Show ak ai f f A fhe THE CRIMINAL jells tells how he ile planned the S raa 1 virila e deed and sought to close every avenue of knowl ar XA X A A or U edge leading to his ills guilt gull t C AR I 1 M E S the D detective shows how futile th the ae efforts were and how the OU old adage murder by HENRY C TERRY will out al x ys holds gjoci I 1 I 1 I 1 coper by F r L nelson THE CRIME WITH THE NEEDLE STILETTO HE man who follows thievery for a living said jack often gets pretty hard shocks but it does not do for him to take any notice of them I 1 read in some newspaper the argument of an old preacher who ought to have lived in the days when they used to break a thief s body on the rack tack that the are the nat ural enemies of mankind and ought 0 be exterminated well it if thieves are the natural en emles of all the world the other side of the argument must stand also that the rest of mankind are the proper prey of thieves with this notion in view I 1 say that it is a wonder that in every house which is visited by thieves there is not left a trail of blood but actual experience and sta will show that fewer murders are committed by thieves when en ela in their work in proportion to their number than are committed in the ranks of persons who go around with a label of honesty on their tore fore heads speaking of shocks that a fellow is liable to get in any business re calls a remark made by old jimmy hope when he first started out as a crook in philadelphia to the effect fret that the bravest people on earth are the thieves who work nork in the night perhaps yau you never thought of it in that way but just think for a moment the common notion of a crook is that he goes about his work armed to the teeth and ready to shoot or stab at a moment s notice to disprove this be het ilef let us look for a moment into the mind of a thief who is about to enter a dwelling house in the nighta first he must satisfy himself that no one Is awake in the house the first evidence of this is the ab sence of lights well then all the lights being out the thief goes about his work as quietly as possible but taking into consideration the fact that thievery or rather burglary Is es senti ally a breaking into a place it cannot ba be done without more or less noise A thief knows that in nine houses out of ten there Is some ready means of defense usually a revolver or a gun and if any one is disturbed his eu entrance trance will be met with a shower of lead he is liable to be killed and thieves appreciate this better than any one else he must face a secret and silent enemy I 1 have been in houses where the first intimation that we were discovered was the report of a firearm and the singing of the lead around our ears it is only the foolish men who jump out of bed and strike a light when they bear hear an unusual sound in their bouses houses that puts them at a vantage and the crook is apt to get in the first shot as a caution to his prey to keep out of sight not one thief in a hundred will will shoot to kill and 05 on the other hand not one person in a hundred in dealing with thieves but what hat will shoot to kill every time A crook has no right to complain of the vigorous defense set up by any man in his castle but a shot in the air or fired out of the window will start a gang of crooks on the move just as quickly as it if a thief s heart were tak en as a target perhaps a thief s bravery Is wasted in an unholy cause but that does not alter the fact that only the bravest of men can be good thieves the or binary housebreaker takes his life in his hands every time he enters a bouse house and he Is cautious about tak ing the lives of others because he knows that murder done in fix the corn com mission of a felony has no defense in a court of law it its a quite a bit ago since I 1 was known as black jack and was the leader of as tough a gang of rangers as ever flashed a bull bulls s ee e e every mother s son of them came out of the old fourth ward and from the time we were mere kids we were out for the dust and were the sworn enemies of the old market gang chich w aich turned out such a desperate lot of crooks as abe coakley paddy reynolds billy por ter and long john garvey but dut our fights were our own fights and not a man in either of the gangs was ever ener known to lay do information to the police there were plenty of tuni tunit ties les to do each other when it meant mone gonei and perhaps the saving of a term of five or ten years in sing sing the black tacks made the best tour on long island ever known among thieves we went from port fort hamilton to riverhead up one side and down the other side of the island with only the loss of two men both of whom paddy gillan and shorty far par rell were shot bi a woman in oyster bay during this trip wo we used a black sloop part of the time but most of the traveling was done by horse and and it was usually the horses and wagons of farmers we visited over houses and divided about 80 worth of stuff it was a trip of pleasure for the 10 lo cal police did not bother us at all this was easily explained it was on account of the lack of money in no n small place can you find the men who have ha ve control of the public money will ing to spend anything to chase thieves and even when murder is committed there is never a willingness to put up money to hunt for the assassin when we got bach back from this trip we were in high spirits and the bow dow ery was painted red from one end to the other with the deepest red and every gambi gambl ng house in the town got a bit of our coin when we reach ed the end of our rope teddy nuck mick came to me with a story that he got from a butler in banker ro chot s home they met in bill dill mur raa s gambling house on broadway and teddy staked the butler who bad had lost his money in the game the in formation that teddy got was that ro chot carried a big bank roll roil in a safe in his house which was in street near madison avenue I 1 thought maybe it was a ghost story put up by the butler to give ted dy an idea that he was secure in his loan but it was worth investigation and I 1 went ent to look the ground over with reddy ward and ana III bill hendrick the house was a bead easy one to beat and I 1 saw from the outside that the safe was there I 1 learned that brochot was a very heavy dealer in for eign elga securities there was also a bit of a scandal connected with his meth of doing business which gave a color to the story told by the butler I 1 decided to work the game av and fixed upon a saturday night for the trick which is the night that all honest folk the soundest we entered the house through the bathroom and reached the office which was in the rear of the parlor on the first floor in the gang was ted dy mccormick reddy mack bill dill hend rick tick abe moses and billy reilly mack and reilly were to do the safe work moses was left outside and me cormick hendrick and myself were down to make a tour through the house to pick up anything that was lying around loose it would not do to blow the safe so the drag was used to force out the back of the strong box this took about two hours we got the stuff together and start ed to leave the house suddenly without the slightest warning we were met by a shower of lead everybody jumped for himself when we lined up on the outside reilly was missing I 1 concluded that he had been shot we hauled a big boodle but a million would not pay for the loss of reilly DETECTIVE REYNOLDS TALE it was rather strange said de reynolds Bey that I 1 should be given the robbery in the house of banker brochot to work up inasmuch as I 1 had something of an inkling into his method of doing business through working up a case of alleged forgery against bis his son emil which by the way was proved easily enough but was ended by the old man putting up considerable money to square the bus ness I 1 imagined when the report of the robbery came in that it would prove to be an ordinary house breaking job but I 1 soon found a condition of affairs which started my wits humming tor for all they were North I 1 vi was as aroused from my bed to turn out on the case shortly before daylight on a sunday morning and went up town not feeling any too well pleased I 1 found all of the family up and laboring under great excitement they were not so much worried over the robbery as they were over the fact that there was a dead man in the louse he ile was found in the hallway of the basement brochot told me he had been work ing quite late follow following ing a set of corn coin pi pl rated books belonging to a mining company in ill which he was largely in te rested when he retired for the night he was in a vers restless state and could not sleep he occupied a room on the top floor while he was tossing in his bed he heard a peculiar no se it sounded to him as if some one were scraping a piece of metal against a pipe Hs H s idea was w as that the noise v as in the street and was made by some workmen who had been at work repairing a leak in the water main in street near his home the sound annoyed him but d d not make him suspicious it continued steadily and he would perhaps not have known that the sound came from the turning of a ratchet drill into his safe by thieves for several hours if he had not heard the stairs leading to the second or third floor ere k he ile was startled but did not make any outcry he was a plucky old fel fei low at that instead of sho she biting to see if any member of bis his family all of whom were sleeping on the two floors below him was up he got quiet ly out of bed to see who it was in the dim light which came from a can die dle he could barely see the forms of two men moving slowly in the hall toward the front room door their step was mas noiseless and he saw them 49 X t k diba into the roum rouin tu ta b his wife he ile reasoned from their movements that thit the were thieves tent bent upon stealing without awaken ing any one and knew that bis his wife would not be aroused for she vas sl si ghaly deaf I 1 brochot came down from the tie top floor to his own room where he had several revolvers veys he took the larg est one and then qu e ly alonea his son who was a bit of a hunter and had two shotguns it so happened that the son had a friend with him which ma made de it a shotgun for each of them they crept do vii the stairs to tc the second loor and in the ball hall they could hear the thieves talking in a whisper the three men took a position where they could shoot without en da dan ngenng gering their own lives they had only a few minutes to wait when the crooks came through the hall evi dently with the intention of going ou through the front door one of them carried a candle when hey they got in range the three men fred fro the thieve replied with a couple of shots ano ana made a dash for the basement the brochot party rushed to the windows to fire on the men when they left the house but were a moment too late as the men had turned the corner my first business was mas to take a look at the dead crook I 1 knew many of them but I 1 had never seen him before he was as a sturdily built fellow bove the average height wore good clothes and had a black mus mu stadle and dark curly hair brochot claimed the cred t of killing him and said he was the man who carried the candle I 1 looked instinctively at the fellow s clothing to see where he had been hit I 1 could not find any blood marks on oil his head or shirt near any vital part I 1 did not think this was strange at the time and I 1 went upstairs to look through the house for clues A rope ladder had been left hang ing from the root roof of the back stoop some scratches on the paint showed that the thieves had forced the bath room window affer after reaching the roof this was only the sort of work that tiptop tip top crooks deal in the method of 0 bursting the safe also indicated that there were some genuine bank opera tors in the gang the drag which is the most powerful tool used by bur clars had forced the back out of the safe as if it had been made by paper the crooks were rewarded by getting 90 in money securities and jewel ry they had left nothing but the dead crook as a clue to their identity his body was taken to the morgue every detective in the city took a peep at him but no one remembered having seen him before this was ex later by the fact that he be had just finished serving a twenty years sentence which meant with good time twelve years and six months in a connecticut prison the usual form torin of inquest was held upon the body 0 then came a startling piece of in formation deputy coroner doldee who made the examination of the body was unable to certify the cause of death the police had reported that the thief had been shot but there was no sign of a bullet or any other wound in any part of his body no autopsy had been held and one was immediately ordered the organs were found to be in a i 1 perfectly healthy state the only abnormal condition was a small clot of blood near the heart the surgeons after a long hunt to find where this came from found a puncture in the heart so min ute that it could hardly be detected by the naked eye corresponding to this was an opening through the chest over the heart so small that not a drop of blood had escaped from it the hole that closed when the inspru ment which made it was withdrawn and all the external evidence was nas a little red spot not much bigger than a pin pia point dr doldee a opinion was that the wound had been made by what is known as the needle stiletto a deap on much used by the cambora of sl SI cicily he ile had never seen one or heard of one being used in this c tiun diun dun try who killed the thief the mystery aroused public inter est A large crowd attended the in quest anong the spectators was nas a woman sl e sat pat in a secluded place atad abd paid deep attention to the test mony no one had claimed the dead man mans s bode bod I 1 studied all the facets carefully I 1 saw this woman wipe a tear from her cheek v hen the jury brought in a verdict that the thief had been killed filed by an unknown person I 1 followed her from the coroner coroners s of fice and spoke to her when we got out of the crowd I 1 as ed I 1 er what interest she had in the dead man she parried in questions for a while and wept I 1 worked upon her sympathies so well that she finally admitted that the man was B lly ily her husband the ice was broken she said that when keilly reilly was in jail she had tak en up with bill hendricks an english crook when reilly s term was ended he deserted hendricks and returned to her husband this made hendricks insanely jealous she attended the inquest to tok find out how h br hr r lit bisband shand was killed if he had not been shot she knew immediate ly that hendricks had put reilly out of the way because he had a needle stiletto she told me where hendricks was and gave me the names of the crooks who robbed brochot hendricks I 1 learn ed had skipped after following mrs to the coroner coroners s office but I 1 cai mccormick mack and moses and recovered a large per tion of the stolen goods old brochot buried reilly and gave his wife a reward |