Chapter III: Part 3

As the result of diplomatic representations from the Austrian minister, the Argentine government soon made elaborate arrangements for a search. On December the second the gunboat _Bermejo_, Captain Don Mensilla, put out from Buenos Aires and made a four months’ cruise of the Argentine coast, visiting every conceivable anchorage where a vessel of the _Santa Margarita’s_ size might possibly have found refuge. Don Mensilla found that, beginning the night of July 20, and continuing intermittently for nearly a month, there had been storms of the greatest violence in the region of Cape Blanco and the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego. More than forty vessels which had been in the vicinity in this period reported that the disturbances had been of unusual character and duration, more than sufficient to overwhelm a sailing bark in the tortuous and treacherous Magellan Straits.

Continuing his search, Don Mensilla found that a vessel answering to the general description of the _Santa Margarita_ had been wrecked off the little island of Nuevo Ano, in the Beagle Canal, in the course of a hurricane which lasted from August 3 to August 5, at which dates the _Santa Margarita_ was very likely in this vicinity. The Argentine commander could find no trace of the wreck and no clew to any survivors. He continued his search for more than two months longer and then returned to base with his melancholy report.

At the same time the Chilean government had sent out the small steamer _Toro_ to search the Pacific coast from Cape Sunday to Cape Penas. Her captain returned after several months with no word of the archduke or any member of his crew.

These investigations, plus the study of logs and reports at the Hamburg maritime observatory, soon convinced most authorities that John Orth and his vessel were at the bottom of the Straits. But in this case, as in that of Roger Tichborne,[4] an old mother’s fond devotion refused to accept the bitter arbitrament of chance. The Grand Duchess Maria Antonia could not bring herself to believe that winds and waves had swallowed up her beloved son. She stormed the court at Vienna with her entreaties, with the result that Franz Josef finally sent out the corvette _Saida_, with instructions to make a fresh search, including the islands of the South Seas, whither, according to a fanciful report, John Orth had made his way.

[4] See page 82.

At the same time the grand duchess appealed to Pope Leo, and the pontiff requested Catholic missionaries in South America and all over the world to search for John Orth and send immediate news of his presence to the Holy See.

The _Saida_ returned to Fiume at the end of a year without having been able to accomplish anything beyond confirming the report of Don Mensilla. And in response to the pope’s letter many reports came back, but none of them resulted in the finding of John Orth.

Shortly after the return of the _Saida_ the Austrian heirs of John Orth moved for the payment of his insurance, and the Hamburg Marine Insurance Company, after going through the formality of a court proceeding, paid the claim. In 1896 a demand was made on two banks, one in Freiburg and the other in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for moneys deposited with them by the archduke after his departure from Austria in 1889. One of these banks raised the question of the death proof, claiming that thirty years must elapse in the case of an unproved death. The courts decided against the bank, thereby tacitly confirming the contention that the end of the archduke had been sufficiently demonstrated. About two million crowns were accordingly paid over to the Austrian custodians.

In 1909 the court marshal in Vienna was asked to hand over the property of John Orth to his nephew and heir, and this high authority then declared that the missing archduke had been dead since the hurricane of August 3-5, 1890. He, however, asked the supreme court of Austria to pass finally upon the matter, and a decision was handed down on May 9, 1911, in which the archduke was declared dead as of July 21, 1890, the day on which the heavy storms about the Patagonian coasts began. His property was ordered distributed, and his goods and chattels were sold. The books, instruments, art collection and furniture, which had long been preserved in the various villas and castles of the absent prince, were accordingly sold at auction in Berlin, during the months of October and November, 1912.

In spite of the great care that was taken to discover the facts in this case, and in the face of the various official reports and court decisions, a great romantic tradition grew up about John Orth and his mysterious destiny. The episodes of his demotion, his marriage, his abandonment of rank, and his exile had undoubtedly much to do with the birth of the legend. Be that as it may, the world has for more than thirty years been feasted with rumors of the survival of John Orth and his actress wife. In the course of the Russo-Japanese war the story was widely printed that Marshal Yamagato was in reality the missing archduke. The story was credited by many, but there proved to be no foundation for it beyond the fact that the Japanese were using their heavy artillery in a manner originally suggested by the archduke in that old monograph which had got him disciplined.

Ex-Senator Eugenio Garzon of Uruguay is the chief authority for one of the most plausible and insistent of all the John Orth stories. According to this politician and man of letters, there was present at Concordia, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentine Republic, in the years 1899 to 1900 and again from 1903 to 1905, a distinguished looking stranger of military habit and bearing, who had few friends, received few visits, always spoke Italian with a Señor Hirsch, an Austrian merchant of Buenos Aires, and generally conducted himself in a secretive and suggestive manner. Señor Hirsch treated the stranger with marked respect and deference.

Senator Garzon presents the corroborative opinion of the _Jefe de Policia_ of Concordia, an official who firmly believed the man of mystery to be John Orth. On the other hand, Señor Nino de Villa Rey, the closest friend and sometime host of the supposed imperial castaway, denied the identity of his intimate and scoffed at the whole tale. At the same time, say Garzon and the chief of police, Señor de Villa Rey tried to conceal the presence of the man, and it was the activity of the police authorities, executing the law authorizing them to investigate and keep records of the identity of all strangers, that frightened the “archduke” away. He went to Paraguay and worked in a sawmill belonging to Villa Rey. Shortly before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war he left for Japan.

This is evidently the basis of the Yamagato confusion. Senator Garzon’s book is full of doubtful corroboration and too subtle reasoning, but it is rewarding and entertaining for those who like romance and read Spanish.[5]

[5] See Bibliography.

The missing John Orth has likewise been reported alive from many other unlikely parts of the world and under the most incredible circumstances. Austrian, German, British, French, and American newspapers have been full of such stories every few years. The much sought man has been “found” mining in Canada, running a pearl fishery in the Paumotus, working in a factory in Ohio, fighting with the Boers in South Africa, prospecting in Rhodesia, running a grocery store in Texas--what not and where not?

One of the most recent apparitions of John Orth happened in New York. On the last day of March, 1924, a death certificate was filed with the Department of Health formally attesting that Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, the missing archduke, had died early that morning of heart disease in Columbus Hospital, one of the smaller semi-public institutions. Doctor John Grimley, chief surgeon of the hospital, signed the certificate and said he had been convinced of the man’s identity by his “inside knowledge of European diplomacy.”

Mrs. Charlotte Fairchild, “a well-known society photographer,” confirmed the story, and said she had discovered the identity of the man the year before and admitted some of her friends to the secret. He had lately been receiving some code cables from Europe which came collect, and his friends had obligingly supplied the money with which to pay for these mysterious messages. The dead man, said Mrs. Fairchild, had been living as O. N. Orlow, a doctor of philosophy, a lecturer in Sanscrit and general scholar.

“He was a marvelous astrologer and even lectured on Sanscrit,” she recounted. “In his delirium he talked Sanscrit, and it was very beautiful.”

According to the same friend of the “missing archduke,” he had furnished her with the true version of his irruption from the Austrian court in 1889. The emperor Franz Josef had applied a vile name to John Salvator’s mother, whereupon the archduke had drawn his sword, broken it, cast it at his ruler’s feet, ripped off his decorations and medals, flung them into the imperial face and finally blacked the emperor’s eye. Striding from the palace to the barracks, the archduke had found his own cavalry regiment turned out to cry “Hoch!” and offer him its loyalty. He could have dethroned the emperor then and there, he said, but he elected to quit the country and have done with the social life which disgusted him.

This is the kind of story to appeal to romantics the world over. Aside from the preposterousness of the yarn as a whole, one needs only to remember that Johann Salvator was an artillery officer and never held either an active or honorary cavalry command; that he was, at the time of his final exit from Austria, long dismissed from the army and without military rank, and that striking the emperor would have been an offense that must have landed him in prison forthwith. Also, it is obvious that the “missing archduke” was pulling the legs of his friends a bit in the matter of the collect cablegrams. Except in cases where special prearrangements have been made, as in the instances of great newspapers, large business houses, banks, and the departments of government, cablegrams are never sent unless prepaid. An imperial government would hardly thus impose on a wandering scion. The imposture is thus apparent.

On the day after the death of the supposed archduke, however, a note of real drama was injected into the case. Mrs. Grace E. Wakefield, who was said to have been the ward, since her fourteenth birthday, of the dead “archduke,” was found dead in her apartment on East Fifty-ninth Street that afternoon. She had drowned her two parrots and her dog. Then she had got into the bath tub, turned on the water, slashed the arteries of both wrists with a razor, and bled to death. Despondency over “John Orth’s” death was given as the explanation.

These tales have all had their charm, much as they have lacked probability. Each and all they rest upon the single fact that the man was never seen dead. There is, of course, no way of being sure that John Orth perished in the hurricane-swept Straits of Magellan, but it is beyond reasonable question that he did not survive. For he would certainly have answered the pitiful appeals of his old mother, to whom he was devoted, and to whom he had written every few days whenever he had been separated from her. He would have been found by the papal missionaries in some part of the world, and the three vessels sent upon his final course must surely have discovered some trace of the man. It should be remembered that, except for letters that were traced back to harmless cranks, nothing that even looked like a communication was ever received from Orth or Ludmilla Stübel, or from any member of the crew of the _Santa Margarita_.

In the light of cold criticism this great enigma is not profound. All evidence and all reason point to the probability that Johann Salvator and his ship went down to darkness in some wild torment of waters and winds, leaving neither wreck nor flotsam to mark their exit, but only a void in which the idle minds of romantics could spin their fabulations.

IV

THE STOLEN CONWAY BOY

At half past ten o’clock on the morning of August 16, 1897, a small, barefoot boy appeared in Colonia Street, in the somnolent city of Albany, the capital of New York State. He carried a crumpled letter in one grimy hand and stopped at one door after another, inquiring where Mrs. Conway lived. The Albany neighbors paid so little attention to him that several of them later estimated his age at from ten years to seventeen. Finally he rang the bell at No. 99 and handed his note to the woman he sought, the wife of Michael J. Conway, a railroad train dispatcher. With that he was gone.

Mrs. Conway, a little puzzled at the receipt of a letter by a special messenger, tore open the envelope, sat down in the big rocking chair in her front room, and began to read this appalling communication:

“Mr. Conway: Your little boy John has been kidnaped and when you receive this word, he will be a safe distance from Albany and where he could not be found in a hundred years. Your child will be returned to you on payment of _three thousand dollars_, $3000, _provided_ you pay the money _to-day and strictly obey the following directions_:

“put the money in a package and send it by a man you can depend on to the lane going up the hill a few feet south of the _Troy road first tollgate_, just off the road on this lane here is a tree with a big trunk have the man put the package on the _south_ side of the tree and _at once come away and come back to your house_.

“We want the money left at this spot at _exactly 8:15 o’clock to-night_.

“See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him or you will _never look upon your little boy again_

“If you say a word of this to any one outside _your_ family and the man you send with the money or if you take any steps to bring it to the attention _of the police you will never see your child_ again, for if _any one_ knows of it we will not take the risk of returning him, but will leave him _to his fate_.

“If you obey our instructions in every point you will have word _within two hours_ after the money has been left where you can go and get your boy safe and sound

“We have been after this thing for a _long time_ we _know our business_ and can beat all the police in America

“we are after the money and if you do what you are _told_, _no harm will come to your little boy_. but if you fail to do what we tell you or do what we tell you not to do _you will never look upon your child again as sure as there is a god in heaven we know you have the money in the bank_ and that the bank closes at 2 o’clock and we _must_ have it _to-night so get in time_. don’t tell them why you draw it out. You can say you are buying property if you wish for this thing must be _between you and us_ if you want your boy back alive.

“_Remember_ the case of _Charley Ross_ of Philadelphia. His father _did not do_ as _he was told_ but went to the police and then spent five times as much as he could have got him back for but never saw his little boy _to the day of his death a word to the wise man is enough_

“_Now understand us plainly_ get the money from the bank _in time_ don’t open your lips to any one and send the money by a trusty man to the place we say at 8:15 a _quarter past eight to-night_ He wants to _be sure that no one else sees him put the package there_, so there is no possible danger of any one _else_ getting it, then within two hours you shall have word from us where your boy is.

“Every move you make will be known to us and if you attempt _any crooked work_ with us _say good-by to your boy_ and look out for _yourself_ for we will _meet you again when you least expect it_ Do as we tell you and all will be well and we will deal straight with you if you make the _least crooked move_ you will _regret it to the day of your death_.

“If you want to have your little boy back _safe and sound_. Keep your lips closed and do _exactly as you are told_

“If you fail to obey _every direction_ you will have _one child less_.

“Yours truly
“The Captain of the Gang.”

Mrs. Conway threw down the letter before she had got past the first few sentences and ran into the street, screaming for her boy. He did not answer. None of the neighbors had seen him since eight o’clock, when he had been let out to play in the sun. It was true.

The distracted mother, clutching the strange epistle in her hand, ran to summon her husband. He read the letter, set his jaw, and sent for the police. No one was going to extort three thousand dollars from him without a fight.

Two of the Albany detectives were detailed to ask questions in the neighborhood and see whether there had been any witnesses to the abduction. The others began an examination of the strange letter in the hope of recognizing the handwriting. This attempt yielded nothing and the letter was temporarily cast aside. Here the first blunder was made, for I have yet to examine a kidnapper’s letter more revealingly written.

The letter is remarkable in many ways. It is long, prolix, and anxiously repetitive. It is without punctuation in part, wrongly punctuated at other points, miscapitalized or not capitalized at all, strangely underlined, curiously paragraphed, often without even the use of a capital letter, wholly illiterate in its structure and yet contradictory on this very point. The facsimile copy which I have before me shows that in spite of all the solecisms and blunders, there is not a misspelled word in the long missive, a thing not always to be said in favor of the writings of educated and even eminent men. Also, there are several cheap literary echoes in the letter, such as “never look upon your child again” and “leave him to his fate.”

The following deductions should have been made from the letter:

That it was written or dictated by some one familiar with Albany and with the affairs of the Conways, since the writer knows Conway has the money in the bank, knows the closing hour, is familiar with the surrounding terrain, is precise in all directions, and knows there are other and older children, since he constantly refers to “your little boy” and says that Conway will have “one child less.”

That the writer of the letter is not a professional criminal. Otherwise he would not have written at length.

That the writer is extremely nervous and anxious to have the thing done at once.

That he is a man without formal education, who has read a good deal, especially romances and inferior verse.

That, judging from the chirographic fluctuations, he is a man between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.

That the kidnappers are anxious to have the money intrusted to some man known to them, to whom they repeatedly refer and whom they believe likely to be selected by Conway.

That the child is in no danger, since the letter writer doth threaten too much.

That the search for the kidnappers should begin close at home.

Lest I be accused of deducing with the aid of what the dialect calls hindsight, it may be well to say that these conclusions were made from the facsimile of the letter by an associate who is not familiar with the case and does not know the subsequent developments.

The detective sciences had, however, reached no special developments in Albany thirty years ago and little of this vital information was extracted from the tell-tale letter. Instead of making some deductions from it and going quietly to work upon them, the officers chose the time-honored methods. They decided to send a man to the big tree with a package of paper, meantime concealing some members of the force near by to pounce upon any one who might call for the decoy. The whole proceeding ended in a bitter comedy. The police went to the place at night and used lanterns, which must have revealed them to any watchers. They were not careful about concealing their plan and they even chose the wrong tree for the deposition of the lure!

So the second day of the kidnapping mystery opened upon prostrated parents, who were only too willing to believe that their boy had been done away with, an excited community which locked the doors and feared to let its children go to school, and a thoroughly discomfited and abused police department.

The child had been stolen on Monday. Tuesday, the police made a fresh start. For one thing they searched the country round about the big tree on the Troy road, which may have been good training for adipose officers. Otherwise it was an empty gesture, such as police departments always make when the public is aroused. For another thing, they spread the dragnet and hauled in all the tramps and vagrants who chanced to be stopping in Albany. They also searched the known criminal resorts, chased down a crop of the usual rumors, and wound up the day in breathless and futile excitement.

Not so, however, with the newspaper reporters. These energetic young men, whose repeated discomfitures of the police were one of the interesting facts of American city government in the last generation, had gone to work on the Conway case themselves. A young man named John F. Farrell, employed on one of the Albany papers, began his investigations by interviewing the father of the missing child. One of the things the reporter wanted to know was whether any one had ever tried to borrow or to extort money from Conway. The train dispatcher replied with some reluctance that his brother-in-law, Joseph M. Hardy, husband of one of Conway’s older sisters, had repeatedly borrowed small amounts from the railroad man and once made a demand for a thousand dollars, which he failed to get, though he used threatening tactics.

The reporter said nothing, but set about investigating Hardy. He found that the man was in Albany, that he was showing no signs of fright, and that he was indeed going about with much energy, apparently devoting himself to the quest for the stolen boy and threatening dire vengeance upon the kidnappers. Reporter Farrell and his associates took this business under suspicion and investigated Hardy’s connections and financial situation. They found the latter to be precarious. They also discovered that Hardy was the bosom friend of a man named H. G. Blake, who had operated a small furniture store in Albany, but was known to be an itinerant peddler and merchant, a man of no very definite social grade, means of livelihood, or character. In the middle of the afternoon, when this connection was first discovered, Blake could not be found in Albany, but late in the evening he was discovered, and the reporters took him in hand.

At the time they had nothing to go upon except Blake’s firm friendship with Hardy, the relative of the missing child, who had once tried to extort a thousand dollars and presumably knew the money affairs of his brother-in-law. The reporters had only one other detail. In the course of the day they had canvassed all the livery stables in and about Albany. They found that early on Monday morning a man had rented a horse and light wagon at a suburban stable and signed for it. This signature was compared with that of Blake, taken from a hotel register and some tax declarations. The handwriting seemed to be identical, and the reporters suspected that Blake had rented the rig under an assumed name.

While Hardy, Conway’s brother-in-law, was lulled into the belief that he was under no suspicion and allowed to go to his home and to bed, Blake was taken to the newspaper office by the reporters and there asked what he knew about the Conway kidnapping. He denied all knowledge until he was assured that the paper wished to score a “scoop” on the story and was willing to pay $2,500 cash for information that would lead to the recovery of the boy.

A large wallet was shown him, containing a wadding of paper with several bank notes on the outside. Apparently the man was a bit feeble-minded. At any rate, he fell into the trap, abandoning all caution and reaching greedily for the money. He said, of course, that he knew nothing directly about the affair, but that he could find out. Later, when the money was withdrawn from his sight he began to boast of what he could do. Under various incitements and provocations he talked along until it became apparent that he was one of the kidnappers. When it was too late the man realized that he had talked too much, and then he tried to retract. When he attempted to leave the office he was met by two officers who had been quietly summoned by the reporters and appeared disguised as drivers. The wallet was once more held out to Blake, and his greed so far overcame him that he agreed to guide the reporters to the spot where the boy was hidden, hold a conference with his captain, and see that the child was delivered.

The little party, consisting of two reporters, the two disguised officers, and Blake set out late at night and arrived at a place on the Schenectady road, about eight miles from Albany, shortly before midnight. Blake here demanded the cash, but was told that it would not be handed over until he produced the boy. He then said that he thought the purse did not contain the money. A long argument followed. Once more the glib talking of the reporters prevailed, and Blake went into the dense woods, accompanied by one of the officers, ostensibly to find the boy.

After proceeding some distance, Blake told the officer, whom he still believed to be a driver, to remain behind, and proceeded farther into the forest. More than an hour passed before he returned, and the party was about to drive off, thinking the man had played a clever trick. Blake, however, came back querulous and suspicious. He demanded once more to see the money, and being refused, said the trick was up. One of the men, however, persuaded him to take him to the other members of the gang, promising that the money would be delivered the moment the boy was seen alive. Apparently Blake was once more befooled, for he allowed the supposed driver to accompany him and made off again into the heart of the woods. One of the reporters and the other disguised policeman followed secretly.

When the two pairs of men had proceeded about three hundred yards, the second lurking in the van of the first, not daring to strike a light, slashed by the underbrush and in evident danger of being shot down, the smoky light of a camp fire appeared suddenly ahead. In another minute a childish voice could be heard, and the gruff tones of a man trying to silence it. Blake and his companion made for the fire and were met by a masked man with a leveled revolver who informed them that they were surrounded and would be killed if they made a false move. There was a parley, which lasted till the second pair came up.

Just what happened at this interesting moment is not easy to say. The witnesses do not agree. Apparently, however, the little boy, momentarily released by his captor, ran away. The three hunters thereupon made a rush for him and there was an exchange of shots in the darkness. One of the officers pounced upon the boy and dragged him to the road, closely followed by the reporter and the other officer, leaving Blake, the masked man, and whatever other kidnappers there might be to flee or pursue. The boy was quickly tossed into the wagon, the reporter and officers sprang in after him, and the horses were lashed into a gallop. Apparently, the midnight adventure had been a little trying on the nerves of the party.

After the rescuers had driven a mile or two at furious speed, it became apparent that there was no pursuit on part of the kidnappers and the drive was slowed to a more comfortable pace while the reporters questioned the child.

Johnny Conway recited in a childish prattle that he had been playing in the street before his father’s house when a dray wagon came by. He had run and caught on to the rear of this for a ride down the block. As he dropped off the wagon, he had been met by a stranger who smiled, patted his head and offered to buy him candy. The child was readily beguiled and taken to the light wagon in which he was driven several miles into the country. Here he was concealed for a time in a vacant cabin. The next night he and his captors spent in a church until they moved out into the woods and began to camp. At this spot the rescuers had found him.

According to the child, the kidnappers had not been cruel or threatening. They had provided plenty of food. They had even played games with the little boy and tried to keep him amused. The only complaint Johnny Conway had to make was against the mosquitoes, which had cruelly bitten him and tortured him incessantly for the two nights and one day he and his captors spent in the woods.

Very early on the morning of August 19th, just three days after the kidnapping, a dusty two-seated wagon turned into Colonia Street and proceeded slowly up that quiet thoroughfare toward the Conway house. In spite of the unseasonable hour there was a crowd in the street, some of whose members had been on watch all night. Albany had been seized with terror and morbid curiosity. The Conway house was never without a few straggling watchers, eager for the first news or crumbs of gossip. Reporters from the New York newspapers were on the scene, and special officers from the great city were on their way. Everything was being prepared for another breathless, nation-wide sensation. The two-seated wagon spoiled it all in the gray light of that early morning.

As the vehicle came close to the Conway house, and some of the stragglers ran out toward it, possibly sensing something unusual, one of the reporters rose in the rear and lifted a small and sleepy boy in his arms.

“Is it him? Is it the bhoy?” an Irish neighbor called anxiously.

“It’s Johnny Conway!” called the triumphant newspaper sleuth.

There was a cheer and then another. Sleeping neighbors came running from their houses in night garb. The Conways came forth from a sleepless vigil and caught the child in their arms. So the mystery of the boy’s fate came to an abrupt end, but another and more lasting enigma immediately succeeded.

Hardy, the boy’s conspiring relative, was immediately seized at his home and dragged to the nearest station house. The rumor of his connection with the kidnapping got abroad within a few hours, and the police building was immediately besieged by a crowd which demanded to see the prisoner. The police drove the crowd off, but it returned after an hour, much augmented in numbers and provided with a rope for a lynching. After several exciting hours, the mob was finally cowed and driven away by the mayor of Albany and a platoon of police with drawn revolvers.

One of the conspirators was thus safely in jail, but at least two others were known, Blake and the man in the mask. Several posses set out at once and surrounded the woods in which the child had been found. After beating the brush timidly all day and spending a creepy night in the black forest, fighting the mosquitoes, the citizenry lost its pallid enthusiasm and returned to Albany only to find that the police of Schenectady had arrested Blake in that city late the preceding evening and that the man was lodged in another precinct house where he could not communicate with Hardy. Another abortive lynching bee was started. Once more the mayor and the police drove off the howling gangs.

The man in the mask, however, was still at large. Both Hardy and Blake at first refused to name him, and the police were at sea. Then a curious thing happened.

William N. Loew, a New York attorney, reading of the kidnapping affair at Albany, which appeared in the metropolitan newspapers under black headlines, went to the office of one of the journals and said he believed he could give valuable information.

On July 15th, a little more than a month earlier, Bernard Myers, a clothing merchant of West Third Street, New York, had flirted on a Broadway car with a handsome young woman, who had given him her name and address as Mrs. Albert Warner, 141 West Thirty-fourth Street, and invited him to write her. Myers, more avid than cautious, wrote the woman a fervid letter, asking for an appointment. A few days later two men appeared in the Myers store. One of them, who carried a heavy cane, said that he was the husband of Mrs. Warner, brandished the guilty letter in one hand, the cane in the other, and demanded that Myers give him a check for three hundred dollars on the spot or take the consequences. Myers, after some argument, gave a check for one hundred dollars, and then, as soon as the men had left his store, rushed to his bank and stopped payment. He then visited the district attorney and caused the arrest of Warner, who was now arraigned and released on bail.

Loew had been summoned to act as attorney for Warner. He now told the newspapers of disclosures his client had made to him in consultation. Warner, who was himself an attorney with an office at 1298 Broadway, had told Loew that he was interested in a plot to organize kidnapping on a commercial scale, and that the first jobs would be attempted in up-State New York. He gave Loew many details and talked plausibly of the ease with which parents could be stripped of considerable sums. Loew, who considered his client and fellow attorney slightly demented, had paid little attention to this sinister talk at the time. Now, however, he felt sure that Warner had told the truth and that he probably was the man in the mask.

Faced with these revelations, in his cell, the pliant Blake admitted that he was a friend of Warner’s, that they had indeed been schoolmates in their youth. He also admitted that he had been in New York a few days before the abduction of Johnny Conway and had then visited Warner. So the chase began.

The police discovered that Warner had been at his office a day ahead of them and slipped out of New York again. They also found that he had been at Albany the three days that Johnny Conway had been detained. Their investigations showed also that Warner, though he had the reputation of being a particularly shrewd and energetic counselor, had never adhered very closely to the law himself, but had again and again been implicated in shady or criminal transactions, though he had always escaped prison, probably through legal acumen.

It was soon apparent that the man had got well away, and an alarm was sent across the country. The police circulars that went out to all parts of America and the chief British and continental ports, described a man between forty and forty-five years old, more than six feet tall, slender, dark, with hair of iron gray over a very high forehead. That Warner was a bicycle enthusiast was the only added detail.

The quest for Warner was one of the most exciting in memory. The first person sought and found was the Mrs. Warner who had given her name and address to Bernard Myers on the Broadway car and figured in the subsequent blackmail charges. She was found living quietly at a boarding house in one of the adjacent New Jersey towns and said that she had not seen Warner for some weeks, a claim which turned out to be very near the truth. He had, in fact, visited her just before he started to Albany, but it is doubtful whether he confided to the girl, who was not in truth his wife, any of his plans or intentions.

It was then discovered that Attorney Warner was married and had a wife, from whom he had long been separated, living in a small town in upper New York. The detectives also visited this woman, but she had not seen her husband in years and could supply no information.

Then the rumor-starting began. Warner was seen in ten places on the same day. His presence was reported from every corner of the country. Clews and reports led weary officers thousands of miles on empty pursuits. Finally, when no real information as to the man developed, the public wearied of him, and news of the case dropped out of the papers.

Meantime Hardy and Blake came up for trial. Blake made an attempt to mitigate his case by turning State’s evidence, and Hardy pleaded that he had only been an intermediary, whose motivation was his brother-in-law’s closeness and reproof. In view of the fact that the evidence against the two men seemed conclusive, even without the admissions of either one, the prosecutor decided to reject their pleas and force them to stand trial. The cases were quickly heard and verdicts of guilty reached on the spot. The presiding justice at once sentenced both men to serve fourteen and one half years in the State prison at Dannemora, and they were shortly removed to that gloomy house of pain in the Adirondack Mountains.

All this happened before the first of October. The prisoners, having been sentenced and sent to the penitentiary, and the kidnapped boy being safely in his parents’ home, the whole affair was quickly forgotten.

But a little after seven o’clock on the evening of December 12, two men entered the farm lot of William Goodrich near the little village of Riley in central Kansas, about two thousand miles from Albany and the scene of the kidnapping. It was past dusk and the farm hand, one George Johnson, was milking in the cow stable by lantern light.

As the rustic, clad in overalls, covered with dirt and straw, horny of hand and tanned by the prairie winds, rose from his stool and started to leave the stable with his buckets, the two strangers stepped inside and approached him. One of them laid a rough hand on the farmer’s shoulder and said soberly:

“Warner, I want you. Come along.”

“Must be some mistake,” said the milker in a curious Western drawl. “My name is Gawge Johnson.”

“Out here it may be,” said the officer, “but in New York it’s Albert S. Warner. I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the Conway kidnapping. You’ll have to come.”

The farm hand was taken to the house, permitted to change his clothes, and loaded upon the next eastbound train. When he reached Kansas City he refused to go farther without extradition formalities. After the officers had telegraphed to New York, the man changed his mind again and proceeded voluntarily back to Albany, where he was placed in jail and soon brought to trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, the maximum penalty, as the leader of the kidnappers.

The captor of Warner had been Detective McCann of the Albany police force. He had trailed the man about five thousand miles, partly on false scents. In his wanderings he had gone to Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, New Mexico, Missouri, and finally to Kansas, where he had satisfied himself that Warner was working on the Goodrich farm. McCann had then called a Pinkerton detective to his aid from the nearest office and made the arrest as already described.

The truth about the Conway kidnapping case seems to have been that Hardy, the boy’s uncle by marriage, had been scheming for some time to get a thousand dollars out of his brother-in-law. He had confided his ideas to Blake, his chum. Blake had suggested the inclusion of his friend, Warner, whom he rated a smart lawyer and clever schemer. Warner had then acted as organizer and leader, with what success the reader will judge.

V

THE LOST HEIR OF TICHBORNE

On the afternoon of the twentieth of April, 1854, the schooner _Bella_ cast off her moorings at the Gamboa wharves in Rio, worked her way down the bay, and stood out to sea, bound for her home port, New York. She was partly in ballast, because of slack commerce, and carried a single passenger. About the name and fate of this solitary voyager grew up a strange mystery and a stranger history.

When the last glint of the _Bella’s_ sails was seen from Rio’s island anchorages, that vessel passed forever out of worldly cognizance. She never reached any port save the ultimate, and of those that rode in her, nothing came back but rumor and doubt. Her end and theirs was veiled in a storm and hidden among unknown waters. The epitaph was written at Lloyd’s in the familiar syllables: “Foundered with all hands.”

Of the _Bella’s_ master, or the forty members of her crew, there is no surviving memory, and only a grimy hunt through the old shipping records could avail in the discovery of anything concerning them. But the lone passenger happened to be the son of a British baronet and heir to a great estate--Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. The succession and the inheritance of the Tichborne wealth depended upon the proof of this young man’s death. There was, accordingly, some formal inquiry as to the _Bella_ and her wreck. The required months were allowed to pass; the usual reports from all ports were scanned. On account of the insistence of the Tichborne family, some additional care was taken. But in July, 1855, the young aristocrat was formally declared lost at sea, his insurance paid, and the question of succession taken before the court in chancery, which determined such matters.

Here, no doubt, the question as to the fate of young Tichborne would have ended, had it not been for the peculiar insistence of his mother. Lady Tichborne would not, and probably could not, bring herself to believe that her beloved elder son had met his end in this dark and mysterious manner. In the absence of human witnesses to his death and objective proofs of the end, she clung obstinately to hope and continued to advertise for the “lost” young man for many years after the courts had solved the problem--or believed they had.

There had already been the cloud of pathos about the head of Roger Tichborne, whose detailed story is necessary to an understanding of subsequent events. Born in Paris on January 5, 1829--his mother being the natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire, and a beautiful French woman--Roger was the descendant of very ancient Hampshire stock. His father, the tenth baronet, was Sir James Tichborne and his grandfather was the once-celebrated Sir Edward of that line.

Because of her antipathy to her husband’s country, Lady Tichborne decided that her son should be reared as a Frenchman, and the lad spent the first fourteen years of his life in France, with the result that he never afterward became quite a Briton. Indeed, his brief English schooling at Stonyhurst never went far enough to get the young man out of the habit of thinking in French and translating his Gallic idioms into English, a fault that appears in his letters to the very end, and one that caused him considerable suffering as a boy in England.

Roger Tichborne left Stonyhurst in 1849 and joined the Sixth Dragoon Guards at Dublin, as a subaltern. But in 1852 he sold out his commission and went home. His peculiarities of manner and appearance, his accent and strange idioms and a temperamental unfitness for soldiering had made him miserable in the army. The constant cruel, if thoughtless, jibes and mimicries of his fellows found him a sensitive mark.

But the unhappy termination of the young man’s military career was only a minor factor in an almost desperate state of mind that possessed him at this time. He had fallen in love with his cousin, Kate Doughty, afterward Lady Radcliffe, and she had found herself unable to reciprocate. After many pleadings and storms the young heir of the Tichbornes set sail from Havre in March, 1853, and reached Valparaiso, Chile, about three months later, evidently determined to seek forgetfulness in stranger latitudes. In the course of the southern summer he crossed the Andes to Brazil and reached Rio in March or early April. Here he embarked on the _Bella_ for New York, as recited, his further plans remaining unknown. In letters to his mother he had, however, spoken vaguely of an intention to go to Australia, a hint upon which much of the following romance was erected.

When, in the following year, the insurance was paid, and the will proved, the Tichbornes accepted the death of the traveler as practically beyond question. But not so his mother. She began, after an interval, to advertise in many parts of the world for trace of her son. Such notices appeared in the leading British, American, Continental, and Australian journals without effect. Only one thing is to be learned from them, the appearance of the lost heir. He is described as being rather undersized, delicate, with sharp features, dark eyes, and straight black hair. These personal specifications will prove of importance later on.

In 1862 Roger Tichborne’s father died, and a younger son succeeded to the baronetcy and estates. This event stirred the dowager Lady Tichborne to fresh activities, and her advertisements began to appear again in newspapers and shipping journals over half the world. As a result of these injudicious clamorings for information, many a seaspawned adventurer was received by the grieving mother at Tichborne House, and many a common liar imposed on her for money and other favors. Repeated misadventures of this sort might have been considered sufficient experience to cause the dowager to desist from her folly, but nothing seemed to move her from her fixed idea, and the fantastic reports and rumors brought her by every wandering sharper had the effect of strengthening her in her fond belief.

Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to restore her son, had not been without its collateral effects. Among them was the wide dissemination of a romantic story and the enlistment of public sympathy. A large part of the newspaper-reading British populace soon came to look upon the lady as a high example of motherly devotion, to sympathize with her point of view, and gradually to conclude that she was right, and that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere in the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to emotional strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate Doughty, the object of the young nobleman’s bootless love, refused various offers of marriage and steadfastly remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as to the fate of her hapless lover.

Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew up. The Tichborne case came to be looked upon in some quarters as another of the great mysteries of disappearance. In various distant lands volunteer seekers took up the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by the fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by the hope of reward.

In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing friends’ bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, a fact which he advertised in the London newspapers. Lady Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw the notice in _The Times_ and communicated with Cubitt. As a result of this contact, Lady Tichborne was notified, in November, 1865, that a man had been discovered who answered the description of her missing “boy.” This fellow had been found keeping a small butcher shop in the town of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas Castro, which he admitted to be assumed.

Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated at once and did not fail to give the impression that the discovery and return of her eldest son would be a feat to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir to a large property, and since she was herself “most anxious to hear.” Australia was then, to be sure, much farther away than to-day. There were no cables and only occasional steamers. It often took months for a letter to pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady Tichborne received a second communication in which she was told that there could be little doubt about the identification, as the butcher of Wagga Wagga had owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at least one person that he was none other than Roger Tichborne.

Not long afterward Lady Tichborne received her first letter from her missing “son”. He addressed her as “Dear Mama,” misspelled the Tichborne name by inserting a “t” after the “i,” spelled common words abominably, and handled the English language with a fine show of ignorance. Finally he referred to a birthmark and an incident at Brighton, of which Lady Tichborne had not the slightest recollection. At first she was considerably damped by these discrepancies and mistakes of the claimant, as the man in Wagga Wagga came shortly to be termed. But Lady Tichborne soon rallied from her doubts and asserted her absolute confidence in the genuineness of the far-away pretender to the baronetcy.

Her stand in the matter was not inexplicable, even when it is recalled that subsequent letters from Australia revealed the claimant to be ignorant of common family traditions and totally confused about himself, even going so far as to say that he had been a common soldier in the carabineers, when Roger Tichborne had been an officer, and referring to his schooling at Winchester, whereas the Roman Catholic Tichbornes had, of course, sent their son to Stonyhurst. Lady Tichborne apparently ascribed such lapses to the “terrible ordeal” her boy had suffered, and she was not the only one to recognize that Roger Tichborne had himself, because of his early French training and the meagerness of his subsequent education, misspelled just such words as appeared incorrectly in the letters, and he had misused his English in a very similar fashion.

These details are interesting rather than important. Whatever their final significance, Lady Tichborne sent money to Australia to pay for the claimant’s passage home. He arrived in England, unannounced, in the last month of 1866, and visited several localities, among them Wapping, a London district which played a vital part in what was to come. He also visited the vicinity of Tichborne Park and made numerous inquiries there. Only after these preliminaries did he cross to Paris, where he summoned Lady Tichborne to meet him. When she called at his hotel she found him in bed complaining of a bad cold. The room was dimly lighted, and she recounted afterward that he kept his face turned to the wall most of the time she spent with him.

What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this man is an interesting matter for speculation. She had sent away, thirteen years before, a slight, delicate, poetic aristocrat, whose chief characteristic was an excessive refinement that made him quite unfit for the common stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short, gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults and vocal solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the young man who knew his French and did not know his English, here was a fellow who could speak not a word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.

None of these things appeared to make any difference to Lady Tichborne. She received the claimant without reservation, said publicly that she had recovered her darling boy, and went so far as to announce her reasons for accepting him as her son.