A GREAT DETECTIVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3029, 3 April 1912, Page 83

A GREAT DETECTIVE.

BUKNS'S FIRST BIG CASE. (Abridged from. M'Cluro's Magazine.) Twenty-five years ago William J. Burns, who lately brought the Los Angeles dyna-

miters to justice, was one of the popular youths of Columbus, Ohio. His father, who was a merchant tailor, had been elected to the Board of Police Commissioners of Columbus as the result of the public spirit that lie had shown in some ''campaign for decency" of the time. Through his father's work as commissioner Burns became interested in the problems of the department. One of the commissionoers, Barney M'L'abe, had been a noted detective in his earlier days; he took a great liking to the eon of his colleague, for the reason that young Burns was likable. In spite of the disparity of their ages they became "chums," and it was M'Cabe who first appreciated Bums's practical ability. A number of rented houses in St. Louis had been burned, one by one, under suspicious circumstances that included, in several instances, a "plugged" fire-alarm box and a smell of incendiarism. The owners of the houses were obviously innocent, and they had lost by the fires ; but the tenants, in each case, had been protected by insurance upon household furniture unusually expensive; and detectives hired by the insurance companies had found evidence on which to found a ''theory" that the original contents of the house had been secretly replaced by second-hand goods, and the companies swindled into paying an excessive fire loss on the substituted furniture. In one instance an invalid, taken from an adjoining house during a fire, had died as a result of exposure. Eventually the companies, after paying out a good deal of money, decided to resist further claims. Tom Furlong, then one of the ablest detectives in St. Louis, was asked to take up the inquiry, after others had failed, and he called in Burns, of whom he had heard goc-d reports. The previous detectives had reported that a man named—let us say—Bob Judd had probably been the driver who had moved the furniture, but they had not succeeded in proving it. They had tried to "rope" him, and they had failed. He had long since disappeared. Burns started out to find him. He found the house in which Judd had lived—a quite ordinary lodging-house on a quite ordinary street; and the mistress of the house was a quite ordinary landlady. The merely ordinary young man who came there to ask for his friend Judd had behaved in no extraordinary manner. He was naturally disappointed to find that Judd had left some months before, and that the landlady did not know where he had gone. She 'thought that he had left town. She did not know the name of any relative or any friend of Judd's from whom it would be possible to learn his address. 'Well, he had a sweetheart, hadn't lie?" Bunts hazarded with a confident smile. • Yes," she said, "he had that. But I don't remember her name." " Where did she live?" " I don't know that either. But I mind her father was a carpenter." " Where did he work?" " Why," she said, " he worked, to be sure, where\er he had work to do. He was a carpenter." " Can't you tell me any one place where be ever worked" "I can," she said. "He worked once down to the Fair grounds—when they were building them sheds.." " Well," Burns ended cheerfully, " if you see Bob, tell him I was looking for him. ' Burke,' tell him—' Ned Burke.' I'm sorry he didn't leave his address." He went then to the Fair grounds and asked the name of the contractor who had built the sheds. When he found the contractor's office he obtained a list of the carpenters who had been employed on the contract. And the list, naturally, was long. After tliroe or four days he arrived at the home of a carpenter named Martin, and it was a small frame house in the suburbs of St. Louis, with nothing to indicate that there was a " mystery " concealed behind the Nottingham lace curtains of its front windows or the panels of its sun-bli®tered door. Burns knocked in a manner altogether matter of fact. The girl.- who answered was pretty, petite, neatly dressed, with a red ribbon in her black hair. " I'm looking or a gentleman in connection with an important matter that I have in hand," Burns tx plained, with formal vagueness, "and I thought you might be able to help me locate him. His name is Judd—Kobert I Judd." She looked surprised. Then she smiled. I "Well," she said, '"he's just- he's here J now." And she glanced back over her I shoulder. \ The cottage had no hall, and the front I door opened directly upon the tidiness of the little parlour. There was no one in j that room, but through the doorway li-e I yond—in what was evidently a sort of dining room and living room—Burns could | see a tall young man sitting with hi.s i head turned fo listen. It was at him that i the girl looked over her shoulder. He rose, I and Burns advanced to meet him. "Are you Mr Judd? I'm sorry if 1 interrupted——" "Yes," said Judd coolly, " and I know who \tiu are. You're another of those de- j tectives. And I want to tell you," Judd went on, " you can't do business with me. I don't want to have anything to do with any of you. In my opinion you're a lot of crooks." Burns had come without any expectation of meeting Judd, and, of course, had no plan prepared for " roping " him. The girl had her hand on Judd's arm as if to restrain him. " That's all right," Burns assured her. " This is -exactly what 1 wanted to hear." And that remark the first step of his approach towards roping Judd. Lest the ingenuity of what followed should seem uncanny, Burns explains: " If you're going to gain tlic confidence of a suspect you have to go in the same direction that he's going, don't vou? You have to move with his mind. Vou have to get in step with him. Judd had a

grievance against detectives. My only play was to have a grievance against them, too." So, when Judd further had expressed his suspicion of detectives and his' belief that they were all crooks, Burns said, "That's exactly what I want to piOve by you. I'ir an attorney from Chicago, representing a number of insurance com parties. We believe that we've been robbed by these men. We find where you have been paid 2000dol, and we can't find any reports to cover it." •Judd was a lank and muscular sort of "homespun" Yankee, with a lean, shrewd face, clean-shaven. He said, " What? They never paid me 20 cents." " Exactly!" Burns said. " But they've got you charged with 2000dol. What I want to do is to bring suit and have the.be fellows anested." " Well, the dirty crooks!" " If we can prove that by you, that's a.U we want. And we'll appreciate it very much. Now, I don o want to interfere with your call this afternoon, but if you can arrange to come to the Southern Hotel to-morrow morning—my name is Williams—B. J. Williams. I'm stopping there. And if you can come there tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock—" It was finally arranged, in the most natural way in the world, that Judd—who was out of work and had just come fo town to see Miss Martin—should give a few hours of the following morning to a consultation with the lawyer for the purpose of convicting the detecitves of the " arson mystery " on a charge of fraud. Burns, as he left the house, did not feel sure that Judd would not change his mind before morning and fail to keep his appointment—in which case it would be well to know where he was lodging in St. Louis, SO that sonic new way might be devised for "roping" him. To this end it was necessary to " tail " him when ho left the Martins'. Nothing could be simpler than the way in which Burns devised that tail. He saw a boy, who evidently lived in the neighbourhood—a boy who looked ordinarily intelligent, about 10 years old, and dressed in the " prevailing style " of boys. "Do you live around here, son?" Burns asked. '' Yes, sir." "Do you know who lives in that house?"" He pointed to Martin's coti? Yes," the boy said. '* That's Martin's." "Do you know Miss Martin?" He nodded. " Well," Burns c'onfided, " sire's a sweetheart of mine. There's a fellow in there calling on her. I want to find out where he lives. Do you think you could follow him when he comes out, and find Out where he goes —without letting him see vou." The bov grinned Burns took out two silver dollars. "If you find out where lie goes to, and get the number and the street, and come to the Southern Hotel tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock and tell me, I'll five you 3dol more." The boy pocketed the 2dol. " When s ho coming out?" " You'll hava to wait and see. And don't tell anyone T got you to do this. I don't want her to know." , "A' right," he said. He had his eye* already fixed on the house, as if he were afraid that the door might open at any moment, and those 3dol make a wild effort to escape bim. . Next morning the bov arrived with Judd's address, and got the P™mi,ed reward and departed with it. Then Burns went back to his room to wait for Jul I, and at 10 o'clock Judd was announced, and Bums ordered the bell boy to show him upstairs. . , He came unsuspiciously. Burns was glafl to see him-and said so. ;Tm imiwnidj pleased that I found you, he told Judd, and he described how he had located Miss Martin, and laughed with Judd over some details of the hunt for her. He explained that he was trying to find everyone to whom the detectives claimed that they had paid money. "What I would like, he said 'is to have vou run out oil these others. I'l give you a list of names, and vou can easily learn from > them how much the detectives oaid them." "There can't have been very many, Judd said. "There was only Black's furniture store, and Spindler's second-hand store." , , ~, "You worked for Black, didn t you.' "No, 1 drove one of Spindler's wagirons." ~, "Taking out second-hand goods.' "Yes, but it was after hours, usually. that I took the things to the houses that the trouble was about." 'You didn't tell that to the detectives, did vou?" "I didn't tell them anything. The fools thought I was in the game, I guess ; and they kept so busv trying to take me in and' following around the streets after me that they never gave themselves a chance to ask anything." "How did you know there was trouble about the houses that you took the secondhand furniture to?" "I read it in the papers when thev burned. .And I could see pretty well what was going on. But—well, it wasn't any of my business." On their way out of the hotel Burns saw approaching him a friend from Columbus, whose greeting would surely betray him to Judd. The ruse that he employed to escape detection was simple, too. He said quickly to Judd, "Don't let this fellow see you with me. He might suspect -" Judd walked away hastily, and did not look back. Burns received his friend, explained that he was "on a case," warned him to address him as "B. J. Williams," and made an appointment to meet him later. When he found Judd again he explained, "You may run across him in this investigation. I didn't want him to suspect that you were on it." And they proceeded to the lawyer's office. There Burns was received as a Chicago attorney representing the insurance companies. "This is Mr Judd," he said. "I

; have just employed him to run out the er- ' penditures in which we're interested, and I have been astounded to find that he is familiar with every detail of the arson ! eases. As a matter of fact, he partici- ! pated to the extent of hauling the inferior j furniture that was subsequently burned. I I wish to have him make an investigation ! of the arson cases, consequently, and he | will need help. Do you know* any firstclass detectives whom* he could employ to assist him?" The lawyer replied, "Why, yes. Tom Furlong. One of the best'in'the coun- , try." | In Furlong's office later in the day they | took from Judd a detailed statement'of his I knowledge of the swindle ; and it was a statement that supplied all the cues neces- : sary to make a compete case against the j swindlers. "As a matter of fact," Burns ! says, "his story was all that we needed. The i°st was merely a matter of getting it properly substantiated—with the entries on the books of the two stores and all that sort of thing." \ Burns remained to assist "Detective" Judd in this corroboration, and they became very friendly. They had been work- , ing some time together, when Burns oon- ' fessed that he was not a lawyer, but a detective himself. "No, you don't," Judd said. "You can't tool me. You're no detective. " I've seen too many of them." i "Yes I am," Burns laughed. "But you seemed so sore on detectives when I found you that day at Martin's I didn't like to 1 tell you." I Judd stared at him. "And all the time you were " i "I Mas roping you." I "Oh, well," Judd said, as the sum of his reflections, "you're not that kind of I detective, anyway. I guess you're the ; real thing," which, perhaps, is as good an explanation as one can give of Burns. I He went before the Grand Jury and ' made a statement on which the whole j band of conspirators were indicted, and among them was the well-to-do proprietor of the furniture store. It was apparently suspected by the gang that the ■unknown "Bums" who made this statement was one of their own number turned traitor. Within 10 days the "traitor" was found dead—murdered—behind a saloon. Burns's appearance at the trial was a I shock to the others. They all went to '■ prison, and Burns went back" to the Secret Service, to which he had meanwhile been appointed.