Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1913 — MYSTERY OF THE SAWS. [ARTICLE]

MYSTERY OF THE SAWS.

Bare Was Using Them to Cut Bars of Cell.

It was dark in the Queens county (N. Y.) jail on Friday night, dark and with that peculiarly gruesome dimness due to lack of light common to most jails even in fiction. Through the labyrinthine gloom one could hear the dull, monotonous voices of the prisoners dictating letters to their friends. Ever and anon through the drear, tearwet place came the steady tread that the feet of prisoners make treading up and down—and particularly downstairs when they are going out of the front door away from there forever, it may be, provided they don’t catch them and bring ’em back. But hark, what is that rasping noise? The grim warden rises in his chair, clutching the back of it in his iron grip. He leans forward intent, every nerve aquiver. He is listening, listening. Chapter Two: The Warden Bmells a Plot. “Keeper Winterbottom!” The gruff summons cuts the gloomy atmosphere. There is a clanking of iron and a heavy tread. It hardly seems ten minutes before another grim faced gaoler Bteps into the room. He stands dourly in the doorway, his eagle eye upon his superior's left ear. “Keeper Winterbottom!” thunders the solemn voice; “wot is that there noise?"

Chapter Three: The Investigation, Keeper Winterbottom put bis hand to his head and again the clanking noise rose up. “Please, sir,” be cried, "it sounds like some bloke was tryin’ to get out." There was a moment of tense silence. The warden looked at Keeper Winterbottom with a flash in his scornful eye. “Of course some one is trying to get out." His voice rose almost to a shriek as the keeper staggered backward. “Some one is always getting out. Don’t you know the reputation o’ this here jail?” "But how is they trying to get out? That’s the question. How is they?” He drew the palsied keeper to bfm, bent over and whispered something In Keeper Wlnterbottom’s aspen ear, while the rasping noise boomed and echoed through the desolate building. “They’s sawin’ their way out,” he sibilated; "that’s wot they’s doin’.” For fifteen minutes the pulmotor operator worked over the keeper’s unconscious form. The shock had been too much for hls sensitive heart Chapter Four: Discovered. John Barz was at the window of his cell on the fourth floor of the dark Queens county jail, Friday night, sawing at a bar. Three saws with iron handles each six inches long lay on the cot behind him. In one corner was a rope 40 feet long made of strips of blanket. From the window of the Jail to the street it Is 40 feet. Hs! A coincidence! Suddenly the door to the cell flung open. Two keepers stood in the doorway. They turned reproachful eyes upon the man at the window. He looked at them Impatiently. Suddenly like a bayed tiger he whirled on them. "Shoo, get «at," he panted. Gently they laid bands on John

Barz. Quietly they explained to him the error of his ways. What kind ot a guy was he, they asked, going to all that trouble getting out with saws and things? he know where he was? Didn’t he know the thing to do was to take a keeper out in the back yard and point out a tall building In the middle distance to him, and while the keeper was looking up at it go decently and like a gentleman over the fenfce, if he just must get out? Ah, he hadn’t acted right. So Barz, who is twenty-three years old and was arrested on September 20 for sticking up farmers on Metropolitan avenue, was led away to a nice new cell downstairs, a sadder and a wiser man. They're thinking of taking him be-' fore the grand jury and indicting him all over again for conduct unbecoming a prisoner. It seems that a girl friend of Barz’e who used to come and bring him cream celery soup in a can must have had all these saws and things in the bottom of the can. Just%ow she got them in when the soup was tasted at the door with a spoon could not be explained yesterday. But there are a lot of folks over there who think they’re smart who went around talking about false bottoms.