“Keep quiet, or I’ll blow your head off,” he commanded.
The robber then threw a jumper over the clerk’s head, bound his hands behind him, and pushed him under the table where he had been asleep.
When a story covers considerable time because the incidents leading up to the principal event took place a week or more before, care must be taken to keep the time element before the readers in order to make the series of incidents clear in their relation to one another. The following story shows the arrangement of material in such a story:
Because he unknowingly tried to swindle the same young woman twice within three weeks by means of a “want ad,” Arthur M. Howell, who says his home is in Yukon, Alaska, was arrested at the Hixon Hotel last night. The similarity of a “want ad” in the Sun a few days ago to one in a Denver paper recently, led Miss Emma Bunde of Denver, who had been swindled out of $280, to notify the local police, and through her efforts Howell was placed under arrest.
When, three weeks ago, an advertisement appeared in the Denver paper for a young woman to act as secretary to a business man during a three months’ trip through Europe, Miss Emma Bunde, then a stenographer in a railroad office in Denver,[Pg 92] answered it, offering her services. In reply to her application, Howell arranged a meeting with her and engaged her for the position.
At her new employer’s suggestion, she withdrew her savings amounting to $280 from one of the Denver banks, and accompanied him to Kansas City. When they arrived there, he offered to take her money for safe keeping and she entrusted the whole amount to him. At the same time he gave her $25, as an advance payment on her salary, and told her that they would continue their journey that afternoon after he had transacted some business.
When she returned to the hotel after a shopping tour in which she had bought a dress for $22.50, she found a note from her employer, which informed her that he had been suddenly called to Columbia, Mo., on business. A railroad ticket and sleeping car reservation were enclosed with the note which requested her to proceed to St. Louis that night and meet him the following day at a hotel in St. Louis.
Miss Bunde went to St. Louis and awaited the arrival of Howell at the hotel designated. After waiting in vain for a week, she decided that she was the victim of a clever swindling game. Being without funds she wrote to friends here and with their aid came to this city.
In looking through the “want ads” in the Sun last Friday, she came upon an advertisement for a young woman secretary to accompany a business man on a tour throughout the states and Alaska. The similarity of this “ad” and that which she had answered in Denver, led her to inform the police of her suspicion that the author was the same person who had taken her money. Detectives were at once detailed to watch for Howell when he called for replies to his advertisement at the Sun office.
The[Pg 93] young woman in reply to the advertisement again offered her services as secretary, giving a fictitious name but her real telephone number. The advertiser failed to call for his mail for nearly a week, and the detectives abandoned their watch. Then on Wednesday Howell called at the Sun office where he found twenty letters, including the one from Miss Bunde.