MASTER MAN-HUNTERS

Otago Witness, Issue 3958, 21 January 1930, Page 8

MASTER MAN-HUNTERS

By

JOSEPH GOLLOMB.

(Copyright.—-For the Otago Witness.)

XI.—TOO MANY CLUES. So many clues pointed to the peenliar methods of Hanims Webneke that their very number constituted an alibi for that notorious individual —It was a supercrook’s game, and a great one —while it lasted. In my last story on the man-hunting police machine of Berlin I told how that machine behaved in a case that furnished it at first with not ■■ of clue wherewith to work. Working in the air, iigurat’nely and literalix,

the machine actually found grist in the fact that it had not a clue to work w it h.

A companion piece to that story must be this one. of a case wherein the same machine had trouble because it had too many clues, an embarrassment of riches that threatened to clog its wheels.

It began quite simply—too simply —• with a burglarly in the Charlottenburg section of Berlin. The home of a Boerse broker was broken into ami robbed of a considerable amount of silver and jewellery. The burglar or burglars left no trace of themselves—none, that is, that was discovered by the squad of mechanical men sent there, the rank and file of the detective service, mere cogs out of whom every bit of individuality and initiative has been drilled.

Their squad leader reported this over the telephone. Whereupon a “ commisson on larcenies in flats and tenements” —a group of Headquarters experts specialising narrowly in such burglaries as the one in question—came

to make its own examination. They found that entry had been made by jemmying the cellar door to a builtin stairway used as a fire-escape, then by expert lockpicking of the door to the apartment. The job was done between 3 o'clock in the morning and dawn. It was a professional affair, as proved by the fact that no fingerprints were found. Then the burglar or burglars repaired to the kitchen and leisurely made a lunch and ate it. 'The commission studied their menu more than anything else that had to do with the robbery, case with a procedure so completely preit seemed to the astonished host.

But the commission, investigating the determined that it amounted to machine work, knew what it was doing. 'The victim of the robbery stared in wonder while the experts triumphantly set down such momentous discoveries as that six «ggs, seven slices of bacon, and a whole jar of marmalade had been consumed by the midnight visitor or visitors.

It was a question, from the amount of food consumed, whether there were two jnen eating with moderate appetites, or one man with a ravenous hunger. From the disposition of the crumbs of the feast, however, the commission decided that but one man had eaten. One man with a remarkable appetite, which in turn pointed to a one-man job. Back to Police Headquarters came the commission and fed its findings into the machine that hunts criminals in Berlin. The chief part of that machine, as J pointed out before, is that' huge cata-

logtie of about twenty million cards called the Meldwesen; an alphabetical record which it takes 1(10 rooms to house, the most exhaustive body of information about human beings ever assembled. Most of it is information on respectable citizens, foreigners and transients in Berlin. But part of it is the Kriminal Archiv, where, in addition to the regular Meldwesen card, there is a rich addition of data on every criminal who was con victed in Berlin, or who ever operated in Berlin e\ en if convicted elsewhere.

The commission had entered its findings ot the burglary in question on a card. Then it put that card into the Meldwesen machine to make it produce a solution, somewhat as one drops a penny into a slot machine. What really happened was the card was given to a spectacled mechanical man. one of the 3(>o who operate the Meldwesen machine, and he hunted for information that would correspond to that on the card. But the man and his search were so mechanical in their nature that it was really the working of a machine.

It will help understanding the present case if I give a sketch of the kind of card Continental police keep in their criminal records. Hero, for instance, is one formula of ten headings under which a crime is recorded by the police: 1. Classword; kind of property attacked, whether dwelling house, lodging house, hotel, etc. 2. Entry; the actual point of entry, whether front window, back window, etc.

3. Means; whether with implements or tools, such as ladder, jemmy, etc. 4. Object: kind of property taken.

5. Time; not only time ot day or night, but whether church time, market day, during meal hours, etc. 6 Style; whether the criminal, to obtain entrance, described himself as mechanic, canvasser, agent, etc.

7. Tale; any disclosure or story as to his alleged business or errand which the» criminal may make. 8. Pals: whether crime was committed with confederates.

9. Transport; whether bicycle or other vehicle was used in connection with the crime.

10. Trademark; whether criminal committed any unusual act in connection with the crime, such as poisoning a dog, changing his clothes, eating a meal in the house robbed, leaving a note for the owner, etc.

Within a quarter of an hour after the mechanical man, so to say, dropped the card with the findings of the commission into the Meldwesen, it produced a name, a man whose previous burglary, as described in the Meldwesen and Kriminal Archiv, resembled so closely the burglary in question that a squad of mechanical men was sent out to bring the man hr—for the Kriminal Archiv even keeps close track of the movements and hanging-out places of criminals who are out of prison.

This man's card showed that in a previous burglary be also had jemmied the cellar door of a built-in fire escape

stairway in an apartment house; picked the lock leading to the apartment; had taken silverware and jewellery; had made an enormous meal in the kitchen of the apartment, and betrayed an inordinate appetite for bacon and eggs and marmalade for dessert. There were other cards that showed elements of similarity with the present burglary—but none that showed such exact correspondence. The man was brought in and closely questioned as to his movements on the night of the burglary —for, of course, he strenuously denied that it was he who lad done this particular job. But when it came to furnishing the alibi, his irotestat ions of innocence were little helped. For the story he told seemed weak.

He said that on that particular night ie had scraped up an acquaintance with t stranger in a tavern: they had drunk ■ lot ; and what he next remembered was

vaking up in his room with a splitting head next morning. But the Kriminal Archiv card pointed so unmistakably to him ami his alibi was so little eonvine-

ng that the police felt little hesitation n holding him.

The following week another burglary iceurred in a well-to-do part of Berlin. Ihis time it was a jewellery store that was robbed. It was the “ Commission m thefts from jewellery stores and

•lawnshops ” that investigated the case ind reported on a card the technique if that particular “job.” 'The card, as in the other case, was put into the Meldwesen, and as before, it found in i short time a suspect whose record in the Kriminal Archiv so closely corresponded to the details of this burglary that he was haled to Police Headquarters and without much ado held for trial.

For his attempt at an alibi for the night of the burglary was so feeble—although he protested as heatedly as the other burglar that he was innocent —that he was laughed at for his story. He had been to visit some cronies, he

recounted, and was on his way home toward midnight when in a lonely quarter, just after he had turned a corner, he had been slugged from behind with a black jack. _ When he recovered it was still dark. But it took him so long to get out of the cellar where he found himself that dawn was in the sky when he got home. His cronies, of course, corroborated his statement, and he offered to show the very cellar where he found himself on recovering consciousness. But neither offer of proof was taken seriously enough by the police to free him from being held for trial. But one of the commission remarked how similar to the alibi furnished by the burglar in the first ease I recorded here was the alibi of the suspect in the second ease. The member of the commission remarked this idly as a sort of interesting coincidence. Then he forgot the matter—until it came back to him with added force two weeks later. For a veritable epidemic of burglaries seemed to have broken out in Berlin and there were features in the third case that made the members of the commission, who remarked on the coincidence I noted above, think hard. Here was a successful burglary in the home of an antique collector with well defined “ trade marks ” of the burglar who did the job. And in this case the ] description tallied closely with another description found in the Kriminal Archiv of the Meldwesen. The man with whose record the latest burglary corresponded so closely was brought to the Police Chiefs and questioned as to the night of the burglary. He grew confused, then clearly evasive. Finally he broke down and confessed that he had been planning to give a party to his friends, but had run short of funds. On the night in question he had broken into a delicatessen store and taken a quantity of food ami sweets for his party. It was petty larceny to which he confessed and the police saw in this an attempt on his part to escape punishment for the more serious burglary. His alibi was of course investigated and was borne out to the extent that the delicatessen store he indicated had really been broken into on the night in question. But the police held that the suspect may have heard of the lesser burglary amt remembered it to use it as an alibi. 'Die suspect continued, however, to protest his innocence and racked his brains how to convince the police that he was telling the truth. Suddenly he remembered something. “ You say it was not I who broke into the delicatessen store on the night of the fifteenth. Well, here is proof. I was climbing up on a barrel to reach some of the imported caviar on an upper shelf in the storeroom when a nail 1 did not see tore my trouser leg and gashed my shin. Here is the mark on my leg still. And there is the rip on my trouser leg. Let me go with you ami I will show you the nail.'’ That sounded real, and the police, looking for that nail, found it just as described by the suspect. That was not enough lor them, They took the nail,

the point of which was covered with brown rust, to tiie chemical laboratory of the Berlin police. Here the rust was scraped off. A dilute solution was made of it, and this was analysed.

It was found to be rust caused by blood. A drop of blood was then taken from the wrist of the suspect. A system of reagents and a count of blood corpuscles was then used on the test of both the blood solution taken from the nail and of the suspect’s blood. They indicated the same bloood.

The police were puzzled. The “trade marks ” of burglary at the antiquary’s tallied so perfectly with the suspect's record in the Kriminal Archiv that mere coincidence seemed too simple an explanation. Also as such a coincidence would weaken the prestige of the Meldwesen, the police looked for some other theory.

“ Not only is there the ‘ coincidence ’ of the exact duplication of technique in the burglary ‘ trade mark,’ but there is also the coincidence that the suspect in the case established his alibi only by the narrowest of margins. Now, let us see if there isn’t some other-explana-

tion. Deadly German machine-like logic ‘ began to weave theories. "The ‘trademarks’ are exactly alike. ! Therefore, either the same man was at I the bottom of it, or some pupil or eonfederate of his. Or—some one imitated I that ‘ trademark.’ But the suspect has i practically proved his alibi. And we know’ from his record that he has never had an accomplice or partner in crime; always played a lone hand. Therefore some one has imitated his ‘trademark.’ If so, why? ” “To east suspicion on the suspect,’’ was the tentative conclusion. The suspect was then asked, had he any enemies? No, he replied; and the fact that it would have served him better to say yes helped belief. “ Then,” decided German police logic, “ it was done by some one who knew of his technique and, though not an enemy, imitated it to throw suspicion off himself and on to this man. But the ‘trademark’ tallies so closely with our record of it that it must have been studied either at the scene of the burglaries or in our own files.” The first seemed improbable. But to assume the latter was uncomfortable. That w’ould mean that some one on the inside at Police Headquarters who had access to the Kriminal Archiv may have studied the record of the suspect and given it to some one else to imitate and thereby throw’ the police off the | scent. In American terminology of the underworld, somebody may have “ planted ” the suspect. That would be so novel and effective a device that one could expect its use

again. Perhaps it had even already been used. In examining this possibility the police re-examined the cases of the suspects in the two preceding burglaries. The one accused of burglary of the Boerse broker’s house still persisted in his protestations that he was “ dead drunk ” on the night in question. The other, accused of burglary of the jewellery store, clung just as strenuously to his story that he had been blackjacked on the night of the burglary. For the first time the police became eager to believe these two men. For if their stories were true it meant that the newest theory of the police was likely to be a fact.

For now a theoretical but highly interesting figure began to emerge in the minds of the chiefs of the Berlin police. It was that of a sort of super-burglar who studied the technique of other lessen

burglars and then proceeded to imitate their technique and did it so well that it folded the expert readers, so to speak, of the handwriting of burglars’ work.

At the same time confederates of the, super-burglar would have arranged matters with the burglar to be

“ planted’ ’ so that he would have a difficult time establishing an alibi for. himself on the night his technique was imitated in a real burglarv.

Such a super-burglar would have his accomplice on the inside at Police Headquarters to acquaint him with the “ trade-: marks” to be imitated. This conclusion was reached in the secrecy of the council room of the detective chiefs. Then followed a secret and minute search in the Meldwesen of the records of the several hundred men and women whq were themselves employed in handlingthe huge card catalogue. But these had been chosen vvitlj especial care, and the secret invest!: gation bore out the records of scrupulous honesty of all the clerks and office staff. However —so minute was the search —it was found that on several when one of the scrub women employed in the Meldwesen offices was ill her placq had been taken by a daughter of hers. ; On the record card of the daughter it ! was found that she had been among those . taken to Police Headquarters in a Razzi, i or police raid, for the purpose of exami: I nation of identity papers.

She had been taken to Police Head: quarters not because of anything her, but because of the company she kept. For there were a number of men and women at that dame who were recorded in the Kriminal Archiv.

When, however, a young man of respectable reputation as a delicatessen store clerk came forward as her escort to the dance, she was allowed to gq free.

But now interest on the part of the police centred on her once more. Um known to her a minute investigation into her life was made, and her move: ments were followed. She was a young woman in her late twenties, not good looking, but greedy for pleasure. Although her old mother worked for a living scrubbing floors in the Meld: wesen office, this robust voting woman did no work of any sort. Yet she did not seem to lack the means wherewith to dress and eat well.

It was then found that the young clerk who had acted as her escort to the dance where the Razzia had taken place was a sad suitor of hers. Sire cared more for the company of other young men and some not so voting, but much more able to spend money on her. Assiduous shadowing of the young woman, Anna Kurtz, discovered to the police one suitor or favourite of Anna’s,

who took her out often to cafes and theatres.

This man was traced and identified as Henkel, a former clerk or a professional bondsman, who specialised in furnishing bail to those arrested on criminal charges. Henkel did not seem to have any means of support more visible than Anna’s. But he did not lack the means wherewith to give both himself and her many treats at expensive restaurants.

Meanwhile word came to the overseer of the Meldwesen menial workers that Anna's mother was ill again and that her daughter. Anna, would, as usual, take her place that night after office hours. This information was passed on to the members of the " commission ” at work on the series of burglaries imitated bv the " Mocking Bird,’’ as the

Police Chiefs now spoke of the theoretical figure they had built up. The full Meldwesen staff works only during the day. At six o’clock the day clerks go home and a small staff or night shift takes their places. At this time too come the scrubwomen and office cleaners. That evening Anna Krutz came in her mother’s place, and with mop and scrubbing pail went leisurely to work. Ordinarily there were clerks about in the Kriminal Archiv offices. But this evening they seemed to be in a truant mood, and were gathered in the main office, having a good time apparently.

Anna found herself alone in the office of the Kriminal Archiv. But she did not seem to mind it. She even glanced occasionally into the corridor as if to assure herself that no one would interrupt her at her work. Several times she seemed to hear some one coming. At such moments she would quickly resume her position on the floor by the side of her scrubbing. But at about eleven in the evening phe rose suddenly and went to one of

t’ne cabinets of the Archiv. Taking out a key and a slip of paper from the bosom of her dress, she unlocked one of the drawers and. glancing at a name written on the paper, she searched and quickly found a certain card in the cabinet. For some minutes she copied on a slip of paper what she read on that card.

1 hen she put the card back in its place, closed the cabinet and locked it. thrust the key and the slip of paper back in her bosom, and resumed her work. By midnight she was through and left, convinced that i ■

any chance seen her interesting interlude.

She did not go home to her mother, but took a taxi to a quiet restaurant near Wurttembergerplatz. Here she was met by Henkel, her most assiduous cavalier. She found occasion when she thought nobody was looking to slip into his hand a bit of paper. Soon after that he put her into a taxi, and himself got into another. He left it several blocks from his destination. He had alighted in a sparsely settled semi-suburban section of Berlin, and the night was far advanced. The man saw not a soul. Nevertheless he kept a sharp lookout and as he turned the corner he whisked about sharply as though to catch some one spying on him. But he seemed satisfied that bis suspicions had no ground, and when he turned into a bleak little garden near the railroad track he looked no more behind him. At the door of the house at the far end of the garden, however, he did take the precaution of giving a low cough, plainly a signal. But when a moment later the front door opened and a man let him in, without showing any light, the visitor dismissed from his mind any thought that he might have been followed in spite of his precautions. Deep into the night the two men sat consulting over the slip of paper Anna Kurtz had handed Henkel, planning. Then at dawn both men turned in and slept. Several nights later a furtive little man entered a naeht lokal. or night club where the police were little welcome. In fact, one had to be well known by the proprietor to get past the several locked doors that led into the resort.

The furtive little man was known to the proprietor as an expert on locks of all kinds, especially such as money changers put on their doors and strong boxes. He had only the month beforeleft a prolonged stay with the state, a stay much against his will, for exercising his skill on a money changer's strong box several years before. The little man’s current name was Schmidt. Schmidt was a bit nervous because some of his friends told him that some one had been inquiring as to his whereabouts in the last few days. Now Schmidt had departed from the custody of the state with the state’s full knowledge and consent, his term being up. But it made him nervous anyway, to hear that some one was asking about him.

So he felt the need of relaxation. This lokal, as he knew, was safe from the police, and he looked there for a breath of respite.

He breathed more freely when the many doors he had negotiated were closed and locked behind him, and he found himself in a room as yet sparsely

filled with quietly talking and drinking men and women, some of whom he knew slightly. He was a recluse of a man, so he called for a pack of cards and ordering a stein of Kulmbacher beer, arranged the candles on his fable and began a game of solitaire. " Hello, Wehncke I” some one said.

The little man swept the cards to the floor and leaped to his feet, bis hand darting to an inside pocket. A quiet looking stranger was regarding him with a friendly look.

"My name isn't Wehncke!” the little man snarled, while the rest of the room looked on uneasily at the scene. The other smiled. ‘‘'Then I must have made a mistake in the name," he said genially. “ But my friends Red Schultze, Hanna, the Gabbler, Chris Fulda, Peter Schnabel, and others told me to look up Carl Wehncke when I got out and he’d shake hands with me. I got out last week and I’ve been looking for you since. How are vou? My name is Pfeffer.” '

The little man stared suspiciously at the cordial stranger. But the fact that he had been admitted here and that he had named so many close pals of his quieted his fears for the moment. He did not, however, take him to his bosom and trust him merely because he had named good names. The stranger treated to drinks, chatted of harmless subjects, urged Wehncke to go on with his game of solitaire, contenting himself with looking on. I inally, however, he suggested a two handed game of casino for small stakes. Wehncke was in the mood now for quiet recreation and consented. They played for half an hour when the proprietor of the lokal began closing up. I can t go to sleep yet,'* the stranger said to ehneke. “ I suggest we go to my hotel and play some more in mv room. Iwe got some good Moselle and Tokay there and good pipe tobacco from England. What do vou say?”

Wehncke was winning. The stranger seemed bent on nothing but recreation. Wehncke was fond of good wine, especially Moselle and Tokay. it seemed providential that the stranger should name just the two wines and the tobacco Wehncke loved best, fko he consented, and the two took a belated taxi and rode to “Pfeffer's” hotel, where they spent the rest of the night

playing cards, smoking English pipe tobacco, and sipping good Moselle and Tokay.

When morning came Wehncke bad won an agreeable amount of pocket money—though nothing extraordinary—had enjoyed the playing, the wine, and the tobacco, and left the hotel to go to bis room. There he fell asleep comfortably.

But at the time he was playing cards in “ Pfeffer’s ” room a scene was taking place in another part of Berlin which would have interested him tremendously. On Friedrichstrasse is a money changer who does a thriving business in foreign currencies, particularly English pounds sterling and American dollars. The day before he had done a rushing business up to past closing time and his vault was full of English pounds and American dollars. The money changer closed the safe, saw to it that the burglar alarm was working, himself locked the doors after the employees had left, then went home. His office was on the ground floor Underneath the office the basement was occupied partly as a storeroom, partly as engine room. Toward three in the morning, at just about the time Wehncke left the lokal to play cards in "Pfeffer's” room, two men climbed

out of a coal bin in the engine part of the basement.

They then took out of their hiding place three large satchels, two of them empty. From the third they got out a collection of tools, oddly fashioned for work no honest workingman would have recognised.

A cold chisel, for instance, bad its bead well padded with leather; so had the nose of a short but heavy hammer. One of the two men marked with chalk a circle in the wooden ceiling of the basement. Then the other put the sharp end of the chisel at one point in the circle of chalk and hit the padded end with the padded nose of the hammer. The sound of the blow did not reach further than a few feet.

But in the strong wood of the ceiling a circle began to eat its way upward under the assault of chisel ami hammer. After half an hour the circle was a hole. It cleverly just missed the iron beams in the floor. Yet the man would have given an onlooker a peculiar impression of working not according to Ills own knowledge, but after a pattern set for him by some one absent.

The wood of the floor of the money changer's office proved an easy task for the chisel and hammer, and in a few minutes both men were in the office. One of them crawled on the floor toward the window and street door and with a tiny pocket torch starched the woodwork until be found the wires of the burglar alarm. With a short, powerful pair of telegrapher's shears he cut the wiies.

Meanwhile the other opened the tool satchel and was kneeling before the money changer's sheet-iron safe. It was not a very formidable affair, but fairly typical of the safes used by money changers who, not handling nearly so much money as a bank, did not extend themselves in the matter of invincible safes.

The burglar put together several pieces of steel into what American safe crackers call a “ can opener ” and looks like a giant model of one. With this as a starter, he went on rapidly and skilfully to pry open the safe door. But he too would have given an onlooker the feeling that he was working after a pattern not his own. That was all the more clear because of a peculiar little incident in his work. The door had given away apparently before he quite expected it. Nevertheless, he went on to chisel another scar or two in the lintel of the safe, even -after the door had yielded, as though there were a definite touch he wanted to impress on his work.

In the safe were bundles of dollars and English pounds sterling, as well as other foreign currency. There was also German money there, but the man left this severely alone, especially as he saw on a bit of paper in the same drawer a carbon copy of a list of the serial nnmliers of the German money bills. The foreign currency was stuffed into the two valises.

The other man meanwhile had manipulated the front door of the office so that it appeared as though the lock had been forced open from the inside. But that done he and his confederate climbed down again through the hole in the floor they had cut, and came out of the basement into the rear courtyard.

Here they climbed a tall fence, one hold ing the satchels while the other climbed and issued on the street.

A taxicab bad been slowly going around the block. But at the sound <ff a long drawn out meow, as by a late prowling tomcat, the taxi put on speed and came up to the doorway just as the two men stepped out of a house and into the cab.

One of the men kept looking out of the small oval glass in the back of the taxi to see if they were being followed. 'J he other kept a sharp lookout ahead. But they seemed reassured after they had ridden several blocks from the scene of their exploit. They got out at the gate to the garden where Henkel had entered several nights before and one of the men let himself and his comrade in with a key.

One of the men disposed of the satchels and their contents in cupboards and hidden cubicles in the floor and walls. The other sat down to a telephone and called up “ Pfeffer’s ” hotel. A sleepy night clerk answered. “ I must speak to Herr Pfeffer,” the man at the telephone said to him. “ I just came into Berlin and have some news of his family he will want to hear at once.”

The clerk plugged the call to Pfeffer's room. Pfeffer answered in remarkably short time, as if he had been expecting the call. “Well, she's safe!” the man at the telephone said. "How's your friend?”

" Played cards most of the night with me—as agreed. Only we two. Perfectly all right. I'm coming over."

“ Don’t come before nine. Want some sleep. And when you do come just use the key. Don’t, wake me. Good-bve.’

“Pfeffer”’ replaced the receiver and went back quietly to sleep. The men at the other end of the wire did the same.

It would have spoiled their sleep, however, could they have seen several men hidden in a room in the next cottage. One of them had uncovered the

insulation of a telephone wire and with a portable apparatus was listening in on the telephone conversation “ Pfeffer ” had just had. When the receiver had been hung up he looked up at his comrades and reported word for word what had been said. “ Then we can be absolutely sure we are right!” a portly man. evidently in command of the group, said. "In that case there is no further need for delay! Come! ”

The squad of mon responded as mechanically and promptly as to a military order. Taking out revolvers, they shoved them up the sleeves of their ulsters, and leaving the house, tramped across to the next house.

Here the leader took out bis revolver and pounding on the front door of the house, called out:

“Open in the name of the law!” At first there was silence in the house. Then a man's voice called out: What in God’s name do you want?’'

The leader of the party called up: “ Unless to play this masquerade any more. We've been on your trail every moment of the time since Anna Kurtz stole the card of ITannus Wehncke from the Kriminal Archiv ! We’ve followed your ‘ Henkel ' here. We overheard your plan to imitate W ehneke's technique in lobbing the money changer on Friedrichstrasse. W'e saw Henkel lure Wehncke to play cards with him so that he could not supply an alibi. W e ve tapjied your telephone wire, and we were within a few feet of you when you cut through the floor and robbed the safe this night. Now we’ll blow your brains out if you attempt to fight! Open up!” There was fierce whispered debate inside the door. A head peered cautiously through the front window. What met that person’s sight was a squad of a dozen men at the front door, all with something obviously up their sleeves. At the curb in front of the garden stood a closed motor police patrol wagon. The man darted to the back window. There another squad of ulstered men stood waiting. Five minutes later a voice, hoarse with emotion and calamity, called down: “We surrender!” ilalf an hour later a band of what can only be described as “ forgers of burglars’ trademarks,” were in the cells made vacant by three hitherto unhappy suspects, now released almost with apologies.