XII

XII

THE RETURN OF JIMMIE GLASS

In the early spring of 1915, Charles L. Glass, long employed as an auditor by the Erie Railroad and living in Jersey City, was grievously ill. In May, when he had recovered to the point of convalescence, it was decided he should go to the country to recuperate. For several years he and his family had been spending their vacations in the little hamlet of Greeley, five miles from Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, in the pleasant hill country. So Glass bundled his wife and three small children to a train and shortly arrived at Greeley and the Frazer farm, where he had arranged for rooms and board. This on May eleventh.

The Frazer farmhouse was one of those country establishments which take boarders for the season. Before it ran the main road leading to the larger towns along the line. Beside and behind it were fields, and beyond the road began the tangle of wild woods and hilly ground rising up to the wrinkle of mountains.

Breakfast done, the children were dressed for play, and Mrs. Glass started for the post office, about two hundred yards up the road, to mail some post cards to her parents, noting the safe arrival of the family. She called to her eldest child, Jimmie, but he shook his head and went out into the field beside the house, interested in a hired man who was plowing in the far corner. The elder girl went with her up the road. The baby was romping indoors. Glass himself sat on the porch watching his son. The little boy, just past four years old, was running about in the young green of the field.

Charles Glass got up from the porch and went inside for a glass of water. He stayed there a minute or two. When he came out he saw his wife and little girl coming back down the road from the post office. They had been gone from the house not more than ten minutes.

Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about, and asked: “Where’s Jimmie?”

Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and surmised: “Maybe he went up the road after you.”

The road was scanned and then the field. Then the farm hand was called and questioned. He had seen the youngster crawling through a break in the fence a few minutes before, but had paid no attention.

One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely missing of recent history had begun. This hunt, which extended over years and covered a continent, taking advantage of several modern inventions never before employed in the quest of a human being, started off with alarmed calls on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent woods, gullies, and thickets. In the course of the evening, however, the organized quest began. It is interesting to note some of the confusion that overcame the people most concerned and the little town of a hundred souls. The suspicion of abduction was not slow in forming, and the question as to who might have done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road going to or coming from the post office. William Losky, the farm hand who was plowing in the field, and Fred Lindloff, who was working on the road, felt sure they had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road, occupied by one man and one woman who had a plush lap robe pulled up about their knees to protect them from the May breezes.

~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~

~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~

~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~

Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three miles down the road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands all of seven hundred feet back, saw a one-seated car stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she might be of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the car saw her approaching and at once drove off.

Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs. Konwickie noted a one-seated motor car with a sobbing child, a woman and two men inside, the child crouching on the floor against the woman’s knees and being covered with the same black plush lap robe.

All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see, and I cite them only to show how unreliable is the human mind and how quickly panic and forensic imagination get hold of people and cause them to see the unseen.

On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was brought from near by—just what kind of bloodhound the record does not show. The dog was given a scent of the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out through the break in the fence to the far side of the road, passed a little distance into the woods, and there stopped still, whined, and quit.

The following morning word of the disappearance or kidnapping had been flashed to surrounding towns and many came to aid in the search. A committee was formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the fourteenth. On the fifteenth of May a much larger committee undertook the work and the surrounding mountains were searched foot after foot. This work took several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about, whose members worked slowly inward, covering all the ground as they came to a center at Greeley. This maneuver also failed to yield hail or trail of the child. At last the weary and foot-sore hunters gave it up.

The search was now begun in a more methodical way. The State constabulary took charge of a systematic review of the ground. Ponds were drained, culverts blown up, wells cleaned out, the dead leaves of the preceding autumn raked out of hollows or from the depths of quarries—all in vain.

Meantime, the mayor and director of public safety in Jersey City, appealed to by the distracted parents, began the official quest. Descriptions of the boy were broadcast. He was four years old, blond, with blue eyes, had good teeth, a double crown or cowlick in his hair, weighed about thirty-five pounds, and wore new shoes, tan overalls with a pink trimming, but no hat. Every town and hamlet in the United States, Canada, and the West Indies was sooner or later placarded with the picture and description of the boy. The film distributors were prevailed upon to assist in the search and, for the first notable occasion, at least, the movies were used to search for a missing person, more than ten thousand theaters having shown Jimmie Glass’ lineaments and flashed his description.

A few years later the radio broadcasting stations spread through the air the story of his disappearance and the particulars of his description.

To understand the drama of the hunt for Jimmie Glass, one must, however, begin with events closely following his vanishment and try to trace their succession through more than eight years. When once the idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors whose interest in the affair was partly sympathetic but more morbid, sat about shaking their heads and sagely talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a demand for ransom in a few days. When the few days had passed without the receipt of any request for money, the wiseacres shook their heads more gravely and opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in coming. But time gave the soft quietus to all these speculations. Except for an obvious extortion letter received the following year, no ransom demand ever came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.

Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead body could be found, and since there seemed to be no sustenance for the idea of kidnapping for ransom, the theorists were forced into another position, one full of the ripe color of centuries.

On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling carnival show had been at Lackawaxen, and with it had toured a band of Gypsy fortune tellers. Later on, Mr. John Bentley, the director of public safety in Jersey City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police, found that these Gypsies, two or three men and one woman, known sometimes as Cruze and sometimes as Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It could be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there had been Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to give fresh life to the old fable. Gypsies stole children to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they had taken Jimmie Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads to earth and force them to give up the child.

Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain Rooney that she had seen a swart man and woman in an automobile on the day of the kidnapping, not far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.

Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and many other officers engaged in a systematic investigation of Gypsy camps wherever they were found, following the nomads south in the winter and north again with the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were found about the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners, with the result that Mrs. Glass, now fairly set out upon her travels in quest for her son, visited one tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought Jimmie.

The discovery of blond or blondish children in Tzigane encampments always stirred the finders and the public to the same emotions, to the indignant belief that such children must have been stolen. All this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany people and the American Gypsies in especial. No one knows just what the original Gypsies were or whence they came. The only hint is contained in the fact that their language contains strong Aryan and Sanscrit connections and suggestions. They appeared in Eastern Europe, probably in the thirteenth century and in France somewhat later, being there mistaken for Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or brown eyed. But several Gypsy clans appeared in England all of five hundred years ago and there soon began to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of Tzigane blood. In the course of the generations the English Gypsy came to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall, straight, dark men, with piercing eyes and the more or less typical Gypsy facial characteristics appeared among them, but these usually occur in cases where there has been marriage with strains from the Continent, from Hungary and Roumania. For instance, Richard Burton, the great traveler and anthropologist, was half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the last century.

The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English origin, though there are a good many from Eastern Europe. Among both kinds there is frequent intermarriage with American girls from the mountain countries of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies pure blond children are of frequent occurrence and one often sees the charming contradiction of light hair and dark, emotive eyes.

Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children. Nomads have very little sense of the property rights of others and may take anything, animal, mineral or vegetable, that strikes their fancy. But so much for the facts on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.

Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps kept the police and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the move. The Cruze party gave them especial trouble and contributed one of the high dramatic moments of the eight years of search and suspense.

When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman called Rose Cruze had been near Greeley on the day the child vanished, he set out to trace her down with her male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more, a most puzzling matter to one who does not understand the motives and habits of nomads. Rose Cruze and the blond boy she was supposed to have with her kept just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into Mexico and continued southward with her band, having meantime married Lister Costello, the head of another clan. Later she was heard of in Venezuela, then in Brazil.

One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram was brought to Director Bentley in Jersey City. It came from Porto Rico, was signed with the mysterious name Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies encamped near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram also gave the information that the men were Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and the woman was Costello’s wife.

Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities, probably a good deal more skeptical about Gypsy stories than are Americans, questioned whether the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously. By the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late by the American officials on the island, the band had moved on into the mountains.

Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of no special standing, and he was severely questioned. But this time there was no foolery. He stuck to his story very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate practically everything he said, and firmly established the fact that among the Gypsies were the much-sought Costello-Cruze family.

The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went out that the hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba. In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made ready to sail. Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused him to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him to packing his bags. He was almost ready to embark when the thing dropped with sudden and sad deflation. The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not Jimmie Glass.

This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of the eight years of quest. Ever and again, not ten times but ten hundred, came reports that Jimmy Glass had been found. Many of them came from irresponsible enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest but mistaken. A few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the marked egg.

One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City grocery store with the following scrawled on the shell:

“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”

“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”

The police chased themselves in excited circles. One of them was off to Richmond at once. The eggs were carefully traced back to the nests of their origin. It was found that they came from a place much nearer than Richmond, and that the inscription was the work of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated by the final running down of the much-sought band, another form of thrill had played its fullest ravages with the unhappy parents and given the public its crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the boy, the showing of his picture on the screens and the repeated newspaper summations of the strange case, all had the effect of putting idle brains and fevered imaginations to work. From almost every part of the country came reports of missing children who looked as though they might be Jimmie Glass.

The distracted mother, suffering like any other woman in a similar predicament from the idea that her child could not fail to be restored, traveled from one part of the country to the other under the lash of these reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the newspapers have estimated that she traveled more than forty thousand miles in all, seeking what she never found.

As happens in many excitements of this kind, the hunt for James Glass resulted in the finding of many other strayed or stolen children, from San Diego to Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in the possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to show that the child had been left with them, and they readily gave it up to the authorities for lodgment in an institution. But, alas, none of these was Jimmie Glass.

The affair of the one demand for money came near ending in a tragedy. The blackmail note demanded that five thousand dollars be placed in a milk bottle near a shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses filled the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the agreed spot, after the police had taken up watch near by. The bottle stayed where it had been placed for hours. Finally the proprietor of the stand saw the thing. His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the bottle, and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police headquarters, protesting that he did not mean to steal anything. It developed that this honest workman knew nothing about the whole affair. The real extortioners had, of course, been much too alert for the police.

One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited before the end. The quest for Jimmy Glass was at its height when news came from the little town of Norman, Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a shoe store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long trip in vain, asked that photographs be sent, and they were received at the end of the week. What they thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City, and motored to Norman.

Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the town had suspended business and hung the streets and houses with flags in their honor.

Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately to one of the houses of the town, where the child was being kept, and ushered into the parlor, while a large crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the streets, giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.

Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy was brought in. Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and held out her arms. The child rushed to her and was showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother, choking with sobs, clasped the little fellow closely to her. He struggled, and she released him. He ran to sit on Mr. Glass’ lap.

“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I was convinced. Surely this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He had his every feature. For the time there was no doubt in either of our minds. We were too happy for words.”

But then the examination of the child began and the discrepancies appeared. The child was Jimmie’s size and age. His hair and eyes were of the same color and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike. This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of Jimmie’s peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of Mr. Glass’ son; there was an old scar on one foot that was unlike anything that had disfigured Jimmie, and there were other slight differences.

Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away. Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find other evidence that might yet change their minds.

A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her, that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store, hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and other local emotionals.

So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took in the Rosses years before.

One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.

Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too, had taken part. Could this be—— He did not stop to ponder much, but looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing, carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.

Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have lain down on his side and wakened no more.

Little was found in addition to the shoes and the skull, except a few bone buttons, the metal clasps from a child’s garters and such like. The skull and shoes furnished the evidence needed. The former, examined by experts, revealed the double crown which had caused the upstanding of the missing boy’s back hair. The shoes, washed free of the encasing mud, showed the maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole. All the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have retained the mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn a brand new pair the morning he strayed out.

Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered away that seductive May morning, gone on and on, as children sometimes do, got into the boggy ground and been unable to get out. Exhaustion had overtaken him, and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again, this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring of 1915, and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in and been drowned, only to have his bones cast up again by the droughty fall eight years later.

With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain Rooney refused absolutely to entertain them. He had been over the ground many times. It was of the most difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he tried to do more than creep among them, absolutely impassable to a child. Again, there was the matter of distance. How could a child of four years, none too firm a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and scar will testify, have made its way for more than two miles over this hellish terrain into a morass? Must it not have fallen exhausted long before and rested till the voices of the searchers in that first night had wakened it?

And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney asks us. Of what leather were they made to have lain for eight and one half years in that impassable bog and yet to have been so well preserved as to retain the maker’s imprint?

“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may be the bones of Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one must have taken him there.”

Perhaps—and then again? How far a lost and desperate child will stray is not too simple a question. If, as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie Glass probably would have tired and lain down to rest, would he not also have risen again and blundered on? As for the durability of the leather, any one may go to any well-stocked museum and find hides of the sixteenth century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that morass, who was it?

It is much easier to believe with the parents. The enchantment of spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited and undreamed places unfolding before a child’s eyes, and straying from flower to flower, wonder to wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure, disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness that clouds all living. It is more pleasant to think of the matter so, to believe that Jimmy Glass, four years in the world, was but a forthfarer into the mysteries, who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and went to sleep—a Babe in the Woods.

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