Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

The boy shortly gave his father and the police his story. The man who had taken him from school in the buggy had told him that he was being taken out of town to the country at his father’s request, because there was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors would lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly gone willingly to Cleveland, where he had been taken to what he believed to be a hospital. A man and woman had taken care of him and treated him well. They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused him in any way. In fact, he liked them, except for the fact that they made him hide under the kitchen sink when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the boy said, had put him aboard the street car, paid his fare, instructed him to tell any inquirers that his name was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to the hotel and join his father. The only additional information got from the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions of the abductors, was to the effect that he had been taken to the “hospital” the night following his abduction and had not left the place till he was led out to be sent to the hotel.

The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed with music and a salute from the local militia company, displayed before the serenading citizens, and photographed for the American and foreign press.

Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under way. The private detectives in the employ of the Whitlas were immediately withdrawn when the boy was recovered, but the police of Cleveland and other cities plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with whom the note had been left, and the woman confectioner, who had received the package of ransom money, were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the transaction they had aided was concerned with the Whitla case, and both were frightened and astonished. They could give little information that has not already been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy store, however, was able to particularize the description of the man who had come to her place, left the note for Mr. Whitla, and returned later for the package of money. He was, she said, about thirty years old, with dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face, weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, and seemed to be Irish.

Considering the car line which had brought the boy to the Hollenden Hotel, the point at which he had boarded the car, and the description he gave of the place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house somewhere in the southeast quarter of the city, and detectives were accordingly sent to comb that part of the city in quest of a furnished suite in which the kidnappers might still be hiding.

Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday night. Tuesday evening, about twenty-two hours after the boy had made his dramatic entry into the Hollenden, the detectives went through a three-story flat building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a couple answering the general descriptions furnished by Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks had rented a furnished apartment there on the night following the kidnapping and had departed only a few hours ahead of the detectives. They had conducted themselves very quietly while in the place, and the woman who had sublet the rooms to them was not even sure there had been a child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this place as the scene of his captivity.

The discovery of this apartment might have been less significant for the moment, had the building not been but a few squares from the point at which Willie had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot on the trail. Reserves were rushed to that part of town, patrolmen were not relieved at the end of their tours of duty, and the extra men were stationed at the exits from the city, with instructions to stop and question all suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the quarry was by no means in sight.

At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far broader forces than the police were thrown upon the stage. The governor of Pennsylvania signed a proclamation in the course of the afternoon, offering to continue the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been posted by the State for the recovery of the boy and the arrest and conviction of his abductors. Since the boy had been returned, the money was to go to those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly, the people of several States were watching with no perfunctory alertness. High hopes of immediate capture were thus based on more than one consideration; but the night was aging without result.

At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman of the most inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario Street, Cleveland, sat down at a table in the rear room, and ordered drink. The liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling the proprietor to include the other patrons then in the place. Again he offered a new bill of the same denomination, and once again he commanded that all present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the woman drank rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the effects of the liquor and becoming more and more loquacious, spendthrift and effusive.

There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such conduct. Men came in often enough who drank heavily, spent freely, and insisted on “buying for the house.” But it was a little unusual for a man to let go of thirty dollars in little more than an hour, and it was still more unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar note after the other.

O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew that there had been a kidnapping; that there was a reward of fifteen thousand dollars outstanding; that a man and woman were supposed to have held the boy captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon. Also he had read about the package of five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. His brows lifted. O’Reilly waited for an opportune moment and went to his cash drawer. The bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new; that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all of the same issue, even of the same series and in consequent numbers. If so——