"The awful, cold-blooded murder of a young woman they call Irene, down on —— Street, by a drunken lad twenty years of age. It's the worst ever!" she exclaimed.
"Do you know the parties, either of them?" I asked.
"Not the girl, only by sight. She was about twenty, and as pretty as a picture. She and her sister were leading awful lives. One lies murdered, and, now that you are here, I guess it won't be hard to induce the other to quit. They have been well reared, in as nice a family as you could wish to know. It's too bad, too bad!" mourned my landlady.
"What about the lad who has committed this awful deed? Do you know him?" I inquired.
"Yes, almost ever since he was born. He is an only child. His mother is a widow, and one of the nicest women you ever met. But he always was bad, even when a small boy. Let me tell you what he once started to do. He took a kitten and was in the very act of skinning it alive, just as you would a rabbit, when he was caught, and the poor little animal quickly put out of its misery. He seemed to delight in being cruel to anything that came his way. He'd take a fly and pick a wing or a leg off at a time, and then turn it loose to enjoy watching it trying to move about. When he got older, his mother couldn't make him go to school much, although she did everything to coax or bribe him. He got beyond her control, and would leave home for days and weeks at a time, then suddenly put in his appearance and demand money from her, which she always gave him; otherwise she would have no peace. Then off he'd go again, to turn up again just as he did yesterday morning, when he came in on the train and began to make his brags that he meant to paint the town red before he left it, and he certainly has—with human blood."
[Illustration: VIEW OF WARDEN'S HOUSE, ETC., REPRESA]
"Is not his home here?" I inquired.
"Not now. It used to be, but they moved away to —— —— some time ago, all owing to his bad actions," she replied, and then added. "My but I'm awful sorry for his poor mother! One of the nicest Christian women you ever met, Mother Roberts. I can't understand how God could punish her with such a child. I can't, indeed!"
Inquiring my way, I soon found myself at the jail, where this twenty-year-old murderer was being held. The sheriff was very kind; but he considerately informed me that the lad was in such a shocking state of inebriety as to be loathsome even to them, and also that they preferred to let his mother, who had not yet arrived, have the first interview.
Thence I wended my way to the district in which this awful crime, at nearly midnight the previous night, had been perpetrated. I first called at a respectable house in the immediate neighborhood, in order to get my bearings and necessary preliminary information; then soon I rang the bell of the door where the poor murdered girl had been lodging, but received no response. Some one next door, however, heard and answered, then invited me in.