Fifty Years a Detective: 35 Real Detective Stories

by Thomas Furlong

To which I replied, "Yes, I am the Chief Special Agent of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company."

"Oh, well," said he, "that is different. I will go with you and see Dr. Smith."

It was drizzling rain the morning of this occurrence, was quite chilly and the streets and sidewalks were wet and slippery and dirty, as the streets of St. Louis were not kept as clean at that time as they are now. I took the fake check and Dingfelter and myself started for Dr. Smith's office, which at that time was in the Missouri Pacific general office building on the corner of Sixth and Locust streets. We walked west on Pine from Fourth. When we reached the corner of Sixth and Pine streets I gave Dingfelter a signal, which had been pre-arranged. This signal was for him to hit me a good, stiff punch, as the fighters call it. There was a large, clumsy patrolman, wearing a raincoat, standing under an awning near the corner saloon. I was walking on the left-hand side of Dingfelter, and when I gave him the signal he cut loose with his right hand, which landed just over my right eye and a little back of it. I had instructed him to hit me hard, and if he succeeded in knocking me down and I became groggy from the blow he was to stumble and fall himself, so as to give the big, clumsy police officer time to reach us. The officer was standing about ten feet from us when Dingfelter struck me, but I knew how slow he was and I wanted to be sure and give him an opportunity of getting hold of Dingfelter. I went down all right, and in fact, was a little dazed from the effects of the blow. Dingfelter stumbled and fell, and the policeman made a dash (such as a heavily loaded ice wagon going up hill would make) and succeeded in reaching him, not, however, until he had arisen, and I also had got to my feet. He got to Dingfelter about the same time that I did. The latter made a good fight and tore off most of the uniform of the policeman and my coat, vest and collar. All of us went down in the street and rolled around in the mud. Our ears and faces were filled with mud, before we finally succeeded in subduing Dingfelter, but I am satisfied if he had tried his best he could have gotten away with both of us, as he was a powerful man.

My office was on Eighth street, just north of Pine, and this fight occurred just two blocks from my office, and after we had subdued Dingfelter I suggested that we take him there, so as to give us an opportunity of washing ourselves while we were waiting for a patrol wagon to take the prisoner to police headquarters. This we did, and on arriving at my office we turned the prisoner over to my chief clerk and one of my operatives, who happened to be there, while the policeman and myself began digging the mud out of our ears and washing our faces. After washing I found that my right eye was very much discolored, and where my face had come in contact with the pavement there were a number of small cuts and scratches, which were somewhat inflamed, and I really had a sore face.

The operative who I have mentioned before, whose name was Phillips, on seeing my face said to me, "Why, you sure ought to go and see a doctor at once. Your eye is in bad shape, and you need medical attention immediately. Let me go up to police headquarters with this fellow. I can attend to the matter for you."

I thanked him, and said that I wished he would do so. I told him what had occurred at the bank, and instructed him to make a complaint against Dingfelter accordingly. In due time the patrol wagon arrived and the police officer and Phillips escorted Mr. Dingfelter to police headquarters. At this time Hughie O'Neil was chief of detectives, and Major Lawrence Harrigan, was chief of police for the city of St. Louis.

As soon as Dingfelter was hustled into the detectives' office in the Four Courts, Chief O'Neil and a squad of his men immediately set about searching him. They found in one of his inside pockets a letter, addressed, sealed and stamped, but apparently which Dingfelter had forgotten to mail. It was directed to San Francisco. They also found about seventy-five or one hundred dollars, and some other articles, all of which were taken from him and placed in the police department archives for safe keeping. The letter was eagerly opened and read. This letter was quite lengthy, and was just such a letter as one crook would write to another. There was then, and had been for some time previous, a gang of bank swindlers working the cities of the Pacific Coast, and the newspapers had been printing a great deal about the operations of this gang several weeks prior to the time of which I write; and for this reason the detectives of St. Louis were led to believe by the finding of the letter that they had struck something which might lead to the capture of the bank swindlers. The contents of the letter appeared in the afternoon papers. Some of these papers censured me for having failed to discover this letter.

After reading the comments of the papers regarding this letter, I would have considered myself very stupid, indeed, for having missed the letter, were it not for the fact that I knew that I had not had an opportunity to search Mr. Dingfelter up to the time he assaulted me and the officer on Pine street, and then I also knew it had taken me about two hours to compose and dictate that same letter.

Dingfelter was locked up, of course, and the time was set for his preliminary hearing, to be several days later. In the meantime the St. Louis papers were devoting lots of space to Dingfelter and his alleged crime; a relief to the newspaper readers, as they had begun to grow tired of reading day after day about Maxwell and what his attorneys expected to do for him. From the time of Dingfelter's arrest up to the time of Maxwell's trial, the newspapers scarcely mentioned the latter's name. Some of them occasionally mentioned my name in rather a joking manner, because I had been stupid enough to miss that letter. When Dingfelter was called for his preliminary hearing he was promptly remanded to jail to await the action of the Grand Jury.