The incidents described in the preceding chapters came to a denouement; this we shall have to chronicle a few chapters further on. Meanwhile we will put the reader in possession of other facts in connection with our hero.
Charles Peace, at this time occupied the attention of the detectives in a most remarkable degree, and every effort was made to bring the crime of murdering Mr. Dyson home to him.
Every effort was used to give as much publicity to the leading circumstances attendant on this crime. The public were furnished with the following account:—On the night of the 29th November, 1876, a civil engineer named Mr. Arthur Dyson, who resided at Bannercross-terrace, near Sheffield, was shot by a man whom he found lurking on his premises. That man was subsequently sworn to as being Charles Peace, a notorious character, who had been convicted of felony, and who was known to be a desperado.
Immediately after committing the murder Peace decamped across the adjacent fields, and from that time all trace of him was lost. A coroner’s inquest, sitting on view of the body of Mr. Dyson, returned a verdict of wilful murder against Peace, and on this a warrant was issued for his apprehension, and it is believed that he at last has been captured.
Peace was an “old bird,” and eluded those who were on his track. He was so successful in that, that many believed he had made away with himself by jumping down some old coal pit, and thus hiding his body whilst ridding the world of himself.
But the police officers who had had to deal with him did not believe this story. “Peace,” they said, “is not a man to do that; he’ll fight before he’s caught; he’s not dead.”
On the night of the murder there was a “handicap” in Sheffield, in which men were the competitors, and the railway stations were crowded with those who were returning home after viewing the pedestrian exhibition.
It was thought that Peace mixed up with this motley crowd and so effected his escape for the time being.
As to where he had gone was a question, but the police were almost as rapid in their movements as was Peace, though for the time being he appeared the most successful in the accomplishing of his purpose—the effecting of his escape.
Within five hours after Mr. Dyson’s death the whole of the large towns within a radius of two hundred miles of here had been warned of the crime which had been committed, and the railway stations of Hull, Huddersfield, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, and Halifax, were most vigilantly watched, and it was known that Peace, being an old hand, knew the thieves’ runs and hiding places in those localities.