Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”

The police chased themselves in excited circles. One of them was off to Richmond at once. The eggs were carefully traced back to the nests of their origin. It was found that they came from a place much nearer than Richmond, and that the inscription was the work of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated by the final running down of the much-sought band, another form of thrill had played its fullest ravages with the unhappy parents and given the public its crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the boy, the showing of his picture on the screens and the repeated newspaper summations of the strange case, all had the effect of putting idle brains and fevered imaginations to work. From almost every part of the country came reports of missing children who looked as though they might be Jimmie Glass.

The distracted mother, suffering like any other woman in a similar predicament from the idea that her child could not fail to be restored, traveled from one part of the country to the other under the lash of these reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the newspapers have estimated that she traveled more than forty thousand miles in all, seeking what she never found.

As happens in many excitements of this kind, the hunt for James Glass resulted in the finding of many other strayed or stolen children, from San Diego to Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in the possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to show that the child had been left with them, and they readily gave it up to the authorities for lodgment in an institution. But, alas, none of these was Jimmie Glass.

The affair of the one demand for money came near ending in a tragedy. The blackmail note demanded that five thousand dollars be placed in a milk bottle near a shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses filled the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the agreed spot, after the police had taken up watch near by. The bottle stayed where it had been placed for hours. Finally the proprietor of the stand saw the thing. His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the bottle, and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police headquarters, protesting that he did not mean to steal anything. It developed that this honest workman knew nothing about the whole affair. The real extortioners had, of course, been much too alert for the police.

One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited before the end. The quest for Jimmy Glass was at its height when news came from the little town of Norman, Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a shoe store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long trip in vain, asked that photographs be sent, and they were received at the end of the week. What they thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City, and motored to Norman.

Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the town had suspended business and hung the streets and houses with flags in their honor.

Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately to one of the houses of the town, where the child was being kept, and ushered into the parlor, while a large crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the streets, giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.

Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy was brought in. Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and held out her arms. The child rushed to her and was showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother, choking with sobs, clasped the little fellow closely to her. He struggled, and she released him. He ran to sit on Mr. Glass’ lap.