Killed For £2000!

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 8 (Supplement)

Killed For £2000!

e By - - John Thetoes

e 5T was a strange letter that Frederick W. Jamieson, the Honolulu banker, received from a messenger boy. It was a long letter in bold liandwriting scrawled over a large sheet of j white paper. Jamieson began to read, e " Sil "' "The fates have decided, so we have been given this privilege in writing you > on this important matter." 11 Then followed the sentence that made Mr. Jamieson, vice-president of the 11 Hawaiian Trust Company, glance feverishly down the rest of the letter. I- "Your son is kidnapped for ransom! Ho is at present, safe and well. He will be as long as you obey each and every one of our commands. If, on the 0 other hand, you do not carry out our s instructions, you can hope for nothing but death to your son." ' e Then came a page of instructions. Jamieson was to pay the sum of £2000 in odd notes varying from £1 to £10. > "We want clean money unspotted by blood," the letter continued. "But any false move on your part will result-in :e death. We are now about to play our . part in our secret drama entitled The e> Three Walking Shadows. "Right on receipt of this letter, you are to be watched by us, your actions and your every detailed movement. So beware. "Without Crowns—the Three Kings KKK." Mr. Jamieson hurriedly read through . the message again, then picked up his j. telephone and asked to be put through tl to his son's school. j. "Good day," he heard the headmaster 1 greet him a moment later. "How is I Mrs. Jamieson ?" g "Very well, thanks," he replied, somewhat curiously. "But the accident . . . the hospital J rang up this morning and said she had I been badly injured?" "What?" lie demanded abruptly. • ""What about Gill? Is my boy all • right?" "Why, he's gone to see his mother!" 3 ... A Man Like j A Hawaiian J The banker's face turned white. "What happened?" "Well, tlicy said she had been knocked down by a car this morning and that • was asking anxiously for her boy. • "A black saloon car arrived a few » minutes later. A man looking like a 1 Hawaiian and wearing .white overalls got out. He told me that Mrs. Jamie- ; son was calling for you and for Gill, i and then they took the boy with ; them." A quarter of an hour later Thomas St. John, star Honolulu detective, had" heard the story and was issuing his orders. Lists of stolen cars were drawn up. Plainclothes men were sent into the native qirrters of Honolulu in the hope of picking up gossip. Later that evening Detective St. John arrived to report progress. Scarcely had he arrived when the telephone rang. Jamieson picked up the receiver. "Yes, speaking. Who is that?" "You know already," came the reply, in deep, gruff tones. "Listen. The Three Walking Shadows will be fair. Get your car out at once and drive to St. Thomas' Square. Come alone, and bring the money with you. And remember, no poliJe!" Jamieson turned helplessly to the detective. "You'd better go," he said. "I'll have my men near you. They'll keep out of sight." It was just after ten o'clock as Jamieson slowed down outside the Honolulu Aeadcniv of Arts in St. Thomas' Square. -As he did so, a figure appeared, opened the door and jumped in.. He was currying n heavy wooden club. "Drive off!" ho ordered. 'JLhe kidnapper gave his instructions. "Left . . . left again . . . riglit . . . now the main road for Waikiki . . . faster . . . faster." The speedometer needle went up to sixty, then gradually up to seventylive. . Jamieson looked hopefully into the driving mirror, but he could see no headlamps from pursuing cars. "Slow down, now turn right" the man ordered. "Now stop! Givo me the money!" Jamieson obej'ed. Then as tile man began to count the notes he studied the face in the dim light from the dash lamp. Ho saw the slanting eyes, the hin-li cheekbones, that showed without °a doubt the man was a Japanese. Suddenly the man jumped out of the car. "Your boy is in those bushes with the other two. Allow lis three minutes to get away." <S>

f l- Anxiously the hanker watched the minute hand of his clock moving slowly, q very slowly. He dared not disobey. Then at last, after exactly .three minutes, he got out of the car and started calling softly for his son. e "Gill —I'm here .• • your dad .. . Gill! G Can't you answer?" But the only answer came from the ( wiml 'whistling softly through the palm trees. ! He kept calling, but gradually losing e hope. He plunged through the under; d growth and searched frantically. At e last, exhausted, all hope lost, he made l * his way slowlv back to his car. g Xext day, the passions of Honolulu were aroused to fever pitch. Men and 5. women came forward by the hundreds 0 to help in the search. But nothing ). was found. y

The police were convinced that tlie .crime was the work of one man, that ,• the words "The -Three Kings" was merely a blind. Witli even greater intensity their inquiries went ahead, livery Japanese with any kind of record was questioned. And at last a man named Mori was brought to police headquarters. He had no clear alibi. The police handwriting expert identified his handwrit- ! ing with that of the note. And this man was Jamieson's former chauffeur! The messenger boy who had delivered tlio note was traced and brought before tile mail. "That's the man!" lie shouted, his eyes wide open, staring in front of him. "It's a lie!" Mori, the suspected kidnapper, shrieked out. "I have never seen this boy before." The facts seemed to point in one direction only, but Detective St. John felt worried. He decided to try out the "truth drug" on him, the drug that sent a man into a semi-stupor unable to control himself, unable to conceal the truth. Willingly Mori pulled up his shirt for the hypodermic needle. The detectives watched his body grow limp, then llung their questions at him. Slowlv his answers followed, spoken softly, as though he were dazed.. "I .. . did not. . . kidnap .. . him . . . I was ... in a gambling hall . . . that night ... I never wrote . . . that note ..." Was the truth drug lying? Or was Mori, Jamieson's one-time chauffeur, telling the truth? Next morning the news editor of the local paper was looking idly through his mail. Suddenly he shouted madTy across the news room. A new note from the kidnapper! And a ransom note with it!" Swiftly he looked through the letter, then spoke quietly, sombrely: "The boys dead . . . murdered!" The same day his body was found marks round his neck ' where cruel fingers had squeezed the life out of him, his head smashed by heavy blows.

In his hands was-a playing card, tie deuce of hearts, torn in two. On the pieces was written in the handwriting the police at once recognised as the same on the ransom note: "But oh Heart, Heart, Oil the bleeding drops of red. Here lies the hoy 60 innocent —cold and dead. Fate shall decide when we sliall pay for this. But oil God, Forgive me!" On the ground near the body were three more playing cards. They were the three kings. No sooner was the news known than angry mobs stormed the prison and demanded that Mori, the suspect, should bo delivered up to them. "Lynch him! Lynch him!" went up their cry. Detective St. John was still unconvinced, and soon came the first of a series of events that showed that he had not been mistaken in his hunch. A young Japanese bought a fountain pen and paid for it with one of the notes Jamieson had paid as ransom money. Then came a wreath, marked the Three Kings, delivered at Jamie-'

son's home. And finally, at a station thirty-five miles away, a man who might have been the murderer had bought a railway ticket. Was it that he had accomplices after all? Soon the man was tracked down. His name was Myles Funaiiga. "I did it alone!" he told the police."I wanted my revenge against the Hawaiian Trust Company. My parents could not pay the rent and the company evicted tliem. "I did not -want io kill him, but he tried to get away from me. I hit him over the head to keep him quiet. Afterwards I strangled him.*'-. Mori was promptly released, freed of all suspicion. The real murderer was tried and found guilty. He was hanged,' aud Gill Jamieson was revenged. .But it. was a revenge that brought, no satisfaction to a sorrowing father and'mother. — — .&