CHAPTER IV
POLICE NEWS AND CRIME
=Type of story.= Since police news ranges from slight misdemeanors to the most serious of crimes such as murder and suicide, it offers widely different material for news stories. Because of the general interest in the material with which stories of crime deal, the purely informative story is sufficient in itself to insure reading (cf. “Burglary,” p. 54, and “Murder of Business Man,” p. 59). The strong personal element in stories of wrong-doing gives occasion for effective human interest presentation in the informative story (cf. “Forgery,” p. 49, and “Street Car Bandit,” p. 57). Amusing aspects of minor offenses, and even of burglary, hold-ups, or fraud, often furnish inspiration for humorous treatment (cf. “Charged with Intoxication,” p. 48, and “Hold-up,” p. 57).
=Purpose.= In no other kind of news should the effect of the story on the reader receive more careful consideration than in news of crime. The evil effects of news stories of criminal acts on many readers have already been pointed out (cf. p. 8). That these destructive influences can be offset to a considerable extent by constructive handling of news has also been shown. In order that the crime story may have a deterrent effect, the crime must be shown to be wrong, even though the wrong-doer deserves some sympathy. The results of wrong-doing, not only in the form of legal punishment imposed but in the remorse and the pangs of guilty conscience that the wrong-doer suffers, as well as in the disgrace that he brings to others through his criminal acts, when emphasized in news stories tend to deter others from risking the dangers of such penalties.
Constructive presentation of crime news may also include emphasis on underlying causes and responsibility, especially when these can be traced to bad conditions in the community or in society as a whole, since such emphasis leads readers to consider the necessity for changing the conditions that are directly or indirectly responsible for the criminal acts. In so far as the criminal is the victim of these circumstances it may be legitimate to create a sympathetic understanding of his act (cf. “Hold-up,” p. 56, and “Story of Escaped Convict,” p. 68).
A danger in writing stories of crime lies in creating sympathy for the undeserving wrong-doer by a sentimental treatment of him and his act. By making more or less of a hero of him, news stories may lead undiscriminating readers to regard him and his crime as not unworthy of emulation. There is also a temptation in writing crime stories to sacrifice truth and accuracy of detail in order to secure greater picturesqueness or stronger dramatic situations, but such treatment is an indefensible deviation from the fundamental duty of presenting the news fairly and accurately.
Whatever influence a story of crime may have on the reader should be the result of the reporter’s selection and presentation of the actual facts. Moralizing or “editorializing” concerning the facts is not only unnecessary but undesirable in news stories.
=Treatment.= Dramatic narrative and vivid description, when true to the facts of the news, are both legitimate and commendable. It is important to keep consistently to one point of view in arranging and presenting the details, particularly in constructive stories. Available material for making the narration and the description effective includes confessions, interviews with witnesses and persons involved, and clues to the identity of the perpetrator or to the solution of any mysterious phases of the crime. Fairness requires that persons accused of wrong-doing as well as their accusers be given a hearing in news stories. It must also be remembered that a person accused of crime is not a criminal unless he has been convicted; until he has been found guilty, he is described as an “alleged” criminal, or is said to be “charged” with the crime.
=Contents.= In police news and crime stories details of significance are: (1) number of lives destroyed or endangered; (2) names of victims; (3) names of persons charged with the crime; (4) arrests of suspects and detention of witnesses; (5) clues to the identity of the perpetrators when these are not known; (6) causes, motives, and responsibility, known or conjectured; (7) amount and character of loss; (8) methods employed in commission of the crime; (9) measures to prevent similar crimes.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
CHARGED WITH INTOXICATION
_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.
* * * * *
FORGERY
_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.
* * * * *
BURGLARY
_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.”
* * * * *
HOLD-UP
_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.
* * * * *
HOLD-UP
_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._)