Mysteries of the missing (2024)

MYSTERIES OF THEMISSING

ByEDWARD H. SMITH

Author of “Famous Poison Mysteries,” etc.

LINCOLN MAC VEAGH
THE DIAL PRESS
NEW YORK · MCMXXVII

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

—Laus Veneris.

A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING

The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strandand the Sirens from their Campanian isle, but still thesons of men go forth to strangeness and forgetfulness.What fruit or song it is that calls them out and bindsthem 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 wediscover whether they have been devoured by the Polyphemusof crime, bestialized by some profane Circe orsimply made drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness.

The unreturning adventurer—the man whose destinyis hid in doubt—has tormented the imagination in everycentury. In life the lost comrade wakes a more poignantcuriosity than the returning Odysseus. What of thetrue Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas theEtruscans slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attiladie of apoplexy in the arms of Hilda or shall we believethe elder Eddas, the Nibelungen and Volsunga sagas orthe Teutonic legends of later times? Was it the genuineDmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and whatof the two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became ofDandhu Panth after he fled into Nepal in 1859; did heperish soon or is there truth in the tale of the fingerburial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who diedat Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siegeof the barn at Bloomfield?

These enigmas are more lasting and irritating thanany other minor facet of history, and the patient searchingof scholars seems but to add to the popular confusionand to the charm of our doubts. Even where researchseems to arrive at positive results, the general will clingto their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is alwayssweeter than a sordid fact.

Even in the modern world, so closely organized, socompletely explored and so prodigiously policed, thoseenigmas continue to pile up. In our day it is an axiomthat nothing is harder to lose sight of than a ship at seaor a man on land. This sounds, at first blush, like a paradox.It ought, surely, to be easy to scrape the name froma vessel, change her gear and peculiarities a little, painta fresh word upon her side and so conceal her. Simplerstill, why can’t any man, not too conspicuous or individual,step out of the crowd, alter the cut of hishair and clothes, assume another name and immediatelybe draped in a fresh ego? Does it not take a huge annualexpenditure for ship registry and all sorts of marinepolicing on the one side, and an even greater sum forthe 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 aman to drop out of sight, as the phrase goes.

Leaving aside the ships, which are a small part ofour argument, we may note that, for all the difficulty,thousands of human beings try to vanish every year.Plainly there are many circ*mstances, many crises inthe lives of men, women and children, that make acomplete detachment and forgottenness desirable, nay,imperative. Yet, of the twenty-five thousand personsreported missing to the police of the City of New Yorkevery year, to take an instance, only a few remain permanentlyundiscovered. Most are mere stayouts oryoung runaways and are returned to their inquiring relativeswithin a few hours or days. Others are desertingspouses—husbands who have wearied or wives who havefound new loves. These sometimes lead long chases beforethey are reported and identified, at which time thepolice have no more to do with the matter unless thereis action from the domestic courts. A number are suicides,whose bodies soon or late rise from the city-engirdlingwaters and are, almost without fail, identifiedby the marvelously efficient police detectives in chargeof the morgues. Some are pretended amnesics and a feware true ones. But in the end the police of the citiesclear up nearly all these cases. For instance, in the year1924, the New York police department had on its booksonly one male and one female uncleared case originatingin the year of 1918, or six years earlier. At the sametime there were four male and six female cases datingfrom 1919, three male and one female cases that hadoriginated in 1920, no male and three female cases thatoriginated in 1921, three male and two female cases ofthe date of 1922, but in 1924 there were still pending,as the police say, twenty-eight male and sixty-threefemale cases of the year preceding, 1923.

The point here is that only one man and one womancould stay hid from the searching eyes of the law as longas six years. Evidently the business of vanishing presentssome formidable difficulties.

However, it is not even these solitary absentees thatengage our interest most sharply, for usually we knowwhy they went and have some indication that they arealive and merely skulking. There is another and farrarer genus of the family of the missing, however, thatdoes strike hard upon that explosive chemical of humancuriosity. Here we have those few and detached inexplicableaffairs that neither astuteness nor diligence, timenor patience, frenzy nor faith can penetrate—the trueromances, the genuine mysteries of vanishment. A mangoes forth to his habitual labor and between hours he isgone from all that knew him, all that was familiar.There is a gap in the environment and many lives areaffected, nearly or remotely. No one knows the why orwhere or how of his going and all the power of menand materials is hopelessly expended. Years pass andthese tales of puzzlement become legends. They arethen things to brood about before the fire, when themoving mind is touched by the inner mysteriousness oflife.

Again, there are those strange instances of the theftof human beings by human beings—kidnappings, in theusual term. Nothing except a natural cataclysm is soexcitant of mass terror as the first suggestion that thereare child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of thepublic temper may result from such crimes will be seenfrom some of what follows. The most celebrated instanceis, 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 makethe perfect abduction tale.

This terror of the thief of children is, to be sure, asold as the races. From the Phoenicians who stole babesto feed to their bloody divinities, the Minoans whoraped the youth of Greece for their bull-fights, and thepriests of many lands who demanded maidens to satisfythe wrath of their gods and the lust of their flesh, downto the European Gypsies, who sometimes steal, or aresaid to steal, children for bridal gifts, we have this dreadvein 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 whenthe shadow of the kidnapper passes over her cote. Thewomen of Normandy are said still to whisper withtrembling the name of Gilles de Rais (or Retz), thatbold marshal of France and comrade in arms of Jeanned’Arc, who seems to have been a stealer and killer ofchildren, instead of the original of Perrault’s Bluebeard,as many believe. What terror other kidnappershave sent into the hearts of parents will be seen from thetext.

This volume is not intended as a handbook of mysteries,for such works exist in numbers. The author haslimited himself to problems of disappearance and casesof kidnapping, thereby excluding many twice-toldwonders—the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman,Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’sFemme sans nom, the changeling of Louis Philippe andthe Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair at Mayerling.

Neither have I attempted any technical explorationof the conduct and motives of vanishers and kidnappers.It must be sufficiently clear that a man unpursuedwho flees and hides is out of tune with his environment,ill adjusted, nervously unwell. Nor need we accentagain the fact that all criminals, kidnappers included,are creatures of disease or defect.

A general bibliography will be found at the end ofthe book. The information to be had from these volumeshas been liberally supported and amplified fromthe files of contemporary newspapers in the countriesand cities where these dramas of doubt were played.The records of legal trials have been consulted in instanceswhere trials took place and I have talked withthe accessible officials having knowledge of the cases orpersons here treated.

E. H. S.

New York, August, 1927.

MYSTERIES OF THEMISSING

I

THE CHARLIE ROSS ENIGMA

Late on the afternoon of the twenty-seventhof June, 1874, two men in a shabby-coveredbuggy stopped their horse under the venerableelms of Washington Lane in Germantown, that sleepysuburb of Philadelphia, with its grave-faced revolutionaryhouses and its air of lavendered maturity. All aboutthese intruders was historic ground. Near at hand wasthe Chew House, where Lord Howe repulsed Washingtonand his tattered command in their famous encounter.Yonder stood the old Morris Mansion, wherethe British commander stood cursing the fog, while histroops retreated from the surprise attack. Here the impetuousAgnew fell before a backwoods rifleman, andthere Mad Anthony Wayne was forced to decamp bythe fire of his confused left. Not far away the firstAmerican Bible had been printed, and that ruinoushouse 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 signof interest in all these things. Instead, they devoted theirattention to the two young sons of a grocer who happenedto be playing among the bushes on their father’sproperty. The children were gradually attracted to confidenceby the strangers, who offered them sweets andasked them who they were, where their parents werestaying, how old they might be, and how they mightlike to go riding.

The older boy, just past his sixth birth anniversary,tried to respond manfully, as his parents had taughthim. He said that he was Walter Ross, and that his companionwas his brother, Charlie, aged four. His mother,he related, had gone to Atlantic City with her olderdaughters, and his father was busy at the store in thebusiness section of the settlement. Yes, that big, whitehouse on the knoll behind them was where they lived.All this and a good deal more the little boy prattled offto his inquisitors, but when it came to getting into theirbuggy he demurred. The men got pieces of candy fromtheir pockets, filled the hands of both children, anddrove away.

When the father of the boys came home a little later,he found his sons busy with their candy, and he wastold where they had got it. He smiled and felt that thetwo men in the buggy must be very fond of children.Not the least suspicion crossed his mind. Yet this harmlessincident of that forgotten summer afternoon wasthe prelude to the most famous of American abductioncases and the introduction to one of the abiding mysteriesof disappearance. What followed with fatal swiftnesscame soon to be a matter of almost worldwidenotoriousness—a case of kidnapping that stands firm inpopular 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 childreninto their wagon.[1] Saying that they were going to buyfire crackers for the approaching Fourth of July, theycarried the little boys to the corner of Palmer and RichmondStreets, Philadelphia, where Walter Ross wasgiven a silver quarter and told to go into a shop and buywhat he wanted. At the end of five or ten minutes theboy emerged to find his brother, his benefactors andtheir buggy gone.

[1] Walter Ross, then 7 years old, testified at the Westervelt trial, the followingyear, that he had seen the men twice before, but this seems unlikely.

Little Walter Ross, abandoned eight miles from hishome in the toils of a strange city, stood on the curb andgave childish vent to his feelings. The sight of the boywith his hands full of fireworks and his eyes full of tears,soon attracted passers-by. A man named Peaco*ck finallytook charge of the youngster and got from him thename and address of his father. At about eight o’clockthat evening he arrived at the Ross dwelling and deliveredthe child, to find that the younger boy had notbeen brought home, and that the father was out visitingthe police stations in quest of his sons.

In spite of the obvious facts, the idea of kidnappingwas not immediately conceived, and it even got a hostilereception when the circ*mstances forced its entertainment.The father of the missing Charlie was ChristianK. Ross, a Philadelphia retail grocer who was popularlysupposed to be wealthy, and was in fact the owner of aprosperous business at Third and Market streets, andmaster of a competence. His flourishing trade, the bighouse in which he lived with his wife and seven children,and the fine grounds about his home naturally causedmany to believe that he was a man of large means. Inview of these facts alone the theory of abduction shouldhave been considered at once. Again, Walter Ross recitedthe details of his adventure with the men in afaithful and detailed way, telling enough about the talkand manner of the men to indicate criminal intent.Moreover, Mr. Ross was aware of the previous visit ofthe strangers. Finally, the manœuver of deserting theolder boy and disappearing with his brother should havebeen sufficiently suggestive for the most lethargic policeman.Nevertheless, the Philadelphia officials took theskeptical position. Their early activities expressed themselvesin the following advertisem*nt, which I take fromthe 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 willbe paid on his return to E. L. Joyce, Central Station, cornerof Fifth and Chestnut streets.”

The advertisem*nt was worded in this fashion to concealthe fact of the child’s vanishment from his mother,who was not called from her summer resort until somedays later.

The police were, however, not long allowed to rest ontheir comfortable assumption that the boy had been lost.On the fifth, Mr. Ross received a letter which had beendated and posted on the day before in Philadelphia. Itstated that Charlie Ross was in the custody of the writer,that he was well and safe, that it was useless to look forhim through the police, and that the father would hearmore in a few days. The note was scrawled by some onewho was trying to conceal his natural handwriting andany literate attainments he may have possessed. Punctuationand capitals were almost absent, and the commonestwords were so crazily misspelled as to betraypurposiveness. The unfortunate father was addressed as“Mr. Ros,” a formal appellation which was later contractedto “Ros.” This missive and some of those thatfollowed were signed “John.”

Even this communication did not mean much to thepolice, though they had not, at that early stage of themystery, the troublesome flood of crank letters to pleadas an excuse for their disbelief. As a matter of fact, thisfirst letter came before there had been anything butthe briefest and most conservative announcements in thenewspapers, and it should have been apparent to any onethat there was nothing fraudulent about it. Yet the policeofficials dawdled. A second message from themysterious John wakened them at last to action.

On the morning of July 7, Mr. Ross received a longercommunication, unquestionably from the writer of thefirst, in which he was told that his appeal to the detectiveswould be vain. He must meet the terms of theransom, twenty thousand dollars, or he would be themurderer of his own child. The writer declared that nopower in the universe would discover the boy, or restorehim to his father, without payment of the money, andhe added that if the father sent detectives too near thehiding place of the boy he would thereby be sealing thedoom of his son. The letter closed with most terrifyingthreats. 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 exampleto others, so that they would act more wiselywhen their children were taken. Ross would see his childeither alive or dead. If he paid, the boy would be broughtback alive; if not, his father would behold his corpse.Ross’ willingness to come to terms must be signified bythe insertion of these words into the Ledger: “Ros, webe willing to negotiate.”

Such an epistle blew away all doubts, and the CharlieRoss terror burst upon Philadelphia and surroundingcommunities the following morning in full virulence.The police surrounded the city, guarded every out-goingroad, searched the trains and boats, went through allthe craft lying in the rivers, spread the dragnet for allthe known criminals in town and immediately began ahouse-to-house search, an almost unprecedented proceedingin a republic. The newspapers grew more inflammatorywith every fresh edition. At once the madpack 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 whatevercame to their door, a most insulting and dishearteningarray of fulminations which caused the collapse of thealready overburdened mother.

In the fever which attacked the city any child waslikely to be seized and dragged, with its nurse or parent,to the nearest police station, there to answer the suspicionof being Charlie Ross. Mothers with golden-hairedboys of the approximate age of Charlie resorted toChristian Ross in an unending stream, demanding thathe give them written attestation of the fact that theirchildren were not his, and the poor beladen man actuallywrote hundreds of such testimonials. The madness of thepublic went to the absurdest lengths. Children twice theage and size of the kidnapped boy were dragged beforethe officials by unbalanced busybodies. Little boys withblack hair were apprehended by the score at the demandof citizens who pleaded that they might be the missingboy, with his blond curls dyed. Little girls were broughtbefore the scornful police, and some of the self-appointedseekers for the missing boy had to be drivenfrom the station houses with threats and blows.

Following the command of the child snatchers withliteral fidelity, Mr. Ross had published in the Ledgerthe words I have quoted. The result was a third epistlefrom the robbers. It recognized his reply, but made nodefinite proposition and gave no further orders, savethe command that he reply in the Ledger, statingwhether or not he was ready to pay the twenty thousanddollars. On the other hand, the letter continued theferocious threats of the earlier communication, laughedat the police efforts as “children’s play,” and askedwhether “Ros” cared more for money or his son. In thisletter was the same labored effort to appear densely unlettered.One new note was added. The writer askedwhether Mr. Ross was “willen to pay the four thousandpounds for the ransom of yu child.” Either the writerwas, or wanted to seem, a Briton, used to speaking ofmoney in British terms. This pretension was continuedin some of the later letters and led eventually to a searchfor the missing boy in England.

In his extremity and natural inexperience, Mr. Rossrelied absolutely on the police and put himself into theirhands. He asked how he was to reply to the third letterand was told that he should pretend to acquiesce in thedemand of the abductors, meantime actually holdingthem 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 toMr. Ross at the end of a few days. He was told that hewas pursuing the course of folly, that the detectivescould not help him, and that he must choose at once betweenhis money and the life of his child.

Ross was advised by some friends and neighbors toyield to the demands of the extortioners, and severalmen of means offered him loans or gifts of such fundsas he was not able to raise himself. Accordingly he signifiedhis intention of arriving at a bargain, and themysterious John wrote him two or three well-veiledletters which were intended to test his good faith. Atthis point the father and the abductors seemed about toagree, when the officials again intervened and causedthe grocer to change his mood. He declared in an advertisem*ntthat he would not compound a felony bypaying money for the return of his child. But this standhad hardly been taken when Mrs. Ross’ pitiful anxietycaused another change of front.

Unquestionably this vacillation had a harmful effectin more than one direction. Its most serious consequencewas that it gave the abductors the impressionthat they were dealing with a man who did not knowhis own mind, could not be relied upon to keep hispromises, and was obviously in the control of the officers.Accordingly they moved with supercaution andbegan to impose impossible conditions. By this time theyhad written the parents of their prisoner at least a dozenletters, each containing more terrifying threats than itsantecedents. To look this correspondence over at thislate day is to see the nervousness of the abductors, slowlymounting to the point of extreme danger to the child.But Mr. Ross failed to see the peril, or was overpersuadedby official opinion.

At this crucial point in the negotiations the blunderof all blunders was made. Philadelphia was tremulouswith excitement. The police of every American citywere looking for the apparition of the boy or his kidnappers.Officials in the chief British and Continentalports were watching arriving ships for the fugitives,and millions of newspaper readers were following thecase in eager suspense. Naturally the police and the otherofficials of Philadelphia felt that the eyes of the worldwere upon them. They quite humanly decided on acourse calculated to bring them celebrity in case ofsuccess and ample justification in case of failure. Inother words, they made the gesture typical of baffledofficialdom, without respect to the safety of the missingchild or the real interests of its parents. At a meetingpresided over by the mayor, attended by leading citizensand advised by the chiefs of the police, a reward oftwenty thousand dollars, to match the amount of ransomdemanded, was subscribed and advertised. Theterms called for “evidence leading to the capture andconviction of the abductors of Charlie Ross and thesafe return of the child,” conditions which may becynically viewed as incongruous. The following day thechief of police announced that his men, should theyparticipate in the successful coup, would claim no partof the reward.

All this was intended, to be sure, as an inducementto informers, the hope being, apparently, that someone inside the kidnapping conspiracy would be bribedinto 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 parentsof the boy were thrown into utter hopelessness. Finallyanother letter came, this time from New York, whereasall previous notes had been mailed in Philadelphia. It wasclear that the offer of a high reward had led the abductorsto leave the city, and their letter showed thatthey had slipped away with their prisoner, in spite of thevaunted precautions.

The next note from the criminals warned Ross interms of impressive finality that he must at once abandonthe detectives and come to terms. He signified hisintention of complying by inserting an advertisem*nt inthe New York Herald, as directed by the abductors.They wrote him that they would shortly inform him ofthe manner in which the money was to be paid over.Finally the telling note came. It commanded Mr. Rossto procure twenty thousand dollars in bank notes ofsmall denomination. These he was to place in a leathertraveling bag, which was to be painted white so that itmight be visible at night. With this bag of money, Rosswas to board the midnight train for New York on thenight of July 30-31 and stand on the rear platform,ready to toss the bag to the track. As soon as he shouldsee a bright light and a white flag being waved, he wasto let go the money, but the train was not to stop untilthe next station was reached. In case these conditionswere fully and faithfully met, the child would be restored,safe and sound, within a few hours.

Ross, after consultation with the police, decided totemporize once more. He got the white painted bag, ascommanded, and took the midnight train, prepared tochange to a Hudson River train in New York and continuehis journey to Albany, as the abductors had furtherinstructed. But there was no money in the valise.Instead, it contained a letter in which Ross said thathe could not pay until he saw the child before him. Heinsisted that the exchange be made simultaneously andsuggested that communication through the newspaperswas not satisfactory, since it was public and betrayed allplans to the police. Some closer and secret way of communicatingmust be devised, he wrote.

So Mr. Ross set out with a police escort. He rode toNew York on the rear platform of one train and toAlbany on another. But the agent of the kidnappers didnot appear, and Ross returned to Philadelphia crestfallen,only to find that a false newspaper report hadcaused the plan to miscarry. One of the papers had announcedthat Ross was going West to follow up a clew.The kidnappers had seen this and decided that their manwas not going to make the trip to New York and Albany.Consequently there was no one along the track toreceive the valise. Perhaps it was just as well. The abductorswould have laughed at the empty police dodgeof suggesting a closer and secret method of communication—forthe purpose of betraying the malefactors, ofcourse.

From this point on, Ross and the abductors continuedto argue, through the New York Herald, the question ofsimultaneous exchange of the boy and money. Ross naturallytook the position that he could not risk being imposedon by men who perhaps did not have the child atall. The robbers, on their side, contended that theycould 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 lettersreceived by Mr. Ross from the abductors. They weretaken to New York by Captain Heins of the Philadelphiapolice, and “Chief Walling’s informant identifiedthe writing as that of William Mosher, alias Johnson.”

In order to draw the line between fact and fable asclearly as possible at this point, I quote from official policesources, namely, “Celebrated Criminal Cases ofAmerica,” by Thomas S. Duke, captain of police, SanFrancisco, published in 1910. Captain Duke says thathis facts have been “verified with the assistance of policeofficials throughout the country.” He continues withrespect to the Ross case:

“The informant then stated that in April, 1874—theyear in question—Mosher and Joseph Douglas, aliasClark, endeavored to persuade him to participate in thekidnapping of one of the Vanderbilt children, while thechild was playing on the lawn surrounding the familyresidence at Throgsneck, Long Island. (Evidently a confusion.)The child was to be held until a ransom of fiftythousand dollars was obtained, and the informant’s partof the plot would be to take the child on a small launchand 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 thefact, as we shall see. It is, however, true that the NewYork police had some sort of information early in August,and it may even be true that they had suspicionsof Mosher and were on the lookout for him. A historyof subsequent events will give the surest light on thisdisputed point.

The negotiations between Ross and the abductorscontinued in a desultory fashion, without any attemptto deliver the child or get the ransom, until toward themiddle of November. At this time the kidnappers arrangeda meeting in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.Mr. Ross’ agents were to be there with the twenty thousanddollars in a package. A messenger was to call forthis some time during the day. His approach and departurehad been carefully planned. In case he waswatched or followed, he would not find the abductorson his return, and the child would be killed. Only goodfaith could succeed. Mr. Ross was to insert in the NewYork Herald a personal reading, “Saul of Tarsus, FifthAvenue Hotel—instant.” This would indicate his decisionto pay the money and signify the day he wouldbe at the hotel.

Accordingly the father of the missing boy had theadvertisem*nt published, saying that he would be at thehotel with the money “Wednesday, eighteenth, all day.”Ross’ brother and nephew kept the tryst, but no messengercame for the money, and the last hope of thefamily seemed broken.

The Rosses had long since given up the detectives andrecognized the futility of police promises. The father ofthe boy had, in his distraction, even voiced some uncomplimentarysentiments pertaining to the guardians ofthe law, with the result that the unhappy man was subjectedto taunt and insult and the questioning of hismotives. Resort was, accordingly, had to the Pinkertondetectives, who evidently counseled Mr. Ross to act insecret. In any event, the appointment at the Fifth AvenueHotel was the last of its kind to be made, thoughRoss and the abductors seemed to have been in contactat later dates. Whatever the precise facts may be on thispoint, five months had soon gone by without the recoveryof 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 Yorkpolice had direct information bearing on the identityof the abductors the first week in August, he manageda veritable feat of inefficiency, for he and his men failed,in four months, to find a widely known criminal whowas afterward shown to have been in and about NewYork all of that time. Not the police, but a stroke ofdestiny, intervened to break the impasse.

On the stormy night of December 14-15, 1874, burglarsentered the summer home of Charles H. Van Brunt,presiding justice of the appellate division of the NewYork supreme court. This mansion stood overlookingNew York Bay from the fashionable Bay Ridge sectionof Brooklyn. The villa was then unoccupied, but in thecourse of the preceding summer Justice Van Brunt hadinstalled a burglar alarm system which connected witha gong in the home of his brother, J. Holmes Van Brunt,about two hundred yards distant from the jurist’s hotweather residence. Holmes Van Brunt occupied hishouse the year around. He was at home on the night inquestion, and the sounding of the gong brought him outof bed. He sent his son out to reconnoiter, and the youngman came back with the report that there was a lightmoving in his uncle’s place.

Holmes Van Brunt summoned two hired men fromtheir quarters, armed them with revolvers or shotgunsand went out to trap the intruders. The house of JusticeVan Brunt was surrounded by the four men, whowaited for the burglars to emerge. After half an hourtwo figures were seen to issue from the cellar door andwere challenged. They answered by opening fire. Thefirst was wounded by Holmes Van Brunt. The secondran around the house, only to be intercepted by youngVan Brunt and shot down, dying instantly.

When the Van Brunts and their servants gatheredabout the wounded man, who was lying on the soddenground in the agony of death, he signified that he wishedto make a statement. An umbrella was held over him tokeep off the driving rain, and he said, in gasping sentences,that he was Joseph Douglas, and that his companionwas William Mosher. He understood he was dyingand therefore wished to tell the truth. He andMosher had stolen Charlie Ross to make money. He didnot know where the child was, but Mosher could tell.Mr. Van Brunt told him that Mosher was dead, and thebody of the other burglar was carried over and exhibitedto the dying man. Douglas then gasped that the childwould be returned safely in a few days. On hearing oneof the party express doubt about his story, Douglas issaid 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 drenchinghis tortured body. Both he and Mosher were identifiedfrom the police records by officers who had knownthem and by relatives. Walter Ross and a man who hadseen the kidnappers driving through the streets of Germantownwith the two boys, were taken to New York.The brother of the kidnapped child, though he was purposelykept in the dark as to his mission, immediatelyrecognized the dead men in the morgue as the abductors,saying that Douglas was the one who gave thecandy, and that Mosher had driven the horse. This identificationwas confirmed by the other witness.

The return of the stolen boy was, therefore, anxiouslyand hourly expected. But he had not arrived at the endof a week, and the police officials immediately movedin new directions.

Mosher had married the sister of William Westervelt,of New York, a former police officer, who was laterconvicted of complicity in the abduction. Westerveltand Mrs. Mosher were apprehended. The one-timepoliceman made a rambling statement containing littleinformation, but his sister admitted that she had beenprivy to the matter of the kidnapping. She had knownfor several months, she said, that her husband had kidnappedCharlie Ross, but she had not been consultedin his planning, and did not know where he had keptthe child hidden, and was unable to give any information.

Mrs. Mosher went on to say that she believed thechild to be alive and stated her reasons. She did not believeher husband, burglar and kidnapper though he was,capable of injuring a child. He had four of his ownand had always been a good father. The poverty of hisfamily had driven him to the abduction. Also, Mrs.Mosher related, she had pleaded with her husband toreturn the stolen boy to his parents, saying that it wascruel to hold him longer, that there seemed to be littlechance of collecting the ransom safely, and that thedanger to the abductors was becoming greater everyday. This conversation, she said, had taken place only afew days before the Van Brunt burglary and Mosher’sdeath. Accordingly, since Mosher had then agreed thatthe child should be sent home, she felt sure it was stillliving.

But Charlie Ross never came back. The death of hisabductors only intensified the quest for the boy. Detectiveswere sent to Europe, to Mexico, to the Pacificcoast, and to various other places, whither false clewspointed. The parents advertised far and wide. Mr. Rosshimself, in the course of the next few years, made hundredsof journeys to look at suspected children in allparts of the United States. He spent, according to hisown account, more than sixty thousand dollars on thesehopeful, but vain, pilgrimages. Each new search resultedas had all the others. At last, after more than twentyyears 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 killedand identified, a large part of the American public suspectedthat Westervelt or Mrs. Mosher, or some oneconnected with them, was detaining the missing childfor fear of arrest and prosecution in case of its returnhome. The theory was that Charlie Ross was old enoughto observe, remember and talk. He might, if released,give information that would lead to the imprisonmentof Mosher’s and Douglas’ confederates. Accordingly,steps were taken to get the child back at any compromise.The Pennsylvania legislature passed an act, inFebruary, 1875, which fixed the penalty for abductingor detaining a child at twenty-five years’ imprisonment,but the new law contained a proviso that any person orpersons delivering a stolen child to the nearest sheriffon or before the twenty-fifth day of March, 1875,should be immune from any punishment. At the sametime Mr. Ross offered a cash reward of five thousanddollars, payable on delivery of the child, and no questionsasked. He named more than half a dozen responsiblefirms at whose places of business the childmight be left for identification, announcing that allthese business houses were prepared to pay the rewardon the spot, and guaranteeing that those bringing in theboy would not be detained.

All this was in vain, and the conclusion had at last tobe reached that the boy was beyond human powers ofrestoration.

To tell what seems to have been the truth—though itwas suspected at the time—the New York police hadfairly reliable information on Mosher and Douglassoon after the crime. Chief Walling appears, though henever openly said so, to have been informed by a brotherof Mosher’s who was on bad terms with the kidnapper.Not long afterwards he had Westervelt brought in forquestioning. That worthy had been dismissed from theNew York police force a few months earlier for neglectof duty or shielding a policy room. His sister wasBill Mosher’s (the suspected man’s) wife and it wasknown that Westervelt had been in Philadelphia aboutthe time of the abduction of Charlie Ross. He was trying,by every device, to get himself reinstated as apoliceman, and Walling held out to him the double baitof renewed employment and the whole of the twentythousand dollars of reward offered for the return ofthe boy and the capture of the kidnappers.

Here a monumental piece of inefficiency and stupidityseems to have been committed, for though Westerveltvisited the chief of police no fewer than twentytimes, he was never trailed to his scores of appointmentswith his brother-in-law and the other abductor. Neitherdid the astute guardians of the law get wind of the factthat Mosher and Douglas were in and about New Yorkmost of the time. They failed to find out that Westerveltand probably one of the others had been seen withthe little Ross boy in their hands. Indeed, they failed tomake the least progress in the case, though they haddefinite information concerning the names of the kidnappers,both of them experienced criminals with longrecords. It might be hard to discover a more dreadfulpiece of police bluffing and blundering. First the Philadelphiaand then the New York forces gave the poorestpossible advice, made the most egregious boasts andpromises and then proceeded to show the most incrediblestupidity and lack of organization. A later prosecutorsummed it all up when he said the police hadbeen, at least, honest.

But, after Mosher and Douglas had been killed atJudge Van Brunt’s house and Douglas had made his dyingstatements, it was easy to lure Westervelt to Philadelphia,arrest him, charge him with aiding the kidnappersand his wife with having been an accessory. WalterRoss had identified Mosher and Douglas as the men whohad been in the buggy but had never seen Westervelt.A neighboring merchant appeared, however, and pickedhim out as the man who had spent half an hour in hisshop a few weeks after the kidnapping, asking manyquestions about the Rosses, especially as to their financialposition and the rumor that Christian K. Ross was bankrupt.Another man had seen him about Bay Ridge theday before Mosher and Douglas broke into the VanBrunt house and were killed. A woman appeared whohad seen Westervelt riding on a Brooklyn horse-car witha child like Charlie Ross. In short, it was soon reasonablyclear that the one-time New York policeman hadconspired with his brother-in-law and the other man toseize the boy and get the ransom. Westervelt’s motiveswere rancor at being caught at his tricks and dismissedand financial necessity, for he was almost in want afterhis discharge. Apparently, he had assisted in the preparationsfor the kidnapping, had the boy in his charge fora time and used his standing as a former officer to hoodwinkthe New York police. He had also had to do withsome of the ransom letters.

On August 30, 1875, Westervelt was brought to trialin the Court of Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia, JudgeElco*ck presiding. Theodore V. Burgin and George J.Berger, the two men who had helped the Van Bruntswaylay and kill the two burglars, testified as to Douglas’dying story. The witnesses above mentioned toldtheir versions of what they had heard and observed. Aporter in Stromberg’s Tavern, a drinking resort at 74Mott Street, then not yet overrun by the Celestialhordes, testified that Westervelt was often at the Taverndrinking and consulting with Mosher and Douglas,that he had boasted he could name the kidnappers andthat he had arranged for secret signals to reveal thepresence of the two confederates now dead. ChiefWalling also testified against the man. The jury returneda verdict of guilty on three counts of the indictment,reaching its decision on September 20, after long deliberation.On October 9, Judge Elco*ck sentenced thedisgraced policeman to serve seven years in solitary confinementat labor, in the Eastern Penitentiary.

Westervelt took his medicine. Never did he admitthat the decision against him was just, confess that hehad taken any part in the kidnapping or yield the leasthint as to the fate of the unfortunate little boy.

Nothing can touch the heart more than the fearfulvigil of the parents in such a case. In his book, ChristianK. Ross recites, without improper emotion, that,not counting the cases looked into for him by the Pinkertons,he personally or through others investigated twohundred and seventy-three children reported to be thelost Charlie. In every case there was a mistake or a deception.Some of the lads put forward were old enoughto have been conventional uncles to him.

In the following decades many strange rumors werebruited, many false trails followed to their empty endings,and many spurious or unbalanced claimants investigatedand exposed. The Charlie Ross fever did notdie down for a full generation, and even to-day mothersin the outlying States frighten their children intoobedience with the name and rumor of this stolen boy.He has become a fearful tradition, a figure of pathosand terror for the generations.

As recently as June 5 of the current year, the LosAngeles Times, a journal staid to reaction, printed longand credulous sticks of type to the effect that John W.Brown, ill in the General Hospital of Los Angeles, wasreally the long lost Charlie Ross. The evil rogue “confessed”that he had remained silent for fifty years inorder to “guard the honor of my mother” and said hehad been kidnapped by his “foster-father, WilliamHenry Brown,” for revenge when Mrs. Ross “declinedto 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 anddying alone explains the fevered hallucination.

As an old newspaper man, I know that any kind ofan item suggesting the discovery of Charlie Ross is alwaysgood copy and will be telegraphed about thecountry from end to end, and printed at greater orlesser length. If the thing has the least aura of credibilityabout it, Sunday features will follow, remarkablemainly for their inaccuracies. In other words, that sadlittle boy of Washington Lane long since became a classicto the American press.

At the end of more than fifty years the commentatorcan hazard no safer opinion on the probable fate ofCharlie Ross than did his contemporaries. The populartheories then were that he had died of grief and privation,that Mosher had drowned him in New York Baywhen he felt the police were near at hand, or that hehad been adopted by some distant family and taught toforget his home and parents. Of these hollow guesses,the reader may take his choice now as then.

II

“SEVERED FROM THE RACE”

Headless horsem*n and other strange ghostlyfigures march nightly on the beach at Nag’sHead. For more than two years these shadesand spectres have been seen and Coast GuardsmanSteve Basnight has been trying vainly to convince hisfellows. They have laughed upon him with sepulchrallaughter, as though the dead enjoyed their mirth. Theyhave 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, hadtrouble with the engine and saw or thought she sawa man standing there, brooding across the waters. Shecalled to him and he, as one shaken from some immortalreverie, moved slowly off, turning not, nor seemingquite to walk, but floating into the fog, silent and serene.

Some scoffers have suggested that these be but smugglersor rum runners, enlarged in the spume by the eyesof terror. But that cannot be so, for the coast guard isstaunch and active. This is no ordinary visitor, no thingof flesh and blood. This is some grieved and restlessspirit, risen through a transcendence of his grave andcome to haunt this wild and forlorn region.

George Midgett, long a scoffer, has seen this uncharnelledbeing most closely and accurately. It is a tall,great man, clad in purest white, strolling along thebeach in the full moonlight, which is no clearer thanthe sad and dreaming face.

It is Aaron Burr. And he is seeking his lost daughter,whose wrecked ship is believed by many to have beendriven ashore at this point.

So much for the lasting charm of doubt, since I takemy substance here, and most of my mystery, from theNew York World of June 9, 1927, contained in a dispatchfrom Manteo, N. C., bearing the date of the previousday—one hundred and fifteen years after thehappening.

But if we see Aaron Burr ghostwalking in the moonlightas once he trod in the tortured flesh at the Battery,looking out upon those bitter waters that denied himhope, or if we believe, with many writers, that he fellupon his knees and cried out, “By this blow I am severedfrom the human race!” we are still not much nearer tothe pathos or the mystery of that old incident in 1812,when Theodosia Burr set out for New York by seaand never reached it.

“By and by,” says Parton in his “The Life and Timesof Aaron Burr,” “some idle tales were started in thenewspapers, that the Patriot had been captured by piratesand all on board murdered except Theodosia, whowas carried on shore as a captive.”

Idle tales they may have been, but their vitality hasoutlived the pathetic facts. Indeed, unless probabilitybe false and romance true, “the most brilliant woman ofher day in America” perished at sea a little more thana hundred and fifteen years ago, caught off the VirginiaCapes in a hurricane that scattered the British war fleetand crushed the “miserable little pilot boat” that wastrying to bear her to New York. In that more thana century of intervening time, however, a tradition ofdoubt has clouded itself about the quietus of AaronBurr’s celebrated daughter which puts her story immovablyupon the roster of the great mysteries of disappearance.The various accounts of piratical atrocitiesconnected with her death may be fanciful or evenstudiedly fictive, but even this realization does nothingto dispel the fog.

Theodosia Burr was born in New York in 1783 andeducated under the unflagging solicitude and carefulpersonal direction of her distinguished father, whowanted her to be, as he testifies in his letters, the equalof any woman on earth. To this enlightened trainingthe precious girl responded with notable spirit and intellectualacquisitiveness, mastering French as a childand becoming proficient in Latin and Greek before shewas adolescent. At fourteen, her mother having diedsome years earlier, she was already mistress of the houseof the New York senator and a figure in the best politicalsociety of the times. As a slip of a girl she playedhostess to Volney, Talleyrand, Jerome Bonaparte andnumberless other notables, and bore, in addition to herrepute as a bluestocking, the name of a most beautifuland charming young woman. Something of her qualitymay be read from her numerous extant letters, two ofwhich are quoted below.

In 1801, just after her father had received the famoustied vote for the Presidency and declined to enter intothe conspiracy which aimed to prefer him to Jefferson,recipient of the popular majority, Theodosia Burr wasmarried to Joseph Alston, a young Carolina lawyer andplanter 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 friendand confidante to the end, was making her twenty days’journey to her new home in South Carolina, where herhusband owned a residence in Charleston and severalrice plantations in the northern part of the state.

At the time of the famous duel with Hamilton, in1804, Burr was still Vice-President, still one of the chiefpolitical figures and at the very height of his popularityand fortune, an elevation from which that unfortunateencounter began his dislodgment. Theodosiawas in the South with her husband at the time and knewnothing either of the challenge or of the duel itself untilweeks after Hamilton was dead.

Of the merits of the Burr-Hamilton controversy orthe right and wrong of either man’s conduct little needbe said here. As time goes on it becomes more and moreapparent that Burr in no way exceeded becoming conductor violated the gentlemanly code as then practised.Hamilton had been his persistent and by no means alwayshonorable enemy. He had attacked and not infrequentlybelied his opponent, thwarting him wherehe could politically and even resorting to the use of hispersonal connections for the private humiliation of hisfoe. The answer in 1804 to such tactics was the challenge.Burr gave it and insisted on satisfaction. Hamiltonmet him on the heights at Weehawken, across theHudson from New York, and fell mortally woundedat the first exchange, dying thirty-one hours later.

It is evident from a reading of the newspapers of thetime and from the celebrated sermon on Hamilton’sdeath delivered by Dr. Nott, later president of UnionCollege, that duelling was then so common that thereexisted “a preponderance of opinion in favor of it,”and that the spot at which Hamilton fell was so muchin use for affairs of honor that Dr. Nott apostrophizedit as “ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned with therichest blood, I tremble at the crimes you record againstus, the annual register of murders which you keep andsend up to God!” Nevertheless, the town was shockedby the death of Hamilton, and Burr’s enemies seized themoment to circulate all manner of absurd calumnieswhich gained general credence and served to undo thevictorious antagonist.

It was reported that Hamilton had not fired at all, astory which was refuted by his powder-stained emptypistol. Next it was charged that Burr had coldly shot hisopponent down after he had fired into the air. The factseems to be that Hamilton discharged his weapon afraction of a second after Burr, just as he was struck byhis adversary’s ball. Hamilton’s bullet cut a twig overBurr’s head. The many yarns to the general effect thatBurr was a dead shot and had practised secretly formonths before he sent the challenge seem also to belongto the realm of fiction. Burr was never an expert withfire-arms, but he was courageous, collected and determined.He had every right to believe, from Hamilton’spast conduct, that his opponent would show him nomercy on the field. Both men were soldiers and acquaintedwith the code and with the use of weapons.

But Hamilton’s friends were numerous, powerful andbitter. They left nothing undone that might bringupon Burr the fullest measure of public and privatereprehension. The results of their campaign were peculiar,inasmuch as Burr lost his influence in the stateswhich had formerly been the seat of his power andgained a high popularity in the comparatively weak newwestern states, where Hamilton and the Federalist leaderswere regarded with hostility. At the expiration of histerm of office Burr found himself politically dead andpractically exiled by the charges of murder which hadbeen lodged against him both in New York and NewJersey.

The duel and its consequences marked the beginningof the Burr misfortunes. Undoubtedly the ostracismwhich greeted him after his retirement from office wasthe immediate fact which moved him to undertake hisfamous enterprise against the West and Mexico, anadventure that resulted in his trial for treason. The factthat he was acquitted, even with the weight of thegovernment and the personal influence of PresidentJefferson, his onetime friend, thrown against him, didnot save him from still further popular dislike, and hewas at length forced to leave the country. It was in thecourse of this exile in Europe that Theodosia wrote himthe well known letter from which I quote an illuminatingextract:

“I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonderat every new misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,you appear to me so superior, so elevated above othermen; I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,admiration, reverence, love and pride, that very littlesuperstition would be necessary to make me worship you as asuperior being; such enthusiasm does your character excitein me. When I afterwards revert to myself, how insignificantmy best qualities appear. My vanity would be greater if Ihad not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is ourrelationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughterof such a man.”

Burr remained abroad for four years, trying vainly tointerest the British government and then Napoleon invarious schemes of privateering. The net result of hisactivities in England was an order to leave the country.Nor did Burr fare any better in France. Napoleonsimply refused to receive him and the American’s pastacquaintance with and hospitable treatment of the emperor’sbrother, once king of Westphalia, failed to availhim. Consequently, Burr slipped back into the UnitedStates in 1812, quite like a thief in the night, not certainwhat reception he might get and even fearful lest Hamilton’swildest partisans might actually undertake tothrow him into jail and try him for the shooting of theirchief. The reception he got was hostile and suspiciousenough, but there was no attempt to proceed legally.

Theodosia, who had never ceased to work in herfather’s interest, writing to everyone she knew and beseechingall those who had been her friends in the daysof Burr’s ascendancy, in an effort to clear the way forhis return to his native land, was overjoyed at the homecomingof her parent and expressed her pleasure in variouscharmingly written letters, wherein she promisedherself the excitement of a trip to New York as soonas 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 themother prostrated and the grandfather, who had dotedon the boy, supervised his education and centered allhis hopes upon him, bereft of his composure and optimism,possibly for the first time in his varied andtempestuous life. Mrs. Alston’s letters at this time deserveat least quotation:

“A few miserable days past, my dear father, and your lateletters would have gladdened my soul; and even now I rejoicein their contents as much as it is possible for me torejoice at anything; but there is no more joy for me; theworld is a blank. I have lost my boy. My child is gone forever. He expired on the thirtieth of June. My head is notsufficiently collected to say any thing further. May Heaven,by other blessings, make you some amends for the noblegrandson 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 havelost. I think Omnipotence could give me no equivalent formy boy; no, none—none.”

This was the woman who set out a few months later,sadly emaciated and very weak, to join her father inNew York, hoping that she might gain strength andhope again from the burdened but undaunted man whonever yet had failed her.

The second war with England was in progress. Theodosia’shusband was governor of South Carolina, generalof the state militia and active in the field. He couldnot leave his post. Accordingly, the plan of making thetrip overland in her own coach was abandoned andMrs. Alston decided to set sail in the Patriot, a smallschooner which had put into Charleston after a privateeringenterprise. Parton says that “she was commandedby an experienced captain and had for a sailingmaster an old New York pilot, noted for his skill andcourage. The vessel was famous for her sailing qualitiesand it was confidently expected she would perform thevoyage to New York in five or six days.” On the otherhand, Burr himself referred to the ship bitterly as “themiserable little pilot boat.”

Whatever the precise facts, the Patriot was madeready and Theodosia went aboard with her maid anda personal physician, whom Burr had sent south fromNew York to attend his daughter on the voyage. Theguns of the Patriot had been dismounted and storedbelow. To give her further ballast and to defray theexpenses of the trip, Governor Alston filled the holdwith tierces of rice from his plantations. The captaincarried a letter from Governor Alston addressed to thecommander of the British fleet, which was lying off theCapes, explaining the painful circ*mstances underwhich the little schooner was voyaging and requestingsafe passage to New York. Thus occupied, the Patriotput out from Charleston on the afternoon of December30th and crossed the bar on the following morning.Here fact ends and conjecture begins.

When, after the elapse of a week, the Patriot had notreached New York, Burr began to worry and to makeinquiries, but nothing was to be discovered. He couldnot even be sure until the arrival of his son-in-law’sletter, that Theodosia had set sail. Even then, he hopedthere might be some mistake. When a second letterfrom the South made it plain that she had gone on thePatriot, Burr still did not abandon hope and we see thepicture of this sorely punished man walking every dayfrom his law office in Nassau street to the fashionablepromenade at the Battery, where he strolled up anddown, oblivious to the hostile or impertinent glances ofthe vulgar, staring out toward the Narrows—in vain.

The poor little schooner was never seen again nor didany member of her crew reach safety and send word ofher end. In due time came the report of the hurricaneoff Cape Hatteras, three days after the departure of thePatriot. Later still it was found that the storm hadbeen of sufficient power to scatter the British fleet andsend other vessels to the bottom. In all probability thecraft which bore Theodosia had foundered with allhands.

Naturally, every other possibility came to be considered.It was at first believed that the Patriot mighthave been taken by a British man-of-war and held onaccount of her previous activities. Before this could bedisproved it was suggested that the schooner mightreadily have been attacked by pirates, since her gunswere stored below decks, and Mrs. Alston takenprisoner. Since there were still a few buccaneers inSouthern waters, who sporadically took advantage ofthe preoccupation of the maritime powers with theirwars, this theory of Theodosia Alston’s disappearancegained many adherents, chiefly among the romantics,it is true. But the possibility of such a thing was alsoseriously considered by the husband and for a time bythe father, who hoped the unfortunate woman mighthave been taken to one of the lesser West Indies by somenot unfeeling corsair. Surely, she would soon or latemake her escape and win her way back to her dear ones.In the end Burr rejected this idea, too.

“No, no,” he said to a friend who revived the fableof the pirates, “she is indeed dead. Were she alive allthe prisons in the world could not keep her from herfather.”

But the mystery persisted and so the rumors andstories would not down. For a number of years after1813 the newspapers contained, from time to time, reportsfrom various parts of the world, generally to theeffect that a beautiful and cultured woman had beenseen aboard a ship supposed to be manned by pirates,that such a woman had been found in a colony of searefugees in some vaguely described West Indian orSouth American retreat, or that a woman of Englishor American characteristics was being detained in anisland prison, whither she had been consigned along witha captured piratical crew. The woman was always, byinference at least, Theodosia Burr.

Nor were the persevering Burr calumniators idle, acirc*mstance which seems to testify to the fear hisenemies must have had of this strange and greatly mistakenman. Theodosia Burr had been seen in Europe incompany with a British naval officer who was payingher marked attentions; she had been located on an islandoff Panama, where she was living in contentmentas the wife of a buccaneer; she was known to be inMexico with a new husband who had first been hercaptor, then her lover and now was in the southern Republictrying to revive Burr’s dream of empire.

The death of Governor Alston in 1816 caused a freshcrop of the old stories to blossom forth and the longdeferred demise of Aaron Burr in 1836 released a stillmore formidable crop of rumors, fables and speculations.It was not until Burr had passed into the gravethat there appeared on the American scene a type ofromantic who made the next fifty years delightful. Hewas the old reformed pirate who desecrated his exit intoeternity with a Theodosia Burr yarn. The great celebrityof the woman in her lifetime, the tragic fame of herfather and the circ*mstances of her death naturallyconspired to promote this kind of aberrant activity inmany idle or unsettled minds. The result was that “pirates”who had been present at the capture of the Patriotin the first days of 1813 began to appear in manyparts of the country and even in England, where theytold, usually on their deathbeds, the most engaging andconflicting tales. It took, as I have remarked, half acentury for all of them to die off.

The accounts given by these various confessors differedin details only. All agreed that the Patriot hadbeen captured by sea rovers off the Carolina coast andthat the entire crew had been forced to walk the plankor been cut down by the pirates. Thus the fabulists accountedfor the fact that nothing had ever been heardfrom any of Mrs. Alston’s shipmates. Nearly all accountsagreed that Theodosia had been carried captiveto an unnamed island where she had first been a rebelliousprisoner but later the docile and devoted mateof the pirate chief. A few of the relators gave theirnarratives 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 tothe same fate. The names of the pirate ships and piratecaptains supposed to have caught the Patriot and disposedof Theodosia Burr Alston ranged through all thelists of shipping. No two dying corsairs ever agreed onthis point.

Forty years after the disappearance of Mrs. Alstonthis typical yarn appeared in the Pennsylvania Enquirer:

Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and theirobvious conflict with known facts, the public took thedying confessions seriously and the editors of Sundaysupplements printed them with a gay air of credenceand a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was accomplishedby this complicity with a most unashamedand unregenerate band of downright liars, the piratelegend came to be disseminated in every civilized countryand there was gradually built up the great falsetradition which hedges the name and fame of TheodosiaBurr. She has even appeared in novels, American, Britishand Continental, in the shape of a mysterious queenof freebooters.

The celebrity of her case came to be such that it wasin time seized upon by the art fakers—perhaps an inevitablestep toward genuine famosity. Several authenticlikenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant, notably thepainting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery,Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston,N. Y., whom Burr discovered, apprenticed toGilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for study. He paintedthe landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of theCapitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neitherrestrained nor satisfied the freebooters of the arts. Onthe other hand, the pirate tales inspired them to profitableactivity.

In the nineties of the last century the New Yorknewspapers contained accounts of a painting of TheodosiaBurr which had been found in an old seashore cottagenear Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwardsmade famous by the gliding experiments of the brothersWright, and the scene of their first successful airplaneflights. The printed accounts said that this picture hadbeen found on an old schooner which had been wreckedoff the coast many years before and various inconclusiveand roundabout devices were employed for identifyingit as a likeness of the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.

Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most floridpublicity in New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently,given out by one of the prominent Fifth Avenueart dealers. A woman client, it was said, had become interestedin the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr,recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of NorthCarolina. Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken asearch for the missing work of art and had at lengthrecovered it, together with a most fascinating history.

In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of ElizabethCity, N. C., spent the summer at Nag’s Head, a resorton the outer barrier of sand which protects the NorthCarolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape Hatteras.While there he was called to visit an aged womanwho lived in an ancient cabin about two miles out ofthe town. His ministrations served to recover her healthand she expressed the wish to pay him in some wayother than with money, of which useful commodity shehad none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerablecuriosity, a most beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful,proud and intelligent lady of high social standing.”He immediately coveted this picture and asked hispatient for it, since she wanted to give him something inreturn for his leechcraft. She not only gave him theportrait but she told him how she had come by it. Manyyears before, when she was still a girl, the old woman’sadmirer and subsequent first husband had, with someothers, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, whichhad stranded with all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfastserved but undisturbed in the cabin. The pilot boatwas empty and several trunks had been broken open,their contents being scattered about. Among the salvagedgoods was this portrait, which had fallen to thelot of the old woman’s swain and come through him toher.

From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture hadpassed to others without ever having left ElizabethCity. There the enterprising dealer had found it in thepossession of a substantial widow, and she had consentedto part with it. The rest of the story—the essentials—wasto be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to besure, the Patriot, the date of its stranding agreed withthe beclouded incidents of January, 1813, and the “intelligentlady of high social standing” was none otherthan Theodosia Burr.

It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelousand romantic work do not show the least resemblanceto the known portrait of Theodosia, and it isalso lamentable to find that the art dealer, in his sweetaccount of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptionsand blunders as regards his subject and the tales ofher demise. But, while both these portrait yarns may bedismissed without further attention, they have undoubtedlyserved to keep the old and enchanting storybefore modern eyes.

In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of theTheodosia Burr case seems to be the acceptable one. Theboat on which she embarked was small and frail. Atthe very time it must have been passing the treacherousregion of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficientviolence to scatter the heavy British frigates andships of the line. The fate of a little schooner in suchweather is almost a matter for assurance. Yet of certaintythere can be none. The famous daughter of thetraditional American villain—the devil incarnate to allthe melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers andpropagandists—went down to sea in her co*ckleshell andreturned no more. Eleven decades have lighted nocandle in the darkness that engulfed her.

III

THE VANISHED ARCHDUKE

One of the most engrossing of modern mysteriesis that which hides the final destinationof Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, betterknown to a generation of newspaper readers as JohnOrth. In the dawn of July 13, 1890, the bark SantaMargarita,[2] flying the flag of an Austrian merchantman,though her owner and skipper was none otherthan this wandering scion of the imperial Hapsburgs,set sail from Ensenada, on the southern shore of thegreat estuary of the Plata, below Buenos Aires, andforthwith vanished from the earth. With her went JohannSalvator, his variety-girl wife and a crew oftwenty-six. Though search has been made in everythinkable port, through the distant archipelagoes of thePacific, in ten thousand outcast towns, and thoughemissaries have visited all the fabled refuges of missingmen, from time to time, over a period of nearly fortyyears, no sight of any one connected with the lost shiphas ever been got, and no man knows with certaintywhat fate befell her and her princely master.

[2] Sometimes written Sainte Marguerite.

The enigma of his passing is not the only circ*mstanceof curious doubt and romantic coloration thathedges 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 episodewill have to be related.

The Archduke Johann Salvator was born at Florenceon the twenty-fifth day of November, 1852, the youngestson of Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany, andMaria Antonia of the Two Sicilies. He was, accordingly,a second cousin of the late Emperor Franz Josef ofAustria-Hungary. At the baptismal font young Johannreceived enough names to carry any man blissfullythrough life, his full array having been JohannNepomuk Salvator Marie Josef Jean Ferdinand BalthazarLouis Gonzaga Peter Alexander Zenobius Antonin.

Archduke Johann was still a child when the Italianrevolutionists drove out his father and later united Tuscanyto the growing kingdom of Victor Emanuel. Sothe hero of this account was reared in Austria and educatedfor the army. Commissioned as a stripling, he roserapidly in rank for reasons quite other than his familyconnections. The young prince was endowed with agood mind and notable for independence of thought.He felt, as he expressed it, that he ought to earn hispay, an opinion which led to indefatigable militarystudies and some well-intentioned, but ill-advised writings.First, the young archduke discovered what he consideredfaults in the artillery, and he wrote a brochureon the subject. The older heads didn’t like it and hadhim disciplined. Later on, Johann made a study of militaryorganization and wrote a well-known pamphletcalled “Education or Drill,” wherein he attacked theold method of training soldiers as automatons and advisedthe mental development of the rank and file, inline with policies now generally adopted. But such advancedideas struck the military masters of fifty yearsago as bits of heresy and anarchy. Archduke Johannwas disciplined by removal from the army and the withdrawalof his commission. At thirty-five he had reachednext to the highest possible rank and been cashieredfrom it. This in 1887.

Johann Salvator had, however, been much more thana progressive soldier man. He was an accomplished musician,composer of popular waltzes, an oratorio and theoperetta “Les Assassins.” He was an historian and publicist,of eminent official standing at least, having collaboratedwith Crown Prince Rudolf in the widely distributedwork, “The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy inWord and Picture,” which was published in 1886. Hewas also a distinguished investigator of psychic phenomena,his library on this subject having been the mostcomplete in Europe—a fact suggestive of somethingabnormal.

Personally the man was both handsome and charming.He was, in spite of imperial rank and military habitude,democratic, simple, friendly, and unaffected. Heliked to live the life of a gentleman, with diverse interestsin life, now playing the gallant in Vienna—tothe high world of the court and the half world of thetheater by turns; again retiring to his library and hisstudies, sometimes vegetating at his country estates andworking on his farms. Official trammels and the rigidetiquette of the ancient court seemed to irk him. Still,he seems to have suffered keen chagrin over his dismissalfrom the army.

Johann Salvator had, from adolescence, been a closepersonal friend of the Austrian crown prince. This intimacyhad extended even to participation in some ofthe personal and sentimental escapades for which the ill-starredRudolf was remarkable. Apparently the twomen hardly held an opinion apart, and it was acceptedthat, with the death of the aging emperor and the accessionof his son, Johann Salvator would be a mostpowerful personage.

Suddenly, in 1889, all these high hopes and promisescame to earth. After some rumblings and rumorings atSchoenbrunn, it was announced that Johann Salvatorhad petitioned the emperor for permission to resign allrank and title, sever his official connection with theroyal house, and even give up his knighthood in theOrder of the Golden Fleece. The petitioner also askedfor the right to call himself Johann Orth, after theestate and castle on the Gmündensee, which was thefavorite abode of the prince and of his aged mother.All these requests were officially granted and confirmedby the emperor, and so the man John Orth came intobeing.

The first of the two Orth mysteries lies concealed behindthe official records of this strange resignation fromrank and honor. Even to-day, after Orth has beenmissing for a whole generation, after all those whomight have been concerned in keeping secret the motivesand measures of those times have been gathered tothe dust, and after the empire itself has been dissolvedinto its defeated components, the facts in the mattercannot be stated with any confidence. There are twoprincipal versions of the affair, and both will have tobe given so that the reader may make his own choice.The popular or romantic account deserves to be consideredfirst.

In the eighties the stage of Vienna was graced byseveral handsome young women of the name Stübel.One of them, Lori, achieved considerable operatic distinction.Another sailed to New York with her brotherand appeared in operetta and in musical comedy at theold Casino. The youngest of these sisters was LudmillaStübel, commonly called Millie, and on that accountsometimes, erroneously, Emilie.

This daring and charming girl began her career in aViennese operetta chorus and rose to the rank ofprincipal. She was not, so far as I can gather from thecontemporary newspapers, remarkable for voice ordramatic ability, but her “surpassingly voluptuousbeauty and piquant manners” won her almost limitlessattention and gave her a popularity that reached acrossthe Atlantic. In the middle eighties Fräulein Stübel appearedat the Thalia Theater in the Bowery, New York,then the shrine of German comic opera in the UnitedStates, creating the rôles of Bettina in “The Mascot”and Violette in “The Merry War.”

The New York Herald, reviewing her Americancareer a few years later, said: “In New York she becamesomewhat notorious for her risqué costumes. On oneoccasion Fräulein Stübel attended the Arion Ball in malecostume, and created a scene when ejected. This conductseems to have ended her career in the UnitedStates.”

This beautiful and spirited plebeian swam into theken of Johann Salvator, of Austria, in the fall of 1888,when that impetuous prince had already been dismissedfrom the army and his other affairs were gathering tothe storm that broke some months afterward. Catastrophicevents followed rapidly.

In January, 1889, Prince Rudolf was found dead inthe hunting lodge at Mayerling, with the BaronessMarie Vetsera, to whom the heir of a hundred kings issaid to have been passionately devoted, and with whomhe may have died in a suicide pact, though it has beensaid the crown prince and his sweetheart were murderedby persons whose identity has been sedulously concealed.This mysterious fatality robbed the dispirited JohannSalvator of his closest and most powerful friend. It mayhave had a good deal to do with what followed.

A few months later Johann Salvator married morganaticallyhis stage beauty. It was now, after the lapseof a few months, that he resigned all rank, title, andprivileges, left Austria with his wife, and married hercivilly in London.

Naturally enough, it has generally been held that thedeath of the crown prince and the romance with thesinger explained everything. The archduke, in disgracewith the army, bereft of his truest and most illustriousfriend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he couldnot fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore thepurple of his birth, had decided to “surrender all forlove” and seek solace in foreign lands with the lady ofhis choice. This interpretation has all the elements ofcolor and sweetness needed for conviction in the mindsof the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem tobear skeptical examination.

Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator wasa man of independent mind and quixotic temperament,that he was embittered by his demotion from militaryrank, and that he must have been greatly depressed bythe death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friendand his most powerful intercessor at court, no such extremeproceeding as the renunciation of all rank andthe severing of family ties was called for.

It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through anaffair with a woman of inferior rank, had embitteredFranz Josef and probably caused the monarch to lookwith uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons amongthe members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly themorganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shiningmoth of the theater displeased the monarch andwidened the breach between him and his kinsman; butit must be remembered that Johann Salvator was onlya distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in linefor succession to the throne; that he had already beendeprived of military or other official connection withthe government; and that affairs of this kind have beenby 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 hadnot 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 abeliever in the sacredness of royal rank. He must havelooked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommonor specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciationof rank and privilege can only have struck him asa precedent of the gravest kind.

Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extremestep because of his histrionic wife. He might haveremained in Austria happily enough, aside from a fewsnubs and the exclusion from further official participationin politics. He might have gone to any country inEurope and become the center of a distinguished society.His children would probably have been ennobled,and even his wife eventually given the same sort ofrecognition that was accorded the consorts of otherprinces in similar case, notably the Archduke FranzFerdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitatedthe World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the mostcomplete and unprecedented severance from all thatseemed most inalienably his. Historians have had tointerpret this action in another light, and their explanationforms the second version of the incident, probablythe true one.

In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable strugglesfor hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gothahad been elected Prince of Bulgaria, butRussia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and theother powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewiserefrained from giving their approval. Austria was in aspecially delicate position as regards this matter. She wasthe natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans,but her statesmen did not feel strong enoughopenly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they hadtheir eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinandhad been an officer in the Austrian army. He was wellliked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regardof Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to thepresent question is that he was the friend of JohannSalvator.

In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russiaattempted to drive the unwelcome German princelingfrom the Bulgarian throne by various military cabals,acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues, and the like.Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countriesrallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. Itis known that he interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand,and he may have approached the emperor. Failing to getaction at Vienna, he is said to have formed a plan ofa military character which was calculated to force thehands of Austria, Germany, and England, bringingthem into the field against Russia, to the end that Ferdinandmight be recognized and more firmly seated.The plot was discovered in time, according to thosewho hold this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvatorcame under the most severe displeasure of theemperor.

It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately,that Johann Salvator’s rash course was onethat came very near involving Austria in a Russian war,and that the most emphatic exhibitions of the emperor’sreprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly,it is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender ofall rank and privileges by his cousin and exiled him fromthe empire for life. Here, at least, is a story of a moreprobable character, inasmuch as it presents provocationfor the unprecedented harshness with which ArchdukeJohann Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganaticmarriage and his other conflicts with higherauthority were seized upon as disguises under which tohide 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 hisbreast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor, whichthing can not have happened since the negotiations betweenthe emperor and his recreant cousin were conductedat a distance through official emissaries or bymail.

Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the EmpressElizabeth, recounts even more fantastic yarns.She says in so many words that Crown Prince Rudolfwas in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others toseize the crown of Hungary away from the emperorand so establish Rudolf as king before his time. It wasfear of discovery in this plot, she continues, that led tothe suicide of Rudolf. A few days after Mayerling, sherecites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box(apparently containing secret papers) on a promenadein the mist and he kissed her hand, exclaimed that shehad saved his life—and more in the same strain.

Both these elevated ladies, it will be recalled, wroteor talked in self-justification and with the usual stupidityof the guilty. We may dismiss their yarns as merewomen’s gabble and return to the solid fact that JohannSalvator, impetuous, a little mad and smarting under hismilitary humiliations, tried to mix into Balkan politicswith the result that he found himself in the position ofa bungling interloper, almost a betrayer of his country’sinterests.

Less than two years ago some further light wasthrown upon the affair of the missing archduke throughwhat have passed as letters taken from the Austrianarchives after the fall of the Hapsburgs. These letterswere published in various European and Americannewspapers and journals and they may be, as asserted,the veritable official documents. The portions I quoteare taken from the Sunday Magazine of the New YorkWorld of January 10 and January 17, 1926. I mustremark that I regard them with suspicion.

The first letter purports to be a report on the violentmisconduct of Johann Salvator at Venice, as follows:

Then follows what may well have been the recreantarchduke’s letter of abdication, thus:

Whether one cousin would use such a tone to another,even an emperor, is a question which every readermust consider for himself, quite as he must decidewhether grown sons of kings were capable of suchmiddle-class sentiment.

There follows the reply of Franz Josef which has thering of genuineness:

Some correspondence followed on the subject of JohnOrth’s retention of his Austrian citizenship, which theemperor wished at first to deny him.

In any event, Johann Salvator, Archduke of Austria,and Prince of Tuscany, became John Orth, leftAustria in the winter of 1889, purchased and refittedthe bark Santa Margarita, had her taken to England, andthere joined her with his operetta wife. He sailed forBuenos Aires in the early spring, with a cargo of cement,and reached the Rio de la Plata in May. His wife wentahead 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 atGmünden:

The vessel was accordingly made ready at Ensenada,and on July 12, 1890, John Orth wrote what proved tobe the last communication ever sent by him. It was addressedto his attorney in Vienna and said that he wasleaving to join his ship for a trip to Valparaiso, whichmight consume fifty or sixty days. His captain, Orthwrote, had been taken ill, and his first officer had provedincompetent, so that it had been necessary to dischargehim. Accordingly Orth was personally in command ofhis vessel, aided by the second officer, who was an experiencedseaman. This is a somewhat altered version,to be sure.

The apparent intention of the renegade archduke atthis time was to follow the sea. He had caused the SantaMargarita to be elaborately refitted inside, had insuredher for two hundred and thirty thousand marks withthe Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, and he hadwritten his aged mother at Lake Gmünden of his determinationto make his living as a mariner and an honestman, instead of existing like an idler on his comfortableprivate means. There is nothing in the recordto indicate that he intended to go into hiding.

The Santa Margarita accordingly sailed on the thirteenthof July. With good fortune she should havebeen in the Straits of Magellan the first week in August,and her arrival at Valparaiso was to be expectednot later than the first of September. But the ship didnot reach port. The middle of September passed withoutword of her. When she had still not been reported bythe first week in October the alarm was given.

As the result of diplomatic representations from theAustrian minister, the Argentine government soonmade elaborate arrangements for a search. On Decemberthe second the gunboat Bermejo, Captain Don Mensilla,put out from Buenos Aires and made a fourmonths’ cruise of the Argentine coast, visiting everyconceivable anchorage where a vessel of the Santa Margarita’ssize might possibly have found refuge. DonMensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20,and continuing intermittently for nearly a month,there had been storms of the greatest violence in theregion of Cape Blanco and the southern extremity ofTierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which hadbeen in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbanceshad been of unusual character and duration,more than sufficient to overwhelm a sailing bark in thetortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.

Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that avessel answering to the general description of the SantaMargarita had been wrecked off the little island ofNuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course of a hurricanewhich lasted from August 3 to August 5, atwhich dates the Santa Margarita was very likely in thisvicinity. The Argentine commander could find no traceof the wreck and no clew to any survivors. He continuedhis search for more than two months longer andthen returned to base with his melancholy report.

At the same time the Chilean government had sentout the small steamer Toro to search the Pacific coastfrom Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her captain returnedafter several months with no word of the archduke orany member of his crew.

These investigations, plus the study of logs and reportsat the Hamburg maritime observatory, soon convincedmost authorities that John Orth and his vesselwere at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as inthat of Roger Tichborne,[4] an old mother’s fond devotionrefused to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance.The Grand duch*ess Maria Antonia could not bringherself to believe that winds and waves had swallowedup her beloved son. She stormed the court at Viennawith her entreaties, with the result that Franz Joseffinally sent out the corvette Saida, with instructions tomake a fresh search, including the islands of the SouthSeas, whither, according to a fanciful report, JohnOrth had made his way.

At the same time the grand duch*ess appealed to PopeLeo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries inSouth America and all over the world to search forJohn Orth and send immediate news of his presence tothe Holy See.

The Saida returned to Fiume at the end of a yearwithout having been able to accomplish anything beyondconfirming the report of Don Mensilla. And inresponse to the pope’s letter many reports came back,but none of them resulted in the finding of JohnOrth.

Shortly after the return of the Saida the Austrianheirs 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 ontwo banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen,Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by thearchduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. Oneof these banks raised the question of the death proof,claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of anunproved death. The courts decided against the bank,thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the endof the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated.About two million crowns were accordingly paid overto the Austrian custodians.

In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked tohand over the property of John Orth to his nephew andheir, and this high authority then declared that themissing archduke had been dead since the hurricane ofAugust 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supremecourt of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and adecision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which thearchduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the dayon which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coastsbegan. His property was ordered distributed, and hisgoods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments,art collection and furniture, which had long been preservedin the various villas and castles of the absentprince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, duringthe months of October and November, 1912.

In spite of the great care that was taken to discoverthe facts in this case, and in the face of the variousofficial reports and court decisions, a great romantictradition grew up about John Orth and his mysteriousdestiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, hisabandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedlymuch to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as itmay, the world has for more than thirty years beenfeasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth andhis actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese warthe story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagatowas in reality the missing archduke. The story wascredited by many, but there proved to be no foundationfor it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using theirheavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by thearchduke in that old monograph which had got himdisciplined.

Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chiefauthority for one of the most plausible and insistent ofall the John Orth stories. According to this politicianand man of letters, there was present at Concordia, inthe province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in theyears 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguishedlooking stranger of military habit and bearing,who had few friends, received few visits, alwaysspoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an Austrian merchantof Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himselfin a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirschtreated the stranger with marked respect and deference.

Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion ofthe Jefe de Policia of Concordia, an official who firmlybelieved the man of mystery to be John Orth. On theother hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey, the closest friendand sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway,denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at thewhole tale. At the same time, say Garzon and the chiefof police, Señor de Villa Rey tried to conceal the presenceof the man, and it was the activity of the policeauthorities, executing the law authorizing them to investigateand keep records of the identity of all strangers,that frightened the “archduke” away. He went toParaguay and worked in a sawmill belonging to VillaRey. Shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanesewar he left for Japan.

This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion.Senator Garzon’s book is full of doubtful corroborationand too subtle reasoning, but it is rewarding and entertainingfor those who like romance and read Spanish.[5]

[5] See Bibliography.

The missing John Orth has likewise been reportedalive from many other unlikely parts of the world andunder the most incredible circ*mstances. Austrian, German,British, French, and American newspapers havebeen full of such stories every few years. The muchsought man has been “found” mining in Canada, runninga pearl fishery in the Paumotus, working in a factoryin Ohio, fighting with the Boers in South Africa,prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store inTexas—what not and where not?

One of the most recent apparitions of John Orthhappened in New York. On the last day of March,1924, a death certificate was filed with the Departmentof Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvatorof Austria, the missing archduke, had died earlythat morning of heart disease in Columbus Hospital,one of the smaller semi-public institutions. DoctorJohn Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital, signed thecertificate and said he had been convinced of the man’sidentity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”

Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known societyphotographer,” confirmed the story, and said she haddiscovered the identity of the man the year before andadmitted some of her friends to the secret. He hadlately been receiving some code cables from Europewhich came collect, and his friends had obligingly suppliedthe money with which to pay for these mysteriousmessages. The dead man, said Mrs. Fairchild, had beenliving as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a lecturerin Sanscrit and general scholar.

“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured onSanscrit,” she recounted. “In his delirium he talkedSanscrit, and it was very beautiful.”

According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,”he had furnished her with the true version of hisirruption from the Austrian court in 1889. The emperorFranz Josef had applied a vile name to John Salvator’smother, whereupon the archduke had drawn hissword, broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off hisdecorations and medals, flung them into the imperialface and finally blacked the emperor’s eye. Stridingfrom the palace to the barracks, the archduke had foundhis own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!”and offer him its loyalty. He could have dethroned theemperor then and there, he said, but he elected to quitthe country and have done with the social life whichdisgusted him.

This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics theworld over. Aside from the preposterousness of the yarnas a whole, one needs only to remember that JohannSalvator was an artillery officer and never held eitheran active or honorary cavalry command; that he was,at the time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissedfrom the army and without military rank, and thatstriking the emperor would have been an offense thatmust have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it isobvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling thelegs of his friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams.Except in cases where special prearrangementshave been made, as in the instances of great newspapers,large business houses, banks, and the departments ofgovernment, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid.An imperial government would hardly thus impose ona 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 intothe case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was said to havebeen the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of thedead “archduke,” was found dead in her apartment onEast Fifty-ninth Street that afternoon. She haddrowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she had gotinto the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteriesof both wrists with a razor, and bled to death.Despondency over “John Orth’s” death was given asthe explanation.

These tales have all had their charm, much as theyhave lacked probability. Each and all they rest uponthe single fact that the man was never seen dead. Thereis, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perishedin the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, butit is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive.For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appealsof his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and towhom he had written every few days whenever he hadbeen separated from her. He would have been found bythe papal missionaries in some part of the world, andthe three vessels sent upon his final course must surelyhave discovered some trace of the man. It should beremembered that, except for letters that were tracedback to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked likea communication was ever received from Orth or LudmillaStübel, or from any member of the crew of theSanta Margarita.

In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is notprofound. All evidence and all reason point to the probabilitythat Johann Salvator and his ship went down todarkness 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 romanticscould spin their fabulations.

IV

THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY

At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August16, 1897, a small, barefoot boy appearedin Colonia Street, in the somnolent city ofAlbany, the capital of New York State. He carried acrumpled letter in one grimy hand and stopped at onedoor after another, inquiring where Mrs. Conway lived.The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to himthat several of them later estimated his age at from tenyears to seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99and handed his note to the woman he sought, the wifeof Michael J. Conway, a railroad train dispatcher. Withthat he was gone.

Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letterby a special messenger, tore open the envelope, satdown in the big rocking chair in her front room, andbegan to read this appalling communication:

Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she hadgot past the first few sentences and ran into the street,screaming for her boy. He did not answer. None of theneighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when hehad been let out to play in the sun. It was true.

The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistlein her hand, ran to summon her husband. He read theletter, set his jaw, and sent for the police. No one wasgoing to extort three thousand dollars from him withouta fight.

Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to askquestions in the neighborhood and see whether therehad been any witnesses to the abduction. The othersbegan an examination of the strange letter in the hopeof recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yieldednothing and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Herethe first blunder was made, for I have yet to examine akidnapper’s letter more revealingly written.

The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long,prolix, and anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuationin part, wrongly punctuated at other points,miscapitalized or not capitalized at all, strangely underlined,curiously paragraphed, often without eventhe use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structureand yet contradictory on this very point. The facsimilecopy which I have before me shows that in spiteof all the solecisms and blunders, there is not a misspelledword in the long missive, a thing not always tobe said in favor of the writings of educated and eveneminent men. Also, there are several cheap literaryechoes in the letter, such as “never look upon yourchild again” and “leave him to his fate.”

The following deductions should have been madefrom the letter:

That it was written or dictated by some one familiarwith Albany and with the affairs of the Conways, sincethe writer knows Conway has the money in the bank,knows the closing hour, is familiar with the surroundingterrain, is precise in all directions, and knows thereare other and older children, since he constantly refersto “your little boy” and says that Conway will have“one child less.”

That the writer of the letter is not a professionalcriminal. Otherwise he would not have written atlength.

That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious tohave the thing done at once.

That he is a man without formal education, who hasread a good deal, especially romances and inferior verse.

That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, heis a man between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.

That the kidnappers are anxious to have the moneyintrusted to some man known to them, to whom theyrepeatedly refer and whom they believe likely to beselected by Conway.

That the child is in no danger, since the letter writerdoth threaten too much.

That the search for the kidnappers should begin closeat home.

Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of whatthe dialect calls hindsight, it may be well to say thatthese conclusions were made from the facsimile of theletter by an associate who is not familiar with the caseand does not know the subsequent developments.

The detective sciences had, however, reached no specialdevelopments in Albany thirty years ago and littleof this vital information was extracted from the tell-taleletter. Instead of making some deductions from itand going quietly to work upon them, the officers chosethe time-honored methods. They decided to send a manto the big tree with a package of paper, meantime concealingsome members of the force near by to pounceupon any one who might call for the decoy. The wholeproceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police wentto the place at night and used lanterns, which musthave revealed them to any watchers. They were notcareful about concealing their plan and they even chosethe wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!

So the second day of the kidnapping mystery openedupon prostrated parents, who were only too willingto believe that their boy had been done away with, anexcited community which locked the doors and fearedto let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfitedand abused police department.

The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, thepolice made a fresh start. For one thing they searchedthe country round about the big tree on the Troyroad, which may have been good training for adiposeofficers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such aspolice departments always make when the public isaroused. For another thing, they spread the dragnet andhauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to bestopping in Albany. They also searched the knowncriminal resorts, chased down a crop of the usual rumors,and wound up the day in breathless and futileexcitement.

Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. Theseenergetic young men, whose repeated discomfitures ofthe police were one of the interesting facts of Americancity government in the last generation, had gone towork on the Conway case themselves. A young mannamed John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albanypapers, began his investigations by interviewing thefather of the missing child. One of the things the reporterwanted to know was whether any one had evertried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. Thetrain dispatcher replied with some reluctance that hisbrother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy, husband of one ofConway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed smallamounts from the railroad man and once made a demandfor a thousand dollars, which he failed to get,though he used threatening tactics.

The reporter said nothing, but set about investigatingHardy. He found that the man was in Albany, thathe was showing no signs of fright, and that he wasindeed going about with much energy, apparently devotinghimself to the quest for the stolen boy andthreatening dire vengeance upon the kidnappers. ReporterFarrell and his associates took this business undersuspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections andfinancial situation. They found the latter to be precarious.They also discovered that Hardy was the bosomfriend of a man named H. G. Blake, who had operateda small furniture store in Albany, but was known tobe an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no verydefinite social grade, means of livelihood, or character.In the middle of the afternoon, when this connectionwas first discovered, Blake could not be found in Albany,but late in the evening he was discovered, and thereporters took him in hand.

At the time they had nothing to go upon exceptBlake’s firm friendship with Hardy, the relative of themissing child, who had once tried to extort a thousanddollars and presumably knew the money affairs of hisbrother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail.In the course of the day they had canvassed all thelivery stables in and about Albany. They found thatearly on Monday morning a man had rented a horse andlight wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. Thissignature was compared with that of Blake, taken froma hotel register and some tax declarations. The handwritingseemed to be identical, and the reporters suspectedthat Blake had rented the rig under an assumedname.

While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulledinto the belief that he was under no suspicion and allowedto go to his home and to bed, Blake was taken tothe newspaper office by the reporters and there askedwhat he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He deniedall knowledge until he was assured that the paperwished to score a “scoop” on the story and was willingto pay $2,500 cash for information that would lead tothe recovery of the boy.

A large wallet was shown him, containing a waddingof paper with several bank notes on the outside. Apparentlythe man was a bit feeble-minded. At any rate,he fell into the trap, abandoning all caution and reachinggreedily for the money. He said, of course, thathe knew nothing directly about the affair, but that hecould find out. Later, when the money was withdrawnfrom his sight he began to boast of what he could do.Under various incitements and provocations he talkedalong until it became apparent that he was one of thekidnappers. When it was too late the man realized thathe had talked too much, and then he tried to retract.When he attempted to leave the office he was met bytwo officers who had been quietly summoned by the reportersand appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet wasonce more held out to Blake, and his greed so far overcamehim that he agreed to guide the reporters to thespot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference withhis captain, and see that the child was delivered.

The little party, consisting of two reporters, the twodisguised officers, and Blake set out late at night andarrived at a place on the Schenectady road, about eightmiles from Albany, shortly before midnight. Blake heredemanded the cash, but was told that it would not behanded over until he produced the boy. He then saidthat he thought the purse did not contain the money. Along argument followed. Once more the glib talking ofthe reporters prevailed, and Blake went into the densewoods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly tofind the boy.

After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer,whom he still believed to be a driver, to remainbehind, and proceeded farther into the forest. Morethan an hour passed before he returned, and the partywas about to drive off, thinking the man had played aclever trick. Blake, however, came back querulous andsuspicious. He demanded once more to see the money,and being refused, said the trick was up. One of themen, however, persuaded him to take him to the othermembers of the gang, promising that the money wouldbe delivered the moment the boy was seen alive. ApparentlyBlake was once more befooled, for he allowedthe supposed driver to accompany him and made offa*gain into the heart of the woods. One of the reportersand the other disguised policeman followed secretly.

When the two pairs of men had proceeded aboutthree hundred yards, the second lurking in the van ofthe first, not daring to strike a light, slashed by theunderbrush 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, andthe gruff tones of a man trying to silence it. Blake andhis companion made for the fire and were met by amasked man with a leveled revolver who informed themthat they were surrounded and would be killed if theymade a false move. There was a parley, which lasted tillthe second pair came up.

Just what happened at this interesting moment is noteasy to say. The witnesses do not agree. Apparently,however, the little boy, momentarily released by hiscaptor, ran away. The three hunters thereupon made arush for him and there was an exchange of shots in thedarkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy anddragged him to the road, closely followed by the reporterand the other officer, leaving Blake, the maskedman, and whatever other kidnappers there might be toflee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into thewagon, the reporter and officers sprang in after him,and the horses were lashed into a gallop. Apparently, themidnight adventure had been a little trying on thenerves of the party.

After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furiousspeed, it became apparent that there was no pursuit onpart of the kidnappers and the drive was slowed to amore comfortable pace while the reporters questionedthe child.

Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that hehad been playing in the street before his father’s housewhen a dray wagon came by. He had run and caught onto the rear of this for a ride down the block. As hedropped off the wagon, he had been met by a strangerwho smiled, patted his head and offered to buy himcandy. The child was readily beguiled and taken to thelight wagon in which he was driven several miles intothe country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacantcabin. The next night he and his captors spent ina church until they moved out into the woods and beganto camp. At this spot the rescuers had found him.

According to the child, the kidnappers had not beencruel or threatening. They had provided plenty of food.They had even played games with the little boy andtried to keep him amused. The only complaint JohnnyConway had to make was against the mosquitoes, whichhad cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly forthe two nights and one day he and his captors spent inthe woods.

Very early on the morning of August 19th, just threedays after the kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagonturned into Colonia Street and proceeded slowly up thatquiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In spiteof 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 stragglingwatchers, eager for the first news or crumbs ofgossip. Reporters from the New York newspapers wereon the scene, and special officers from the great citywere on their way. Everything was being prepared foranother breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seatedwagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that earlymorning.

As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, andsome of the stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensingsomething unusual, one of the reporters rose in therear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in his arms.

“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor calledanxiously.

“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspapersleuth.

There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighborscame running from their houses in night garb. TheConways came forth from a sleepless vigil and caughtthe child in their arms. So the mystery of the boy’sfate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lastingenigma immediately succeeded.

Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediatelyseized at his home and dragged to the nearest stationhouse. The rumor of his connection with the kidnappinggot abroad within a few hours, and the policebuilding was immediately besieged by a crowd whichdemanded to see the prisoner. The police drove thecrowd off, but it returned after an hour, much augmentedin numbers and provided with a rope for alynching. After several exciting hours, the mob wasfinally cowed and driven away by the mayor of Albanyand a platoon of police with drawn revolvers.

One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, butat least two others were known, Blake and the man inthe mask. Several posses set out at once and surroundedthe woods in which the child had been found. Afterbeating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepynight in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, thecitizenry lost its pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albanyonly to find that the police of Schenectady hadarrested Blake in that city late the preceding eveningand that the man was lodged in another precinct housewhere he could not communicate with Hardy. Anotherabortive lynching bee was started. Once more the mayorand 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, andthe police were at sea. Then a curious thing happened.

William N. Loew, a New York attorney, readingof the kidnapping affair at Albany, which appeared inthe metropolitan newspapers under black headlines,went to the office of one of the journals and said hebelieved he could give valuable information.

On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, BernardMyers, a clothing merchant of West Third Street,New York, had flirted on a Broadway car with a handsomeyoung woman, who had given him her name andaddress as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourthStreet, and invited him to write her. Myers, more avidthan cautious, wrote the woman a fervid letter, askingfor an appointment. A few days later two men appearedin the Myers store. One of them, who carrieda heavy cane, said that he was the husband of Mrs.Warner, brandished the guilty letter in one hand, thecane in the other, and demanded that Myers give hima check for three hundred dollars on the spot or takethe consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave acheck for one hundred dollars, and then, as soon as themen had left his store, rushed to his bank and stoppedpayment. He then visited the district attorney andcaused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraignedand released on bail.

Loew had been summoned to act as attorney forWarner. He now told the newspapers of disclosures hisclient had made to him in consultation. Warner, whowas himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway,had told Loew that he was interested in a plot toorganize kidnapping on a commercial scale, and thatthe first jobs would be attempted in up-State NewYork. He gave Loew many details and talked plausiblyof the ease with which parents could be stripped ofconsiderable sums. Loew, who considered his client andfellow attorney slightly demented, had paid little attentionto this sinister talk at the time. Now, however,he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that heprobably was the man in the mask.

Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliantBlake admitted that he was a friend of Warner’s, thatthey had indeed been schoolmates in their youth. Healso admitted that he had been in New York a few daysbefore the abduction of Johnny Conway and had thenvisited Warner. So the chase began.

The police discovered that Warner had been at hisoffice a day ahead of them and slipped out of New Yorkagain. They also found that he had been at Albany thethree days that Johnny Conway had been detained.Their investigations showed also that Warner, thoughhe had the reputation of being a particularly shrewdand energetic counselor, had never adhered very closelyto the law himself, but had again and again been implicatedin shady or criminal transactions, though hehad 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 policecirculars that went out to all parts of America and thechief British and continental ports, described a manbetween forty and forty-five years old, more than sixfeet tall, slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over avery high forehead. That Warner was a bicycle enthusiastwas the only added detail.

The quest for Warner was one of the most excitingin memory. The first person sought and found was theMrs. Warner who had given her name and address toBernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in thesubsequent blackmail charges. She was found livingquietly at a boarding house in one of the adjacent NewJersey towns and said that she had not seen Warner forsome weeks, a claim which turned out to be very nearthe truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before hestarted to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confidedto the girl, who was not in truth his wife, anyof his plans or intentions.

It was then discovered that Attorney Warner wasmarried and had a wife, from whom he had long beenseparated, living in a small town in upper New York.The detectives also visited this woman, but she had notseen her husband in years and could supply no information.

Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen inten places on the same day. His presence was reportedfrom every corner of the country. Clews and reportsled 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 thecase dropped out of the papers.

Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blakemade an attempt to mitigate his case by turning State’sevidence, and Hardy pleaded that he had only been anintermediary, whose motivation was his brother-in-law’scloseness and reproof. In view of the fact that theevidence against the two men seemed conclusive, evenwithout the admissions of either one, the prosecutordecided to reject their pleas and force them to standtrial. The cases were quickly heard and verdicts ofguilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at oncesentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half yearsin the State prison at Dannemora, and they were shortlyremoved to that gloomy house of pain in the AdirondackMountains.

All this happened before the first of October. Theprisoners, having been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary,and the kidnapped boy being safely in hisparents’ home, the whole affair was quickly forgotten.

But a little after seven o’clock on the evening ofDecember 12, two men entered the farm lot of WilliamGoodrich near the little village of Riley in central Kansas,about two thousand miles from Albany and thescene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farmhand, one George Johnson, was milking in the cowstable by lantern light.

As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt andstraw, horny of hand and tanned by the prairie winds,rose from his stool and started to leave the stable withhis buckets, the two strangers stepped inside and approachedhim. One of them laid a rough hand on thefarmer’s shoulder and said soberly:

“Warner, I want you. Come along.”

“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curiousWestern drawl. “My name is Gawge Johnson.”

“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in NewYork it’s Albert S. Warner. I have a warrant for yourarrest in connection with the Conway kidnapping.You’ll have to come.”

The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted tochange his clothes, and loaded upon the next eastboundtrain. When he reached Kansas City he refused to gofarther without extradition formalities. After the officershad telegraphed to New York, the man changedhis mind again and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany,where he was placed in jail and soon brought totrial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment,the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.

The captor of Warner had been Detective McCannof the Albany police force. He had trailed the manabout five thousand miles, partly on false scents. In hiswanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota,New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas,where he had satisfied himself that Warner was workingon the Goodrich farm. McCann had then called aPinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest officeand made the arrest as already described.

The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seemsto have been that Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage,had been scheming for some time to get a thousand dollarsout of his brother-in-law. He had confided his ideasto Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion ofhis friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer andclever schemer. Warner had then acted as organizer andleader, 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 mooringsat the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked herway down the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for herhome port, New York. She was partly in ballast, becauseof slack commerce, and carried a single passenger.About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grewup a strange mystery and a stranger history.

When the last glint of the Bella’s sails was seen fromRio’s island anchorages, that vessel passed forever outof worldly cognizance. She never reached any port savethe ultimate, and of those that rode in her, nothing cameback but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs wasveiled 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 hercrew, there is no surviving memory, and only a grimyhunt through the old shipping records could avail inthe discovery of anything concerning them. But thelone passenger happened to be the son of a Britishbaronet and heir to a great estate—Roger CharlesDoughty Tichborne. The succession and the inheritanceof the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof ofthis young man’s death. There was, accordingly, someformal inquiry as to the Bella and her wreck. The requiredmonths were allowed to pass; the usual reportsfrom all ports were scanned. On account of the insistenceof the Tichborne family, some additional care wastaken. But in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formallydeclared lost at sea, his insurance paid, and thequestion of succession taken before the court in chancery,which determined such matters.

Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of youngTichborne would have ended, had it not been for thepeculiar insistence of his mother. Lady Tichborne wouldnot, and probably could not, bring herself to believethat her beloved elder son had met his end in this darkand mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnessesto his death and objective proofs of the end, sheclung obstinately to hope and continued to advertisefor the “lost” young man for many years after thecourts had solved the problem—or believed they had.

There had already been the cloud of pathos about thehead of Roger Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessaryto an understanding of subsequent events. Bornin Paris on January 5, 1829—his mother being thenatural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire,and a beautiful French woman—Roger was thedescendant of very ancient Hampshire stock. His father,the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne and hisgrandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of thatline.

Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country,Lady Tichborne decided that her son should be rearedas a Frenchman, and the lad spent the first fourteenyears of his life in France, with the result that he neverafterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief Englishschooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough toget the young man out of the habit of thinking inFrench and translating his Gallic idioms into English, afault that appears in his letters to the very end, andone that caused him considerable suffering as a boy inEngland.

Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joinedthe 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 accentand strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness forsoldiering had made him miserable in the army. Theconstant cruel, if thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of hisfellows found him a sensitive mark.

But the unhappy termination of the young man’smilitary career was only a minor factor in an almostdesperate 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 herselfunable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and stormsthe young heir of the Tichbornes set sail from Havrein March, 1853, and reached Valparaiso, Chile, aboutthree months later, evidently determined to seek forgetfulnessin stranger latitudes. In the course of the southernsummer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reachedRio in March or early April. Here he embarked on theBella for New York, as recited, his further plans remainingunknown. 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 waserected.

When, in the following year, the insurance was paid,and the will proved, the Tichbornes accepted the deathof the traveler as practically beyond question. But notso his mother. She began, after an interval, to advertisein many parts of the world for trace of her son. Suchnotices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental,and Australian journals without effect. Onlyone thing is to be learned from them, the appearanceof the lost heir. He is described as being rather undersized,delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes, andstraight black hair. These personal specifications willprove of importance later on.

In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and ayounger son succeeded to the baronetcy and estates.This event stirred the dowager Lady Tichborne to freshactivities, and her advertisem*nts began to appear againin newspapers and shipping journals over half the world.As a result of these injudicious clamorings for information,many a seaspawned adventurer was received by thegrieving mother at Tichborne House, and many a commonliar imposed on her for money and other favors.Repeated misadventures of this sort might have beenconsidered sufficient experience to cause the dowagerto desist from her folly, but nothing seemed to moveher from her fixed idea, and the fantastic reports andrumors brought her by every wandering sharper hadthe effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.

Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed torestore her son, had not been without its collateral effects.Among them was the wide dissemination of a romanticstory and the enlistment of public sympathy. Alarge part of the newspaper-reading British populacesoon came to look upon the lady as a high example ofmotherly devotion, to sympathize with her point ofview, and gradually to conclude that she was right, andthat Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere inthe antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined toemotional strangers, as appears from the fact that KateDoughty, the object of the young nobleman’s bootlesslove, refused various offers of marriage and steadfastlyremained single, pending a termination of all doubt asto the fate of her hapless lover.

Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grewup. The Tichborne case came to be looked upon in somequarters as another of the great mysteries of disappearance.In various distant lands volunteer seekers took upthe quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes bythe fascinating powers of mystery, but more often bythe hope of reward.

In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missingfriends’ bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, a factwhich he advertised in the London newspapers. LadyTichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, sawthe 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 discoveredwho answered the description of her missing“boy.” This fellow had been found keeping a smallbutcher shop in the town of Wagga Wagga, New SouthWales, and was there known by the name of ThomasCastro, which he admitted to be assumed.

Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicatedat once and did not fail to give the impression that thediscovery and return of her eldest son would be a featto earn a very high reward, since he was the heir to alarge property, and since she was herself “most anxiousto hear.” Australia was then, to be sure, much fartheraway than to-day. There were no cables and only occasionalsteamers. It often took months for a letter topass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, LadyTichborne received a second communication in whichshe was told that there could be little doubt about theidentification, as the butcher of Wagga Wagga hadowned to several persons that he was indeed not ThomasCastro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to atleast one person that he was none other than RogerTichborne.

Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her firstletter from her missing “son”. He addressed her as “DearMama,” misspelled the Tichborne name by inserting a“t” after the “i,” spelled common words abominably,and handled the English language with a fine show ofignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incidentat Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had notthe slightest recollection. At first she was considerablydamped by these discrepancies and mistakes of the claimant,as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to betermed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from herdoubts and asserted her absolute confidence in the genuinenessof the far-away pretender to the baronetcy.

Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, evenwhen it is recalled that subsequent letters from Australiarevealed the claimant to be ignorant of commonfamily traditions and totally confused about himself,even going so far as to say that he had been a commonsoldier in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne hadbeen an officer, and referring to his schooling at Winchester,whereas the Roman Catholic Tichbornes had,of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborneapparently ascribed such lapses to the “terribleordeal” her boy had suffered, and she was not the onlyone to recognize that Roger Tichborne had himself,because of his early French training and the meagernessof his subsequent education, misspelled just such wordsas appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misusedhis English in a very similar fashion.

These details are interesting rather than important.Whatever their final significance, Lady Tichborne sentmoney to Australia to pay for the claimant’s passagehome. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the lastmonth of 1866, and visited several localities, amongthem Wapping, a London district which played a vitalpart in what was to come. He also visited the vicinity ofTichborne 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 bedcomplaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted,and she recounted afterward that he kept his faceturned to the wall most of the time she spent with him.

What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding thisman is an interesting matter for speculation. She hadsent away, thirteen years before, a slight, delicate, poeticaristocrat, whose chief characteristic was an excessiverefinement that made him quite unfit for the commonstresses of life. In his stead there came back a short,gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faultsand vocal solecisms of the co*ckney. In the place of theyoung man who knew his French and did not knowhis English, here was a fellow who could speak not aword of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.

None of these things appeared to make any differenceto Lady Tichborne. She received the claimantwithout reservation, said publicly that she had recoveredher darling boy, and went so far as to announceher reasons for accepting him as her son.

The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, anexciting topic of the newspapers of the time, with theresult that the romantic story of his voyage, the shipwreckof the Bella, his rescue, his wanderings, his finaldiscovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return to hismother’s arms became known to millions of people,many of whom accepted the legend for its charm andcolor alone, without reference to its probability. Indeed,the tale had all the elements that make for popularityand credibility. The opening incident of unrequitedlove, the journey in quest of forgetfulness, thecrossing of the Andes, the ordeal of shipwreck, the adventuresin the Australian bush, and the interventionof the hand of Providence to drag him back to his nativeland, his title and his inheritance! Was there lackingany element of pathetic grace?

For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichbornefamily affairs and his sad illiteracy sober objections tothe pretensions of the claimant, there was triple evidenceof identification. Not only had Lady Tichbornerecognized this wanderer as her son, but two old Tichborneservants had preceded her in their approval. Ithappened that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who hadbeen intimate with Roger Tichborne as a boy, was livingin New South Wales when the first claim was putforward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the requestof the dowager this man went to see the pretender andtalked with him at length, first in the presence of thosewho were pressing the claim and later alone. The servantand the claimant reviewed a number of incidentsin Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported thathe was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servantand subsequently accompanied him to England. Latera former Tichborne gardener, Grillefoyle by name, whoalso had gone out to Australia, was sent to interviewthe Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. Hereported favorably to his former mistress, and it seemsto have been mainly on the opinion of these two menthat Lady Tichborne based her decision to disregardthe difficulties inherent in the letters and to finance thereturn of the man to England. Their testimony, backedby the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubtswayed her to credence when she finally stood face toface with the improbable apparition that pretended tobe her son.

The claimant, though he had arrived in Englandin December, 1866, made various claims and went tocourt once or twice but did not make the definitive legalmove to establish his position or to retrieve the baronetcyand estates until more than three years later. Suitwas finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trialcame on before the court of common pleas in Londonon the eleventh of May, 1871. This was the beginningof one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trialdramas to be found in the records of modern nations.

The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delayfor the purpose of gathering evidence and consolidatinghis case. He had sought out and won over tohis side the trusted servants of the house, the familysolicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineersand many others. The school, the officers’ mess,the Tichborne seat, and many other localities connectedwith the youth and young manhood of Roger Tichbornehad all been visited. In addition, the obese claimanthad further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who cameto have more and more faith in him. Originally shehad written:

“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it willnot prevent me from recognizing him, though hisstatements differ from mine.”

Before the suit was filed, and the case came to betried, his memory improved remarkably; he correctedthe many errors in his earlier statements, and his recollectionquickly assimilated itself to that of Lady Tichborne.After he had been in England for a time evenhis handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealedin the letters written by Roger Tichborne beforehis disappearance.

There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidencein favor of the man from Australia. I have alreadysaid that the public accepted the stranger. Itneeds to be recorded that every new shred of similarityor circ*mstance that could be brought out only addedto the conviction of the people. This was unquestionablyRoger Tichborne and none other. Some elementsasserted their opinion with a passion that was not farfrom violence, and the public generally regarded thehostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based onselfish motives. Naturally the other Tichbornes did notwant to be dispossessed in favor of a man who hadbeen confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted amongthe dead for more than fifteen years. The man in thestreet regarded the family position as natural, butreprehensible. How, it was asked, could there be anydoubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was thereanything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubtseemed almost monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher ofWagga Wagga became a public idol, and the Tichbornefamily an object of aversion.

Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it becameknown that the claimant had no funds with which toprosecute his case, the suggestion of a public bond issuewas made and promptly approved. Bonds, with noother backing than the promise to refund the advancedmoney when the claimant should come into possessionof his property, were issued, and so extreme was thepublic confidence in the validity of the claim that theywere bought up greedily. In addition, a number ofwealthy individuals became so interested in the affairand so convinced of the rights of the stranger, thatthey made him large personal advances. One man, Mr.Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as75,000 pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow familyadvanced 30,000 pounds and Earl Rivers is believed tohave wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on the impostor.

Finally the civil trial of the suit took place. The proceedingsbegan on the eleventh of May, 1871, and werenot concluded until March, 1872. Sir John Coleridge,who defended for the Tichborne family and later becamelord chief justice, cross-questioned the claimantfor twenty-two days, and his speech in summing up issaid to have been the longest ever delivered before acourt in England. The actual taking of evidence requiredmore than one hundred court days, and at leasta hundred witnesses identified the claimant as RogerTichborne. To quote from Major Arthur Griffiths’ account:

“These witnesses included Lady Tichborne,[6] Roger’smother, the family solicitor, one baronet, six magistrates,one general, three colonels, one major, thirty non-commissionedofficers and men, four clergymen, sevenTichborne tenants, and sixteen servants of the family.”

[6] A mistake, for the dowager Lady Tichborne died on March 12, 1868. Herdamage had been done before the trial.

On the other hand, the defense produced only seventeenwitnesses against the claimant, but it piled up agreat deal of dark-looking evidence, and, in the courseof 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 accumulationof ignorances and blunders that the jury gaveevidence of its inclination. Thereupon Serjeant Ballantine,the claimant’s leading counsel, abandoned the case.

On the order of the judge the claimant was immediatelyseized, charged with three counts of perjury,and remanded for criminal trial. This case was not calleduntil April, 1873, and it proved a more formidablelegal contest than the unprecedented civil action. Theproceedings lasted more than a year, and it took thejudge eighteen days to charge the jury; this in spite ofthe usual despatch of British trials. How long such acase might have hung on in the notoriously slow Americancourts is a matter for painful speculation.

This long and dramatic trial, full of emotionalscenes and stirring incidents, moving slowly along tothe accompaniment of popular unrest and violent partisanshipin the newspapers, ended as did the civil action.The claimant was convicted of having impersonatedRoger Tichborne, of having sullied the name ofMiss Kate Doughty, and of having denied his true identityas 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 claimantwas sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment.Thus ended one of the most magnificent imposturesever attempted. Lady Tichborne did not live to witnessthis collapse of the fraud, or the humiliation of the manshe had so freely accepted as her own son. The poorlady was shown to be a monomaniac, whose judgmenthad been unseated by the shipwreck of her beloved eldestboy.

I have purposely reserved the story, as brought out inthe two trials, for direct narration, since it embraces themajor romance connected with this celebrated case andneeds to be told with regard to chronology and climax.

Arthur Orton, the true name of the claimant, wasborn to a Wapping butcher, at 69 High Street, in June,1834, and was thus nearly five years younger thanRoger Tichborne. He had been afflicted with St. Vitus’dance as a boy and had been delinquent. As a result ofthis, he had been sent from home when fourteen yearsold, 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. Ortonremained in Chile for several years, living with a familynamed Castro, at the small inland city of Melipillo, until1851, when he returned to England and visited hisparents at Wapping. In the following year he sailed forTasmania and settled at Hobart Town.

He operated a butcher shop in that place for someyears, but made a failure of business and “disappearedinto the brush,” owing every one. Trace of his movementsthen grew vague, but it is known that he was suspectedof complicity in several highway robberies,which were staged in New South Wales a few yearsafterward, and he was certainly charged with horsestealing on one occasion. Later he appeared in WaggaWagga and opened a small butcher shop under the nameof Thomas Castro, which he had adopted from the familyin Chile.

In a confession which Orton wrote and sold to a Londonnewspaper[7] years after his release from prison in1884, he gives an account of the origin of the fraud.He says that some time before Cubitt, of the missing-friendsbureau, found him and induced him to write toLady Tichborne, he and his chum at Wagga Wagga,one Slade, had seen some of the advertisem*nts whichthe distraught lady was having published in antipodeannewspapers. Orton soon adopted the pose of superiorstation, told Slade that he was, in fact, a nobleman incognito,and finally let his friends understand that hewas Roger Tichborne. The whole thing had been begunin a spirit of innocent acting, for the purpose of notingthe effect of such a revelation upon his friend. In viewof what followed we cannot escape the conclusion thatthe swinishly fat butcher undertook this adventure becausehe was mentally disturbed, in the sense of beinga pathological liar. A talent for impersonation and impostureis one of the marked characteristics displayedby this common type of mental defective, and Ortoncertainly 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 bythe butcher’s tale and thus encouraged Orton to proceedwith the fraud, as did a lawyer to whom Orton-Castrowas in debt. He soon went swaggering about,trying to talk like a gentleman and giving what musthave been a most painful imitation of the manners ofa lord. His rude neighbors can have had no better discriminationin such matters than the British public andLady Tichborne herself, so it was not a difficult feat toplay upon local credulity.

In the last month of 1865, when Cubitt sent an agentto Wagga Wagga, as a result of his correspondence withLady Tichborne, the legend of Orton’s identity as RogerTichborne was already firmly established in the mindsof his townspeople, and the rumor thus gained its initialconfirmation. The reader is asked to remember thatOrton was known as Castro, and that his identificationas Orton was a difficult feat, which remained unperformeduntil the final trial, more than eight yearslater.

Lady Tichborne herself supplied Castro and his backersin Australia with their first vital information. Inseeking to identify her son she quite guilelessly wrote toCubitt and others many details of her son’s appearance,history, education, and peculiarities. She also mentioneda number of intimate happenings. All these were seizedupon by the butcher and used in framing his letters tothe dowager. In spite of this fact, he made the manystupid blunders already referred to. Lady Tichbornesaw the discrepancies, as has been remarked, but hermonomania urged her to credence, and she sent the ex-servants,Bogle and Grillefoyle to investigate. HowOrton-Castro managed to win them over is not easy todetermine. For a time it was suspected that perhapsthese men had been corrupted by those interested inhaving the claimant recognized; but the facts seem todiscountenance any such belief. One of the outstandingcharacteristics of Orton was his ability to make friendsand gain their confidence, of which fact there can beno more eloquent testimony than the long list of witnesseswho appeared for him at his trials. The man whowas able to persuade a mother, a sharp-witted solicitor,half a dozen higher army officers, six magistrates, andnumberless soldiers and tenants who had known RogerTichborne well, to accept and support him in his preposterousclaim, did not need money to befool an oldgardener and a negro valet.

Indeed, it was this personal gift, backed by the man’sabnormal histrionic bent and capacity for mimicry,that carried him so far and won him the support of somany individuals and almost the solid public. How farhe was able to carry things has been suggested, but thedetails are so remarkable as to demand recounting.

Orton had almost no schooling. He quite naturallymisspelled the commonest words and was normallyguilty of the most appalling grammatical and rhetoricalsolecisms. He knew not a word of French, Latin, or ofany other language, save a smattering of Spanish, pickedup from the Castros while at Melipillo. He had neverassociated with any one who remotely approached theposition of a gentleman, and the best imitation he canhave contrived, must have been patterned after performanceswitnessed on the stages of cheap varietyhouses. Moreover he knew absolutely nothing about theTichbornes, not even the fact that they were Catholics.He did not know where their estates were, nor whereRoger had gone to school; yet he carried his imposturewithin an inch of success. Indeed, it was the opinion ofdisinterested observers at the trial of his civil action thathe must have won the case had he stayed off the standhimself.

The feat of substitution this man almost succeededin accomplishing was palpably an enormous one. Hewent to England, familiarized himself with the placesRoger Tichborne had visited, studied French withoutmanaging to learn it, practiced the handwriting of theyoung 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 misspelljust those words on which the original Roger wasweak. He crammed his memory with incidents and detailspicked up at every hand. He learned to talk almostlike a gentleman. He worked with his voice until hegot out of it most of the earthy harshness that belongedto it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtlybehavior, gentle ways, and a certain charming deferencewhich went far toward convincing those who took himseriously and gave him their support. In short, he wasable to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness,but he could not, with all his talent, quite project himselfinto the personality and mentality of another andvery different man. That, perhaps, is a simulation beyondhuman capacity.

So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificentimpersonation, went to prison for fourteen years,having made quite too grand a gesture and much toosad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and wasthen released in view of good conduct. Thereafter hewrote several confessions and retracted them all in turn.Finally, toward the end of his life, he changed his mindonce more and prepared a final and fairly complete accountof his life and misdeeds, from which some of thefacts here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898.

The extent to which he had moved the public maybe judged from an incident the year following Orton’sconviction and imprisonment. His chief counsel at thecriminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy, whowas himself scathingly denounced by the court in connectionwith a misdirected attempt to have Orton identifiedas a castaway from the Bella by a seaman whoswore he had performed the rescue, but was shown to bea perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was electedto Parliament, so great was his popularity and that ofhis client. When Kenealy, soon after taking his seat,moved that the Tichborne case be referred to a royalcommission, the House of Commons rejected the motionunanimously. This action inflamed the populace.There were angry street meetings, inflammatoryspeeches, and symptoms of a general riot. The troopshad 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 fromprison, there was almost no one to greet him. The ficklepublic, that had once been ready to storm the Housesof Parliament for him, had utterly forgotten the man.Nor was there any sign of public interest, when he diedin obscurity and poverty fourteen years later. A fewof 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 legalintricacy was founded, received, to be sure, not theslightest clarification from all the pother and feverishinvestigating. If ever there had been any good reasonto doubt that the young Hampshire aristocrat wenthelplessly down with the stricken Bella and her fatedcrew, none remained after the trials and the stupendouspublicity 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 Britishpublisher’s agent residing at 159 East Sixty-fifthStreet, New York, found this advertisem*nt inthe New York Herald, under the heading, “EmploymentWanted:”

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 gavethe name of Carrie Jones and said she had come only twoweeks before from the little town of Deposit, in upperNew York State. The fact explained her lack of references.Mrs. Clarke, far from being suspicious because ofthe absence of employment papers, was impressed withthe new child’s maid. She seemed to be a well-schooled,even-tempered young woman, considerably above herstation, devoted to children, and, what was particularlynoted, gentle in voice and demeanor—a jewel amongservants.

Five days later pretty Carrie Jones and Baby MarionClarke had become the center of one of the celebratedabduction cases and, for a little while, the nucleus of adark and appalling mystery. To-day, after the lapseof twenty-five years, the effects of this striking affairare still to be read in the precautions hedging the employmentof nursemaids in American cities and in thetimidity of parents everywhere. It was one of those occasionaland impressive crimes which leave their markon social habits and public behavior long after the detailsor the incidents themselves have been forgotten.

The home of Marion Clarke’s parents in East Sixty-fifthStreet is about two squares from the city’s greatplayground, Central Park, a veritable warren of childrenand their maids on every sunny day. Here MarionClarke went almost every afternoon with her newnurse, and here the first scene of the ensuing drama wasplayed.

At about ten thirty o’clock on the morning of thenext Sunday, May 21, Carrie Jones went to Mrs. Clarkeand asked if she might not take the little girl to thePark then, as the day was warm, and the sunshine inviting.In the afternoon it might be too hot. Mrs. Clarkeand her husband consented, and the maid set off a littlebefore eleven o’clock with Baby Marion tucked into awicker carriage. She was told to return by one o’clock,so that the child might have her luncheon at the usualhour.

At twelve o’clock Mr. Clarke set off for a walk inthe Park, also tempted from his home by the enchantmentsof the day. Mrs. Clarke did not accompany him,since she had borne a second baby only two or threemonths before, and she was still confined to the house.

Mr. Clarke entered the Park at the Sixty-sixth Streetentrance and followed the paths idly along toward theold arsenal. Without especially seeking his daughter andher nurse, he nevertheless kept an eye out. A short distancefrom the arsenal he saw his child’s cart standingin front of the rest room; he approached, expecting tosee the child. Both baby and nurse were gone, and theattendant explained that the child’s vehicle had beenleft in her care, while the nurse bore the baby to themenagerie.

“She said she’d be back in about an hour. Ought to behere any minute now,” prattled the public employee.

The father sat down to wait. Then he grew impatientand went off to wander through the animal gardens.In half an hour he was back at the rest room to find theattendant about to move the cart indoors and make herdeparture, her tour of duty being over.

Beginning to feel alarmed, Mr. Clarke resorted to thenearest policeman, who smiled, with the confidence oflong experience, and advised him to go home. It was acommon thing for a green country girl to get lostamong the winding drives and walks of Central Park.No doubt the nurse would find her way home with thechild in a little while.

Clarke went back to his house and waited. At twoo’clock he went excitedly back to the Park and consultedthe captain of police, with the same results. Theofficers were ordered to look for the nurse and child,but the alarm of the parent was not shared. He wasonce more told to go home and wait. At the same timehe was rather pointedly told not to return with his annoyinginquiries. Such temporary disappearances ofchildren 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 thefather rushed excitedly to answer.

A bright-eyed, grinning boy stood in the vestibuleand asked if Mr. Clarke lived here. Then he handed overa letter in a plain white envelope, lingering a moment, asif expecting a tip.

Clarke naturally tore the letter open with quakingfingers and read:

The letter was correctly done, properly paragraphed,punctuated, and printed with a fine pen in a somewhatlaborious simulation of writing-machine type. It alsobore several markings characteristic of the journalist orpublisher’s copy reader, especially three parallel linesdrawn under the signature, “Three,” evidently to indicatecapitals. The envelope was the common plain whitekind, but the sheet of paper on which the note had beenpenned was of the white unglazed and uncalendaredkind known as newsprint and used in all newspaper officesas copy paper. Accordingly it was at once suspectedthat the kidnapper must have been a newspaper man,printer, reader, or some one connected with a publishinghouse.

The Clarkes recalled that the nurse had been alonethe preceding Friday evening and had been writing.Evidently she had prepared the note at that time andhad been planning the abduction with foresight andcare. People at once reached the conclusion that shewas one of the agents of a great band of professionalkidnappers. Accordingly every child and every motherin the city stood in peril.

To indicate the nature of the official search, we mayas well reproduce Chief of Police Devery’s proclamation:

A photograph of the missing child accompanied thedescription.

So the quest began. It was, however, by no meansconfined to Carrie Jones and the child. The New Yorknewspaper reporters were early convinced that someone else stood behind the transaction, and they soughtnight and day for a man or woman connected eitherdirectly or distantly with their own profession. It wasthe day when the reporter prided himself especially onhis superior acumen as a sleuth, with the result thatevery effort was made to give a fresh demonstration ofjournalistic enterprise and shrewdness.

Several days of the most feverish hunting, accompaniedby a sharp rise in public emotionalism and the incipienceof panic among parents, failed, however, toproduce even the most shadowy results. Rumors andsuspicions were, as usual, numerous and fatuous, butthere came forth nothing that had the earmarks of thegenuine clew. The arrests of innocent young womenwere many, and numerous little girls were dragged topolice stations by the usual crop of fanatics.

Similarly, little Marion Clarke was reported from allparts of the surrounding country and even from themost distant places. One report had her on her way toEngland, another showed her as having sailed forSweden, a third report was that she had been taken toAustralia by a childless couple. All the other commonhypotheses were, of course, entertained. A bereavedmother had taken little Marion to fill the void of herown loss. A childless woman had stolen the little girland was using her to present as her own offspring, probablyto comply with the provisions of some freak will.

But the hard fact remained that a letter had comewithin four hours after the abduction of the child,and before there had been the first note of alarm orpublicity. Such an epistle could only have been writtenby the actual kidnapper, since no one else was privy tothe fact that the girl was gone. In that communicationthe 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 asubsequent demand.

Theorizing was thus a bit sterile. The police, be itsaid to their credit, bothered themselves with no fine-spunhypotheses, but clung to the main track andsought the kidnappers. The New York World offereda reward of a thousand dollars and put its most efficientreportorial workers into the search. The other newspapersalso kept their men going in shifts. Every possibletrail was followed to its end, every promising partof the city searched. Even the most inane reports wereinvestigated with diligence.

Hundreds of persons had gone to the police with bitsof information which they, no doubt, considered suggestiveor important. The well-known Captain McClusky,then chief of detectives, received these oftenwearisome callers, read their mail, directed the investigationof their reports, and often remained at his desklate into the night.

Among a large number of women who reported tothe detective chief was a Mrs. Cosgriff, a sharp and volubleIrishwoman, who maintained a rooming house inTwenty-seventh street, Brooklyn. Mrs. Cosgriff assertedthat two women with a little girl of MarionClarke’s age and general appearance had rented a roomfrom her on the evening of the eventful Sunday andspent the night there. The next morning one of themhad got the newspapers, gone to her room, remained secludedwith the other woman and child for a time, andhad then come out to announce that they would not remainanother day. Mrs. Cosgriff thought she detectedexcitement in the manner of both women, but shehad to admit that the child had made no complaint oroutcry. Nevertheless, she felt that these were the wantedpeople.

Had she noted anything of special interest about thechild, any peculiarity by which the parents mightrecognize her? Or had she heard the women mentionany town or place to which they might have gone?

The lodging-house keeper considered a moment, confessedthat her curiosity had led her to do a little spying,and recalled that she had heard one of the womenmention a town. Either she had not heard the namedistinctly, or she had forgotten part of it, but it wasa name ending in berg or burg. She was certain of that.Fitchburg, Pittsburg, Williamsburg, Plattsburg—somethinglike that. She did not know the reason for herfeeling, but she was sure it was a place not very farfrom New York.

As to a peculiarity of the child, she had noted nothingexcept that it seemed good-humored, healthy, andclever. She had heard one of the women say: “Comeon, baby! Show us how Mrs. Blank does.” Evidently thelittle girl had done some sort of impersonation.

Captain McClusky was inclined to place some credencein Mrs. Cosgriff’s account, but he saw no specialpromise in her revelations till he repeated the details tothe agonized parents. At the mention of the childishimpersonation, Mrs. Clarke leaped up in excitement.

“That was Marion!” she cried. “That’s one of herlittle tricks!”

It developed that the nurse, Carrie Jones, had spenthours playing with the child, teaching it to walk andpose like a certain affected woman friend of its mother.Undoubtedly then, Marion Clarke, Carrie Jones, and anotherwoman had been in South Brooklyn the eveningafter the abduction and spent the night and part ofthe next day at Mrs. Cosgriff’s, leaving in the afternoonfor a town whose name ended in burg or berg.

Now the chase began in earnest. The detectives madea list of towns with the burg termination, and one ortwo men were sent to each, with instructions to makea quiet, but thorough, search. Information of a confidentialkind was also forwarded to the police departmentsof other cities, near and far. As a result anumber of suspected young women were picked up.Indeed, the mystery was believed solved for a shorttime when a girl answering to the description of CarrieJones was seized in Connecticut and held for thearrival of the New York detectives, when she began toact mysteriously and failed to give a clear account ofherself. It was found, however, that she had other substantialreasons for being cryptic, and that she was,moreover, enjoying her little joke on the officials.

Again, in Pennsylvania a girl was held who wouldneither affirm nor deny that she was Carrie Jones, butlet the local police have the very definite impression thatthey had in hand the much-hunted kidnapper. Sheturned out to be an unfortunate pathologue of the self-accusatorytype. Her one real link with the affair wasthat her name happened to be Jones, a circ*mstancewhich got the members of this large and popular familyof citizens no little discomfort during the pendency ofthe Clarke mystery.

Meantime no further communication had been receivedfrom the abductors. They had said, in the singlenote received from them, that they would communicateMonday or Tuesday, “if everything is quiet.” Everything,far from being quiet, had been in a most plangentuproar, which circ*mstances alone should have beenrecognized as the reason for silence. But, as is usual,the clear and patent explanation seemed not to containenough for popular acceptance. More fanciful interpretationswere put forward in the usual variety offorms. The note had been sent merely to misguide, andone might be sure the abductors did not intend to returnBaby Marion. If the abductors were looking forransom, why had no more been heard? Why had theychosen the daughter of a man who had slender meansand from whom no large ransom could be expected?No, it was something more sinister still. Probably LittleMarion was dead.

As the days dragged by, and there were still no conclusivedevelopments, the public sympathy toward thestricken couple became expressive and dramatic.Crowds besieged the house in East Sixty-fifth Street inhope of catching sight of the bereaved mother. Thefather was greeted with cheers and sympathetic expressionswhenever he came or went. Many offers of aidwere received, and some came forward who wanted topay whatever ransom might be demanded.

In these various ways the Marion Clarke case cameto be a national and even an international sensation inthe brief course of a week. Sympathy with the parentswas instant and widespread, and passion against the abductorsfilled the newspaper correspondence columnswith suggestions in favor of more stringent laws, plansfor cruel vengeance on the kidnappers, complaintsagainst the police, fulminations directed at quite everyone connected with the unfortunate affair—all theusual expressions of helplessness and bafflement.

On the morning of Thursday, June 1st, eleven daysafter the disappearance, a woman with a little girl enteredthe general store at the little hamlet of St. John,N. Y., where Mrs. Ada B. Corey presided as postmistressto the community. The child was a little petulantand noisy; the woman very annoyed and nervous.Both were strangers. The woman gave her name asBeauregard and took one or two letters which had comefor her. With these and the little girl she made a quickdeparture.

Because of the great excitement and wide publicityof the Clarke case, nothing of the sort could happen sonear the city of New York without one inevitable result.The postmistress immediately notified DeputySheriff William Charleston of Rockland County, whohad his office in St. John. Charleston was able to locatethe woman and child before they could leave town, andhe covertly followed them to the farmhouse of FrankOakley, 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 inthe vicinity for some months, and she had been occupyingthe Oakley house with her husband. Ten days previously,however, she had appeared with another womanand the little girl.

The dates tallied; the town was Sloatsburg; therewere, or had been, two women; the place was ideal forhiding, and the child was of the proper age and description.Sheriff Charleston quickly summoned someother officers, descended on the place, seized the woman,the child, and the husband, locked them into the nearestjail, and sent word to Captain McClusky.

New York detectives and reporters arrived by thenext train, and Mr. Clarke came a short time later. Assoon as he was on the ground, the party proceeded tothe jail, and the weeping father caught his wanderinggirl into happy arms. She was indeed Marion Clarke.Within ten minutes every available telephone and telegraphwire was humming the triumphant message backto New York.

But, in the recovery of the child, the inner mysteryof the case only began to unfold itself. The womanseized at Sloatsburg was not Carrie Jones. Neither hadthe Clarkes ever seen her before. She gave the name ofMrs. George Beauregard, and, when questioned aboutthis matter, later “admitted” that she was really Mrs.Jennie Wilson. Her story was that a couple had broughtthe child to her, saying that it needed to remain in themountains for the summer. They had paid her for thelittle girl’s board and care. She declared she did notknow their address, but they would certainly be onhand in the fall to reclaim their baby.

The man arrested at the farmhouse said that he wasJames Wilson; that he had no employment at the time,except working on the farm, and that he knew nothingof the baby beyond what his wife had revealed. Hedidn’t interfere in such affairs.

Both were returned to New York after some slightdelay. The detectives and the newspapers at once wentto work on the problem of discovering who they were,and what had become of Carrie Jones.

Meantime the abducted child was being broughthome to her distracted mother. A crowd of severalthousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth Street,apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the eveningnewspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loadedwith presents, saluted by the public officials, and treatedas the heroine that circ*mstance and good police workhad made her. Photographs of her crowded the journals,and she was altogether the most famous youngsterof the day. Her parents later removed to Boston withher, and they were heard of in the succeeding yearswhen attempts were made to release the imprisoned kidnappers,or whenever there was another kidnapping ormissing-child case. In time they passed back into obscurity,and Marion Clarke disappeared from the glareof notoriety.

The work of identifying the man and woman caughtin the Sloatsburg farmhouse proceeded rapidly. FreddyLang, the boy who had brought the note to the Clarkedoor on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediatelyrecognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman whohad handed him the missive and a five-cent piece inSecond Avenue and asked him to deliver the note toMrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn andsaid that the prisoner was one of the two women whohad stayed at her house on that Sunday night. It wasapparent then that one of the active kidnappers, and notan innocent tool, had been caught. The woman and herhusband, however, denied everything and refused togive any information about themselves.

Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned inan attempt to make the identification complete, discoverjust who the prisoners were, and establish theirconnections with others believed to have financed thekidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister thanmere abduction for ransom was suspected, and it seemedto be indicated by certain facts that will appear presently.Accordingly the reporters and journalistic investigatorswere conducting a fresh search on very broadlines.

On the evening of the second of June this hunt cameto an abrupt close, when a reporter traced the mysteriousCarrie Jones to the home of an aunt at White OakRidge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her theadmission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a countrygirl who had been for no long period a waitress inthe Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, New York. BellaAnderson readily told who the captive man and womanwere, and how the kidnapping plot had been concoctedand carried out. Her story may be summarized to clearthe ground.

Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter ofa retired soldier who had seen service in India and Africa.At the age of fourteen, her parents being dead, sheand her brother, Samuel, had set out for America andbeen received by relatives in the States of New Yorkand New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooledand aided financially both by her brother and other relatives.The year before the kidnapping she had gone toNew 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 herand become her intimates, nursing her through an illnessand otherwise befriending a lonely creature.

The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrestedpair, had persuaded her that the work of waitingon table in a hotel was too arduous and advised her toseek employment in a private family as nurse to a child.In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunityto seize some rich man’s darling and exact aheavy ransom for its return. All this part of the businessthey would manage for her. All she needed to dowas to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this shewas to receive one half of whatever ransom might becollected.

Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for aplace as child’s nurse. Several parents answered. At thefirst two homes she was just too late to procure employment,other applicants having anticipated her. So itwas mere chance that took her to the Clarke home anddetermined Marion Clarke to be the victim.

The girl went on to recite that the Barrows hadcoached her carefully. They had instructed her in thematter of her lack of references, in the manner of takingthe child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in thedetails of an inoffensive account of her past, and so onthrough the list. They had been the mentors and the“master minds.”

After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a fewdays and had taken little Marion to the Park the firsttime, Mrs. Barrow had consulted with the nurse andinstructed her to be ready for the abduction on the nextexcursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered manyqualms and been unable to bring herself to the deed forseveral visits. Each time Mrs. Barrow met her in thePark and was ready to flee with the little girl. Finallythe nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noonshe found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. Theyleft the baby’s cart at the rest room, carried the childto a remote place, changed its coat and cap, and thenset out at once for South Brooklyn, where they tookthe room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to,the women exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returnedto Manhattan, gave the note to the boy, andturned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she hadseen the headlines in the newspapers, realized that thegame was dangerous, and set out quickly for Sloatsburg,where the farmhouse had been rented in advance byBarrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sentaway because the Barrows felt she was being too hotlysought and might be recognized in the neighborhood.

This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrowsnaturally sought to shield themselves. It was also discoveredthat 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 characteristicsof the Clarke abduction note. She was abouttwenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not unattractive.

Investigation brought out romantic and patheticfacts concerning the husband. He had apparently hadno better employment in New York than that of motormanin the hire of an electric cab company then operatingin that city. But this derelict was the son of distinguishedparents. His father was Judge John C. Barrowof the superior court of Little Rock, Arkansas, andthe descendant of other persons politically well known inthe South. George Beauregard Barrow—his middle namebeing that of the famous Confederate commander at thefirst battle of Bull Run or Manassas, to whom distant relationshipwas claimed—had been incorrigible fromchildhood. In early manhood he had been connectedwith kidnapping threats and plots in his home city andwith assaults on his enemies, with the result that he wasfinally sent away, cut off and told to make his ownberth in the world. Judge Barrow tried to aid his unfortunateson at the trial, but public feeling was toosorely aroused.

George Barrow and Bella Anderson were tried beforeJudge Fursman and quickly convicted. Barrow was sentencedto fourteen years and ten months, and the Andersongirl to four years, both judge and jury acceptingher statement that she had been no more than a pawnin the hands of shrewder and older conspirators. Mrs.Barrow, sensing the direction of the wind, took a pleaof guilty before Judge Werner, hoping for clemency.The court, however, said that her crime merited thegravest reprehension and severest punishment. He fixedher term at twelve years and ten months.

These trials were had, and the sentences imposedwithin six weeks of the kidnapping, the courts havingacted with despatch. While the cases were pending,Barrow, Mrs. Barrow, and the Anderson girl had againand again been asked to reveal the names of others whohad induced them to their crime or had financed them.All said there had been no other conspirators, but thefeeling persisted that Barrow had acted with the supportof professional criminals, or of some enemy of theClarkes, either of whom had supplied him with considerablesums of money.

This belief, which was specially strong with some ofthe newspapers, was predicated upon two facts.

On the morning of Thursday, May 25, four daysafter the abduction of Marion Clarke, there had appearedin the New York Herald the following advertisem*nt:

“M. F. two thousand dollars reward will be O. K. in BabyClarke case. Write again and let me know when and whereI can meet you Thursday evening. Don’t fail—strictly confidential.”

Neither the Clarkes, the newspapers, nor any personsacting for them knew anything about a two-thousand-dollar-rewardoffer or had communicated with any onewho had been promised such a sum. Hence there wereonly two possible explanations of the advertisem*nt.Either it had been inserted by some unbalanced personwho wanted to create a stir—the kind of restless neuroticwho projects his unwelcome apparition into everysensation—or there was really some dark force movingbehind the kidnapping.

A second fact led many to persist in this latter notion.In spite of the fact that George Barrow had been disownedat home and driven from his town, and opposedto the circ*mstances that he had worked at commonand ill-paid jobs, had been unable to pay his rent foreleven months, had been seen in the shabbiest clothesand was known to be in need—the only force thatmight have prompted him to attempt a kidnapping—hewas found to have a considerable sum in his pocketswhen searched at the jail; he informed his wife that hewould get plenty of cash for their defense, and he wasshown to have expended a fairly large sum on the planningof the crime, the traveling and other expenses, therent of the farmhouse, the needs of Bella Anderson, andfor his own amusem*nt. Where had this come from?

Not only the public and the newspapers, but DetectiveChief McClusky were long occupied with thisenigma. Barrow himself gave various specious explanationsand finally refused to say more. Hints and bruitsof all kinds were current. Many said that Arthur Clarkecould furnish the answer if he would, an accusationwhich the harried father indignantly rejected.

In the end the guilty trio went to prison, the Clarkesremoved to Boston, the public interest flagged, and themystery remained unsolved.

VII

DOROTHY ARNOLD

On the afternoon of Monday, December 12,1910, a young woman of the upper socialworld vanished from the pavement of FifthAvenue. Not only did she disappear from the center ofone of the busiest streets on earth, at the sunniest hourof a brilliant winter afternoon, with thousands withinsight and reach, with men and women who knew her atevery side, and with officers of the law thickly strewnabout her path; but she went without discernible motives,without preparation, and, so far as the public hasever been permitted to read, without leaving the dimmestclew to her possible destination.

These are the peculiarities which mark the DorothyArnold case as one of the most irritating puzzles ofmodern police history, a true mystery of the missing.

It is one of the maxims in the administration of absent-personsbureaus that disappearing men and women,no matter how carefully they may plan, regardless ofall natural astuteness, invariably leave behind some tokenof their premeditation. Similarly, it is a truism that,barring purposeful self-occultation, the departure of anadult human being from so crowded a thoroughfarecan 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 aremarked by previous symptoms and by fairly early recovery,the recondite and baffling aspects of this affairbecome manifest; for there was never the least hint ofa ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuousfor rugged physical and mental health.

Thus, to sum up the affair, a disappearance whichhad from the beginning no standing in rationality, beinglogically both impenetrable and irreconcilable, remains,at the end of nearly a score of years, as obstinateand perplexing as ever—publicly a gall to human curiosity,an impossible problem for reason and analyticalpower.

Dorothy Arnold was past twenty-five when shewalked out of her father’s house into darkness that shiningwinter’s day. She was at the summit of her youth,rich, socially preferred, blessed with prospects, and toevery outer eye, uncloudedly happy. Her father, awealthy importer of perfumes, occupied a dignifiedhouse on East Seventy-ninth Street, in the center ofone of the best residential districts, with his wife andfour children—two sons and two daughters. Mr. Arnold’ssister was the wife of Justice Peckham of theUnited States Supreme Court, and the entire familywas socially well known in Washington, Philadelphia,and New York. His missing daughter had been educatedat Bryn Mawr and figured prominently in the activitiesof “the younger set” in all these cities. All descriptionsset her down as having been active, cheerful,intelligent, and talented.

The accepted story is that Miss Arnold left her father’shome at about half past eleven on the morningof her disappearance, apparently to go shopping for anevening gown. She appears to have had an appointmentwith 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 youngwoman went to her mother’s room and said she was goingout to look for the dress. Her mother remarked thatif her daughter would wait till she might finish dressing,she would go along. The girl demurred quietly, sayingthat it wasn’t worth the bother, and that she wouldtelephone if she found anything to her liking. So faras her parent could make out, the girl was not anxiousto be alone. She was no more than casual and seemedespecially 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-ninthStreet, where she bought a box of candy and hadit charged on her father’s account. At about half pastone she was at Brentano’s bookshop, Twenty-seventhStreet and Fifth Avenue. Here she bought a volume offiction, also charging the item to her father.

Whether she was recognized again at a later hour isin doubt. She met a girl chum and her mother in thestreet some time during the early part of the afternoonand stopped to gossip for a few moments; but whetherthis incident occurred just before or after her visit tothe 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 homefor dinner, there was a little irritation, but no concern.Her family decided that she had probably come acrossfriends and forgotten to telephone her intention of diningout. But when midnight came, and there was stillno word from the young woman, her father began tofeel uneasy and communicated by telephone with thehomes of various friends, where his daughter mighthave been visiting. When he failed to discover her inthis way, Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney,and a search was begun.

The reader is asked to note that there was no publicannouncement of the young woman’s absence for morethan six weeks. Just why it was considered wise to proceeddiscreetly and privately cannot be more than surmised.This action on the part of her family has alwaysbeen considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicionand a determination to prevent its publication. At anyrate, it was not until January 26, that revelation wasmade 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 notbe merely visiting, private detectives were summoned,and a formal quest begun. Her room and its contentsrevealed nothing of a positive character. She had left thehouse in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat andstreet 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 therebeen any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts.No part of the girl’s clothing had been packed or takenalong; none of her more valuable jewelry was missing;no letter had been left, and nothing pointed to preparationof any sort.

A search of her correspondence revealed, however, apacket of letters from a man of a well-known family inanother city. When, somewhat later, Mr. Arnold wassummoned by the district attorney and asked to producethe letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, butadded that they contained nothing of significance.

It developed, too, that, while her parents were inMaine in the preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold hadgone to Boston on the pretext of visiting a school chum,resident in the university suburb of Cambridge; whereasshe had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and hadpawned about five hundred dollars’ worth of personaljewelry with a local lender, taking no trouble, howeverto conceal her name or home address. It was shownthat the man of the letters was registered at anotherBoston hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he deniedhaving seen her or been with her on this occasion,and there was no way of proving to the contrary. Thedate of this Boston visit was September 23, about twoand a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance.The police were never able to establish any connectionbetween the Boston visit, the pawning of the jewels, andthe subsequent events, so that the reader must rely atthis point upon his own conjecture.

Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishmentof the young heiress, both her mother andbrother and the man of the letters had returned fromEurope, and the latter took part in the search for her.He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge ofMiss Arnold’s plans, proclaimed that he knew of noreason why she should have left home, announced thathe had considered himself engaged to marry her, andhe pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortlyappear. Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintainedover the young man and all his movements formany months. In the end, however, the police seemedsatisfied that he knew no more than any one else ofDorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped outof the case almost as suddenly as he had entered it.

In the six weeks before the public was acquaintedwith the facts, private detectives, and later the publicpolice, had worked unremittingly on the several possibletheories covering the case. There were naturally anumber of possibilities: First, that the girl had met witha traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital;second, that she had been run down by somereckless motorist, killed, and carried off by the frighteneddriver and secretly buried; third, that she had beenkidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that shehad been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wanderingabout the country, unable to give any clew to heridentity; sixth, that she had quarreled with her parentsand chosen this method of bringing them to terms bythe pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrestedas a shoplifter and was concealing her identity forshame.

As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded.The hospitals and morgues were searched in vain; therecords of traffic accidents were scanned with the utmostcare; the roadhouses and resorts in all directionsfrom the city were visited, and their owners closelyquestioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected,the passenger lists of all departing ships examined, andlater sailings observed. The authorities in European andother ports were notified by cable, and the captains ofships at sea were informed by wireless, now for thefirst time employed in such a quest. The city jails andprisons were visited and every female prisoner noted.Similar precautions were taken in other American cities,where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues were alsosubjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices ofphysicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, andall manner of possible and impossible retreats were madethe objects of detective attention—all without result.

The notion that the girl might have been abductedand held for ransom was discarded at the end of a fewweeks, when no word had come from possible kidnappers.The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, withthe most emphatic denials coming from all the near anddistant members of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea ofan elopement also had to be discarded after a time, andso also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic attack.

After the police finally insisted on the publication ofthe facts and the summoning of public aid, and afterthe various early hypotheses had one and all failed tostand the test of scrutiny and time, various more andmore fantastic or improbable conjectures came intocurrency. One was that the girl might have been carriedoff to some distant American town or foreign port.Another was that some secret enemy, whose name andgrievance her parents were loath to reveal, had madeaway with the young woman, or was holding her to satisfyhis spite. The public excitement was nigh boundless,and ingenious fabulations or diseased imaginingscame pouring in upon the harried police and the distractedparents with every mail.

Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. Asthe story of the young woman’s disappearance continuedto occupy the leading columns of the daily papers,day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstableelements of the population came into vigorousplay. Dorothy Arnold was reported from all parts ofthe country, and both the members of her family andnumberless detectives were kept on the jump, runningdown the most absurd reports on the meager possibilitythat there might be a grain of truth in one of them. Soonthere appeared the pathological liars and self-accusers,with whose peculiarities neither the police nor the publicwere then sufficiently acquainted. In more than ahundred cities—judging from a tabulation of the newspaperreports of that day—women of the most diverseages and types came forward with the suggestion thatthey concealed within themselves the person of the missingheiress. Girls of fourteen made the claim and womenof fifty. Such absurdities soon had the police in a stateof weary skepticism, but the Arnold family and thenewspaper-reading public were still upset by every freshreport.

Naturally enough, the fact that a prominent youngwoman, enjoying the full protection of wealth and socialdistinction, could apparently be snatched awayfrom the most populous quarter of a world city, struckterror to the hearts of many. If a Dorothy Arnold couldbe ravished from the familiar sidewalks of her homecity, what fate waited for the obscure stranger? Was itnot possible that some new and strange kind of criminal,equipped with diabolic cunning and actuated by impenetrablemotives, was launched upon a campaign ofwoman stealing? Who was safe?

One of the popular beliefs of the time was that MissArnold might have gone into some small and obscureshop at a time when there was no other customer in theplace and been there seized, bound, gagged, and madeready for abduction. The notion was widely acceptedfor the dual reason that it provided a set of circ*mstancesunder which it was possible to explain the totallyunwitnessed snatching of the young woman and,at the same time, set a likely locale, since there are thousandsof such little shops in New York. As a result ofthe currency of this story, many women hesitated toenter the establishments of cobblers, bootblacks, stationers,confectioners, tobacconists, and other pettytradesmen, especially in the more outlying parts of thecity. Many bankruptcies of these minor business peopleresulted, as one may read from the court records.

A similar fabulation, to the effect that the girl mighthave entered a cruising taxicab, operated by a sinisterex-convict, and been whisked off to some secret den ofcrime and vice, was almost as popular, with the resultthat cabs did a poor business with women clients formore than a year afterward. An old hackman, who wasarrested in that feverish time because of the hysteria ofa woman passenger, tells me that even to-day he encounterswomen who grow suspicious and excited, if hehappens to drive by some unaccustomed route, a thingoften done in these days to avoid the congestion on themain streets.

While all this popular burning and sweating was goingon, the police and many thousands of private investigators,professional and amateur, were busy withthe problem of elucidating some motive to fit the case.Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying toreason, the possibilities became a very general preoccupation.The deductive steps may be briefly set down.First, there were the alternative propositions of voluntaryor involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction.Second, if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained,there were only two general possibilities—abductionfor ransom or kidnapping by some maniac. Theideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like,come under the latter head. The notion of a fatal accidenthad been eliminated.

The proposition of voluntary absence presented amore complex picture. Suicide, elopement, amnesia,personal rebellion, an unrevealed family situation, a forbiddenlove affair, the desire to hide some social lapse—anyof these might be the basis of a self-willed absenceof a permanent or temporary kind.

The failure, after months of quest, to find any traceof a body, seemed to have rendered the propositions ofmurder and of suicide alike improbable. Elopement andamnesia were likewise rendered untenable theories bytime, nor was it long before the conceit of a disagreementwas relegated to the improbabilities.

Justly or unjustly, a good many practical detectivescame after a time to the opinion that the case demandeda masculinizing of the familiar adage into cherchezl’homme. More seasoned officers inclined to the idea thatthere must have been some man, possibly one whoseidentity had been successfully concealed by the distraughtgirl. Again, as is common in such cases, therewas the very general feeling that Miss Arnold’s familyknew a good deal more than had been revealed either tothe police or the public, and there was something aboutthe long delay in reporting the case and the subsequentguarded attitude of the girl’s relatives that seemed toconfirm this perhaps idle suspicion.

The trouble with a great many of the theories evolvedin the first months following the disappearance of DorothyArnold, was that they fitted only a part of thefacts and probabilities. After all, here was an intricateand baffling situation, involving a person who, becauseof position, antecedents, and social situation, might beexpected to act in a conventional manner. Accordingly,any explanation that fitted the physical facts and wasstill characterized by extraordinary details might reasonablybe discarded.

It was several years before the girl’s father finally declaredhis belief in her death, and it is a fact that a sumof not less than a hundred thousand dollars was expended,first and last, in running down all sorts of rumorsand clews. The search extended to England, Italy,France, Switzerland, Canada—even to the Far East andAustralia. But all trails led to vacancy, and all speculationswere at length empty. No dimmest trace of thegirl was ever found, and no genuinely satisfactory explanationof the strange story has ever been put forward.

It is true there have been, at times in the interveningdozen or more years, rumors of a solution. Persons moreor less closely connected with the official investigationhave on several occasions been reported as voicing theopinion that the Arnold family was in possession of thefacts, 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 NewYork Police Department, told an audience at the HighSchool of Commerce that the fate of Miss Arnold hadat that time been known to the police for many months,and that the case was regarded as closed. This pronouncementreceived the widest publicity in the NewYork and other American newspapers, but CaptainAyers’ statement was immediately and vigorously controvertedby John S. Keith, the personal attorney of thegirl’s father, who declared that the police official hadtold a “damned lie,” and that the mystery was as deep asever it had been. The police chiefs later issued interviewsfull of dubiety and qualifications, the general tenor beingthat Captain Ayers had spoken without sufficientknowledge of the facts.

Just a year later the father of this woman of mysterioustragedy died, the last decade of his life beclouded bythe sorrowful story and painful doubt. In his will wasthis 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 therumor mongers to work and a variety of tales, bolderthan had been uttered before, were circulated throughthe demi-world of New York and hinted in the newspapers.These rumors have not been printed directlyand there has thus been no need of denial on part of thefamily. It must be said at once that they are mere bruits,mere attempts on the part of the cynical town to inventa set of circ*mstances to fit what few facts and allegedfacts are known.

On the other hand, the newspapers have been only tooready to take seriously the most absurd fabulations. In1916, for instance, a thief arrested at Providence, R. I.,for motives best known to himself, declared that he hadhelped to bury Dorothy Arnold’s body in the cellar ofa house about ten miles below West Point, near the J. P.Morgan estate. Commissioner Joseph A. Faurot, CaptainGrant Williams and a number of detectives providedwith digging tools set out for the place in motorcars, closely pursued by other cars containing the newspaperreporters. The police managed to shake off thenewspaper men and reached the house. There they dugtill they ached and found nothing whatever.

Returning to New York, the detectives left theirshovels, some of which were rusty or covered with a redclay, at a station house and there the reporters caughta glimpse of them. The result was that a bit of rust orferrous earth translated itself into blood and thence intoheadlines in the morning papers, declaring that DorothyArnold’s body had been found. Denials followed withinhours, to be sure.

So the case rests.

Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death willopen the lips of one or another who knows the secret andhas been sealed to silence by the fears and needs of life.But it is just as likely that the words of her dying parentcontain as much as can be known of the truth aboutthe missing Dorothy Arnold.

VIII

EDDIE CUDAHY AND PAT CROWE

At seven o’clock on the bright winter evening ofDecember 18, 1900, Edward A. Cudahy, themultimillionaire meat packer, sent his fifteen-year-oldson to the home of a friend, with a pile of periodicals.The boy, Edward A., junior, but shortly to beknown over two continents as Eddie Cudahy, left hisfather’s elaborate house at No. 518 South Thirty-seventhStreet, Omaha, walked three blocks to the home ofDoctor 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 noticedthat his son had not returned, and he observed to his wifethat the Rustins must have invited the boy to stay. Mrs.Cudahy felt a little nervous and urged her husband tomake sure. He telephoned to the Rustin home and waspromptly told that Eddie had been there, left the papersand departed immediately, almost two hours before.

The Cudahys were instantly alarmed and convincedthat something out of the ordinary had befallen theboy. He had promised to return immediately to consultwith his father over a Christmas list. He was known tohave no more than a few cents in his pockets, and unexplainedabsences from home at night were unprecedentedwith him.

The beef magnate notified the Omaha police withoutlong hesitation, and the quest for the missing rich boywas on. All that night detectives, patrolmen, servants,and friends of the family went up and down the streetsand alleys of the overgrown Nebraska packing town,with its strange snortings from the cattle pens, its gruntingrailroad engines, its colonies of white and black laborersfrom distant lands, its brawling night life and itspretentious new avenues where the brash and suddenrich 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 hadbeen found, and no one dared to whisper the clearestsuspicions.

By noon all Omaha was in turmoil. The great packinghouses had practically stopped their activity; the policehad been called in from their usual assignments and putto searching the city, district by district; the resortsand gambling houses were combed by the detectives; theanxious father had telegraphed to Chicago for twentyPinkerton men, and the usual flight of mad rumors wasin the air.

One man reported that he had seen two boys, oneof them with a broken arm, leave a street car at the citylimits on the preceding night. The fact that the car linepassed near the Cudahy home was enough to lead peopleto think one of the boys must have been Eddie Cudahy.As a result, his known young friends were sought outand questioned; the schools were gone over for the boywith a broken arm, and all the street-car crews in townwere examined by the police.

By the middle of the afternoon, the newspapers issuedspecial editions, which bore the news that a letterhad been received from kidnappers. According to thisaccount, a man on horseback had ridden swiftly past theCudahy home at nine o’clock that morning and tosseda letter to the lawn. This had been picked up by one ofthe servants, and it read as follows:

With the publication of this alleged communication,even more fantastic reports began to reach the policeand the parents. One young intimate of the family camein and reported in all seriousness that he had seen a horseand trap standing in Thirty-seventh Street, near theCudahy home on several occasions in the course of thepreceding week. The fact that it looked like any one ofa hundred smart rigs then in common use did not seemto detract from its fancied significance.

Another neighbor reported that three days before thekidnapping he had seen a covered light wagon standingat the curb in the street, a block to the rear of the Cudahyhome. One man on the seat was talking with another,who was standing on the walk, and, as the narratorpassed, they had lowered their voices to a whisper.He had not thought the incident suggestive untilafter the report of the kidnapping. And the police, quiteforgetting the instinctive universal habit of loweringthe voice when strangers pass, sent out squads of mento find the wagon and the whisperers!

In short, the town was excited out of all sanity, andthe very forces which should have maintained calmnessand acted with all possible self-possession seemed themost headless. All the officials accomplished was the briefdetention of several innocent persons, the theatricalraiding of a few gambling houses, and the further excitationof the citizenry, always ready to respond topolice histrionism.

To add an amusing exhibit to the already heavy storeof evidence on this last point, it may be noted withamusem*nt, not to say amazement, that the kidnappingletter, which had so agitated the public, was itself a policefake, and the rider who had thrown it on the lawnwas a clumsy invention.

Meantime, however, a genuine kidnapping letter hadreached the hands of Mr. Cudahy. A little before nineo’clock on the morning of the nineteenth, after he toohad been up all night, the family coachman was walkingacross the front lawn when he saw a piece of red clothtied to a stout wooden stick about two feet long. Heapproached it, looked at it suspiciously, and finallypicked it up, to find that an envelope was wrappedabout the stick and addressed in pencil to Mr. Cudahy.Evidently some one had thrown this curiously preparedmissive into the yard in the course of the precedingnight, for there had been numbers of policemen, detectives,and neighbors on the lawn and on the walks infront of the property since dawn.

The letter, with its staff and red cloth, was immediatelycarried to the packer, who read with affrightedeyes this remarkable and characteristic communication:

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 cheapnote paper and in a small, but firm, masculine hand. Itwas read to the chief police authorities soon after itsreceipt. Just why they felt compelled to announce thatit 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 policeadvised the father not to comply with the demand ofthe criminals, but to rely upon their efforts. No doubttheir sense of duty to the public is as much responsiblefor this invariable position as any confidence in theirown powers. An officer must feel, after all, that he cannotcounsel bargaining with dangerous criminals, andthat to pay them is only to encourage other kidnappersand further kidnappings.

In spite of the menacing terms of the rather garrulousletter, which betrayed by its very length the fervorof its persuasive threats, and the darkness of its reminders,the nervousness of its composer, Mr. Cudahywas minded to listen to the advice of the officers anddefy the abductors of his son. In this frame of mind hedelayed action until toward the close of the afternoon,meantime sitting by the telephone and hearing reportsfrom police headquarters and his own private officersevery half hour. By four o’clock he and his attorney beganto realize that there was no clew of any kind; thatthe whole Omaha police force and all the men his wealthhad been able to supply in addition, had been able tomake not even the first promising step, and that thehour for a decision that might be fatal was fast approaching.Still, he hesitated to take a step in direct violationof official policy and counsel.

In this dilemma Mrs. Cudahy came forward with ademand for action to meet the immediate emergencyand protect her only son. She refused to listen to talk ofremoter considerations, declared that the amount of ransomwas a trifle to a man of her husband’s fortune, andweepingly insisted that she would not sacrifice her boyto any mad plans of outsiders, who felt no such poignantconcern as her own.

Shortly before five o’clock Mr. Cudahy telephonedthe First National Bank, which had, of course, closedfor the day, and asked the cashier to make ready thetwenty-five thousand dollars in gold. A little later theCudahy attorney called at the bank and received thespecie in five bags and in the denominations asked bythe abductors. The money was taken at once to theCudahy house and deposited inside, without the knowledgeof the servants or outsiders.

At half past six Mr. Cudahy ordered his driving marehitched to the buggy in which he made the rounds ofhis yards and plants. At seven o’clock he slipped quietlyout of his house, without letting his wife, the servants,or any one but his attorney know his errand. He carrieda satchel containing the five bags of gold, which weighedmore than one hundred pounds, to the stable, put theprecious stuff into the bottom of his vehicle, took up thereins, and set out on his perilous and ill-boding adventure.

Mr. Cudahy had not been allowed to leave home withoutwarnings from the police and his attorney. They hadtold him that he might readily expect to find himselftrapped by the kidnappers, who would then hold bothhim and his son for still higher ransom. So he drove towardthe appointed place along the dim, night-hiddenroads, with more than ordinary misgiving. Once ortwice, after he had proceeded six or seven miles into theblackness of the open prairie, without seeing any signsfrom the abductors, he came near turning back; but thedanger to his son and the thought that the criminalscould have no object in sending him on a fruitless expedition,held him to his course.

About ten miles out of town, still jogging anxiouslyalong behind his horse, Mr. Cudahy saw a passengertrain on one of the two transcontinental lines that convergeat that point, coiling away into the infinite blackness,like some vast phosphorescent serpent. The beautyand mystery of the spectacle meant nothing to him, butit served to raise his hopes. No doubt the kidnapperswould soon appear now. They had probably chosen thislocality, with the swift trains running by, for theirrendezvous. Once possessed of the gold, they wouldcatch the next flyer for either coast and be gone out ofthe reach of local police. Perhaps they would even havethe missing boy with them and surrender him as soonas they had been paid the ransom.

Thus buoyed and heartened, the father drove on. Suddenlythe road entered a cleft between two abrupt hillsor butts. A sense of impendency oppressed the lonelydriver. He took up a revolver beside him on the seat,clutching it near him, with some protective instinct. Atthe same moment he turned higher the flame in his redlantern, which swung from the whip socket of hisbuggy, and peered out into the gulch. Everything waspit-black and grave-silent. He lay back disappointedand spoke to the horse, debating whether to turn back.Once more he decided to go on. The cleft between thetwo eminences grew narrower. The horse turned a swiftsharp corner. Cudahy sat up with startled alertness.

There in the road before him, not ten rods away, wasa smoky lantern, throwing but a pallid radiance aboutit in the thick darkness, but lighting a great hope in thefather’s heart. He approached directly, drew up hishorse a few yards away, found that the lantern, tied to atwig by the roadside, was decorated with the specifiedribbons of black and white, returned to his buggy, carriedthe bags of gold to the lantern, put them down inthe roadside, waited a few moments for any sign thatmight be given, turned his horse about, and started forhome, driving slowly and listening intently for anysound from his expected son.

The ten miles back to Omaha were covered in thisslow and tense way, with eyes and ears open, and a mindfluctuating between hope and despair. But no lost boycame out of the darkness, and Cudahy reached his housewithout the least further encouragement. It was thenpast eleven o’clock. His attorney and his wife were stillin the drawing-room, sleepless, tense, and terrified. Theygreeted the boy’s father with swift questions and relapsedinto hopelessness when he related what he haddone. An hour passed, while Cudahy tried to keep up thecourage of his wife by argument and reasoning. Thencame one o’clock. Now half past one. Surely there wasno longer any need of waiting now. Either the kidnappershad hoaxed the suffering parents, or that notehad not come from kidnappers at all, but from impostors—or—somethingfar worse. At best, nothing wouldbe heard till morning.

“It’s no use, Mrs. Cudahy,” said the lawyer. “You’dbetter get what sleep you can, and——”

“Hs-s-sh!” said the mother, laying her finger on herlips and listening like a hunted doe.

In an instant she sprang out of her chair, ran intothe hall, out of the door, down the walk to the street,and out of the gate. The two men sprang up and followedin time to see her catch the missing boy into herarms. She had heard his footfall.

The news of the boy’s return was flashed to policeheadquarters within a few minutes, and the detectivechief went at once to the Cudahy home to hear the returningboy’s story. It was simple and brief enough.

Eddie Cudahy had left Doctor Rustin’s house thenight before, and gone directly homeward. Three orfour doors from his parents’ house Eddie Cudahy wassuddenly confronted by two men who faced him withrevolvers, called him Eddie McGee, declared that he waswanted for theft, that they were officers, and that hemust come to the police station. He protested that hewas not Eddie McGee, and that he could be identified inthe house yonder; but his captors forced him into theirbuggy and drove off, warning him to make no outcry.They had gone only a few blocks when they changedtheir tone, tied the lad’s arms behind him, and put abandage over his eyes and another over his mouth, sothat he could not cry out. He understood that he hadbeen kidnapped.

Thus trussed up and prevented from either seeingwhere he was being taken, or making any outcry, theyoung fellow was driven about for an hour, and finallydelivered 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. Hewas taken into a room on the second floor, seated in achair, and handcuffed to it. His gag was removed, butnot the bandage on his eyes. He was supplied with cigarettesand offered food, but he could not eat. One of thetwo men stood guard, the other departing at once, butreturning later on.

All that night and the next day the boy was unableto sleep. But he sensed that his captor seemed to be imbibingwhisky with great regularity. Finally, about anhour before he had been set free, Eddie heard the otherman return and hold a whispered conversation with hisguard. The boy was then taken from the house, put backinto the same buggy, driven to within a quarter of amile of his father’s home, and released. He ran for home,and his captors drove off.

Eddie Cudahy could not give any working descriptionof the criminals. He had not got a good look atthem in the street when they seized him, because it wasdark, and they had the brims of their large hats pulleddown over their eyes. Immediately afterward he hadbeen bandaged and deprived of all further chance of observation.One man was tall, and the other short. Thetall man seemed to be in command. The short man hadbeen his guard. He thought there was a third man whowas bringing in reports.

There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation.First, it would surely be possible to find thehouse in which the boy had been held captive, forOmaha was not so large that there were many emptyhouses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides,the time at which any such house had been rentedwould offer evidence. It might be possible to get a clewto the identity of the kidnappers through the descriptionof the person or persons who had done the renting.

Second, the kidnappers must have got the horse andbuggy somewhere; most likely from a local livery stable.If its source could be found, the liveryman also wouldbe able to describe the persons with whom he had donebusiness.

So the police set to work, searching the town againfor house and for stable. They found several desertedtwo-story cottages that fitted the picture well enough,and in each instance there were circ*mstances whichseemed to indicate that the kidnappers had been there.Finally, however, all were eliminated, except a crudetwo-story cabin at 3604 Grover Street. This turnedout to be the place, situated near the outskirts, on thetop of a hill, with the nearest neighbors a block away.Cigarette ends, burned matches, empty whisky bottles,and windows covered with newspapers gave silent, butconclusive, testimony.

The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It hadnot been hired at any stable in Omaha or in CouncilBluffs, across the Missouri River. Advertising and policecalls brought out no private owner who had rented sucha rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer livingabout twenty miles out of town who had sold a baypony to a tall stranger several weeks before. Anotherman was found who had sold a second-hand buggy toa man of the same general description. At last the policebegan to realize that they were dealing with a criminalof genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man hadnot blundered in any of the usual ways, and he hadmade the trail so confused that more than a week hadpassed before there were any positive indications as tohis possible identity.

In the end several indications pointed in the same direction.It seemed highly probable that the kidnapperchieftain had been some one acquainted with the packingbusiness and probably with the Cudahys. He wasalso familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commandingvoice, was accompanied by a shorter man, whoseemed to be older, but was still dominated by his companion.More important still, this chief of abductorswas an experienced and clever criminal. He gave everyevidence of knowing all the ropes. These specificationsseemed to fit just one man whose name now began to beused on all sides—the thrice perilous and ill-reputedPat Crowe.

It was recalled that this man had begun life as abutcher, been a trusted employee of the Cudahys tenyears before, and had been dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequentlyhe had turned his hand to crime, and achieveda startling reputation in the western United States as anintrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handyman with a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in acorner. He had been in prison more than once, had latelymade what seemed an effort at reform, knew Edward A.Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors andgratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactlythe man to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeksand evidence only strengthened the suspicion againsthim. Crowe, though he had been seen in Omaha the daybefore the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered.Even this fact added to the general belief that he andnone other had done the deed. In a short time the Cudahykidnapping mystery resolved itself into a quest forthis notorious fellow.

The alarm was spread throughout the United Statesand Canada, to the British Isles, and the Continentalports, and to Mexico and the Central American borderand port cities, where it was believed the fugitive mightmake his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended,and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases,with occasional lapses back into exciting alarms. Everylittle while the capture of Pat Crowe was reported, andon at least a dozen occasions men turned up with confessionsand detailed descriptions of the kidnapping.These apparitions and alleged captures took place insuch diffused spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil,San Francisco, and various obscure towns in theUnited States and Canada. The genuine and authenticPat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of thecaptives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.

Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman onthe Union Pacific Railroad, had been taken and broughtto trial. His name was James Callahan, and there wasthen and is now no question about his connection withthe affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on April29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, thepresiding tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect ofduty, saying that never had evidence more clearly indicatedguilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on othercounts were no better starred, and he had finally to bereleased.

In the same year, 1901, word was received fromCrowe through an attorney he had employed in an earlierdifficulty. Crowe had sent this barrister a draft fromCapetown, South Africa, in payment of an old debt. Themuch sought desperado had got through the lines to theTransvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fightingagainst the British. He had been twice wounded, decoratedfor distinguished courage, and was, according tohis own statement, done with crime and living a differentlife—adventurous, but honest. So many canards hadbeen exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story,albeit time proved it to be true.

At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-fivethousand dollars had been offered for the captureand conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty thousand by Cudahyand twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha.This huge price on the head of this wandering bad manhad, of course, contributed to the feverish and half-worldwideinterest in the case. Yet even these fat inducementsaccomplished nothing.

Finally, in 1906, when Crowe had been hunted invain for more than five years, he suddenly opened negotiationswith Omaha’s chief of police through an attorney,offering to come in and surrender, in case allthe rewards were immediately and honestly withdrawn,so that there would be no money inducement whichmight cause officers or others to manufacture a caseagainst him. After some preliminaries, these terms weremet, but not until an attempt to capture the desperadohad been made and failed, with the net result of threebadly wounded officers.

In February, 1906, Crowe was at last brought totrial and, to the utter astoundment and chagrin of theentire country, promptly acquitted, though he offeredno defense and tacitly admitted that he had taken theboy. One bit of conclusive evidence that had been offeredby the prosecution and admitted by the court,was a letter written by Crowe to his parish priest in thelittle Iowa town of his boyhood. In the course of thisletter, which had been written to the priest in the hopethat he might make peace with Cudahy, the desperadoadmitted that “I am solely responsible for the Cudahykidnapping. No one else is to blame.”

No matter. The jury would not consider the evidenceand brought in the verdict already indicated. Crowe,after six years of being hunted with a price of fifty-fivethousand dollars on his head, was a free man.

The acquittals of Crowe and Callahan have furnishedmaterial for a good deal of amused and some angry speculation.The local situation in Omaha at the time furnishesthe key to the puzzle. First of all, there was thebitter anti-beef trust agitation, founded on the fact thatmany small independent butchers had been put out ofbusiness by the great packing-house combination, ofwhich Cudahy was a member; and that meat prices hadeverywhere been rapidly advanced to almost doubletheir earlier prices. Next, there was the circ*mstance ofCudahy’s abundant and flaunting wealth. The commonman considered that these millions had been gouged outof his pocket and cut from off his dinner plate. Cudahyhad also begun the introduction of cheap negro laborinto 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 consideredhim a hero. But there was still another strangecause of the state of the public mind.

In the very beginning a not inconsiderable part ofOmaha’s people had somehow come to the curious conclusionthat there had been no Cudahy kidnapping. Onestory said that Eddie Cudahy was a wild youth, and thathe himself had conspired with Crowe and Callahan toabduct him and get the ransom, since he needed a shareof it for his own purpose, and he saw in this plan an easymethod to mulct his unsuspecting father. A later versiondenied the boy’s guilt, but still insisted that thewhole story, as told by the father and confirmed by thepolice, was a piece of fiction. What motive the richpacker could have had for such a fraud, no one couldsay. The best explanation given was that he saw in ita plan to get worldwide advertising for the Cudahyname. How this could have sold any additional hams orbeeves, is a bit hard to imagine, but the story was sogenerally believed that two jurors at one of the trialsvoiced 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 wordgoes. He has committed no more crimes, unless onewants to rate under this heading a book of highly romanticconfessions, which he had published the followingyear. In this book he set forth the circ*mstances ofthe crime in great, but unreliable, detail. He made itvery plain, however, that he and Callahan alone plannedthe crime and carried it out.

Crowe personally conceived the whole plan and tookCallahan into the conspiracy only because he neededhelp. The two held up the boy, as already related. Assoon as they had him safe in the old house, Crowe droveback to the Cudahy home in his buggy and threw thenote, wrapped about the stick and decorated with thered cloth, upon the lawn, where it was found the nextmorning by the coachman. Of the twenty-five thousanddollars in gold, Crowe gave his assistant only threethousand dollars, used one thousand for expenses, andburied the rest, recovering it later when the coast wasclear. He selected Cudahy for a victim because he knewthat the packer was a fond father, had a nervous wife,and would be strong enough to resist any mad policeadvice.

A few years later I first encountered Crowe in NewYork, when he came to see me with a petty favor to askand an article of his reminiscences to sell. He had meantimebecome a kind of peregrine reformer, lecturer,pamphlet seller and semi-mendicant, now blessed witha little evanescent prosperity, again sleeping in Boweryflops and eking out a miserable living by any deviceshort of lawbreaking. And he has called upon me orcrossed my wanderings repeatedly in the interveningyears, always voluble, plausible and a trifle pathetic.Now he is off to call upon the President, to memorializea governor or to address a provincial legislature. Heis bent on abolishing prisons, has a florid set-speech,which he delivers in a big sententious voice, and perhapshe impresses his rural hearers, though the tongue inthe cheek and the twinkle in the eye never escape thosewho know him of old.

This grand rascal is no longer young—rising sixty, Ishould say—and life has treated him shabbily in the lasttwenty years. Yet neither poverty nor age has quitetaken from him a certain leonine robustness, a kind ofruined strength and power that shines a little sadlythrough his charlatanry.

Only once or twice, when he has lost himself in theexcited recounting of his adventures, of his hardy oldcrimes, of the Cudahy kidnapping, have I ever caughtin him the quality that must once have been his—theforce, the fire that made his name shudder around theworld. Convention has beaten him as it beats them all,these brave and baneful men. It has made a sidling apologistof a great rogue in Crowe’s case—and what a saddeclension!

IX

THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING

Abduction is always a puzzling crime. Therisks are so great, the punishment, of late years,so severe, and the chances of profit so slightthat logic seems to demand some special and extraordinarymotive on the part of the criminal. It is truethat kidnapping is one of the easiest crimes to commit.It is also a fact that it seems to offer a quick andpromising way of extorting large sums of money withoutphysical risk. But every offender must know thatthe chances of success are of the most meager.

A study of past cases shows that child stealing arousesthe public as nothing else can, not even murder. Thisstate of general alarm, indignation, and alertness is thefirst peril of the kidnapper. Again, the problem of gettingthe ransom from even the most willing victimwithout exposing the criminal to capture, is a mostintricate and unpromising one. It is well known thatchild snatchers almost never succeed with this part ofthe business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actuallygot the ransom and made off without beingcaught and punished are so thinly strewn upon thelong record that any criminal who ever takes the troubleto peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses.Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officersthat professional criminals usually are aware of thisfact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.

The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of theserecognized discouragements probably accounts for theproneness of policemen and citizens to interpret intoevery abduction case some moving force other thanmere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springsof action, whether real or surmised, are often the innerpenetralia of child stealing mysteries. So with thefamous 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 westernPennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned toWesley Sloss, the janitor.

“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office rightaway,” said the stranger.

It may have been more than irregular for a pupil tobe summoned from his classes in this way, but in Sharonno one questioned vagaries having to do with this particularchild. Willie Whitla was the eight-year-old sonof the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla, whowas wealthy and politically influential. The boy wasalso, and more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage ofFrank M. Buhl, the multimillionaire iron master andindustrial overlord of the region.

Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried insideto Room 2, told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, thatthe boy was wanted, helped bundle him into his coat,and led him out to the buggy. The man in the conveyancetucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered histhanks, and drove off in the direction of the town’scenter, where the father’s office was situated.

When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home forluncheon at the noon recess, there was no special apprehension.Probably he had gone to a chum’s houseand 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 Whitlaveranda, blew his whistle, and left a note which hadbeen posted in the town some hours before. It was addressedto the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl ofthe little boy. Its contents, written by another hand,read:

“We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if youcomply with our instructions. If you give this letter to thenewspapers, or divulge any of its contents, you will neversee your boy again. We demand ten thousand dollars intwenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar bills. If you attemptto mark the money, or place counterfeit money, youwill 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 PittsburghDispatch in the personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do asyou 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 wereon the lookout in a thousand cities and towns throughthe eastern United States.

At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard ofthe abduction, a boy named Morris was found, who hadseen Willie Whitla get out of a buggy at the edge of thetown, drop a letter into the mail box, and get back intothe vehicle, which was driven away.

This discovery had hardly been made when it wasalso learned that a stranger had rented a horse andbuggy, fitting the description of those used by the kidnapper,in South Sharon early in the morning. At fiveo’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rentedbuggy, was found tied to a post in Warren, Ohio,twenty-five miles from Sharon.

The search immediately began in the northern orlake cities and towns of Ohio, the trend of the searchrunning strongly toward Cleveland, where it was believedthe abductor or abductors would try the hidingproperties of urban crowds.

The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense andcaution. They were sufficiently well informed to knowthat the police are doubtful agencies for the safe recoveryof snatched children. They were rich to thepoint of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meantnothing. The safety and speedy return of the child werethe only considerations that could have swayed them.Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents of thenote, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide tothe police any other details, or the direction of theirintentions. The fact of the kidnapping could, of course,not be concealed, but all else was guarded from officialor public intrusion.

On the advice of friends the parents did employ privatedetectives, but even their advice was disregarded,and Mr. Whitla without delay signified his willingnessto capitulate by inserting the dictated notice into allthe four mentioned newspapers.

The answer of the abductors came very promptlythrough the mails, reaching Whitla on the morning ofthe twentieth, less than forty-eight hours after the boyhad been taken.

Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicateto the police the contents of this note or hisplans. Instead, he set off quietly for Cleveland, evidentlyto mislead the public officers, who seemed to take delightin their efforts to seize control of the case. Ateight o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompaniedby one private detective, and went to the neighboringcity of Ashtabula. Here the detective was leftat the White Hotel, and the father of the missing boyset out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.

They, it appears, had written him that he must go atten o’clock at night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip ofland on the outskirts of Ashtabula, and there depositunder a certain stone the package of bills. He was toldwhat route to follow, commanded to go alone, andwarned not to communicate with the police. Havingleft the money as commanded, Whitla was to return tothe hotel and wait there for the coming of his son, whowould be restored as soon as the abductors were safelyin possession of the money.

So the father set out in the dark of the night, followedthe route given him by the abductors, depositedthe money in the park, and returned forthwith to thehotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock. Here he sat withhis bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition ofhis little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’snervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in themorning, some local officers appeared and notified thefrenzied lawyer that they had been watching the parkall night, and that no one had appeared to claim thepackage of money.

Police interference had ruined the plan.

The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnapperswere to call for the money in the park, theymust 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 yardsand boats in the harbor, watched the roads leading inand out of the city, searched the street cars and generallyplayed the devil. But all in vain. There were nosuspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.

The following morning the father of the boy visitedthe mayor and requested that the police cease their activities.He pointed out that there were no clews ofdefinite promise, and the peril in which the child stoodought to command official coöperation instead of dangerousinterference. Whitla finally managed to convincethe officers that they stood no worse chance of catchingthe criminals after the recovery of the boy, and the Ashtabulaofficers were immediately called off.

The disappointed and harried father was forced toreturn to Sharon in defeat and bring the disappointingnews to his prostrated wife. The little steel town hadgot the definite impression that news of the child hadbeen got, and preparations for the boy’s return had beenmade. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receivethe little wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation.Crowds besieged the Whitla home, and policemen hadto be kept on guard to turn away a stream of well-meaningfriends and curious persons, who would havekept the breaking mother from such little sleep as waspossible under the circ*mstances.

The excitement of the vicinity had by this timespread to all the country. As is always the case, arrestson suspicion were made of the most unlikely persons inthe most impossible situations. Men, women, and childrenwere stopped in the streets, dragged from theirrooms, questioned, harried, taken to police stations, andeven locked into jails for investigation, while the missingboy and his abductors succeeded in eluding completelythe large army of pursuers now in the field.

Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers onthe twenty-first, and the hearts of the bewildered parentsand relatives sank with apprehension, but themorning mail of the twenty-second again contained anote which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate thatthe business of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabulamay have been a test maneuver, to find out whetherWhitla would keep the faith and act without the police.This note read:

This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. Heaccordingly had his representatives announce that allactivities would cease for the time being, in the hopethat the kidnappers would regain their confidence andreopen communications. At the same time he told theAshtabula police to resume their activities. With thesetwo false leads given out, Whitla slipped away from hishome, caught the train, and went straight to Cleveland.

Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that hehad eluded the overzealous officers, Whitla went toDunbar’s drug store and found the note waiting, aspromised. It contained nothing but further directions.He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by aMrs. Hendricks at 1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliverthe ransom, carefully done into a package, to thewoman in charge. He was to tell her the package shouldbe held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.

Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned overthe package of ten thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks,and was given a note in return. This missive instructedhim to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel, where hewas to wait for his boy. The promise was made that thechild would be returned within three hours.

It was about five o’clock when this exchange wasmade. The tortured father turned and went immediatelyto the Hollenden, one of the chief hostelriesof Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hourpassed. His anxiety became intolerable. He went downto the lobby and began walking back and forth, in andout of the doors, up and down the walk, back into thehotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several noticedhis nervousness and preoccupation, but only alone newspaper man identified him and kept him underwatch.

Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seventhe worn lawyer’s agitation increased to the point offrenzy. He could do no more than retire to a quietcorner 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 ofa Payne Avenue street car saw a man and a small boycome out of the gloom at a street corner in East Clevelandand motion him to stop. The man put the childaboard and gave the conductor some instructions, payingits fare, and immediately vanished in the darkness.The little boy, wearing a pair of dark goggles and alarge 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 ofseventeen or eighteen years boarded the car and wereimmediately intrigued by the glum little figure. Thenewcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney andThomas W. Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspiciousthat this might be the much-sought WillieWhitla. When they asked his name the lad said he wasWillie Jones. In response to other questions he told thathe was on his way to meet his father at the Hollenden.

The two young men said no more till the hotel wasreached. Here they insisted on leaving the car with theboy and at once called a policeman to whom they voicedtheir suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and thechild thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. Inresponse to further interrogation, the little fellow stillinsisted that he was Jones, but, being deprived of his bigcap 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 tinkleof the childish voice, ran across the big room, caught upthe child and rushed hysterically to his own apartment,where he telephoned at once to the boy’s mother. By thetime the attorney could be persuaded to come backdown stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father andchild were welcomed with cheers.

The boy shortly gave his father and the police hisstory. The man who had taken him from school inthe buggy had told him that he was being taken out oftown to the country at his father’s request, because therewas an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctorswould lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordinglygone willingly to Cleveland, where he hadbeen taken to what he believed to be a hospital. A manand woman had taken care of him and treated him well.They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abusedhim in any way. In fact, he liked them, except for thefact that they made him hide under the kitchen sinkwhen any one knocked at the door, and they gave himcandy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, theboy said, had put him aboard the street car, paid hisfare, instructed him to tell any inquirers that his namewas Jones, and warned him to go immediately to thehotel and join his father. The only additional informationgot from the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptionsof the abductors, was to the effect that he had beentaken to the “hospital” the night following his abductionand had not left the place till he was led out to besent to the hotel.

The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomedwith music and a salute from the local militiacompany, displayed before the serenading citizens, andphotographed for the American and foreign press.

Meantime the search for the kidnappers was underway. The private detectives in the employ of the Whitlaswere immediately withdrawn when the boy was recovered,but the police of Cleveland and other citiesplunged in with notable energy. The druggist, withwhom the note had been left, and the woman confectioner,who had received the package of ransom money,were immediately questioned. Neither knew that thetransaction they had aided was concerned with theWhitla case, and both were frightened and astonished.They could give little information that has not alreadybeen indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candystore, however, was able to particularize the descriptionof the man who had come to her place, left the note forMr. Whitla, and returned later for the package ofmoney. He was, she said, about thirty years old, withdark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face,weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, andseemed to be Irish.

Considering the car line which had brought the boyto the Hollenden Hotel, the point at which he hadboarded the car, and the description he gave of theplace he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police werecertain Willie had been detained in an apartment housesomewhere in the southeast quarter of the city, and detectiveswere accordingly sent to comb that part of thecity in quest of a furnished suite in which the kidnappersmight still be hiding.

Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Mondaynight. Tuesday evening, about twenty-two hours afterthe boy had made his dramatic entry into the Hollenden,the detectives went through a three-story flatbuilding at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that acouple answering the general descriptions furnished byWillie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks had rented a furnishedapartment there on the night following the kidnappingand had departed only a few hours ahead of thedetectives. They had conducted themselves very quietlywhile in the place, and the woman who had sublet therooms to them was not even sure there had been achild with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified thisplace as the scene of his captivity.

The discovery of this apartment might have beenless significant for the moment, had the building notbeen but a few squares from the point at which Williehad been put aboard the street car for his trip to joinhis father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hoton the trail. Reserves were rushed to that part of town,patrolmen were not relieved at the end of their toursof duty, and the extra men were stationed at the exitsfrom the city, with instructions to stop and question allsuspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but thequarry was by no means in sight.

At this tense and climactic moment of the drama farbroader forces than the police were thrown upon thestage. The governor of Pennsylvania signed a proclamationin the course of the afternoon, offering to continuethe reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had beenposted by the State for the recovery of the boyand the arrest and conviction of his abductors. Sincethe boy had been returned, the money was to go tothose who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly,the people of several States were watching withno perfunctory alertness. High hopes of immediate capturewere 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 womanof the most inconspicuous kind entered the saloon ofPatrick O’Reilly on Ontario Street, Cleveland, sat downat a table in the rear room, and ordered drink. Theliquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollarbill in payment. He immediately reordered, tellingthe proprietor to include the other patrons then inthe place. Again he offered a new bill of the same denomination,and once again he commanded that allpresent accept his hospitality. Both the man and thewoman drank rapidly and heavily, quickly showing theeffects of the liquor and becoming more and more loquacious,spendthrift and effusive.

There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in suchconduct. Men came in often enough who drank heavily,spent freely, and insisted on “buying for the house.” Butit was a little unusual for a man to let go of thirty dollarsin little more than an hour, and it was still moreunusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollarnote after the other.

O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knewthat there had been a kidnapping; that there was areward of fifteen thousand dollars outstanding; that aman and woman were supposed to have held the boycaptive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon.Also he had read about the package of five, ten, andtwenty dollar bills. His brows lifted. O’Reilly waited foran opportune moment and went to his cash drawer. Thebills this pair of strangers had given him were all new;that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be allof the same issue, even of the same series and in consequentnumbers. If so——

The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. Whenhis suspect callers had their attention on something else,he slipped the money from the till and moved to theend of the bar near the window, where he was out oftheir visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigarcase, adjusted his glasses, and stared.

In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reillyurged them to stay, insisted on supplying them with afree drink, did what he could, without arousing suspicion,to detain them, hoping that an officer wouldsaunter in. At last they could be held no longer. Withan exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out ofthe door and gone into the night, whose shadows hadyielded them up an hour before.

O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to atelephone. In response to his urgings, Captain Shattuckand Detective Woods were hurried to the place andset out with O’Reilly’s instructions and description.They had no more than moved from the saloon whenthe rollicking pair was seen returning.

The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remarkabout the weather and the lateness of the hour.Instantly the man took to his heels, with Captain Shattuckin pursuit. As they turned a corner, the officerdrew and fired high.

The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policemanran to him, marveling that his aim had been sounintentionally good. He found, however, that the fugitivehad merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at flight.

Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearestpolice station and subjected to questioning. Theywere inarticulately drunk, or determinedly reticent andpretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half assuredthat 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 beentaken from the bank, were nine thousand, seven hundredand ninety dollars.

The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle andHelen McDermott Boyle—he a floating adventurerknown to the cities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, she thedaughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom shehad quit several years before to go venturing on herown account.

From the beginning both the police and the publicheld the opinion that these two people had not beenalone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigationfailed to reveal the presence of others at any stage ofthe abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal inCleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possiblybeen the sole active agents, but the opinion wasretained that some one else must have plotted the crime.

Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscurelittle town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla,when there were tens of thousands of boys withwealthier parents and many with even richer relatives?Who had acquainted them with the particularities of theWhitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, thechild’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it notobvious that some one close to the family had suppliedthe information and laid the plans?

James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth ofMay, faced with his accusers, and swiftly encircled withthe accusing evidence, which was complete and unequivocal.He accepted it without display of emotionand offered no defense. After brief argument the casewent to the jury, which reached an affirmative verdictwithin a few minutes.

Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterwardand also presented no defense. A verdict was foundagainst her with equal expedition on May 10, and shewas remanded for sentence.

On the following day both defendants were calledbefore the court. The judge imposed the life sentenceon Boyle and a term of twenty-five years on his wife. Afew hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper reportersto his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed thema written statement.

Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895,when the body of Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lyingon the sidewalk on East Federal Street, Youngstown,Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. Therehad been some mysterious circ*mstances or rumors attachedto Reeble’s end.

Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble,but he said in his statement that he and one DanielShay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper, who had died in 1907,had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs. JamesP. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking anumber of letters from the pockets of the dead man, ashis body lay on the walk. Boyle recited that not onlyhad he and Shay found Forker in this compromisingposition, but they had picked up two envelopes overlookedby Forker, in which were found four lettersfrom women, two from a girl in New York State andthe other two from a Cleveland woman. The contentswere intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventurethat Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.

Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequentlywritten Forker, told him about the letters,and suggested that they were for sale. Forker had immediatelyreplied and made various efforts to recoverthe incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them andcontinued to extort money from Forker for years,threatening to reveal the letters unless paid.

Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on torecite, a demand for five thousand dollars had beenmade on Forker, who said he could not raise the money,but would come into an inheritance later and wouldthen pay and recover the dangerous evidence. WhenForker failed in this undertaking, fresh threats weremade, with the result that Forker suggested the kidnappingof his nephew, the demand for ten thousand dollars’ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way toget the five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.

Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnappingand attended to the matter of having the boytaken from the school. He said that some one else haddone 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 reasoningas it did, created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediatelyand indignantly denied the accusation andbrought to their support a Youngstown police officer,Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body ofDan Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talkingto Reeble on the walk before the building in whichReeble resided, early in the morning of June 8, 1895.Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walkingslowly down the street when he heard a thump andgroans behind him. Returning to the spot where he hadleft Reeble, he found his companion of a few minutesbefore, dying on the walk.

Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sittingon his window sill, and that the man had apparentlyfallen out to his death. He swore that neither Forker,Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when Reebledied.

There are, to be sure, some elements which vergeupon improbability in this account, but the denials ofForker and Whitla were strongly reinforced by thetestimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the liverywhere the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmlyidentified Boyle as the man they had seen and dealtwith, thus refuting the latter part of Boyle’s accusativestatement.

Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten yearsof her long term. Her husband, on the other hand, continuedhis servitude and died of pneumonia in RiversidePenitentiary on January 23, 1920.

X

THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE

A few minutes past seven o’clock, on the eveningof March 27, 1901, Willie McCormick,a ten-year-old schoolboy, started to attendvespers in the little Church of the Sacred Heart, in theHighbridge section of New York City. His mother gavehim a copper cent for the collection plate, and he ranout of the door, struggling into his short brown overcoat,in great haste to overtake two of his elder sisterswho had started ahead of him. Three doors down thestreet he stopped and blew a toy whistle to attract theattention of a playmate. This boy’s mother called fromthe porch that her son was to take a music lesson andcould not go to church. So Willie McCormick lifted hiscap and went his way.

It was a cold spring evening, and cutting winds werepiping through the woods and across the open spaces ofthat then sparsely settled district of the Americanmetropolis. Dusk had fallen, and the thinly planted electriclights along Ogden Avenue threw the shadows ofthe curbside trees across the walks in moving arabesques.The boy buttoned his coat closely about him, runningaway into the gloom, while the neighbor womanwatched him disappear. In that moment the profounderdarkness enveloped him, swallowed him into a voidfrom which he never emerged alive, and made him thechief 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 andcentering about one approach to the old and beautifulstone bridge from which it takes its name. The tracks ofthe New York Central Railroad skirt the edge of theriver on their way up-state. Further back from thestream the ground rises, and along the ridge, parallelingthe river, is Ogden Avenue. Near the southern foot ofthis thoroughfare, at One Hundred and Sixty-firstStreet, the steel skeleton of the McComb’s Dam bridgethrust itself across the Harlem, with its eastern archspanning high above the muddy mouth of CromwellCreek,[9] which empties into the Harlem at this point.At the shore level, under the great bridge approach, ahinged steel platform span, raised and lowered by meansof balance weights to permit the passage of minor shippingup and down the creek, carried the tracks acrossthe 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 andframe house of the villa type, set back from the highestpoint 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 McCormickdisappeared, the vicinity bore, as it still bearsto a lesser degree, the air of suburbia. Then houses werefew and rather far apart. Some of the side streets wereunpaved, and all about were patches of unimprovedland, where clumps of trees, that once were part of theBronx Woods, still flourished in dense order. The firstapartment houses of the district were building, andgangs of Italian laborers, with a sprinkling of nativemechanics, were employed in the excavations and erections.

Kilns and a brick yard disfigured one bank of CromwellCreek, while a factory, a coal dump, and twolumber yards sprawled along the other. Five squares tothe north of the creek’s mouth and two squares to thewest is the Highbridge police station. The Church ofthe Sacred Heart, then in charge of the wealthy andvenerable Father J. A. Mullin, stands two blocks to theeast of Ogden Avenue and practically on the same crossstreet with the police building. Neither of these placesis more than a third of a mile from the McCormickhome.

Shortly after nine o’clock on the important eveningalready noted, the two young daughters of WilliamMcCormick returned from church without theirbrother. He had not overtaken them on the way, orjoined them at the services. They had not seen him andsupposed he had either remained at home, or playedtruant from church and gone to romp with other boys.The father was immediately alarmed. It was not likeWillie to stay out in the dark. He was the eleventh oftwelve children, all the others being girls, and he wasaccordingly petted, overindulged, and feminine. He hadan especially strong dread of the dark and had neverbeen known to venture out in the night without hisolder sisters or other boys. Besides, there had been kidnappingrumors in the neighborhood. It was not longafter the notorious abduction of Eddie Cudahy, andparents in all parts of the United States were stillnervous and watchful.

Whether because of threats, local suspicions, or becauseof the general alarm, the richest man in the neighborhoodhad gone to almost ludicrous extremes in hisprecautions. This man, a cloak manufacturer namedOscar Willgerodt, occupied a large house about a hundredyards from that of the McCormicks. He had ayoung son, also ten years old. His apprehensions for thesafety of this lad, who was a playmate of Willie McCormick,resulted in a ten-foot stone wall across thefront of his property, with an ornamental iron gatethat was kept padlocked at night, though this step invalidatedthe fire insurance, an eight-foot iron fenceabout the sides and rear of the property, topped withstrands of barbed wire, and several formidable dogsthat ran at large day and night.

The fears of the neighborhood rich man had naturallycommunicated themselves to other parents, and theyseethed in William McCormick’s mind, as he hurriedfrom his home to seek the absent boy. Willie was not tobe found at the home of any of his chums; he was notplaying at a near-by street corner, where some olderboys were congregated, and apparently no one had seenhim since the neighbor woman, Mrs. Tierney, had toldhim that her son could not go to church. The father,growing more and more excited, stormed about theHighbridge district half the night and then set out tovisit 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, hisfather summoned the police.

What followed provides an excellent exposition ofthe phenomenon of public unconcern being graduallyrallied to excitement and finally driven to hysteria. Thepolice listened to the statements of the missing boy’sparents and sisters, made some perfunctory investigations,and said that Willie McCormick had evidentlyrun away from home. Many boys did that. Moreover,it was spring, and such vagaries were to be expected inyoungsters. The newspapers noted the case with shortroutine paragraphs. A street-car conductor brought inthe information that he had carried a boy, whom hewas willing to identify as Willie McCormick, judgingfrom nothing better than photographs, to a site inSouth Brooklyn, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Showwas encamped. Another conductor reported that he hadtaken a boy answering the description of Willie McCormickto the Gravesend race course, where the horseswere tuning up for the spring meeting. But the policefound no trace of the wanderer at either place, nor atseveral others that were suggested.

The McCormicks took the attitude at once that theirson had not gone away voluntarily. He was, they said,far too timid for adventuring, much too beloved andpampered at home to seek other environment, and tooyoung to be troubled with the dromomania that attacksadolescents. To these objections one of the policeofficials responded with the charge that the McCormickswere not telling all they knew, and that he was satisfiedthey had an idea what had happened to the runaway, ashe insisted on terming him.

At this point two interventions brought the McCormickcase out of obscurity. Father Mullin, having beenappealed to by the McCormicks, pointed out to thepolice in an interview that Willie McCormick had vanishedwith one cent in his pocket, that he could havetaken a sum which must have seemed sufficient for longwanderings to a childish mind from his mother’s purse,which lay at hand; that he had started to church withhis sisters and returned for his overcoat, and that thedeparture was wholly unprepared and assuredly unpremeditated.The astute priest said that every runawaymade preparations for flight, and that, no matter howcarefully the plans might be laid, there always remainedbehind the evidence of intent to disappear. A child, hesaid, could not have planned more cunningly thanmany clever men, and he insisted that there must be anotherexplanation for the absence of the boy.

Naturally the newspapers paid more attention to thepriest, and they began printing pictures of the boy, withscare headlines. Father Mullin had just taken in handthe affair when Oscar Willgerodt, the man of the stonewall and iron fences, came forward with an offer of athousand dollars’ reward for information leading to thediscovery of the missing boy. He said that he felt surekidnappers had been at work, and that they had takenthe McCormick boy in mistake for his own son. Headded that he had received threats of abduction at intervalsfor more than a year.

A few days later, the boy’s uncle appeared in thepress with an offer of five thousand dollars for thesafe return of the child and the production of his abductors.By this time the newspapers were flaming withaccounts of the disappearance in every edition. Theirreporters and detectives swarmed over Highbridge, andthat quiet district was immediately thrown into thewildest excitement, which rose as the days succeeded.

Father Mullin next offered ten thousand dollars forthe apprehension of the kidnappers and return of theboy. Then a restaurant keeper of the neighborhood,whose nephew had been threatened by anonymous letterwriters, offered two thousand dollars more for thereturn of the McCormick boy, and he said he would payan additional thousand for evidence against kidnappers.Thus the total of fees offered was nineteen thousanddollars. Still no word came from the absent lad, andthe efforts of a thousand officers failed to disclose anyabductors.

The constant appearance of these articles in the newspapersand the offers of such high rewards succeeded,however, in throwing a city of five or six million peopleinto general hysteria. Parents refused to allow theirchildren out of doors without escort; rich men calledup at all hours of the day and night, demanding specialpolice to protect their homes; excited women throughoutthe city and later throughout the State and surroundingcommunities proceeded to interpret theapparition of every stranger as evidence of kidnappersand to bombard the police of a hundred towns and citieswith frantic appeals. The absence of this obscure childhad 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 possibilityof achieving celebrity and rich reward, all bogged downprecisely where they started. Willie McCormick hadvanished within a hundred feet of his father’s door. Thenight had simply swallowed him up, and all efforts failedto penetrate a step into the gloom.

Only two suggestive bits of information could begot 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 hada grievance. This was a mechanic, who lived a fewsquares away, and with whom there had been a disagreementas to pay. But this man was at home and goingsteadily about his work; he was vouched for byneighbors and his employers, and he came out of a policegrilling completely absolved.

Launcelot Tierney, the playmate for whom WillieMcCormick had blown his whistle a minute or two beforehe vanished, supplied the information that Williehad tormented an Italian laborer on the morning beforethe disappearance, and that this man had nursed hisgrudge until the afternoon, when the boys were returninghome from school. Then, said the Tierney boy, thisworkman had lain in wait behind a pile of lumber anddashed out after Willie, as the children passed. Williehad 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 employedat the indicated building was absent. Howeverthe Tierney boy was unable to identify the man he hadaccused, when the workmen were lined up for his inspection.A good deal was made of this circ*mstance.

The public police, however, always came back totheir original attitude. Kidnappers were actuated bythe hope of extorting money, they said. Since WilliamMcCormick was a poor man, there could have been nomotive for the abduction of his son. Consequently itwas 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 thekidnapper might very well have been ignorant of hisdecline in fortune and taken the boy in the belief thathis parent was still wealthy. Others joined the controversyby pointing out in the newspapers that abductionswere sometimes motivated by revenge or spite on thepart of persons quite unknown or unsuspected by theparents; that children were often stolen by irrationalor demented men or women, and that there was atleast some basis for faith in the abduction theory, butno evidence to support the idea of a runaway.

Meantime events had added their spice of immediatedrama. A few nights after the disappearance of WillieMcCormick, Doctor D. A. McLeod, a surgeon occupyingthe next house but one to the McCormick’s, hadfound a masked man skulking about the rear of hisproperty just after nightfall, and tried to grapple withthe intruder. A week later, from a house two blocksaway, another neighbor reported that he, too, had foundthe masked man prowling about his place and had followedhim into the woods, where he had been lost. Thisinformant 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 inWashington, and one of them showed the camera mana slip of paper with some childish scrawl. Somehow thisbit of writing came to be identified as that of one ofWillie McCormick’s sisters. It was said the scrap ofpaper must have been taken from the McCormickhouse. The two Gypsy children were seized and held injail, while detectives hurried off to interrogate theirelders and search through the Romany camps up anddown the Atlantic seaboard. No trace of the missingboy was found, and the girls were quickly released.

Finally the expected note from the kidnapperreached William McCormick. It was scrawled awkwardlyon a piece of nondescript paper by some illiterateperson who was apparently trying to conceal hisnormal handwriting. It said that Willie was being heldfor ransom; that he was well; that he would be safe solong as no attempt was made to bring the police intothe negotiations, and that disaster would follow if thefather played false. The writer then demanded the absurdlysmall sum of two hundred dollars for the releaseof the boy and directed that the money be taken atnight to the corner of Third Avenue and One Hundredand Thirty-fifth Street, and there placed in an old tinbucket which would be found inside an abandonedsteam boiler. The missive bore the signature “Kid.”

The police immediately denounced the letter as thework of some mental defective, but instructed thefather to go to the rendezvous at the appointed timeand deposit a bundle of paper which might look likethe demanded sum in bank notes.

McCormick did as commanded. He found the cornerof Third Avenue and One Hundred and Thirty-fifthStreet to be a half-abandoned spot near the eastbank of the Harlem, at its juncture with the EastRiver. A low barroom, a disused manufacturing plant,and some rookeries of dubious tenantry ornamented theplace, while coarsely dressed men, the dregs of the riverquarter, lounged about and robbed the stranger of anygathered reassurance. The old boiler was there, standingin the center of open, flat ground that sloped downto the railroad tracks and the river under the ThirdAvenue bridge. Plainly the writer of the letter hadchosen a likely spot, which might be kept under observationfrom a considerable distance and could notbe surrounded or approached without the certainknowledge of a watcher posted in any one of a hundredwindows commanding the view. McCormick depositedthe package and went his way, while disguiseddetectives lay in various vantages and watched theboiler for days. No one went near it, and the gamewas abandoned.

But, at the end of ten days, McCormick received asecond letter from Kid, in which he was reproachedfor having enlisted the police; he was told that suchcrude tactics would not work, and he was ordered toplace two thousand dollars in cash under a certain stone,which he was directed to find under the approach ofthe McComb’s Dam bridge, a few rods from the mouthof Cromwell Creek. He was told that the amount of theransom had been increased because of his associationwith the police, and the letter closed with the solemnwarning that the demand must be met if McCormickhoped to see his son again. A postscript said that if thepolice appeared again the boy’s ears would be thrownupon his father’s porch.

Relatives, friends, and neighbors were at hand tofurnish the demanded money, and the father was morethan willing to deposit it according to the stipulation,but the police again intervened and had McCormickleave another dummy packet. Once more he saw, andthe police should have noted, that the spot selected bythe letter writer was most suited to the purpose. Oncemore it was an open area in the formidable shadow of agreat bridge, freely observable from all sides and impossibleto surround effectively.

No one was baited to the trap, but McCormick gota third letter from Kid, in which he was told that hissilly tactics would avail him nothing; that his boy hadbeen taken out to sea, and that he would not hear againuntil he reached England. He was told to blame his ownfolly if he never beheld his child alive.

It must be said in favor of the police point of viewthat these were not the only letters from supposed kidnapperswhich reached the distraught parents. Indeed,there was a steady accumulation of all sorts of missivesof this type, most of them quite obviously the work oflunatics. These were easily distinguishable, however. Anexperienced officer ought to be able to choose betweensuch vaporings of disjointed intelligences and letterswhich bore some evidence of reason, some mark ofplausibility. The police who handled this case committedthe common blunder of lumping them all together.They had determined that the boy was a runaway andwere naturally inhospitable to contrary evidences.

But others were as firmly convinced on the otherside. The father now became genuinely alarmed andfeared that further activity by the police might indeedlead to the murder of the child. Accordingly FatherMullin withdrew his ten-thousand-dollar offer for theapprehension of the criminals, and Michael McCormick,the lost boy’s uncle, moved swiftly to change the termsof his five-thousand-dollar reward. In seeking for away to make an appeal directly to the abductors andassure them of their personal safety, he brought intothe case at this point the redoubtable Pat Sheedy.

Sheedy had just achieved worldwide notoriety by recoveringfrom the thieves’ fence, Adam Worth, the famousGainsborough painting of Elizabeth, duch*ess ofDevonshire, which had been stolen from Agnew’s ArtRooms in London in 1876, and which had been huntedover half the earth for twenty-five years. This successfulintermediacy between the police and the underworldgave the New York and Buffalo “honest gambler” atremendous reputation for confidential dealing, and theMcCormicks counted on Sheedy’s trusted positionamong criminals to convince the kidnappers that theycould deliver the boy, collect five thousand dollars, andbe safe from arrest or betrayal. So Sheedy came forward,announced that he was prepared to pay over the moneyon the spot and without question, the moment the boywas delivered and identified.

The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension,disgusted by the police failures and thrilled bySheedy’s performance in the matter of the stolen painting,received the news of his intervention in the casewith signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s returnwas breathlessly expected, and many believed the feat asgood as accomplished. But this time the task was beyondthe powers of even the man who enjoyed theconfidence of the foremost professional criminals of theday, counted the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli,as an intimate, forced the celebrated internationalfence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam Worth, toleave London and follow him across the ocean after thelost Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar ofthe American Express office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,[10]and seemed able to compel the most abandonedlawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, butSheedy 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, JohnGarfield, bridge tender for the New York Central Railroadat Cromwell Creek, worked the levers and liftedthe steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighterbound up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. Afterhe had lowered the platform again he observed that alarge floating object had worked its way to the shoreand threatened to get caught in the machinery whichoperated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkheadwith a boat hook, intending to dislodge it. At the extremeend he leaned over and bent down, proddingthe object with his pole. The thing turned in thestream and swam into better view. It was the body of aboy.

Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawledback to the bridge, called to two boys and a man, whowere angling near by, and soon put out with them in arowboat. In five minutes the body had been broughtto shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it hadbeen identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectiveshad been seeking him thousands of miles away,and European port authorities had been watching thein-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had laindead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares fromhis home. The churning propeller of the steam lighterhad brought the body to the surface.

A coroner’s autopsy revealed that the body had beenin the water for a period which could not be fixed withany degree of precision. It might have been two weeks,but the coroner felt unable to state that the body hadnot been in the creek for six weeks, the full length oftime since the disappearance. There was no way tomake sure. Again, it was not possible to determine ifthe boy had been choked to death before being castinto the waters. There was no skull fracture, no breakageof bones, and no discernible wound. There was alsono evidence of poison—no abnormal condition of thelungs. The official physicians were inclined to believethat death had been caused by drowning, but theywould not make a definite declaration.

The police dismissed the case with the assertion thatthey had been vindicated. It was clear that the boy hadplayed truant from church, wandered away, fallen intothe river, probably on the night of his disappearance,and lain under the water for six weeks.

But to this conclusion the McCormicks and manyothers, among them several distinguished private officers,took exception, and it must be said that the policeexplanation leaves some important questions suspended.Why did the boy turn and go three blocks to the southof his home, when he had last been seen hurrying northwardtoward church? What could have led this timidand dark-frightened boy to go voluntarily down to thesinister and gloomy river bank on the edge of night?How did it happen that the Kid directed William McCormickto deposit the two-thousand-dollar ransomwithin a few score yards of the spot where the body wasrecovered? Who was the mysterious masked man?

We shall never know, and neither shall we be ableto answer whether accident or foul design lurks in theshadow of this mystery.

XI

A NUN IN VIVISEPULTURE

Whoever is familiar with Central Europeanpopular literature has tucked awayin his memory some part or parcel of thestory of Barbara Ubrik. The romance of her life andparentage has furnished material for countless novels,plays, short stories, tales and poems of the imaginativekind. Bits of her history appear in more serious literature,in religious and social polemics, even in the memoirsof personages. And more than one of the tragicincidents of opera may be, if diligence and intuition arenot lacking, traced back to this forgotten Polish womanand her exorbitant adventures. Time and creative interpretationhave fashioned her case into one of the classiclegends of disappearance.

In the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, a certain AlexanderUbrik played a part sufficiently noteworthy toget himself exiled to Siberia for life, leaving behind hima 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 ofthe romantic fabric and there had already been a remarkabledisappearance mystery involving a relative nomore remote than the mother of Barbara and wife ofthe banished Alexander. It is with this part of the familyhistory that much of the literary offspring deals.

About the year 1800, according to the account ofthe celebrated Polish detective Masilewski, extensivelyquoted by his American friend and compeer, the lateGeorge S. McWatters of the United States Secret Service,the first of the series of astonishing scenes involvingthe Ubrik family was played in Warsaw. There wasthen resident in the Polish capital one Jaromir Ubrik,the profligate son of an old and noble Polish house whohad wasted his substance in gambling and roistering.Ubrik, though fallen into disrepute among his formerfriends, was still intimate with a few of the aristocraticfamilies, among them that of Count Michael Satorin.

The Countess Satorin had borne her lord severaldaughters but no son to succeed to the title. When, inthe year mentioned, Mme. Satorin yielded still anotherdaughter, her husband being then absent in Russia, shesought to forestall the wrath and disappointment ofher spouse by substituting a male child. It happenedthat the wife of Jaromir Ubrik had borne a son onlytwo days earlier and died in childbirth. For the considerationof ten thousand florins, Ubrik consented toexchange children with the countess, who said she wasadditionally persuaded to the arrangement by the factthat the Ubrik blood was as good as her own and theboy thus fit to wear a title. The little Ubrik boy was,accordingly, delivered to the countess and her littledaughter turned over to Jaromir Ubrik, nestled in adown lined basket with a fine gold chain and cross abouther neck.

The elements of a thousand plots will be apparenteven at this early stage of the story. But far more fabulous-seemingthings followed immediately.

Ubrik took the basket containing the little girl andstarted home. On the way, following his unhappyweakness, he entered a tavern and began to spend someof the money he had been paid. He got drunk, staggeredhome without the little girl in her basket and returnedthe following day to find that a nameless Jew hadclaimed this strange parcel and disappeared.

Not long afterwards, it seems, Countess Satorin,plagued by her natural feelings, came to see her daughterand had to be told the story. The outraged motherfinally exacted an oath that he devote his worthless lifeto the quest for the stolen child. Ubrik began his work,apparently sobered by the death of his wife, the theftof the little girl and the charge her mother had laidupon him. After several years he rose in the ranks of theRussian intelligence service and was made captain ofthe Warsaw police.

About this time the keeper of the inn where Ubrikhad lost the little girl was seized with a mortal diseaseand called the police captain to his bedside, confessingthat he had turned the little girl over to a Jewish adventurernamed Aaron Koenigsberger, whose addressin Germany the dying man supplied. Captain Ubrikproceeded to Germany, confronted Koenigsberger withthe confession of his accomplice and dragged the abductorback to Poland to face the courts. Koenigsberger,to avoid punishment, assisted in the search for the littlegirl and guided Captain Ubrik to Kiev, where he hadsold the child to another Jew named Gerson. The Gersonsappeared to be respectable people, who had takenthe little girl to console them in their own childlessness.They deplored that she had been stolen several yearsearlier by a band of Gypsies. Captain Ubrik, at lengthsatisfied that this story was true, set out on an Odysseanjourney in quest of the child. For more than eleven yearshe followed Gypsy bands through all parts of westernand southern Russia and into Austria and Germany. Atlast, in a village not an hour’s journey from Warsaw, hediscovered the missing daughter of the Countess Satorinand returned her to her mother, as a grownwoman who believed herself to be a Jewess and couldnow at last explain why her supposed people had alwayssaid she looked like a “Goy.”

The woman recovered as Judith Gerson seems to havebeen satisfactorily documented as the missing daughterof the countess. At any rate, she was taken into the Satorinfamily and christened Elka Satorin. Her fatherhad meantime died, leaving the bulk of his fortune andthe title to his supposed son, Alexander. Elka Satorin,however, inherited her mother’s property and, a fewyears later, married the boy who had been substitutedfor her in the cradle.

This was the strange match from which BarbaraUbrik was spawned into a life that was to be darkenedwith more sinister adventures. The year of her birth isgiven as 1828, so that she was a tot of three when herfather was dragged away to the marshes and mines ofRussia in Asia.

I must confess that I set down so fantastic a tale onlyafter hesitation and skeptical misgiving. It, and whatis to follow, reads like a piece of motion picture fustian,an old wives’ tale. The meter of reasonableness andprobability is not there. The whole yarn is too crudelycolored. It is sensation; it is melodrama. But it seemsalso to be the truth. My sources are old books by reputablechroniclers, containing long quotations fromthe story of Masilewski, the detective, from the testimonyof Wolcech Zarski, the lover who appeared inBarbara Ubrik’s life at a disastrous moment, from theproceedings of an ecclesiastical trial. Indeed, the wholething seems to be a matter of court record in Warsawand in Cracow, the old Polish capital. This being so, wemust conclude that fiction has been once more detectedin the act of going to life even for its ultimate extravagances.

The years following the great revolt of 1831 werefull of torment for Poland. Nicholas I, weary of whathe termed the obstinacy of the people, began a series ofthe most dire repressions, including the closing of thePolish universities, the revocation of the constitution,the persecution of the Roman priests and a generaleffort to abolish the Polish language and national culture.The old nobility, made up of devout Roman Catholicsand chauvinistic patriots, was especially sought outfor the reactionary discipline of the czar, and a familylike that of Barbara Ubrik, whose chief had been sentto Siberia for treason, was naturally among the worstafflicted.

The attempt from St. Petersburg to uproot thechurch of Rome was the cause of an intense devotionalismamong the Poles, with the result that many menand women of distinguished families gave themselves upto the religious life and entered the monasteries andconvents. This passion touched the Ubriks as well asothers and Barbara, naturally of a passionate and enthusiasticnature, decided as a girl that she would retirefrom the world and devote herself to her forbiddenfaith. Her mother, Elka Satorin-Ubrik, once award of the Jewish family in Kiev and later the prisonerof the Gypsies, strongly opposed such a course, but in1844, when she was 16 years old, the girl could nolonger be restrained. She presented herself to the Carmelitecloister of St. Theresa in Warsaw in the springof that year and was admitted to the novitiate.

From the beginning, however, the spirited youngnoblewoman seems to have been most ill-adapted to thestern regulations hedging life in a monastery of the unshodcenobite Carmelites. She had brought into theaustere atmosphere of the nunnery something thathas played havoc with rules and good intentions underfar happier environments than that of the cloister;namely, young beauty. The older and less favored nunssaw it first with misgiving and soon with envy, a sinwhich seems not altogether foreign to the holiest places.What was more directly in line with evil consequences,Father Gratian, the still youthful confessor of thecloister, also saw and appraised the charms of the youthfulsister and was quite humanly moved.

The official story is silent as to details but it appearsthat in 1846 Sister Jovita, as Barbara Ubrik had beennamed in the convent, bore a child. Very naturally,she was called before the abbess, who appears in theaccounts as Zitta, confronted with her sin and sentencedto the usual and doubtless severe punishments.In the progress of her chastisem*nt she seems to have declaredthat Father Gratian was the guilty man.

This was the beginning of the young man’s troubles.Detective Masilewski, in his report on the investigationof the case, says that the motivation of the nun’ssubsequent mistreatment was complex. Father Gratiannaturally wanted to defend himself from the seriouscharge. The abbess, Zitta, was quite as anxious both todiscipline 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 wasfar from friendly and any pretext might have beenseized for the closing of a nunnery and the expropriationof church property. Masilewski says, also, that SisterJovita possessed a considerable property which wasto belong to the cloister and that there was, thus, a furthermaterial motive.

But, whatever else may have actuated either the priestor the abbess, Sister Jovita aggravated matters by herown conduct. The severity of her punishment led herto desire liberty and she sought to renounce her vowsand return to her family. Such a course would probablyhave been followed by a public repetition of thecharges made by the young nun, and every effort wasaccordingly made to prevent her from leaving the order.She was locked into her cell, loaded with penancesand almost unbelievably severe punishments and preventedfrom communicating with her mother andsisters.

Not long afterwards love again intruded itself intothe story of Sister Jovita and further complicated thesituation. This was in the last months of 1847. It appearsthat a young lay brother whose worldly name wasWolcech Zarski happened about this time to meet thebeautiful young nun, while occupied at the conventwith some official duties, and straightway fell in lovewith her. She told him of her experiences and sufferingsand he, a spirited young man and not yet a monk,immediately laid plans to elope. Owing to the stringentdiscipline and the careful watch kept over the offendingsister, this departure was not quickly or easily accomplished.Finally, however, on the night of May25th, 1848, Zarski managed to pull his beloved to thetop of the convent wall by means of a rope. In tryingto descend outside, she fell and was injured, with theresult that flight was impeded.

Zarski seems, however, to have had the strength tocarry his precious burden to the nearest inn. Herefriends and human nature failed him. The friends didnot appear with a coach and change of feminine clothing,as they had promised, and the superstitious dreadof the innkeeper’s wife led her to send immediate wordto the convent. Before he could move from the neighborhood,Zarski was overcome by a bevy of stout friarsand Sister Jovita carried back to the nunnery.

The monasteries and nunneries of Poland had stilltheir own judicial jurisdiction, so Zarski could not enterSt. Theresa’s by legal means. He tried again and againto communicate with his beloved by stealth, but theAbbess Zitta was now fully awake to the danger andevery effort was defeated. The young lover tried onemeasure after another, appealed to ecclesiastical authorities,consulted lawyers, besieged officials. At lengthhe was told that the object of all this devotion was nolonger in St. Theresa’s but had been removed to anotherCarmelite seat, the name of which was, of course,refused.

Here political events intervened. Nicholas I hadgrown slowly but surely relentless in his attitude towardthe Roman clergy in Poland, whom he considered to bethe chief fomenters and supporters of the continued Polishresistance. Nicholas simply closed the monasteriesand cloisters and drove the clergy out of Poland. Itwas the kind of drastic step always taken in the pastin 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 legalor 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 tostop for months and even years at a time and earn moremoney with which to press his quest. His tenacity seemsto have been heroic; his faith tragic.

One evening in the summer of 1868, twenty yearsafter Sister Jovita had last been seen, Detective Masilewskiwas driving homeward toward Warsaw, after aday’s hunt, when an old peasant stepped before thehorse, doffed his hat and asked:

“Are you the secret detective, Mr. Masilewski?”

On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigatora letter, explaining that an unknown manhad handed it to him with a tip to pay for its delivery.The note said simply:

Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not alittle incredulous. True, he had heard of this nun andher disappearance, but she had vanished long ago andsurely death had sealed the lid of this mystery, as ofothers. No doubt this was another of those romanticreappearances of the famous missing. Still—what ifthere were truth in it. But no, it must be a figment, elsewhy had the informant hidden himself? It was an attemptto make a fool of an honest detective.

So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remotepossibility of something grotesque and extraordinaryplagued him and drove him at last to action. Even whenhe had determined to move, however, he knew that hemust act with caution. If he were to go to the bishopof the diocese, for instance, and ask for permission tosearch the nunnery of St. Mary’s, the very possible resultmight be the transfer of the unfortunate nun tosome new hiding place and the infliction of worse penaltiesand tortures.

If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austriahaving annexed the province of Cracow in 1846),he might enter the convent and find himself the victimof a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate humiliationfor a detective. There was no possible course exceptcautious investigation.

So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowlyhe traced back the stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother,the exchanged babies, the theft by the old Jew and thecaptivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the recordof Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’sbirth certificate, learned about her admittance to theconvent, the part played in her life by Father Gratianand the early chastisem*nt. How he did these thingsone needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care andwatchful judgment were necessary. He must never letthe enemies of the nun know that a detective was atwork. 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 theconvent of St. Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiasticallibrary. The inspiration came to him at once.He or someone else must play the part of a learnedstudent of religious and local ecclesiastical matters andget permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. Aftersome seeking, Masilewski came upon a renegade theologicalstudent and sent this man first to the bishop andthen to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the dioceseapparently approved the student, he was permitted toenter and use the rare old books and records.

Under instructions from Masilewski, the man workedwith caution. The detective invented a subject withwhich the man busied himself for days before a chancequestion, skillfully introduced into his research problem,called for an inspection of the old church lawrecords of the convent. There was a moment of suspenseand the investigator feared that he had been suspectedor that the abbess would rule against any such liberty.But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decidedthat so holy and studious a young man might wellbe permitted to see the secret papers.

Once the records were in his hands, the mock studentturned immediately to the date of the nun’s escapeand found under date of June 3, 1848, this remarkablerecord:

“Barbara Ubrik, known under the name of Jovita, is accusedof immoral actions, continued disturbances in the convent,manifold irregularities and trespasses of the rules ofthe convent, even of theft and cunningly plotted crime; shehas refused the mercy of baptism and given her soul to thedevil, for which cause she was unworthy of the holy Lord’sSupper, and by this act she has calumniated God; she hasclandestinely broken the vows of purity, in so far that sheheld a love correspondence with the novice, Zarski, and allowedherself to elope with him; at last she has offendedagainst the law of obedience of poverty and seclusion, andon the 25th of May, 1848, she has accomplished an escapefrom the convent.”

Trial was held before the abbess and judgment wasthus rendered:

“The criminal has to do three days’ expiation of sins inthe church, afterwards she will be lashed by all the sistersof the order and be forfeited of her clerical dignity; she herselfwill be considered as dead and her name will be takenfrom the list of the order. At last, she has forfeited the rightto the holy Mass and the Lord’s Supper, and is condemnedto perpetual imprisonment.”

The reader is warned not to take this as a sampleof monastic life or justice as it might be discovered to-dayor even as it generally existed then. Sister Jovitahad simply got herself involved in one of those sadtangles of scandal which had to be kept hid at any andevery price. She was the victim not of monasticism orof any form of religion but of a political situation andof her relations with other men and women, some ofwhom have been hard and evil from the beginning ofthe world, respectless of vows or trust.

In one particular, however, her treatment was adefinite result of certain religious beliefs then prevalentin all strict churches. She was accused of being devilridden or possessed by the fiend and many of her criesof anguish, screams of madness and acts of defiance wereattributed to such a possession. It was then customaryin certain parts of Europe to drive the devil out bymeans of torture. This was in no sense a belief peculiarto Catholics. Martin Luther held it, and so did JohnWesley, as any historian must tell you. Therefore manyof Jovita’s sufferings were the result of beliefs general inthose days except among the exceptionally enlightened.

With this record copied and safely in his hand, Masilewskimoved immediately and directly. One morninghe and a squad of Gallician gendarmes appeared beforethe convent of St. Mary’s and demanded admittance inthe name of the emperor. The abbess, certain what wasabout to happen, tried to temporize, but Masilewskientered, arrested the abbess with an imperial warrantand commanded a search of the place. The mother superior,seeing that there was nothing to be gained byresistance led the company down to the lowest cellarsof the building and turned over to Masilewski a key toa damp cell.

The detective opened the door, felt rats run acrosshis shoes as he stepped inside and found, crouched ina corner on a pile of wet straw, the shrunken form ofwhat had been the beautiful Barbara Ubrik. She wasbrought forth to the light of day, to see the sheen uponthe autumn trees once more and the clouds sailing inthe skies. Alas, she was no Bonnivard. Life had lost itscolors and symmetries for her. She had long been hopelesslymad.

There is still a detail of this famous case of mysteryand detection to be told. Father Gratian had disappearedwhen Russia drove out the clergy. Masilewskiwas determined to complete his work and bring themalefactor back to answer for his crimes. After the ruinof Barbara Ubrik had been lodged in an asylum, Masilewskiset out to find the priest. After seven months ofwandering through Austria, Prussia and Poland, thedetective was rewarded with the information thatFather Gratian had gone to Hamburg. He went immediatelyto the great German seaboard town, searchedthere for months and found that the man he sought hadgone to London years before.

The quest began anew in the British capital. It waslike seeking a flea in a hayloft, but success came at last.Masilewski was passing through one of the obscurestreets when he noticed a man with the peculiar gaitand bearing of priests, which seems to mark them apartto the expert eye, no matter what their physique ordress, going into a bookstall where foreign books weresold.

The detective, who was, of course, totally unknownto Father Gratian, followed into the shop and found tohis delight that the priestly person was the owner of theshop. Many of the books dealt in were German or Polish.Masilewski rummaged for a long time, made a few purchasesand ingratiated himself with the bibliophile.When he left he went directly to the first book experthe could find, stuffed himself with the terms and generalknowledge of the book dealer and soon returnedto the little shop.

On his second visit he let drop a few Polish termswhich made the shopkeeper prick up his ears. As Masilewskilearned more and more of the new rôle he wasto play he gradually revealed that he was himself a greatcontinental expert. Later he informed the shopkeeperof a huge sale of famous libraries that was about to beheld in Hamburg and invited the London dealer to accompanyhim. The priestly man was too much interestedand beguiled to refuse a man who could speak hisown 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 haddriven him from the church—in short, that he wasFather Gratian.

Masilewski waited until he got his man safely on thecontinent and then, knowing the extradition agreementsin force between Austria and the various Germanstates, placed his man under arrest, not withouta feeling of pain and regret. Father Gratian, like onerelieved of a strange weight, immediately accompaniedMasilewski to Cracow and faced his accusers withoutdenying the facts. He could offer no extenuation savethat nature had not ordained him to be a priest and“the devil had been too strong for his weak flesh.” Heconfessed his part in the whole transaction and evenadded that he had given the unfortunate nun drugs tobereave her of her reason. He made every attempt toshield the abbess, but she, too, face to face with the authorityof the empire and the church, refused to deny orextenuate.

For once the courts were more merciful than theirvictims. Mother Zitta was sentenced to expulsion fromthe order, imprisonment for five years and exile fromthe empire. Father Gratian was likewise expelled fromthe church, which he had long deserted, put to prisonfor ten years and exiled.

XII

THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS

In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, longemployed as an auditor by the Erie Railroad andliving 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 spendingtheir vacations in the little hamlet of Greeley, five milesfrom Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in the pleasant hillcountry. So Glass bundled his wife and three small childrento a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and theFrazer farm, where he had arranged for rooms andboard. This on May eleventh.

The Frazer farmhouse was one of those countryestablishments which take boarders for the season. Beforeit ran the main road leading to the larger townsalong the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and beyondthe road began the tangle of wild woods and hillyground rising up to the wrinkle of mountains.

Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play,and Mrs. Glass started for the post office, about twohundred yards up the road, to mail some post cards toher parents, noting the safe arrival of the family. Shecalled to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook hishead and went out into the field beside the house, interestedin a hired man who was plowing in the farcorner. The elder girl went with her up the road. Thebaby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on theporch watching his son. The little boy, just past fouryears old, was running about in the young green ofthe field.

Charles Glass got up from the porch and went insidefor a glass of water. He stayed there a minute or two.When he came out he saw his wife and little girl comingback down the road from the post office. They hadbeen 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, andsurmised: “Maybe he went up the road after you.”

The road was scanned and then the field. Then thefarm hand was called and questioned. He had seen theyoungster crawling through a break in the fence a fewminutes before, but had paid no attention.

One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangelymissing of recent history had begun. This hunt, whichextended over years and covered a continent, takingadvantage of several modern inventions never beforeemployed in the quest of a human being, started off withalarmed calls on neighbors and visits to the more adjacentwoods, gullies, and thickets. In the course of theevening, however, the organized quest began. It is interestingto note some of the confusion that overcamethe people most concerned and the little town of ahundred souls. The suspicion of abduction was not slowin forming, and the question as to who might havedone the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass wassure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the roadgoing to or coming from the post office. William Losky,the farm hand who was plowing in the field, and FredLindloff, who was working on the road, felt sure theyhad seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road, occupiedby one man and one woman who had a plushlap robe pulled up about their knees to protect themfrom the May breezes.

Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, threemiles down the road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house standsall of seven hundred feet back, saw a one-seated carstop, heard a child screaming, and thought she might beof assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in thecar 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 sobbingchild, a woman and two men inside, the child crouchingon the floor against the woman’s knees and beingcovered 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 humanmind and how quickly panic and forensic imaginationget hold of people and cause them to see the unseen.

On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound wasbrought from near by—just what kind of bloodhoundthe record does not show. The dog was given a scent ofthe child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, outthrough the break in the fence to the far side of theroad, passed a little distance into the woods, and therestopped still, whined, and quit.

The following morning word of the disappearanceor kidnapping had been flashed to surrounding townsand many came to aid in the search. A committee wasformed of forty men familiar with the surroundingterrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all thefourteenth. On the fifteenth of May a much largercommittee undertook the work and the surroundingmountains were searched foot after foot. This worktook several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about,whose members worked slowly inward, covering all theground as they came to a center at Greeley. Thismaneuver 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 reviewof the ground. Ponds were drained, culverts blownup, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves of the precedingautumn raked out of hollows or from the depths ofquarries—all in vain.

Meantime, the mayor and director of public safetyin Jersey City, appealed to by the distracted parents,began the official quest. Descriptions of the boy werebroadcast. 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. Everytown and hamlet in the United States, Canada, and theWest Indies was sooner or later placarded with the pictureand description of the boy. The film distributorswere prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for thefirst notable occasion, at least, the movies were usedto search for a missing person, more than ten thousandtheaters having shown Jimmie Glass’ lineaments andflashed his description.

A few years later the radio broadcasting stationsspread through the air the story of his disappearanceand the particulars of his description.

To understand the drama of the hunt for JimmieGlass, one must, however, begin with events closelyfollowing his vanishment and try to trace their successionthrough more than eight years. When once theidea of kidnapping had been formed the neighborswhose interest in the affair was partly sympathetic butmore morbid, sat about shaking their heads and sagelytalking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a demandfor ransom in a few days. When the few days hadpassed without the receipt of any request for money,the wiseacres shook their heads more gravely andopined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to somesafe and distant place, whence word would be slow incoming. But time gave the soft quietus to all thesespeculations. Except for an obvious extortion letterreceived the following year, no ransom demand evercame to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.

Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his deadbody could be found, and since there seemed to be nosustenance for the idea of kidnapping for ransom, thetheorists were forced into another position, one full ofthe ripe color of centuries.

On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a travelingcarnival show had been at Lackawaxen, and with it hadtoured a band of Gypsy fortune tellers. Later on, Mr.John Bentley, the director of public safety in JerseyCity, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police,found that these Gypsies, two or three men and onewoman, known sometimes as Cruze and sometimes asCostello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It couldbe traced, but not they. But the mere fact that therehad been Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough togive fresh life to the old fable. Gypsies stole childrento bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they had taken JimmieGlass, and the way to find him was to run these nomadsto earth and force them to give up the child.

Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told CaptainRooney that she had seen a swart man and womanin an automobile on the day of the kidnapping, notfar from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.

Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney andmany other officers engaged in a systematic investigationof Gypsy camps wherever they were found, followingthe nomads south in the winter and north again withthe sun. Again and again fair-haired children werefound about the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners,with the result that Mrs. Glass, now fairly setout upon her travels in quest for her son, visited onetribe after another, but without finding the much-soughtJimmie.

The discovery of blond or blondish children inTzigane encampments always stirred the finders andthe public to the same emotions, to the indignantbelief that such children must have been stolen. Allthis is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romanypeople and the American Gypsies in especial. Noone knows just what the original Gypsies were orwhence they came. The only hint is contained in thefact that their language contains strong Aryan andSanscrit connections and suggestions. They appeared inEastern Europe, probably in the thirteenth century andin France somewhat later, being there mistaken forEgyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stockswere certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black orbrown eyed. But several Gypsy clans appeared in Englandall of five hundred years ago and there soon beganto mix and marry with other vagabonds not of Tziganeblood. In the course of the generations the EnglishGypsy came to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall,straight, dark men, with piercing eyes and the more orless typical Gypsy facial characteristics appeared amongthem, but these usually occur in cases where there hasbeen marriage with strains from the Continent, fromHungary and Roumania. For instance, RichardBurton, the great traveler and anthropologist, washalf Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the last century.

The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of Englishorigin, though there are a good many from EasternEurope. Among both kinds there is frequent intermarriagewith American girls from the mountain countriesof the southern and central regions. With these Gypsiespure blond children are of frequent occurrence andone often sees the charming contradiction of light hairand dark, emotive eyes.

Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children.Nomads have very little sense of the property rights ofothers and may take anything, animal, mineral or vegetable,that strikes their fancy. But so much for the factson which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.

Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy campskept the police and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on themove. The Cruze party gave them especial trouble andcontributed one of the high dramatic moments of theeight years of search and suspense.

When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy womancalled Rose Cruze had been near Greeley on the day thechild vanished, he set out to trace her down with hermale companions. The Gypsies were moving south atthe time, separating sometimes and meeting once more,a most puzzling matter to one who does not understandthe motives and habits of nomads. Rose Cruze andthe blond boy she was supposed to have with her keptjust a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed intoMexico and continued southward with her band, havingmeantime married Lister Costello, the head of anotherclan. Later she was heard of in Venezuela, then inBrazil.

One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegramwas brought to Director Bentley in Jersey City. It camefrom Porto Rico, was signed with the mysterious nameIsmael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boyanswering his description was in the possession of Gypsiesencamped near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegramalso gave the information that the men wereNicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and thewoman was Costello’s wife.

Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities,probably a good deal more skeptical aboutGypsy stories than are Americans, questioned whetherthe thing was not a canard and moved cautiously. Bythe time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too lateby the American officials on the island, the band hadmoved on into the mountains.

Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man ofno special standing, and he was severely questioned. Butthis time there was no foolery. He stuck to his storyvery closely, produced witnesses to substantiate practicallyeverything he said, and firmly established thefact that among the Gypsies were the much-soughtCostello-Cruze family.

The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report wentout that the hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba.In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made ready to sail.Further reports came from Porto Rico which causedhim to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set himto packing his bags. He was almost ready to embarkwhen the thing dropped with sudden and sad deflation.The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was notJimmie Glass.

This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote ofthe eight years of quest. Ever and again, not ten timesbut ten hundred, came reports that Jimmy Glass hadbeen found. Many of them came from irresponsibleenthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honestbut mistaken. A few were cruel hoaxes, like that of themarked egg.

One morning an egg was found in a Jersey Citygrocery store with the following scrawled on the shell:

“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”

The police chased themselves in excited circles. Oneof them was off to Richmond at once. The eggs werecarefully traced back to the nests of their origin. Itwas found that they came from a place much nearerthan Richmond, and that the inscription was the workof a fifteen-year-old boy.

Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abatedby the final running down of the much-sought band,another form of thrill had played its fullest ravageswith the unhappy parents and given the public itscrooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for theboy, the showing of his picture on the screens and therepeated newspaper summations of the strange case,all had the effect of putting idle brains and feveredimaginations to work. From almost every part of thecountry came reports of missing children who lookedas though they might be Jimmie Glass.

The distracted mother, suffering like any otherwoman in a similar predicament from the idea that herchild could not fail to be restored, traveled from onepart of the country to the other under the lash of thesereports and the spur of undying hope. I believe thenewspapers have estimated that she traveled more thanforty thousand miles in all, seeking what she neverfound.

As happens in many excitements of this kind, thehunt for James Glass resulted in the finding of manyother strayed or stolen children, from San Diego toEastport. In one case a pretty child was found in thepossession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able toshow that the child had been left with them, and theyreadily gave it up to the authorities for lodgment in aninstitution. But, alas, none of these was Jimmie Glass.

The affair of the one demand for money came nearending in a tragedy. The blackmail note demanded thatfive thousand dollars be placed in a milk bottle near ashoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses filledthe milk bottle with stage money and placed it at theagreed spot, after the police had taken up watch nearby. The bottle stayed where it had been placed forhours. 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 policeheadquarters, protesting that he did not mean to stealanything. It developed that this honest workman knewnothing about the whole affair. The real extortionershad, of course, been much too alert for the police.

One other piece of dramatic failure must be recitedbefore the end. The quest for Jimmy Glass was at itsheight when news came from the little town of Norman,Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in ashoe store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the longtrip in vain, asked that photographs be sent, and theywere received at the end of the week. What theythought of the matter is attested by the fact that theycaught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City,and motored to Norman.

Their coming had been heralded in advance, and thetown had suspended business and hung the streets andhouses with flags in their honor.

Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediatelyto one of the houses of the town, where the child wasbeing kept, and ushered into the parlor, while a largecrowd 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 boywas brought in. Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh andheld out her arms. The child rushed to her and wasshowered with kisses. Asked its name, the childpromptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother,choking with sobs, clasped the little fellow closely toher. He struggled, and she released him. He ran to siton Mr. Glass’ lap.

“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that Iwas convinced. Surely this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. Hehad his every feature. For the time there was no doubtin either of our minds. We were too happy forwords.”

But then the examination of the child began andthe discrepancies appeared. The child was Jimmie’ssize and age. His hair and eyes were of the same colorand the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.This child even had the mole on the ear that was one ofJimmie’s peculiar marks. But the toes were not those ofMr. Glass’ son; there was an old scar on one foot thatwas unlike anything that had disfigured Jimmie, andthere were other slight differences.

Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs.Glass could make up her mind, and the crowd stood outsidecrying for news and being told to wait, that thechild was still being examined. Finally the negative wordwas given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfullyaway. Even then the Glasses stayed two dayslonger in the town, eager to find other evidence thatmight yet change their minds.

A few weeks afterward the true mother of the childwas found. She confessed that her husband had abandonedand would not support her, that she had beenunable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and thatin a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoestore, hoping that some one would adopt him. Thelittle boy had learned to say he was Jimmie Glassthrough the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper andother local emotionals.

So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervousman who had gone to the country to recover andbeen struck with this fatality, and for the sorrowingmother who would not resign her hope. The Glassesseemed about to be engulfed in the slow quagmireof 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 rabbitsnot far from Greeley, where Jimmie Glass had disappeared.There had been a very dry autumn and themarshy ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse,ordinarily not to be crossed afoot, was caked andfirm. A light snow had powdered the accumulations ofbrown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints fora few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.

Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunterfashion, his shotgun ready in his hands, his eyes fixedahead, covering the ground for some sudden flurry ofa furred body. His foot kicked what looked like around stone. It was light and rolled away. He steppedafter it; picked it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’smemory fled back over the eight and one half yearsto the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too, hadtaken part. Could this be—— He did not stop to pondermuch, but looked about. Very near the spot fromwhich he had kicked the skull were a pair of child’sshoes. He picked them up carefully and found themto contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton wasmissing, carried away in those long seasons by beasts andbirds, no doubt.

Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxenand telegraphed to Charles Glass. The father respondedat once and went over the ground with the hunter andwith Captain Rooney. They found, judging from therelative positions of the shoes and the skull, that thelittle boy must have lain down on his side and wakenedno more.

Little was found in addition to the shoes and theskull, except a few bone buttons, the metal clasps froma child’s garters and such like. The skull and shoes furnishedthe evidence needed. The former, examined byexperts, revealed the double crown which had causedthe upstanding of the missing boy’s back hair. Theshoes, washed free of the encasing mud, showed themaker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole. Allthe facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would haveretained the mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worna brand new pair the morning he strayed out.

Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wanderedaway that seductive May morning, gone on and on, aschildren sometimes do, got into the boggy ground andbeen 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 springof 1915, and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen inand been drowned, only to have his bones cast up againby the droughty fall eight years later.

With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but CaptainRooney refused absolutely to entertain them. He hadbeen over the ground many times. It was of the mostdifficult character, loose and swampy, and literallystrewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if hetried to do more than creep among them, absolutelyimpassable to a child. Again, there was the matter ofdistance. How could a child of four years, none too firma walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise andscar will testify, have made its way for more than twomiles over this hellish terrain into a morass? Must itnot have fallen exhausted long before and rested tillthe voices of the searchers in that first night had wakenedit?

And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooneyasks us. Of what leather were they made to have lainfor eight and one half years in that impassable bog andyet to have been so well preserved as to retain the maker’simprint?

“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those maybe the bones of Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some onemust have taken him there.”

Perhaps—and then again? How far a lost and desperatechild will stray is not too simple a question. If,as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie Glass probablywould have tired and lain down to rest, would henot also have risen again and blundered on? Asfor the durability of the leather, any one may go toany well-stocked museum and find hides of the sixteenthcentury still tolerably preserved. And if some one tookthe pitiful body of the child and tossed it into thatmorass, who was it?

It is much easier to believe with the parents. Theenchantment of spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisitedand undreamed places unfolding before a child’seyes, and straying from flower to flower, wonder towonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darknessthat clouds all living. It is more pleasant to thinkof the matter so, to believe that Jimmy Glass, four yearsin the world, was but a forthfarer into the mysteries,who lay down at the end of mighty explorations andwent to sleep—a Babe in the Woods.

XIII

THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA

On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, SalvatoreVarotta took his eldest son for a ride onLong Island. Perhaps it was not quite the rightthing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him.His employers might not like the idea of a child beingcarted about the countryside in their delivery van. Still,what did it matter? The day had been hot. Little Adolfohad begged to go. No one would ever know the difference,and the boy would be happy. So this simple-heartedItalian motor driver set out from the reeks andthrongs of New York’s lower East Side on what was tobe a pilgrimage of pleasure.

There was a cool wind in the country and the landscapewas still green. The truck chauffeur enjoyed hisdrive as he rolled by fields where farmers were at theirlate 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’sgroans and growls.

Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Anothertruck lurched drunkenly across his path. There was ahorrid shriek of collision, the shattering tinkle of glass,the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore Varotta was tossedaside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He pickedhimself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreckand little Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flameas one of the tanks blew up. The undaunted fatherplunged into the smoke and managed to draw out theboy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions,but breathing and alive.

Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital sufferingfrom a frightfully cut and burned face and a crushedleg. The surgeons looked at the mangled child andshook their heads. There was a chance of putting thatwretched leg into some kind of shape again, and itmight be possible to restore that ruined face to humansemblance, but the work would take many months.It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of freehospital accommodations and the gratuitous services ofthe doctors.

The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in arookery on East Thirteenth Street, the father, themother and five children, of whom the injured boywas, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as truckdriver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of sucha family an accident like that which had overtakenAdolfo means about what a broken leg does to a horse:Death is the greatest mercy. In this case, however, someone with connections got interested either in the boy orin the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich andcharitable woman for aid. This lady came down fromher apartment on Park Avenue and stood by the bedsideof the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions thathe was to be restored at any cost. She grew interestednot only in the boy but his family.

One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street wereappalled to see the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactressdrive up to their tenement. They watched herenter the humble home, pat the children, talk with theburdened mother, and then drive away perilouslythrough the swarms of children screaming and prankingin the street. The “great lady” came again and again.It was understood that she had paid much money to helplittle Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of hisson had brought him the patronage of the rich. Surely,he would know how to make something of his goodfortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindnessis no more than weakness and must be taken advantageof accordingly. The neighbors of Salvatore Varottawere such men and women.

Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patchedand mended, when his father sued the owner of thecolliding truck for fifty thousand dollars, alleging carelessness,permanent injury to the child, and so on. Theneighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatorewas a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And hewould get it, too. Did he not have a rich and powerfulpatroness?

Thus, through the intervention of a charitablewoman and a lawsuit, Varotta became a dignitary inhis block, a person of special and consuming interest. Hehad or would soon have money. In that case he wouldbe profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple andguileless fellow. A way would be found.

In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged fromthe hospital with his leg partly restored but with hisface still in need of skin grafting and other treatments,Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap, second-handautomobile. He could make money with it and also useit to give his family an airing once in a while. The car,for which only one hundred and fifty dollars had beenpaid, attracted the attention of the East ThirteenthStreet neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought anautomobile? Then there must have been a settlementin the damage suit over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatorehad money, then. So, so!

One of the neighbor women happened to pass whenthe rickety car was standing at the curb, and Mrs.Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest child in herarms.

“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buysyou a hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked thewoman.

“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if hewanted to,” said the wife with a surge of false pride.

That was enough. That was confirmation. The damagesuit had been settled. Salvatore Varotta had themoney. He could have bought an expensive car, but hehad spent only a hundred and fifty. The nigg*rdly oldrascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So theword fled up and down the street, to the amusem*nt ofsome and the closer interest of others.

As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not beensettled. It was even doubtful whether Salvatore wouldever get a cent for all his son’s injuries and suffering.The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s hadno means and could not be made to give what he didnot possess. So it was an entirely false rumor of prosperityand a word of bragging from a sensitive wifethat brought about many things.

At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24,1921, Giuseppe Varotta, five years old, the youngerbrother of the wounded Adolfo, put on his clean sailorsuit and his new shoes and went out into East ThirteenthStreet to wait for the homecoming of his father andthe automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did notknow or care whether the car had cost a hundred or athousand 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 randown the block to spend a penny which a passer-by hadgiven him. Other children playing in the street observedhim by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, andwatched him go down the walk to the confectioner’s.They did not mark his further progress.

At half past three, Salvatore Varotta came home inhis 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 wasplaying in the street and would be in soon.

The father sat down to rest and smoke. When Joedid not appear, and twenty minutes had passed, hismother went out to the stoop to call him. She couldnot find him in the street, and he did not respond toher voice. There was another wait for half an hour andanother looking up and down the street. Then SalvatoreVarotta was forced to yield to his wife’s anxiousentreaties and set out after the lad.

He visited the stores and houses, inquired of friendsand neighbors, questioned the children, circled theblocks, looked into cellars and areaways, visited thekindergarten where the child was a pupil, implored theaid of the policemen on the beats, and finally, late atnight, went to the East Fifth Street police station andtold his story to the captain, who was sympathetic butbusy and inclined to take the matter lightly. The childwould turn up. Lots of children strayed away in NewYork every day. They were almost always found again.It was very seldom that anything happened.

So Salvatore Varotta went wearily back to his wifeand told her what the “big chief policeman” had said.No doubt, the officer spoke from experience. They hadbetter try to get a little sleep. Joe would turn up in themorning.

On the afternoon of the following day the postmanbrought a letter to Salvatore Varotta. The truck driverread it and trembled with fear and apprehension. Hiswife glanced at it and moaned. She lighted a candlebefore the tinseled St. Anthony in her bedroom and beganendless prayers and protestations.

The letter was written in Italian, evidently by onehabited to the Sicilian dialect. It said that the writerwas a member of a powerful society, too secret and toostrong to be afraid of the police. The society had takenlittle Joe. He was being held for ransom. The price ofhis life and restoration was twenty-five hundred dollars.Varotta was to get the money at once in cash andhave it ready in his home, so that he could hand it overto a messenger who would call for it. If the money werepromptly and quietly paid the boy would be restoredsafe and sound, but if the police were notified and anyattempt were made to catch the kidnappers, the powerfulsociety would destroy the child and take furthervengeance upon the family.

There was a black hand drawn at the bottom of thisforbidding 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 whetherthey dared speak of the matter at all. But necessityfinally decided their course for them. Varotta did nothave twenty-five hundred dollars. He could not haveit ready when the fateful footfall of the messengerwould sound on the stairs. In his extremity he had toseek aid. He went to the police again and showed theletter to Captain Archibald McNeill.

The same evening the case was placed in the hands ofthe veteran head of the New York Italian Squad, SergeantMichael Fiaschetti, successor of the murderedPetrosino and the agent who has sent more Latin killersto the chair and the prison house than any other officerin the country. Fiaschetti saw with immediate and clearvision that this job was probably not the work of anyorganized or powerful society. He knew that professionalcriminals act with more caution and better information. Theywould never have made the blunderof assuming that Varotta had money when he had none.The detective also saw that the plan of sending a messengerto the house for the ransom was the plan of resourcelessamateurs. He reasoned that the work had beendone by relatives or neighbors, who knew something butnot enough of Varotta’s affairs, and he also concludedthat the child was not far from its home.

Fiaschetti quickly elaborated a plan of action in accordancewith these conclusions. His first work was toget a detective into the Varotta house unobserved orunsuspected. For this work he chose a woman officer,Mrs. Rae Nicoletti, who was of Italian parentage andcould speak the Sicilian dialect.

The next day, Mrs. Varotta, between weeping andinquiring after her child, let it be known that she hadtelegraphed to her cousin in Detroit, who had a littlemoney. The cousin was coming to aid her in her difficulties.

That night the cousin came. She drove up to the housein 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 Varottahome. So the detective, Mrs. Nicoletti, introducedherself to her assignment.

The young woman was not long in the house beforethings began to happen. First of all, she observed thatthe Varotta tenement was being constantly watchedfrom the windows across the street. Next she noted thatshe was followed when she went out, ostensibly to do alittle shopping for the house, but really to telephone toFiaschetti. Finally came visitors.

The first of these was Santo Cusamano, a baker’s assistant,who dwelt across the street from the Varottasand knew Salvatore and the whole family well.

Cusamano was very sympathetic. It was too bad. Undoubtedlythe best thing to do was to pay the money.The Black Handers were terrible people, not to be trifledwith. What? Varotta had no money? He could raiseonly five hundred dollars? Sergeant Fiaschetti had instructedVarotta to mention this sum. The Black Handerswould laugh at such an amount. Varotta must getmore. He must meet the terms of the kidnappers. Asfor the safety of the boy, the Varottas could rest easyon that point, but they must get the money quickly.

The following day there were other callers fromacross the street. Antonio Marino came with his wifeand his stepdaughter, Mrs. Mary Pogano, née Ruggieri.The Marinos, too, were full of tender human kindnessand advice. When Antonio found out that Varotta hadreported the kidnapping to the police he shook his headin alarm. That was bad; very bad. The police could donothing against a powerful society of Black Handers.It was folly. If the police were really to interfere, theBlack Handers would surely kill the boy. Antonio hadknown of other cases. There was but one thing to do—paythe money. Another man he had known had doneso promptly and without making any fuss. He had gothis son back safely. Yes, the money must be raised.

Then Cusamano came again. He inquired for newsand said that perhaps the Black Handers would takefive hundred dollars if that was really all Varotta couldraise. He did not know, but Varotta had better havethat sum ready for the messenger when he came. Ashe left the house, Cusamano accidentally made whatseemed 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, listeningto every word she could catch. She had taken up therôle of visiting cousin, was busy preparing meals, workingabout the house, and generally assisting the sorrowingmother. Whatever suspicion of her might have existedwas soon allayed. She even sat in on the council withCusamano and told him she had saved about six hundreddollars and would advance Varotta five hundred ofit if that would save the child.

Mrs. Nicoletti and her chief were by this time almostcertain 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 thequick recovery of the child were to be expected. Planswere accordingly laid to trap the messenger coming forthe money and any one who might be with him or nearthe place when he came.

On June first, a man whom Varotta had never seenbefore came to the house late at night and asked inhushed accents for the father of the missing boy. Thecaller was, of course, admitted by Mrs. Nicoletti, whothus had every opportunity to look at him and hear hisvoice. He was led upstairs to a room where Varotta waswaiting.

When the dark and midnight emissary of the terribleBlack Hand strode across the threshold, the torturedfather could hold back his emotion no longer.He threw himself on his knees before the visitor, liftedhis clenched hands to him, and kissed his dusty boots,begging that his child be sent safely home and pleadingthat he had only five hundred dollars to pay. It wasnot true that he had received any money. It was impossiblefor him to ask his rich patroness who had befriendedAdolfo for anything. All he had was the littlemoney his wife’s good cousin was willing to lend himfor the sake of little Joe’s safety. Would the BlackHand not take the five hundred dollars and send backthe child, who was so innocent and so pretty that histeacher had taken his picture in the kindergarten?

The grim caller had very little to say. He would reportto the society what Varotta had told him and hewould return later with the answer. Meantime, Varottahad better get ready all the money he could raise. Themessenger might come again the next night.

The detectives were ready when the time came. Inthe course of the next day Varotta went to the bankas if to get the money. While there he was handed fivehundred dollars in bills which had previously beenmarked by Sergeant Fiaschetti. Later on it was decidedthat Mrs. Nicoletti would need help in dealing with thekidnappers’ messenger, who might not come alone. Varottahimself was shaken and helpless. Accordingly, DetectiveJohn Pellegrino was dressed as a plumber, suppliedwith kit and tools, and sent to the Varotta houseto mend a leaking faucet and repair some broken pipes.He came and went several times, bringing with himsome new tools or part when he returned. In this way hehoped to confuse the watchers as to his final position.The trick was again successful. Pellegrino remained inthe house at last, and the lookouts for the kidnappersevidently thought him gone.

A little after ten o’clock on the night of June secondthere was a knocking at the Varotta door. Two menwere there, one of them the emissary of the Black Handwho had called the night before. This man curtly announcedthe purpose of his visit and sent his companionup to get the money from Varotta, remaining downstairshimself.

Varotta received the stranger in the same room wherehe had kissed the boots of the first messenger the nightbefore, talked over the details with him, inquired anxiouslyas to the safety of Joe, and was told that he neednot worry. Joe had been playing happily with otherchildren and would be home about midnight if themoney were paid. This time Varotta managed to retainsome composure. He counted out the five hundred dollarsto the messenger, asked this man to count the moneyagain, saw that the bills were stuffed into the blackmailer’spocket and then gave the agreed signal.

Pellegrino, who had lain concealed behind the drapery,sprang into the room with drawn revolver, covered theintruder, handcuffed him and immediately communicatedwith the street by signal from a window. Otherdetectives broke into the hallway, seized the first emissarywho was waiting there. On the near-by corner,Sergeant Fiaschetti and others of his staff clapped thewristlets on the arm of Antonio Marino and JamesRuggieri, his stepson. A few moments later Santo Cusamanowas dragged from the bakeshop where he worked.Five of the gang were in the toils and five more wereseized before the night was over.

Cusamano and the first messenger, who turned out tobe Roberto Raffaelo, made admissions which were latershown in court as confessions. All the prisoners werelocked into separate and distant cells in the Tombs, andthe 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 andwould be released within a few hours now that the membersof the gang were in custody.

Here, however, the shrewd detective counted withouta full consideration of the desperateness and deadlinessof the amateur criminal, characteristics that haverepeatedly upset and baffled those who know crime professionallyand are conversant with the habits and conductof experienced offenders. There can be no doubtthat professionals would, in this situation, have releasedthe boy and sent him home, though the Ross case furnishesa fearful exception. The whole logic of the situationwas on this side of the scale. Once the boy wassafely at home, his parents would probably have lostinterest in the prosecution, and the police, busy withmany graver matters, would probably have been contentwith convicting the actual messengers, the only onesagainst whom there was direct evidence. These menmight have expected moderate terms of imprisonmentand 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 pretendedto know nothing of the whereabouts of Joe Varotta.More than a week went by while the parents of thechild grew more and more hysterical and finally gave upall but their prayers, convinced that only divine interventioncould avail them. Was little Joe alive or dead?They did not know. They had asked the good St. Anthony’said and probably he would give them his answersoon.

At seven o’clock on the morning of July eleventh,John Derahica, a Polish laborer, went down to the beachnear Piermont, a settlement just below Nyack, in questof driftwood. The tide was low in the Hudson, andDerahica had no trouble reaching the end of a smallpier which extended out into the stream at this point.Just beyond, in about three feet of water, he found thebody of a little boy, caught hold of the loose clothingwith a stick, and brought it out.

Derahica made haste to Piermont and summoned thelocal police chief, E. H. Stebbins. The body was carriedto a local undertaker’s and was at once suspected ofbeing that of the missing Italian child. The next nightSergeant Fiaschetti and Salvatore Varotta arrived atPiermont and went to see the body, which had meantimebeen buried and then exhumed when the coming ofthe New York officer was announced.

The remains were already sorely decomposed and theface past recognition, but Salvatore Varotta looked atthe swollen little hands and feet and the blue sailor suit.He knelt by the slab where this childish wreck lay proneand sobbed his recognition and his grief.

A coroner’s autopsy showed that the child had beenthrown alive into the stream and drowned. Calculatingthe probable results of the reaction of tides and currents,it was decided that Giuseppe had been cast to hisdeath somewhere above the point at which the recoveryof the corpse was made.

Long and tedious investigations followed. When hadthe child been killed and by whom? Was the little boystill alive when the two messengers arrived at the Varottahome for the ransom and the trap was sprungwhich gathered in five chief conspirators and five supposedaccessories? If so, who was the confederate whohad committed the final deed of murderous desperation?Who had done the actual kidnapping? Where had thechild 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 themen, from the evidence presented at four ensuing murdertrials, and from the subsequent drift of police information,to reconstruct the story of the crime ingreater part.

On the afternoon of May twenty-fourth, when littleJoe Varotta went into the candy store with hispenny, he was engaged in talk by one of the men fromacross the street, whom Joe knew well as a friend ofhis father’s. The child was enticed into a back room,seized, gagged, stuffed into a barrel and then loaded intoa delivery wagon. Thus effectively concealed, the littleprisoner was driven through the streets to anotherpart of town and there held in a house by some memberof the conspiracy. The men engaged in the plot up tothis point were all either neighbors or their relativesand friends.

On the afternoon of May twenty-ninth, RobertoRaffaelo was sitting despondently on a bench in UnionSquare when a stranger sat down beside him and accostedhim in his own Sicilian dialect. This chance acquaintance,it developed later, was James Ruggieri. Raffaelowas down on his luck and had found work hard toget. He was, as a matter of fact, washing dishes in aBowery lunch room for five dollars a week and meals.Ruggieri asked how things were going, and being informedthat they might be better, he told Raffaelo of achance to make some real money, explaining the factsabout the kidnapping, saying that a powerful societywas back of the thing, and representing that Varottawas a craven and an easy mark. All that was requiredof Raffaelo was that he go to the Varotta house and getthe money. For his pains he was to have five hundreddollars.

Raffaelo was subsequently introduced to Cusamanoand Marino. The next night he went to visit Varottawith the result already described.

After Raffaelo had made one visit it was held to bebetter tactics to send some one else to do the actual takingof the money. This man had to be a stranger, soRaffaelo looked up John Melchione, an old acquaintance.Melchione, promised an equal reward and paid fiftydollars in advance as earnest money, went with Raffaeloto the Varotta home on the night of June second, toget the money. Melchione went upstairs and took themarked bills while Raffaelo waited below in the vestibule.It was the former whom Detective Pellegrinocaught in the act. Neither he nor Raffaelo had ever seenlittle Joe and both so maintained to the end, nor is theremuch doubt on this point.

On June second, the night when Raffaelo, Melchione,Cusamano, Marino and Ruggieri were caught and theothers arrested a little later, Raffaelo made some statementsto Detective Fiaschetti which sent the officersoff 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 thefive men and their five friends had been arrested andlodged in jail, another confederate, perhaps more thanone, took Joe Varotta up the Hudson and threw himin, having first strangled the little fellow so that hemight not scream. The boy was destroyed because theconfederates who had him in charge were frightenedinto panic by the sudden collapse of their scheme andfeared they would either be caught with the boy intheir possession or that the arrested men might “squeal”and be supported by the identification from the littlevictim’s lips were he allowed to live.

Raffaelo was brought to trial in August and quicklyconvicted of murder in the first degree. He was committedto the death house at Sing Sing and there waitedto be joined by his fellows. When the hour for his executionhad almost come upon him, Raffaelo was seizedwith remorse and declared that he was willing to tellall he knew. He was reprieved and appeared at the trialsof the others, where he told his story substantially asrecited above. Largely as a result of his testimony, Cusamano,Marino and Ruggieri were convicted and sentencedto electrocution while Melchione went mad inthe Tombs and was sent to Matteawan to end his lifeamong the criminal insane. Governor Smith finallygranted commutations to life imprisonment in each ofthese cases, because it was fairly well established thatall the convicted men had been in the Tombs at thetime Joe Varotta was drowned and had probably nothingto do with his actual murder. They are still in prisonand will very likely stay there a great many years beforethere can be any question of pardon.

In spite of every effort on the part of the police andevery inducement held out to the convicted men, noinformation could ever be got as to the identity of theman 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, absolutelyrefused to talk, saying it would be certain deathif they did so. They tried all along to create the impressionthat they were only the minor tools of somegreat and mysterious organization, but this claim maybe dismissed as fiction and romance.

XIV

THE LOST MILLIONAIRE

Some time before three o’clock on the afternoonof December 2, 1919, Ambrose Joseph Small depositedin the Dominion Bank, of Toronto, acheck for one million dollars. At seven fifteen o’clockthat evening the lean, swart, saturnine master of Canadianplayhouses bought his habitual newspapers fromthe familiar boy under the lamps of Adelaide Street,before his own Grand Theater, turned on his heel, andstrode off into the night, to return no more.

In the intervening years men have ferreted in allcorners of the world for the missing rich man; rewardsup to fifty thousand dollars have been offered for hisreturn, or the discovery of his body; reports of his presencehave chased detectives into distant latitudes, andthe alarm for him has been spread to all the trails andtides without result. By official action of the Canadiancourts, Amby Small, as he was known, is dead, and hisfortune has been distributed to his heirs. To the romanticspeculation he must still exist, however. Andwhatever the fact, his case presents one of the strangeststories of mysterious absenteeism to be found upon thebooks.

Men disappear every day. The police records of anygreat city and of many smaller places bear almost interminablelists of fellows who have suddenly and curiouslydropped 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 needlessexcuses to their friends and families. And otherspass from their regular haunts into new fields. Theselatter are usually poor and fameless gentry, weary oflife’s routine.

Ambrose Small, however, was a person of differentkidney. He was rich, for one thing. Thirty-five yearsearlier, Sir Henry Irving, on one of his tours to Canadahad found the youthful Small taking tickets in a Torontotheater. Attracted by some unusual quality inthe youngster, Irving shrewdly advised him to quit thestudy of law and devote himself to the theatrical business.Following this counsel, Small had risen slowly andsurely until he controlled theaters in all parts of theDominion and was rated at several millions. On theafternoon before his disappearance he had consummateda deal with the Trans-Canada Theaters, Limited, bywhich he was to receive nearly two millions in moneyand a share of the profits, in return for his theatricalholdings. The million-dollar check he deposited had beenthe first payment.

Again, Small was a familiar figure throughout Canadaand almost as well acquainted in New York, Boston,Philadelphia, and other cities of the United States. Figuratively,at least, everybody knew him—thousands ofactors, traveling press agents, managers, real estate men,promoters, newspaper folk, advance agents; indeed, allthe Wandering Jews and Gentiles of the profession ofmake-believe, with which he had been connected so longand profitably. With such a list of acquaintances, whoserovings took them to the ends of the earth, how almostimpossible it seemed for Small to drop completely out ofsight.

Finally, Amby Small was a man with a wife and mostdeeply interested relatives. Entirely aside from the questionsof inheritance and the division of his estate, whichnetted about two millions, as was determined later on,Mrs. Small would certainly want to know whether shewas a wife or widow, and the magnate’s sisters wouldcertainly suspect everything and everybody, leavingnothing undone that would bring the man back to hishome, or punish those who might have been responsiblefor any evil termination of his life.

Thus the Small case presents very different factorsfrom those governing the ordinary disappearance case.It is full of the elements which make for mystery andbafflement, and it may be set down at once as an enigmaof the most arresting and irritating type, upon whosedarknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.

So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies andfelt no apprehensions. He was totally immersed forsome months before his disappearance in the negotiationsfor the sale of his interests to the Trans-CanadaCompany, and apparently he devoted all his energies tothis project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusionfor some time and looked upon the signing of theagreements and writing of the check on December 2as nothing more than a formality.

Late in the morning of the day in question, Smallmet his attorney and the representatives of the Trans-CanadaCompany in his offices, and the formalities wereconcluded. Some time after noon he deposited the checkin the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small toluncheon. Afterward he visited a Catholic children’sinstitution with her and left her at about three o’clockto return to his desk in the Grand Theater, where hehad sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling uphis fortune.

There seems to be not the slightest question thatSmall went directly to his office and spent the remainderof the afternoon there. Not only his secretary, JohnDoughty, who had been Small’s confidential man fornineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysteriouspart in the disappearance drama, but several otheremployees of the Grand Theater saw their retiring masterat his usual post that afternoon. Small not onlytalked with these workers, but he called business associateson the telephone and made at least two appointmentsfor the following day. He also was in conferencewith his solicitor as late as five o’clock.

According to Doughty, his employer left the GrandTheater at about five thirty o’clock and this time ofdeparture coincided perfectly with what is known ofSmall’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be athome for dinner at six thirty o’clock.

There is also confirmation at this point. For yearsSmall had been in the habit of dropping into Lamb’sHotel, next door to his theater, before going home inthe evening. He was intimately acquainted there, oftenmet his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generallychatted a few minutes before leaving for his residence.The proprietor of the hotel came forward after Small’sdisappearance and recalled that he had seen the theaterman in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock. Hewas also under the impression that Small had stayed forsome time, but he could not be sure.

The next and final point of time that can be fixed isseven fifteen o’clock. At that time Small approached thenewsboy in Adelaide Street, who knew the magnate well,and bought his usual evening papers. The boy believedthat Small had come from the theater, but was not surehe had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small saidnothing but the usual things, seemed in no way differentfrom his ordinary mood, and tarried only long enoughto glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.

Probably there is something significant about thefact that Small did not leave the vicinity of his officeuntil seven fifteen o’clock, when he was due at home byhalf past six. What happened to him after he had lefthis theater in plenty of time to keep the appointmentwith his wife? That something turned up to change hisplan is obvious. Whether he merely encountered someone and talked longer than he realized, or whether somethingarrested him that had a definite bearing on hisdisappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems tobe the reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind ofman lightly to neglect his agreements, particularly thoseof a domestic kind.

Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited whenher husband failed to appear at the fixed time. She knewhe had been going through a busy day, and she reasonedthat probably something pressing had come up to detainhim. At half past seven, however, she got impatientand telephoned his office, getting no response. She waitedtwo hours longer before she telephoned to the home ofJohn Doughty’s sister. She found her husband’s secretarythere and was assured that Doughty had been thereall evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughtysaid his employer had left the theater at five thirtyo’clock, and that he knew no more. He could not explainSmall’s absence from home, but took the matterlightly. No doubt Small would be along when he gotready.

At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’svarious theaters in eastern Canada, asking for her husband.In the course of the next twenty-four hours shegot responses from all of them. No one had seen Smallor knew anything about his movements.

Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting.Mrs. Small did not go to the police; neither did sheemploy private detectives until later. For two weeks sheevidently waited, believing that her husband had goneoff on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those ofhis intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out ofthe secret of his absence took the same attitude. It wasexplained later that there was nothing unprecedentedabout Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt forsome days or even several weeks. He was a moody andself-centered individual. He had gone off before in thisway and come back when he got ready. He might havegone to New York suddenly on some business. Probablyhe had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently sharedthis view, and her reasons for so doing developed a gooddeal later. In fact, she refused for months to believethat anything had befallen her husband, and it wasonly when there was no remaining alternative that shechanged her position.

Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’sdisappearance, his wife and attorneys went to the Dominionpolice and laid the case before them. Even thenthe quest was undertaken in a cautious and skepticalway. This attitude was natural. The police could findnot the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea thatsuch a man had been kidnapped seemed preposterous.Besides, what could have been the object? There hadbeen no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small hadgone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probablyhis wife understood these impulsions better than shewould say. There were rumors of infelicity in the Smallhome, and these proved later to be well grounded. Thepolice simply felt that they would not be made ridiculous.Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, onlyto have Small return and spill his wrath upon theirinnocent heads.

But the days spun out, and still there was no news ofthe missing man. Many began to turn from their originalattitude of knowing skepticism. Other rumors beganto fly about. Gradually the conviction gainedground that something sinister had befallen the masterof theaters. Could it not be possible that Small had beenentrapped in some blackmailing plot and perhaps killedwhen he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but suchthings did happen. How about his finances? Was hismoney intact in the bank? Had he drawn any checksagainst his account? It was soon discovered that nofunds had been withdrawn either on December 2 orsubsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had onlya 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 whohad been close to the theater owner. One of the mostobvious marks for this kind of inquiry was JohnDoughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as alreadyremarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearlytwo decades. He knew his employer’s secrets, was closeto all his business affairs, and was even known to havebeen Small’s companion on occasional drinking bouts.At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a nigg*rdlyway as regards pay. The secretary had been receivingforty-five dollars a week for years, never more.At the same time, probably through other bits of incomewhich his position brought him, Doughty hadsaved some money, bought property in Toronto, andestablished himself with a small competence.

That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly andwas careful to provide for him, is shown by the factthat Small had got Doughty a new and better placeas manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his newjob Doughty received seventy-five dollars a week. Hehad left to assume his new duties a day or two after theconsolidation of the interests, which is to say a day ortwo after Small vanished.

Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but itseemed obvious that this time he knew nothing of hisold employer’s movements. He had accordingly stayedon in Montreal, attending to his new duties and payingvery little attention to Small’s absence. Less than threeweeks after Small had gone, and one week after thecase had been taken to the police, however, new attentionbegan to be paid to Doughty, and there were someunpleasant whisperings.

On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeksafter Small had walked off into the void, came the dramaticbreak. Doughty, as was his habit, left Montrealthe preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Torontowith his relatives and friends. On Monday morning,instead of appearing at his desk, he telephoned fromToronto that he was ill and might not be at work forsome days. His employers took him at his word and paidno further attention until, three days having elapsed,they telephoned to the home of Doughty’s sister. Shehad not seen him since Monday. The man was gone!

If the Small disappearance case had heretofore beenconsidered a somewhat dubious jest, it now became agenuine sensation. For the first time the Canadian andAmerican newspapers began to treat the matter underscare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police beganto move with force and alacrity.

An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, whereSmall was now said to have kept a large total of securities,showed that Doughty had visited this place twice onDecember 2, the day of Small’s disappearance, and hehad on each occasion either put in, or taken away, somebonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to haverevealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousanddollars.

Even this discovery did not change the minds of theskeptics, in whose ranks the missing magnate’s wife stillremained. It was now believed that Doughty had receiveda secret summons from Small, and that he hadtaken the bonds, which had previously been put aside,at Small’s instruction, and gone to join his chief in somehidden retreat. A good part of Toronto believed thatSmall had gone on a protracted “party,” or that he hadseized the opportunity offered by the closing out of hisbusiness to quit a wife with whom he had long been indisagreement.

When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opiniongradually veered about to the opposite side. Afterall, 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 suspicionturning its face toward him. The absence of the supposedone hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bondsprovided sufficient motivation to fit almost any criminalhypothesis.

As this attitude became general, Toronto came toexamine the relationship between Small and Doughty. Itwas recalled that the secretary had, on more than oneoccasion when he was in his cups, spoken bitterly ofSmall’s exaggerated wealth and his cold nigg*rdliness.Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibilityof kidnapping Small for ransom; though theman who reported this conversation admitted Doughtyhad seemed to be joking. The conclusion reached by thepolice was not clear. Doughty, they found, had beenfaithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to concludethat he was careful and substantial, and they couldnot discover that he had ever had the slightest connectionwith the underworld or with suspect characters. Atthe 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 thatDoughty had figured as the tool of conspirators, in thedisappearance of Small. They soon brought Mrs. Smallaround to this view. Now the hunt began.

A reward of five hundred dollars, which had beenperfunctorily offered as payment for information concerningSmall’s whereabouts, was withdrawn, and threenew rewards were offered by the wife—fifty thousanddollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteenthousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousanddollars for the capture of Doughty.

The Toronto chief constable immediately assigneda squad of detectives to the case, and Mrs. Small employeda firm of Canadian private detectives to pursuea line of investigation which she outlined. Later onshe employed four more widely known investigatingfirms in the United States to continue the quest. Small’ssisters also summoned American officers to carry outtheir special inquiries. Thus there were no fewer thanseven 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 theUnited States; then from Scotland Yard they were sentto all the police offices in the British Empire, and, finally,from the American, Canadian, and British capitals toevery known postmaster and police head on earth. Morethan half a million copies of the circulars were printed,it is said, and translations into more than twenty languageswere distributed. I am told by eminent policeauthorities that this campaign, supported as it was byadvertisem*nts and news items in the press of almostevery nation, some of them containing pictures of themissing millionaire, has never been approached in anyother absent person case. Mrs. Small and her advisersset out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearanceand the rewards should reach to the most remoteplaces, and they spent a small fortune for printingbills and postage. Even the quest for the lost ArchdukeJohn Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a specialletter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representativesof the Roman Catholic Church in everypart of the world, seems to have been less far-reaching.

Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began tocome in soon after the first alarms. Small and Doughtywere reported seen in Paris, on the Italian Riviera, atthe Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at Calcutta,aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, atZanzibar, and where not? A skeleton was found in aravine not far from Toronto, and for a time the fateof Small was believed to be understood. But physiciansand anatomists soon determined that the bones couldnot have been those of the theatrical man for a varietyof conclusive reasons. So the hunt began again.

Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, andresults failed to show themselves, the private detectivefirms were dismissed, one after the other, and the taskof running down rumors in this clewless case was leftto the Toronto police. The usual sums of money andof time were wasted in following blind leads. The usualfailures and absurdities were recorded. One Canadianofficer, however, Detective Austin R. Mitchell, began todevelop a theory of the case and was allowed to followhis ideas logically toward their conclusion. Workingin silence, when the public had long come to believethat the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchellplugged away, month after month, without definite accomplishment.He was not able to get more than anoccasional scrap of information which seemed to bearout his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundredsof investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless,the Toronto authorities permitted him to goon with his work, and he is probably still occupied attimes with the Small mystery.

Detective Mitchell was actively following his coursetoward the end of November, 1920, eleven monthsafter the flight of Doughty, when a telegram arrivedat police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small townfar out near the Pacific. Once more the weary detectivetook a train West, arriving in Oregon City on the eveningof November 22.

Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at thetrain and told him his story. He had seen one of the circularsa few months earlier and had carried the imagesof Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he hadobserved a strange laborer working in a local paper mill,and he had been struck by his likeness to Doughty. Theman had been there for some time and risen from themeanest work to the position of foreman in one of theshops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect evenindirectly, and he failed on various occasions to get aview of the worker without his hat on. Because thepicture on the circular showed Doughty bare-headed,the constable had been forced to wait until the suspectedman inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune hadsent 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 Fortuneseemed certain of his game, and he was right.

Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective toa modest house, where some of the mill workers boarded.They entered, and Mitchell was immediately confrontedwith Doughty, whom he had known intimately in Toronto.

“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised asthe fugitive. “How could you do it?”

In this undramatic fashion one part of the great questcame to an end.

Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave theofficer a voluntary statement. He admitted withoutreservation that he had taken Canadian Victory bondsto a total of one hundred and five thousand dollarsfrom Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been doneafter the millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutelyand firmly any knowledge of Small’s whereabouts;pleaded that he had never had any knowledgeof or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that hehad not seen Small nor heard from him since half pastfive on the evening of the disappearance. To this accounthe adhered doggedly and unswervingly. Doughtywas returned to Toronto on November 29, and the nextday he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of hissister’s house, where he had made his home with his twosmall sons, since the death of his wife several yearsbefore.

In April of the following year Doughty was broughtto trial on a charge of having stolen the bonds, a secondindictment for complicity in the kidnapping remainingfor future disposal. The trial was a formal and, insome ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnappingand all hints which might have indicated the directionof Doughty’s ideas on the central mystery wererigorously avoided. Only one new fact and one correctionof accepted statements came out. It was revealedthat Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollarsin bonds to be used for charitable purposes on the daybefore his disappearance. This fact had not been hintedbefore, and some interpreted the testimony as a concealedway of stating the fact that Small had madesome kind of settlement with his wife on the first ofDecember.

Doughty in his testimony corrected the statementthat he had taken the bonds after Small’s disappearance.He testified that he had been sent to the vault on thesecond of December, and that he had then extractedthe hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds.He had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and hehad no notion that Small would disappear. He explainedhis act by saying that Small had long promised him somereward for his many years of service, and had repeatedlystated that he would arrange the matter whenthe deal with the Trans-Canada Company had beenconcluded. Knowing that the papers had been signedthat morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bondsin his hands and suggest that these might serve as a fittingreward for his contribution to the success of theSmall enterprises. He later saw the folly of this actionand fled.

The prosecution naturally attacked this story on theground that it was incredible, but nothing was broughtout to show what opposing theory might fit the facts.Doughty was convicted of larceny and sentencedto serve six years in prison. The kidnapping chargewas never brought to trial. Instead, the police letit be known that they believed Doughty had notplayed any part in the “actual murder” of AmbySmall, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally,it was admitted that the police believed Small tobe dead. That was the only point on which any informationwas given, and even here not the first detail wassupplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspectedof having kidnapped and killed Small was inprogress, and the officials were being careful to revealnothing of their information or intentions.

Doughty took an appeal from the verdict againsthim, but abandoned the fight later in the spring of 1921,and was sent to prison. Here the unravelling of theSmall mystery came to an abrupt end. A year passed,then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughtywas in prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive.Perhaps they had abandoned the hunt. Possibly theyknew what had befallen the theater owner and wererefraining from making revelations for reasons of publicpolicy. 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 betweenthe wife and Small’s two sisters, who had apparentlybeen hostile for years. This struggle promisedto bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to thepublic what the family and the officials knew or suspected.

Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had movedformally to protect his property by having a measureintroduced into the Dominion Parliament declaringSmall an absentee and placing herself and a bank incontrol of the estate. This measure was soon taken, withthe result that the Small fortune, amounting to abouttwo million dollars, net, continued to be profitablyadministered.

Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two yearsin prison, and all rumor of the kidnapping or disappearancemystery had died down, Mrs. Small appearedin court with a petition to have her husband declareddead, so that she might offer for probate an informalwill made on September 6, 1903. This document waswritten on a single small sheet of paper and devised toMrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was ofmodest proportions at the time the will was drawn.

The court refused to declare the missing magnatedead, saying that insufficient evidence had been presented,and that the police were apparently not satisfied.Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the reviewingcourt reversed the decision and declared Small legallydead. Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 andwas immediately attacked by Small’s sisters, who declaredthat they had in their possession a will made in1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinheritedMrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was neverproduced.

There followed a series of hearings. At one of these,opposing counsel began a line of cross-questioningwhich suggested that Mrs. Small had been guilty ofa liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in therecords merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramaticallyin court, indignantly denied these imputations as wellas the induced theory that her misbehavior had led toan estrangement from her husband and, perhaps, to hisdisappearance. The widow declared that this suspicionwas diametrically opposed to the truth, and that ifSmall were in court he would be the first to reject it. Asa matter of fact, she testified, it was Small who hadbeen guilty. He had confessed his fault to her, promisedto be done with the woman in the matter, and had beenforgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation,she said, and Small had agreed that one half of themillion-dollar check which he received on the day ofhis disappearance should be hers.

To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Smallsoon after obtained permission of the court to file certainletters which had been found among Small’s effectsafter his disappearance. In this manner the secretlove affair in the theater magnate’s last years came tobe spread upon the books. The letters presented bythe wife had all come from a certain married womanwho, according to the testimony of her own writingsand of others who knew of the connection, had beenassociated with Amby Small since 1915. It appears thatMrs. Small discovered the attachment in 1918 andforced 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 beforehe 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 theimpending close of his big deal and his retirement fromactive business, the same lady wrote: “I am the most unhappygirl in the world. I want you. Can’t you suggestsomething after the first of December? You will befree, 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 togetherall 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 lettersimmediately after her husband’s departure, and thatthey had kept her from turning the case over to thepolice until two weeks after the disappearance. Meantimethe other woman had been summoned, interrogatedby the police, and released. She had not seen Smallnor had she heard from him either directly or indirectly.It was apparent that, while she had been correspondingwith 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 theprogress of the will controversy no hint was given of theofficial or family beliefs as to the mystery. There areonly two tenable conclusions. Either there is a furtherskeleton to be guarded, or the police have somekind of information which promises the eventual solutionof the case and the apprehension of suspected criminals.How slender this promise must be, every readerwill judge for himself, remembering the years of fruitlessattack on this extraordinary and complex enigma.

XV

THE AMBROSE BIERCE IRONY

Some time in his middle career, Ambrose Biercewrote three short tales of vanishment—weirdand supernatural things in one of his favoriteveins. The three sketches—for they are no more—heclassed under the heading, “Mysterious Disappearances,”a subject which occupied his speculations from time totime. Herein lies a complete irony. Bierce himself waslater 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 romanceand sardonics without some brief glance at the man andhis history. Nor need one make apology for intruding ashort account of him in a story of mystery, for Biercealive was almost as strange and enigmatic a creature asBierce dead.

Ambrose Bierce, whom a good many critics have regardedas the foremost master of the American shortstory after Poe, was born in Ohio in 1841. He joined theUnion armies as a private in 1861, when he was in histwenty-first year, rose quickly through the ranks tothe grade of lieutenant, fought and was wounded atChickamauga as a captain of engineers under Thomas,and retired with the brevet rank of major. After thewar he took up writing for a living, and soon went toLondon, where his early short stories, sketches and criticismsattracted attention. His cutting wit and ironicspirit soon won him the popular name “Bitter Bierce.”

After 1870, the banished Empress Eugénie of France,alarmed at the escape of her implacable journalisticenemy, Henri Rochette, and the impending revival inLondon of his paper, La Lanterne, in which she hadbeen intolerably lampooned, sought to forestall theFrench writer by establishing an English paper calledThe Lantern, thus taking advantage of the law whichforbade a duplication of titles. For this purpose sheemployed Bierce, purely on his polemical reputation,and Bierce straightway began the publication of TheLantern, and devoted his most vitriolic explosions to thebaffled Rochette, who saw that he could not succeedin England without the name which he had made famousat the head of his paper and could not return toFrance, whence he was a political exile.

In this employment Bierce exhibited one of his peculiarities.His assaults on her old enemy greatly pleasedthe banished empress, and she finally sent for Bierce.Following the imperial etiquette, which she still soughtto maintain, she “commanded” his presence. Bierce,who understood and obeyed military commands, didnot like that manner of wording an invitation from adethroned empress. He did not attend and The Lanternsoon 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 Westernwriters.” His journalistic work in San Francisco andlater in Washington set him apart as a satirist of thebitterest strain. His literary productions marked him asa man of the most independent thought and distinctivetaste. Most of his tales are Poe plus sulphur. He reveledin the mysterious, the dark, the terrible and the bizarre.

Between intervals of writing his tales, criticisms andepigrams, Bierce found time to manage ranches andmining properties, to fight bad men and frontier highwaymen,to grill politicians, and to write verse.

Bierce went through life seeking combat, weatheringstorm after storm, by some regarded as the foremostAmerican literary man of his time, by others denouncedas a brute, a pedant, even as a scoundrel. Inthe 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 contributedto the confusion by making something of ariddle of himself. He loved mystery and indirection. Heliked the fabulous stories which grew up about himand encouraged them by his own silence and air ofconcealment. In the essentials, however, he was no morethan an intelligent and perspicacious man of high talent,who hated sentiment, reveled in the assault on popularprejudices, liked nothing so much as to throw himselfupon 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 itstorments. The visionary Madero had been assassinated.Huerta was in the dictator’s chair, Wilson had inauguratedhis “watchful waiting,” and the new rebelswere moving in the north—Carranza and Villa. Atthe time Ambrose Bierce was living, more or less retired,in Washington, probably convinced that he had hadhis last fling, for he was already past seventy-two and“not so spry as he once had been.” But along came theorder for the mobilization along the border. GeneralFunston and his little army took up the patrol alongthe Rio Grande, the newspapers began to hint at apossible invasion of Mexico, and there was a stir of martialblood among the many.

Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth isborn again. Everything that belonged to the dawn becomeshallowed in the sunset of manhood. It must havebeen so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm thanhe fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpetsof Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent forfifty years, called him out again and he set out forMexico, saying little to any one about his plans or intentions.Some believed that he was going down to theRio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he plannedto join the Constitutionalists as a military adviser.Either might have been true, for Bierce was as goodan officer as a writer. He knew both games from theroots up.

Even the preliminary movements of the man are alittle hazy, but apparently he went first to his old homein California and then down to the border. He did notstop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was reported tohave crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretaryin Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letterfrom him postmarked in Chihuahua.

Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expectedto hear again within a month. When no lettercame, she wondered, but was not alarmed. Bierce wasa man of irregular habits. He was down there in awar-torn country, moving about in the wilderness witharmies and bands of insurgents; he might not be ableto get a letter through the lines. There was no reasonto 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.

The Department quickly notified the Americanchargé d’affaires in Mexico to make inquiries and theWar Department shortly afterwards instructed GeneralFunston to send word along his lines and to communicatewith the Mexican commanders opposite him,asking for Bierce. The Washington officials soon notifiedMrs. Cowden that a search was being made. GeneralFunston also answered that he was proceeding with aninquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both thediplomatic and the military forces reported that theyhad been unable to find Bierce or any trace of him.Probably, it was added, he was with one of the independentrebel commands in the mountains and out oftouch with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.

Now the rumoring began. First came the report thatBierce had really gone to Mexico to join Villa, whosereputation as a guerrilla fighter had attracted theveteran, and whose emissaries were said to have askedBierce to join the so-called bandit as a military aide.Bierce, it was reported, had joined Villa and had beenwith that commander in Chihuahua just before thebattle there, in which the rebel forces were unsuccessful.Possibly Bierce had fallen in action. This story wassoon discarded on the ground that Villa, had Biercebeen on his staff, would certainly have reported thedeath of so widely-known a man and one so close tohimself.

A little later came a second report, this time backedby what seemed to be more credible evidence. It wassaid that Bierce had been at the later battle of Torreonin command of the Villista artillery, that he hadtaken part in the running campaign through the provinceof Sonora and that he had probably died of hardshipsand exposure in those trying days.

A California friend now came forward with the reportof a talk with Bierce, said to have been held justbefore the author set out for Mexico. The old satiristwas reported to have said that he had grown weary ofthe stodgy life of literature and journalism, that hewanted to wind up his career with some more gloriousend than death in bed and that he had decided to godown into Mexico and find a “soldier’s grave or crawloff into some cave and die like a free beast.”

It sounded very rebellious and Byronic, but Bierce’sother friends immediately declared that it was entirelyout of character. Bierce had gone to Mexico to fight andsee another war. He had not gone to die. He was afatalist. He would take whatever came, but he wouldnot go out and seek a conclusion.

So the talk went on and the months went by. Therewere no scare headlines in the papers. After all, Biercewas only a distinguished man of letters.

But there was a still better reason for the lack ofattention. The absence of Bierce had not yet been reportedofficially when the vast black cloud of war rolledup in Europe. All men’s eyes were turned to the Atlanticand the fields of Flanders. The American adventurealong the Mexican border seemed trivial andgrotesque. The little puff of wind in the South wasforgotten before the menacing tornado in the East.What did a poet matter when the armies of the greatpowers 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 receivedby his daughter. It said that Major Bierce wasin England on Lord Kitchener’s staff and that he wastaking a prominent part in the recruiting movement inBritain. This sensation lasted ten days. Then, inquiryhaving been made of the British War Office, the soberreport was issued that Bierce’s name did not appear onthe rolls and that he certainly was not attached to LordKitchener’s staff.

Now, at last, the missing writer’s secretary put thetouch of disaster to the fable. Miss Christianson announcedin Washington that careful investigationabroad showed that Major Bierce was not fighting withthe Allies, and that she and his family had been forcedto the melancholy conclusion that he was dead.

But how and where? The State Department continuedits inquiries in Mexico, but many private individualsalso began to investigate. Journalists at thesouthern front tried to get trace or rumor of the man.Old friends went into the troubled region to seek whatthey could find. The literary world was touched bothwith curiosity and grief and with a romantic interestin the man’s fate. Bierce became a later Byron, and itwas held he had gone forth to fight for the oppressedand found himself another Missolonghi.

Out of all this grew a vast curiosity. Probably Biercewas dead, though even this was by no means certain.There was no evidence save the fact that he had notwritten for more than a year, which, in view of theman’s character and the situation in which he wascaught, might be no evidence at all. But, granting thathe was dead, how had his end come? Where was hisbody? It was impossible to escape the impression thatone whose life had been touched with such extraordinarycolor should have died without a flame. Themen and women who knew and loved Bierce—and theywere a considerable number—kept saying over andover to themselves that this heroic fellow could nothave passed out without some signal. Surely some onehad seen him die and could tell of his end and place ofrepose. So the quest began again.

For years, there was no fruit. Northern Mexico,where Bierce had certainly met his end, if indeed, hewas dead, was no place for a hunter after bits of literaryhistory to go wandering in. First there was the constantfighting between Huerta and the Constitutionalists.Then Huerta was eliminated and Carranza becamepresident. There followed the various campaigns ofpacification. Next Villa rebelled against his old ally,leading to a fresh going to and fro of armies. Finallythe whole region was infested by marauding bands ofirregular and rebellious militia, part soldiers and partbandits. To cap the climax came the invasion of Mexicoby the expedition under Pershing.

In 1918 was heard the first report on Bierce whichseemed to have some basis in fact. A traveler had heardin Mexico City and at several points along the railroadthat an aged American, who was supposed to have beenfighting with either Villa or Carranza, had been executedby order of a field commander. From descriptions,this man was supposed to have been Bierce. Atany 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 couldget any details or give the scene of the execution. Thereport was finally discarded as no more reliable thanseveral 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 theBierce enigma was Mr. George F. Weeks, an old friendand close associate of the old writer’s, who went toMexico City and later visited the various towns innorthern Mexico where Bierce was supposed to havebeen seen shortly before his death. Weeks went up anddown and across northern Mexico without finding anythingdefinite. Then he returned to Mexico City and bychance encountered a Mexican officer who had beenwith Villa in his campaigns and had known Bierce well.Weeks mentioned Bierce to this soldier and was toldthis story:

Bierce actually did join the Villista forces soon afterJanuary, 1914, when he wrote his last letter from Chihuahua.He said to those who were not supposed toknow his affairs too intimately that he, like otherAmerican journalists and writers, had gone to Mexicoto get material for a book on conditions in that unhappycountry. In reality, however, he was acting asadviser and military observer with Villa, though not attachedto the eminent guerilla in person. The Mexicanofficer related that Bierce could speak hardly any Spanishand Villa’s staff hardly any English. On the otherhand, this particular man spoke English fluently.Naturally, he and Bierce had been thrown together agreat deal and had held numerous conversations. Somuch for showing that he had known Bierce well, andhow and why.

After Chihuahua, the officer continued, he and Biercehad parted company, due to the exigencies of militaryaffairs, and he had never seen the American alive again.He had often wondered about him and had made inquiriesfrom time to time as he encountered variouscommandos of the Constitutionalist army. Finally,about a year later, which is to say some time toward theend of 1915, the relating officer met a Mexican armysurgeon, who also had been with Villa, and this surgeonhad told him a tale.

Soon after the breach between Villa and Carranza in1915, a small detachment of Carranza troops occupiedthe village of Icamole, east of Chihuahua State in thedirection of Monterey and Saltillo. The Villista forcesin 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 notfar from Icamole, attempting to beleaguer the town or,at least, to cut the Carranza garrison off from its baseof supplies and the main command. Neither side wasstrong enough to risk an engagement and the wholething settled down into a waiting and sniping campaign.

In the gray of one oppressive morning toward the endof 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 wasat once sent out and the strangers were brought in.They turned out to be an American of advanced yearsbut military bearing, a nondescript Mexican, and fourmules laden with the parts of a machine gun and a largequantity of its ammunition.

Both men were immediately taken before GeneralUrbina, according to the surgeon’s story, and subjectedto questioning. The Mexican said that he had been employedby another Mexican, whose name he did notknow, to conduct the American and his convoy toIcamole and the Carranza commander. Urbina turnedto the American and started to question him, but foundthat the man could speak hardly any Spanish and wastherefore unable to explain his actions or to defendhimself.

It may be as well to note the first objections to thecredibility of the story here. Bierce had been in Mexicoalmost two years, according to these dates. He was aman 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 spokenby many. It seems hard to believe that such a man couldhave survived to the end of 1915 in such ignorance ofthe speech of the Mexican people as to be unable toexplain what he was doing or to tell his name and whohe was. It seems hard to believe, also, that Bierce wouldhave been doing any gun-running or that he could havebeen alive twenty months after the Chihuahua letterwithout communicating with some one in the UnitedStates, without being found or heard of by the militaryand diplomatic agents who had then already been seekinghim for more than a year. Also, it is necessary toexplain how the man who went down to fight withVilla happened suddenly to be taking a gun and ammunitionto Villa’s enemies, though this might be reconciledon the theory that Bierce had gone to fight withthe Constitutionalists and had remained with themwhen Villa rebelled. But we may disregard these minordiscrepancies as possibly capable of reconciliation orcorrection, and proceed further with the surgeon’sstory.

Urbina, after questioning the captives for a littlewhile, lost patience, concluded that they must be enemiesat best and took no half measures. Life was cheapin northern Mexico in those days, judgments were swiftand harsh, and Urbina was savage by nature. He tookaway the lives of these two with a wave of the hand.Immediate execution was their fate.

Ambrose Bierce and the unknown Mexican were ledout and placed against the wall of a building, in thiscase a stable. Faced with the terrible sight, the Mexicanfell to his knees and began to pray, refusing to rise andface his executioners. Bierce, following the example ofhis companion, also knelt but did not pray. Instead, herefused the cloth over his eyes and asked the soldiersnot to mutilate his face. And so he died.

“I was much interested in the whole affair,” thenameless Mexican officer told Mr. Weeks, “and I askedmy surgeon friend many questions. He did not knowBierce at all and did not know he was describing thedeath of some one in whom I was deeply concerned.But I had known Bierce well and asked the surgeon fordetail after detail of the murdered American’s appearance,age, bearing, and manner. From what he toldme, I have not the slightest doubt that this was AmbroseBierce and that he died in this manner at thehands of the butcher, Urbina.”

Following the reports of Mr. Weeks, the San FranciscoBulletin sent one of its special writers, Mr. U. H.Wilkins, down into Mexico, to further examine andconfirm or discredit the report of the Mexican officer.Mr. Wilkins reported in March, 1920, confirming theWeeks report and adding what seems to be direct testimony.Mr. Wilkins says that he found a Mexican soldierwho had been in Urbina’s command at Icamoleand who was a member of the firing squad. This manshowed Mr. Wilkins a picture of Bierce which, he said,he had taken from the pocket of the dead man just afterthe execution had taken place.

Still the doubt perseveres. No one has been able tofind the grave of Bierce. The picture which the soldiersaid he took from the pocket of the dead man was notproduced and has never, so far as I can discover, beenshown.

Personally, I find in this material more elements forskepticism than for belief. Would Ambrose Biercehave been carrying a picture of himself about thewastes of Mexico? Perhaps, if it was on a passportor other credentials. In that case General Urbina musthave known whom he was shooting. And would aguerilla leader, with much more of the brigand abouthim than the soldier, have shot a man like Bierce,who certainly was worth a fortune living and nothingdead? I must beg to doubt.

Nor do the other details ring true. If the capturedAmericano was Ambrose Bierce, one of two things musthave happened. Either he would have resorted, to savehis life, to invective and persuasiveness, for which he wasremarkable, or he must have shrugged and been resigned.This Bierce was too old, too cynical, too tiredof living and pretending for valedictory heroics. Andhe was too much of a soldier to wince. For this andanother reason the story of his execution will not godown.

Unhappily, the tale of a distinguished victim of thefiring squad asking that his face be not disfigured isa piece of standard Mexican romance. According to thetradition of that country, the Emperor Maximilian,when he faced his executioners at Queretaro, beggedthat he be shot through the body, so that his mothermight look upon his face again. Hence, I suspect thesoldierly Mexican raconteur of having been guilty of aromantic anachronism, perhaps an unconscious substitution.If the man whom Urbina shot had been AmbroseBierce, he would neither have knelt, nor madethe pitiful gesture of asking the inviolateness of hisface.

Adolphe de Castro, who won a lawsuit in 1926 compellingthe publishers of a collected edition of Bierce’swritings to recognize him as the co-author of “TheMonk and the Hangman’s Daughter,” has within theyear published a version of Bierce’s end[11] that has someof the same elements in it. Bierce, says de Castro, wasshot 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 in1913. After this fight there was nothing for thenovelist-soldier to do and he took to drinking tequila,a liquor which causes those who drink it any lengthof time to turn blue. (Sic!) Bierce had with him apeon who understood a little English and acted as valetand cup companion. When he was in his mugs Biercetalked too much, complained of inactivity and criticisedVilla. One drunken night he suggested to the peon thatthey desert to Carranza. Someone overheard this prattleand carried it to Villa, who had the peon tortured tillhe confessed the truth. He was released and instructedto carry out the plan with the Gringo. That night, asthey started to leave Chihuahua, the writer and his peonwere overtaken by a squad, shot down “and left forthe vultures.”

Though Vincent Starrett[12] records that Villa flewinto a rage when questioned about Bierce, a reactionlooked upon by some as confirming Villa’s guilt, othershave pointed out objections that seem insuperable. Thebreak between Carranza and Villa did not follow untila long time after the battle of Chihuahua, they pointout, and Bierce must have been alive all the while withoutwriting a letter or sending a word of news to anyone.Possible but improbable, is the verdict of those whoknew 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 poeticaccounts of his end if that be our taste, but really we areno closer to any satisfactory solution than we were in1914.

Bierce is dead, past doubt. That much needs no additionalproof. His fierce spirit has traveled. His bitterpen will scrawl no more denunciations across the page;neither will he sit in his study weaving mysteries andironies for the delectation of those who love abstractionas beauty, and doubt as something better than truth.

My own guess is that he started out to fight battlesand shoulder hardships as he had done when a boy,somehow believing that a tough spirit would carryhim through. Wounded or stricken with disease, heprobably lay down in some pesthouse of a hospital, sometroop train filled with other stricken men; or he mayhave crawled off to some water hole and died, withnothing more articulate than the winds and stars forwitness.

XVI

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CENTURY

No account of disappearances under curious andromantic circ*mstances, or of the enigmaticfates of forthfaring men in our times, wouldapproach completeness without some narration of oneof the boldest and maddest projects ever undertakenby human beings, in many ways the crowning adventureof the nineteenth century. Particularly now, whena circumnavigation of the earth by airplane has beenaccomplished, when the Atlantic has been bridged by adirigible flight, and men have flown over the NorthPole in plane and airship, the heroic and pathetic storyof Doctor Andrée and his attempt to reach the top ofthe world by balloon is of fresh and abiding interest.

No one who was not alive in the late nineties of thelast century and of age to read and be thrilled, canhave any conception of the wonder and excitement thisman and his voyage caused, of the cloud of doubt andmystery which hung about his still unexplained end,of the rumors and tales that came out of the Northyear after year, of the expeditions that started out tosolve the riddle, of the whole decade of slowly abatingpreoccupation with the terrible romance of this singularman and his undiscoverable end.

In the summer of 1895, at the International GeographicalCongress in London, Doctor Salomon AugustAndrée, a noted engineer, and chief examiner ofthe Royal Swedish Patent Office in Stockholm, let it beknown that he was planning for a flight to the polein a balloon, and that active preparations were underway. At first the public regarded the whole thing withan interested incredulity, though geographers, meteorologists,geodesists, and some students of aëronauticshad been discussing the possibilities of such a voyagefor much longer than a generation, and many had expressedthe belief in its feasibility. Sivel and Silbermann,of the University of Paris, had declared as early as 1870that 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 aflight had been made in the course of a voyage to theUnited States in 1876 to visit the Centennial Expositionat Philadelphia. On shipboard he had made numerousobservations of the winds and air currents, which ledhim to the belief that there was a general suction ordrift of air toward the pole from the direction of thenorthern coast of Europe and from the pole southwardalong the Siberian or Alaskan coasts.

With this belief in mind, Andrée had gone back toSweden and begun a series of experiments in ballooning.He built various gas bags and made a considerable numberof voyages in them, on several occasions with nearlyfatal results. Mishaps, however, did not daunt him, andhe 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 ninetiesAndrée succeeded in making a flight of four hundredkilometers in a comparatively small balloon, and it wason the observations taken in the course of this voyagethat he based mathematical calculations which formedhis guide in the polar undertaking.

If, as I have said, the first public announcement ofthe Andrée project was received by the rank and file ofmen as an entertaining, but impossible, speculation,there was a rapid change of mind in the course of thefollowing months. News came that Andrée had openeda subscription for funds, and that the hundred thousanddollars he believed necessary had been quickly providedby the enthusiastic members of the Swedish Academyof Science, by King Oscar from his private purse,and by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of nitroglycerin andprovider of the prizes which bear his name. Evidentlythis fellow meant business.

In the late spring of 1896 Andrée and a party ofscientists and workmen, including two friends who haddecided to make the desperate essay with him, sailedfrom Gothenburg in the little steamer Virgo for Spitzbergen.They had on board a balloon made by Lachambreof 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 thattime. The gas container was of triple varnished silk,and there was a specially designed gondola, whose detailsare of surviving interest.

This compartment, in which three men hoped tolive through such temperatures as might be expectedin the air currents fanning the North Pole, was made ofwicker, covered outside with a rubberized canvas andinside with oiled silk, these two substances being consideredcapable of making the big basket practicallyair and weather proof. The gondola was about six andone half feet long inside and about five feet wide. Itcontained a sleeping mattress for one, with provisionfor a second bed, though the plan was to keep two ofthe three men constantly on deck, while the third tooktwo hours of sleep at a time. This basket was covered,to be sure, the top having a trapdoor or hatch, throughwhich the voyagers could come up to the deck. Insideand outside the gondola, in various pockets and bags,were fixed the provisions and supplies, while the variousnautical instruments, cameras, surveyors’ paraphernalia,and a patent cookstove hung among the ropes, or werefixed to the gondola by specially invented devices.Everything had been thought out in great detail, mostof the apparatus had been designed for the occasion,and Andrée had enjoyed the benefit of advice from allthe 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 landedon the obscure Danes Island in the Spitzbergen group,where he found a log cottage built some years beforeby Pike, the British bear and walrus hunter. Here a largeoctagonal building was thrown up to shelter the balloonfrom the fierce winds, while it was being inflated. Finallyall was ready, the chemicals were put to work, andthe great bag slowly filled with hydrogen. Everythingwas in shape for flying by the middle of July, but nowvarious mishaps and delays came to foil the eager adventurer,the worst of all being the fact that the windsteadily refused to blow from the south, as Andrée hadanticipated. He waited until the middle of August, andthen returned somewhat crestfallen to Sweden, wherehe was received with that ready and heartbreakingridicule which often greets a brave man set out uponsome undertaking whose difficulties and perils the fickleand callous public little understands.

Andrée himself was nothing damped by his reverses,and even felt that he had learned something that wouldbe of benefit. For one thing, he had the gas bag of hisballoon enlarged to contain about two hundred thousandcubic feet, and made some changes in its coating,which was expected to prevent the seepage of the hydrogen,a problem which much more modern aircraftbuilders have had difficulty in meeting.

If the delay in Andrée’s sailing had lost him a little ofthe 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 wasundiminished. King Oscar again met the additional expenseswith a subscription from his own funds, and Andréewas accordingly able to set out for the second essayin June of 1897. His goods and the reconstructed balloonwere sent as far as Tromsoe by rail, and thereloaded into the Virgo and taken to Danes Island, accompaniedby a small group of friends and interested scientists.

Almost at the last moment came a desertion, a happeningthat is looked upon by all explorers and adventurersas something of most evil omen. Doctor Ekholm,who had made the first trip to Danes Island and intendedto be one of the three making the flight, hadmarried in the course of the delay, the lady of his choicebeing fully aware of his perilous project. When it cametime for him to start north in 1897, however, she hada not unnatural change of heart, and finally forced herhusband to quit the expedition. Another man steppedinto the gap without a day’s delay, and so the partystarted north.

The enlarged bag was attached to the gondola andits fittings, and the process of inflation began anew inthat strange eight-sided building on that barren arcticisland. The bag was fully distended at the end of thefirst week in July, and Andrée impatiently waited forjust the right currents of air before casting off.

In those last few days of waiting a good deal of forebodingadvice was given the daring aëronauts by thegroup of admirers who had made the voyage to DanesIsland with them. It is even said that one of the leadingscientists with the expedition took Andrée aside, spenta night with him, and tried to convince the man thathis theories and calculations were mistaken; that theair currents were inconstant, and could not be dependedon to sweep the balloon across the pole and down onthe other side of the earthly ball; that very low temperaturesat the pole might readily cause the hydrogento shrink and thus bring the balloon to earth; and thatthe whole region was full of such doubts and surprises asto forbid the adventure.

To all this Andrée is said to have answered simplythat he had made his decision and must stand by it.

Indeed, the balloonist’s plan seems to have been mostthoroughly matured in his own mind. In twenty yearsof aëronautics he had worked out his ideas and theoriesin the greatest detail. He had not been blind to theproblem of steering his machine, once it was in the air,but the plan of air rudders, or a type of constructionthat might lend itself to guidance through the air, hadevidently not struck him as feasible, and was notbrought to any kind of success until several years laterunder Santos Dumont. Yet Andrée was prepared tosteer his balloon after a fashion. His gondola was, asalready said, oblong, with a front and back. The frontwas provided with two portholes fitted with heavyglass, through which the explorer hoped to make observationsin the course of his flight. As a practical balloonist,he knew that, once his car was in the air, the greatbag was almost certain to begin spinning and to travelthrough the air at various speeds, increasing the rateof its giddy rotations as its rate of travel grew greater.That being so, the idea of front portholes and a prowfor the gondola seemed something of a vanity, but Andréehad his own ideas as to this.

The balloonist explorer did not intend to ascend toany great heights, or to subject himself to the rotatingaction which is one of the unpleasantnesses and perilsof ballooning. He had fixed to the stern of his gondolathree heavy ropes, each about one hundred yards long,which descended from his craft, like elongated flaxenpigtails. In the center of each hundred-yard length ofrope was a thinner spot or safety escapement, by meansof which the lower half of any one of the ropes couldbe let go. And near the gondola was a second catch forreleasing all of the rope or ropes.

These singular contrivances constituted Andrée’ssteering gear and antiwhirling apparatus. His intentionwas to fly at an elevation of somewhat less than onehundred yards, thus leaving the ends of his three ropestrailing out behind him on the ice, or in the water ofany open sea he might cross. The tail of his craft wasexpected to keep his gondola pointed forward by meansof its dragging effect. Realizing that one or all of theropes might become entangled in some manner withobjects on the ice surface, and that such a mishap mightwreck the gondola, Andrée had provided the escapementsto let go the lower half or all the ropes.

Just what the man expected to do, may be read fromhis 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 landand water conformations, pick up whatever meteorological,geological, geographical, and other informationthat came his way, cross the pole, if he could, and findhis way back on the other side of the earth to somepoint within reach of inhabited places. Andrée said thathe might be carried the seven hundred-odd miles fromDanes Island to the pole in anywhere from two daysto two weeks, depending on the force and direction ofthe surface wind. He did not expect to consume morethan three weeks to a month for the entire trip, buthis ship carried condensed emergency provisions forthree years.

While a widely known French balloonist, who hadplanned a rival expedition and then abandoned it, hadintended to take along a team of dogs, Andrée’s balloonhad not sufficient lifting power or accommodations foranything of this kind, and he was content to carry twolight collapsible sleds on which he expected to carrythe provisions for his homeward trek after the landing.

When a correspondent asked Andrée, just before heset out, what provisions he had made for a mishap, andjust what he would do if his balloon were to comedown in open water, the explorer showed his spirit inthe tersest of responses: “Drown.”

Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination,it is not quite certain in what spirit Andrée setforth. It has often been said that he was a stubborn, self-willed,and self-esteeming enthusiast, who had workedup a vast confidence in himself and an overweeningpassion for his project through his flying and experimenting.Others have pictured him as an infatuatedscientific theorist, bound to prove himself right, or diein the attempt. And there is still the other possibilitythat the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt,in spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule ofthe public and the skepticism of some critics. He feltthat he would be a laughingstock before the world anda discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to set out,it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remainsa fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausibleto engage the attention and credence of a considerablenumber of scientists, and his enthusiasm brightenough to attach two others to him in his great emprise.

In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andréegot into the gondola of his car, tested the ropesand other apparatus, and was quickly joined by his twoassistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H. F. Frankel, thelatter having been chosen to take the place of the defectedEkholm.

At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off,after Andrée had sent his farewell message, “a greetingto friends and countrymen at home.” The great baghesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shotup to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowlyabout, with its three ropes dragging first on the iceand then in the water of the sea, and set out majesticallyfor the northwest, carried by a steady slow breeze.

The little group of men on the desolate arctic islandstood late through the afternoon, with eyes straininginto the distance, where the balloon hung, an ever-diminishingball against the northern horizon. Whatdoubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculatingcrowd, what burnings of the heart and moisteningsof the eyes overcame its members, as they watched theintrepid trio put off upon their unprecedented adventure,the subsequent accounts reveal. But the imaginationof the reader will need no promptings on this score.A little more than an hour the ship of the air remainedin sight. Then, at last, it floated off into the mist, andthe doubt from which it never emerged.

Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sendingback word of his situation and progress. For early communicationhe carried a coop of homing pigeons. Inaddition, he had provided himself with a series ofspecially designed buoys, lined with copper and coatedwith cork. They were hollow inside and so fashioned asto contain a written message and preserve it indefinitelyfrom the sea water, like a manuscript in a bottle. To thetop of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, witha little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release oneof the small buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitudewas crossed, thus marking out, by the longitude observationsas well, the precise route taken by the balloonin its drift toward or away from the pole.

About a week after Andrée’s departure one of thecarrier pigeons returned to Danes Island, with this messagein the little cylinder attached to its legs:

The earlier birds and any the balloonists may havereleased after the night of the thirteenth, about fifty-fivehours out from Danes Island, must have been overcomeby the distance and the excruciating cold. Noneexcept the one mentioned ever reached either DanesIsland or any cotes in the civilized world.

All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaperaccounts of Andrée’s daring undertaking, waitedwith something like bated breath for further news ofthe adventuring three. It was not expected that thebrave Swedes could reach civilization again, even withevery turn of luck in their favor, in less than twomonths. Even six months or a year were elapsed periodsnot considered too long, for the chances were that theballoon would land in some far northern and difficultspot, out of which the three men would not be ableto make their way before winter. That being so, theywould be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then,very likely, they could find their way to some outpostand bring back the tidings of their monumentalfeat.

Meantime the world got to work on its preparations.The Czar, foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and histwo companions might alight somewhere in upperSiberia, sent a communication by various agencies tothe wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains,explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andréeand his men were, and admonishing the natives to treatany such wayfarers with kindness and respect, aidingthem in every way and sending them south as speedilyas possible, the special guests of the imperial governmentand the great white father. In other northerncountries similar precautions were taken, with the resultthat the news of Andrée and his expedition wascirculated far up beyond the circle, among the Indiansand adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters ofLabrador and interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos,and scores of other tribes and peoples.

But the fall of 1897 passed without any further signfrom Andrée, and 1898 died into its winter, with thepole voyagers still unreported. By this time there was afeeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among theoptimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange thatno further messages of any kind had been received. Anothersignificant thing was that one of the copper-and-corkbuoys 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 upthe following summer.

Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing exceptone or two more of the empty buoys, and the definitefeeling of despair. Expeditions began to organize for thepurpose of starting north in search of the balloonists,and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in adirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in gettingunder way, and the summer of 1900 came along withnothing accomplished.

On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however,another, if not very satisfactory, bit of news waspicked up. It was, once more, one of the buoys fromthe balloon. This time, to the delight of the finders,there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:

It will be noted at once that the body of this communicationwas written the night after the departurefrom Danes Island, and the postscript probably at sevenforty-five o’clock the next morning, so that it musthave been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours beforethe single returning pigeon was released. No lightof hope in such a communication.

The North was by this time resonant with rumorsand fables. Almost every traveler who came down fromthe boreal regions brought some fancy or report, sometimessupporting the product of his or another’s imaginationwith scraps of what purported to be evidence.A prospector came down from the upper Alaskangold claims with a bit of tarred and oiled clothwhich had been given him by the chief of some remoteIndian tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of theAndrée balloon? For a time there was a thrill ofcredulity. Then the thing turned out to be hide, insteadof varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.

In the spring of 1900 a report reached Berlin thatAndrée and his party had been killed by Eskimos inupper Canada, when they descended from the cloudsand 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 allpoints, beginning at Kamtchatka and running aroundthe world to the Alaskan side of Bering Strait, and theywere 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 BayCompany, had received from Fort Churchill, the northernmostoutpost of the company, several letters fromthe local factor, Ashtond Alston, in which the sad fateof Doctor Andrée and his comrades was contained. Thenews had been received at Fort Churchill from wanderingEskimos. It was to the effect that a tribe of outlawmushers, up beyond the Barren Islands, had seen a greatship descend from the sky and had followed it manymiles till it settled on the ice. Three men had got outand displayed arms. The savage hunters, totally unacquaintedwith white men, and far less with balloons,believed the intentions of the trio to be hostile and attackedthem, eventually killing all with their bows andarrows, though the white men were armed with repeatingrifles and put up a good fight. There were manyother confirmatory details in the report. The musherswere found with modern Swedish rifles and with cookingand other utensils salvaged from the wreckedballoon.

These reports led the late William Ziegler to write tothe commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company forconfirmation, with the result that the story was at onceexploded in these words:

“There is no probability of there being any truth inthe report regarding the supposed finding of Andrée’sballoon. The chief officer of the company on the westcoast of Hudson’s Bay who himself interviewed the nativeson the matter, has reported as his firm convictionthat the natives who are said to have seen the balloonimposed upon the clerk at Churchill, to whom thestory was given. The sketches of the balloon which thecompany has been careful to distribute throughoutnorthern Canada naturally gave occasion for muchtalk among these isolated people, and it is not greatlyto be wondered at that some such tale might be givenout by natives peculiarly cunning and prone to practiceupon the credulity of those not familiar with them, oreasily imposed upon.”

But the imagination of the world was nothingdaunted by such cold douches of fact, and more reportsof Andrée’s death, of his survival in the igloos ofdetached tribes, of the finding of his camps, of his balloon,of parts of his equipment, of the skeletons of hisparty, and of many fancies came down from the northernsectors of the world, season after season. Therewas a great revival of these yarns in 1905, once moredue to some imaginative Eskimo tale spinners, and in1909, twelve years after Andrée’s flight, there was aneven more belated group of rumors, all centering aboutthe fact that one Father Turquotille, a Roman Catholicmissionary residing at Reindeer Lake, and often makinglong treks farther into the arctic, had found a party ofnomadic natives in possession of a revolver and somerope, which fact they explained to him by telling thestory of the Andrée balloon, which was supposed tohave landed somewhere in their territory. The goodpriest reported what he had been told to Bishop Pascal,of Prince Albert, and that worthy ecclesiastic transmittedthe report to Ottawa, whence it was spreadbroadcast. But Father Turquotille, after having madea special journey to confirm the rumors, was obligedto discredit them. And so another end to gossip.

Thus it happens that there is to-day, more than thirtyyears after that heroic launching out from Danes Island,after the pole has long been attained, and all theregions of the Far North traversed back and forth bycountless expeditions and hunting parties, no sureknowledge of Andrée’s fate. All that is absolute is thathe never returned, and all that can be asserted as beyondreasonable doubt is that he and his companionsperished somewhere in the North. The probabilities aremore interesting, though they cannot be termed morethan inductions from the scattered bits of fact.

The chief matters of evidence are the buoys, whichwere picked up from time to time between the springof 1899 and the late summer of 1912, when the Norwegiansteamer Beta, outward bound on September 1st,from Foreland Sound, Spitzbergen, put into Tromsoeon the fourteenth, with Andrée’s buoy No. 10, whichhad been picked up on the eighth in the open ocean.This buoy, like all the others, except the one alreadydescribed, was empty and had its top unsecured. Itrests with the others in the royal museum at Stockholm.When Andrée flew from Danes Island he tooktwelve of these buoys, eleven small ones, which he expectedto drop as each succeeding degree of latitudewas crossed, and one larger float, which was to bedropped in triumph at the North Pole. This biggestbuoy was picked up in the closing months of 1899,and identified by experts at Stockholm, who had witnessedthe preparation for the flight. In all, seven ofthese floats have been retrieved from the northern seas.

We know that Andrée dropped one buoy on themorning of July 12, 1897, less than sixteen hours fromhis base, and that he liberated a pigeon on the followingnight, after an elapsed time of about fifty-fivehours. At that time he had attained 82.20 degrees northernlatitude and 15.5 degrees eastern longitude. SinceDanes Island lies above the seventy-ninth parallel, andin about 12 degrees of eastern longitude, the balloonhad drifted about three degrees north and three eastin fifty-five hours, a distance of roughly three hundredand fifty miles, as the crow flies. His net rate ofprogress toward the pole was thus no better than sevento eight miles an hour, and he was being carried northeastinstead of northwest, as he had calculated. Evidentlyhe was disillusioned as to the correctness of histheories before he was far from his starting point.

The recovered buoys offer mute testimony to whatmust have happened thereafter. When the big NorthPole buoy was brought back to Sweden, the great explorerNansen shook his head in dismay and said theemptiness of the receptacle was a sign portentous ofdisaster. Andrée would never have cast his largest andbest buoy adrift, except in an emergency, or until hehad reached the pole, in which case it would surelyhave contained a message. Nansen felt that the buoyhad been thrown overboard as ballast, when the shipseemed about to settle into the sea. But even then, itwould seem, Andrée would have scribbled some messageand put it into the float, had there been time.

The fact that this main buoy and five others werepicked up, with their tops unfastened and barren ofthe least scrap of writing, seems to argue that some suddendisaster overtook the balloon and its horrified passengers.Either it sprang a leak and dropped so rapidlytoward the sea or an ice floe, that everything wasthrown out in an attempt to arrest its fall, or therewas an explosion, and the whole great air vessel, withall its human and mechanical freight, was dropped intothe icy seas. In that case the unused buoys would havefloated off and been found scattered about the northernocean, while the explorer and his men must havemet the fate he had so briefly described—“drowned.”

The fact that no buoy has ever been recovered bearingany message later than that carried by the solitaryhoming pigeon would seem also to indicate that deathovercame the party soon after the night of July 13th,with the goal of the pole still far beyond the fogs andice packs of the North.

In some such desolation and bleak disaster one of themost splendid and mad adventures of any time cameto its dark and mysterious conclusion, leaving the worldan enigma and a legend.

XVII

SPECTRAL SHIPS

We have not yet lost that sense of terrorbefore the vast power and wrath of thewaters that wrought strange gods andmonsters from the fancy of our ancestors. It is thisfright and helplessness in us that gives disappearances atsea their special quality. In spite of all progress, all inventiveness,all the power of man’s engines, every puttingforth to sea is still an adventure. The same fatethat overcomes the little catboat caught in a squallmay overtake the greatest liner—the Titanic to note atrite example.

As a matter of fact, never a year passes without theloss of some ship somewhere in the wild expanse of theworld’s waters. Boats go down, leaving usually at leastsome indirect evidence of their fate. Now and again, asin the case of the Archduke Johann Salvator’s SantaMargarita and Roger Tichborne’s schooner Bella, not asurvivor lives to tell the tale nor is any bit of wreckagefound to give indication. Here we have the genuinemarine mystery. The marvel lies in the number of suchcompletely vanished ships. A most casual survey of therecords turns up this generous list, from the Americannaval records alone:

The brig Reprisal, 1777; the General Gates, 1777; theSaratoga, 1781; the Insurgent, 1800; the Pickering,1800; the Hamilton, 1813; the Wasp III, 1814; theEpervier, 1815; the Lynx, 1821; the Wildcat, 1829;the Hornet, 1829; the Sylph II and the Seagull, bothin 1839; the Grampus, in 1843; the Jefferson, 1850; theAlbany, with two hundred and ten men, in 1854; andLevant II, with exactly the same number aboard, in1860. In 1910 the tug Nina steamed out of Norfolkand was never again heard from, and in 1921 the seagoingtug Conestoga put out from Mare Island, Cal.,bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with four officersand fifty-two men aboard, and was never again reported.These are not mere marine disasters[13] but completemysteries. No one knows precisely what happenedto 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 withoutmention of the American brigantine Marie Celeste,of New York, Captain Briggs, which was found floatingabandoned and in perfect order in the vicinity ofGibraltar on the morning of December 5th, 1872. Shehad sailed from New York late in October with a cargoof alcohol, bound for Genoa. On the morning mentionedthe British bark Dei Gratia, Captain Boyce,found the Marie Celeste in Lat. 38.20 N., Long. 17.15W. with sails set but acting queerly, yawing and fallingup into the wind. Captain Boyce ran up the urgenthoist but got no answer from the brigantine. Theday 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 andmanaged to board her. There was not a soul to be seen,not the least sign of violence or struggle, no indicationof any preparations for abandonment, not a boat gonefrom the davits.

Captain Boyce and his mate, naturally amazed, madea careful inspection of the ship and wrote full reportsof what they had found. In the cabin a breakfast hadbeen laid for four persons and only partly eaten. Oneof these four was a child, whose half empty bowl ofporridge stood on the table. A hard boiled egg, peeledand cut in two but not bitten into, lay near one of theother places. There were biscuits and other food onthe table.

Investigation showed that the cargo had not shiftedand was completely intact. None of the food, water orother supplies had been carried off, the captain’s funds,of considerable amount, were safe and his gold watchhung 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 theeffect that a bloody sword had been found was officiallydenied. Neither was there any leak or any defect, exceptthat there were two square cuts at the bow on theoutside. They had been made with an axe or similartool and might have been there for some time.

The Dei Gratia towed her prize into Gibraltar andnotified the American consul, who again examined thebrigantine with all care and reported to Washington.It was found that the Marie Celeste had set sail with acrew of ten men, the mate, the captain, his wife andtheir eight-year-old daughter. She was a vessel of sixhundred tons.

Inquiries made by the American consuls in all theregion near the finding place of the abandoned vesselresulted in nothing and a general quest throughout theworld brought no better results. The British ship Highlanderreported that she had passed the Marie Celesteand spoken her just south of the Azores, on December4th, the day before she was picked up, and that thebrigantine had answered “All well.” This is obviouslya mistake, for the most easterly of the Azores lies aboutfive hundred miles from the place where the ship wasfound or about twice as far as she was likely to havesailed in twenty-four hours.

There are conflicting statements as to the actual stateof affairs on the Marie Celeste when found. One reportsays the ship’s clock was still ticking. On the other handthe log, which was found, had not been brought up beyondten days prior to the discovery. One statementsays that the ship’s papers and some instruments weregone, another that everything was intact. All indicationsare, however, that the crew had not been long away. Abottle of cough medicine stood upright and uncorkedon the table next to the child’s plate. Any bit of roughweather or continued yawing and twisting before thewind with a loose rudder would have upset it. Again,on a sewing machine, which stood near the table in thecabin, lay a thimble, that must have rolled off to thefloor if there had been any specially active dipping orlurching of the brigantine.

Many theories have been propounded to explain thedisappearance of the crew, not the least fantastic ofwhich is the giant cuttlefish yarn. Those who spin thistale affect to believe that there are squidlike monstersin the deeper waters of midocean, large enough andbold enough to reach aboard a six hundred ton shipand snatch off fourteen persons one after the other.Personally, I like much better the idea that Sinbad’s rochad come back to life and carried the crew off to theValley of Diamonds on his back.

As in other mysteries, men have turned up fromtime to time who asserted that they knew the fate ofthe crew of the Marie Celeste, that they were the oneand only survivor, that murder and foul crime hadbeen committed on the brigantine and more in thesame strain.

In 1913, the Strand Magazine (London) printed atale which has about it some elements of credibility. Thearticle was written by A. Howard Linford, head masterof Peterborough Lodge, one of the considerableBritish preparatory schools. Mr. Linford specificallydisowned responsibility for what he narrated, sayingthat he had no first hand knowledge. His story was, hesaid, based on some papers left him in three boxes byan old servant, Abel Fosdyk.

This Fosdyk appears in the Linford narrative as oneof the ten members of the crew—the steward in fact.He recounts that the carpenter had built a little platformin the bows, where the child of the captain mightplay in safety. The thing was referred to as baby’squarterdeck, and upon this structure the child playeddaily in the sun, while its mother sat beside it, readingor sewing. The good woman had been ill the first partof the trip and was now greatly worried because of thenervous health of her husband, who had suffered abreakdown.

One morning, according to the supposed Fosdykpapers, the captain determined to swim about the shipin his clothes, possibly as the result of a challenge fromthe mate. Mrs. Briggs tried to dissuade her husbandbut he was obdurate and she prompted the mate toswim with him. They plunged in and the whole crew,with the commander’s wife and child, crowded on thelittle platform to watch the swimmers. Suddenly therewas a collapse and the platform, with all on it fell intothe sea. Just then the breeze freshened and the brigantine,with sail set, rapidly ran away from the swimmersand the hopeless strugglers in the water. Fosdyk alonemanaged to cling to the platform and was washed tothe African shore, where he was restored to health bysome friendly blacks. He reached Algiers and in 1874Marseilles. Later on he got to London and was employedby Mr. Linford’s father.

Here is a tale that is on its face within the realm ofpossibility. We may believe it if we like, without riskingthe suspicious glances of our better balancedbrothers, but——

Would an experienced mariner, even in a nervousstate, have gone swimming hundreds of miles from land,leaving his vessel with sail set and expecting, even in acalm, to keep pace with her? Would the helmsmanhave left his post under such circ*mstances to standon the baby’s quarterdeck and gape? Would the captainand mate have got up without finishing their breakfastto engage in such folly? Finally, why did thisAbel Fosdyk not immediately report the story on hisreturn to Algiers or at least at Marseilles, when therewas a great hue and cry still in the air and sure informationwould have been rewarded? Or why did he nottell the story in the succeeding years, when the newspapersagain and again revived the mystery and soughtto solve it? Why did he leave papers to be publishedby another after his death?

My answer is that the mystery of the Marie Celesteis no nearer solution since the so-called Fosdyk paperswere published. Moreover, I cannot find that worthy’sname on the list of the mystery ship’s crew.

A more credible explanation has recently been putforth by a writer in the New York Times, who saysthat the whole case rested upon a conspiracy. The captainand crew of the Marie Celeste had agreed with thepersonnel of another ship, that the brigantine be desertedin the region where she was found, her men toput off in a longboat which had previously been suppliedby the conspirators in order that none of theMarie Celeste’s boats should be missing. The other vesselwas to come along presently, pick up the derelict andcollect the prize money, while the owners were to profitby the insurance. The deserting crew was to get itsshare of the proceeds and then disappear.

There are objections to this explanation also. Woulda set of sailors and a captain, the latter with his wifeand little girl, venture upon the sea in an open boatsome hundreds of miles from land? Would the captainhave taken his wife and child on the voyage with himif such a trick had been planned? And why was nomember of the crew ever discovered in the course ofthe feverish search or through the persistent curiositythat followed? On the other hand, such tricks havebeen worked by mariners, and men who set out to commitcrimes often attempt and accomplish the perilousand seemingly impossible. The doubts are by no meansdispelled by this theory but here is at least a rationalversion of the affair.

The World War added two mysteries of the sea to thelong roster that stand out with a special and tormentingcharacter. The war had hardly opened when the Britishnavy set out to destroy a small number of Germancruisers that lay at various stations in the Atlantic andPacific. There was von Spee’s squadron which sent AdmiralCradock and his ships to the bottom at the battleof Coronel and was subsequently destroyed by a force ofBritish off the Falkland Islands. There was the Emden,that made the Pacific and Indian oceans a torment forAllied shipping for month after month, until she wasovertaken, beaten and beached. Finally, there was theKarlsruhe.

This modern light cruiser, completed only the yearbefore the war began, did exactly what she was designedfor—commerce raiding. With her light armamentof 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 Germanfleet at sea to scout for, she became, within a few hotweeks, 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 merchantmenbegan to arrive at American, West Indian andSouth American ports.

These refugees told, one and all, the same story.There would be a smudge of smoke on the horizon andwithin minutes the long slender German cruiser wouldcome churning up out of the distance with the speedof an express train, firing a shot across the bows andsignalling for the surrender of the trader. The prizecrew came aboard, always acting with the most punctiliouspoliteness and treating crew and passengers withapologetic kindness. If the vessel was old and slow, hercoal was taken, the useful parts of her cargo transferred,her crew and passengers removed to safety andthe craft sent to the bottom with bombs or by openingthe sea co*cks. If, on the other hand, the captured shipwas modern and swift, she was manned from thecruiser, 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 sixsuch vessels in her train, at another four. When theregot to be too many passengers and other captives, theleast worthy of the vessels was detached and ordered tosteam to a given port, being allowed just enough coalto get there.

As early as October 4, 1914, two months after theopening of hostilities, it was announced that the Karlsruhehad captured thirteen British merchantmen inthe Atlantic, including four hundred prisoners. Shedid much better than that before she was through andthe chances are she had then already put about twentyships out of business, for this was a conservative announcementfrom the British Admiralty, which let itbe known soon afterwards that all of seventy Britishwar vessels were hunting the Karlsruhe and her sisterraider, the Emden.

Shipping in the Atlantic was in a perilous way andexcitement was high among newspaper readers ashore,who watched the game of hide and seek with all theinterest of spectators at some magnificent sportingevent. Nor was the sympathy all against the German,for the odds were too heavy. The wildest rumors werefloating in by every craft that reached port from theSouthern Atlantic, by radio and by cable. On October27, a Ward Line boat came into New York with the reportthat she had observed a night battle off the VirginiaCapes between the German raider and Britishmen-of-war. On November 3 came the report that theKarlsruhe had captured a big Lamport and Holt lineroff the coast of Brazil as late as October 26. On November10 an officer of a British freighter captured by theraider reached Edinburgh and told the story that theKarlsruhe was using Bocas Reef, off the north Braziliancoast, as a base.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the forays ofthe modern corsair ceased. The first belief was, ofcourse, that the pursuing British had found her andsent her to Davy Jones. But as the weeks went bywithout any announcement to that effect, doubtscrept in. Soon the British government, without makinga formal declaration, revealed the untruth of this reportby keeping its searching vessels at sea. It was thetheory that the Karlsruhe had run up the Amazonor the Orinoco for repairs and rest. The expectationwas that she would soon be at her old tricksagain.

The battle and sinking story persisted in the Britishpress, the wish being evidently father to the thought.On January, 12, 1915, for instance, the Montreal Gazettepublished an unverified (and afterwards disproved)report from a correspondent at Grenada, BritishWest Indies, giving a detailed description of a fourhour battle in which the raider was destroyed. This storywas allegedly verified by the washing ashore of wreckageand the finding of sailors’ corpses. All moonshine.

On January 21, an American steamer captain announcedhaving sighted the Karlsruhe off Porto Rico.On other dates in January and February she was alsofalsely reported off La Guayra, the Canary Islands,Port au Prince and other places. On March 17, theBrooklyn Eagle published a tale to the effect that thehulk of the raider lay off the Grenadines, a little stringof islets that stretch north from Grenada in the Windwards.This report said there had been no battle. Thecruiser had been self-wrecked or broken up in a storm.Again wreckage was said to have been found, but hereonce more was falsehood.

On March 18, the Stifts-Tidende of Copenhagen reportedthat the Karlsruhe had been blown up by an internalexplosion one evening as the officers and menwere having tea. One half of the wreck sank immediately,the report went on to say, while the otherfloated for some time, enabling between 150 and 200of the crew to be rescued by one of the accompanyingauxiliaries. The survivors, it was added, had been swornto secrecy before reaching port—why this, no one canguess.

The following day, the National Tidende publishedcorroboration from a German merchant captain thenin Denmark, to the effect that the “crew of the Karlsruhehad been brought home early in December, 1914,by the German liner, Rio Negro, one of the Karlsruhe’sescort ships.”

Somewhat later, a Brooklyn man, wintering at Nassau,in the Bahamas, reported finding the raider’s motorpinnace 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 memoirsjust this and no more:

“The commander of the Karlsruhe, Captain Köhler, neverdreamt of taking advantage of the permission to make hisway homeward; working with the auxiliary vessels in theAtlantic, surrounded by the English cruisers, but relying onhis superior speed, he sought ever further successes, until hewas destroyed with his ship by an explosion, the probablecause of which was some unstable explosive brought aboard.”

It is obvious from this that the Karlsruhe was giventhe option of returning home, having gained enoughglory and sunk enough ships to satisfy a dozen admirals.But the main fact to be gleaned from Tirpit’s statementis that an internal explosion was the thing officially acceptedby the head of the German admiralty as the causeof her disappearance. And this is the most likely of allthe theories that have been or can be proposed. But, thatsaid, we are still a long way from any satisfaction ofour deeper curiosity. Where and when did the explosiontake place? Under what circ*mstances? Did any escapeand return to Germany to tell the tale?

To these queries there are no positive answers. If theKarlsruhe was, as so often stated, accompanied by oneor more auxiliaries or coaling ships, it seems incrediblethat all the crew can have been lost and quite beyondimagination that there was not even a distant witnessingof the accident. Yet this seems to have been the case.In spite of the report that a large part of the famousraider’s crew got safely home after the supposed explosion,I have searched and scouted through the Germanpress and the German book lists for an account of theaffair—all in vain. Not only that, but I am assured byreliable correspondents of the American press in Germanythat nothing credible or authoritative has appeared.We have von Mücke’s book “The Emden,” publishedin the United States as early as 1917, and previouslyin Germany. We have the exploits of theMoewe, and we have the lesser adventures of the popularvon Luckner and his craft. But of the famous Karlsruhewe have nothing at all, save rumors and gossip.

The conclusion must be that the ship did break upsomewhere in the deepest ocean, as the result of an explosion,while she was altogether unattended. She musthave gone down with all her men, for not even the reportsof finding bits of her wreckage have ever beenverified. The mystery of her end is still much discussedamong seafaring men and William McFee, in one of histales, suggests that she lay hid up one of the SouthAmerican rivers and came to grief there.

Even more fantastic than this, however, is the storyof the great United States collier Cyclops. This vessel,of nineteen thousand tons displacement, five hundredand eighteen feet long, of sixty-five foot beam andtwenty-seven foot draught, with a cargo capacity oftwelve thousand five hundred tons, was built by theCramps in Philadelphia in 1910. She was designed tocoal the first-line fighting ships of our fleet while at seaand under way, by means of traveling cables from herarm-like booms. She had frequently accompanied ourbattleships abroad, had transported the marines to Cubaand the refugees from Vera Cruz to Galveston in April1914. On a trip to Kiel in 1911, she was wonderinglyexamined by the German naval critics and builders, whodeclared her to be a marvel of design and structure.

On March 4, 1918, the Cyclops sailed from Barbadosfor an unnamed Atlantic port (Norfolk, as it proved),with a crew of 221 and 57 passengers, includingAlfred L. Moreau Gottschalk, United States ConsulGeneral at Rio de Janeiro. She was due to arrive onMarch 13. When that date had come and nothing hadbeen heard from her, it was announced that one of hertwo engines had been injured and she was proceedingslowly with the other engine compounded. But on April14 the news came out in the press that the great shipwas a month overdue and totally unaccounted for.

For a whole month the story had been veiled underthe censorship while the Navy Department had beenmaking every conceivable effort to find the ship or someevidence of her fate. There had been no news throughher radio equipment since her departure from Barbados.There had been no heavy weather in that vicinity. Shehad been steaming in the well-traveled lane of shipspassing between North and South America, yet not avessel had spoken her, heard her radio call or seenher at any distance. Destroyers had been searching thewhole Gulf, Caribbean, North and South Atlantic regionsfor three frantic weeks. They had not found somuch as a life preserver belonging to the missing ship.

The public mind immediately jumped to the conclusionthat a German submarine had done this dirty pieceof business, if an attack on an enemy naval vessel intime of war may be so listed. Alas, there were no Germansubmarines so far from their home bases at thattime or any proximate period. None had been reportedby other vessels and the German admiralty has longsince confirmed the understood fact that there wasnone abroad. A floating mine was next suspected, butthe lower West Indies are a long distance from anymine field then in existence and a ship of the size ofthe Cyclops, even if mined, probably would have hadtime to use her radio, lower some boats and put some ofher people afloat. At the very least, she must have leftsome flotsam to reach the beaches of the archipelagowith its tragic meanings.

The mystery was soon complicated. On May 6 a Britishsteamer from Brazil brought news that two weeksafter the due date of the Cyclops but still two weeksbefore her disappearance was announced, an advertisem*nthad been published in a Portuguese newspaper atRio announcing requiem mass for the repose of the soulof A. L. M. Gottschalk “lost when the Cyclops wassunk at sea.” Efforts were made by the secret agentsof the American and Brazilian governments to discoverthe identity of the persons responsible for the advertisem*nt,but nothing of worth was ever discovered. Thenotice was signed with the names of several prominentBrazilians, all of whom denied that they had the leastknowledge of the matter. The rector of the church deniedthat any arrangement had been made for the massand said he had not known Gottschalk. Some chose tobelieve that the advertisem*nt had been inserted by Germansecret agents for the purpose of notifying thelarge number of Germans in Brazil that the Fatherlandwas still active in American waters.

A rumor having no substance whatever was to theeffect that the crew of the ship had revolted, overcomethe officers and converted the ship into a German raider.A companion tale said the ship had sailed for Germanyto deliver her cargo of manganese to the enemy, bywhom this valuable metal was sorely needed. The onlyfoundation for this rumor was the fact that the Cyclopswas indeed carrying a load of manganese ore to theUnited States.

It was not until August 30, 1918, that Secretary ofthe Navy Josephus Daniels announced that the ship wasofficially recorded as lost. At that time he notified therelatives of the officers, crew and passengers. More thanthree months later, on December 9th, Mr. Daniels supplementedthis official notice with the statement, givento the newspaper correspondents, that “no reasonableexplanation” of the Cyclops case could be given. Andhere the official news ends. At this writing, inquiry atthe official source in Washington brings the answer thatnothing has since been learned to alter the then issuedstatement.

The Cyclops case naturally excited and disturbed thepublic mind, with the result of an unusual crop offancies, lies, false alarms and hoaxes. On May 8, 1923,for instance, Miss Dorothy Walker of Pittsburgh reportedthat she had found a bottle at Atlantic Citycontaining the message “Cyclops wrecked at Sea.—H.”This note was written on a piece of note paper tornfrom a memorandum book and was yellowed with age.The bottle was tightly corked and closed with sealingwax—a substance which shipwrecked sailors do not havein 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. Itread:

“U. S. S. Cyclops, torpedoed April 7, 1918, Lat. 46.25,Long. 35.11. All on board when German submarine fired onus. Lifeboats going to pieces. No one to be left to tell thetale.”

The position indicated is midway between Hatterasand the Azores, where the Cyclops had no business andprobably never was. It was found after the war, as alreadysuggested, that no German submarine had been inany so distant region at the time. We may accordinglylook upon this bottle as another flagon of disorderedfancy, another press from the old “spurlos versenkt”madness.

Finally, in their search for something that might explainthis dark and baffling affair, the hunters cameupon a suggestive fact. The commander of the Cyclopswas Lieutenant-Commander George W. Worley. It nowcame to light—and it struck many persons like a revelation—thatthis man was really G. W. Wichtman, thathe was born a German; ergo, that he was the man responsiblefor this disaster to our navy. It proved truethat Wichtman-Worley was a German by birth, buthe had been brought to the United States as a child andhad spent twenty-six years in the American navy. Noone in official position suspected him, but the professionalHun strafers insisted that this was the typical actof a German, no matter how long separated from his nativeland, how little acquainted with it or how longand faithfully attached to the service of his adoptedcountry. It is only fair to the memory of a blamelessofficer to say that Lieutenant-Commander Worleycould not have done such a complete job had he wishedto and that his record is officially without the least blemish.

We are left then, to look for more satisfactory explanationsof the fate of the big collier. One possibility isthat the manganese developed dangerous gases in thehold and caused a terrific explosion, which blew the shipout of the water without warning, killed almost all onboard and so wrecked the boats that none could reachland. The only trouble with this is that a nineteen thousandton ship, when destroyed by an explosion, is certainto leave a great mass of surface wreckage, whichwill drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passingvessels in any travelled lane. It happens that vesselssent out by the Navy Department visited everyness and cove and bay along the coast from Brazil toHatteras, every island in the West Indies and everyquarter of the circling seas without ever finding somuch as a splinter belonging to the collier. Fishermenand boatmen in all the great region were questioned, encouragedwith promises of reward and sent seeking, butthey, too, found never a spar or scrap of all that greatship.

This also seems to dispose of the possibility of a disasterat the hands of a German raider or submarine.Besides, to emphasize the matter once more, the Germanrecords show that there is no possibility of anythingof this sort. The suspicion has been officially andcategorically denied and there is no reason for concealmentnow.

There remains one further possibility, which probablyconceals the truth. The Cyclops, like her sisterships, the Neptune and Jupiter, was topheavy. She carried,like them, six big steel derricks on a superstructurefifty feet from her main deck. This great weight aloftmade it dangerous for the ship to roll. Indeed she couldnot roll, like other heavy vessels, very far without capsizing.We have but to suppose that with her one crippledengine she ran into heavy weather or perhaps a tidalwave, that she heeled over suddenly, her cargo shiftedand her heavy top turned her upside down, all in a fewseconds. In that event there would have been no timefor using the wireless, no chance to launch any boats.Also, with everything battened and tied down, ship-shapefor a naval vessel travelling in time of war, especiallyif the weather was a little heavy, there is thestrong possibility that nothing could have been looseto float free. In this manner the whole big ship with allher parts and all who rode upon her may have beendumped into the sea and carried to the depths. One ofthe floating mines dropped off our Southern Coast in theprevious year by the U 121 may have done the fatalrocking, it is true.

There is no better explanation, and I have reason toknow that an upset of this sort is the theory held bynaval builders and naval officials generally. But certainlythere is none and a satisfying answer is not likely tocome from the graveyard of the deep.

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