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Show FAKALLELl THE CRIMINAL Tells j I How He Planned the r STOHILS Deed and Sought to Close 1 I A ,,Oi's,TfT I Every Avenue of Knovvl- (j f Jt i&JiWtUUb edge Leading to His Guilt: I (T ? Tf TPIT Ts The Detective Shows How 1 1 x Avi tJ Futile These Efforts Were and M 1 "" " How the Old Adaee, Murder g Ey HENRY C. TERRY Will Out, "Always Holds Good." j , (Copyright by F. L. NelsoO social and church affairs Ii. tlic town, and had been with the bank lcr many years. "I inquired very minutely into the method of opening the safe. I learned that It required two men the cashier and a clerk who each had a key to different doors. Without both of them being present the safe could net be opened. This looked like a promising lead, so I pushed my inquiries in that direction. I learned when the cashier had opened the safe on Monday morning morn-ing that the other clerk was not present. pres-ent. It was evident then that the cashier had both keys. The president would not believe me when I told him of the state of affairs. It was a strict rule of the bank that the keys held by each men should not be surrendered surren-dered to any one except by order of tbe president. "I then centered my attention on Cashier Bell and began to weave the net closer and closer about him. I learned that Bell had requested the clerk to give him the keys about a week before the robbery. The clerk was going to attend a ball, and the cashier had told him to let him have the keys, so he need not report as early as usual at the bank. The clerk gave up the keys. The cashier did not return. them, although the clerk asked for them. Then I learned that Bell had been speculating through a broker bro-ker in Wall street, and, as near as I could get at It, had lost about ?S,000 in a year, which was news to the bank officials. "I found out that the cashier had held several interviews with strangers, and another startling fact that on the night of the robbery Mrs. Bell had awakened and found that her husband was cot in bed. She did not know w-here he was, and had not thought of asking him. There were several other suspicious circumstances against Bell. I became convinced that if he did not commit the robbery himself, he must certainly have had some knowledge of it. "There were also many facts in Bell's favor; but the bank directors direc-tors became convinced, after carefully weighing all the evidence, that he was guilty, and he was arrested. I never saw a man who took bis arrest so hard, and justly so, as it afterw-ard turned out. He had a hearing, and so strong a case was made out against him that he was held for trial. "Shortly after this there was a fire in the house of a Mrs. Libby Larscn. Being a bit of a fire fiend. I went to see the country boys work. They did such good work that they saved the house. I went into the place, and in a closet on the second floor I picked up a piece of wax. It would not have been noticed by any one not familiar with the methods of thieves, hut I saw at a glance that it had been used to make an impression of two keys. I slipped it into my pocket and made a careful examination of it in my room. The impression showed that the keys were of intricate construction, and the thought flashed across my mind that they were very similar to the keys of the vault in the bank. I obtained the '.;eys without telling any one my business, busi-ness, and found hat they fitted perfectly. per-fectly. This was new light on the mystery. It seemed to be convincing proof that Bell had accomplices probably prob-ably the strangers he had met. "I could not understand, however, how it was that a wax impression had been made of the keys which Bell had in his possession. Why go to all this trouble when the keys themselves could be used at any time? "I took a peep at Mrs. Larsen without with-out her knowing it. I tell you I gave i a jump when I recognized her as Annie An-nie Skidmore, the wife of Bill Skid-more, Skid-more, a well known bank sneak. At last I began to see daylight. Annie . was stopping at the house of a neighbor, neigh-bor, after being burned out, and I learned that she had received $100 by telegraph from New York the day of the fire. The wording of the telegram j did not throw any light on the case. I "To my surprise and delight, Annie, I the following day after I recognized j her, left Kingston, and went to AI- ; bany. She showed her cunning in do- ! ing this, as the same night she took I the train for New York. I knew from ! this secretive movement that Annie had something important that she was trying to hide. I could tell by her easy movements that, she thought she was safe. I telegraphed for. a couple of detectives to meet me at the depot, as I could not tell what would turn up. j "It was lucky that I did so, for in the depot, w'aiting for Annie, were Wily Mitchell and Bill Noble, two of the brightest crooks in the land. They spoke with her a moment. I knew (hat they were making an appointment from the movement, of her head. I sent the two men after Wily and Bill, and I went after Annie. She wfnt to a private bouse in Fourteenth street, remained there two hours, and then went out with a gray wig as a disguise. dis-guise. , "She was well known in this city. I surmised that she was going to meet, her partners, and was convinced of it when she reached tbe corner of Greene street and Clinton place. I saw my partners taking a pipe on a house in Clinton place, and I quiclly arrested Annie. I locked her up i o the Mercer street station, went bark to my partners, and arrested Bill and Wily when they appeared on the street. They gave us the laugh, but that night I gave Annie the tbird degree. de-gree. She finally broke down and told all about the robbery and the part Wily and Bill had played in It. "They still pretended their innocence inno-cence until I produced the wax impression im-pression of tbe keys. Then they were ready to confess, and gave up tbe stolen property to lighten . their sentence. sen-tence. I recovered all the money except ex-cept $30,000, and sent my humble apol-;gy apol-;gy to Cashier Bell. THE LOOT OF THE KINGSTON NATIONAL. "TOT HAVE ofter wondered what ; Mr. Sherlock Holmes or Monsieur Lecocq. would '"fijj have done if confronted ( pip) with the problem of the rob-' rob-' VMi hery of the Kingston Na-vAcV Na-vAcV tional. The detective of fic- tion, you say, is never realized real-ized in real life. Here is a story that proves the opposite. op-posite. I doubt if either of the famous fa-mous sleuths of Doctor Doyle's or Gaboriau's imagination would have proceeded more ingeniously or more successfully to the final unraveling of the tangle than did Detective Price. If you don't believe that the old adage ad-age about fact being stranger than fiction fic-tion applies to the detection of crime, follow tbe mystery of the Kingston robbery with me as it came from the lips of the principal actors. WILY MITCHELL'S YARN. "A crook who is up to snuff," said Wily Mitchell, who is noted among other things for having been tried and acquitted three times for murder, "and wants to get along in the business without working too much for the state, must be like a good general. He must always arrange his plans so as to cover his retreat. Some thieves are so constituted that they do not mind going to jail for a five or so. Punishment of that sort has no terrors for them, and, while liberty is sweet to every man, they take their medicine, and rather enjoy prison life. I always had a horror of going to prison, but it was never quite strong enough to lead me to become honest. When the big door closed behind be-hind me every time that I entered jail it gave me a chill, and I never got over It until I was out in the sunshine again. "So it naturally happened that when I was in active business, it was my special desire to do everything in my power to keep out of jail. I always paid a great deal more attention to laying plans for a get-away after a robbery than to the work itself. For that reason I used to get into quarrels quar-rels with the men I worked with. They did not like my caution, and I have pulled many times out of what looked easy jobs just because I could not see my way clear to escape. It was my notion that any bit of work would not pay, no matter how much money there was in it, if it were followed fol-lowed by a ten-years' contract with the state in the stone-breaking line. "It was this trait of mind which led me into the Kingston National bank robbery. At tile time when I ran against this trick I was a fugitive from justice, 'with the charge of killing Ned Wallace hanging over me, so, naturally, natural-ly, I had to go a bit slow. There was no doubt about my killing Ned. but I had to do it to save my own life. I knew that I would be acquitted if I were pinched and held for trial; but I hated to go through it all, and I made up my mind that the best way i out of it was to keep under cover until un-til the clouds blew away. I got over to Kingston, where I had a solid friend, and in my trips about the place I struck the bank. "My attention was attracted to the bank by a story in one of the papers about a large sum of money which had been deposited in its vaults by some company that was going to build a railroad and a water works. I knew that this money was going to remain in the bank for several-weeks, so I sent for Bill Noble, who was at that time running a gambling house in East Houston street, near Broadway. Bill was always ready to take a hand with me because he understood my ways and I did his, and we never had had any trouble. .It was just what Bill wanted, for his bank roll had been hit very hard. I had not been out of the house in the daytime because the murder mur-der of Wallace was very hot, and I knew that the coppers were making a lively chase for me. I arranged with Bill Tor him to do all the preliminary work. He turned a book agent on short notice, which gave him a chance to visit the bank without exciting suspicion. sus-picion. "I don't remember what book it was that Bill was selling, but he did such slick work that the clerks bought all his stock, and he had to get more books to fill the orders, just to make it appear all straight. "While Bill was talking books he sized up the vault, and saw that the door was an old-fashioned affair, with a new and intricate lock, which had just come out, and was believed to be burglar-proof. Bill got everybody's phiz in the bank firmly fixed in his mind, and the signs on the desk in j Tront of them indicated the part of the I business that each man looked after. I "The next step was to find out who I :losed up the vault. This was a very delicate thing to pick up without being be-ing Inquisitive. The fact that Bill had to deliver some more books at the bank opened the way to get this infor- mation. He kept tab on the bank for several days, and found out the time i that each man left, but he could not j see from the street who had charge ot the vault. When the books came Bill waited until banking hours were over before going to deliver them. He found several of the clerks busy closing clos-ing up the books, and he showed that he was a genuine book agent by starting in to talk against time. Bill knew what he was after, and he got it, after waiting an hour. Bill saw that the cashier, whose name was Bell, locked up the vault. He used two sets of keys, one for the inner door to the small safe and the other for the big iron outside door. He put the keys in different pockets. Bill was close enough to the keys to remember them if he saw them again. Bill fallowed the cashier to his home, whicb was in the suburbs, in a neat two-stJry cottage, cot-tage, and the preliminary work was over. "It would have been easy to take the next step, whicb would be to get the keys and open the safe. That is what some thieves would have done, but I had a better trick up my sleeve, which came out of my caution, and would aid us in making escape easy. It was developed in this way: The same night Bill found out about the keys, we made a call at Cashier Bell's house after the family had retired. We did not care to disturb their slumbers, slum-bers, so we entered the house through a parlor window. Bill had located the room in which the cashier slept, and I went there noiselessly. Either the cashier or his wife had a beautiful snore, and I need not havj been so careful in my operations. I found the cashier's trousers, removed the keys and returned to the street, where Bill was waiting. "We went to a secluded spot where it was safe to flash a lantern. There I took a careful impression of the vault keys and the key of the front door of the bank in wax, and all the measures necessary. I then returned to the cashier's house and replaced the keys In his pockets just as I had found them. WTe closed up the house and went home. I immediately went to work on the keys. They used to say I was the best keymaker in the world. It took me about a day to file the keys. "The night after we had called on Cashier Bell, Bill and I paid a visit to the bank about two o'clock in the morning, when we knew the policeman police-man on the beat was taking a snooze in a bakery. "The keys worked like a charm. Five fninutes after we entered the bank I was inside the vault packing up the green stuff. I took all the money and such bonds as apared to be negotiable. I worked lively, and in twenty minutes closed the doors of the vault and walked out with $340,000 in my grip. We were in time to connect with a freight train. After riding about ten miles we left the train, crossed the Hudson to Rhinebeck, and took the first train to New York." DETECTIVE PRICE'S STORY. "Mistakes are something that cannot be avoided," said Detective Price, "no matter how careful you may be. In probably no other business are mistakes mis-takes made so often as in police work, and we, are frequently unjustly criticized crit-icized and condemned. ' "I speak in this way because of my recollection of the pounding I received re-ceived when investigating the robbery of the Kingston National bank. I know that I did not. deserve all that I got, but a great many people thought I was not abused half enough. "I was put to work upon the case the day the robbery was discovered, which was on a Monday morning. A very singular state of things was found at the bank when Cashier Bell threw open the doors of the vaults to begin the day's business. All th6 clerks were present at their desks, aa the books were kept in another safe, which was in charge of the head bookkeeper. book-keeper. The cashier entered the vault to take out some bills to put in the drawers in his desk. A moment later he staggered oat and fell into a thair. He was not able to speak for a moment. mo-ment. The clerks gathered around him, thinking he had an attack of heart failure, to which he was subject. sub-ject. He announced, when be got control con-trol of himself, that there was no money in the vault, but he did not say that there had been a robbery. "After a short consultation, the bank was closed for the day, and everything was just as it had been found when I got there. I made a careful examination of all the windows and doors. There was no sign that thieves had forced an entrance. The vault, according to the statement of Cashier Bell and all the clerks, was locked when they reached the bank. The paint on the doors had not even a slight scratch to show that they had been tampered with. The deeper I went into the affair the more mysterious mysteri-ous it became. I made up my mind that some one had robbed the bank who was perfectly familiar with the safe and the methods of doing business. busi-ness. "I had a private consultation with the president and directors, and got from them the history of every man who worked in the bank, so far as the? knew it. Every employe had a gilt-edged gilt-edged reputation, was prominent in |