“Aw, hell!” was the reply, “We’d just as lieve kill a cop or anybody else. We stick in this house till you tell us where we can reach that guy with the money and the diamonds—understand?”
Then Josie broke down, and told them Splaine had been there early in the evening, but had gone away to take a train out of town. She did not know the railroad, and urged them to leave. This was evidently the truth, so they hurried to Police Headquarters, telegraphed descriptions to other cities with a request that arriving trains be watched, and went to bed to get a little sleep, so that they could be at work early the next morning.
But in the morning word came from the Memphis Police that Splaine had been arrested there on alighting from a train, and they thereupon notified New York, went to Memphis, secured Splaine on extradition papers, and brought him back to the metropolis.
The Traps Are Sprung
On Saturday afternoon, February 24, while most of the energy of the Detective Bureau was centered on the taxicab case, a brutal murder was committed in Brooklyn.
Word came that a Flatbush merchant had been found dead in his store, shot by unknown criminals whose motive was robbery. They had taken his watch and five safety razors.
Inspector Hughes was sent to the scene of the crime, and Commissioner Dougherty quickly followed. The murder occurred about one p. m. By six o’clock the same day the number of the watch had been learned through a canvass of jewelers in the neighborhood, it being on record by one of them who had repaired it, and the watch and two of the safety razors had been found in pawnshops. Descriptions of the murderers were obtained, and by three o’clock Sunday, the following day, their identity had been established. Within thirty hours after the crime these men had been arrested, positively identified as the pawners of the stolen articles, and completely tied up in their own statements.
At half-past nine Sunday night, while the Commissioner, Inspector Hughes and Captain Coughlin, in charge of Brooklyn detectives, and Lieutenant Riley were winding up their work on this murder case, word suddenly came over the telephone to Commissioner Dougherty from an informant that Eddie Kinsman had been seen in New York with “Swede Annie,” and that he was accompanied by an unknown man, wearing a red necktie, supposed to be Gene Splaine. At the same time Matron Goodwin, stationed inside Annie’s lodgings, telephoned that she had information indicating that Kinsman had returned to the city.
When the Commissioner motored over to New York, he found his men covering a hotel on Third avenue, not far from 42d street. Kinsman and Annie were inside.
The Commissioner hurried to the 18th precinct police station and sent out a call for twenty-five detectives. Team work on the case had developed to such a degree by this time that, though the men came from many stations, they were all on hand in record time, a matter of twenty or thirty minutes. Then a squad of these plain-clothes men was sent to watch every railroad station and ferry house, each accompanied by one of the men from “Plant 21,” familiar with Annie from having followed her movements for a week. Surveillance on the hotel was strengthened, and steps taken to ascertain whether the unknown man in the red tie was really Splaine.