Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When his suspect callers had their attention on something else, he slipped the money from the till and moved to the end of the bar near the window, where he was out of their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar case, adjusted his glasses, and stared.

In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly urged them to stay, insisted on supplying them with a free drink, did what he could, without arousing suspicion, to detain them, hoping that an officer would saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With an exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of the door and gone into the night, whose shadows had yielded them up an hour before.

O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a telephone. In response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck and Detective Woods were hurried to the place and set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and description. They had no more than moved from the saloon when the rollicking pair was seen returning.

The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark about the weather and the lateness of the hour. Instantly the man took to his heels, with Captain Shattuck in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the officer drew and fired high.

The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman ran to him, marveling that his aim had been so unintentionally good. He found, however, that the fugitive had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at flight.

Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest police station and subjected to questioning. They were inarticulately drunk, or determinedly reticent and pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half assured that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers, Captain Shattuck ordered them searched.

At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing, still in the neat packages in which it had been taken from the bank, were nine thousand, seven hundred and ninety dollars.

The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and Helen McDermott Boyle—he a floating adventurer known to the cities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, she the daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she had quit several years before to go venturing on her own account.

From the beginning both the police and the public held the opinion that these two people had not been alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigation failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in Cleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possibly been the sole active agents, but the opinion was retained that some one else must have plotted the crime.

Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure little town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla, when there were tens of thousands of boys with wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives? Who had acquainted them with the particularities of the Whitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, the child’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it not obvious that some one close to the family had supplied the information and laid the plans?