They more readily reached such an understanding when Abbott suggested that for Miss Templin’s sake it would be well, if possible, to keep from her the knowledge of the fate of her father.
So this was the proposition made to Mackenzie and his wife:
First, they were to return Miss Templin to her friends without her having suffered serious bodily harm.
Secondly, they should surrender the five life insurance policies.
Each should plead guilty to a charge of defrauding the Scotia Insurance Company, and take a sentence in the State’s prison of from ten to twenty years.
In return, they were promised that Templin’s fate would never be brought up against them.
To this compromise Mackenzie, speaking for himself and his wife, refused to agree.
It was only after a promise that in addition to a pledge not to prosecute them on a charge of murder, the insurance companies would refund the premiums already paid in that a final agreement was made.
Acting under directions from Mackenzie, Nick found Miss Templin, bound hand and foot, gagged, senseless and almost dead, in a scantily furnished room high up in a half-deserted tenement on Tenth Avenue, where she had been taken by Mackenzie and the latter’s friend, Dent, on the night they decoyed her from the St. James Hotel.
The decoy had been simple.