Truly the night had been an eventful one.
The discovery had been made too late for the first editions of the morning papers, but those published on the following evening gave accounts of the tragedy, headed “Another Mysterious Murder: The Mystic Seal again,” in which the details of the crime were most graphically told, the facts exaggerated, and plenty of fiction infused; for that style known as the New Journalism seems to have been invented for the purpose of satisfying the craving for sensational reading.
During the day I was pestered with interviewers. Several enterprising reporters, who saw a chance of making an interesting column of “copy” out of me, sent up their cards, and to them I granted an audience. Following these came two detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department, who also wished for a description of my night’s adventure.
This I gave willingly, yet to my astonishment and annoyance I found, when I went down to the club in the evening, that the police had been making inquiries of the servants as to what time I left on the previous night, besides endeavouring to learn various other particulars.
I, Frank Burgoyne, was evidently suspected of the crime!
There had been six murders, all curious, unexplained mysteries, which had formed the chief topic of conversation and comment in the newspapers for the past few weeks. In each there appeared an utter absence of motive, which made the enigma doubly puzzling; and though the murderer had sought his victims from every rank of society, the same seal—evidently impressed by the same hand—had been found pinned upon the breast of the corpses.
Premeditated the crimes undoubtedly were, and accomplished by one to whom murder was an art, for in not a single instance was there the slightest clue to his identity, though some were committed in broad daylight. The modus operandi appeared to be similar in every case, and with the exception of one victim, who had been shot, the remaining five had all been stabbed to the heart by a stiletto, which the murderer usually carried away with him.
Various were the theories advanced as to the motives for these appalling deeds.
Some journals suggested that the murderer was a maniac, whose insatiable thirst for blood was controlled by the moon’s changes. This appeared plausible enough to some, but others asked how, if he were a lunatic, did he continue so effectually to conceal himself. These were told there was method in madness, and that in all probability the murderer was insane whilst committing the crimes, and immediately afterwards, on gaining his right senses, he remembered nothing of the fearful deeds.
Such hypotheses, and others of a far wilder character, were daily talk, not only throughout the Kingdom, but in all the Continental capitals, and in America. Although several heavy rewards had been offered for the apprehension of the defender, and a free pardon to any accomplice, all efforts to discover him were futile. The shrewdest detectives acknowledged themselves utterly baffled.