Fate Calls Upon a Modern Valjean.
This is a story of a few sheets of legal cap paper faded and yellow with age, a modern Jean Valjean, whose quarter of a century of peace and industry may end in a black cloud of misery and death, and a passionate crime in which brother slays brother.
Unlike Victor Hugo’s celebrated character, this modern Valjean has not mounted the rostrum of justice to proclaim his guilt and true self before the wide world, but, to the contrary, the man accused refuses to acknowledge the alleged facts and criminating evidence that the hand of the law spreads before him.
Recently carpenters moving an old desk in the district attorney’s office in Pittsburgh, Pa., accidentally broke open a locker, from which tumbled a number of dusty papers. Among them were the verdict and minutes of a coroner’s inquest and an indictment for murder. The papers recalled the crime of almost a quarter of a century ago.[Pg 65]
In 1892, Joseph Gantt and his brother Frank were ex-convicts. Both had served their time, reformed, gone to work, and were living with their parents in Pittsburgh.
On the day before the murder, just twenty-two years ago, Frank Gantt was picked up by the police on the strength of his former record.
At the dinner table the following night, Joseph accused Frank of returning to his old ways of crime and bringing more disgrace on their aged parents. The charge resulted in an argument. The table was upset as both men jumped to their feet. The lamp was dashed to the floor and the room was in darkness.
When lights were restored, Frank was dead on the floor from a knife wound and Joseph was gone.
The story was told at the coroner’s inquest. Sisters and brothers were brought before the grand jury, and an indictment was returned.
Then Fate smiled on the man who wished to reform, tucked the papers in an out-of-the-way corner of the district attorney’s desk, and left them a score of years until her smile faded.
When Assistant District Attorney John Dunn brought the papers to the office of the county detective department in Pittsburgh, Detective E. E. Clark was interrogating Miss Ethel Reese in regard to another case. The girl is not as old as the musty papers.
“Ever hear of Joe Gantt?” asked Dunn.
“Not that I remember,” replied the detective.
“I have,” spoke up the girl. “He’s my uncle. His name is Clark now, and he lives in Chicago. Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Dunn, as he walked out of the office, making notes on his cuff.
Dunn and Detective Edeburn came to Chicago. With the assistance of Captain Halpin, of the detective bureau, and two other Chicago detectives, they began to hunt for “Clark.” They located the man. His arrest followed. Then Miss Reese arrived in Chicago with Detective Clark.
“That’s Uncle Joe,” she said, when she confronted “Clark” in Captain Halpin’s office. “He came back to Pittsburgh to visit us last spring. Why is he arrested?”
“He is wanted for the murder of your Uncle Frank,” replied the captain. The girl fainted.
Meanwhile, the man—whether Clark, Gantt, or Ghent, as the Pittsburgh newspaper twenty-two years ago called him—is silent except to insist that he is Frank J. Clark and not Gantt. He refuses to recognize the girl.
During the last twenty-two years the man says he has lived “clean.” He worked all over the country. He served his country against Spain in ’98. He fought at Santiago as a member of the Fifth Mississippi Volunteers—known as “the Immunes,” because all the men in it were immune to tropical fevers.
Last of all, Gantt married and settled down in a little home at 2128 West Harrison Street. He has been working as a structural ironworker.
His wife is a deaf mute—the man himself is now approaching the sixty-year mark—and the smile of the kindly Fate has faded.