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 ofthree thousand dollars, $3000,providedyou pay the moneyto-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 theTroy 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 thesouthside of the tree andat once come away and come back to your house.“We want the money left at this spot atexactly 8:15 o’clock to-night.“See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him or you willnever look upon your little boy again“If you say a word of this to any one outsideyourfamily and the man you send with the money or if you take any steps to bring it to the attentionof the police you will never see your childagain, for ifany oneknows of it we will not take the risk of returning him, but will leave himto his fate.“If you obey our instructions in every point you will have wordwithin two hoursafter the money has been left where you can go and get your boy safe and sound“We have been after this thing for along timeweknow our businessand can beat all the police in America“we are after the money and if you do what you aretold,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 doyou will never look upon your child again as sure as there is a god in heaven we know you have the money in the bankand that the bank closes at 2 o’clock and wemusthave itto-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 bebetween you and usif you want your boy back alive.“Rememberthe case ofCharley Rossof Philadelphia. His fatherdid not doashe was toldbut went to the police and then spent five times as much as he could have got him back for but never saw his little boyto the day of his death a word to the wise man is enough“Now understand us plainlyget the money from the bankin timedon’t open your lips to any one and send the money by a trusty man to the place we say at 8:15 aquarter past eight to-nightHe wants tobe sure that no one else sees him put the package there, so there is no possible danger of any oneelsegetting 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 attemptany crooked workwith ussay good-by to your boyand look out foryourselffor we willmeet you again when you least expect itDo as we tell you and all will be well and we will deal straight with you if you make theleast crooked moveyou willregret it to the day of your death.“If you want to have your little boy backsafe and sound. Keep your lips closed and doexactly as you are told“If you fail to obeyevery directionyou will haveone child less.“Yours truly“The Captain of the Gang.”
“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 ofthree thousand dollars, $3000,providedyou pay the moneyto-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 theTroy 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 thesouthside of the tree andat once come away and come back to your house.
“We want the money left at this spot atexactly 8:15 o’clock to-night.
“See that no one is with the man you send and that no one follows him or you willnever look upon your little boy again
“If you say a word of this to any one outsideyourfamily and the man you send with the money or if you take any steps to bring it to the attentionof the police you will never see your childagain, for ifany oneknows of it we will not take the risk of returning him, but will leave himto his fate.
“If you obey our instructions in every point you will have wordwithin two hoursafter the money has been left where you can go and get your boy safe and sound
“We have been after this thing for along timeweknow our businessand can beat all the police in America
“we are after the money and if you do what you aretold,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 doyou will never look upon your child again as sure as there is a god in heaven we know you have the money in the bankand that the bank closes at 2 o’clock and wemusthave itto-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 bebetween you and usif you want your boy back alive.
“Rememberthe case ofCharley Rossof Philadelphia. His fatherdid not doashe was toldbut went to the police and then spent five times as much as he could have got him back for but never saw his little boyto the day of his death a word to the wise man is enough
“Now understand us plainlyget the money from the bankin timedon’t open your lips to any one and send the money by a trusty man to the place we say at 8:15 aquarter past eight to-nightHe wants tobe sure that no one else sees him put the package there, so there is no possible danger of any oneelsegetting 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 attemptany crooked workwith ussay good-by to your boyand look out foryourselffor we willmeet you again when you least expect itDo as we tell you and all will be well and we will deal straight with you if you make theleast crooked moveyou willregret it to the day of your death.
“If you want to have your little boy backsafe and sound. Keep your lips closed and doexactly as you are told
“If you fail to obeyevery directionyou will haveone 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.