Hicksville proved too small for this enterprising scamp who, after rifling the cash drawer in the railroad station, withdrew from these scenes of limited opportunity to spread his wings in the great metropolis of New York.
Joe and his mother never heard of him again. The stunted affections and criminal tendencies of the one son seemed compensated for in the other, who remained the dutiful and loving companion and support of his mother until the great war called him. He received his training at a southern camp and was later transferred to Camp Merritt, which was an embarkation camp. Had it not been for a certain occurrence he would have sailed with the swarms of boys who went across in the spring and summer of 1918. But he never went to France.
On a pleasant Sunday morning in April of that year, Joe Blythe started for Woodcliff to dine at the home of a family he did not know–the home and family of Miss Bates. As we know, he never reached that hospitable roof. We do know, however, that in an isolated shack in the woods not far from camp were found his wallet containing his leave of absence, an unmailed letter to his mother, and Miss Bates’ card.
How came he to that shack? It was in a bypath sometimes followed by soldiers, he said. He said he paused there to get out of a shower. This statement was at least partly verified by the authorities who secured reports that it did rain on that day.
Joe Blythe said that in that shack he met his brother, shabby, desperate. Did the brother know that Joe was a soldier in the camp? Very likely. Was he lying in wait for him in that secluded spot? That also seems probable. That his brother attacked him, hitting him with an old sash-weight, is certain. Who shall say what actually transpired between these brothers in that lonely spot?
But the proven facts of Bob Haskell’s career are these. He escaped from Canada after committing burglary and a brutal murder. He tried at one American recruiting station after another to find safety in military service, and was rejected as unfit wherever he applied.
Neither Joe nor anyone else knows what was in the mind of this defective, desperate, frantic wretch when he sought the neighborhood of Camp Merritt. No one knows whether the horrible plan which he executed had been previously conceived.
But this is certain, that he struck his brother on the head and laid him low and took from him not only his uniform but his memory as well. One thing he did not take, because he did not want it, and that was a little trinket containing their mother’s picture which Joe had always worn.
We may picture Joe Haskell lying in that dank, musty shack, bleeding, unconscious, for hours. How long he lay there no man shall say. We may picture him wandering forth, in an ill-fitting suit of civilian clothes, demented, broken, dazed. Of his wanderings, likewise, who shall tell the full truth? He visited a place called Blytheville and took the name of Blythe. He visited great cities, so he said. He was in the west. He was in jail for vagrancy. He watched some cows for a farmer. He remembered nothing of his past. He was sheltered by the Salvation Army somewhere. He was a wanderer over the country.
And so in time he wandered to New York. There he fell in with men who were interested in demolishing the old camp. Probably they had no faith in him. They did not reckon that he would fall in with a troop of scouts who, in the good cause of pitying friendship, would make the old shacks of the deserted reservation echo to the sound of their saws and hammers, and the music of their merry laughter.