lost Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar of
+the American Express office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+and seemed able to compel the most abandoned
+lawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, but
+Sheedy got no word and could find no trace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> Or so says one of the most persistent of underworld legends.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On the rain-drenched afternoon of May 10, John
+Garfield, bridge tender for the New York Central Railroad
+at Cromwell Creek, worked the levers and lifted
+the steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighter
+bound up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. After
+he had lowered the platform again he observed that a
+large floating object had worked its way to the shore
+and threatened to get caught in the machinery which
+operated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkhead
+with a boat hook, intending to dislodge it. At the extreme
+end he leaned over and bent down, prodding
+the object with his pole. The thing turned in the
+stream and swam into better view. It was the body of a
+boy.</p>
+
+<p>Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawled
+back to the bridge, called to two boys and a man, who
+were angling near by, and soon put out with them in a
+rowboat. In five minutes the body had been brought
+to shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it had
+been identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectives
+had been seeking him thousands of miles away,
+and European port authorities had been watching the
+in-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had lain
+dead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares from
+his home. The churning propeller of the steam lighter
+had brought the body to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>A coroner’s autopsy revealed that the body had been
+in the water for a period which could not be fixed with
+any degree of precision. It might have been two weeks,
+but the coroner felt unable to state that the body had
+not been in the creek for six weeks, the full length of
+time since the disappearance. There was no way to
+make sure. Again, it was not possible to determine if
+the boy had been choked to death before being cast
+into the waters. There was no skull fracture, no breakage
+of bones, and no discernible wound. There was also
+no evidence of poison—no abnormal condition of the
+lungs. The official physicians were inclined to believe
+that death had been caused by drowning, but they
+would not make a definite declaration.</p>
+
+<p>The police dismissed the case with the assertion that
+they had been vindicated. It was clear that the boy had
+played truant from church, wandered away, fallen into
+the river, probably on the night of his disappearance,
+and lain under the water for six weeks.</p>
+
+<p>But to this conclusion the McCormicks and many
+others, among them several distinguished private officers,
+took exception, and it must be said that the police
+explanation leaves some important questions suspended.
+Why did the boy turn and go three blocks to the south
+of his home, when he had last been seen hurrying northward
+toward church? What could have led this timid
+and dark-frightened boy to go voluntarily down to the
+sinister and gloomy river bank on the edge of night?
+How did it happen that the Kid directed William McCormick
+to deposit the two-thousand-dollar ransom
+within a few score yards of the spot where the body was
+recovered? Who was the mysterious masked man?</p>
+
+<p>We shall never know, and neither shall we be able
+to answer whether accident or foul design lurks in the
+shadow of this mystery.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE</p>
+
+
+<p>Whoever is familiar with Central European
+popular literature has tucked away
+in his memory some part or parcel of the
+story of Barbara Ubrik. The romance of her life and
+parentage has furnished material for countless novels,
+plays, short stories, tales and poems of the imaginative
+kind. Bits of her history appear in more serious literature,
+in religious and social polemics, even in the memoirs
+of personages. And more than one of the tragic
+incidents of opera may be, if diligence and intuition are
+not lacking, traced back to this forgotten Polish woman
+and her exorbitant adventures. Time and creative interpretation
+have fashioned her case into one of the classic
+legends of disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>In the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, a certain Alexander
+Ubrik played a part sufficiently noteworthy to
+get himself exiled to Siberia for life, leaving behind him
+a wife and four young daughters, the third of whom,
+Barbara, was the chief figure of the subsequent affair.
+But the Ubrik family had already known the feel of
+the romantic fabric and there had already been a remarkable
+disappearance mystery involving a relative no
+more remote than the mother of Barbara and wife of
+the banished Alexander. It is with this part of the family
+history that much of the literary offspring deals.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1800, according to the account of
+the celebrated Polish detective Masilewski, extensively
+quoted by his American friend and compeer, the late
+George S. McWatters of the United States Secret Service,
+the first of the series of astonishing scenes involving
+the Ubrik family was played in Warsaw. There was
+then resident in the Polish capital one Jaromir Ubrik,
+the profligate son of an old and noble Polish house who
+had wasted his substance in gambling and roistering.
+Ubrik, though fallen into disrepute among his former
+friends, was still intimate with a few of the aristocratic
+families, among them that of Count Michael Satorin.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Satorin had borne her lord several
+daughters but no son to succeed to the title. When, in
+the year mentioned, Mme. Satorin yielded still another
+daughter, her husband being then absent in Russia, she
+sought to forestall the wrath and disappointment of
+her spouse by substituting a male child. It happened
+that the wife of Jaromir Ubrik had borne a son only
+two days earlier and died in childbirth. For the consideration
+of ten thousand florins, Ubrik consented to
+exchange children with the countess, who said she was
+additionally persuaded to the arrangement by the fact
+that the Ubrik blood was as good as her own and the
+boy thus fit to wear a title. The little Ubrik boy was,
+accordingly, delivered to the countess and her little
+daughter turned over to Jaromir Ubrik, nestled in a
+down lined basket with a fine gold chain and cross about
+her neck.</p>
+
+<p>The elements of a thousand plots will be apparent
+even at this early stage of the story. But far more fabulous-seeming
+things followed immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Ubrik took the basket containing the little girl and
+started home. On the way, following his unhappy
+weakness, he entered a tavern and began to spend some
+of the money he had been paid. He got drunk, staggered
+home without the little girl in her basket and returned
+the following day to find that a nameless Jew had
+claimed this strange parcel and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Not long afterwards, it seems, Countess Satorin,
+plagued by her natural feelings, came to see her daughter
+and had to be told the story. The outraged mother
+finally exacted an oath that he devote his worthless life
+to the quest for the stolen child. Ubrik began his work,
+apparently sobered by the death of his wife, the theft
+of the little girl and the charge her mother had laid
+upon him. After several years he rose in the ranks of the
+Russian intelligence service and was made captain of
+the Warsaw police.</p>
+
+<p>About this time the keeper of the inn where Ubrik
+had lost the little girl was seized with a mortal disease
+and called the police captain to his bedside, confessing
+that he had turned the little girl over to a Jewish adventurer
+named Aaron Koenigsberger, whose address
+in Germany the dying man supplied. Captain Ubrik
+proceeded to Germany, confronted Koenigsberger with
+the confession of his accomplice and dragged the abductor
+back to Poland to face the courts. Koenigsberger,
+to avoid punishment, assisted in the search for the little
+girl and guided Captain Ubrik to Kiev, where he had
+sold the child to another Jew named Gerson. The Gersons
+appeared to be respectable people, who had taken
+the little girl to console them in their own childlessness.
+They deplored that she had been stolen several years
+earlier by a band of Gypsies. Captain Ubrik, at length
+satisfied that this story was true, set out on an Odyssean
+journey in quest of the child. For more than eleven years
+he followed Gypsy bands through all parts of western
+and southern Russia and into Austria and Germany. At
+last, in a village not an hour’s journey from Warsaw, he
+discovered the missing daughter of the Countess Satorin
+and returned her to her mother, as a grown
+woman who believed herself to be a Jewess and could
+now at last explain why her supposed people had always
+said she looked like a “Goy.”</p>
+
+<p>The woman recovered as Judith Gerson seems to have
+been satisfactorily documented as the missing daughter
+of the countess. At any rate, she was taken into the Satorin
+family and christened Elka Satorin. Her father
+had meantime died, leaving the bulk of his fortune and
+the title to his supposed son, Alexander. Elka Satorin,
+however, inherited her mother’s property and, a few
+years later, married the boy who had been substituted
+for her in the cradle.</p>
+
+<p>This was the strange match from which Barbara
+Ubrik was spawned into a life that was to be darkened
+with more sinister adventures. The year of her birth is
+given as 1828, so that she was a tot of three when her
+father was dragged away to the marshes and mines of
+Russia in Asia.</p>
+
+<p>I must confess that I set down so fantastic a tale only
+after hesitation and skeptical misgiving. It, and what
+is to follow, reads like a piece of motion picture fustian,
+an old wives’ tale. The meter of reasonableness and
+probability is not there. The whole yarn is too crudely
+colored. It is sensation; it is melodrama. But it seems
+also to be the truth. My sources are old books by reputable
+chroniclers, containing long quotations from
+the story of Masilewski, the detective, from the testimony
+of Wolcech Zarski, the lover who appeared in
+Barbara Ubrik’s life at a disastrous moment, from the
+proceedings of an ecclesiastical trial. Indeed, the whole
+thing seems to be a matter of court record in Warsaw
+and in Cracow, the old Polish capital. This being so, we
+must conclude that fiction has been once more detected
+in the act of going to life even for its ultimate extravagances.</p>
+
+<p>The years following the great revolt of 1831 were
+full of torment for Poland. Nicholas I, weary of what
+he termed the obstinacy of the people, began a series of
+the most dire repressions, including the closing of the
+Polish universities, the revocation of the constitution,
+the persecution of the Roman priests and a general
+effort to abolish the Polish language and national culture.
+The old nobility, made up of devout Roman Catholics
+and chauvinistic patriots, was especially sought out
+for the reactionary discipline of the czar, and a family
+like that of Barbara Ubrik, whose chief had been sent
+to Siberia for treason, was naturally among the worst
+afflicted.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt from St. Petersburg to uproot the
+church of Rome was the cause of an intense devotionalism
+among the Poles, with the result that many men
+and women of distinguished families gave themselves up
+to the religious life and entered the monasteries and
+convents. This passion touched the Ubriks as well as
+others and Barbara, naturally of a passionate and enthusiastic
+nature, decided as a girl that she would retire
+from the world and devote herself to her forbidden
+faith. Her mother, Elka Satorin-Ubrik, once a
+ward of the Jewish family in Kiev and later the prisoner
+of the Gypsies, strongly opposed such a course, but in
+1844, when she was 16 years old, the girl could no
+longer be restrained. She presented herself to the Carmelite
+cloister of St. Theresa in Warsaw in the spring
+of that year and was admitted to the novitiate.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning, however, the spirited young
+noblewoman seems to have been most ill-adapted to the
+stern regulations hedging life in a monastery of the unshod
+cenobite Carmelites. She had brought into the
+austere atmosphere of the nunnery something that
+has played havoc with rules and good intentions under
+far happier environments than that of the cloister;
+namely, young beauty. The older and less favored nuns
+saw it first with misgiving and soon with envy, a sin
+which seems not altogether foreign to the holiest places.
+What was more directly in line with evil consequences,
+Father Gratian, the still youthful confessor of the
+cloister, also saw and appraised the charms of the youthful
+sister and was quite humanly moved.</p>
+
+<p>The official story is silent as to details but it appears
+that in 1846 Sister Jovita, as Barbara Ubrik had been
+named in the convent, bore a child. Very naturally,
+she was called before the abbess, who appears in the
+accounts as Zitta, confronted with her sin and sentenced
+to the usual and doubtless severe punishments.
+In the progress of her chastisement she seems to have declared
+that Father Gratian was the guilty man.</p>
+
+<p>This was the beginning of the young man’s troubles.
+Detective Masilewski, in his report on the investigation
+of the case, says that the motivation of the nun’s
+subsequent mistreatment was complex. Father Gratian
+naturally wanted to defend himself from the serious
+charge. The abbess, Zitta, was quite as anxious both to
+discipline the nun and to prevent the airing of a scandal,
+especially in times of suspicion and persecution,
+when the imperial attitude toward the holy orders was
+far from friendly and any pretext might have been
+seized for the closing of a nunnery and the expropriation
+of church property. Masilewski says, also, that Sister
+Jovita possessed a considerable property which was
+to belong to the cloister and that there was, thus, a further
+material motive.</p>
+
+<p>But, whatever else may have actuated either the priest
+or the abbess, Sister Jovita aggravated matters by her
+own conduct. The severity of her punishment led her
+to desire liberty and she sought to renounce her vows
+and return to her family. Such a course would probably
+have been followed by a public repetition of the
+charges made by the young nun, and every effort was
+accordingly made to prevent her from leaving the order.
+She was locked into her cell, loaded with penances
+and almost unbelievably severe punishments and prevented
+from communicating with her mother and
+sisters.</p>
+
+<p>Not long afterwards love again intruded itself into
+the story of Sister Jovita and further complicated the
+situation. This was in the last months of 1847. It appears
+that a young lay brother whose worldly name was
+Wolcech Zarski happened about this time to meet the
+beautiful young nun, while occupied at the convent
+with some official duties, and straightway fell in love
+with her. She told him of her experiences and sufferings
+and he, a spirited young man and not yet a monk,
+immediately laid plans to elope. Owing to the stringent
+discipline and the careful watch kept over the offending
+sister, this departure was not quickly or easily accomplished.
+Finally, however, on the night of May
+25th, 1848, Zarski managed to pull his beloved to the
+top of the convent wall by means of a rope. In trying
+to descend outside, she fell and was injured, with the
+result that flight was impeded.</p>
+
+<p>Zarski seems, however, to have had the strength to
+carry his precious burden to the nearest inn. Here
+friends and human nature failed him. The friends did
+not appear with a coach and change of feminine clothing,
+as they had promised, and the superstitious dread
+of the innkeeper’s wife led her to send immediate word
+to the convent. Before he could move from the neighborhood,
+Zarski was overcome by a bevy of stout friars
+and Sister Jovita carried back to the nunnery.</p>
+
+<p>The monasteries and nunneries of Poland had still
+their own judicial jurisdiction, so Zarski could not enter
+St. Theresa’s by legal means. He tried again and again
+to communicate with his beloved by stealth, but the
+Abbess Zitta was now fully awake to the danger and
+every effort was defeated. The young lover tried one
+measure after another, appealed to ecclesiastical authorities,
+consulted lawyers, besieged officials. At length
+he was told that the object of all this devotion was no
+longer in St. Theresa’s but had been removed to another
+Carmelite seat, the name of which was, of course,
+refused.</p>
+
+<p>Here political events intervened. Nicholas I had
+grown slowly but surely relentless in his attitude toward
+the Roman clergy in Poland, whom he considered to be
+the chief fomenters and supporters of the continued Polish
+resistance. Nicholas simply closed the monasteries
+and cloisters and drove the clergy out of Poland. It
+was the kind of drastic step always taken in the past
+in response to religious interference in political matters.</p>
+
+<p>Now the unfortunate Zarski was at his dark hour.
+The nuns were scattered into foreign lands where he,
+as a foreigner, could have little chance of either legal
+or official aid, where he knew nothing of the ways,
+was acquainted with no one, could count on no encouragement.
+Worse yet, he was not rich. He had to
+stop for months and even years at a time and earn more
+money with which to press his quest. His tenacity seems
+to have been heroic; his faith tragic.</p>
+
+<p>One evening in the summer of 1868, twenty years
+after Sister Jovita had last been seen, Detective Masilewski
+was driving homeward toward Warsaw, after a
+day’s hunt, when an old peasant stepped before the
+horse, doffed his hat and asked:</p>
+
+<p>“Are you the secret detective, Mr. Masilewski?”</p>
+
+<p>On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigator
+a letter, explaining that an unknown man
+had handed it to him with a tip to pay for its delivery.
+The note said simply:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Dear Sir: In the convent of St. Mary of the Carmelites at
+Cracow, a nun by the name of Jovita, her real name being
+Barbara Ubrik, has been held a captive for twenty years,
+which imprisonment has made her a lunatic. I do not care
+to mention my name but vouch for the truth of my assertion.
+Seek and you will find.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“Your correspondent.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not a
+little incredulous. True, he had heard of this nun and
+her disappearance, but she had vanished long ago and
+surely death had sealed the lid of this mystery, as of
+others. No doubt this was another of those romantic
+reappearances of the famous missing. Still—what if
+there were truth in it. But no, it must be a figment, else
+why had the informant hidden himself? It was an attempt
+to make a fool of an honest detective.</p>
+
+<p>So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remote
+possibility of something grotesque and extraordinary
+plagued him and drove him at last to action. Even when
+he had determined to move, however, he knew that he
+must act with caution. If he were to go to the bishop
+of the diocese, for instance, and ask for permission to
+search the nunnery of St. Mary’s, the very possible result
+might be the transfer of the unfortunate nun to
+some new hiding place and the infliction of worse penalties
+and tortures.</p>
+
+<p>If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austria
+having annexed the province of Cracow in 1846),
+he might enter the convent and find himself the victim
+of a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate humiliation
+for a detective. There was no possible course except
+cautious investigation.</p>
+
+<p>So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowly
+he traced back the stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother,
+the exchanged babies, the theft by the old Jew and the
+captivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the record
+of Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’s
+birth certificate, learned about her admittance to the
+convent, the part played in her life by Father Gratian
+and the early chastisement. How he did these things
+one needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care and
+watchful judgment were necessary. He must never let
+the enemies of the nun know that a detective was at
+work. All he did had to be handled through intermediaries.
+Probably it would even be a thankless job,
+but it was an enigma, a temptation. He went ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Masilewski stumbled upon the fact that the
+convent of St. Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiastical
+library. The inspiration came to him at once.
+He or someone else must play the part of a learned
+student of religious and local ecclesiastical matters and
+get permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. After
+some seeking, Masilewski came upon a renegade theological
+student and sent this man first to the bishop and
+then to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the diocese
+apparently approved the student, he was permitted to
+enter and use the rare old books and records.</p>
+
+<p>Under instructions from Masilewski, the man worked
+with caution. The detective invented a subject with
+which the man busied himself for days before a chance
+question, skillfully introduced into his research problem,
+called for an inspection of the old church law
+records of the convent. There was a moment of suspense
+and the investigator feared that he had been suspected
+or that the abbess would rule against any such liberty.
+But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decided
+that so holy and studious a young man might well
+be permitted to see the secret papers.</p>
+
+<p>Once the records were in his hands, the mock student
+turned immediately to the date of the nun’s escape
+and found under date of June 3, 1848, this remarkable
+record:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Barbara Ubrik, known under the name of Jovita, is accused
+of immoral actions, continued disturbances in the convent,
+manifold irregularities and trespasses of the rules of
+the convent, even of theft and cunningly plotted crime; she
+has refused the mercy of baptism and given her soul to the
+devil, for which cause she was unworthy of the holy Lord’s
+Supper, and by this act she has calumniated God; she has
+clandestinely broken the vows of purity, in so far that she
+held a love correspondence with the novice, Zarski, and allowed
+herself to elope with him; at last she has offended
+against the law of obedience of poverty and seclusion, and
+on the 25th of May, 1848, she has accomplished an escape
+from the convent.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Trial was held before the abbess and judgment was
+thus rendered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“The criminal has to do three days’ expiation of sins in
+the church, afterwards she will be lashed by all the sisters
+of the order and be forfeited of her clerical dignity; she herself
+will be considered as dead and her name will be taken
+from the list of the order. At last, she has forfeited the right
+to the holy Mass and the Lord’s Supper, and is condemned
+to perpetual imprisonment.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The reader is warned not to take this as a sample
+of monastic life or justice as it might be discovered to-day
+or even as it generally existed then. Sister Jovita
+had simply got herself involved in one of those sad
+tangles of scandal which had to be kept hid at any and
+every price. She was the victim not of monasticism or
+of any form of religion but of a political situation and
+of her relations with other men and women, some of
+whom have been hard and evil from the beginning of
+the world, respectless of vows or trust.</p>
+
+<p>In one particular, however, her treatment was a
+definite result of certain religious beliefs then prevalent
+in all strict churches. She was accused of being devil
+ridden or possessed by the fiend and many of her cries
+of anguish, screams of madness and acts of defiance were
+attributed to such a possession. It was then customary
+in certain parts of Europe to drive the devil out by
+means of torture. This was in no sense a belief peculiar
+to Catholics. Martin Luther held it, and so did John
+Wesley, as any historian must tell you. Therefore many
+of Jovita’s sufferings were the result of beliefs general in
+those days except among the exceptionally enlightened.</p>
+
+<p>With this record copied and safely in his hand, Masilewski
+moved immediately and directly. One morning
+he and a squad of Gallician gendarmes appeared before
+the convent of St. Mary’s and demanded admittance in
+the name of the emperor. The abbess, certain what was
+about to happen, tried to temporize, but Masilewski
+entered, arrested the abbess with an imperial warrant
+and commanded a search of the place. The mother superior,
+seeing that there was nothing to be gained by
+resistance led the company down to the lowest cellars
+of the building and turned over to Masilewski a key to
+a damp cell.</p>
+
+<p>The detective opened the door, felt rats run across
+his shoes as he stepped inside and found, crouched in
+a corner on a pile of wet straw, the shrunken form of
+what had been the beautiful Barbara Ubrik. She was
+brought forth to the light of day, to see the sheen upon
+the autumn trees once more and the clouds sailing in
+the skies. Alas, she was no Bonnivard. Life had lost its
+colors and symmetries for her. She had long been hopelessly
+mad.</p>
+
+<p>There is still a detail of this famous case of mystery
+and detection to be told. Father Gratian had disappeared
+when Russia drove out the clergy. Masilewski
+was determined to complete his work and bring the
+malefactor back to answer for his crimes. After the ruin
+of Barbara Ubrik had been lodged in an asylum, Masilewski
+set out to find the priest. After seven months of
+wandering through Austria, Prussia and Poland, the
+detective was rewarded with the information that
+Father Gratian had gone to Hamburg. He went immediately
+to the great German seaboard town, searched
+there for months and found that the man he sought had
+gone to London years before.</p>
+
+<p>The quest began anew in the British capital. It was
+like seeking a flea in a hayloft, but success came at last.
+Masilewski was passing through one of the obscure
+streets when he noticed a man with the peculiar gait
+and bearing of priests, which seems to mark them apart
+to the expert eye, no matter what their physique or
+dress, going into a bookstall where foreign books were
+sold.</p>
+
+<p>The detective, who was, of course, totally unknown
+to Father Gratian, followed into the shop and found to
+his delight that the priestly person was the owner of the
+shop. Many of the books dealt in were German or Polish.
+Masilewski rummaged for a long time, made a few purchases
+and ingratiated himself with the bibliophile.
+When he left he went directly to the first book expert
+he could find, stuffed himself with the terms and general
+knowledge of the book dealer and soon returned
+to the little shop.</p>
+
+<p>On his second visit he let drop a few Polish terms
+which made the shopkeeper prick up his ears. As Masilewski
+learned more and more of the new rôle he was
+to play he gradually revealed that he was himself a great
+continental expert. Later he informed the shopkeeper
+of a huge sale of famous libraries that was about to be
+held in Hamburg and invited the London dealer to accompany
+him. The priestly man was too much interested
+and beguiled to refuse a man who could speak his
+own language and loved his own subject.</p>
+
+<p>On the trip to Hamburg the London bookseller told,
+after skillful questioning, that he had once been a priest,
+that he had lived in Warsaw, that a love affair had
+driven him from the church—in short, that he was
+Father Gratian.</p>
+
+<p>Masilewski waited until he got his man safely on the
+continent and then, knowing the extradition agreements
+in force between Austria and the various German
+states, placed his man under arrest, not without
+a feeling of pain and regret. Father Gratian, like one
+relieved of a strange weight, immediately accompanied
+Masilewski to Cracow and faced his accusers without
+denying the facts. He could offer no extenuation save
+that nature had not ordained him to be a priest and
+“the devil had been too strong for his weak flesh.” He
+confessed his part in the whole transaction and even
+added that he had given the unfortunate nun drugs to
+bereave her of her reason. He made every attempt to
+shield the abbess, but she, too, face to face with the authority
+of the empire and the church, refused to deny or
+extenuate.</p>
+
+<p>For once the courts were more merciful than their
+victims. Mother Zitta was sentenced to expulsion from
+the order, imprisonment for five years and exile from
+the empire. Father Gratian was likewise expelled from
+the church, which he had long deserted, put to prison
+for ten years and exiled.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS</p>
+
+
+<p>In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, long
+employed as an auditor by the Erie Railroad and
+living in Jersey City, was grievously ill. In May,
+when he had recovered to the point of convalescence,
+it was decided he should go to the country to recuperate.
+For several years he and his family had been spending
+their vacations in the little hamlet of Greeley, five miles
+from Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in the pleasant hill
+country. So Glass bundled his wife and three small children
+to a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and the
+Frazer farm, where he had arranged for rooms and
+board. This on May eleventh.</p>
+
+<p>The Frazer farmhouse was one of those country
+establishments which take boarders for the season. Before
+it ran the main road leading to the larger towns
+along the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and beyond
+the road began the tangle of wild woods and hilly
+ground rising up to the wrinkle of mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play,
+and Mrs. Glass started for the post office, about two
+hundred yards up the road, to mail some post cards to
+her parents, noting the safe arrival of the family. She
+called to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook his
+head and went out into the field beside the house, interested
+in a hired man who was plowing in the far
+corner. The elder girl went with her up the road. The
+baby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on the
+porch watching his son. The little boy, just past four
+years old, was running about in the young green of
+the field.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Glass got up from the porch and went inside
+for a glass of water. He stayed there a minute or two.
+When he came out he saw his wife and little girl coming
+back down the road from the post office. They had
+been gone from the house not more than ten minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about,
+and asked: “Where’s Jimmie?”</p>
+
+<p>Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and
+surmised: “Maybe he went up the road after you.”</p>
+
+<p>The road was scanned and then the field. Then the
+farm hand was called and questioned. He had seen the
+youngster crawling through a break in the fence a few
+minutes before, but had paid no attention.</p>
+
+<p>One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely
+missing of recent history had begun. This hunt, which
+extended over years and covered a continent, taking
+advantage of several modern inventions never before
+employed in the quest of a human being, started off with
+alarmed calls on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent
+woods, gullies, and thickets. In the course of the
+evening, however, the organized quest began. It is interesting
+to note some of the confusion that overcame
+the people most concerned and the little town of a
+hundred souls. The suspicion of abduction was not slow
+in forming, and the question as to who might have
+done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was
+sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road
+going to or coming from the post office. William Losky,
+the farm hand who was plowing in the field, and Fred
+Lindloff, who was working on the road, felt sure they
+had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road, occupied
+by one man and one woman who had a plush
+lap robe pulled up about their knees to protect them
+from the May breezes.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i241" style="max-width: 122em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i241.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three
+miles down the road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands
+all of seven hundred feet back, saw a one-seated car
+stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she might be
+of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the
+car saw her approaching and at once drove off.</p>
+
+<p>Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs.
+Konwickie noted a one-seated motor car with a sobbing
+child, a woman and two men inside, the child crouching
+on the floor against the woman’s knees and being
+covered with the same black plush lap robe.</p>
+
+<p>All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see,
+and I cite them only to show how unreliable is the human
+mind and how quickly panic and forensic imagination
+get hold of people and cause them to see the unseen.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was
+brought from near by—just what kind of bloodhound
+the record does not show. The dog was given a scent of
+the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out
+through the break in the fence to the far side of the
+road, passed a little distance into the woods, and there
+stopped still, whined, and quit.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning word of the disappearance
+or kidnapping had been flashed to surrounding towns
+and many came to aid in the search. A committee was
+formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding
+terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the
+fourteenth. On the fifteenth of May a much larger
+committee undertook the work and the surrounding
+mountains were searched foot after foot. This work
+took several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about,
+whose members worked slowly inward, covering all the
+ground as they came to a center at Greeley. This
+maneuver also failed to yield hail or trail of the child.
+At last the weary and foot-sore hunters gave it up.</p>
+
+<p>The search was now begun in a more methodical way.
+The State constabulary took charge of a systematic review
+of the ground. Ponds were drained, culverts blown
+up, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves of the preceding
+autumn raked out of hollows or from the depths of
+quarries—all in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the mayor and director of public safety
+in Jersey City, appealed to by the distracted parents,
+began the official quest. Descriptions of the boy were
+broadcast. He was four years old, blond, with blue eyes,
+had good teeth, a double crown or cowlick in his hair,
+weighed about thirty-five pounds, and wore new shoes,
+tan overalls with a pink trimming, but no hat. Every
+town and hamlet in the United States, Canada, and the
+West Indies was sooner or later placarded with the picture
+and description of the boy. The film distributors
+were prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for the
+first notable occasion, at least, the movies were used
+to search for a missing person, more than ten thousand
+theaters having shown Jimmie Glass’ lineaments and
+flashed his description.</p>
+
+<p>A few years later the radio broadcasting stations
+spread through the air the story of his disappearance
+and the particulars of his description.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the drama of the hunt for Jimmie
+Glass, one must, however, begin with events closely
+following his vanishment and try to trace their succession
+through more than eight years. When once the
+idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors
+whose interest in the affair was partly sympathetic but
+more morbid, sat about shaking their heads and sagely
+talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a demand
+for ransom in a few days. When the few days had
+passed without the receipt of any request for money,
+the wiseacres shook their heads more gravely and
+opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some
+safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in
+coming. But time gave the soft quietus to all these
+speculations. Except for an obvious extortion letter
+received the following year, no ransom demand ever
+came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead
+body could be found, and since there seemed to be no
+sustenance for the idea of kidnapping for ransom, the
+theorists were forced into another position, one full of
+the ripe color of centuries.</p>
+
+<p>On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling
+carnival show had been at Lackawaxen, and with it had
+toured a band of Gypsy fortune tellers. Later on, Mr.
+John Bentley, the director of public safety in Jersey
+City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police,
+found that these Gypsies, two or three men and one
+woman, known sometimes as Cruze and sometimes as
+Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It could
+be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there
+had been Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to
+give fresh life to the old fable. Gypsies stole children
+to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they had taken Jimmie
+Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads
+to earth and force them to give up the child.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain
+Rooney that she had seen a swart man and woman
+in an automobile on the day of the kidnapping, not
+far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and
+many other officers engaged in a systematic investigation
+of Gypsy camps wherever they were found, following
+the nomads south in the winter and north again with
+the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were
+found about the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners,
+with the result that Mrs. Glass, now fairly set
+out upon her travels in quest for her son, visited one
+tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought
+Jimmie.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of blond or blondish children in
+Tzigane encampments always stirred the finders and
+the public to the same emotions, to the indignant
+belief that such children must have been stolen. All
+this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany
+people and the American Gypsies in especial. No
+one knows just what the original Gypsies were or
+whence they came. The only hint is contained in the
+fact that their language contains strong Aryan and
+Sanscrit connections and suggestions. They appeared in
+Eastern Europe, probably in the thirteenth century and
+in France somewhat later, being there mistaken for
+Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks
+were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or
+brown eyed. But several Gypsy clans appeared in England
+all of five hundred years ago and there soon began
+to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of Tzigane
+blood. In the course of the generations the English
+Gypsy came to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall,
+straight, dark men, with piercing eyes and the more or
+less typical Gypsy facial characteristics appeared among
+them, but these usually occur in cases where there has
+been marriage with strains from the Continent, from
+Hungary and Roumania. For instance, Richard
+Burton, the great traveler and anthropologist, was
+half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the last century.</p>
+
+<p>The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English
+origin, though there are a good many from Eastern
+Europe. Among both kinds there is frequent intermarriage
+with American girls from the mountain countries
+of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies
+pure blond children are of frequent occurrence and
+one often sees the charming contradiction of light hair
+and dark, emotive eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children.
+Nomads have very little sense of the property rights of
+others and may take anything, animal, mineral or vegetable,
+that strikes their fancy. But so much for the facts
+on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps
+kept the police and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the
+move. The Cruze party gave them especial trouble and
+contributed one of the high dramatic moments of the
+eight years of search and suspense.</p>
+
+<p>When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman
+called Rose Cruze had been near Greeley on the day the
+child vanished, he set out to trace her down with her
+male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at
+the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more,
+a most puzzling matter to one who does not understand
+the motives and habits of nomads. Rose Cruze and
+the blond boy she was supposed to have with her kept
+just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into
+Mexico and continued southward with her band, having
+meantime married Lister Costello, the head of another
+clan. Later she was heard of in Venezuela, then in
+Brazil.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram
+was brought to Director Bentley in Jersey City. It came
+from Porto Rico, was signed with the mysterious name
+Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy
+answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies
+encamped near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram
+also gave the information that the men were
+Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and the
+woman was Costello’s wife.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities,
+probably a good deal more skeptical about
+Gypsy stories than are Americans, questioned whether
+the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously. By
+the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late
+by the American officials on the island, the band had
+moved on into the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of
+no special standing, and he was severely questioned. But
+this time there was no foolery. He stuck to his story
+very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate practically
+everything he said, and firmly established the
+fact that among the Gypsies were the much-sought
+Costello-Cruze family.</p>
+
+<p>The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went
+out that the hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba.
+In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made ready to sail.
+Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused
+him to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him
+to packing his bags. He was almost ready to embark
+when the thing dropped with sudden and sad deflation.
+The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not
+Jimmie Glass.</p>
+
+<p>This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of
+the eight years of quest. Ever and again, not ten times
+but ten hundred, came reports that Jimmy Glass had
+been found. Many of them came from irresponsible
+enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest
+but mistaken. A few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the
+marked egg.</p>
+
+<p>One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City
+grocery store with the following scrawled on the shell:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The police chased themselves in excited circles. One
+of them was off to Richmond at once. The eggs were
+carefully traced back to the nests of their origin. It
+was found that they came from a place much nearer
+than Richmond, and that the inscription was the work
+of a fifteen-year-old boy.</p>
+
+<p>Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated
+by the final running down of the much-sought band,
+another form of thrill had played its fullest ravages
+with the unhappy parents and given the public its
+crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the
+boy, the showing of his picture on the screens and the
+repeated newspaper summations of the strange case,
+all had the effect of putting idle brains and fevered
+imaginations to work. From almost every part of the
+country came reports of missing children who looked
+as though they might be Jimmie Glass.</p>
+
+<p>The distracted mother, suffering like any other
+woman in a similar predicament from the idea that her
+child could not fail to be restored, traveled from one
+part of the country to the other under the lash of these
+reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the
+newspapers have estimated that she traveled more than
+forty thousand miles in all, seeking what she never
+found.</p>
+
+<p>As happens in many excitements of this kind, the
+hunt for James Glass resulted in the finding of many
+other strayed or stolen children, from San Diego to
+Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in the
+possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to
+show that the child had been left with them, and they
+readily gave it up to the authorities for lodgment in an
+institution. But, alas, none of these was Jimmie Glass.</p>
+
+<p>The affair of the one demand for money came near
+ending in a tragedy. The blackmail note demanded that
+five thousand dollars be placed in a milk bottle near a
+shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses filled
+the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the
+agreed spot, after the police had taken up watch near
+by. The bottle stayed where it had been placed for
+hours. Finally the proprietor of the stand saw the thing.
+His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the bottle,
+and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police
+headquarters, protesting that he did not mean to steal
+anything. It developed that this honest workman knew
+nothing about the whole affair. The real extortioners
+had, of course, been much too alert for the police.</p>
+
+<p>One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited
+before the end. The quest for Jimmy Glass was at its
+height when news came from the little town of Norman,
+Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a
+shoe store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long
+trip in vain, asked that photographs be sent, and they
+were received at the end of the week. What they
+thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they
+caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City,
+and motored to Norman.</p>
+
+<p>Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the
+town had suspended business and hung the streets and
+houses with flags in their honor.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately
+to one of the houses of the town, where the child was
+being kept, and ushered into the parlor, while a large
+crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the streets,
+giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy
+was brought in. Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and
+held out her arms. The child rushed to her and was
+showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child
+promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother,
+choking with sobs, clasped the little fellow closely to
+her. He struggled, and she released him. He ran to sit
+on Mr. Glass’ lap.</p>
+
+<p>“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I
+was convinced. Surely this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He
+had his every feature. For the time there was no doubt
+in either of our minds. We were too happy for
+words.”</p>
+
+<p>But then the examination of the child began and
+the discrepancies appeared. The child was Jimmie’s
+size and age. His hair and eyes were of the same color
+and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.
+This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of
+Jimmie’s peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of
+Mr. Glass’ son; there was an old scar on one foot that
+was unlike anything that had disfigured Jimmie, and
+there were other slight differences.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs.
+Glass could make up her mind, and the crowd stood outside
+crying for news and being told to wait, that the
+child was still being examined. Finally the negative word
+was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully
+away. Even then the Glasses stayed two days
+longer in the town, eager to find other evidence that
+might yet change their minds.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child
+was found. She confessed that her husband had abandoned
+and would not support her, that she had been
+unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and that
+in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe
+store, hoping that some one would adopt him. The
+little boy had learned to say he was Jimmie Glass
+through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and
+other local emotionals.</p>
+
+<p>So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous
+man who had gone to the country to recover and
+been struck with this fatality, and for the sorrowing
+mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses
+seemed about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire
+of doubt and grief that took in the Rosses years before.</p>
+
+<p>One morning on the first days of December of 1923,
+Otto Winckler, of Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits
+not far from Greeley, where Jimmie Glass had disappeared.
+There had been a very dry autumn and the
+marshy ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse,
+ordinarily not to be crossed afoot, was caked and
+firm. A light snow had powdered the accumulations of
+brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for
+a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.</p>
+
+<p>Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter
+fashion, his shotgun ready in his hands, his eyes fixed
+ahead, covering the ground for some sudden flurry of
+a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a
+round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped
+after it; picked it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s
+memory fled back over the eight and one half years
+to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too, had
+taken part. Could this be—— He did not stop to ponder
+much, but looked about. Very near the spot from
+which he had kicked the skull were a pair of child’s
+shoes. He picked them up carefully and found them
+to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was
+missing, carried away in those long seasons by beasts and
+birds, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen
+and telegraphed to Charles Glass. The father responded
+at once and went over the ground with the hunter and
+with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the
+relative positions of the shoes and the skull, that the
+little boy must have lain down on his side and wakened
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>Little was found in addition to the shoes and the
+skull, except a few bone buttons, the metal clasps from
+a child’s garters and such like. The skull and shoes furnished
+the evidence needed. The former, examined by
+experts, revealed the double crown which had caused
+the upstanding of the missing boy’s back hair. The
+shoes, washed free of the encasing mud, showed the
+maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole. All
+the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have
+retained the mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn
+a brand new pair the morning he strayed out.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered
+away that seductive May morning, gone on and on, as
+children sometimes do, got into the boggy ground and
+been unable to get out. Exhaustion had overtaken him,
+and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again,
+this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring
+of 1915, and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in
+and been drowned, only to have his bones cast up again
+by the droughty fall eight years later.</p>
+
+<p>With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain
+Rooney refused absolutely to entertain them. He had
+been over the ground many times. It was of the most
+difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally
+strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he
+tried to do more than creep among them, absolutely
+impassable to a child. Again, there was the matter of
+distance. How could a child of four years, none too firm
+a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and
+scar will testify, have made its way for more than two
+miles over this hellish terrain into a morass? Must it
+not have fallen exhausted long before and rested till
+the voices of the searchers in that first night had wakened
+it?</p>
+
+<p>And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney
+asks us. Of what leather were they made to have lain
+for eight and one half years in that impassable bog and
+yet to have been so well preserved as to retain the maker’s
+imprint?</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may
+be the bones of Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one
+must have taken him there.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps—and then again? How far a lost and desperate
+child will stray is not too simple a question. If,
+as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie Glass probably
+would have tired and lain down to rest, would he
+not also have risen again and blundered on? As
+for the durability of the leather, any one may go to
+any well-stocked museum and find hides of the sixteenth
+century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took
+the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that
+morass, who was it?</p>
+
+<p>It is much easier to believe with the parents. The
+enchantment of spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited
+and undreamed places unfolding before a child’s
+eyes, and straying from flower to flower, wonder to
+wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,
+disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness
+that clouds all living. It is more pleasant to think
+of the matter so, to believe that Jimmy Glass, four years
+in the world, was but a forthfarer into the mysteries,
+who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and
+went to sleep—a Babe in the Woods.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA</p>
+
+
+<p>On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, Salvatore
+Varotta took his eldest son for a ride on
+Long Island. Perhaps it was not quite the right
+thing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him.
+His employers might not like the idea of a child being
+carted about the countryside in their delivery van. Still,
+what did it matter? The day had been hot. Little Adolfo
+had begged to go. No one would ever know the difference,
+and the boy would be happy. So this simple-hearted
+Italian motor driver set out from the reeks and
+throngs of New York’s lower East Side on what was to
+be a pilgrimage of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cool wind in the country and the landscape
+was still green. The truck chauffeur enjoyed his
+drive as he rolled by fields where farmers were at their
+late plowing. The nine-year-old Adolfo sat beside him,
+chattering with curiosity or musing in pure delight.
+After all, it was a bright and perfect world, for all men’s
+groans and growls.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Another
+truck lurched drunkenly across his path. There was a
+horrid shriek of collision, the shattering tinkle of glass,
+the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore Varotta was tossed
+aside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He picked
+himself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreck
+and little Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flame
+as one of the tanks blew up. The undaunted father
+plunged into the smoke and managed to draw out the
+boy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions,
+but breathing and alive.</p>
+
+<p>Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering
+from a frightfully cut and burned face and a crushed
+leg. The surgeons looked at the mangled child and
+shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that
+wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it
+might be possible to restore that ruined face to human
+semblance, but the work would take many months.
+It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free
+hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of
+the doctors.</p>
+
+<p>The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a
+rookery on East Thirteenth Street, the father, the
+mother and five children, of whom the injured boy
+was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as truck
+driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such
+a family an accident like that which had overtaken
+Adolfo means about what a broken leg does to a horse:
+Death is the greatest mercy. In this case, however, some
+one with connections got interested either in the boy or
+in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and
+charitable woman for aid. This lady came down from
+her apartment on Park Avenue and stood by the bedside
+of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that
+he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested
+not only in the boy but his family.</p>
+
+<p>One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were
+appalled to see the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress
+drive up to their tenement. They watched her
+enter the humble home, pat the children, talk with the
+burdened mother, and then drive away perilously
+through the swarms of children screaming and pranking
+in the street. The “great lady” came again and again.
+It was understood that she had paid much money to help
+little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.
+That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his
+son had brought him the patronage of the rich. Surely,
+he would know how to make something of his good
+fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness
+is no more than weakness and must be taken advantage
+of accordingly. The neighbors of Salvatore Varotta
+were such men and women.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp49" id="i259" style="max-width: 79.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i259.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+
+<p class="small right">
+<i>Pacific &amp; Atlantic Photo.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched
+and mended, when his father sued the owner of the
+colliding truck for fifty thousand dollars, alleging carelessness,
+permanent injury to the child, and so on. The
+neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore
+<i>was</i> a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he
+would get it, too. Did he not have a rich and powerful
+patroness?</p>
+
+<p>Thus, through the intervention of a charitable
+woman and a lawsuit, Varotta became a dignitary in
+his block, a person of special and consuming interest. He
+had or would soon have money. In that case he would
+be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and
+guileless fellow. A way would be found.</p>
+
+<p>In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from
+the hospital with his leg partly restored but with his
+face still in need of skin grafting and other treatments,
+Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap, second-hand
+automobile. He could make money with it and also use
+it to give his family an airing once in a while. The car,
+for which only one hundred and fifty dollars had been
+paid, attracted the attention of the East Thirteenth
+Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an
+automobile? Then there must have been a settlement
+in the damage suit over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore
+had money, then. So, so!</p>
+
+<p>One of the neighbor women happened to pass when
+the rickety car was standing at the curb, and Mrs.
+Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest child in her
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buys
+you a hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked the
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if he
+wanted to,” said the wife with a surge of false pride.</p>
+
+<p>That was enough. That was confirmation. The damage
+suit had been settled. Salvatore Varotta had the
+money. He could have bought an expensive car, but he
+had spent only a hundred and fifty. The niggardly old
+rascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So the
+word fled up and down the street, to the amusement of
+some and the closer interest of others.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not been
+settled. It was even doubtful whether Salvatore would
+ever get a cent for all his son’s injuries and suffering.
+The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s had
+no means and could not be made to give what he did
+not possess. So it was an entirely false rumor of prosperity
+and a word of bragging from a sensitive wife
+that brought about many things.</p>
+
+<p>At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24,
+1921, Giuseppe Varotta, five years old, the younger
+brother of the wounded Adolfo, put on his clean sailor
+suit and his new shoes and went out into East Thirteenth
+Street to wait for the homecoming of his father and
+the automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did not
+know or care whether the car had cost a hundred or a
+thousand dollars. It was a car, it belonged to his father,
+and Joe intended to have a ride in it.</p>
+
+<p>For some minutes Joe played about the doorstep.
+Then his childish patience forsook him, and he ran
+down the block to spend a penny which a passer-by had
+given him. Other children playing in the street observed
+him by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, and
+watched him go down the walk to the confectioner’s.
+They did not mark his further progress.</p>
+
+<p>At half past three, Salvatore Varotta came home in
+his car. He ran up the steps into the house to his wife.
+She greeted him and asked immediately:</p>
+
+<p>“Where’s Joe?”</p>
+
+<p>Varotta had not seen his little son. No doubt he was
+playing in the street and would be in soon.</p>
+
+<p>The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joe
+did not appear, and twenty minutes had passed, his
+mother went out to the stoop to call him. She could
+not find him in the street, and he did not respond to
+her voice. There was another wait for half an hour and
+another looking up and down the street. Then Salvatore
+Varotta was forced to yield to his wife’s anxious
+entreaties and set out after the lad.</p>
+
+<p>He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friends
+and neighbors, questioned the children, circled the
+blocks, looked into cellars and areaways, visited the
+kindergarten where the child was a pupil, implored the
+aid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late at
+night, went to the East Fifth Street police station and
+told his story to the captain, who was sympathetic but
+busy and inclined to take the matter lightly. The child
+would turn up. Lots of children strayed away in New
+York every day. They were almost always found again.
+It was very seldom that anything happened.</p>
+
+<p>So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wife
+and told her what the “big chief policeman” had said.
+No doubt, the officer spoke from experience. They had
+better try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn up in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the following day the postman
+brought a letter to Salvatore Varotta. The truck driver
+read it and trembled with fear and apprehension. His
+wife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a candle
+before the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and began
+endless prayers and protestations.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was written in Italian, evidently by one
+habited to the Sicilian dialect. It said that the writer
+was a member of a powerful society, too secret and too
+strong to be afraid of the police. The society had taken
+little Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price of
+his life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars.
+Varotta was to get the money at once in cash and
+have it ready in his home, so that he could hand it over
+to a messenger who would call for it. If the money were
+promptly and quietly paid the boy would be restored
+safe and sound, but if the police were notified and any
+attempt were made to catch the kidnappers, the powerful
+society would destroy the child and take further
+vengeance upon the family.</p>
+
+<p>There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of this
+forbidding missive with a dripping dagger at its side.</p>
+
+<p>Varotta and his wife conferred all day in despair.
+They did not know whom they might trust, or whether
+they dared speak of the matter at all. But necessity
+finally decided their course for them. Varotta did not
+have twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not have
+it ready when the fateful footfall of the messenger
+would sound on the stairs. In his extremity he had to
+seek aid. He went to the police again and showed the
+letter to Captain Archibald McNeill.</p>
+
+<p>The same evening the case was placed in the hands of
+the veteran head of the New York Italian Squad, Sergeant
+Michael Fiaschetti, successor of the murdered
+Petrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin killers
+to the chair and the prison house than any other officer
+in the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clear
+vision that this job was probably not the work of any
+organized or powerful society. He knew that professional
+criminals act with more caution and better information. They
+would never have made the blunder
+of assuming that Varotta had money when he had none.
+The detective also saw that the plan of sending a messenger
+to the house for the ransom was the plan of resourceless
+amateurs. He reasoned that the work had been
+done by relatives or neighbors, who knew something but
+not enough of Varotta’s affairs, and he also concluded
+that the child was not far from its home.</p>
+
+<p>Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordance
+with these conclusions. His first work was to
+get a detective into the Varotta house unobserved or
+unsuspected. For this work he chose a woman officer,
+Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage and
+could speak the Sicilian dialect.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping and
+inquiring after her child, let it be known that she had
+telegraphed to her cousin in Detroit, who had a little
+money. The cousin was coming to aid her in her difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>That night the cousin came. She drove up to the house
+in a station taxicab with two heavy suit cases for baggage.
+After inquiring the correct address from a bystander,
+the visiting cousin made her way into the Varotta
+home. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introduced
+herself to her assignment.</p>
+
+<p>The young woman was not long in the house before
+things began to happen. First of all, she observed that
+the Varotta tenement was being constantly watched
+from the windows across the street. Next she noted that
+she was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do a
+little shopping for the house, but really to telephone to
+Fiaschetti. Finally came visitors.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant,
+who dwelt across the street from the Varottas
+and knew Salvatore and the whole family well.</p>
+
+<p>Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedly
+the best thing to do was to pay the money.
+The Black Handers were terrible people, not to be trifled
+with. What? Varotta had no money? He could raise
+only five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructed
+Varotta to mention this sum. The Black Handers
+would laugh at such an amount. Varotta must get
+more. He must meet the terms of the kidnappers. As
+for the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easy
+on that point, but they must get the money quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The following day there were other callers from
+across the street. Antonio Marino came with his wife
+and his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary Pogano, née Ruggieri.
+The Marinos, too, were full of tender human kindness
+and advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta had
+reported the kidnapping to the police he shook his head
+in alarm. That was bad; very bad. The police could do
+nothing against a powerful society of Black Handers.
+It was folly. If the police were really to interfere, the
+Black Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio had
+known of other cases. There was but one thing to do—pay
+the money. Another man he had known had done
+so promptly and without making any fuss. He had got
+his son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.</p>
+
+<p>Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for news
+and said that perhaps the Black Handers would take
+five hundred dollars if that was really all Varotta could
+raise. He did not know, but Varotta had better have
+that sum ready for the messenger when he came. As
+he left the house, Cusamano accidentally made what
+seemed a suggestive statement.</p>
+
+<p>“You will hear from me soon,” he remarked to Varotta.</p>
+
+<p>While these conversations were being held, Mrs. Nicoletti,
+the detective, was bustling about the house, listening
+to every word she could catch. She had taken up the
+rôle of visiting cousin, was busy preparing meals, working
+about the house, and generally assisting the sorrowing
+mother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existed
+was soon allayed. She even sat in on the council with
+Cusamano and told him she had saved about six hundred
+dollars and would advance Varotta five hundred of
+it if that would save the child.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almost
+certain that their original theory of the crime was correct.
+The neighbors were certainly a party to the matter,
+and it seemed that a capture of the whole band and the
+quick recovery of the child were to be expected. Plans
+were accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming for
+the money and any one who might be with him or near
+the place when he came.</p>
+
+<p>On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seen
+before came to the house late at night and asked in
+hushed accents for the father of the missing boy. The
+caller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, who
+thus had every opportunity to look at him and hear his
+voice. He was led upstairs to a room where Varotta was
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p>When the dark and midnight emissary of the terrible
+Black Hand strode across the threshold, the tortured
+father could hold back his emotion no longer.
+He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, lifted
+his clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots,
+begging that his child be sent safely home and pleading
+that he had only five hundred dollars to pay. It was
+not true that he had received any money. It was impossible
+for him to ask his rich patroness who had befriended
+Adolfo for anything. All he had was the little
+money his wife’s good cousin was willing to lend him
+for the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would the Black
+Hand not take the five hundred dollars and send back
+the child, who was so innocent and so pretty that his
+teacher had taken his picture in the kindergarten?</p>
+
+<p>The grim caller had very little to say. He would report
+to the society what Varotta had told him and he
+would return later with the answer. Meantime, Varotta
+had better get ready all the money he could raise. The
+messenger might come again the next night.</p>
+
+<p>The detectives were ready when the time came. In
+the course of the next day Varotta went to the bank
+as if to get the money. While there he was handed five
+hundred dollars in bills which had previously been
+marked by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decided
+that Mrs. Nicoletti would need help in dealing with the
+kidnappers’ messenger, who might not come alone. Varotta
+himself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly, Detective
+John Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, supplied
+with kit and tools, and sent to the Varotta house
+to mend a leaking faucet and repair some broken pipes.
+He came and went several times, bringing with him
+some new tools or part when he returned. In this way he
+hoped to confuse the watchers as to his final position.
+The trick was again successful. Pellegrino remained in
+the house at last, and the lookouts for the kidnappers
+evidently thought him gone.</p>
+
+<p>A little after ten o’clock on the night of June second
+there was a knocking at the Varotta door. Two men
+were there, one of them the emissary of the Black Hand
+who had called the night before. This man curtly announced
+the purpose of his visit and sent his companion
+up to get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairs
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Varotta received the stranger in the same room where
+he had kissed the boots of the first messenger the night
+before, talked over the details with him, inquired anxiously
+as to the safety of Joe, and was told that he need
+not worry. Joe had been playing happily with other
+children and would be home about midnight if the
+money were paid. This time Varotta managed to retain
+some composure. He counted out the five hundred dollars
+to the messenger, asked this man to count the money
+again, saw that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’s
+pocket and then gave the agreed signal.</p>
+
+<p>Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery,
+sprang into the room with drawn revolver, covered the
+intruder, handcuffed him and immediately communicated
+with the street by signal from a window. Other
+detectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissary
+who was waiting there. On the near-by corner,
+Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of his staff clapped the
+wristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and James
+Ruggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamano
+was dragged from the bakeshop where he worked.
+Five of the gang were in the toils and five more were
+seized before the night was over.</p>
+
+<p>Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out to
+be Roberto Raffaelo, made admissions which were later
+shown in court as confessions. All the prisoners were
+locked into separate and distant cells in the Tombs, and
+the search for Joe Varotta was begun. Sergeant Fiaschetti,
+amply fortified by the correctness of his surmises,
+took the position that the child was not far away and
+would be released within a few hours now that the members
+of the gang were in custody.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, the shrewd detective counted without
+a full consideration of the desperateness and deadliness
+of the amateur criminal, characteristics that have
+repeatedly upset and baffled those who know crime professionally
+and are conversant with the habits and conduct
+of experienced offenders. There can be no doubt
+that professionals would, in this situation, have released
+the boy and sent him home, though the Ross case furnishes
+a fearful exception. The whole logic of the situation
+was on this side of the scale. Once the boy was
+safely at home, his parents would probably have lost
+interest in the prosecution, and the police, busy with
+many graver matters, would probably have been content
+with convicting the actual messengers, the only ones
+against whom there was direct evidence. These men
+might have expected moderate terms of imprisonment
+and the whole affair would have been soon forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But Little Joe was not released. The days dragged by,
+while the men in the Tombs were questioned, threatened,
+cajoled and besought. One and all they pretended
+to know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.
+More than a week went by while the parents of the
+child grew more and more hysterical and finally gave up
+all but their prayers, convinced that only divine intervention
+could avail them. Was little Joe alive or dead?
+They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’s
+aid and probably he would give them his answer
+soon.</p>
+
+<p>At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh,
+John Derahica, a Polish laborer, went down to the beach
+near Piermont, a settlement just below Nyack, in quest
+of driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson, and
+Derahica had no trouble reaching the end of a small
+pier which extended out into the stream at this point.
+Just beyond, in about three feet of water, he found the
+body of a little boy, caught hold of the loose clothing
+with a stick, and brought it out.</p>
+
+<p>Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned the
+local police chief, E. H. Stebbins. The body was carried
+to a local undertaker’s and was at once suspected of
+being that of the missing Italian child. The next night
+Sergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived at
+Piermont and went to see the body, which had meantime
+been buried and then exhumed when the coming of
+the New York officer was announced.</p>
+
+<p>The remains were already sorely decomposed and the
+face past recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked at
+the swollen little hands and feet and the blue sailor suit.
+He knelt by the slab where this childish wreck lay prone
+and sobbed his recognition and his grief.</p>
+
+<p>A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had been
+thrown alive into the stream and drowned. Calculating
+the probable results of the reaction of tides and currents,
+it was decided that Giuseppe had been cast to his
+death somewhere above the point at which the recovery
+of the corpse was made.</p>
+
+<p>Long and tedious investigations followed. When had
+the child been killed and by whom? Was the little boy
+still alive when the two messengers arrived at the Varotta
+home for the ransom and the trap was sprung
+which gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposed
+accessories? If so, who was the confederate who
+had committed the final deed of murderous desperation?
+Who had done the actual kidnapping? Where had the
+child been concealed while the negotiations were proceeding?</p>
+
+<p>Some of these questions have never been answered,
+but it is now possible, from the confession of one of the
+men, from the evidence presented at four ensuing murder
+trials, and from the subsequent drift of police information,
+to reconstruct the story of the crime in
+greater part.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when little
+Joe Varotta went into the candy store with his
+penny, he was engaged in talk by one of the men from
+across the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend of
+his father’s. The child was enticed into a back room,
+seized, gagged, stuffed into a barrel and then loaded into
+a delivery wagon. Thus effectively concealed, the little
+prisoner was driven through the streets to another
+part of town and there held in a house by some member
+of the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up to
+this point were all either neighbors or their relatives
+and friends.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, Roberto
+Raffaelo was sitting despondently on a bench in Union
+Square when a stranger sat down beside him and accosted
+him in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance acquaintance,
+it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelo
+was down on his luck and had found work hard to
+get. He was, as a matter of fact, washing dishes in a
+Bowery lunch room for five dollars a week and meals.
+Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informed
+that they might be better, he told Raffaelo of a
+chance to make some real money, explaining the facts
+about the kidnapping, saying that a powerful society
+was back of the thing, and representing that Varotta
+was a craven and an easy mark. All that was required
+of Raffaelo was that he go to the Varotta house and get
+the money. For his pains he was to have five hundred
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamano
+and Marino. The next night he went to visit Varotta
+with the result already described.</p>
+
+<p>After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to be
+better tactics to send some one else to do the actual taking
+of the money. This man had to be a stranger, so
+Raffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old acquaintance.
+Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fifty
+dollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaelo
+to the Varotta home on the night of June second, to
+get the money. Melchione went upstairs and took the
+marked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the vestibule.
+It was the former whom Detective Pellegrino
+caught in the act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seen
+little Joe and both so maintained to the end, nor is there
+much doubt on this point.</p>
+
+<p>On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione,
+Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were caught and the
+others arrested a little later, Raffaelo made some statements
+to Detective Fiaschetti which sent the officers
+off the right track for the time being. This prevarication,
+which was done to shield himself and his confederates,
+he came to regret most bitterly later on.</p>
+
+<p>On June third, as soon as the word got abroad that the
+five men and their five friends had been arrested and
+lodged in jail, another confederate, perhaps more than
+one, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and threw him
+in, having first strangled the little fellow so that he
+might not scream. The boy was destroyed because the
+confederates who had him in charge were frightened
+into panic by the sudden collapse of their scheme and
+feared they would either be caught with the boy in
+their possession or that the arrested men might “squeal”
+and be supported by the identification from the little
+victim’s lips were he allowed to live.</p>
+
+<p>Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quickly
+convicted of murder in the first degree. He was committed
+to the death house at Sing Sing and there waited
+to be joined by his fellows. When the hour for his execution
+had almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seized
+with remorse and declared that he was willing to tell
+all he knew. He was reprieved and appeared at the trials
+of the others, where he told his story substantially as
+recited above. Largely as a result of his testimony, Cusamano,
+Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentenced
+to electrocution while Melchione went mad in
+the Tombs and was sent to Matteawan to end his life
+among the criminal insane. Governor Smith finally
+granted commutations to life imprisonment in each of
+these cases, because it was fairly well established that
+all the convicted men had been in the Tombs at the
+time Joe Varotta was drowned and had probably nothing
+to do with his actual murder. They are still in prison
+and will very likely stay there a great many years before
+there can be any question of pardon.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of every effort on the part of the police and
+every inducement held out to the convicted men, no
+information could ever be got as to the identity of the
+man or men who threw the little boy into the river.
+The arrested and convicted men, except for Raffaelo,
+who evidently did not know any more than he told, absolutely
+refused to talk, saying it would be certain death
+if they did so. They tried all along to create the impression
+that they were only the minor tools of some
+great and mysterious organization, but this claim may
+be dismissed as fiction and romance.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE LOST MILLIONAIRE</p>
+
+
+<p>Some time before three o’clock on the afternoon
+of December 2, 1919, Ambrose Joseph Small deposited
+in the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, a
+check for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clock
+that evening the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadian
+playhouses bought his habitual newspapers from
+the familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide Street,
+before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, and
+strode off into the night, to return no more.</p>
+
+<p>In the intervening years men have ferreted in all
+corners of the world for the missing rich man; rewards
+up to fifty thousand dollars have been offered for his
+return, or the discovery of his body; reports of his presence
+have chased detectives into distant latitudes, and
+the alarm for him has been spread to all the trails and
+tides without result. By official action of the Canadian
+courts, Amby Small, as he was known, is dead, and his
+fortune has been distributed to his heirs. To the romantic
+speculation he must still exist, however. And
+whatever the fact, his case presents one of the strangest
+stories of mysterious absenteeism to be found upon the
+books.</p>
+
+<p>Men disappear every day. The police records of any
+great city and of many smaller places bear almost interminable
+lists of fellows who have suddenly and curiously
+dropped out of their grooves and placements.
+Some are washed up as dead bodies—the slain and self-slain.
+Some return after long wanderings, to make needless
+excuses to their friends and families. And others
+pass from their regular haunts into new fields. These
+latter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary of
+life’s routine.</p>
+
+<p>Ambrose Small, however, was a person of different
+kidney. He was rich, for one thing. Thirty-five years
+earlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of his tours to Canada
+had found the youthful Small taking tickets in a Toronto
+theater. Attracted by some unusual quality in
+the youngster, Irving shrewdly advised him to quit the
+study of law and devote himself to the theatrical business.
+Following this counsel, Small had risen slowly and
+surely until he controlled theaters in all parts of the
+Dominion and was rated at several millions. On the
+afternoon before his disappearance he had consummated
+a deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters, Limited, by
+which he was to receive nearly two millions in money
+and a share of the profits, in return for his theatrical
+holdings. The million-dollar check he deposited had been
+the first payment.</p>
+
+<p>Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canada
+and almost as well acquainted in New York, Boston,
+Philadelphia, and other cities of the United States. Figuratively,
+at least, everybody knew him—thousands of
+actors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men,
+promoters, newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, all
+the Wandering Jews and Gentiles of the profession of
+make-believe, with which he had been connected so long
+and profitably. With such a list of acquaintances, whose
+rovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almost
+impossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and most
+deeply interested relatives. Entirely aside from the questions
+of inheritance and the division of his estate, which
+netted about two millions, as was determined later on,
+Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether she
+was a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters would
+certainly suspect everything and everybody, leaving
+nothing undone that would bring the man back to his
+home, or punish those who might have been responsible
+for any evil termination of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Small case presents very different factors
+from those governing the ordinary disappearance case.
+It is full of the elements which make for mystery and
+bafflement, and it may be set down at once as an enigma
+of the most arresting and irritating type, upon whose
+darknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.</p>
+
+<p>So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies and
+felt no apprehensions. He was totally immersed for
+some months before his disappearance in the negotiations
+for the sale of his interests to the Trans-Canada
+Company, and apparently he devoted all his energies to
+this project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusion
+for some time and looked upon the signing of the
+agreements and writing of the check on December 2
+as nothing more than a formality.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the morning of the day in question, Small
+met his attorney and the representatives of the Trans-Canada
+Company in his offices, and the formalities were
+concluded. Some time after noon he deposited the check
+in the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small to
+luncheon. Afterward he visited a Catholic children’s
+institution with her and left her at about three o’clock
+to return to his desk in the Grand Theater, where he
+had sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling up
+his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be not the slightest question that
+Small went directly to his office and spent the remainder
+of the afternoon there. Not only his secretary, John
+Doughty, who had been Small’s confidential man for
+nineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysterious
+part in the disappearance drama, but several other
+employees of the Grand Theater saw their retiring master
+at his usual post that afternoon. Small not only
+talked with these workers, but he called business associates
+on the telephone and made at least two appointments
+for the following day. He also was in conference
+with his solicitor as late as five o’clock.</p>
+
+<p>According to Doughty, his employer left the Grand
+Theater at about five thirty o’clock and this time of
+departure coincided perfectly with what is known of
+Small’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be at
+home for dinner at six thirty o’clock.</p>
+
+<p>There is also confirmation at this point. For years
+Small had been in the habit of dropping into Lamb’s
+Hotel, next door to his theater, before going home in
+the evening. He was intimately acquainted there, often
+met his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generally
+chatted a few minutes before leaving for his residence.
+The proprietor of the hotel came forward after Small’s
+disappearance and recalled that he had seen the theater
+man in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock. He
+was also under the impression that Small had stayed for
+some time, but he could not be sure.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i281" style="max-width: 82.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i281.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ AMBROSE J. SMALL ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The next and final point of time that can be fixed is
+seven fifteen o’clock. At that time Small approached the
+newsboy in Adelaide Street, who knew the magnate well,
+and bought his usual evening papers. The boy believed
+that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure
+he had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said
+nothing but the usual things, seemed in no way different
+from his ordinary mood, and tarried only long enough
+to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.</p>
+
+<p>Probably there is something significant about the
+fact that Small did not leave the vicinity of his office
+until seven fifteen o’clock, when he was due at home by
+half past six. What happened to him after he had left
+his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment
+with his wife? That something turned up to change his
+plan is obvious. Whether he merely encountered some
+one and talked longer than he realized, or whether something
+arrested him that had a definite bearing on his
+disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to
+be the reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of
+man lightly to neglect his agreements, particularly those
+of a domestic kind.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when
+her husband failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew
+he had been going through a busy day, and she reasoned
+that probably something pressing had come up to detain
+him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient
+and telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited
+two hours longer before she telephoned to the home of
+John Doughty’s sister. She found her husband’s secretary
+there and was assured that Doughty had been there
+all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty
+said his employer had left the theater at five thirty
+o’clock, and that he knew no more. He could not explain
+Small’s absence from home, but took the matter
+lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got
+ready.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s
+various theaters in eastern Canada, asking for her husband.
+In the course of the next twenty-four hours she
+got responses from all of them. No one had seen Small
+or knew anything about his movements.</p>
+
+<p>Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting.
+Mrs. Small did not go to the police; neither did she
+employ private detectives until later. For two weeks she
+evidently waited, believing that her husband had gone
+off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of
+his intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of
+the secret of his absence took the same attitude. It was
+explained later that there was nothing unprecedented
+about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt for
+some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and
+self-centered individual. He had gone off before in this
+way and come back when he got ready. He might have
+gone to New York suddenly on some business. Probably
+he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared
+this view, and her reasons for so doing developed a good
+deal later. In fact, she refused for months to believe
+that anything had befallen her husband, and it was
+only when there was no remaining alternative that she
+changed her position.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’s
+disappearance, his wife and attorneys went to the Dominion
+police and laid the case before them. Even then
+the quest was undertaken in a cautious and skeptical
+way. This attitude was natural. The police could find
+not the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea that
+such a man had been kidnapped seemed preposterous.
+Besides, what could have been the object? There had
+been no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small had
+gone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probably
+his wife understood these impulsions better than she
+would say. There were rumors of infelicity in the Small
+home, and these proved later to be well grounded. The
+police simply felt that they would not be made ridiculous.
+Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, only
+to have Small return and spill his wrath upon their
+innocent heads.</p>
+
+<p>But the days spun out, and still there was no news of
+the missing man. Many began to turn from their original
+attitude of knowing skepticism. Other rumors began
+to fly about. Gradually the conviction gained
+ground that something sinister had befallen the master
+of theaters. Could it not be possible that Small had been
+entrapped in some blackmailing plot and perhaps killed
+when he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but such
+things did happen. How about his finances? Was his
+money intact in the bank? Had he drawn any checks
+against his account? It was soon discovered that no
+funds had been withdrawn either on December 2 or
+subsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had only
+a few dollars in his pockets when he vanished, unless,
+as was suggested, he kept a secret cache of ready money.</p>
+
+<p>Attention was now directed toward every one who
+had been close to the theater owner. One of the most
+obvious marks for this kind of inquiry was John
+Doughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as already
+remarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearly
+two decades. He knew his employer’s secrets, was close
+to all his business affairs, and was even known to have
+been Small’s companion on occasional drinking bouts.
+At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a niggardly
+way as regards pay. The secretary had been receiving
+forty-five dollars a week for years, never more.
+At the same time, probably through other bits of income
+which his position brought him, Doughty had
+saved some money, bought property in Toronto, and
+established himself with a small competence.</p>
+
+<p>That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly and
+was careful to provide for him, is shown by the fact
+that Small had got Doughty a new and better place
+as manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,
+which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his new
+job Doughty received seventy-five dollars a week. He
+had left to assume his new duties a day or two after the
+consolidation of the interests, which is to say a day or
+two after Small vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it
+seemed obvious that this time he knew nothing of his
+old employer’s movements. He had accordingly stayed
+on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and paying
+very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three
+weeks after Small had gone, and one week after the
+case had been taken to the police, however, new attention
+began to be paid to Doughty, and there were some
+unpleasant whisperings.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks
+after Small had walked off into the void, came the dramatic
+break. Doughty, as was his habit, left Montreal
+the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto
+with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning,
+instead of appearing at his desk, he telephoned from
+Toronto that he was ill and might not be at work for
+some days. His employers took him at his word and paid
+no further attention until, three days having elapsed,
+they telephoned to the home of Doughty’s sister. She
+had not seen him since Monday. The man was gone!</p>
+
+<p>If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been
+considered a somewhat dubious jest, it now became a
+genuine sensation. For the first time the Canadian and
+American newspapers began to treat the matter under
+scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began
+to move with force and alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where
+Small was now said to have kept a large total of securities,
+showed that Doughty had visited this place twice on
+December 2, the day of Small’s disappearance, and he
+had on each occasion either put in, or taken away, some
+bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have
+revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Even this discovery did not change the minds of the
+skeptics, in whose ranks the missing magnate’s wife still
+remained. It was now believed that Doughty had received
+a secret summons from Small, and that he had
+taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside,
+at Small’s instruction, and gone to join his chief in some
+hidden retreat. A good part of Toronto believed that
+Small had gone on a protracted “party,” or that he had
+seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his
+business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in
+disagreement.</p>
+
+<p>When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion
+gradually veered about to the opposite side. After
+all, it was possible that Small had not gone away voluntarily,
+that he was the victim of some criminal conspiracy,
+and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion
+turning its face toward him. The absence of the supposed
+one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bonds
+provided sufficient motivation to fit almost any criminal
+hypothesis.</p>
+
+<p>As this attitude became general, Toronto came to
+examine the relationship between Small and Doughty. It
+was recalled that the secretary had, on more than one
+occasion when he was in his cups, spoken bitterly of
+Small’s exaggerated wealth and his cold niggardliness.
+Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,
+and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibility
+of kidnapping Small for ransom; though the
+man who reported this conversation admitted Doughty
+had seemed to be joking. The conclusion reached by the
+police was not clear. Doughty, they found, had been
+faithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to conclude
+that he was careful and substantial, and they could
+not discover that he had ever had the slightest connection
+with the underworld or with suspect characters. At
+the same time they decided that the man was unstable,
+emotional, imaginative, and probably not hard to mislead.
+In short, they came to the definite suspicion that
+Doughty had figured as the tool of conspirators, in the
+disappearance of Small. They soon brought Mrs. Small
+around to this view. Now the hunt began.</p>
+
+<p>A reward of five hundred dollars, which had been
+perfunctorily offered as payment for information concerning
+Small’s whereabouts, was withdrawn, and three
+new rewards were offered by the wife—fifty thousand
+dollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteen
+thousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousand
+dollars for the capture of Doughty.</p>
+
+<p>The Toronto chief constable immediately assigned
+a squad of detectives to the case, and Mrs. Small employed
+a firm of Canadian private detectives to pursue
+a line of investigation which she outlined. Later on
+she employed four more widely known investigating
+firms in the United States to continue the quest. Small’s
+sisters also summoned American officers to carry out
+their special inquiries. Thus there were no fewer than
+seven distinct bodies of police working at the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Circulars containing pictures of Small and Doughty,
+with their descriptions, and announcement of the rewards,
+were circulated throughout Canada and the
+United States; then from Scotland Yard they were sent
+to all the police offices in the British Empire, and, finally,
+from the American, Canadian, and British capitals to
+every known postmaster and police head on earth. More
+than half a million copies of the circulars were printed,
+it is said, and translations into more than twenty languages
+were distributed. I am told by eminent police
+authorities that this campaign, supported as it was by
+advertisements and news items in the press of almost
+every nation, some of them containing pictures of the
+missing millionaire, has never been approached in any
+other absent person case. Mrs. Small and her advisers
+set out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearance
+and the rewards should reach to the most remote
+places, and they spent a small fortune for printing
+bills and postage. Even the quest for the lost Archduke
+John Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a special
+letter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representatives
+of the Roman Catholic Church in every
+part of the world, seems to have been less far-reaching.</p>
+
+<p>Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began to
+come in soon after the first alarms. Small and Doughty
+were reported seen in Paris, on the Italian Riviera, at
+the Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at Calcutta,
+aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, at
+Zanzibar, and where not? A skeleton was found in a
+ravine not far from Toronto, and for a time the fate
+of Small was believed to be understood. But physicians
+and anatomists soon determined that the bones could
+not have been those of the theatrical man for a variety
+of conclusive reasons. So the hunt began again.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, and
+results failed to show themselves, the private detective
+firms were dismissed, one after the other, and the task
+of running down rumors in this clewless case was left
+to the Toronto police. The usual sums of money and
+of time were wasted in following blind leads. The usual
+failures and absurdities were recorded. One Canadian
+officer, however, Detective Austin R. Mitchell, began to
+develop a theory of the case and was allowed to follow
+his ideas logically toward their conclusion. Working
+in silence, when the public had long come to believe
+that the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchell
+plugged away, month after month, without definite accomplishment.
+He was not able to get more than an
+occasional scrap of information which seemed to bear
+out his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundreds
+of investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless,
+the Toronto authorities permitted him to go
+on with his work, and he is probably still occupied at
+times with the Small mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Detective Mitchell was actively following his course
+toward the end of November, 1920, eleven months
+after the flight of Doughty, when a telegram arrived
+at police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,
+a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small town
+far out near the Pacific. Once more the weary detective
+took a train West, arriving in Oregon City on the evening
+of November 22.</p>
+
+<p>Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the
+train and told him his story. He had seen one of the circulars
+a few months earlier and had carried the images
+of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had
+observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill,
+and he had been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The
+man had been there for some time and risen from the
+meanest work to the position of foreman in one of the
+shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even
+indirectly, and he failed on various occasions to get a
+view of the worker without his hat on. Because the
+picture on the circular showed Doughty bare-headed,
+the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected
+man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had
+sent his telegram.</p>
+
+<p>Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously.
+He had made a hundred trips of the same sort, he said.
+Probably there was another mistake. But Constable Fortune
+seemed certain of his game, and he was right.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to
+a modest house, where some of the mill workers boarded.
+They entered, and Mitchell was immediately confronted
+with Doughty, whom he had known intimately in Toronto.</p>
+
+<p>“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as
+the fugitive. “How could you do it?”</p>
+
+<p>In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest
+came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the
+officer a voluntary statement. He admitted without
+reservation that he had taken Canadian Victory bonds
+to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars
+from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done
+after the millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely
+and firmly any knowledge of Small’s whereabouts;
+pleaded that he had never had any knowledge
+of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he
+had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past
+five on the evening of the disappearance. To this account
+he adhered doggedly and unswervingly. Doughty
+was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the next
+day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his
+sister’s house, where he had made his home with his two
+small sons, since the death of his wife several years
+before.</p>
+
+<p>In April of the following year Doughty was brought
+to trial on a charge of having stolen the bonds, a second
+indictment for complicity in the kidnapping remaining
+for future disposal. The trial was a formal and, in
+some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping
+and all hints which might have indicated the direction
+of Doughty’s ideas on the central mystery were
+rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and one correction
+of accepted statements came out. It was revealed
+that Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars
+in bonds to be used for charitable purposes on the day
+before his disappearance. This fact had not been hinted
+before, and some interpreted the testimony as a concealed
+way of stating the fact that Small had made
+some kind of settlement with his wife on the first of
+December.</p>
+
+<p>Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement
+that he had taken the bonds after Small’s disappearance.
+He testified that he had been sent to the vault on the
+second of December, and that he had then extracted
+the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds.
+He had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he
+had no notion that Small would disappear. He explained
+his act by saying that Small had long promised him some
+reward for his many years of service, and had repeatedly
+stated that he would arrange the matter when
+the deal with the Trans-Canada Company had been
+concluded. Knowing that the papers had been signed
+that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,
+Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds
+in his hands and suggest that these might serve as a fitting
+reward for his contribution to the success of the
+Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this action
+and fled.</p>
+
+<p>The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the
+ground that it was incredible, but nothing was brought
+out to show what opposing theory might fit the facts.
+Doughty was convicted of larceny and sentenced
+to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge
+was never brought to trial. Instead, the police let
+it be known that they believed Doughty had not
+played any part in the “actual murder” of Amby
+Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally,
+it was admitted that the police believed Small to
+be dead. That was the only point on which any information
+was given, and even here not the first detail was
+supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected
+of having kidnapped and killed Small was in
+progress, and the officials were being careful to reveal
+nothing of their information or intentions.</p>
+
+<p>Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against
+him, but abandoned the fight later in the spring of 1921,
+and was sent to prison. Here the unravelling of the
+Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year passed,
+then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty
+was in prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive.
+Perhaps they had abandoned the hunt. Possibly they
+knew what had befallen the theater owner and were
+refraining from making revelations for reasons of public
+policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers,
+there were persons of influence involved in the mess,
+persons powerful enough to hush the officials.</p>
+
+<p>But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance,
+and there were indications of a bitter contest between
+the wife and Small’s two sisters, who had apparently
+been hostile for years. This struggle promised
+to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the
+public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved
+formally to protect his property by having a measure
+introduced into the Dominion Parliament declaring
+Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank in
+control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with
+the result that the Small fortune, amounting to about
+two million dollars, net, continued to be profitably
+administered.</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years
+in prison, and all rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance
+mystery had died down, Mrs. Small appeared
+in court with a petition to have her husband declared
+dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal
+will made on September 6, 1903. This document was
+written on a single small sheet of paper and devised to
+Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was of
+modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.</p>
+
+<p>The court refused to declare the missing magnate
+dead, saying that insufficient evidence had been presented,
+and that the police were apparently not satisfied.
+Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the reviewing
+court reversed the decision and declared Small legally
+dead. Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and
+was immediately attacked by Small’s sisters, who declared
+that they had in their possession a will made in
+1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited
+Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never
+produced.</p>
+
+<p>There followed a series of hearings. At one of these,
+opposing counsel began a line of cross-questioning
+which suggested that Mrs. Small had been guilty of
+a liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in the
+records merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramatically
+in court, indignantly denied these imputations as well
+as the induced theory that her misbehavior had led to
+an estrangement from her husband and, perhaps, to his
+disappearance. The widow declared that this suspicion
+was diametrically opposed to the truth, and that if
+Small were in court he would be the first to reject it. As
+a matter of fact, she testified, it was Small who had
+been guilty. He had confessed his fault to her, promised
+to be done with the woman in the matter, and had been
+forgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation,
+she said, and Small had agreed that one half of the
+million-dollar check which he received on the day of
+his disappearance should be hers.</p>
+
+<p>To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Small
+soon after obtained permission of the court to file certain
+letters which had been found among Small’s effects
+after his disappearance. In this manner the secret
+love affair in the theater magnate’s last years came to
+be spread upon the books. The letters presented by
+the wife had all come from a certain married woman
+who, according to the testimony of her own writings
+and of others who knew of the connection, had been
+associated with Amby Small since 1915. It appears that
+Mrs. Small discovered the attachment in 1918 and
+forced her husband to cause his inamorata to leave Toronto.
+The letters, which need not be reprinted here,
+contained only one significant strain.</p>
+
+<p>A letter, which reached Small two or three days before
+he disappeared, concluded thus: “Write me often,
+dear heart, for I just live for your letters. God bless you,
+dearest.”</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks earlier, evidently with reference to the
+impending close of his big deal and his retirement from
+active business, the same lady wrote: “I am the most unhappy
+girl in the world. I want you. Can’t you suggest
+something after the first of December? You will be
+free, practically. Let’s beat it away from our troubles.”</p>
+
+<p>And five days later she amended this in another note:
+“Some day, perhaps, if you want me, we can be together
+all the time. Let’s pray for that time to come,
+when we can have each other legitimately.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Small declared that she had found these letters
+immediately after her husband’s departure, and that
+they had kept her from turning the case over to the
+police until two weeks after the disappearance. Meantime
+the other woman had been summoned, interrogated
+by the police, and released. She had not seen Small
+nor had she heard from him either directly or indirectly.
+It was apparent that, while she had been corresponding
+with Small up to the very week of his last appearance,
+he had not gone to see her.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the will contest was settled out of court,
+Small’s sisters receiving four hundred thousand dollars,
+and the widow retaining the balance.</p>
+
+<p>And here the darkness closes in again. Even in the
+progress of the will controversy no hint was given of the
+official or family beliefs as to the mystery. There are
+only two tenable conclusions. Either there is a further
+skeleton to be guarded, or the police have some
+kind of information which promises the eventual solution
+of the case and the apprehension of suspected criminals.
+How slender this promise must be, every reader
+will judge for himself, remembering the years of fruitless
+attack on this extraordinary and complex enigma.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY</p>
+
+
+<p>Some time in his middle career, Ambrose Bierce
+wrote three short tales of vanishment—weird
+and supernatural things in one of his favorite
+veins. The three sketches—for they are no more—he
+classed under the heading, “Mysterious Disappearances,”
+a subject which occupied his speculations from time to
+time. Herein lies a complete irony. Bierce himself was
+later to disappear as mysteriously as any of his heroes.</p>
+
+<p>No one will understand his story, with its many implications,
+or get from it the full flavor of romance
+and sardonics without some brief glance at the man and
+his history. Nor need one make apology for intruding a
+short account of him in a story of mystery, for Bierce
+alive was almost as strange and enigmatic a creature as
+Bierce dead.</p>
+
+<p>Ambrose Bierce, whom a good many critics have regarded
+as the foremost master of the American short
+story after Poe, was born in Ohio in 1841. He joined the
+Union armies as a private in 1861, when he was in his
+twenty-first year, rose quickly through the ranks to
+the grade of lieutenant, fought and was wounded at
+Chickamauga as a captain of engineers under Thomas,
+and retired with the brevet rank of major. After the
+war he took up writing for a living, and soon went to
+London, where his early short stories, sketches and criticisms
+attracted attention. His cutting wit and ironic
+spirit soon won him the popular name “Bitter Bierce.”</p>
+
+<p>After 1870, the banished Empress Eugénie of France,
+alarmed at the escape of her implacable journalistic
+enemy, Henri Rochette, and the impending revival in
+London of his paper, <i>La Lanterne</i>, in which she had
+been intolerably lampooned, sought to forestall the
+French writer by establishing an English paper called
+<i>The Lantern</i>, thus taking advantage of the law which
+forbade a duplication of titles. For this purpose she
+employed Bierce, purely on his polemical reputation,
+and Bierce straightway began the publication of <i>The
+Lantern</i>, and devoted his most vitriolic explosions to the
+baffled Rochette, who saw that he could not succeed
+in England without the name which he had made famous
+at the head of his paper and could not return to
+France, whence he was a political exile.</p>
+
+<p>In this employment Bierce exhibited one of his peculiarities.
+His assaults on her old enemy greatly pleased
+the banished empress, and she finally sent for Bierce.
+Following the imperial etiquette, which she still sought
+to maintain, she “commanded” his presence. Bierce,
+who understood and obeyed military commands, did
+not like that manner of wording an invitation from a
+dethroned empress. He did not attend and <i>The Lantern</i>
+soon disappeared from the scene of politics and letters.</p>
+
+<p>Bierce returned to America and went to San Francisco,
+where he in time became the “dean of Western
+writers.” His journalistic work in San Francisco and
+later in Washington set him apart as a satirist of the
+bitterest strain. His literary productions marked him as
+a man of the most independent thought and distinctive
+taste. Most of his tales are Poe plus sulphur. He reveled
+in the mysterious, the dark, the terrible and the bizarre.</p>
+
+<p>Between intervals of writing his tales, criticisms and
+epigrams, Bierce found time to manage ranches and
+mining properties, to fight bad men and frontier highwaymen,
+to grill politicians, and to write verse.</p>
+
+<p>Bierce went through life seeking combat, weathering
+storm after storm, by some regarded as the foremost
+American literary man of his time, by others denounced
+as a brute, a pedant, even as a scoundrel. In
+the West he was generally lionized, in the East neglected.
+One man called him the last of the satirists,
+another considered him a strutting dunce. Bierce contributed
+to the confusion by making something of a
+riddle of himself. He loved mystery and indirection. He
+liked the fabulous stories which grew up about him
+and encouraged them by his own silence and air of
+concealment. In the essentials, however, he was no more
+than an intelligent and perspicacious man of high talent,
+who hated sentiment, reveled in the assault on popular
+prejudices, liked nothing so much as to throw himself
+upon the clay idols of the day with ferocious claws,
+and yet had a tender and humble heart.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of 1913, Mexico was in another of its
+torments. The visionary Madero had been assassinated.
+Huerta was in the dictator’s chair, Wilson had inaugurated
+his “watchful waiting,” and the new rebels
+were moving in the north—Carranza and Villa. At
+the time Ambrose Bierce was living, more or less retired,
+in Washington, probably convinced that he had had
+his last fling, for he was already past seventy-two and
+“not so spry as he once had been.” But along came the
+order for the mobilization along the border. General
+Funston and his little army took up the patrol along
+the Rio Grande, the newspapers began to hint at a
+possible invasion of Mexico, and there was a stir of martial
+blood among the many.</p>
+
+<p>Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth is
+born again. Everything that belonged to the dawn becomes
+hallowed in the sunset of manhood. It must have
+been so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm than
+he fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpets
+of Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent for
+fifty years, called him out again and he set out for
+Mexico, saying little to any one about his plans or intentions.
+Some believed that he was going down to the
+Rio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he planned
+to join the Constitutionalists as a military adviser.
+Either might have been true, for Bierce was as good
+an officer as a writer. He knew both games from the
+roots up.</p>
+
+<p>Even the preliminary movements of the man are a
+little hazy, but apparently he went first to his old home
+in California and then down to the border. He did not
+stop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was reported to
+have crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretary
+in Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letter
+from him postmarked in Chihuahua.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expected
+to hear again within a month. When no letter
+came, she wondered, but was not alarmed. Bierce was
+a man of irregular habits. He was down there in a
+war-torn country, moving about in the wilderness with
+armies and bands of insurgents; he might not be able
+to get a letter through the lines. There was no reason
+to feel special apprehension. In September, 1914, however,
+Bierce’s daughter, Mrs. H. D. Cowden of Bloomington,
+Illinois, decided that something must be amiss,
+no word having come from her father in eight months.
+She appealed to the State Department at Washington,
+saying that she feared for his life.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i303" style="max-width: 81em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i303.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ AMBROSE BIERCE ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The Department quickly notified the American
+chargé d’affaires in Mexico to make inquiries and the
+War Department shortly afterwards instructed General
+Funston to send word along his lines and to communicate
+with the Mexican commanders opposite him,
+asking for Bierce. The Washington officials soon notified
+Mrs. Cowden that a search was being made. General
+Funston also answered that he was proceeding with an
+inquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both the
+diplomatic and the military forces reported that they
+had been unable to find Bierce or any trace of him.
+Probably, it was added, he was with one of the independent
+rebel commands in the mountains and out of
+touch with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.</p>
+
+<p>Now the rumoring began. First came the report that
+Bierce had really gone to Mexico to join Villa, whose
+reputation as a guerrilla fighter had attracted the
+veteran, and whose emissaries were said to have asked
+Bierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide.
+Bierce, it was reported, had joined Villa and had been
+with that commander in Chihuahua just before the
+battle there, in which the rebel forces were unsuccessful.
+Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story was
+soon discarded on the ground that Villa, had Bierce
+been on his staff, would certainly have reported the
+death of so widely-known a man and one so close to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>A little later came a second report, this time backed
+by what seemed to be more credible evidence. It was
+said that Bierce had been at the later battle of Torreon
+in command of the Villista artillery, that he had
+taken part in the running campaign through the province
+of Sonora and that he had probably died of hardships
+and exposure in those trying days.</p>
+
+<p>A California friend now came forward with the report
+of a talk with Bierce, said to have been held just
+before the author set out for Mexico. The old satirist
+was reported to have said that he had grown weary of
+the stodgy life of literature and journalism, that he
+wanted to wind up his career with some more glorious
+end than death in bed and that he had decided to go
+down into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave or crawl
+off into some cave and die like a free beast.”</p>
+
+<p>It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’s
+other friends immediately declared that it was entirely
+out of character. Bierce had gone to Mexico to fight and
+see another war. He had not gone to die. He was a
+fatalist. He would take whatever came, but he would
+not go out and seek a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>So the talk went on and the months went by. There
+were no scare headlines in the papers. After all, Bierce
+was only a distinguished man of letters.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a still better reason for the lack of
+attention. The absence of Bierce had not yet been reported
+officially when the vast black cloud of war rolled
+up in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to the Atlantic
+and the fields of Flanders. The American adventure
+along the Mexican border seemed trivial and
+grotesque. The little puff of wind in the South was
+forgotten before the menacing tornado in the East.
+What did a poet matter when the armies of the great
+powers were caught in their bloody embrace?</p>
+
+<p>Yet Bierce was not altogether forgotten. In April,
+1915, more than a year after his last letter from Chihuahua,
+another note, supposedly from him, was received
+by his daughter. It said that Major Bierce was
+in England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he was
+taking a prominent part in the recruiting movement in
+Britain. This sensation lasted ten days. Then, inquiry
+having been made of the British War Office, the sober
+report was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear on
+the rolls and that he certainly was not attached to Lord
+Kitchener’s staff.</p>
+
+<p>Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put the
+touch of disaster to the fable. Miss Christianson announced
+in Washington that careful investigation
+abroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting with
+the Allies, and that she and his family had been forced
+to the melancholy conclusion that he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>But how and where? The State Department continued
+its inquiries in Mexico, but many private individuals
+also began to investigate. Journalists at the
+southern front tried to get trace or rumor of the man.
+Old friends went into the troubled region to seek what
+they could find. The literary world was touched both
+with curiosity and grief and with a romantic interest
+in the man’s fate. Bierce became a later Byron, and it
+was held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressed
+and found himself another Missolonghi.</p>
+
+<p>Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Bierce
+was dead, though even this was by no means certain.
+There was no evidence save the fact that he had not
+written for more than a year, which, in view of the
+man’s character and the situation in which he was
+caught, might be no evidence at all. But, granting that
+he was dead, how had his end come? Where was his
+body? It was impossible to escape the impression that
+one whose life had been touched with such extraordinary
+color should have died without a flame. The
+men and women who knew and loved Bierce—and they
+were a considerable number—kept saying over and
+over to themselves that this heroic fellow could not
+have passed out without some signal. Surely some one
+had seen him die and could tell of his end and place of
+repose. So the quest began again.</p>
+
+<p>For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico,
+where Bierce had certainly met his end, if indeed, he
+was dead, was no place for a hunter after bits of literary
+history to go wandering in. First there was the constant
+fighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists.
+Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza became
+president. There followed the various campaigns of
+pacification. Next Villa rebelled against his old ally,
+leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies. Finally
+the whole region was infested by marauding bands of
+irregular and rebellious militia, part soldiers and part
+bandits. To cap the climax came the invasion of Mexico
+by the expedition under Pershing.</p>
+
+<p>In 1918 was heard the first report on Bierce which
+seemed to have some basis in fact. A traveler had heard
+in Mexico City and at several points along the railroad
+that an aged American, who was supposed to have been
+fighting with either Villa or Carranza, had been executed
+by order of a field commander. From descriptions,
+this man was supposed to have been Bierce. At
+any rate, he might have been Bierce as well as another,
+and, since Bierce was both conspicuous and missing,
+there was some reason for credence. But no one could
+get any details or give the scene of the execution. The
+report was finally discarded as no more reliable than
+several others.</p>
+
+<p>Another year went by. In February, 1919, however,
+came a report which carries some of the marks of credibility.</p>
+
+<p>One of the several persons who set out to clear up the
+Bierce enigma was Mr. George F. Weeks, an old friend
+and close associate of the old writer’s, who went to
+Mexico City and later visited the various towns in
+northern Mexico where Bierce was supposed to have
+been seen shortly before his death. Weeks went up and
+down and across northern Mexico without finding anything
+definite. Then he returned to Mexico City and by
+chance encountered a Mexican officer who had been
+with Villa in his campaigns and had known Bierce well.
+Weeks mentioned Bierce to this soldier and was told
+this story:</p>
+
+<p>Bierce actually did join the Villista forces soon after
+January, 1914, when he wrote his last letter from Chihuahua.
+He said to those who were not supposed to
+know his affairs too intimately that he, like other
+American journalists and writers, had gone to Mexico
+to get material for a book on conditions in that unhappy
+country. In reality, however, he was acting as
+adviser and military observer with Villa, though not attached
+to the eminent guerilla in person. The Mexican
+officer related that Bierce could speak hardly any Spanish
+and Villa’s staff hardly any English. On the other
+hand, this particular man spoke English fluently.
+Naturally, he and Bierce had been thrown together a
+great deal and had held numerous conversations. So
+much for showing that he had known Bierce well, and
+how and why.</p>
+
+<p>After Chihuahua, the officer continued, he and Bierce
+had parted company, due to the exigencies of military
+affairs, and he had never seen the American alive again.
+He had often wondered about him and had made inquiries
+from time to time as he encountered various
+commandos of the Constitutionalist army. Finally,
+about a year later, which is to say some time toward the
+end of 1915, the relating officer met a Mexican army
+surgeon, who also had been with Villa, and this surgeon
+had told him a tale.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the breach between Villa and Carranza in
+1915, a small detachment of Carranza troops occupied
+the village of Icamole, east of Chihuahua State in the
+direction of Monterey and Saltillo. The Villista forces
+in that quarter, commanded by General Tomas Urbina,
+one of the most ruthless of all the Villa subcommanders,
+who was himself later put to death, were encamped not
+far from Icamole, attempting to beleaguer the town or,
+at least, to cut the Carranza garrison off from its base
+of supplies and the main command. Neither side was
+strong enough to risk an engagement and the whole
+thing settled down into a waiting and sniping campaign.</p>
+
+<p>In the gray of one oppressive morning toward the end
+of 1915, according to the surgeon who was with Urbina,
+one of that commander’s scouts gave an alarm,
+having seen four mules and two men on the horizon,
+making toward Icamole. A mounted detachment was
+at once sent out and the strangers were brought in.
+They turned out to be an American of advanced years
+but military bearing, a nondescript Mexican, and four
+mules laden with the parts of a machine gun and a large
+quantity of its ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>Both men were immediately taken before General
+Urbina, according to the surgeon’s story, and subjected
+to questioning. The Mexican said that he had been employed
+by another Mexican, whose name he did not
+know, to conduct the American and his convoy to
+Icamole and the Carranza commander. Urbina turned
+to the American and started to question him, but found
+that the man could speak hardly any Spanish and was
+therefore unable to explain his actions or to defend
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>It may be as well to note the first objections to the
+credibility of the story here. Bierce had been in Mexico
+almost two years, according to these dates. He was a
+man of the keenest intelligence and the quickest perceptions.
+He had also lived in California for many years,
+where Spanish names are common and Spanish is spoken
+by many. It seems hard to believe that such a man could
+have survived to the end of 1915 in such ignorance of
+the speech of the Mexican people as to be unable to
+explain what he was doing or to tell his name and who
+he was. It seems hard to believe, also, that Bierce would
+have been doing any gun-running or that he could have
+been alive twenty months after the Chihuahua letter
+without communicating with some one in the United
+States, without being found or heard of by the military
+and diplomatic agents who had then already been seeking
+him for more than a year. Also, it is necessary to
+explain how the man who went down to fight with
+Villa happened suddenly to be taking a gun and ammunition
+to Villa’s enemies, though this might be reconciled
+on the theory that Bierce had gone to fight with
+the Constitutionalists and had remained with them
+when Villa rebelled. But we may disregard these minor
+discrepancies as possibly capable of reconciliation or
+correction, and proceed further with the surgeon’s
+story.</p>
+
+<p>Urbina, after questioning the captives for a little
+while, lost patience, concluded that they must be enemies
+at best and took no half measures. Life was cheap
+in northern Mexico in those days, judgments were swift
+and harsh, and Urbina was savage by nature. He took
+away the lives of these two with a wave of the hand.
+Immediate execution was their fate.</p>
+
+<p>Ambrose Bierce and the unknown Mexican were led
+out and placed against the wall of a building, in this
+case a stable. Faced with the terrible sight, the Mexican
+fell to his knees and began to pray, refusing to rise and
+face his executioners. Bierce, following the example of
+his companion, also knelt but did not pray. Instead, he
+refused the cloth over his eyes and asked the soldiers
+not to mutilate his face. And so he died.</p>
+
+<p>“I was much interested in the whole affair,” the
+nameless Mexican officer told Mr. Weeks, “and I asked
+my surgeon friend many questions. He did not know
+Bierce at all and did not know he was describing the
+death of some one in whom I was deeply concerned.
+But I had known Bierce well and asked the surgeon for
+detail after detail of the murdered American’s appearance,
+age, bearing, and manner. From what he told
+me, I have not the slightest doubt that this was Ambrose
+Bierce and that he died in this manner at the
+hands of the butcher, Urbina.”</p>
+
+<p>Following the reports of Mr. Weeks, the San Francisco
+<i>Bulletin</i> sent one of its special writers, Mr. U. H.
+Wilkins, down into Mexico, to further examine and
+confirm or discredit the report of the Mexican officer.
+Mr. Wilkins reported in March, 1920, confirming the
+Weeks report and adding what seems to be direct testimony.
+Mr. Wilkins says that he found a Mexican soldier
+who had been in Urbina’s command at Icamole
+and who was a member of the firing squad. This man
+showed Mr. Wilkins a picture of Bierce which, he said,
+he had taken from the pocket of the dead man just after
+the execution had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Still the doubt perseveres. No one has been able to
+find the grave of Bierce. The picture which the soldier
+said he took from the pocket of the dead man was not
+produced and has never, so far as I can discover, been
+shown.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I find in this material more elements for
+skepticism than for belief. Would Ambrose Bierce
+have been carrying a picture of himself about the
+wastes of Mexico? Perhaps, if it was on a passport
+or other credentials. In that case General Urbina must
+have known whom he was shooting. And would a
+guerilla leader, with much more of the brigand about
+him than the soldier, have shot a man like Bierce,
+who certainly was worth a fortune living and nothing
+dead? I must beg to doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Nor do the other details ring true. If the captured
+Americano was Ambrose Bierce, one of two things must
+have happened. Either he would have resorted, to save
+his life, to invective and persuasiveness, for which he was
+remarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned.
+This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tired
+of living and pretending for valedictory heroics. And
+he was too much of a soldier to wince. For this and
+another reason the story of his execution will not go
+down.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of the
+firing squad asking that his face be not disfigured is
+a piece of standard Mexican romance. According to the
+tradition of that country, the Emperor Maximilian,
+when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, begged
+that he be shot through the body, so that his mother
+might look upon his face again. Hence, I suspect the
+soldierly Mexican <i>raconteur</i> of having been guilty of a
+romantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious substitution.
+If the man whom Urbina shot had been Ambrose
+Bierce, he would neither have knelt, nor made
+the pitiful gesture of asking the inviolateness of his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compelling
+the publishers of a collected edition of Bierce’s
+writings to recognize him as the co-author of “The
+Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within the
+year published a version of Bierce’s end<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> that has some
+of the same elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, was
+shot by Villa’s soldiers at the guerilla leader’s command.
+Here is the story condensed:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> “Ambrose Bierce as He Really Was,” <i>The American Parade</i>, October, 1926.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Bierce was with Villa at the taking of Chihuahua in
+1913. After this fight there was nothing for the
+novelist-soldier to do and he took to drinking <i>tequila</i>,
+a liquor which causes those who drink it any length
+of time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him a
+peon who understood a little English and acted as valet
+and cup companion. When he was in his mugs Bierce
+talked too much, complained of inactivity and criticised
+Villa. One drunken night he suggested to the peon that
+they desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattle
+and carried it to Villa, who had the peon tortured till
+he confessed the truth. He was released and instructed
+to carry out the plan with the Gringo. That night, as
+they started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peon
+were overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left for
+the vultures.”</p>
+
+<p>Though Vincent Starrett<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> records that Villa flew
+into a rage when questioned about Bierce, a reaction
+looked upon by some as confirming Villa’s guilt, others
+have pointed out objections that seem insuperable. The
+break between Carranza and Villa did not follow until
+a long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they point
+out, and Bierce must have been alive all the while without
+writing a letter or sending a word of news to anyone.
+Possible but improbable, is the verdict of those who
+knew him most intimately.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> “Ambrose Bierce,” by V. Starrett.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>So, applying the critical acid to the whole affair,
+there is still the mystery, as dark as in the beginning.
+We may have our delight with the dramatic or poetic
+accounts of his end if that be our taste, but really we are
+no closer to any satisfactory solution than we were in
+1914.</p>
+
+<p>Bierce is dead, past doubt. That much needs no additional
+proof. His fierce spirit has traveled. His bitter
+pen will scrawl no more denunciations across the page;
+neither will he sit in his study weaving mysteries and
+ironies for the delectation of those who love abstraction
+as beauty, and doubt as something better than truth.</p>
+
+<p>My own guess is that he started out to fight battles
+and shoulder hardships as he had done when a boy,
+somehow believing that a tough spirit would carry
+him through. Wounded or stricken with disease, he
+probably lay down in some pesthouse of a hospital, some
+troop train filled with other stricken men; or he may
+have crawled off to some water hole and died, with
+nothing more articulate than the winds and stars for
+witness.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY</p>
+
+
+<p>No account of disappearances under curious and
+romantic circumstances, or of the enigmatic
+fates of forthfaring men in our times, would
+approach completeness without some narration of one
+of the boldest and maddest projects ever undertaken
+by human beings, in many ways the crowning adventure
+of the nineteenth century. Particularly now, when
+a circumnavigation of the earth by airplane has been
+accomplished, when the Atlantic has been bridged by a
+dirigible flight, and men have flown over the North
+Pole in plane and airship, the heroic and pathetic story
+of Doctor Andrée and his attempt to reach the top of
+the world by balloon is of fresh and abiding interest.</p>
+
+<p>No one who was not alive in the late nineties of the
+last century and of age to read and be thrilled, can
+have any conception of the wonder and excitement this
+man and his voyage caused, of the cloud of doubt and
+mystery which hung about his still unexplained end,
+of the rumors and tales that came out of the North
+year after year, of the expeditions that started out to
+solve the riddle, of the whole decade of slowly abating
+preoccupation with the terrible romance of this singular
+man and his undiscoverable end.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1895, at the International Geographical
+Congress in London, Doctor Salomon August
+Andrée, a noted engineer, and chief examiner of
+the Royal Swedish Patent Office in Stockholm, let it be
+known that he was planning for a flight to the pole
+in a balloon, and that active preparations were under
+way. At first the public regarded the whole thing with
+an interested incredulity, though geographers, meteorologists,
+geodesists, and some students of aëronautics
+had been discussing the possibilities of such a voyage
+for much longer than a generation, and many had expressed
+the belief in its feasibility. Sivel and Silbermann,
+of the University of Paris, had declared as early as 1870
+that this was the practical way of attaining the pole.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, they had not by long anticipated Doctor Andrée.
+His first inquiries into the possibility of such a
+flight had been made in the course of a voyage to the
+United States in 1876 to visit the Centennial Exposition
+at Philadelphia. On shipboard he had made numerous
+observations of the winds and air currents, which led
+him to the belief that there was a general suction or
+drift of air toward the pole from the direction of the
+northern coast of Europe and from the pole southward
+along the Siberian or Alaskan coasts.</p>
+
+<p>With this belief in mind, Andrée had gone back to
+Sweden and begun a series of experiments in ballooning.
+He built various gas bags and made a considerable number
+of voyages in them, on several occasions with nearly
+fatal results. Mishaps, however, did not daunt him, and
+he became, in the course of the following twenty years,
+perhaps the best versed aëronaut on earth. He was not,
+of course, an ordinary balloonist, but a scientific experimenter,
+busy with an attempt to work out a serious,
+and to him a practical, problem. In the early nineties
+Andrée succeeded in making a flight of four hundred
+kilometers in a comparatively small balloon, and it was
+on the observations taken in the course of this voyage
+that he based mathematical calculations which formed
+his guide in the polar undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>If, as I have said, the first public announcement of
+the Andrée project was received by the rank and file of
+men as an entertaining, but impossible, speculation,
+there was a rapid change of mind in the course of the
+following months. News came that Andrée had opened
+a subscription for funds, and that the hundred thousand
+dollars he believed necessary had been quickly provided
+by the enthusiastic members of the Swedish Academy
+of Science, by King Oscar from his private purse,
+and by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of nitroglycerin and
+provider of the prizes which bear his name. Evidently
+this fellow meant business.</p>
+
+<p>In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party of
+scientists and workmen, including two friends who had
+decided to make the desperate essay with him, sailed
+from Gothenburg in the little steamer <i>Virgo</i> for Spitzbergen.
+They had on board a balloon made by Lachambre
+of Paris, the foremost designer of that day,
+with a gas capacity of more than six thousand cubic meters,
+the largest bag which had been constructed at that
+time. The gas container was of triple varnished silk,
+and there was a specially designed gondola, whose details
+are of surviving interest.</p>
+
+<p>This compartment, in which three men hoped to
+live through such temperatures as might be expected
+in the air currents fanning the North Pole, was made of
+wicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas and
+inside with oiled silk, these two substances being considered
+capable of making the big basket practically
+air and weather proof. The gondola was about six and
+one half feet long inside and about five feet wide. It
+contained a sleeping mattress for one, with provision
+for a second bed, though the plan was to keep two of
+the three men constantly on deck, while the third took
+two hours of sleep at a time. This basket was covered,
+to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, through
+which the voyagers could come up to the deck. Inside
+and outside the gondola, in various pockets and bags,
+were fixed the provisions and supplies, while the various
+nautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’ paraphernalia,
+and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or were
+fixed to the gondola by specially invented devices.
+Everything had been thought out in great detail, most
+of the apparatus had been designed for the occasion,
+and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from all
+the foremost flyers and scientific theorists in Europe.
+His was anything but a haphazard or ill-prepared expedition.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of June, Andrée and his party landed
+on the obscure Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group,
+where he found a log cottage built some years before
+by Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter. Here a large
+octagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloon
+from the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finally
+all was ready, the chemicals were put to work, and
+the great bag slowly filled with hydrogen. Everything
+was in shape for flying by the middle of July, but now
+various mishaps and delays came to foil the eager adventurer,
+the worst of all being the fact that the wind
+steadily refused to blow from the south, as Andrée had
+anticipated. He waited until the middle of August, and
+then returned somewhat crestfallen to Sweden, where
+he was received with that ready and heartbreaking
+ridicule which often greets a brave man set out upon
+some undertaking whose difficulties and perils the fickle
+and callous public little understands.</p>
+
+<p>Andrée himself was nothing damped by his reverses,
+and even felt that he had learned something that would
+be of benefit. For one thing, he had the gas bag of his
+balloon enlarged to contain about two hundred thousand
+cubic feet, and made some changes in its coating,
+which was expected to prevent the seepage of the hydrogen,
+a problem which much more modern aircraft
+builders have had difficulty in meeting.</p>
+
+<p>If the delay in Andrée’s sailing had lost him a little of
+the public’s confidence and alienated a few lay admirers,
+his prestige with scientific bodies had not suffered,
+and his popularity with the subscribers of his fund was
+undiminished. King Oscar again met the additional expenses
+with a subscription from his own funds, and Andrée
+was accordingly able to set out for the second essay
+in June of 1897. His goods and the reconstructed balloon
+were sent as far as Tromsoe by rail, and there
+loaded into the <i>Virgo</i> and taken to Danes Island, accompanied
+by a small group of friends and interested scientists.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the last moment came a desertion, a happening
+that is looked upon by all explorers and adventurers
+as something of most evil omen. Doctor Ekholm,
+who had made the first trip to Danes Island and intended
+to be one of the three making the flight, had
+married in the course of the delay, the lady of his choice
+being fully aware of his perilous project. When it came
+time for him to start north in 1897, however, she had
+a not unnatural change of heart, and finally forced her
+husband to quit the expedition. Another man stepped
+into the gap without a day’s delay, and so the party
+started north.</p>
+
+<p>The enlarged bag was attached to the gondola and
+its fittings, and the process of inflation began anew in
+that strange eight-sided building on that barren arctic
+island. The bag was fully distended at the end of the
+first week in July, and Andrée impatiently waited for
+just the right currents of air before casting off.</p>
+
+<p>In those last few days of waiting a good deal of foreboding
+advice was given the daring aëronauts by the
+group of admirers who had made the voyage to Danes
+Island with them. It is even said that one of the leading
+scientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spent
+a night with him, and tried to convince the man that
+his theories and calculations were mistaken; that the
+air currents were inconstant, and could not be depended
+on to sweep the balloon across the pole and down on
+the other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperatures
+at the pole might readily cause the hydrogen
+to shrink and thus bring the balloon to earth; and that
+the whole region was full of such doubts and surprises as
+to forbid the adventure.</p>
+
+<p>To all this Andrée is said to have answered simply
+that he had made his decision and must stand by it.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been most
+thoroughly matured in his own mind. In twenty years
+of aëronautics he had worked out his ideas and theories
+in the greatest detail. He had not been blind to the
+problem of steering his machine, once it was in the air,
+but the plan of air rudders, or a type of construction
+that might lend itself to guidance through the air, had
+evidently not struck him as feasible, and was not
+brought to any kind of success until several years later
+under Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared to
+steer his balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, as
+already said, oblong, with a front and back. The front
+was provided with two portholes fitted with heavy
+glass, through which the explorer hoped to make observations
+in the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist,
+he knew that, once his car was in the air, the great
+bag was almost certain to begin spinning and to travel
+through the air at various speeds, increasing the rate
+of its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater.
+That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prow
+for the gondola seemed something of a vanity, but Andrée
+had his own ideas as to this.</p>
+
+<p>The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend to
+any great heights, or to subject himself to the rotating
+action which is one of the unpleasantnesses and perils
+of ballooning. He had fixed to the stern of his gondola
+three heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long,
+which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxen
+pigtails. In the center of each hundred-yard length of
+rope was a thinner spot or safety escapement, by means
+of which the lower half of any one of the ropes could
+be let go. And near the gondola was a second catch for
+releasing all of the rope or ropes.</p>
+
+<p>These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’s
+steering gear and antiwhirling apparatus. His intention
+was to fly at an elevation of somewhat less than one
+hundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his three ropes
+trailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water of
+any open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft was
+expected to keep his gondola pointed forward by means
+of its dragging effect. Realizing that one or all of the
+ropes might become entangled in some manner with
+objects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap might
+wreck the gondola, Andrée had provided the escapements
+to let go the lower half or all the ropes.</p>
+
+<p>Just what the man expected to do, may be read from
+his own articles in the New York and European papers.
+He hoped to fly low over a great part of the arctic regions,
+make photographs and maps, study the land
+and water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological,
+geological, geographical, and other information
+that came his way, cross the pole, if he could, and find
+his way back on the other side of the earth to some
+point within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said that
+he might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles from
+Danes Island to the pole in anywhere from two days
+to two weeks, depending on the force and direction of
+the surface wind. He did not expect to consume more
+than three weeks to a month for the entire trip, but
+his ship carried condensed emergency provisions for
+three years.</p>
+
+<p>While a widely known French balloonist, who had
+planned a rival expedition and then abandoned it, had
+intended to take along a team of dogs, Andrée’s balloon
+had not sufficient lifting power or accommodations for
+anything of this kind, and he was content to carry two
+light collapsible sleds on which he expected to carry
+the provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i325" style="max-width: 82.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i325.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center">~~ DOCTOR ANDRÉE ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before he
+set out, what provisions he had made for a mishap, and
+just what he would do if his balloon were to come
+down in open water, the explorer showed his spirit in
+the tersest of responses: “Drown.”</p>
+
+<p>Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination,
+it is not quite certain in what spirit Andrée set
+forth. It has often been said that he was a stubborn, self-willed,
+and self-esteeming enthusiast, who had worked
+up a vast confidence in himself and an overweening
+passion for his project through his flying and experimenting.
+Others have pictured him as an infatuated
+scientific theorist, bound to prove himself right, or die
+in the attempt. And there is still the other possibility
+that the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt,
+in spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule of
+the public and the skepticism of some critics. He felt
+that he would be a laughingstock before the world and
+a discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to set out,
+it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remains
+a fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausible
+to engage the attention and credence of a considerable
+number of scientists, and his enthusiasm bright
+enough to attach two others to him in his great emprise.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andrée
+got into the gondola of his car, tested the ropes
+and other apparatus, and was quickly joined by his two
+assistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H. F. Frankel, the
+latter having been chosen to take the place of the defected
+Ekholm.</p>
+
+<p>At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off,
+after Andrée had sent his farewell message, “a greeting
+to friends and countrymen at home.” The great bag
+hesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shot
+up to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowly
+about, with its three ropes dragging first on the ice
+and then in the water of the sea, and set out majestically
+for the northwest, carried by a steady slow breeze.</p>
+
+<p>The little group of men on the desolate arctic island
+stood late through the afternoon, with eyes straining
+into the distance, where the balloon hung, an ever-diminishing
+ball against the northern horizon. What
+doubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculating
+crowd, what burnings of the heart and moistenings
+of the eyes overcame its members, as they watched the
+intrepid trio put off upon their unprecedented adventure,
+the subsequent accounts reveal. But the imagination
+of the reader will need no promptings on this score.
+A little more than an hour the ship of the air remained
+in sight. Then, at last, it floated off into the mist, and
+the doubt from which it never emerged.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sending
+back word of his situation and progress. For early communication
+he carried a coop of homing pigeons. In
+addition, he had provided himself with a series of
+specially designed buoys, lined with copper and coated
+with cork. They were hollow inside and so fashioned as
+to contain a written message and preserve it indefinitely
+from the sea water, like a manuscript in a bottle. To the
+top of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, with
+a little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release one
+of the small buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitude
+was crossed, thus marking out, by the longitude observations
+as well, the precise route taken by the balloon
+in its drift toward or away from the pole.</p>
+
+<p>About a week after Andrée’s departure one of the
+carrier pigeons returned to Danes Island, with this message
+in the little cylinder attached to its legs:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“July 13, 10.30 <span class="allsmcap">P. M.</span>—82.20 north latitude; 15.5 east longitude.
+Good progress toward north. All goes well on board.
+This message is the third by carrier pigeon.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“<span class="smcap">Andrée.</span>”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The earlier birds and any the balloonists may have
+released after the night of the thirteenth, about fifty-five
+hours out from Danes Island, must have been overcome
+by the distance and the excruciating cold. None
+except the one mentioned ever reached either Danes
+Island or any cotes in the civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaper
+accounts of Andrée’s daring undertaking, waited
+with something like bated breath for further news of
+the adventuring three. It was not expected that the
+brave Swedes could reach civilization again, even with
+every turn of luck in their favor, in less than two
+months. Even six months or a year were elapsed periods
+not considered too long, for the chances were that the
+balloon would land in some far northern and difficult
+spot, out of which the three men would not be able
+to make their way before winter. That being so, they
+would be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then,
+very likely, they could find their way to some outpost
+and bring back the tidings of their monumental
+feat.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the world got to work on its preparations.
+The Czar, foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and his
+two companions might alight somewhere in upper
+Siberia, sent a communication by various agencies to
+the wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains,
+explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andrée
+and his men were, and admonishing the natives to treat
+any such wayfarers with kindness and respect, aiding
+them in every way and sending them south as speedily
+as possible, the special guests of the imperial government
+and the great white father. In other northern
+countries similar precautions were taken, with the result
+that the news of Andrée and his expedition was
+circulated far up beyond the circle, among the Indians
+and adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters of
+Labrador and interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos,
+and scores of other tribes and peoples.</p>
+
+<p>But the fall of 1897 passed without any further sign
+from Andrée, and 1898 died into its winter, with the
+pole voyagers still unreported. By this time there was a
+feeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among the
+optimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange that
+no further messages of any kind had been received. Another
+significant thing was that one of the copper-and-cork
+buoys had been picked up in the arctic current—empty.
+Still, it might have been dropped by accident,
+and it was yet possible that Andrée had reached a safe,
+if distant, anchorage somewhere, and he might turn up
+the following summer.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing except
+one or two more of the empty buoys, and the definite
+feeling of despair. Expeditions began to organize for the
+purpose of starting north in search of the balloonists,
+and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in a
+dirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in getting
+under way, and the summer of 1900 came along with
+nothing accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however,
+another, if not very satisfactory, bit of news was
+picked up. It was, once more, one of the buoys from
+the balloon. This time, to the delight of the finders,
+there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Buoy No. 4. The first to be thrown out. July 11, 10
+<span class="allsmcap">P. M.</span>, Greenwich mean time.</p>
+
+<p>“All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an
+altitude of about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction
+at first northerly, ten degrees east; later northerly, forty-five
+degrees east. Four carrier pigeons were dispatched at 5.40
+<span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> They flew westward. We are now above the ice, which
+is very cut up in all directions. Weather splendid. In excellent
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p class="attribution">
+“<span class="smcap">Andrée, Strindberg, Frankel.</span>”<br>
+</p><p>
+“Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It will be noted at once that the body of this communication
+was written the night after the departure
+from Danes Island, and the postscript probably at seven
+forty-five o’clock the next morning, so that it must
+have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before
+the single returning pigeon was released. No light
+of hope in such a communication.</p>
+
+<p>The North was by this time resonant with rumors
+and fables. Almost every traveler who came down from
+the boreal regions brought some fancy or report, sometimes
+supporting the product of his or another’s imagination
+with scraps of what purported to be evidence.
+A prospector came down from the upper Alaskan
+gold claims with a bit of tarred and oiled cloth
+which had been given him by the chief of some remote
+Indian tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the
+Andrée balloon? For a time there was a thrill of
+credulity. Then the thing turned out to be hide, instead
+of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin that
+Andrée and his party had been killed by Eskimos in
+upper Canada, when they descended from the clouds
+and started to shoot caribou. But why go into details?
+Month after month came other reports of all kinds,
+most of them of similar import. They came from all
+points, beginning at Kamtchatka and running around
+the world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and they
+were all more or less fiction.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in the spring of 1902, came the masterpiece.
+A long dispatch from Winnipeg announced that C. C.
+Chipman, head commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay
+Company, had received from Fort Churchill, the northernmost
+outpost of the company, several letters from
+the local factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fate
+of Doctor Andrée and his comrades was contained. The
+news had been received at Fort Churchill from wandering
+Eskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlaw
+mushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a great
+ship descend from the sky and had followed it many
+miles till it settled on the ice. Three men had got out
+and displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally unacquainted
+with white men, and far less with balloons,
+believed the intentions of the trio to be hostile and attacked
+them, eventually killing all with their bows and
+arrows, though the white men were armed with repeating
+rifles and put up a good fight. There were many
+other confirmatory details in the report. The mushers
+were found with modern Swedish rifles and with cooking
+and other utensils salvaged from the wrecked
+balloon.</p>
+
+<p>These reports led the late William Ziegler to write to
+the commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company for
+confirmation, with the result that the story was at once
+exploded in these words:</p>
+
+<p>“There is no probability of there being any truth in
+the report regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’s
+balloon. The chief officer of the company on the west
+coast of Hudson’s Bay who himself interviewed the natives
+on the matter, has reported as his firm conviction
+that the natives who are said to have seen the balloon
+imposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom the
+story was given. The sketches of the balloon which the
+company has been careful to distribute throughout
+northern Canada naturally gave occasion for much
+talk among these isolated people, and it is not greatly
+to be wondered at that some such tale might be given
+out by natives peculiarly cunning and prone to practice
+upon the credulity of those not familiar with them, or
+easily imposed upon.”</p>
+
+<p>But the imagination of the world was nothing
+daunted by such cold douches of fact, and more reports
+of Andrée’s death, of his survival in the igloos of
+detached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his balloon,
+of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of his
+party, and of many fancies came down from the northern
+sectors of the world, season after season. There
+was a great revival of these yarns in 1905, once more
+due to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and in
+1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was an
+even more belated group of rumors, all centering about
+the fact that one Father Turquotille, a Roman Catholic
+missionary residing at Reindeer Lake, and often making
+long treks farther into the arctic, had found a party of
+nomadic natives in possession of a revolver and some
+rope, which fact they explained to him by telling the
+story of the Andrée balloon, which was supposed to
+have landed somewhere in their territory. The good
+priest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal,
+of Prince Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmitted
+the report to Ottawa, whence it was spread
+broadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having made
+a special journey to confirm the rumors, was obliged
+to discredit them. And so another end to gossip.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirty
+years after that heroic launching out from Danes Island,
+after the pole has long been attained, and all the
+regions of the Far North traversed back and forth by
+countless expeditions and hunting parties, no sure
+knowledge of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is that
+he never returned, and all that can be asserted as beyond
+reasonable doubt is that he and his companions
+perished somewhere in the North. The probabilities are
+more interesting, though they cannot be termed more
+than inductions from the scattered bits of fact.</p>
+
+<p>The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, which
+were picked up from time to time between the spring
+of 1899 and the late summer of 1912, when the Norwegian
+steamer <i>Beta</i>, outward bound on September 1st,
+from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoe
+on the fourteenth, with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, which
+had been picked up on the eighth in the open ocean.
+This buoy, like all the others, except the one already
+described, was empty and had its top unsecured. It
+rests with the others in the royal museum at Stockholm.
+When Andrée flew from Danes Island he took
+twelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he expected
+to drop as each succeeding degree of latitude
+was crossed, and one larger float, which was to be
+dropped in triumph at the North Pole. This biggest
+buoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899,
+and identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessed
+the preparation for the flight. In all, seven of
+these floats have been retrieved from the northern seas.</p>
+
+<p>We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on the
+morning of July 12, 1897, less than sixteen hours from
+his base, and that he liberated a pigeon on the following
+night, after an elapsed time of about fifty-five
+hours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northern
+latitude and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. Since
+Danes Island lies above the seventy-ninth parallel, and
+in about 12 degrees of eastern longitude, the balloon
+had drifted about three degrees north and three east
+in fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundred
+and fifty miles, as the crow flies. His net rate of
+progress toward the pole was thus no better than seven
+to eight miles an hour, and he was being carried northeast
+instead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidently
+he was disillusioned as to the correctness of his
+theories before he was far from his starting point.</p>
+
+<p>The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to what
+must have happened thereafter. When the big North
+Pole buoy was brought back to Sweden, the great explorer
+Nansen shook his head in dismay and said the
+emptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous of
+disaster. Andrée would never have cast his largest and
+best buoy adrift, except in an emergency, or until he
+had reached the pole, in which case it would surely
+have contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoy
+had been thrown overboard as ballast, when the ship
+seemed about to settle into the sea. But even then, it
+would seem, Andrée would have scribbled some message
+and put it into the float, had there been time.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that this main buoy and five others were
+picked up, with their tops unfastened and barren of
+the least scrap of writing, seems to argue that some sudden
+disaster overtook the balloon and its horrified passengers.
+Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidly
+toward the sea or an ice floe, that everything was
+thrown out in an attempt to arrest its fall, or there
+was an explosion, and the whole great air vessel, with
+all its human and mechanical freight, was dropped into
+the icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would have
+floated off and been found scattered about the northern
+ocean, while the explorer and his men must have
+met the fate he had so briefly described—“drowned.”</p>
+
+<p>The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearing
+any message later than that carried by the solitary
+homing pigeon would seem also to indicate that death
+overcame the party soon after the night of July 13th,
+with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs and
+ice packs of the North.</p>
+
+<p>In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of the
+most splendid and mad adventures of any time came
+to its dark and mysterious conclusion, leaving the world
+an enigma and a legend.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVII">XVII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">SPECTRAL SHIPS</p>
+
+
+<p>We have not yet lost that sense of terror
+before the vast power and wrath of the
+waters that wrought strange gods and
+monsters from the fancy of our ancestors. It is this
+fright and helplessness in us that gives disappearances at
+sea their special quality. In spite of all progress, all inventiveness,
+all the power of man’s engines, every putting
+forth to sea is still an adventure. The same fate
+that overcomes the little catboat caught in a squall
+may overtake the greatest liner—the Titanic to note a
+trite example.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, never a year passes without the
+loss of some ship somewhere in the wild expanse of the
+world’s waters. Boats go down, leaving usually at least
+some indirect evidence of their fate. Now and again, as
+in the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s <i>Santa
+Margarita</i> and Roger Tichborne’s schooner <i>Bella</i>, not a
+survivor lives to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckage
+found to give indication. Here we have the genuine
+marine mystery. The marvel lies in the number of such
+completely vanished ships. A most casual survey of the
+records turns up this generous list, from the American
+naval records alone:</p>
+
+<p>The brig <i>Reprisal</i>, 1777; the <i>General Gates</i>, 1777; the
+<i>Saratoga</i>, 1781; the <i>Insurgent</i>, 1800; the <i>Pickering</i>,
+1800; the <i>Hamilton</i>, 1813; the <i>Wasp III</i>, 1814; the
+<i>Epervier</i>, 1815; the <i>Lynx</i>, 1821; the <i>Wildcat</i>, 1829;
+the <i>Hornet</i>, 1829; the <i>Sylph II</i> and the <i>Seagull</i>, both
+in 1839; the <i>Grampus</i>, in 1843; the <i>Jefferson</i>, 1850; the
+<i>Albany</i>, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; and
+<i>Levant II</i>, with exactly the same number aboard, in
+1860. In 1910 the tug <i>Nina</i> steamed out of Norfolk
+and was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoing
+tug <i>Conestoga</i> put out from Mare Island, Cal.,
+bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with four officers
+and fifty-two men aboard, and was never again reported.
+These are not mere marine disasters<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> but complete
+mysteries. No one knows precisely what happened
+to any of these ships and their people.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> For a handy list of these see The World Almanac, 1927 Edition, pages 691-95.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>No account of sea riddles would be complete without
+mention of the American brigantine <i>Marie Celeste</i>,
+of New York, Captain Briggs, which was found floating
+abandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity of
+Gibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. She
+had sailed from New York late in October with a cargo
+of alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the morning mentioned
+the British bark <i>Dei Gratia</i>, Captain Boyce,
+found the <i>Marie Celeste</i> in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15
+W. with sails set but acting queerly, yawing and falling
+up into the wind. Captain Boyce ran up the urgent
+hoist but got no answer from the brigantine. The
+day being almost windless and the sea beautifully calm,
+Captain Boyce put off in a boat with his mate, Mr.
+Adams, and two sailors, reached the <i>Marie Celeste</i> and
+managed to board her. There was not a soul to be seen,
+not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indication
+of any preparations for abandonment, not a boat gone
+from the davits.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, made
+a careful inspection of the ship and wrote full reports
+of what they had found. In the cabin a breakfast had
+been laid for four persons and only partly eaten. One
+of these four was a child, whose half empty bowl of
+porridge stood on the table. A hard boiled egg, peeled
+and cut in two but not bitten into, lay near one of the
+other places. There were biscuits and other food on
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>Investigation showed that the cargo had not shifted
+and was completely intact. None of the food, water or
+other supplies had been carried off, the captain’s funds,
+of considerable amount, were safe and his gold watch
+hung in his bunk, as did the watches of two of the seamen.
+There was no evidence whatever of any struggle,
+and a report published by irresponsible papers, to the
+effect that a bloody sword had been found was officially
+denied. Neither was there any leak or any defect, except
+that there were two square cuts at the bow on the
+outside. They had been made with an axe or similar
+tool and might have been there for some time.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dei Gratia</i> towed her prize into Gibraltar and
+notified the American consul, who again examined the
+brigantine with all care and reported to Washington.
+It was found that the <i>Marie Celeste</i> had set sail with a
+crew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife and
+their eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of six
+hundred tons.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiries made by the American consuls in all the
+region near the finding place of the abandoned vessel
+resulted in nothing and a general quest throughout the
+world brought no better results. The British ship <i>Highlander</i>
+reported that she had passed the <i>Marie Celeste</i>
+and spoken her just south of the Azores, on December
+4th, the day before she was picked up, and that the
+brigantine had answered “All well.” This is obviously
+a mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores lies about
+five hundred miles from the place where the ship was
+found or about twice as far as she was likely to have
+sailed in twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>There are conflicting statements as to the actual state
+of affairs on the <i>Marie Celeste</i> when found. One report
+says the ship’s clock was still ticking. On the other hand
+the log, which was found, had not been brought up beyond
+ten days prior to the discovery. One statement
+says that the ship’s papers and some instruments were
+gone, another that everything was intact. All indications
+are, however, that the crew had not been long away. A
+bottle of cough medicine stood upright and uncorked
+on the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of rough
+weather or continued yawing and twisting before the
+wind with a loose rudder would have upset it. Again,
+on a sewing machine, which stood near the table in the
+cabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off to the
+floor if there had been any specially active dipping or
+lurching of the brigantine.</p>
+
+<p>Many theories have been propounded to explain the
+disappearance of the crew, not the least fantastic of
+which is the giant cuttlefish yarn. Those who spin this
+tale affect to believe that there are squidlike monsters
+in the deeper waters of midocean, large enough and
+bold enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton ship
+and snatch off fourteen persons one after the other.
+Personally, I like much better the idea that Sinbad’s roc
+had come back to life and carried the crew off to the
+Valley of Diamonds on his back.</p>
+
+<p>As in other mysteries, men have turned up from
+time to time who asserted that they knew the fate of
+the crew of the <i>Marie Celeste</i>, that they were the one
+and only survivor, that murder and foul crime had
+been committed on the brigantine and more in the
+same strain.</p>
+
+<p>In 1913, the <i>Strand Magazine</i> (London) printed a
+tale which has about it some elements of credibility. The
+article was written by A. Howard Linford, head master
+of Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerable
+British preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specifically
+disowned responsibility for what he narrated, saying
+that he had no first hand knowledge. His story was, he
+said, based on some papers left him in three boxes by
+an old servant, Abel Fosdyk.</p>
+
+<p>This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as one
+of the ten members of the crew—the steward in fact.
+He recounts that the carpenter had built a little platform
+in the bows, where the child of the captain might
+play in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’s
+quarterdeck, and upon this structure the child played
+daily in the sun, while its mother sat beside it, reading
+or sewing. The good woman had been ill the first part
+of the trip and was now greatly worried because of the
+nervous health of her husband, who had suffered a
+breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, according to the supposed Fosdyk
+papers, the captain determined to swim about the ship
+in his clothes, possibly as the result of a challenge from
+the mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her husband
+but he was obdurate and she prompted the mate to
+swim with him. They plunged in and the whole crew,
+with the commander’s wife and child, crowded on the
+little platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly there
+was a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell into
+the sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine,
+with sail set, rapidly ran away from the swimmers
+and the hopeless strugglers in the water. Fosdyk alone
+managed to cling to the platform and was washed to
+the African shore, where he was restored to health by
+some friendly blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874
+Marseilles. Later on he got to London and was employed
+by Mr. Linford’s father.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm of
+possibility. We may believe it if we like, without risking
+the suspicious glances of our better balanced
+brothers, but——</p>
+
+<p>Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervous
+state, have gone swimming hundreds of miles from land,
+leaving his vessel with sail set and expecting, even in a
+calm, to keep pace with her? Would the helmsman
+have left his post under such circumstances to stand
+on the baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captain
+and mate have got up without finishing their breakfast
+to engage in such folly? Finally, why did this
+Abel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on his
+return to Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when there
+was a great hue and cry still in the air and sure information
+would have been rewarded? Or why did he not
+tell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapers
+again and again revived the mystery and sought
+to solve it? Why did he leave papers to be published
+by another after his death?</p>
+
+<p>My answer is that the mystery of the <i>Marie Celeste</i>
+is no nearer solution since the so-called Fosdyk papers
+were published. Moreover, I cannot find that worthy’s
+name on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.</p>
+
+<p>A more credible explanation has recently been put
+forth by a writer in the New York <i>Times</i>, who says
+that the whole case rested upon a conspiracy. The captain
+and crew of the <i>Marie Celeste</i> had agreed with the
+personnel of another ship, that the brigantine be deserted
+in the region where she was found, her men to
+put off in a longboat which had previously been supplied
+by the conspirators in order that none of the
+<i>Marie Celeste’s</i> boats should be missing. The other vessel
+was to come along presently, pick up the derelict and
+collect the prize money, while the owners were to profit
+by the insurance. The deserting crew was to get its
+share of the proceeds and then disappear.</p>
+
+<p>There are objections to this explanation also. Would
+a set of sailors and a captain, the latter with his wife
+and little girl, venture upon the sea in an open boat
+some hundreds of miles from land? Would the captain
+have taken his wife and child on the voyage with him
+if such a trick had been planned? And why was no
+member of the crew ever discovered in the course of
+the feverish search or through the persistent curiosity
+that followed? On the other hand, such tricks have
+been worked by mariners, and men who set out to commit
+crimes often attempt and accomplish the perilous
+and seemingly impossible. The doubts are by no means
+dispelled by this theory but here is at least a rational
+version of the affair.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The World War added two mysteries of the sea to the
+long roster that stand out with a special and tormenting
+character. The war had hardly opened when the British
+navy set out to destroy a small number of German
+cruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic and
+Pacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent Admiral
+Cradock and his ships to the bottom at the battle
+of Coronel and was subsequently destroyed by a force of
+British off the Falkland Islands. There was the <i>Emden</i>,
+that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment for
+Allied shipping for month after month, until she was
+overtaken, beaten and beached. Finally, there was the
+<i>Karlsruhe</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This modern light cruiser, completed only the year
+before the war began, did exactly what she was designed
+for—commerce raiding. With her light armament
+of twelve 4.1 inch guns and her great speed
+(25.5 knots official, 27.6 according to the British reckoning)
+she was a scout vessel and destroyer of merchantmen.
+Since there was no considerable German
+fleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few hot
+weeks, the terror of Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
+One vessel after another fell to her hunting pouch,
+while crews taken off the captured or sunken merchantmen
+began to arrive at American, West Indian and
+South American ports.</p>
+
+<p>These refugees told, one and all, the same story.
+There would be a smudge of smoke on the horizon and
+within minutes the long slender German cruiser would
+come churning up out of the distance with the speed
+of an express train, firing a shot across the bows and
+signalling for the surrender of the trader. The prize
+crew came aboard, always acting with the most punctilious
+politeness and treating crew and passengers with
+apologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow, her
+coal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred,
+her crew and passengers removed to safety and
+the craft sent to the bottom with bombs or by opening
+the sea cocks. If, on the other hand, the captured ship
+was modern and swift, she was manned from the
+cruiser, loaded with coal and other needed supplies,
+crowded with the captives and made to form an escort.
+At one time the cruiser is said to have had six
+such vessels in her train, at another four. When there
+got to be too many passengers and other captives, the
+least worthy of the vessels was detached and ordered to
+steam to a given port, being allowed just enough coal
+to get there.</p>
+
+<p>As early as October 4, 1914, two months after the
+opening of hostilities, it was announced that the <i>Karlsruhe</i>
+had captured thirteen British merchantmen in
+the Atlantic, including four hundred prisoners. She
+did much better than that before she was through and
+the chances are she had then already put about twenty
+ships out of business, for this was a conservative announcement
+from the British Admiralty, which let it
+be known soon afterwards that all of seventy British
+war vessels were hunting the <i>Karlsruhe</i> and her sister
+raider, the <i>Emden</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Shipping in the Atlantic was in a perilous way and
+excitement was high among newspaper readers ashore,
+who watched the game of hide and seek with all the
+interest of spectators at some magnificent sporting
+event. Nor was the sympathy all against the German,
+for the odds were too heavy. The wildest rumors were
+floating in by every craft that reached port from the
+Southern Atlantic, by radio and by cable. On October
+27, a Ward Line boat came into New York with the report
+that she had observed a night battle off the Virginia
+Capes between the German raider and British
+men-of-war. On November 3 came the report that the
+<i>Karlsruhe</i> had captured a big Lamport and Holt liner
+off the coast of Brazil as late as October 26. On November
+10 an officer of a British freighter captured by the
+raider reached Edinburgh and told the story that the
+<i>Karlsruhe</i> was using Bocas Reef, off the north Brazilian
+coast, as a base.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the forays of
+the modern corsair ceased. The first belief was, of
+course, that the pursuing British had found her and
+sent her to Davy Jones. But as the weeks went by
+without any announcement to that effect, doubts
+crept in. Soon the British government, without making
+a formal declaration, revealed the untruth of this report
+by keeping its searching vessels at sea. It was the
+theory that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> had run up the Amazon
+or the Orinoco for repairs and rest. The expectation
+was that she would soon be at her old tricks
+again.</p>
+
+<p>The battle and sinking story persisted in the British
+press, the wish being evidently father to the thought.
+On January, 12, 1915, for instance, the Montreal <i>Gazette</i>
+published an unverified (and afterwards disproved)
+report from a correspondent at Grenada, British
+West Indies, giving a detailed description of a four
+hour battle in which the raider was destroyed. This story
+was allegedly verified by the washing ashore of wreckage
+and the finding of sailors’ corpses. All moonshine.</p>
+
+<p>On January 21, an American steamer captain announced
+having sighted the <i>Karlsruhe</i> off Porto Rico.
+On other dates in January and February she was also
+falsely reported off La Guayra, the Canary Islands,
+Port au Prince and other places. On March 17, the
+Brooklyn <i>Eagle</i> published a tale to the effect that the
+hulk of the raider lay off the Grenadines, a little string
+of islets that stretch north from Grenada in the Windwards.
+This report said there had been no battle. The
+cruiser had been self-wrecked or broken up in a storm.
+Again wreckage was said to have been found, but here
+once more was falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>On March 18, the <i>Stifts-Tidende</i> of Copenhagen reported
+that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> had been blown up by an internal
+explosion one evening as the officers and men
+were having tea. One half of the wreck sank immediately,
+the report went on to say, while the other
+floated for some time, enabling between 150 and 200
+of the crew to be rescued by one of the accompanying
+auxiliaries. The survivors, it was added, had been sworn
+to secrecy before reaching port—why this, no one can
+guess.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, the <i>National Tidende</i> published
+corroboration from a German merchant captain then
+in Denmark, to the effect that the “crew of the Karlsruhe
+had been brought home early in December, 1914,
+by the German liner, Rio Negro, one of the Karlsruhe’s
+escort ships.”</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat later, a Brooklyn man, wintering at Nassau,
+in the Bahamas, reported finding the raider’s motor
+pinnace on the shore of Abaco Island, north of Nassau.</p>
+
+<p>To this there is little to add. Admiral von Tirpitz,
+then the head of the German navy, says in his memoirs
+just this and no more:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“The commander of the <i>Karlsruhe</i>, Captain Köhler, never
+dreamt of taking advantage of the permission to make his
+way homeward; working with the auxiliary vessels in the
+Atlantic, surrounded by the English cruisers, but relying on
+his superior speed, he sought ever further successes, until he
+was destroyed with his ship by an explosion, the probable
+cause of which was some unstable explosive brought aboard.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is obvious from this that the <i>Karlsruhe</i> was given
+the option of returning home, having gained enough
+glory and sunk enough ships to satisfy a dozen admirals.
+But the main fact to be gleaned from Tirpit’s statement
+is that an internal explosion was the thing officially accepted
+by the head of the German admiralty as the cause
+of her disappearance. And this is the most likely of all
+the theories that have been or can be proposed. But, that
+said, we are still a long way from any satisfaction of
+our deeper curiosity. Where and when did the explosion
+take place? Under what circumstances? Did any escape
+and return to Germany to tell the tale?</p>
+
+<p>To these queries there are no positive answers. If the
+<i>Karlsruhe</i> was, as so often stated, accompanied by one
+or more auxiliaries or coaling ships, it seems incredible
+that all the crew can have been lost and quite beyond
+imagination that there was not even a distant witnessing
+of the accident. Yet this seems to have been the case.
+In spite of the report that a large part of the famous
+raider’s crew got safely home after the supposed explosion,
+I have searched and scouted through the German
+press and the German book lists for an account of the
+affair—all in vain. Not only that, but I am assured by
+reliable correspondents of the American press in Germany
+that nothing credible or authoritative has appeared.
+We have von Mücke’s book “The Emden,” published
+in the United States as early as 1917, and previously
+in Germany. We have the exploits of the
+<i>Moewe</i>, and we have the lesser adventures of the popular
+von Luckner and his craft. But of the famous <i>Karlsruhe</i>
+we have nothing at all, save rumors and gossip.</p>
+
+<p>The conclusion must be that the ship did break up
+somewhere in the deepest ocean, as the result of an explosion,
+while she was altogether unattended. She must
+have gone down with all her men, for not even the reports
+of finding bits of her wreckage have ever been
+verified. The mystery of her end is still much discussed
+among seafaring men and William McFee, in one of his
+tales, suggests that she lay hid up one of the South
+American rivers and came to grief there.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Even more fantastic than this, however, is the story
+of the great United States collier <i>Cyclops</i>. This vessel,
+of nineteen thousand tons displacement, five hundred
+and eighteen feet long, of sixty-five foot beam and
+twenty-seven foot draught, with a cargo capacity of
+twelve thousand five hundred tons, was built by the
+Cramps in Philadelphia in 1910. She was designed to
+coal the first-line fighting ships of our fleet while at sea
+and under way, by means of traveling cables from her
+arm-like booms. She had frequently accompanied our
+battleships abroad, had transported the marines to Cuba
+and the refugees from Vera Cruz to Galveston in April
+1914. On a trip to Kiel in 1911, she was wonderingly
+examined by the German naval critics and builders, who
+declared her to be a marvel of design and structure.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i351" style="max-width: 121.4375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i351.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+
+<p class="small right">
+<i>Wide World.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">~~ <i>U. S. S. CYCLOPS</i> ~~</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>On March 4, 1918, the <i>Cyclops</i> sailed from Barbados
+for an unnamed Atlantic port (Norfolk, as it proved),
+with a crew of 221 and 57 passengers, including
+Alfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States Consul
+General at Rio de Janeiro. She was due to arrive on
+March 13. When that date had come and nothing had
+been heard from her, it was announced that one of her
+two engines had been injured and she was proceeding
+slowly with the other engine compounded. But on April
+14 the news came out in the press that the great ship
+was a month overdue and totally unaccounted for.</p>
+
+<p>For a whole month the story had been veiled under
+the censorship while the Navy Department had been
+making every conceivable effort to find the ship or some
+evidence of her fate. There had been no news through
+her radio equipment since her departure from Barbados.
+There had been no heavy weather in that vicinity. She
+had been steaming in the well-traveled lane of ships
+passing between North and South America, yet not a
+vessel had spoken her, heard her radio call or seen
+her at any distance. Destroyers had been searching the
+whole Gulf, Caribbean, North and South Atlantic regions
+for three frantic weeks. They had not found so
+much as a life preserver belonging to the missing ship.</p>
+
+<p>The public mind immediately jumped to the conclusion
+that a German submarine had done this dirty piece
+of business, if an attack on an enemy naval vessel in
+time of war may be so listed. Alas, there were no German
+submarines so far from their home bases at that
+time or any proximate period. None had been reported
+by other vessels and the German admiralty has long
+since confirmed the understood fact that there was
+none abroad. A floating mine was next suspected, but
+the lower West Indies are a long distance from any
+mine field then in existence and a ship of the size of
+the <i>Cyclops</i>, even if mined, probably would have had
+time to use her radio, lower some boats and put some of
+her people afloat. At the very least, she must have left
+some flotsam to reach the beaches of the archipelago
+with its tragic meanings.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery was soon complicated. On May 6 a British
+steamer from Brazil brought news that two weeks
+after the due date of the <i>Cyclops</i> but still two weeks
+before her disappearance was announced, an advertisement
+had been published in a Portuguese newspaper at
+Rio announcing requiem mass for the repose of the soul
+of A. L. M. Gottschalk “lost when the <i>Cyclops</i> was
+sunk at sea.” Efforts were made by the secret agents
+of the American and Brazilian governments to discover
+the identity of the persons responsible for the advertisement,
+but nothing of worth was ever discovered. The
+notice was signed with the names of several prominent
+Brazilians, all of whom denied that they had the least
+knowledge of the matter. The rector of the church denied
+that any arrangement had been made for the mass
+and said he had not known Gottschalk. Some chose to
+believe that the advertisement had been inserted by German
+secret agents for the purpose of notifying the
+large number of Germans in Brazil that the Fatherland
+was still active in American waters.</p>
+
+<p>A rumor having no substance whatever was to the
+effect that the crew of the ship had revolted, overcome
+the officers and converted the ship into a German raider.
+A companion tale said the ship had sailed for Germany
+to deliver her cargo of manganese to the enemy, by
+whom this valuable metal was sorely needed. The only
+foundation for this rumor was the fact that the <i>Cyclops</i>
+was indeed carrying a load of manganese ore to the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until August 30, 1918, that Secretary of
+the Navy Josephus Daniels announced that the ship was
+officially recorded as lost. At that time he notified the
+relatives of the officers, crew and passengers. More than
+three months later, on December 9th, Mr. Daniels supplemented
+this official notice with the statement, given
+to the newspaper correspondents, that “no reasonable
+explanation” of the <i>Cyclops</i> case could be given. And
+here the official news ends. At this writing, inquiry at
+the official source in Washington brings the answer that
+nothing has since been learned to alter the then issued
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Cyclops</i> case naturally excited and disturbed the
+public mind, with the result of an unusual crop of
+fancies, lies, false alarms and hoaxes. On May 8, 1923,
+for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh reported
+that she had found a bottle at Atlantic City
+containing the message “<i>Cyclops</i> wrecked at Sea.—H.”
+This note was written on a piece of note paper torn
+from a memorandum book and was yellowed with age.
+The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealing
+wax—a substance which shipwrecked sailors do not have
+in their pockets at the moment of peril.</p>
+
+<p>Other such messages were found from time to time.
+One floated ashore at Velasco, Tex., also in a bottle. It
+read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“U. S. S. <i>Cyclops</i>, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25,
+Long. 35.11. All on board when German submarine fired on
+us. Lifeboats going to pieces. No one to be left to tell the
+tale.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The position indicated is midway between Hatteras
+and the Azores, where the <i>Cyclops</i> had no business and
+probably never was. It was found after the war, as already
+suggested, that no German submarine had been in
+any so distant region at the time. We may accordingly
+look upon this bottle as another flagon of disordered
+fancy, another press from the old “<i>spurlos versenkt</i>”
+madness.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in their search for something that might explain
+this dark and baffling affair, the hunters came
+upon a suggestive fact. The commander of the <i>Cyclops</i>
+was Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It now
+came to light—and it struck many persons like a revelation—that
+this man was really G. W. Wichtman, that
+he was born a German; ergo, that he was the man responsible
+for this disaster to our navy. It proved true
+that Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, but
+he had been brought to the United States as a child and
+had spent twenty-six years in the American navy. No
+one in official position suspected him, but the professional
+Hun <i>strafers</i> insisted that this was the typical act
+of a German, no matter how long separated from his native
+land, how little acquainted with it or how long
+and faithfully attached to the service of his adopted
+country. It is only fair to the memory of a blameless
+officer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worley
+could not have done such a complete job had he wished
+to and that his record is officially without the least blemish.</p>
+
+<p>We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanations
+of the fate of the big collier. One possibility is
+that the manganese developed dangerous gases in the
+hold and caused a terrific explosion, which blew the ship
+out of the water without warning, killed almost all on
+board and so wrecked the boats that none could reach
+land. The only trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand
+ton ship, when destroyed by an explosion, is certain
+to leave a great mass of surface wreckage, which
+will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing
+vessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vessels
+sent out by the Navy Department visited every
+ness and cove and bay along the coast from Brazil to
+Hatteras, every island in the West Indies and every
+quarter of the circling seas without ever finding so
+much as a splinter belonging to the collier. Fishermen
+and boatmen in all the great region were questioned, encouraged
+with promises of reward and sent seeking, but
+they, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that great
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disaster
+at the hands of a German raider or submarine.
+Besides, to emphasize the matter once more, the German
+records show that there is no possibility of anything
+of this sort. The suspicion has been officially and
+categorically denied and there is no reason for concealment
+now.</p>
+
+<p>There remains one further possibility, which probably
+conceals the truth. The <i>Cyclops</i>, like her sister
+ships, the <i>Neptune</i> and <i>Jupiter</i>, was topheavy. She carried,
+like them, six big steel derricks on a superstructure
+fifty feet from her main deck. This great weight aloft
+made it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she could
+not roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing.
+We have but to suppose that with her one crippled
+engine she ran into heavy weather or perhaps a tidal
+wave, that she heeled over suddenly, her cargo shifted
+and her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a few
+seconds. In that event there would have been no time
+for using the wireless, no chance to launch any boats.
+Also, with everything battened and tied down, ship-shape
+for a naval vessel travelling in time of war, especially
+if the weather was a little heavy, there is the
+strong possibility that nothing could have been loose
+to float free. In this manner the whole big ship with all
+her parts and all who rode upon her may have been
+dumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One of
+the floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in the
+previous year by the U 121 may have done the fatal
+rocking, it is true.</p>
+
+<p>There is no better explanation, and I have reason to
+know that an upset of this sort is the theory held by
+naval builders and naval officials generally. But certainly
+there is none and a satisfying answer is not likely to
+come from the graveyard of the deep.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY">BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Note—the number in parenthesis after each reference indicates
+the chapter of this volume concerned.</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">“American Versus Italian Brigandage.—Life, Trial and Conviction
+of W. H. Westervelt,” Philadelphia, 1875. (1)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Atlay, James Beresford; “The Tichborne Case,” London,
+1916. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Austrian Archives, Letters from the, quoted in the New
+York <i>World</i>, Jan. 10 and 17, 1926. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Bierce, Ambrose; “Collected Works.” (15)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Bierce, Ambrose; “Letters of,” Edited by Bertha Pope, San
+Francisco, 1922. (15)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Crowe, Pat; “His Story, Confessions and Reformation,” New
+York, 1906. (8)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Crowe, Pat; “Spreading Evil,” New York, 1927. (8)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Faucigny-Lucigne, Mme. de.; “L’Archiduc Jean Salvator,”
+Paris. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Faustini, Arnaldo; “Gli Esploratori,” Turin, 1913. (16)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Faustini, Arnaldo; “Le Memorie dell’ ingegniere Andrée,”
+Milan, 1914. (16)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Felstead, Sidney Theodore (and Lady Muir); “Famous
+Criminals and their Trials,” London and New York,
+1926. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Fisher, H. W.; “The Story of Louise,” New York, 1912. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Garzon, Eugenio; “Jean Orth,” Paris, 1906. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Griffiths, Arthur; “Mysteries of Police and Crime,” London,
+1902. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Kenealy, Maurice Edward; “The Tichborne Tragedy,” London,
+1913. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Lachmabre, Henri, and Machuron, A.; “Andrée’s Balloon
+Expedition in Search of the North Pole,” New York,
+1898. (16)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Larisch, Countess Marie; “My Past,” London and New York,
+1913. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">“Letters from Andrée’s Party,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian
+Institution for 1897. (16)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Louise of Belgium, Princess; “My Own Affairs,” New York,
+(3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Louise Marie Amélie, Princess of Belgium; “Autour des
+trônes que j’ai vu tomber,” Paris, 1921. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Louisa of Tuscany, ex-Crown Princess of Saxony; “My
+Own Story,” London and New York, 1911. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">McWatters, George S.; “Detectives of Europe and America,”
+Hartford, 1877-1883. (11)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Minnigerode, Meade; “Lives and Times.” (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Orton, Arthur; “Confessions of,” London, 1908. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Parry, Edward Abbott; “Vagabonds All,” London, 1926. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Parton, James; “Life and Times of Aaron Burr,” Boston and
+New York, 1898. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Parton, James; “Famous Americans of Recent Times.” (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Blennerhassett, or the Decree of
+Fate,” Boston, 1901. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Pidgin, Charles Felton; “Theodosia, the First Gentlewoman
+of her Times,” Boston, 1907. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, V. 14,
+1916. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Report of the Select Committee of the Parliament of New
+South Wales on the Case of William Creswell, Sydney,
+1900. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Ross, Christian K.; “Charley Ross,” etc., Philadelphia, 1876;
+London, 1877. (1)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Safford, W. H.; “Life of Harman Blennerhassett,” 1850. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Safford, W. H.; “The Blennerhassett Papers,” Ed. by, Cincinnati,
+1864. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Starrett, Vincent; “Ambrose Bierce,” Chicago, 1920.</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Stoker, Bram; “Famous Impostors,” London. (5)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Tod, Charles Burr; “Life of Col. Aaron Burr,” etc., pamph.,
+New York, 1879. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Torelli, Enrico; “Mari d’Altesse,” Paris, 1913. (3)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Wandell, Samuel and Minnigerode, Meade; “Life of Aaron
+Burr,” New York, 1925. (2)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Walling, George W.; “Recollections of a New York Chief of
+Police,” New York, 1888. (1)</p>
+
+<p class="hangingindent">Westervelt, “Life Trial and Conviction of,” pamph., Philadelphia,
+1879. (1)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="transnote">
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes:</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+</p>
+
+<p>Some questionable spellings (e.g. Monterey instead of Monterrey) are
+retained from the original.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73706 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+