Memoirs of a Great Detective; Incidents in the Life of John Wilson Murray
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NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 08236547 3 A BURY John Wilson Murray Memoirs of A Great Detective INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF JOHN WILSON MURRAY EDITED BY VICTOR SPEER WITH PORTRAIT «$? NEW YORK THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 33-37 East Seventeenth Street, Union Sq., North Copyright, 1904, 1905, by '" "*' VICTOR SPEER and JOHN W. MURRAY • * '") ) \ CONTENTS I. Murray ...... 9 II. From Babyhood to Battleship . H III. The First Case : Confederate Cole's Coup *9 IV. A Word by the Way .... 29 V. Knapp : A Weazened Wonder 35 VI. The Feminine Firm of Hall and Carroll 42 VII. The Episode of Poke Soles 47 VIII. How a Feud Almost Burned Erie 5° IX. Two Scars, by the Blade of Napper Nichols bullet and the of Whitey Stokes . 54 X. A King, a Lunatic, and a Burglar—Three in One, and none at all ... 57 XI. The Box-Car Battle of Sweetman, and the Thrashers with the Wheat 63 XII. With the Help of Jessie McLean 69 XIII. The Course of a Career 71 XIV. Sanctimonious Bond .... 76 XV. When Ralph Findlay Lurched and Fell . 81 XVI. The Tinkling House of Wellington Square 89 XVII. The Driverless Team on Caledonia Road . 93 XVIII. Apropos of Hunker Chisholm . 98 XIX. The Whitesides of Ballinafad . 101 XX. The Monaghan Murder 104 The Six -Foot Needhams : Father and Son . 108 Pretty Mary Ward of the Government Gardens, 116 XXIII. The Fatal Robbery of the Dains 121 3 4 CONTENTS " XXIV. "Amer! Amer ! Amer ! . XXV. McPherson's Telltale Trousers . XXVI. When Glengarry Wrecked the Circus XXVII. The Disappearing Stores XXVIII. Mary Ann Weatherup, Coquette . XXIX. The Capture of Lochinvar Sproule XXX. The Million Dollar Counterfeiting XXXI. Heney, of the Welted Forehead . XXXII. The Tookes's Revel in Riches XXXIII. Big Mac of Simcoe, Young Smith, and Bill Nay XXXIV. John Dobbin, from Beyond the Quicksands XXXV. Luke Phipps, Who Buried Himself Alive XXXVI. The New Year's Murder of Stillwell of Bayham .... XXXVII. The Winter Road to Manitoulin . XXXVIII. The Long Point Mystery . XXXIX. John Stone, Gentleman XL. Bates of Allanburg's Funeral Pyre . XLI. A Spreader of Arsenic XLII. For a Mess of Pottage XLIII. "Shet-Black Herres of the Ding-Donj Mustachees "... XLIV. Baldy Drinkwater XLV. Old John Klippert of Waterloo . XLVI. The Returning of Darky George Claxton XL VII. Two Disappearances . XLVIII. The Hollowed Chocolate . XLIX. The Shanty City of Slabtown L. Why Tambly Sleeps in Georgian Bay LI. Reginald Birchall : Occupation, Murderer . CONTENTS 5 LII. The Footmark by Langford's Bed . 33o LIII. The Lady of the Piercing Black Eyes 335 LIV. An Escaper of Genius 34 1 LV. Pennyfeather of the Bank 348 LVI. The Tour of Charles Hilton Davidson 352 LVII. Over the Andes for Aitken . 362 LVIII. The Case of Perry Weinberg 379 LIX. The Four Barn Burnings of Chatham 381 LX. Almeda Chattelle, the Hairy Man 385 LXI. The Gangs of Burtch and Rutledge 39° LXIJ. The Middlemarch Mystery . 394 LXIJI. The Graded Grays 399 Alger's LXIV. George Graveyard Policy . 4° 3 LXV. The Killing of James Agnew 406 LXVI. The Voice of the Haunted House 411 LXVII. Olive Adele Sevenpiper Sternaman 414 LXVIII. Simpering Jim Allison . 419 LXIX. The Turnip Pit Tragedy 425 LXX. Foolish Frank Osier and Wise Sam Lindsay 429 LXXI. Eddie Elliott, Boy Murderer 433 LXXII. Kate Pender Demure of Emsdale . 437 LXXIII. Why Humphrey Went Back to Prison 440 LXXIV. Laing of Lawrason's, Thrifty Thief 442 LXXV. Lee Cluey of Cathay . 445 LXXVI. Melvin Hall, Freebooter . 448 LXXVII. The Murder of Joseph Sifton 454 LXXVIII. The Three Dynamitards 459 LXXIX. The Temporary Quirk Mystery 473 LXXX. Two Crooks in Clover 476 LXXXI. The Crime of Charlie King 479 LXXXII. In Conclusion . 483 Introductory The editing of these episodes has been a joyous task, undertaken for an old friend whose eventful life is worthy of an abler appreciation. The narrative bears witness to his steadfast determination that his published Memoirs should be a detailed record of truth. There was no desire to create a fanciful work of fiction out of the facts of an earnest and straightforward life. In the writing of it, one thought was uppermost, a thought of value, perhaps, in the reading of it, that when it was finished, the one who lived it should say, as he has said, " It is true, every word of it." V. S. Memoirs of a Great Detective MURRAY In a tangled swamp on a farm near Gait, in the county of Waterloo, Province of Ontario, Canada, in August, 1897, searchers were hunting for the body of a farmer's wife. She had disappeared, and blood by the wood-pile and near the house told of a crime and the hiding of the body. One of the party beating the swamp came upon a half-dug grave. He kept silence as to his discovery, and, when night fell, he secreted himself in the thick brush near the grave and waited, in the faint hope that the murderer would return and finish his task, perchance bringing the body with him. It was bright moonlight overhead. In the thicket of the swamp all was gloom, save for a broken filtering of pale light where the underbrush and tall briar had been thinned out. It was a lonely, dismal place. An owl's wailing and the swamp-frog's croaking were the only sounds. The hours passed. Midnight came and went. Not even a lizard appeared by the grave. The watcher was about to creep closer and ease his limbs, when a rustle sounded in the brush, a noise like the wind swish- ing a bush. It ceased, then came again, then all was still. Suddenly, on the side of the grave farthest from the watcher, a figure crept swiftly out of the thicket and stood erect. The moon shone full upon him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a pose like that in the old-fash- ioned prints of heroic figures of the ancient wars. He wore knee-boots, with a long, loose coat reaching to their io MEMOIRS OF A GREAT DETECTIVE tops, and buttoned to the chin. A slouch hat, pulled well down on the forehead, shaded his face. In his left hand he held a spade. He paused by the grave, thrust his spade into the earth, and left it upright like a head- stone, then shoved back the hat, and knelt on all fours, with his face close to the ground, for all the world like a bloodhound sniffing for a scent. On hands and knees he crept around and around the grave. Finally, from a pocket of the long coat, he produced a tiny lamp, and turning its light full upon the ground, he resumed his circling of the grave, his face not five inches from the earth, his eyes searching every foot of ground. For half an hour this creeping around the grave con- tinued. Then the figure squatted by the mound of earth and sat motionless. Suddenly he arose, seized the spade, and swiftly tossed away the mound of earth dug from the grave. All was done so noiselessly, so deftly, that it seemed unreal, phantom-like, the antics of a ghost. As he neared the bottom of the pile of earth his care re- doubled. At length, he began to dig around the remnant of the pile as if making a second grave, beside the first. He had left about four inches of the earth from the first grave lying undisturbed on the site of the second grave. It was thick, sticky soil, that held together firmly, being less watery than elsewhere in the swamp, yet being full of heaviness and moisture. He dug cautiously, sinking the spade about four inches in the soil, then driving it under, as would a man in cut- ting sod. When he thus had cut under the entire rem- nant of earth from the first grave he cleared a space on the ground beside it, and as one would turn a pancake on the griddle, he flipped the earth out and turned it on to the cleared space, so that the remnant of soil from the first grave was underneath. He then painstakingly lifted away the upper layer, and thus exposed to view the soil from the first grave, precisely as it had formed the surface or top of the earth before the digging of the grave began. He knelt over this earth as a mother over her child. He turned the light of the little lamp full upon it. Then he 1 MURRAY 1 grunted, a subdued, deep, satisfied grunt. With the spade he carefully cut out a piece of the earth about a foot long and half as wide. He produced a measuring rule, and for half an hour worked over the piece of earth. Then he took the earth in his arms as tenderly as if it were a babe, picked up the spade, and vanished in the thicket. Like a flash it dawned on the watcher that this mys- terious figure had been searching for footprints. He had found no clear footprint around the grave. The marks there had been trampled by those of the watcher. But on the surface of the earth, where the grave had been dug, the footprints of the digger were certain to appear. So the figure in the long coat had reclaimed this surface undisturbed, and, judging from the one sound he made, the grunt of joy, he had found what he sought. The watcher trailed after him, ignorant of who he was or whence he came.