Uncle Sam, Detective

by William Atherton DuPuy

Kelliner was taken into custody. He indignantly protested that he was innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. Mansfield, Walls and Tollman had disappeared. The capture of the latter was of first importance.

The special agent turned first to that primary command of the old-school detective when a crime is committed: "Find the woman." The results obtained indicate that there may be much in the theory. In the case of Tollman the connection with the Gatewood woman was soon established. She was not about her old haunts in New York. No trails were immediately found. It was developed that she had originally lived in Kansas City. When any individual has got into trouble there is always a strong probability that he will return to his old home, another detective theory to which Billy Gard subscribed. It is particularly true with reference to such serious crimes as murder, but it is to a material extent true in all cases that necessitate flight.

Upon this theory Gard went to Kansas City to look for the woman in the Tollman case. It required some weeks to find her. When she was located it was found that Tollman was not with her. He had been there until the night before. They had quarreled and he had gone away. The cause of their quarrel was the fact that Tollman had no money. She had cast him off as a dead husk. She did not know his whereabouts.

In practically every case of otherwise well executed crime there develops some element of unexpected folly—the criminal does some one thing that seems, from what would be supposed to be his standpoint, inexcusably stupid. Gard was therefore not surprised when it developed that Tollman had not so much as a thousand dollars out of all he had taken from the bank. He had made no provision for the time which he must have known would inevitably come when he should be detected. This, however, was not the crowning folly from a criminal standpoint. Despite the dash and cunning and the determination he had evinced in his lootings, he lost his nerve when his woman threw him out. He purchased, with the proceeds of pawned jewelry, a ticket to Bainbridge, Mass., went there, and gave himself up to the police. His nerve was broken.

The theory of "find the woman" was applied in the case of the third of the offenders, John R. Mansfield, the Boston gambler. The apartment of Mrs. Siddons where the faro game was, upon occasion, set up, and the woman herself, who was suspected of being particularly intimate with Mansfield, were watched. The watch was not effective, however, for the woman disappeared with no one seeing her.

The janitor at the apartment house reported that in going she had taken a particularly heavy trunk. Special Agent Stephens undertook to follow that trunk. He canvassed half the expressmen of Boston before he found the man who had taken the trunk away. This man stated that he had taken it to the Back Bay station at a certain time, and that it had been weighed and found to be in excess of the baggage a passenger might carry free of charge. This singled it out from the mass of trunks. The expressman remembered that it weighed 225 pounds, and that the baggageman had marked it for 60 cents excess. According to the rate book this would have been the excess charge for that weight to New York. The trunk was thus located with sufficient definiteness that its number was procured.

In New York it was found that the excess trunk had been sent on to North Philadelphia with the charge C. O. D. Here the record showed that the trunk had been called for by a Mrs. Price, living at an address on Broad Street, and the agent remembered that she had been accompanied by a man. At this address a Mr. and Mrs. Price were found to be living. Special Agent Stephens watched the Broad Street house until Price came out. He was none other than Mansfield. He was placed under arrest.

With confidence in the old detective theory of the woman, the special agents applied it again in the case of Walls, the one-time gambler on transatlantic liners. This was not done, however, until several suspected individuals in different cities had been shown not to be the man wanted, and many other schemes for the apprehension of the gambler had failed. For Walls was married to a very attractive and respectable woman, who supported herself by keeping a boarding house after his flight. It could not be discovered that she was in communication with her husband. Finally, there was developed another woman with whom Walls was known to have been friendly, and who had a part in the activities of the faro gang. This woman's correspondence was watched, and it was soon discovered that she was sending letters to and receiving letters from a man in Detroit, Michigan. Tracings of the man's handwriting were made as the letters came through the post office, and when compared with that of Walls, the resemblance was convincing.

The writer of these letters gave his address as a lock box. A special agent went to Detroit, but the box had been given up. Two months later more letters came to the same woman from Grand Junction, Colorado, and also from a lock box. The postmaster was able to describe the man holding the box and the description suited Walls. But he moved again before a detective got there to identify and arrest him. There was a chase of six months on such clues, always through the same woman, but Walls was still at large.