Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

Meantime the abducted child was being brought home to her distracted mother. A crowd of several thousand persons had gathered in Sixty-fifth Street, apprised of the little girl’s impending return by the evening newspapers. She was greeted with cheers, loaded with presents, saluted by the public officials, and treated as the heroine that circumstance and good police work had made her. Photographs of her crowded the journals, and she was altogether the most famous youngster of the day. Her parents later removed to Boston with her, and they were heard of in the succeeding years when attempts were made to release the imprisoned kidnappers, or whenever there was another kidnapping or missing-child case. In time they passed back into obscurity, and Marion Clarke disappeared from the glare of notoriety.

The work of identifying the man and woman caught in the Sloatsburg farmhouse proceeded rapidly. Freddy Lang, the boy who had brought the note to the Clarke door on that painful Sunday afternoon, immediately recognized Mrs. Beauregard-Wilson as the woman who had handed him the missive and a five-cent piece in Second Avenue and asked him to deliver the note to Mrs. Clarke. Mrs. Cosgriff came from Brooklyn and said that the prisoner was one of the two women who had stayed at her house on that Sunday night. It was apparent then that one of the active kidnappers, and not an innocent tool, had been caught. The woman and her husband, however, denied everything and refused to give any information about themselves.

Meantime the newspapers left no stone unturned in an attempt to make the identification complete, discover just who the prisoners were, and establish their connections with others believed to have financed the kidnapping. Something deeper and more sinister than mere abduction for ransom was suspected, and it seemed to be indicated by certain facts that will appear presently. Accordingly the reporters and journalistic investigators were conducting a fresh search on very broad lines.

On the evening of the second of June this hunt came to an abrupt close, when a reporter traced the mysterious Carrie Jones to the home of an aunt at White Oak Ridge, near Summit, New Jersey, and got from her the admission that she was, in fact, Bella Anderson, a country girl who had been for no long period a waitress in the Mills Hotel, in Bleecker Street, New York. Bella Anderson readily told who the captive man and woman were, and how the kidnapping plot had been concocted and carried out. Her story may be summarized to clear the ground.

Bella Anderson was born in London, the daughter of a retired soldier who had seen service in India and Africa. At the age of fourteen, her parents being dead, she and her brother, Samuel, had set out for America and been received by relatives in the States of New York and New Jersey. The girl had been recently schooled and aided financially both by her brother and other relatives. The year before the kidnapping she had gone to New York to make her own way. At the Mills Hotel, in the course of her duties, she had met Mr. and Mrs. George Beauregard Barrow. They had been kind to her and become her intimates, nursing her through an illness and otherwise befriending a lonely creature.

The Barrows, this being the true name of the arrested pair, had persuaded her that the work of waiting on table in a hotel was too arduous and advised her to seek employment in a private family as nurse to a child. In this way, they told her, she would have an opportunity to seize some rich man’s darling and exact a heavy ransom for its return. All this part of the business they would manage for her. All she needed to do was to seize the child, a very easy matter. For this she was to receive one half of whatever ransom might be collected.

Accordingly, Bella Anderson had advertised for a place as child’s nurse. Several parents answered. At the first two homes she was just too late to procure employment, other applicants having anticipated her. So it was mere chance that took her to the Clarke home and determined Marion Clarke to be the victim.

The girl went on to recite that the Barrows had coached her carefully. They had instructed her in the matter of her lack of references, in the manner of taking the child, in her conduct at her employers’ home, in the details of an inoffensive account of her past, and so on through the list. They had been the mentors and the “master minds.”

After she had been employed at the Clarkes’ a few days and had taken little Marion to the Park the first time, Mrs. Barrow had consulted with the nurse and instructed her to be ready for the abduction on the next excursion. Bella Anderson said she had suffered many qualms and been unable to bring herself to the deed for several visits. Each time Mrs. Barrow met her in the Park and was ready to flee with the little girl. Finally the nurse reached the point of yielding. Sunday noon she found Mrs. Barrow waiting for her, as usual. They left the baby’s cart at the rest room, carried the child to a remote place, changed its coat and cap, and then set out at once for South Brooklyn, where they took the room from Mrs. Cosgriff. This matter attended to, the women exchanged clothes, and Mrs. Barrow returned to Manhattan, gave the note to the boy, and turned back to Brooklyn. The next morning she had seen the headlines in the newspapers, realized that the game was dangerous, and set out quickly for Sloatsburg, where the farmhouse had been rented in advance by Barrow. Two days later Bella Anderson had been sent away because the Barrows felt she was being too hotly sought and might be recognized in the neighborhood.

This story was readily confirmed, though the Barrows naturally sought to shield themselves. It was also discovered that Mrs. Barrow had been an Addie McNally, born and reared in up-State New York, and that she, with her husband, had once owned a small printing establishment, thus explaining the chirographical characteristics of the Clarke abduction note. She was about twenty-five years old, shrewd, capable and not unattractive.