Fine Work in a Thieves' Resort.
In the same year of 1896, Detective Wooldridge, disguising himself as a cheap thief, entered a Clark street criminals' resort and fraternized with thieves, murderers and vagabonds of all kinds, in order to obtain information, leading Wooldridge into the most amazing school of crime ever witnessed by a Chicago police officer. He was accepted in good faith as a proper sneak thief by the brotherhood, and for his benefit the "manager" of the den put his "pupils" through their "lessons."
These lessons were in shoplifting, pocket picking, purse snatching and other forms of larceny requiring skill and deftness. When he had seen enough Wooldridge generously volunteered to "rush the growler" and went out—and called the patrol wagon. Twenty-three crooks were arrested this time. Each one of them swore he would have killed the detective had his makeup or conduct for an instant directed suspicion toward him.
Makes High Dive.
November 20, 1896, Detective Wooldridge made a high dive.
To offset his aerial stunt he took a high dive from the top of a building, landing on his head in a pile of refuse with such force as to go "in over his head" and stick there so tightly that it required the combined strength of two officers to pull him out by the legs.
It was near Twelfth and State streets while pursuing two women across a roof that his remarkable stunt took place. The women jumped from the roof into a pile of refuse. They landed on their feet. Wooldridge came after them. He landed on his head. As he landed he grasped a woman with either hand, and held them until the arrival of his brother officers effected his release and their capture.
But these are only humorous incidents, things to laugh over when the day's work is done. In the parlance of the detectives, they belong to "straight police work." As a direct antithesis to them is the story of the murder and the black cat, which is in real life a weirder and more startling affair than Poe's fantastic tale of the same subject. A black cat helped solve a murder in a way which puts a distinct strain on the credulity of the uninitiated.
Story Rivals Poe's "Black Cat."
A rich man had been murdered in a certain part of the city. He was in his library at the time of the crime. His family was in an adjoining room, yet none of them heard any noise, or knew what had been done until they found him lifeless on the floor. Investigation proved that he had been shot, but not with an ordinary weapon. The missile in his heart was a combination of bullet and dart, evidently propelled from a powerful air rifle or spring gun. But no clew was left by the perpetrator of the crime, and Wooldridge carried the strange missile in his pocket for several months before a single prospect of apprehending the murderer appeared. Then it was the black cat that did it. What strange coincidence or freak of fate it was that impelled the cat to literally lead the detective to a little pile of dirt in an alley that night Wooldridge never has attempted to explain. But lead him it did, and when he dug into the disturbed ground he found something entirely new in the gun line, the weapon that had discharged the fatal bullet in his pocket. Eventually he traced the gun to its inventor, and from there to the man who had purchased it, a young fellow named Johnson, and a supposed friend of the murdered man's family. The consequence was that this man proved to be the murderer. When arrested he at first denied his guilt, broke down under the sweatbox ordeal and confessed, and—killed himself in his cell next morning.