Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 26, Number 48, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 23 May 1896 — Page 6

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(Copyright 1896, by tt»chelter, Johnson Bachriler.l

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aper and declares to Dennisson that he solved the mystery with the ai4 of the earthquake, the (reckto Mt^rrofofttor the devilled lQb«&rIS* PART II.

Wolcot and I looked at each other in dmazement. His thoughts were mine and mine his. This man whom we had brought with us Into the case, was either a drivelling idiot, or he thought that we W6r6. "Mr. Benjamin!" I said. "Either you are a fool, or you think that we are. This is the worst kind of nonsense I ever heard. We ave not children, and this weak effort nt mystification, this objectless attempt to Impose on us by a string of ridiculous nothings won't go down any longer." •VI djMnJi Jj&Ke you for children," he enswered. "You are men, as I think, of Intellect above the ordinary but, allowing this, it is not surprising that you do not understand this business. I will say now, \1ikt this is an extraordinarily singular case.

There probably bas never been anything like it In the annals of crime. In fact, it the JJiQSt ingenious sjcampls ?f cfclcane«y that it has evesr oeeri my luck to rufl fecroSs. Do you mean to »ay that, at the present moment, you haven't fttv Inkling, Just a Blight Inkllhft b* the r/.tans which were Used to rob thfc Jefferson bank?"

Wolcot and I looked at each other, and acknowledged in terms of mockery, that We had not.

I wish to say, befqre going further, that subsequent events showed that Benjamin was right that every word he had spoken was true. And yet, Wolcot and I. who had witnessed the whole of the investigation up to that time, could not, for the life of us, perceive any clue, any shadow of a elue to the mystery notwithstanding, that tt seems so si to me now.

MAs

FRECKLE CXTFRHINATOR^

&db™G

^Devilled v" Lobster

^PD^TD SKAATS FOSTER

AuTnOft of *EL

I NOR

H# *t«

LewU McKeever, the cashier of the Jer-

wf

ftNTOl^

our singular associate. I was firmly of the opinion that he was utterly incompe-

t„r 1 tent for the business which he had under-

ferscn bank of New York, on the afternoon taken, but my friend, feeling it necessa Wednesday, November 28, 1894, the day! to vindicate himself, in some measure, for fore Thanksgiving, sets the time lock of the bank safe, closes the safe and the •ault, and goes away with a stranger who has come in with him from luncheon- On the following Friday morning Curtis, the bookkeeper, opens the safe and finds that forty thousand dollars has .been stolen. McKeever fails to appear, and it is learned that he has disappeared. Mr. Dennisson, a director of the bank, the narrator of the atory, believes that McKeever is innocent. He mentions the matter to his friend VVolcot, who advises him to employ an odd old character, Benjamin, skilled in unravelling criminal mysteries. Benjamin takes charge and learns from the bookkeeper that McKeever talked strangely on Tuesday afternoon about an earthquake, and the liberation of John Y. McKane, then in Jail. He also spoke of Distillers' stock being at 27 6-8, when its market price was 9 "-4. Benjamin goes to see Miss Agnec. Warren, McKeever's niece, who keeps house for him. He questions her, but learns nothing. She goes to visit a Brooklyn relative, and he goes back and questions her servant, Maria Flanagan. He finds out from her that she thinks McKeever disappeared on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday, because devilled lobster had been ordered by Miss Warren for that day at lunch, a dish always served in the family on Tuesday. Benjamin also learns that McKeever always read The Post after lunch, and tnat Miss Warren had burned the paper he read on that Wednesday. Maria Flanagan bad managed to save a scrap of the paper, however, which contained an advertisement of a freckle exterminator, she beiug much troubled Vith freckles. Benjamin examines the

If

having induced me to emplox him, Insisted that he might be on the right track after all.

At half-past seven that night I -was summoned to the visitors' room of the club, and found Benjamin waiting for me. He seemed to be in great good humor. He was fcomewbat excited and chuckled to himself with satisfaction. "If you want to assist personally in the capture of the person or persons who robbed the Jefferson bank," said he, "get your things on and come at once. I have a carriage waiting and not a minute Is to be lost." "You are sure you are not on the wrong track?" I asked Incredulously. ••'I will risk my life and reputation on it. There is some danger in the business, though and it's right you should know it before you go. Do you want to take the risk?"

I didn't think there could be any great amount of risk, for the reason that I doubted his having discovered the criminals so, I told him I would go and getting on my coat, we went out to the hack.

There was a man on che box beside the driver and two others inside the vehicle on the front seat. I was surprised to find th*t one of these was the bookkeeper Curtis. His neighbor and the man beside the driver, as I was informed by Benjamin, were officers in plain clothes.

We drove down to Thirtieth street and along that thorough Care to a point just east of Eighth avenue. Here the carriage stopped, and its five passengers alighted'. "We are going," said the old man to me, to a restaurant

on

Etebth avenue, In the

middle g( the blot* &W9 u«. The rest of these people have their you have to do, is to go into tne with these two officers, Bit down at a tabic and call for something to eat or drink. Curtis and I will precede you by about three minutes. When you are in the restaurant, you must not appear to know us."

The two officers and I waited at the corner the necessary length of time and then followed Benjamin and Curtis into the building. It was an ordinary Eighth avenue saloon and restaurant. A number of small tables were placed about the room, at one of which we took our places, ordering at the same time some refreshments.

The place contained besides the usual resplendent bar, with its mirrors and Its cut glass, three or four small rooms, each furnished with a table and chairs for the accommodation of parties who wished for privacy. At a table, quite near us, sat the old man and the bookkeeper. They did not toolc at us and I have no doubt that, to th« other patrons of the place, and there were probably half a dozen of these present, our two parties appeared to have no connection with each other and our presence there to have no meaning beyond the ordinary one.

At about ten minutes past eight two men came into the restaurant and, as they did so, I saw Curtis start suddenly and whisper to Benjamin. The new arrivals were both men of twenty-eight or thirty. One was tall and dark,—a good lookibg individual, but with a rather sinister face. The

THEN THERE WERE SEVERAL. 6ATHS, A SCtfFFLW AND A TISTOL SHOT. I will ask my readers, right hers, to think hard, and see If they cannot come to a faint perception of the truth.

1 said before," continued Benjamin, "I think that 1 can soon put my bands «pon the criminals thougn there Is such a thing as their escaping me after all. it la bow twelve o'clock. I will be very busy this afternoon, but would like to see yon this evening, say at half-past seven. Where vfil you boat that ttnihr* "it you have anything of Importance to communicate." I utviftd, "that Is to say, something of greater- weight thaa all this •tuff about earthquakes and freckle exterminators. yoa can see me at ths Manhattan «l«b at the time you namo." "Very well," said be. woat call baas 1 have soma news that !•«.**

With Uti we separated. Wfctwdt iSC 1 off together and discussing, as we it, the aistoriow worts aad ways at

other was a trifle shorter, a handsome blonde fellow with rosy cheek® and a fluffy yellow moustache. Both were well dresoed and would pass ordinarily for gentlemen.

They went into one of ths small private rooms or alcoves already mentioned, and called for something to drtnk.

Benjamin arose and motioned to my two compaatoas and the three quickly stepped to the door of the apartment. I heard the old man say: "Gentlemen! I bare a warrant hero for your arrest." Then there were scleral oaths, a scuffle and a pistol sboc Tou may Imagine that ail this created a gnat aproav ta the place. We al£ crowded around the •etrance to the smell room and found that* the two strangers were already haadcaffed. The dark ooe would have shot the detective had not the pistol beea knocked oat of bts band as be Sred.

a safest polios station aat loavlag thsai

safely fastened under lock and key I took Benjamin with me to my house and, having seated him before the fire In my library and having given him a good cigar, I said: "Now then, Benjamin! Tills thing has gone far enough and it's time for you to explain yourself. You have arrested two men who, judging from their demeatfbr, the way they resisted arrest, et cetera, are criminals of some kind or another. Who are these men? And why do you suppose them to be the persons who robbed the bank? Curtis, the bookkeeper, I acknowledge, identifies one of them, the dark one, as the man who left the bank, on last Wednesday afternoon with the cashier but how could they have opened the safe and how did you get upon their track? Above all, I want you to tell me what on earth yon meant by saying all that rubbish about the earthquake and the deviled lobster. Now is the time to show me that yon still have your senses about you."

The old man laughed silently before he answered.. "You are right, Mr. Dennisson/ in demanding an explanation, and I wonder that you have been patient as long as you have. The whole thing must have seemed without head or tail to you, and I must confess that I have enjoyed very much the mystification which you and your friend Wolcot have labored under. I will now explain the whole matter from first to last and make every point so plain to you that you will wonder you did not understand it before."

At that moment the door bell rang and a servant brought me a telegram. I opened it and read as follows: "Havana, Cuba, December 3, 1894. "Geo. E. DennAson—Have been drugged and kidnapped. Arrivea here this afternoon. Return next steamer. Is bank all right? ,,,^'LEWIS McKEEVER." "There you are!" exclaimed Benjamin. "That's about the thing that I expected. That finishes the case. Everything is now accounted for." tj' 'Rather say," skid I, "that it makes everything more complicated." "Not at all, as you will soon see. I will now commence at the very beginning and, in five minutes, will make everything as clear as crystal. This has been a very singular, in fact, an extraordinary case, and, for that reason, it has been far from a difficult one. Your difficult cases are the ones which do not possess any singularity, which are perfectly plain and ordinary, and whose circumstances present nothing which would excite attention. Thi& case had so many things about it which were queer and bizarre that one was immediately furnished with an abundance of clues for getting at the truth. When I say that it was not difficult I mean that it was not difficult when a man approached the problem who had a /air modicum of brains and a respectable

amount

ness of the data, which gives to me such an advantage, would offer to the muddled brains of the official detectives the greatest obstacle. "When you first detailed the matter to me, and told me that you soughtimy services with the wish to show that McKeever was innocent of the crime, I decided, in the first place, to take the cashier's innocence for granted, and to work the matter out with that idea settled in my mind. If I failed to establish this, there was no harm done, and what was the use of, showing him to be the culprit, when I was hired for something else? You will see that, in this way, the extent of my field of operations was cut down and narrowed considerably, and that I could work to much better advantage and accomplish more in a certain length of time. "The first question was: how could the safe have been robbed without connivance of Mr. McKeever, he having set the time lock on that Wednesday afternoon There was nothing gained In supposing that he wound the time lock short of the proper time while he was temporarily deranged. That would have been simply a^pailiating circumstance, but would not have disproved his agency in the robbery^ My conclusion was, necessarily, that some person or persons caused him to wind the time lock as he did. If he had wound the time

while out of his head, how could another party have known it and taken advantage of it? It was settled in my mind, then, that be bad been influenced by another person or persons and that he had acted as be did while under this influence. "The next question was: in what way Could an outsider cause the cashier to so wind the time lock that It would run down on Thursday? I thought this matter over a long time. There were a number of hypotheses which presented themselves and which, one after the other, I put away as impossible. After I bad got rid of everything that was .utterly impossible there was one supposition left, and, as is my Invariable custom, I accepted this as the true one. By inducing Mr. McKeever to think tb.it the Wednesday upon which be last ctosed the sale was not Wednesday but Tuesday, you would cause him to wind the ttuo lock to run eighteen hours instead sf forty-two, aad the doer of the safe might bo opened at tea o'clock Thanksgiving morning. Too will recollect that I gave you my opinion that the bank bad been tabbed at about that time. *T started out, then, with the Idea that upon that Wednesday afternoon. McKeever •apposed that It was Tuesday. Therefore, when I heard this morning in the bank the* he bstT txHred stwur an earthquake hap VitBg the day before that he had men

After accompanying oar captives ta'^tMP tfoaertHstnfcrtr stock as at XT%, aad tai oC John T. McKane as at lib

TEBRE HALTTE SATUEDAY EVEXING MAIL, MAY 23, 1896.

of reasoning power.

Though, I dare say, tfcat this very strange-

MISS AGNES SUDDENLY CAME IN, AND SNATCHED THE PAPER AW AT. house at half-past After her employer's departure the servant picked up this paper and was looking at it, when Miss Ag-

lock improperly. In a fit of abstraction, or read the account of the earthquake which

erty, my mind was In just the proper receptive and assimilating state and these utterances, which to you seemed those of a disordered intellect, opened up an immense vista to my imagination. It was at that mcmeat, if you remember, I told you that I had no doubt of being able to prove Mr. McKeever's innocence. "We will now come to our perquisition at the cashier's house. It appeared to me to be altogether reasonable that, if such a fraud were practised upon him it must have been done at his house and, furthermore, that it must have been done on Wednesday noon, when he was last there. Any other idea, on the cpntrary, was unreasonable and Improbable. Therefore, the conspirators must have had an accomplice, an ally in the banker's own home. I make It a point to enter upon these investigations •without any bias whatever to approach them, as far as possible, with a perfectly judicial mind. And so, when I got to the house and we saw those two women I immediately proceeded upon the basis that this M'iss Agnes Warren was the accomplice In question. I noticed, as well as you, her sad and modest demeanor and the dark rings under those handsome, black eyes of hers but I have seen such things before, and how, let me ask you, could this deceit as to the day of the week have been practised upon McKeever without the concurrence and help of his nelce, who was with him that noon at lunch, as well as before and after? "I was borne out in my theory by the very straightforwardness and smoothness of her story, and the readiness with which she answered me when I suddenly broke in upon her narrative with inconvenient and impertinent inquiries. Her manner, probably, to you, looked like innocence. To me she seemed too glib and altogether too well prepared for my questions. I noticed, also, that she showed an anxiety that we should not talk with the servant, and, for this very reason, I devised the expedient of the mislaid spectacles, in order that I might interview Miss Flanagan •while her mistress was absent. "We are now coming to a clue of greater value than anything I have mentioned. Namely to the devilled lobster and the freckle exterminator the importance of which you and your friend were so disposed to ridicule. "You will recollect that Maria Flanagan thought that it was Tuesday and not Wednesday when McKeever was last at his house. Why did she think so? Because they had devilled-lobster for lunch that day, and they never had it except on Tuesdays. Miss Flanagan was led into the same error as her master, and Miss Warren, who ordered the dish prepared, was the cause of it. "Mr. McKeever was reading a newspaper that day, when he was interrupted by a stranger' calling upon him. It was the Evening Post and it came regularly to the

nes suddenly came in, snatched the paper away, crumpled it up and threw It in the grate. When her mistress' back was turned, Maria saved a portion of the paper from the flames the fragment which she showed me thfs morning. On looking it over, I saw the advertisement of Fordham's phenominal freckle exterminator but, at the same time, I saw something else, which almost made me shout with exultation. It was part of an account of an earthquake which had happened the day before the paper was published. I say part of an account, because the most of it was torn away and had been burned. "I then knew about where I stood. The rest was a matter merely of detail and exertion. I left you, if you remember, shortly after this. I went at once to the office of the Post and looked over their files of old papers. The piece of newspaper which I had got of Maria had the date of November 2a printed upon it in several places. Prom several items of news which were still legible on the fragment, I knew that this newt, paper had not been printed on November 28, 1894. I looked over the files until I came to the issue of November 28, 1893, and I found the newspaper from which this scrap had been torn. In that paper I

happened November 27, 1893. From the stock reports I saw that at the first board that morning, November 28, 1893, Distillers' had sold at 27%. I also read an account of John Y. McKane having presided over the Sunday school of the Methodist church at Gravesend on the Sunday preceding. The most Important, however, was the fact that November 28, 1898, was on Tuesday, whereas November 28, 1894, came on Wednesday. I immediately returned to McKeever's .house, having stopped on the way st Macy's to buy Maria a purple and green silk handkerchief with which, by the way, she was so pleased that she grinned from one ear to the other. 1 asked her who brought the paper in that day from the steps. She answered that she bad not done so and there was no one else who could have done so but Miss Agnes. When you aad Mr. Wolcot and I were in McKeever's library this morning. I noticed that there was a small calendar standing upon the mantel. It was one of those perpetual calendars which you change from day to day, aad this calendar bore the date Tuesday, November 28. Tou probably didn't see it. but I, having an eye to all theee small matters, took it In at once. After asking Maria who brought in the paper. Tasked her why she hadn't fixed the calendar as It should be. She answered that she kaew nothing ahoat it aad'never teoehad till Cbea asked ho* to show me ths lien of old papers ta the atdo. the

did so, and on examining them, I found they had been systematically arranged and kept for years. As near as I could see, ths issues for 1893 were all there, with the ex« caption of that of November 28, which had been taken from its place. The whole cas« was now as plain as the nose on your face. The old cashier had been given a paper to read which, while it bore the proper month [CONTINUKP ON SKVENTH I'AGK,]

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