Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1913 — Page 3

The Cases of Alice Clement

True Stories of the World’s Greatest Woman Sleuth as Told by Herself to Courtney Riley Cooper

A Modernized,Green Goods Game

QUEER, isn’t it, how you'll be talking to someone upon some very, very absorbing topic, suddenly to awaken in a sort of - way and ask yourself how on earth you ever dL . happened to get started TkIFo on that subject. As I Temember it, Miss Clement and I had been discussing the high price of Jr real estate along Lake Shore drive, when all at

once we discovered that we were talking about poetry in the most earnest manner. I looked at Miss Clement; she looked at me. Both of us smiled foolishly. “What on earth ever switched us from real estate to poetry?” I asked, and she laughed. We were strolling along through the damp of a summer mist. Our jaunting clothes on, happy in the freshness of the atmosphere and the coolness of the breeze as it drifted in from the lake; not caring whether we became wet or not—just joyous In the knowledge that life was good and that we were a part of it Miss Clement and I take many a stroll that way. Sometimes Ido the talking; most of the time, however, I draw her out to make the conversation, for she is the interesting one. And as I looked into that face of rosy cheeks, full red Ups and snapping eyes, I wondered what today would bring, what

experience of the past. She was still endeavoring to trace back our conver- ' sation to the point where real estate had become meter and rhyme—but fehe had failed. "I can’t trace the poetry,” she said with a little shake of her head, "but I can remember the time when poetry traced a green goods man and traced him into the penitentiary at that. It was not Bo very long ago either.” There was a time, when 'reminiscence crowded upon her, that Miss (Clement would ask me if I cared to Ihear the story. That time is past now, for she knows better. And so she began the recital as we strolled along the dripping drive, where the trees hung low and where the birds, Imprlso ed by the dampness, cheeped disgustedly at the weather^ “For a couple of weeks,” she began as we strolled along, "men of every type had been walking into detective headquarters with looks of disgust on their faces and long stories on their tongues. It was the old green goods story—or rather a story that was a little better, for this was the case of a money machine.”

“A money machine?” I asked. “Exactly; put in a dime and draw out a dollar. Or better still, draw out thousands. There were cattlemen, there were farmers, there were even business men. It seemed that they would meet their money machine friend at night, around the city somewhere, become interested in the fresh, clean bills he had, and finally become excited enough to believe his story. And the story was not bad,” Miss Clement added with a little smile. "He had formerly worked In the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Finally he got the secret of how to make the Impressions of money and then print more Just like it. It was a mint, you see. But the difficulty was — every green goods man has a little difficulty, you know, which keeps him from turning out all the money in the world, and keeping it for himself—that all thlß money he made was brand new, and if he kept spending new money all the time he would be caught And therefore, he was now In the philanthropic business of exchanging new money for old, at reduced prices. So, if you had SI,OOO on which you wanted to snake a quick investment, he would be very glad to put it into the machine and turn you out SIO,OOO in clean new bills for it, Bimply to get the old money. Nice little scheme, don’t you think?” "But—’’ I interrupted. “How did he fool his victims? Very easily. There would be two packages of supposed money. One really contained bills. The other contained nothing but tissue paper. He would take his victim to some out of the way place, pretend to give him the package of money and hand him the package of tissue paper instead, with instructions that it was dangerous to open the same before he got home. And then —well, when he got home, he would hurry for the police station with his tissue paper in his hand.

"And so this thing had gone along (or two weeks. It Beemed that the maker of money was everywhere, and there was no way to stop him. A general alarm was sent Out among the detectives and I was one of those who received it. » Description? Oddly enough, there was none. It seemed the fr.een goods man was a man who could disguise himself naturally. One man would describe him with a twisted mouth. Another time he would have a Jewish appearance. On other occasions he would seem, somewhat epileptic and his face would have a contortionistic appearance. All we had to go on were his height, weight and the color of his eyes and hair. And at that, I’ve seen mighty few persons who could describe the same man alike even In these details.

(Copyright, by W. Q. Chapman.)

“But we started to work, and one morning there walked another victim into detective headquarters with his little bundle of tissue paper. We heard the story, and as the man talked I began to finger the bogus bundle. As I did so, there began to come a few inspirations into my mind. The tissue paper was short and square and folded. It struck me all of a sudden that it was of the type used for shaving paper in barber shops. Suddenly as I •started to crumple the paper in my hand, I stopped and looked at it Some of it bore the marks of a pencil. I began- to examine the pieces, one by one. At last I grasped one close and held it closer to the light I read: ‘Sunset and evening star And one clear call for me, And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put opt to peal’

“I whirled. Something had flashed through my head. Here on the evidence of thievery, someone had written a stanza of Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar.’ I approached the captain, for a wild idea had come. “ ‘lf you please, I would like a little expense money on this case,’ I told him. ‘I may be wrong in my belief but I’ve got a little lead that may turn out something.’ “I received the money, and then started out. The loop district' looked like the best chhnce for me and so I started around there. The first day I made eight barbershops and —” “Made them?” I interrupted. *T don’t believe I quite understand." “Why,” Miss Clement answered, “I simply covered them like a salesman would cover a line of stores. And incidentally, I had become a salesman. I had figured it out that my man would be either a poetic barber or a poetic candy merchant of some kind. I knew someone who had something to do with tissue paper of that size was either a barber or a candy man. In one place it would be used for the shaving. In the other, it would be used in putting the dressing in candy boxes. And so, I got a job with a candy manufacturer I knew and started out to drum up trade.

“And you know,” Miss Clement added with a smile, “in walking around Chicago, where the wind is always blowing, one’s face gets mighty grimy and dusty. There is nothig# that takes the dust away like a massage. And so, between every candy store, I would manage to become grimy enough to need the assistance of a barber. I always did hate to go to these feminine hairdressing establishments,” she smiled at me, “and so I just acted like a man, walked into the barbershop, sat down in the chair and ordered a 'massage. “When the night of the first day came, my face was as sore as a boil. The next day I decided that I had better change my method until my face got over the various rubbings it had received the day before, and so I found that my hair was giving me a headache and needed a good combing. Ten times that day I went into barbershops and had my hair combed, then dressed by the manicurist. No luck. “Nor were the candy stores any more enlightening. The men I saw were sordid brutes. They had no more poetry in their systems than a blpck of wood, I began to realize that I was working on a mighty slim clue, to begin with, that it was wild in the extreme and that there was' little chance of me winning out in my fight to catch a man simply through the fact that there had been some poetry written on tissue paper. But I persisted just the same.

"And things steadily grew worse. The loop district was covered, I did every barbershop and every candy store in the radius of the confines of L structures which go to make up the real business district of .Chicago. In not one of them could I find a man whose face or whose personality at all tallied with that of the one I sought After all, I had been foolish. I; had spent a lot Of good money on a quest that I should have known, before I started, would be fruitless. Yet something impelled me to keep on. “I visited every shop in the tougher districts of the city. Not an item of evidence did I find. I went out into the residence districts; and then, in a small, two-man shop, I saw some shaving paper of exactly the kind of which the fake ’money..bundle’ had been prepared. I took hope—then lost it again. The owner of the shop was small and dull-eyed and a glance at him showed that by no possibility could he the man described by the various victims. The other barber was nearer the size I sought, but it seemed that there was a plodding something, a characteristic about him that never had been described. But just the same, I determined to take a chance. 1 got into his chair and called for a massage.

“As he worked I tried to study his’ face (whenever I could keep my eyes open) to see if there I could find the criminal lines that Would depict the kind of man I sought; or if I could find that softer something which would show that he was the sort of a man who could appreciate a poem of the depth and the beauty of Tennyson's ’Crossing the Bar.’ But It was

useless. For once in my-life I was stomped. I have always prided myself that I can read faces and see the character outlined there, and in every case with the other man I had studied I had even been able to tell what their best girls looked like. But here——.” Miss Clement .shrugged her shoulders, pursed her lips and spread forth her hands to the drizzling rain. I turned a pair of inquiring eyes, to her. "What was the trouble?” I asked.

"Simply this: that man’s face might as well have been dough, as far as any expression was concerned. There did not seem to be a single bit of expression to the eyes, and his face did not change once. It interested me, that countenance, I studied it and studied it, yet I could derive nothing from it I determined that as soon as the massage was over, I would get my hair combed for about the 900th time and see if conversation would do any good. “And for a. half hour I talked, trying to draw him out, endeavoring to learn whether or not he knew anything of literature; but his answers were almost invariably in monosyllables. I gave up the attempt and left the shop. “That night as I was returning to my apartment, I chanced, in changing cars, to again pass the little shop where I had wasted so much of my good time. I was tired, more than that, I was weary, ready almost to go to the captain and tell him that I had made a failure of everything and that my great clue had been nothing more than the wild dream of a woman’s brain, intangible, impractical. It was just about at that moment that I noticed my shoe string had become übtied. I stopped to retie it, and as I rose, a figure approached and passed me. That figure I knew, there was something about the general bearing of the man that was familiar, mighty familiar to me. And yet, it seemed I had never seen the face before. True, the contour waß similar, the color of the hair and the eyes was the same as that of the man in the barbershop. But that was all. Almost involuntarily I turned and followed him a few steps. Then I gasped. I heard him begin to whistle the first few bars of ‘The Melody in F.’

“And then I understood. I was on the right track after all. Putting two and two together, judging from the various descriptions of the men who had been fleeced, here was a man who had the power, seemingly, of not only changing his face, but his whole bearing whenever It suited his purpose. I had studied his appearance in the barbershop, I had taken in every detail of his clothing, and had it cot been for that and for that fact, too, that I had seen him leaving the shop, I never would have been able to recognize him. But now I was sure! “A great feeling of relief surged through me; I knew now that I could go to the captain and tell him a. different story from the one I had been planning a short time before. More than that, I would be the means of bringing in a criminal who was dangerous in the extreme, who would represent all the finer arts of trickery and 'whom it would be a triumph to put behind the bars of a penitentiary. Hurriedly I started toward my car, that I might hasten to police headquarters and arrange for the arrest tiie next morning. ,

“Then, just as suddenly, I halted, and although a queer fear ran through me, I could not help laughing at the funny possibilities of the situation. Just suppose,” Miss Clement began to chuckle as she thought of it, “just suppose that this man should have still another ‘face’ which had never been used, so to speak, and no one could identify him? And that identity would be all upon which I could have my case. I had none of his paraphernalia, not a witness had been able to tell where he was taken when the money machine did its work and ground out the supposed fortunes, and so all I would have to show to a court would be a group of disgruntled men who would swear that they had been robbed but in a place they could not point out and by a' man they could not identify. I decided all at once that this was not a time for making arrests. There must be evidence and it was up to little Alice to get it.” . She smiled as she said that, and — for a few moments we walked along in the mist, I whistling, she taking in the bright freshness of the trees and the grass and shrubbery with her snapping, liquid eyes. By and by she took up the thread of her narrative.

"I resolved that if it took me a month, I would get that man to talk to me. And the next day I began my campaign by walking into the barber shop and climbing into his chair. " *1 believe you are a wizard,’ I said to hinj. “ ‘Whyr ** ‘Why?’ I laughed. ‘For three months I have been suffering from afternoon headaches. Yesterday I came in here and had you comb my hair. And when I walked out, my headache was gone. I’m back for another dose of the same prescription.’ ’’ “Oh, flattery!” laughed Miss Clement, “your power is greater than even gold! My little speech pleased him. He laughed and there came a bit of the light to his eyes that I had seen in them on the street “‘Live in the city?’ he asked after a long time. “ ‘Yes,’ I answered, *1 just came here from Louisville. I had always lived there, but when my husband died, 1 just determined that I’d sell out everything and move away to a bigger city. It took a great deal more time than I imagined,’, I added innocently, ‘because when we came to look things up, my husband had about three timea as much property as I had thought.’ “That was Just another bit of bait upon the hook and I was wondering whether or not he would swallow it

He gave no evidence of interest. However, there was a smile of geniality on his countenance as he finished the brushing of my hair and stood to one side while I dressed it. ~ ,v, — “ ‘Does your head feel better now?’ he asked. ““Very much,’ I answered. “ ‘Then perhaps you will come back tomorrow.* “‘Assuredly so,’ I laughed in answer. ‘You are the best doctor I ever knew.’ I reached into my bag and handed him a S2O bill. He did not go to the cash register with it Instead, he took from his pocket three $5 bills and four ones and handed them to me. I saw that they were absolutely clean and new, evidently Just procured from some bank that morning. And I walked {rom the shop with a little thump of gladness in my heart I knew he had been impressed by my story of wealth and had decided that he would get a portion of my supposed fortune.

“And he began to play on me a game of love. The next day when I came in for my usual headache cure he asked if I was not late. “T hardly think so,’ I answered, ‘why?’ •“ ‘Nothing,’ he said slowly, ‘only it just seemed I had been expecting yon for a good while, that’s all.* "Cute, wasn’t it?" Miss Clement laughed. “Let me tell you that Terence Lallan (which wasn’t his real name at all) certainly knew the game of love. They tell me that a barber is the most dangerous love-maker in the world, anyhow; at least, that’s what the new detectives down at headquarters always have said. And certainly Terry didn’t miss out on any of the fine points when he was going to college .** “Barber college, of course,” I supplied.

“‘Here, we’re getting away from the story,’ Miss Clement broke in. “What I was trying to say was that within the next two weeks, Terry Laffan managed to work up the finest case dt love at first sight you ever heard of. The fact that he was only a barber while I was supposed to be a rich woman, didn’t worry him in the least And then the poetry began to spring forth. And all the time, understand, he Was changing' the bills I gave him and handing me back clean, new money. Once or twice, just to see what would happen, I asked him what it meant, how he happened always to have new money. He only smiled at me. Then he would recite a little strain of mystic verse to me as I sat in the chair, something that would show hq was far better read than I. And then one afternoon came the clincher. He pulled a bit of tissue paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “‘I was thinking of you when I wrote that this noon. It’s a bit of Omar’s philosopher. I often pick up a scrap of paper here and scribble on It’ “And then, I read: ‘Ah love! could you and I with Him conspire, To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire. Would we not shatter it to bits and then. Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?’ “ ‘Do you mean anything especial by that?’ I asked in a half joking way. He turned quickly, saw that the proprietor was out of the shop, and then came close to me.

“ ‘Yes, I do,’ he whispered. “ ‘What?’ I appeared surprised. “ ‘Mrs. Marion,’ he said, (that was my name, you know) ‘Have you noticed anything queer about that money I have been giving you for the last two weeks?’” “‘No. Why?’ “ ‘Because it has all been counterfeit, that’s all.’ “He was mine at last! My eyes danced as he lurriedly went into his bogus confession of how he llad learned the secrets of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving at Washington. He told of his money machine, how it could turn out cash tike so much printed eallco —and then came the real nubbin of the whole affair. He told me of his poor old mother.

' Mr. Terrence Laffan Walked With a Couple of Decorations on His Wrists.

blind, dying. She was about to be thrown out of her home for a debt of $5,000. He could make the money, it is true, but if he went to the bank with that many fresh bills thby would suspect. And so, could I let him have $5,000 providing he would turn me out SIO,OOO on his Trusty machine? Wouldn’t Ido this for him? Couldn’t I see that he loved me, that he held me above all other women on earth? “‘I would talk Uke this to no other woman,’ he pleaded. ‘But I love you. Some of these days I am going to ask you that most important of questions that a man can ever ask. I have confessed to you what I never would have confessed to anyone,” hb added, and his eyes shone with a passion I could hardly believe was feigned. 1 have confessed to you; it is within your power to have me put behind bars. But .you won’t do It, will you?’ he pleaded. ‘You’ll help me—just for this last time, and then I will be through forever. I will be straight from then on, I will lead the life that I should lead. And won’t you help me?* “ ‘I gazed at him steadily a moment Then I held out a hand. “ ‘Terry,’ I said, ‘l’ll help you.’ "He sprang forward. ‘“Tonight then, at 8 o’clock, meet

GREAT HEN IN COMMON GLAY

by G. A. BEATY

Models

-He’s real next thing to president, an’ that is sumptat’, Bill, a sort of understudy, in the background some, but still, he’s often in the public eye a-subbing for his chief at talkfests, balls and dinners where the grub is past rliet He stands in rays reflected from the White House searchlight glow, kind of subdued grandeur, calm and dignified, you know,- he hasn’t much to do except be happy and look wise and lay an odd foundation stone to please some learned guys. He held the job of governor withlh the Hoosier State, he hustled hard for Wilson and his work was something great, a popular gazabo, he was Johnny-on-the-Spot to snare the flitting voters and keep ’em set vftien caught. But now his labor’s over, he can cut the bustling out, there’s four long years before him te go easy and grow stout, he can view with gracious pity the gloomy cloud of care which hovers o’er his Nobs who fills the presidential chair. (Copyright, ISIS, by Universal Press SyndlcataJ « t .t ft Try.fgyrara :Apr

me here. There win be a taxicab to take us to the place where I can make the impressions of the money. Will you have the $5,000 with you?* "‘I will,’ I answered.” Then Miss Clement stopped and for ten minutes as we walked along, she added nothing to her narrative. “Well?” I asked finally, “what’s the rest of it?” “The rest?” Miss Clement turned to me and laughed. “What rest need there be! There was only one more detail, you see. I met him. I had the $5,000 and we went in the taxicab. But,”—and there came that mischievous light into her eyes again, “there were certain persons who tagged behind, who followed that taxicab, who lingered outside of the door to the room in which he took me, and, at the crucial moment, walked in. And when they walked in, Mr. Terry Laffan walked out, with a couple of decorations on his wrists. He’s still walking—in lockstep.”

“So your son has made a pecuniary success of art?” "Yes,” replied Mr. Growcher, "bul It was my advice that made him quit painting landscapes and get into the moving-picture 'business.”

Ml by OEM HOMAN

THOMAS H. MARSHALL.

Art Influence.