BOY RUNS AWAY
Chicago Herald
Somewhere between Chicago and Lansing, Mich., Harvey L. New, a fair-haired boy of 14, is wandering along the dusty roads carrying a nightcap, a pocket full of feed and Sarah Jane, a stub-toed chicken.
In his boyish heart he carries a love for his chicken, the life of which he felt bound to save at the cost of his home.
Harvey visits his grandfather’s farm near Lansing every summer. A year ago his grandmother presented him with Sarah Jane, then only three weeks old.
He brought the chicken to his home at 4969 Prairie avenue and built a coop in the back yard. Every morning he arose early and fed and fondled the chicken. When he returned from school his first thought was for Sarah Jane.
One night last winter the cold penetrated the cellar where he kept her and froze off her toes. He nursed her until she got well.
As time went on his love for the chicken grew. The chicken also grew, until one day Harvey’s parents jokingly remarked that she was getting large enough for a stew.
Harvey shuddered, but said nothing. Last Sunday his parents again threatened to sacrifice his pet.
Early Monday morning, when Harvey’s father entered the boy’s room, he found his son gone. In the mud beneath the bedroom window he saw footprints. He made a search about the house.
Then he noticed that Sarah Jane also was gone, likewise a coop that Harvey had made from an old fruit crate. The boy’s nightcap, presented to him by his grandmother, also was missing. Harvey has not been heard from since.
“I believe the boy actually thought I was going to kill his beloved pet,” said his broken-hearted father, James New, yesterday. “He probably will try to make his way to the home of his grandparents in Michigan. He loved his grandmother more than anybody else in the world, with the possible exception of Sarah Jane.”
When Harvey left he wore a gray suit, a brown overcoat and a blue cap. He stammers slightly when excited.
Harvey’s father has promised that Sarah Jane never will be made into stew.
“ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH”
New York Times
Frank H. Thompson of 981 West Fifty-second Street, who runs an elevator on ordinary days, took a day off yesterday and celebrated so heartily that, when he tried to buy a ticket to the Crescent Theatre, a moving picture and vaudeville house at 1,175 Boston Road, the Bronx, at 6:30 o’clock last evening, they refused to admit him. Thompson then strolled down an alley leading to the stage entrance, and finding no one at the door, stepped inside, leaned heavily against the wall, and went to sleep.
Inside the theatre, where 600 persons were gathered to watch the election returns, which were flashed on the screen between acts, there was great excitement, for all the lights went out, even those of the electric sign outside the place. Thompson had leaned against the master switch.
They found him there, turned the lights up again and turned him over to Policeman Fitzgerald, who locked him up in the Morrisania Station.
New York World
Business has been bad with Isaac Einstein, who keeps a “gents’” clothing and furnishing emporium, No. 918 Paris avenue, the Bronx.
To encourage trade he marked down his goods until it was a shame to take them at the prices he asked. The gilded youth of the Bronx could buy of Einstein a suit of evening clothes “like King Edward wears, $2.98: reduced from $29.80.” Still, nobody would buy the suit.
The lack of customers made Einstein despondent. It is suspected that yesterday he sought to drown his low spirits in others. After a rather long absence he returned to his store and began to act as if the thought had struck him, “If I can’t sell ’em I can give ’em away.”
Einstein pulled in the first man that came along and made him a present of a pair of trousers.
“They cost me $4 wholesale,” said Einstein, tearfully. “I can’t sell ’em for $1.50. You’ve got fine legs; you will show off this check well. Take ’em, my friend, take ’em. But take my advice, too. You are a married man? Yes. You have children? Yes. Don’t wear ’em in the house when the babies are asleep.”
To the next man Einstein gave “a real Panama straw hat” knocked down from $19 to 90 cents; to the third a suit of near-silk underwear such as “the Sultan wears when he goes visiting.”
In a very short time 500 men and boys were scuffling to get into the store. Patrolman Buck could not restrain the mob, and sent for the reserves of the Alexander avenue police station.
“At last I have a bargain crowd,” cried Einstein. “See what a rush.”
Einstein thoughtlessly left his store. Policeman Buck grabbed him, charged him with intoxication and locked him up. Then Buck locked up the store.
SWINDLE
New York Tribune
Frederick A. White, fifty-six years old, who says he is a broker and lives at No. 345 West 116th street, was arrested yesterday by Detectives Fitzsimmons and Flood, of the District Attorney’s office, charged with swindling James H. Burns, of Knoxville, Tenn., out of lumber land in Marion, N. C., worth $65,000.
Burns says that through fraud and misrepresentation White obtained possession of the deeds to the property on May 10. Burns became suspicious, and, coming to this city, went to Police Headquarters, where, according to the police, he picked out White’s picture, No. 4,391, in the Rogues’ Gallery. He then communicated with the District Attorney’s office, and the alleged swindler was arrested in the office of W. E. Wells & Co., lumber dealers, at No. 29 Broadway.
Burns, who is staying at the Hoffman House, is the owner of extensive lumber lands in South Carolina. He came to this city in January, and advertised in an organ of the lumber trade that he had some property for sale. He says White, representing himself as a broker, called on him in answer to the advertisement, and said he had a prospective purchaser of the land. He introduced Burns to Frederick A. Cannon, who lives in The Bronx, as the ostensible purchaser. The negotiations which followed were completed in Washington.
Burns was to receive two bonds for $25,000 each and three notes for $5,000 each, he says. The bonds, he understood, were guaranteed by a trust company of this city. The notes were for three, five and seven months.
Shortly after the transfer of the property to Cannon it passed into the hands of the Standard Lumber Company, of which White is president and Cannon is vice-president. Burns says he tried to get possession of the $25,000 bonds but failed, notwithstanding repeated demands.
When the first note fell due, on August 20, Burns did not receive the $5,000. Then the man from Tennessee grew suspicious, and on investigation he learned that the bonds were not guaranteed. He learned also, he says, that the Standard Lumber Company consisted of three shares valued at $5 each.
The title to the land subsequently changed hands again, this time to the Southern Lumber Company.
White was arrested, the police say, about five years ago, under the name of Wilce.
Kansas City Star
Sister sick. No work. Money gone. Everything that could be pawned or sold outright gone. Then Laura Walsington, 20 years old, 14 West Thirty-second Street, took to forgery.
That was in July. Since then she has cashed forged checks for sums from $15 to $75. She was arrested this morning, was taken to police headquarters and there confessed.
Slumped down in a chair in the office of Larry Ghent, chief of detectives, she wept bitterly.
“Sister and I were living together,” she said. “Then she got sick. She had to go to a hospital and be operated on. We had a little money, but that soon went. Then I pawned everything I had, and then everything Sis had. Then those things were gone. Then I lost my position. I was desperate.”
After that, she said, she decided on forgery.
On receipts for supplies of butter and eggs, she had the name of a dairyman of Parkton, Kas. After practicing the name until proficiency had been acquired, she telephoned to a Lakeview bank to inquire if the dairyman’s checks were good. Informed they were, she began, July 23, to cash checks, signed in his name. The Eagle Clothing Company, the Smith Garment Company and the Wilson Coal & Coke Company all cashed checks for her aggregating $119.
The name of the physician who had attended her sister was next. After practice, Miss Walsington issued checks signed in his name for sums totalling $170. The checks were cashed at the London Cloak Company, Peck’s, French Cloak and Suit Company and the Mond Suit Company.
Then, November 10, Miss Walsington, in a downtown bank, found a deposit slip signed in a woman’s name. After practicing the signature, she telephoned the bank, inquiring if checks by that name would be honored. She drew and cashed checks on the woman for a total of $45.
Miss Walsington was arrested at the Wilson Coal and Coke Company this morning. She was recognized as having previously cashed bad checks there and detained until the arrival of two detectives.
“I’ll pay it all back,” she cried in Chief Ghent’s office. “Only give me another chance. Why, I’ve been respectable all my life until this happened.”
She is being held.
WORTHLESS CHECKS
Topeka Capital
Frank Green and Ruth Blair were childhood sweethearts at New Rapids, Kansas. Five years ago, when both were 16 years old, Ruth married a man named Bird, 13 years her senior. The bride moved away while Frank remained in high school and tried to forget.
Frank developed into a youthful speaker. A year ago last September on Labor day, Green, then 20 years old, delivered the labor oration before 1,500 persons at New Rapids. Then he went to Baker university. Young Green played in several games with the Baker football team and was active in the debating societies. He returned to his home in June to find his former sweetheart back in New Rapids. Her life with Bird had been unhappy and she had secured a divorce.
The old friendship was renewed. In a few weeks the two were married in Atchison, “on the sly,” as Green said, because his parents did not approve of the match. With a few hundred dollars the happy couple left New Rapids to make their way. First Green tried getting subscriptions for magazines. This failing, other propositions were tried in various towns, including St. Joseph and Kansas City. The store of dollars dwindled until, when Mr. and Mrs. Green reached Topeka from Lawrence, where they had looked vainly for work, only $3 remained. That was a week ago Saturday.
Still optimistic, Green took his wife to the Fifth Avenue hotel, confident that he could find work and meet expenses. But work was lacking, Green says. Meanwhile Frank Long, manager of the Fifth Avenue hotel, suggested several times to Green that his bill had not been paid.
Completely discouraged Thursday, Green cashed several small checks not good. That night two suit cases were lowered by a rope to the street from the room occupied by the Greens. Then the young husband led his wife through the hotel lobby “to find a dentist to help her toothache,” as he explained to the night clerk. The two went to the Santa Fé station and boarded train No. 117, Oklahoma City bound.
A telegram from Sheriff L. L. Kiene arrived ahead of Mr. and Mrs. Green. When they entered the Oklahoma City station they were arrested.
“We were taken to the city jail like murderers,” said Green.
Saturday Sheriff Kiene arrived. The return trip was ended last night, when Mr. and Mrs. Green slept in the county jail.
Penitent would hardly describe the feeling of the two as expressed to big-hearted Sheriff Kiene. Pretty Mrs. Green was nearly a nervous wreck from the continued uncertainty and the shocks. Apparently it is the first affair with the law for either.
“My record has been clear,” said Green. “I never have been arrested before. One hallowe’en night they almost got me, but I outran the cop.”
How the present escapade will end, is not known. Last night Green prayed for another chance for his wife and himself.
“I will make good,” he said.
Note—How, with additional information, a striking follow-up story can be written a few hours after the first story was published is well illustrated by the following two stories, the first of which appeared in the Saturday evening edition and the second in the Sunday morning edition of the same paper.
EMBEZZLEMENT
(1)
Kansas City Star, Saturday evening edition
John E. Jones, jr., formerly a clerk at the Merchants Bank, which day before yesterday was absorbed by the Commercial Trust Company, is being detained at police headquarters this afternoon pending an investigation of his accounts. He is about 22 years old and is married. It was asserted there was a discrepancy amounting to something like $9,000.
The difference was found when an audit of the books of the Merchants Bank was made in turning over its money, books and business to the Commercial Trust Company.
In a statement made to the police this afternoon young Jones told a queer story. He admitted falsifying the books for an amount he calculated to be about $9,800. But he said that he received only about $500 of that amount, the rest going to a lawyer friend. The lawyer is being detained and questioned this afternoon in the office of Larry Ghent, chief of detectives. There is some doubt as to whether the lawyer would be criminally liable although he got most of the money.
Jones lives at 4510 Walker St. He did not dissipate or spend recklessly and it is believed he can restore the greater part of the money.
This was the method of the bookkeeper and his lawyer friend. The friend wrote checks on an account he had in the Merchants Bank. When the canceled checks appeared at the Merchants Bank from the clearing house to be charged against the lawyer’s account, they first went to Jones, whose task at the bank gave him that opportunity. He held out those checks and destroyed them. He covered the discrepancy by making a false entry on his books.
Jones says he received $160 at one time with which he purchased a motor cycle, but the rest of his share went to him, he says, in comparatively small amounts.
Young Jones told the police that he had been forced by the lawyer to keep up the system of destroying checks and falsifying the books after once he started, for fear of being exposed. The bookkeeper said that he first fell into the clutches of the lawyer when the attorney representing an installment furniture house, threatened to take back the furniture he had partly paid for. A payment was due on it and the bookkeeper could not meet it. He says the lawyer proposed the scheme for destroying the checks and falsifying the accounts. Once he started, Jones said, his master made him keep it up. The amounts of the checks at first were comparatively small, but they kept getting larger until one day the lawyer compelled him to put over a check for $2,000.
At 3:30 o’clock this afternoon the police were still investigating the lawyer. He cashed the checks, but was in no way connected with the bank.
(2)
Kansas City Star, Sunday morning edition
After drifting in a current that both knew must lead to wrack and ruin, two Kansas City men are on the rocks today. One is Henry A. Black, 47, smart lawyer and man of affairs. His companion in dishonor is John E. Jones, jr., 21, a pallid bank bookkeeper.
Accompanied by detectives and lawyers, Black went to his offices in the Commercial Building yesterday afternoon and produced from his safe cancelled checks totalling $9,800. The checks, drawn on his account at the Merchants Bank, had been paid by the bank but never charged against him. Jones, the tool in this game of foolish finance, pocketed them as they came in.
Around Black were men in whose class the lawyer had only recently counted himself. They were all staring at him. He felt the need of explanation. He spoke slowly:
“I was under a great financial strain and I had to resort to methods of raising money that otherwise I never would have used.”
He said nothing more and the little group returned to police headquarters. Black and the young bookkeeper, who for months had juggled the lawyer-promoter’s account at the bank, were held in jail over night. Tomorrow both will be charged with a felony, the prosecutor said last night.
Black is a church member and was for many years a Sunday school teacher. He is a cold man and even his close friends have known only in a general way about his business affairs. He was an exceptional scholar. In the last ten years he has not practiced much at the law, but has sought to promote telephone corporations and large land businesses. He has a lot of that force that is sometimes called character but more often described as personality. He was the first man possessed of any considerable personal magnetism who ever came into the life of John Jones, bank clerk.
The man of affairs began to notice Jones months ago and Jones glowed under the attention. Married at 18 to a girl a year his junior, earning for a time $35 a month, while his wife added to this by wages from a wholesale coffee house, Jones had had a dull life. He had been graduated from a grade school at 14 and gone through a business college. Several jobs followed and he finally worked in one bank until his salary was raised to $50 a month. After that he helped his father in a grocery and then went to work for the Merchants Bank for $70 a month. When that bank was absorbed by the Commercial Trust Company last week, he was getting $75.
This was the young bookkeeper, pallid, unassuming, rather thin chested, beside whose place at the bank railing Black, one of the bank’s customers, stopped one morning.
Black asked how his checks totaled. The bookkeeper, returning in a moment, told him his account would be overdrawn $110. Black thanked him, said he would go out and get the money, and passed a 10-cent cigar over the railing.
Many times this happened, Jones said yesterday. His pocket was quite used to the “feel” of one or two good cigars by now.
Then one day Jones, the bank clerk, needed a friend. He had lost a little home out on Walker Avenue which he had sought to buy on installments. Now an installment house was threatening him for furniture purchased.
Well, he guessed he had a friend, a lawyer-friend, too. His intimacy with the man, whom he considered one of the bank’s best customers, had grown. Black now was trusting the bookkeeper to notify him whenever that exasperating account was about to be overdrawn.
Jones was not disappointed. The installment people were placated. In one interview his friend of the 10-cent cigars arranged a basis of settlement and even advanced the first payment of $7.50.
This was the story that Jones told yesterday to a roomful of lawyers, bankers and bond company representatives, and to one woman—the little girl who had married him at 17.
In the next chapter it was his benefactor who needed a favor.
It was in the power of the bank bookkeeper, the financial weakling, to favor the man of affairs. Black had written more checks than he could meet. He wanted a check for $100 held out for a day. It would be easy for the bookkeeper to slip it from the pile that came in from the clearing house. Of course, the man of affairs might ask Mr. White, the cashier. But sometimes Mr. White was willing to favor and sometimes not. It depended a good deal on how he felt. And this was important.
That $100 check was not made good the next day. It went over to the “next day.”
Others, at the insistence of the man of affairs, were added to this.
The picture Jones drew in the minds of those that heard him was of a nervous young man, hurrying from the bank to the office of the man of affairs and greeting him with all the apprehension that had grown upon him every time he looked at a bank book.
“For God’s sake get this money and get this straightened up.”
“Now, that’s all right. I’ll look after this.”
And after a few minutes Jones would be surprised to find himself picking up some of the other’s confidence. He would go back to his post confident that the money would soon be raised and his duplicity toward his employers wiped away.
Jones would get such messages as these:
“Meet me at 7:30 in the morning.”
“Drop in at 6 o’clock at night.”
“93, 94, 95, 96 are coming in. Take care of them.”
It had reached $9,800 when the prospective consolidation threatened disclosure.
Jones had the advice of the man of affairs—to keep quiet and trust in him as his lawyer.
When arrest came Friday, Jones called for his lawyer. The lawyer was at church. The messenger reached the church too late.
At midnight Black was at police headquarters. The police would not let him see his young client. At 8 o’clock yesterday morning, and again at 10 o’clock, Black was back at the jail. But Jones, under the sweating of the detectives, was keeping his faith.
Then his young wife, leaving their 2-year-old baby at home, came into the room. She pleaded for the truth. Then Jones took her hand and told the queer, pitiful story.
The chief of detectives stared hard.
“Can you tell that story before Black?” the chief demanded.
In a little while Black was brought into the room.
The two men, so radically different in character, education and manner, sat on either side of a desk.
Again the young man told his story. Black played with a lead pencil.
“Well, sir, what do you think of that?” the detective chief asked sharply.
The answer was ready enough.
“The boy is having a wild dream. It is preposterous!”
But a little while afterwards Black said, briefly, that the cancelled checks, given him by the accused clerk, were in his office safe.
There the checks were found. And Black, who had gone to the bank officials the day before and pleaded for time for his client’s sake, now pleaded for time for himself, time in which to clean everything up, time to make that restitution delayed so many months.
In the matron’s room at the jail were the boy and his wife. They had been crying.
“A headache I’ve had for weeks is gone,” the boy said.
He was not vindictive.
“I was the fool,” he said. “I thought that he was prosperous and that it would all come out right.”
The disclosures of the day brought to police headquarters another wife, Mrs. Black, from the home at 215 Wilson Place. With her was the Rev. A. Brittingham Brown, Mr. Black’s pastor. Black’s 7-year-old daughter was at home, asleep and ignorant of the day’s cumulative events.
Mrs. Black brought for her husband in a valise a change of clothing.
Black was summoned from the cell-room and conducted to the office of the night captain. He came in, his hat pulled forward, head bowed.
Then he saw his wife. They advanced to each other with open arms. They kissed and hugged. Neither said a word for a long time.
They all sat down, the wife holding her husband’s hand.
“We are very sorry, indeed, at this sudden trouble,” the minister said. “The sympathy of pastor and of members is with you and we are going to stand by you. This is a time to stand by a man.”
Black and Mrs. Black wept.
Other friends entered the room. No one spoke of the case and Black volunteered no information.
After his friends had gone, Black went back to the cellroom, leaving on the captain’s desk the valise brought by his wife. The pajamas inside would have given slight comfort on the iron slats upon which he was to sleep.
San Francisco Chronicle
Diamonds and other stones to the value of $3500 were stolen yesterday afternoon from the apartments of Mrs. Dennis M. Patrick at 1907 Woolworth street by a burglar, who ran away in such haste that he left jewelry to an equal value spread out on the bed, besides money and other valuables.
The burglar seems to have been familiar with the hiding places of Mrs. Patrick’s valuables and with her movements as well. While she was out of the house between 2 and 4 o’clock in the afternoon, he entered the rear door with a key which he took from the place where she had hidden it, picked up a screwdriver in the kitchen, and, going straight to the bedroom, pried open the locked bureau drawer where the jewels were.
The burglar spread the loot out on the bed and was evidently engaged in sorting and packing it up when Mrs. Patrick’s daughter, Dorothy, came home from school at 3:30 o’clock. The little girl went up to the back door, and, finding it locked, went back to the street and down to the corner. Apparently, when the child tried the back door the burglar ran out through the front way, as Mrs. Patrick found that door open when she came home half an hour later.
The stolen jewels included thirty-seven diamonds, eight emeralds and eight pearls, all set in platinum, principally in the shape of rings and a lavalliere. Most of the stones were heirlooms and prized by Mrs. Patrick beyond their value. The jewels which the burglar left behind in his hurry included a diamond bracelet, besides other diamonds and emeralds, and a quantity of gold jewelry. Several hundred dollars’ worth of silverware and about $20 in coin had not been touched. But the burglar did take about 55 cents from the little girl’s purse.
A cigarette on the floor, a room full of smoke and an excellent set of finger prints on a hand mirror, which Detective M. T. Arey found last night, were all the clews the burglar left.
BURGLARY
Chicago Herald
Helen Walker is 12 years old. Her father is John Walker, a lawyer, and the family resides in Oakland Park. Mr. Walker always has been proud of his daughter. But he boasts about her now.
Helen’s mother, when she kissed her girl good-by yesterday morning, had said she would not be home till late. That’s why Helen grew suspicious.
She heard some one walking upstairs when she came home from school. It couldn’t be her father. And the step was too heavy for her mother; and, besides, her mother wasn’t home.
So she tiptoed upstairs and into her father’s room, and she found a big revolver in a bureau drawer. Then she walked quietly into the room where the noise seemed to come from.
She saw a man putting things into a bag—silverware, bric-a-brac, ornaments, jewelry—all her mother’s pretty things.
The girl drew in her breath sharply. The burglar turned. His little eyes glared at her—a slim little creature with a halo of golden hair and a revolver—and blue eyes that looked into his unafraid.
For a moment they kept the pose. Then—
“It’s loaded,” said the girl. “Don’t you think you’d better drop my mamma’s silver comb?”
The burglar did. Likewise a rope of pearls.
“Hadn’t you better turn the bag upside down on the bed there?” the girl continued.
The burglar, without a word, complied.
Then she made him turn his pockets inside out, and, keeping the revolver trained on him, walked him down the steps and onto the porch.
And there he turned and spoke.
“Say, kid, you’re all right,” he affirmed, and walked away.
And Helen went and told the neighbors—and was afraid to go back into the home she had just defended—until the arrival of her mother.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY
Chicago Herald
About to be married and needing money, Edward Russell, 19 years old, decided it would be easier to steal the money than work for it.
So he turned auto robber, and was captured with three other young men, after they held up Edward Bessinger and took his satchel, containing $3,000. They told their stories yesterday in the Chicago avenue police station and gave their strange motives for becoming criminals.
“I was going to be married and knew I would need a lot of money,” said Russell. “I couldn’t get enough by working and thought a holdup would be the best way.”
John Harper said he joined the other robbers because his father was in trouble.
“He is a saloon-keeper in Walsingham, Ill., and was caught staying open after hours,” said Harper. “He needed money to help him out, and the only way I had to get it was to steal it.”
“I was just trying to collect what Bessinger owed me,” declared Arthur Raymond, who planned the robbery. “I worked in the Bessinger restaurant at Halsted and Hamilton streets and got paid next to nothing for it. You can’t work for such small wages and have any money.
“I decided I would get enough out of Bessinger to pay me handsomely for the time I worked there. I knew he carried money in the satchel and planned the holdup.”
“Let the others talk themselves into the penitentiary if they want to,” said George Wilson, the fourth prisoner. “I have nothing to say about it. We tried and fell down. That’s all.”
The four men were arrested after they had run their automobile into a fence while trying to escape with the satchel. They had knocked down Bessinger, who is a collector for the Bessinger Restaurant Company, and the automobile ran over his leg, causing the machine to swerve. The money satchel was recovered.
THEFT OR LOSS
Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin
It will be Christmas without the “merry” for Jules Alexander, Brussels, Belgium, who will spend it in Milwaukee penniless, because of either an evil twist of fate or the daring of a hotel thief.
Monsieur Alexander, a young Belgian, is an American representative of a large machinery plant in Brussels. He has been in Milwaukee about two weeks and is staying at the Hotel Pfister.
Thursday afternoon M. Alexander decided that his suit needed pressing. Hurriedly—it must have been hurriedly—he made a change of wardrobe, rang for a bellboy and had the suit taken down to the hotel tailor.
Little did M. Alexander know that a $130 roll of crinkly American bills, practically his assets in toto, reposed in the left hand hip pocket of the tailor-bound trousers. In the newly donned suit there was not a franc, not a sou, not even a centime.
Later in the afternoon, having left the hotel, M. Alexander had use for some change. He felt in his hip pocket and found nothing. He found the same thing in all his other pockets. All at once it dawned on him that he had left the precious roll of bills in the other suit.
M. Alexander went back to the hotel on the run. He told the clerk of his loss. Quickly but quietly a search for the lost or stolen money was made through the hotel, but without avail. Evidently both tailor and bellboy declared that they knew nothing of the money.
M. Alexander is positive that the roll of bills was in the pocket of the trousers sent down to the tailor. As the tailor is in the same building, there was no chance of the money’s dropping on the street, and yet the hotel corridors, elevators and lobbies have been searched inch by inch.
This morning M. Alexander went to the central police station and reported the loss, or theft. Detective Paul Pergande was detailed on the case.
“It was 650 francs I lose; all I had, aussi,” said M. Alexander this morning, with a deprecatory French shrug of the shoulders. “I do not know what shall I do if the gendarmerie, the police, soon do not find the money. It is of a probability, certainement, that I can get some more, but it will take time and I am what you call ‘broke’—n’est-ce pas?
“You see, monsieur, my compagnie—it is in Bruxelles—allow me an expense account and we representateefs do not carry with us so much. That which one has stolen is all that I had. Voila!
“I must find that money, monsieur. Certainement I can explain to our New York agents and they will send me some money to live with. Assuredly I hope that they will not doubt my explanation and wonder how I use so much expense account. Six hundred and fifty francs—it is much, monsieur!
“King Albert, I? Oh, oui, we have a new and fine king, but just now I worry so about my money that I have not thought much of our new king.”
Kansas City Star
Liquor was responsible for starting out two young men last night on a brief career as holdup men which lasted only a few hours and ended in cells at police headquarters at midnight. The men are Herbert Wilson, 24 years old, 910 East Nineteenth Street, and Sherwin Carter, 28 years old, 143 Payne Avenue. Carter is married.
The holdups were eight in number, occurring in the district between Twenty-first and Thirty-seventh streets and Penn Street and Forest Avenue. The loot obtained amounted to $12 in cash, eight diamond rings, four purses and three watches. The robberies came in quick succession and so did the calls of the victims to police headquarters. Two policemen in a motor car finally caught the pair at Linwood Boulevard and Forest Avenue.
Carter is the son of Dr. Eugene Carter, Hampshire Apartments, president of Standard Lumber Company. Doctor Carter, when notified of his son’s arrest, immediately blamed liquor for the young man’s downfall and said that ordinarily he was a “good boy.”
“I’d been drinking for three days and didn’t know what I was doing last night,” young Carter said this morning at police headquarters. “I was out of a job and didn’t have any money to speak of. And, say, I’m kind of responsible for Wilson’s getting into this, too. It was my scheme to hold up people.
“I’ve been a little wild, but I’ve never been in trouble for holding up people. Say, this’ll be hard on my wife.”
Wilson, too, blamed liquor.
“I’d never have dreamed of robbing people if I hadn’t been drunk,” he said. “Carter thought it would be an easy way to get some money and so we went and borrowed a gun from a negro that he knew and went to holding up people. I’d hold the gun and Carter would search them.”
Both men were shaking and wild-eyed this morning. After their continued drinking of whisky for three days, their nerves were far from steady.
Kansas City Star
See now how real life beats the reel life every now and then. Here, for instance, is the strange history of The Man in the Black Mask, as acted upon the stage of Kansas City’s streets in the deserted hours of the morning when everybody slumbers except holdup men, belated wayfarers and policemen.
REAL I.
Ed Wilson, alias E. Harry Miller, known in the family album at police headquarters as a “gunman,” fares forth very early this morning with a companion to make his living. At 2:30 o’clock at Thirteenth and Charlotte streets, they meet a man and begin their pleasant labors.
“Don’t do it, gents,” says the stranger, “don’t do it. It ain’t perfessional. I’m one of the same. Here’s my gun and here’s my black mask. See?”
“Excuses,” says Spokesman Ed. “Have ’em back. Luck to you.”
REAL II.
Frank Mathis, one of those belated wayfarers who afford occupation to holdup men, is held up half an hour later at Thirteenth and Charlotte streets by two men. By the illumination of an arc light he observes the two closely. So does Timothy Dalton, policeman. Timothy comes up rapidly and the two flee, bombarding the air, Timothy doing the same. The robbers escape.
Mathis then furnishes Timothy descriptions of the two, which Timothy, in turn, furnishes police headquarters, which, in turn, furnishes them to whatever policemen can be reached by telephone.
REAL III.
(In two scenes.)
Scene I—Frank Hoover, another policeman with insomnia, sees a man approach him at Eleventh and Charlotte streets about 4 o’clock. The man seems to answer the description of one of the two holdup chaps.
Hoover runs and so does the man.
Another batch of shots are fired. This time they find lodging.
The fleeing man drops with a bullet in the left leg and another in the left hip. Hoover stoops down, picks up something clutched in the wounded man’s hand, stares at it curiously, puts it in his pocket. The ambulance arrives and the wounded man is taken to the General Hospital.
Scene II—Furnished with descriptions of the two fleeing holdup men, another policeman at 4 o’clock at Tenth and Holmes streets, arrests Ed Wilson, our hero of “Real 1.”
REAL IV.
At police headquarters today Wilson is identified by Mathis as one of the pair who held him up.
Wilson agrees with him and tells his partner’s name.
Mathis then goes to the hospital, but fails to identify the wounded man, who gives the name of Harry Walters.
From this Wilson gathers that the wounded man is not his pal.
But who, then, is he?
“You say this Hoover cop picked up something when he shot the fellow?” queries Wilson.
“What was it?”
“A black mask, eh? Well, ain’t that the limit?”
“Why, that must be the fellow we held up to begin with and turned loose because he was in the business.
“And here he goes and gets shot because a cop thinks he looks like me. That’s luck for you!”
Los Angeles Times
Two pairs of arms entwined the neck of Harry Blair, wounded and confessed streetcar bandit, as he lay chained to a cot in the Emergency Hospital yesterday morning. While his young wife embraced him, sobbing, their year-old baby laughed and cooed. He crawled across the pillow on which Blair’s head rested, and, snuggling close to his father, threw his chubby arms around Blair’s neck.
Hospital folk and the police are used to pathetic scenes in the hospital, but that sight seemed too much for them, and silently they stole from the ward and closed the door, leaving the wife to her grief, the husband to whatever thoughts he had, and the innocent babe to its joy.
It was a decidedly hard-luck story that the Blairs related to the detectives and nurses. The first year of their married life happiness and prosperity smiled on them, they said. But when the stork visited the Blair household in Dallas it brought not only a bright-eyed baby but also a nemesis.
Their savings went for doctor’s bills and clothing for the little one. Then Blair had difficulty, he says, in finding steady employment at his trade, painting. When they were reduced almost to poverty they decided to come to Los Angeles. They have been here six weeks. In that time, Blair says, he was unable to earn enough to provide properly for his sick wife and impoverished baby.
The last dollar the couple had went a few days ago for rent. Weary of tramping the streets in quest of work, weak from lack of nourishment, and worried because he couldn’t buy food, clothing and medicine, Blair says he conceived the idea of turning highwayman.
“Even then my nemesis followed me,” he said, choking. “I got a few dollars from the conductor and was hurrying home to give it to my wife for food and things when I was stopped by a police officer. I escaped from him and was climbing a fence when the bullet caught me in the leg.”
Blair will be confined in the criminal ward at the County Hospital until he is physically able to be arraigned. He will be charged with highway robbery, the police say.
FREE-FOR-ALL FIGHT
New York World
With whistle screeching and hundreds of passengers yelling for help out of the windows, a northbound Third avenue elevated train was held in panic late last night by a crowd of roughs, who terrorized the passengers and assaulted a conductor.
More than a dozen women, returning from the theatre, fainted, and Mrs. Sadie Arthur, of No. 991 East One Hundred and Seventy-eighth street, was thrown into violent hysterics and taken to the Lebanon Hospital.
The riot started at One Hundred and Thirty-eighth street and continued all the way to One Hundred and Sixty-sixth street. There policemen shoved through a great crowd, which had been attracted by the whistling, and arrested Adolph J. Weiss, eighteen years old, of No. 444 East One Hundred and Sixty-fifth street. His companions in the excitement managed to escape.
Weiss, who is somewhat of a fighter, was the ringleader of the disturbers. They began their horseplay by throwing hats about the car, smashing hats and jostling the passengers. Dresses were torn and women insulted; yet no one took a hand to suppress the outrage.
“Shame on you men,” cried some of the women. “Haven’t any of you enough spirit to protect us?”
Just as one woman received a severe blow in the face, Conductor Thomas J. Boyce, of No. 108 East One Hundred and Twenty-first street, who is known on the road as “Scrappy Tom,” jumped into the fracas and hit straight from the shoulder.
“Beat him up,” yelled the gang, and they all jumped on “Scrappy Tom.”
“Come on, all of you,” he roared, his fighting Irish blood aroused. One, two, three of the brawlers hit the dusty mat, and finally Boyce reached Adolph and landed hard on his jaw.
The fight ranged up and down the car, with Boyce taking care of the entire gang. Three or four women who had fainted and fallen to the floor were trampled upon.
Windows were raised throughout the train. Yells of “Murder!” “Police!” alarmed the Bronx. The motorman started his whistle going, and this tipped Policemen Wilson and Dempsey, of the Morrisania station, who lay in wait at One Hundred and Sixty-sixth street.
The crowd that was bunched there prevented their making more arrests and furnished a means of escape to Weiss’s “pals.”
Pieces of hats, feathers, ribbons and lingerie were scattered from end to end of the car. A number of the women had not revived, and Mrs. Arthur appeared to be in a critical condition. A hurry call was sent to Lebanon Hospital, and Dr. Singer, hastily treating the others, hurried Mrs. Arthur to the institution. He said she was in a dangerous hysterical condition.
The line was tied up for half an hour by the riot.
Weiss looked as though he had stayed in the ring twenty rounds with Bill Papke. His face was unrecognizable.
“I never knew that any of these conductors could fight,” he sputtered through swollen lips, as he was led to a cell.
“Over in the old country,” said “Scrappy Tom,” as he watched the ex-champion led to a cell in the Morrisania station, “I used to throw a couple of lads like you over my head before breakfast just for an appetizer.”
New York Tribune
Walter H. Hammond, a well known business man of Jersey City and a brother of Colonel Robert A. Hammond, was shot and instantly killed yesterday afternoon in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s ferry house at Jersey City. Peter Grew, a man he had befriended, was arrested as the slayer of Hammond.
Mr. Hammond was about to have his luncheon in the restaurant in the railway station, on the second floor. He had ascended the stairs and turned toward the restaurant, when he was confronted by Grew, to whom he made a cheery remark. Without a word in reply, the police say, Grew drew a revolver, which he carried in his coat pocket, and fired at him. The bullet entered the left temple and ploughed into the brain. Two more bullets were fired into his body after he fell.
Calmly replacing the weapon in his pocket, Grew started to walk down the stairs to the street, but Patrolman Amann, who was on duty at the ferry house, dashed up the stairs and, meeting him half way, arrested him. Grew remarked, Amann says, as he handed the revolver to the officer: “The thing is all over, and I might as well give up.” Later he persistently refused to admit that he did the shooting.
The police say their investigation has revealed that Grew, who has been regarded as eccentric and impulsive, had frequently threatened to kill Hammond. They say that Grew had recently been drinking excessively.
The victim of the shooting was the head of the Hammond and Wilson Stock Company, dealers in butterine and eggs at Jerome and 4th streets, Jersey City. He was a bachelor and forty-two years old. He was a director of the Second National Bank and of the Commercial Trust Company, and an active member of the Union League Club, of Jersey City. He lived at No. 314 Harrison avenue, Jersey City.
Grew had been in the same business. Some time ago, the police say, he was arrested in Brooklyn for making and selling oleomargarine without stamping it properly. Hammond gave him a new start in business. His business dwindled to nothing, and he accused Hammond of persecuting him. Grew owned a flathouse at No. 244 3d street, Jersey City, in which he, his wife and six children lived. This house he conveyed to his wife during his business troubles. It is said that Grew complained that his wife was under the influence of Mr. Hammond and refused to permit him to have any of the revenue derived from the rental of the building. Ten days ago he was arrested for beating her. Judge Harmon, before whom he was arraigned, ordered him committed to jail for ten days, but relented when he promised to refrain from abusing or beating his wife.
Otto S. Wilkins, of No. 21 Park street, who has a butter business at No. 52 Hudson street, Jersey City, met Grew less than an hour before the shooting. He told Captain Larkins, at the Jersey City Police Headquarters, of a conversation he had had with Grew. He said that Grew asked him to give him a job.
“I then told him,” Mr. Wilkins said, “that I understood that he was in such a financial condition that he could live without working. He said, ‘No,’ that his property brought him in $120 a month, and that after he had paid the interest on a small loan which stood against it, with taxes and repairs, it left very little to live on; that his wife would not let him have any of that, and that Mr. Hammond was responsible for her attitude in withholding funds from him. He was in a natural state of mind to-day, cool and collected, and talked to me in the same strain that I have always known him to use. He used to tell me four or five years ago that he had it in for Mr. Hammond and would shoot him some time.”
In a statement to the police Grew said he had known Hammond for sixteen years and had done business with him. “I am not going to answer that,” was his reply when asked if he had had any trouble with Hammond. He said that he was on his way home from Manhattan when he met Hammond, and that Hammond spoke to him, but he did not reply. “I had the revolver in my right hand in the inside pocket of my sack coat,” said Grew, “and that is all I have to say.” He stated that “Hammond had been pounding me and had got the inspectors to pound me.”
Mrs. Grew said that her husband’s mind had been affected by brooding over his failure in business, and she shared her husband’s opinion that he had been persecuted.
MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY
Kansas City Star
Murders in Little Italy Since January 1.
January 9—Mario Ippolito shot down and killed by unidentified assassin.
January 11—John Kanato shot by John Herwetine; died two days later.
January 23—John Janoka shot by Nick Hontrogen; died same day.
January 24—Lusciano Musso murdered by gunmen in daylight.
February 4—Salvador Cangialosi shot and killed by Angelo Mannino.
February 24—Giovanni Seculo shot down by unidentified assassin, will die.
Shootings.
January 24—H. C. Petro, shot in his home, 110 Watkins Avenue, by someone who fired through the window; not fatal.
February 13—Robert Jordan, 1039 East Fourth Street, was shot twice by Tony Filo; not fatal.
That impenetrable air of mystery which closed down on the attack last night on two Italians, as it has closed down upon every one of the weekly murders of Little Italy, a sable cloak hiding details, obliterating the trails of assassins who shoot men in the back and flee, is not such a mysterious thing after all. There is only one policeman at night in Little Italy.
Giovanni Seculo and Tony Boni are walking along Cherry Street near Fourth Street. It is 10 o’clock at night. A shotgun barks, once, twice. Seculo falls, a death wound in his back. Boni falls, shot in the hip.
Presently a policeman comes, who was blocks distant at the time.
Little Italy shrugs and avers it was all sound asleep when Seculo and his companion were shot.
The assassin escapes.
There is nothing different in the main threads of the chronicle from those of all the other unpunished crimes of Little Italy.
Always, the crime is committed in some part of Little Italy distant from that lone policeman. Little Italy extends from Independence Avenue to the Missouri River, from Oak Street to Tracy Avenue.
“There should be at least four policemen in that district at night,” said Larry Ghent, chief of detectives, this morning. Then he revealed some figures on the police department.
In the district comprising Little Italy, Hick’s and Belvidere hollows, which are unsavory negro neighborhoods, and others almost as notorious, a district extending north of Independence Avenue and east of Main Street to Jackson Avenue, there are at night only four patrolmen.
In the central district, taking in the whole of the North Side, fourteen out of thirty-one police “beats” are without patrolmen at night.
In all Kansas City there are only 264 patrolmen, exclusive of officers. Many of these work as clerks in stations. The police force is at the lowest that it has been for years. The city is increasing in population.
Ghent withdrew detectives from other cases this morning and sent four of them, under the direction of Patrolman Louis Olivero, into Little Italy to attempt to ferret out the attack on Seculo last night.
Seculo, proprietor of the Neopolitan Macaroni factory at 516–18 East Tenth Street, and an influential Italian, probably will die. His condition was slightly improved today, however. Neither Seculo nor Boni knows why he was attacked or by whom.
MURDER
New York Sun
Trying door knobs early yesterday morning, Policeman Merkle of the East 104th street station found that the door of the little Italian grocery shop at 321 East 109th street opened. He entered, thinking that the place might have been robbed. At the rear of the dark, smelly little shop he found another door that opened, and as it did so, a bulldog sprang at him. The policeman shut the door and ran out to the street and rapped for assistance. Policeman O’Connell came and the two went back into the store.
They coaxed the dog into good humor, and, on lighting the gas in the squalid room, they found its master kneeling beside his bed in a pool of blood. Another door in the rear was forced open. Peter Mutolo, who lives there with his wife and three children, said they had heard no noise.
They said that the murdered man was Frederick Cinci, who had kept the shop about a month. He had been in this country about a year. No one knew of any enemies.
On the table were three dirty glasses and an empty wine bottle. Friends sometimes came to see him, the neighbors said. Nobody knew whether visitors came to see him before his death. On the floor below his body they found a stiletto, long of blade, which was bent double. In his neck, lungs, stomach and kidneys the ambulance surgeon found five thrusts.
The body was still warm; death hadn’t come long before the police found him. Some money, $1.60, was found in his pockets, and his gold watch had not been taken. Six dollars was found in the cash drawer of his shop. No one killed him to rob him of money. The dog, the police think, would have attacked a stranger and probably recognized the murderer.
MURDER
New York World
Pietro de Angelo ran along Columbus avenue, Montclair, N. J., yesterday. Plainly De Angelo, a sturdy fellow of twenty-two years, had run far and hard. He came from the direction of the Brookdale section of Bloomfield. He was leg weary, his steps grew shorter. Panting, he looked over his shoulder ever and again at an older man who ran behind him at some distance.
The older man carried a shotgun which swung by his side in his grasp as he plodded along. He seemed to be in no hurry; he seemed to be able to run forever; straight he ran, with his eyes fixed always on De Angelo, who looked back, fearfully.
Christopher street and Columbus avenue is the most fashionable part of Montclair. Wealthy persons live in that neighborhood. Men on the street or looking from their dwellings had no idea of the tragedy that was to be enacted. Being law-abiding, having no reason to run, in flight or pursuit, the Montclair men thought that De Angelo and the older man who ran behind him were both fleeing from the same pursuer.
“The police are after those fellows,” said one Montclair man.
“Or the game wardens,” said another. “See, the second chap has a shotgun—been poaching most likely. The young fellow has outstripped him.”
Not so. Where Christopher street intersects Columbus avenue De Angelo halted, swayed, almost fell. His bolt was shot, his breath was spent. He turned and slowly walked back to the older man, who did not even hasten his gait, but approached De Angelo—approached as inexorably as death itself. As he got nearer, De Angelo stretched out his hands toward him in mute pleading. The older man, never hurrying, never slackening his gait, got within ten yards of De Angelo, stopped, raised his shotgun to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and sent the charge from one barrel into De Angelo’s left breast.
The younger man pitched down on his face, arms extended, palms down. The older man looked down at him an instant—yes, one barrel was enough—then, dropping the gun from his shoulder, he kept on running, no faster, no slower, than before.
And he escaped. A dozen most respectable citizens of Montclair all had the same thought, to notify the police. The dozen rushed to their telephones. When the police arrived De Angelo was dead. He had died instantly.
Deputy County Physician Muta went from Orange and had the body taken to the Morgue at Orange. De Angelo lived at No. 961 Wilson street, Montclair. His parents say he had dinner with them there at noon, then went out. They do not know where he went. The police are trying to learn.
MURDER
Kansas City Star
In the parlor of the rooming house at 57 Green Street A. C. Hobson was busily tuning the piano this morning. As he bent above the humming wires, the lid of the instrument thrown back, a light step sounded down the corridor. Then he heard a fresh young voice, singing softly. Hobson smiled and ceased his work to listen.
The voice sang a line or two touching on cows and green fields.
“A kid from the country,” Hobson said, and went on.
A heavier step clumped on the stairway leading up from the street entrance. The song ceased abruptly.
“Hello, Maggie,” Hobson heard a man’s voice say. “What made you leave me?”
There was a little pause; then a girl’s voice answered sharply:
“Why do you follow me, anyhow? I don’t love you.”
“I came to take you back with me,” said the man. Hobson had stopped his tinkering. The sound of the man’s heavy breathing came in to him through the open doorway from the dim corridor. “Kiss me,” the man’s voice commanded.
The girl’s voice rose. “No,” she cried. “No. I don’t love you.”
The man swore. “Then no one else’ll have you,” he shouted.
Hobson stood motionless, as though paralyzed. Then he heard a scuffle; the girl cried out sharply. The restraint on him was broken at that, and Hobson rushed into the corridor. The struggling forms of man and woman were disappearing through the doorway of another room down the hall. An instant or two later, Hobson heard the crack of a revolver shot followed closely by a second. Then the moans of a woman in agony succeeded. Hobson ran into the room. Man and woman writhed on the bed.
Going to a telephone, Hobson summoned the police. Sergt. James O’Rile, acting captain of the Walnut Street Police Station, responded. It was twenty-five minutes before the ambulance arrived.
The woman was Mrs. Maggie Towes, 24 years old, who left her husband, John Towes, in Homeville, Mo., four months ago. Towes came to Kansas City a week ago, finally, this morning, finding his wife at the rooming house of Mrs. Mary Howe, where she had found employment as housekeeper. Towes is a blacksmith’s helper and is 32 years old.
As he lay on the bed in that twilight state between the conscious and the unconscious, Towes reached a hand gropingly towards his wife.
“Kiss me, honey,” he mumbled; “kiss me before I go.”
They were taken to the General Hospital. Mrs. Towes was shot through the abdomen, Towes through the left breast. Both probably will die.
MURDER
New York Sun[A]