A MOMENT OF ANGER; OR, The History of Mr and Mrs Brownlow's Quarrel.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2645, 11 September 1906, Page 6

A MOMENT OF ANGER; OR, The History of Mr and Mrs Brownlow's Quarrel.

BY ROBERT HO'l'E.

presence of ibe.servants. As to what might * have texen piace oil Tuesday, the 14th, they knew nothing except that when they left the house at seven o'clock Mr. and Mrs. Brownlow were dressed to go out, and that whem they returned both the master and the mistress were still absent, and further, th."t Mr. Brownlow returned alone at three o'clock in the morning. Although no definite facts, therefore, were developed in this testimony, the tenor of it was decidedly unfavorable. Wtiether they disliked . their master or whether they had some foolish pride to satisfy in seeing the accusations of which they had furnished the first elements corroborated, they certainly expressed the moral conviction that in their absence something terrible must have passed between the couple. As for the neighbors whom the detectives interviewed with unceasing perseverance, none had remarked whether Mr. and Mrs. Brownlow had gone out on that evening separately or together. The difficulty of establishing this first point was one which caused the detectives the keenest; anxiety. Brownlow in tba few words which he had consented to utter had declared that his wife hadieft the hOUse between sfevenand half past seven. It was this point that sev- — erai of the detectives who were employed on the case discussed most seriously when they met one morning for a consultation in the chiefs office. One of the most enterprising and successful of the detectives on the regular fores was Mr. Seth Ketcham. He had worked longer than any of the others upon the case, and on the point at issue saiii to his chief and colleagues: i • "Inasmuch as Brownlow deciares that his wife left the house between seven and half past seven, it must be a falsehood. A man in his grade of society and of his peculiarly stubborn pride of character could not let any thing escape through inadvertence, and if he had furnished this indication it could only have been with the purpose of misleading justice. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Mrs. Brownlow did not leave the house in the way in which her husband indicated. In all probability the deed was done indoors, and the body thereafter concealed in tome way that we have to find out. In my opinion, therefore, we should search the house. In all probability Mrs. Brownlow was murdered without premeditation, probably in a moment of anger. Between seven and midnight, the hour when the servants had returned, the assassin had five hours to cover up all traces of his crime." "But," suggested the chief, "it is not oonceivablo that, having committed the crime in the house, he could have carried the body on his back through the streets of , New fork. He would have been obliged to take a carriage. He could not have put the body into a carriage and taken it out again without making the coachman his accomplice. Now, he had had no timo to prepare for this complicity, as he did not know an hour b6fore seven o'clock that all the servants were to be out that night. There is just a bare possibility, however, that he may have planned this thing deliberately, for you will remember that ha permitted his own coachman to go to the theater of his own free will,- and it looks as if he had dismissed him lor the evening with a special purpose. It certainly follows that his coachman was not the one who conspired with him to dispose of the body. Therefore, although I

i ««IX SEEMS PROBABLE SOW," HE SAID.

agree that the house should be most thoroughly searched, it is highly important that we should look after ail the hack-drivers in the neighborhood, if not all ifllhe city and vicinity.". The next day the search was begun as Ketcham had suggested. Almost all the detective! were confident that in the thorough starch men of their calling know howio-make they should find some direct clew to the crime in the house. For although % hackman might have been in complicity with Mr. Brown low in the terrible affair, every thingpointed to premeditation, inasmuch as he had arranged matters so \ that he could be alone with his wife for several hourt. "The police searched not only every corner, •very armoirc and cupboard, from cellar to garret, and all the barrels and boxes and packages; they sounded the walls; they dug up the stones of the cellar that seemed to be loose: they ripped up the floors and the steps of- the stairs; for three days they devoted themselves to a systematic and unremitting search, aad literally left no stone unturned, that might by any possibility conceal a" clew to the crime. They found nothing They had to comeback to the first hypothe- - s;r that Mr. Brownlow had induced his wife the house and had led her to some SHfefcof-the-way spit and there murdered hWi~where event-'Jilly they would find the body in «ncn a state of decomposition that its identity ooold not be established. It -would only be one-more body to add to those which are found daily in the river and by the docks and in ont-of-the-way places. Another consultation was heid in the chiefs office, in fact, they were held every day, ' but at this odie a new theory was suggested, this time also by Ketcham. "It seems probable now," he said, "that this detdcou:d not have been committed in New York at all. Brownlow must have known how difficult it ia to hide for any length of time the traces of a murder upon ground which' is traversed daily in all directions and watched over by a police whose effective force is tne standing admiration •of the entire country. He had plenty of time not only to get out of the city but to go | for a long distance. There are a great mauy railroads running from New York with frequent trains in toe early evening. He could have taken anyone of those and pone out as ■ far as frcm fifty to one hundred miles and ' yet have hud two hours or more in which to carry out. his parpose-and return to the city •>;/ theiast train andreaeh his home, as the I servaii'.-; will testify that he did, at three j paockinthetccraiag. It will be necessary, : -then, to have the search proceed until all j "ground is covered within a radius of one •hundred mik-s from New York." 1 This plan of the campaign was so expensive and so difficult that if tho murder had not been ono of unusual interest the detectives would Reves have thought of undertaking it.' But the popular clamor was so great, the newspapers were so constant in their publication of sensational clews, and editcriuls wore hurled in such volume

upon the department as to compel it to take every chance, no matter how chimerical it might set m, to ferret out the truth of this mystery. The general cry was: "Let there be the same law for the rich man as well as for the poor." The wildest sort of stories were circulated and even published to the effect thut the wealthy friends of Mr. Brownlow had bribed the police, from the chief to the humblest patrolman, not to find evidence in this case. Smarting under this sort of c;-i; icism, therefore, and with a natural pride in their work, the detectives put their most earnest endeavors into the case and studied and worked night and day to get at the cruth. One of the detectives who had been authorized to make special investigations into the family oOlrs.Brownlowreportedoneday that the theory of sudden anger would really not hold in this case; that there must be some satisfactory motive forthedeed, and that, he believed that it would be found by examination of the papers of Mrs. Brownlow. Up to this time all the private documents found in the Brownlow mansion, when it had been searched, had been carefully kept without examination.- The detective averred that the Champion family felt so strongly that Mr. Brownlow had married their daughter for the sake of her money that he now believed that he had been instrumental in putting her out of the way for the sake of getting a secure and undivided hold upon it. Accordingly, an examination was made of the property which Mrs. Brownlow held. It was found that nothing had been touched by Mr. Brownlow, and that the property which stood in her name consisted almost entirely of unregistered bonds, which, as everybody knows, are good for their face value on presentation.

Among the papers, however, was a will made by Mrs. Brownlow, in which her husband was nominated as her sole heir, and this will bore a date six days previous to the crime. The finding of this testament created a sensation among the detectives, but its discovery was for a considerable period kept from the public. They knew now what interest the husband had in the death or disappearance of his wife. There was only one objection to this theory: In order to inherit this property he must produce a certificate of death of his wife. But after her disappearance this was impossible. However, it would have been comparatively easy to overcome this, for as long as the death of Leonora was not regularly proven Mr. Brownlow remained in practicable possession of the fortune as the administrator, and it would have been very difficult to oust him from his position. If, later on, her death should become an established fact, the will would then set aside any adverse claim. It seemed to be a cleverly executed scheme.

CHAPTER IV. As time wore on the situation of the accused became more serious. It was more and more impossible to believe that Mrs. Brownlow had left the house of her own free will. After discussion of all the theories they could possibly evolve, the reporters, in order to keep the matter well before the public in an attractive shape, originated this theory: That Mrs. Brownlow had simply gone with her husband's consent to take a journey, the object of which they did not care to reveal. Although this theory gained credit in the papers, especially because of efforts on the part of some of Mr. Brownlow"s friends to substantiate it, the detectives paid little attention to it. It was so evident that Mrs. Brownlow, had such been the case, would have returned as soon as she had heard the accusations directed against her husband, that the theory seemed to be of no importance. Day after day, of course, the detectives gave Mr. Brownlow every opportunity to talk and state his side of the case, but he obstinately remained silent. It was disappointing to the detectives engaged upon the case that they could not get direct and incontrovertible evidence of the fundamental fact in the case, namely, that Mrs. Brownlow was dead The fact of her disappearance needed no proof; the object of ths accused in committing the crime was established; he had refused to account for the time passed, where and how no one knew, during the evening and part of tke night of Tuesday, the 14th.. And his atiilude from the time of his arrest had been compromising in tho extreme; but there was still no evidence that seemed to justify conviction. One day the detectives found just the clew that they seemed to have been waiting for so long.

It came partly as chance and partly as the result of keen detective work. Seth Ketcham had reasoned with himself that as Mrs. Brownlow had left the house, or had at all events been last seen in evening dress, and as those garments were not found in the house at the time of the search, she must have had them on whenever the deed was committed. Next to the difficulty of hiding the body would be the difficulty of disposing of this peculiar clothinsr. He had made tireless searches among tho secondhand clothing stores and pawn-shops of the city to see i f therein might not be found some of the garments which Mrs. Brownlow had worn, his ide-a being the vague one that perhaps Mr. Brownlow had taken that means to disguise any trace of the crime that might be found on the clothing. Having found nothing in any of those places that he went through, he thought over the possible ways in which the crim9 might have been committed. Any noisy violence in the city would be liable to attract attention ; therefore he concluded that the deed must have been done some other way. In the course of his investigations he'found that the deck hand of a ferry-boat that had been crossing the North river upon that night about ten o'cloek had seen a man and woman quarreling in low tones upon the after part of the boat. He had paid but little attention to them, although he confessed that his post of duty should have been at that end of the boat. He went forward to the engine-room for a moment, and when he returned he saw the man standing by the rail alone. As he approached the stranger the man turned abruptly and walked into the gentlemen's cabin. The deck hand had paid no attention to it, because circumstances of that nature are so common where crowds assemble, and had thought nothing further of it until the detectives had put their usual inquiries to him as to whether he had seen such people as Mr. and Mrs. Brownlow come ever on his boat on tho night in question. Ketcham reasoned from this that tho murder hud been done upon the ferry-boat, and b3 strong y belioved that there was a clew to the crime. He was therefore watching the river as patiently as possible. One day a ragamuffin, who was fishing from the end of a loug dock that ran out into the North river, pulied up soinethhfg heavy on his line. He knew that it wa"s no fish, and was in some disgust that his line should have caught in a t-"»ag. But when he brought the object to the surface it proved to be a garment of some kind. He quickly pulled it up to the wharf and found at the end of tho line a iashionable opera cloak in an advanced state of ruin. The cloak was maue in the latest fashion, in black Indian cashmere, embroidered in gold passementeries. Few such garments are worn by people who cross on the ferryboats or who ramble about the docks. The ragamuffin was much rejoiced at his find, and, although the garment was so (To be continued. J