Someone s Daughter In Search of Justice for Jane Doe

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Someone s Daughter In Search of Justice for Jane Doe 1st
Edition Silvia Pettem Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Silvia Pettem
ISBN(s): 9781589794214, 1589794214
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.33 MB
Year: 2009
Language: english
 SOMEONE’S DAUGHTER

9781589794207_Print.indb i 2/27/12 11:47 AM

9781589794207_Print.indb ii 2/27/12 11:47 AM
 SOMEONE’S DAUGHTER
In Search of Justice for Jane Doe

SILVIA PETTEM

TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

9781589794207_Print.indb iii 2/27/12 11:47 AM

 Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rlpgtrade.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Distributed by National Book Network

Copyright © 2009 by Silvia Pettem

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pettem, Silvia.
Someone’s Daughter : In Search of Justice for Jane Doe / Silvia Pettem.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-58979-420-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58979-421-4
(electronic)
1. Murder—Colorado—Boulder—Case studies. 2. Murder—Investigation—
Colorado—Boulder—Case studies. 3. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—
Colorado—Boulder. I. Title.
HV6534.B68P48 2009
364.152'3092—dc22
2009009250
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

9781589794207_Print.indb iv 2/27/12 11:47 AM

 When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.
—Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

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9781589794207_Print.indb vi 2/27/12 11:47 AM
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
List of Characters xi
Foreword by Richard H. Walton xv
Introduction xxi
Part 1: An Extended Family
Chapter 1 3
Chapter 2 11
Chapter 3 25
Chapter 4 41
Chapter 5 51
Chapter 6 61
Part 2: Twists and Turns
Chapter 7 73
Chapter 8 91
Chapter 9 105
Chapter 10 117
Chapter 11 131
Chapter 12 143
Chapter 13 155

vii

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 viii Contents

Part 3: Closing In and Closure

Chapter 14 171
Chapter 15 183
Chapter 16 195
Chapter 17 207
Chapter 18 217
Chapter 19 229
Epilogue 243
Acknowledgments 251
Harvey Glatman Timeline 257
Index 261

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 ILLUSTRATIONS

Columbia Cemetery in the 1880s 5

Jane Doe’s gravestone 8
Students show where they found Jane Doe’s body 16
Officials at the crime scene 17
Sheriff’s office in the courthouse 21
Flower card, “To Someone’s Daughter” 22
Graveside service, 1954 23
Boulder Crime School 37
Author in Columbia Cemetery 57
Road through Boulder Canyon 67
Detectives at the crime scene 68
Rocks at the crime scene, 2004 69
Remains in Jane Doe’s grave 76
Sheriff visits the exhumation 77
Exhumation scene 77
Stripper “Tempest Storm” 87
Gilda from Our Gang 88
Jane Doe’s reassembled skull 92
Mannequin used in dummy toss 95
Twylia May Embrey 106
Frank Bender with a bust of Jane Doe 110

ix

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 x Illustrations

Vidocq men and sheriff at press conference 123

Gravestone for Albert and Ophelia Glatman 134
Author at Colorado State Archives 151
Denver East High School 158
Alley in Capitol Hill neighborhood 160
Harvey Glatman’s mug shot, 1945 161
Last residence of Katharine Farrand Dyer 177
Micki Lavigne and author 191
America’s Most Wanted control room 193
Capitol Hill bus route map 202–203
Eula Jo “Jody” Hand 214
Poster session at forensic conference 218
Katharine Farrand Dyer 223
Photo-superimposition of Katharine Farrand Dyer 231
Mildred “Midge” Garner 238
Graveside service, 2008 241

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 CHARACTERS

Acton, Hugh “Huck”: Witness to the marriage of Jimmie and Katharine

Dyer
Ainsworth, Steve: Detective, Boulder County Sheriff’s Office
Andes, James: One of two college students who found Jane Doe’s body
Bausch, Sandy: One of core group of historical/genealogical researchers
Bender, Frank: Forensic artist who sculpted the bust of Jane Doe
Birkby, Dr. Walter: Forensic anthropologist, assisted at Jane Doe’s
exhumation and reassembled her skull
Bornhofen, Frederick: Chairman of the board and case manager for the
Vidocq Society
Brooks, Pierce: Former lead investigator, Los Angeles Police Department
Cass, Alan: Family friend of author
Conour, Beth: Boulder County medical investigator, assisted at Jane
Doe’s exhumation
Crawley, Pat: Former longtime resident of Flagstaff, Arizona
Donton, Clayton: Former Navy buddy of Jimmie Dyer
Dyer, Jimmie: Late husband of Katharine Farrand Dyer
Dyer, Katharine Farrand: Missing Denver woman in 1954
Eichorn, Cindi: One of core group of historical/genealogical researchers
Embrey, Twylia May: Missing Nebraska woman in 1952
Everson, Art: Former sheriff (1942–1966), Boulder County Sheriff’s Office
Fabian, Robert: Detective, Scotland Yard consultant on Marion Joan
McDowell case
Farrand, Katharine: Maiden name of Katharine Dyer
Fenton, Dr. Todd: Director, Michigan State University Forensic
Anthropology Laboratory
Foster, Theresa: Murder victim in Boulder, 1948

xi

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 xii Characters

Frederick, Dave: One of core group of historical/genealogical researchers

Froede, Dr. Richard: Forensic pathologist, assisted at Jane Doe’s
exhumation
Garner, Mildred “Midge”: Sister of Twylia May Embrey
Glatman, Harvey M.: Suspect in Jane Doe’s murder
Goldberg, Dr. Robert “Dr. Bob”: Forensic pathologist, assisted at Jane
Doe’s exhumation
Greenwood, Michael: General manager of Crist Mortuary
Hand, Eula Jo “Jody”: Assault victim of Harvey Glatman
Hendricks, Roy: Former detective, Boulder Police Department
Hill, Roy: Former detective, Boulder Police Department
Hubbs, Billie Ruth: Former acquaintance of Katharine Farrand Dyer
Hutchins, James W.: Initial suspect in Jane Doe’s murder
James, Dr. Freburn L.: Pathologist who performed Jane Doe’s original
autopsy
Jaquette, Elaura: Murder victim in Boulder, 1966
Kitt, Jennifer: Great-niece of Twylia May Embrey
Lauer, Norene: Assault victim of Harvey Glatman
Lavigne, Micki: First of core group of historical/genealogical researchers
Little Miss Nobody: Unidentified murder victim, Prescott, Arizona
Little Miss X: Unidentified murder victim, Flagstaff, Arizona
Looney, Bob: Boulder Daily Camera reporter in 1954
Matthews, Todd: Media director of the Doe Network, identifier of the
“Tent Girl”
McDowell, Marion Joan: Missing Toronto woman in 1953
Nicholas, Karen Anne: One of core group of historical/genealogical
researchers
Ostrander, Shirley: Former acquaintance of Katharine Farrand Dyer
Parker, Reverend Charles Franklin: Performed marriage of Jimmie and
Katharine Dyer
Pelle, Joe: Sheriff (current), Boulder County Sheriff’s Office
Raines, Ed: Husband of author
Ramsey, JonBenét: Murder victim in Boulder, 1996
Ridpath, Susan: Cousin of Marion Joan McDowell
Scanlon, Dr. Richard M.: Forensic dentist, examined photos of Jane
Doe’s teeth
Smith, Woody: Archivist, Colorado Mountain Club
Starr, Emily: Late sister of Jimmie Dyer
Swanson, Wayne: One of two college students who found Jane Doe’s
body

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 Characters xiii

Taylor, Carol: Librarian, Boulder Daily Camera

Teegarden, Dorse “Dock”: Former under-sheriff, Boulder County
Sheriff’s Office
Teegarden, Myron: Former police chief (1949–1967), Boulder Police
Department
Umenhofer, John: Sergeant, Springfield Police Department
Vigil, Lorraine: Assault victim of Harvey Glatman
Wedum, Eleanor: One of the portrayers of Jane Doe in “Meet the
Spirits”
Weibel, Bruce: Murder victim, killed by James W. Hutchins in 1954
West, Phil: Lieutenant (then commander, now division chief), Boulder
County Sheriff’s Office
Wineman, Reverend Andy: Chaplain, Boulder County Sheriff’s Office

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9781589794207_Print.indb xiv 2/27/12 11:47 AM
 FOREWORD

T he number of missing and unidentified dead that haunt our country’s

morgues and cemeteries has been called the “nation’s silent mass di-
saster.” How many victims are there? We don’t know. In a society that
statistically researches and tracks almost every aspect of life, this is a gray
area of knowledge and a black hole whose depths are unknown. Perhaps
this is no better exemplified than in the case of “Boulder Jane Doe”—the
tragic story of a young victim cast into a remote Colorado creek bed in
1954. Hers is a compelling and haunting tale, one that is demonstrative of
the worst of mankind, yet is also exemplary of the best that people can do
when motivated to do the right thing. It is the story of one woman’s search
to restore a victim’s dignity by returning her name, and the enlightened
efforts of a cold case detective and his law-enforcement agency to bring a
killer to justice.
Life begins with a name and a spanking, and in the end, the name is all
that remains. For most, life ends peacefully, surrounded by loved ones who
reminisce on the many years of happiness the departed brought into their
lives. The perils of life, however, are many and often cut short the years.
These dangers recognize no age, gender, or race and bring sorrow and sad-
ness into a place where love and happiness once reigned. Accident, disease,
and other misfortunes are seldom reported in the headlines of the day, but
one manner of death stands out among all others—murder.
By varying degrees of violence, the lives of young and old murder
victims are most often snuffed out quickly. Sometimes they know their
killers, sometimes they do not. For some, death is lingering and slow and
they ultimately pass on in whatever comfort may be available, attended by
doctors and family. In either case, law-enforcement agencies respond to
identify and apprehend the perpetrator of a crime historically considered

xv

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 xvi Foreword

mala en se, and what passes for justice for victims and their families proceeds
according to law.
Some are not so lucky, however. After receiving fatal wounds, they
are not surrounded by clean sheets and those who care. These victims lie
in isolated surroundings, trembling in fear and horror while the body shuts
down. Baked by the sun or shivering in terrible cold, they are unable to
move as minutes turn into hours, or even days, and ultimately they die.
Alone and afraid, their only companions are the predators drawing near.
If the victims are found and identified within a reasonable time, law
enforcement may solve their murders. From historical times to the pres-
ent, identification of the victim is a primary requisite in solving criminal
homicide. Only then can police seek to learn who had the motive, the op-
portunity, and the means—known in the trade as “MOM.”
But not all murders are solved. They never have been and probably
never will. While we have seen unprecedented advances in forensics and
police practices in the past half century, even the best of these today cannot
always help us if we cannot identify the victims. Once living, breathing hu-
man beings with families and dreams, the bodies often cannot contribute to
solving the cases if we do not know who they are. While law enforcement
usually does its best, if a case cannot be solved using means and forensics
available at the time, it becomes an unsolved murder—popularly termed a
“cold case” homicide.
As the years pass, those with missing loved ones move on, wondering
“What happened? Where are they? Will I ever know?” They, also, are victims
of the senseless crime. Similarly, those who investigated the events move on
in their careers; they are promoted, transferred, and ultimately retire. As the
investigation grows more distant, even they pass away. And life goes on.
If the unnamed victims are not cremated, most are buried simply in
paupers’ graves at public expense and known to the world only as “John
Doe” or “Jane Doe.” For these departed, justice is an elusive dream and the
killer moves on—perhaps to kill again.
For some, however, there is occasionally hope. A hope that arises from
unexpected sources. For Boulder Jane Doe, that hope was local historian
and researcher Silvia Pettem and the Boulder County, Colorado, Sheriff’s
Office. Driven by a compelling curiosity and a historian’s mission to seek
the truth and find justice, Pettem approached her local sheriff with a plan
and a vision. Could they utilize modern forensic and investigative techniques to
identify this young woman, even, perhaps, to solve her crime almost fifty years
later? What resulted is perhaps unprecedented in modern law-enforcement
investigations.

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 Foreword xvii

Silvia Pettem did not fit the profile, if there is such a thing, of a citizen
detective. This middle-aged mother had no police training, no desire to
solve crimes. She simply wanted to see a wrong made right; in doing so, she
demonstrated the power of one person in our society. It did not take long
for her to realize that her naive sense of right and wrong would run head-
long into the realities of criminal investigation in the homicide arena. Good
intentions were tempered with the realities of law and law enforcement as
she learned that the cops have restraints; they have policies and procedures
which, while often not making sense to the uninformed, are there for a
purpose. In this way, she experienced the same frustrations that confront
investigators on a daily basis, but of which the public is generally unaware.
Her desire to return Boulder Jane Doe to her family was confounded by
modern-day confidentiality restraints and the objective, unbiased processes
of homicide investigation. She wanted to find the woman’s name; they
wanted to find her killer.
From her rural mountain home, Pettem made contacts and won al-
lies to her cause around the nation. The internet, unfathomable fifty years
ago, became an umbilical cord that stretched coast to coast as volunteer
researchers augmented the official investigation with bits and pieces of in-
formation gained from sources not commonly found in the usual homicide
investigation, but of significant importance in a cold case investigation.
Cold case investigators often have to “color outside the box” and Pettem
and the detectives did just that. Each gave many hours of their lives in a
joint effort to give Boulder Jane Doe back her name and her dignity, sacri-
ficing time with their families in search of answers. From the Philadelphia-
based Vidocq Society, a nationally acclaimed cold case homicide resource,
to America’s Most Wanted and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences,
Pettem told Jane Doe’s story.
It was an almost unholy alliance. Highly regarded forensic experts from
the Vidocq Society came forward and volunteered pro bono to help ex-
hume the young woman’s remains and to reconstruct not only her skull and
face but also her final hours of life. Dedicated sheriff’s personnel and others
went the extra mile to solve the crime, each succumbing to that obsessive,
compulsive desire to learn the truth about events a half century before. In
the course of their efforts they opened the pages of a book looking backward
in time, gaining insights into the past, into life in a different era and police
practices and forensics that seem prehistoric by modern standards.
I have read the same book. I have experienced the same compulsive
and obsessive drive to learn the truth behind a crime perpetrated decades in
the past. My experiences involved a series of murders and alleged rapes that

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 xviii Foreword

occurred in the heart of the Prohibition Era amid a criminal justice system
marked by gross political corruption. As have Pettem and the detectives, I
spent years digging for clues from attics to archives, traveling thousands of
miles to interview elderly citizens about events sixty years earlier and ex-
periencing the frustrations that come when one tries to unravel the past—a
past that seemingly does not want to be unraveled.
In my case, a young Native American, by now deceased, spent more
than forty years in prison and on parole for crimes he did not commit. While
the genesis of Pettem’s efforts began while reading the inscription on a small
headstone in a local cemetery, the first clues in my case came with second-
hand statements by one of the alleged rape victims before her death. This was
the beginning of my thirteen-year trek to seek justice and win a complete
pardon on the grounds of innocence for a young cowboy. I did identify a
living killer, but in the end, the pardon was more important. Like Pettem, I
had never investigated a murder before, and did it all on my own time and
expense. Along the way I learned to be resourceful as I sought to synthesize
the old with the new to find the truth, and ultimately the case was officially
reactivated. The truth is there, but the dust of the decades must be blown
away to reveal it. The dust is deeper in some cases than in others.
Forensics, the application of science to law, is a fascinating subject.
Almost daily the media reports the cases of those convicted by science, and
occasionally, those exonerated. DNA and other discoveries have revolu-
tionized the field of investigation, but despite these modern marvels, old-
fashioned shoe leather is still what solves cases. The saga of Boulder Jane
Doe blends the old with the new and exemplifies the teamwork that cold
case investigations require.
For these Boulder investigators, law and citizen alike, the issues com-
mon to many cold case investigations became apparent very early on. Lack
of original written records and photographs necessitated rebuilding the case
from scratch, which is to say, by reading newspaper accounts and starting
from there. Newspapers are staples of cold case reconstruction, a treasure
trove of information, including names, dates, investigation summaries, and
photographs. Other frustrations arose, including red herrings, false leads,
and emerging hopes and expectations dashed by tenacious investigation:
commonalities in the daily course of cold case investigation.
Pettem’s story and the efforts of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office
offer revealing insight into a potential slayer, a notorious serial killer whose
crimes became the driving force behind the establishment of the FBI’s Vio-
lent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) at Quantico, Virginia. For
more than twenty years now, this unit has tracked serial killers and others

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 Foreword xix

and provided significant assistance to law enforcement nationwide. Chill-

ingly, the investigation reveals potential time and space relationships that
the victim could not have foreseen, but which may have been preordained
by a sociopathic predator.
Investigations such as this are expensive. A decades-old paradigm sug-
gests that if these cases are not solved within the first twenty-four to sev-
enty-two hours, the chances of solving the case rapidly plunge. People get
their stories straight, the suspect gets away, and the likelihood of recovering
evidence diminishes. Ultimately, when the case is reactivated, those who
need to be located and reinterviewed have often scattered to all points in
the nation. This adds to the cost of the investigation. These and other issues
are considerations to those who administer budgets, and who have opposed
reopening decades-old cases. Instead of being viewed as unsolved cases of
murder, they are viewed in light of allocation of budgetary resources. Thus
begs the question “What is the value of human life?”
This case, however, illustrates enlightened official approaches to such
investigations. It demonstrates the commitment of those in modern law
enforcement to adapt and to move forward in a responsible manner that
balances the need for prudent management of resources with a commit-
ment to ensuring public safety and sending the message that the law does
not forget. We can learn many lessons from this experience.
This effort was rewarding by far. Boulder Jane Doe acquired a legacy
as well as a new and extended family. After all was said and done, she did
not die nor will she rest in obscurity. The more we learn about victims,
the more we may, on occasion, begin to take them into our hearts. After
all, we are their last hope for whatever passes for justice. Pettem, sheriff’s
detectives, members of Vidocq, and others all came to take this unknown
waif into their hearts as they sought to close the book on this crime. In the
end, they ultimately acknowledged the victim’s life and brought answers to
others they encountered along the way who suffered from their own cases
of assault and missing persons. Thus, from bad came good.
It is this ending, perhaps, that marks the success of their efforts and
restores the victim’s dignity. Even in those homicides that we solve, we do
not always learn all the answers. In this case, perhaps we never will. But
we learned a lot and have laid the foundation for the future. What will the
future hold? Only time will tell . . .

Richard H. Walton
Author, Cold Case Homicides:
Practical Investigative Techniques

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all we had to do was to cruise around in the launch and pick up the
floats and haul in the bale. It was my part of the business to dispose
of the opium after we had got it into town. I sold it to a German
who distributed it through Chinatown.
The first year I was perfectly happy with Moy Kip, and no white man
could have treated me better than he did. He named me “Hak
Chu”—the black pearl—and nothing was too good for me. But still
we didn’t count for much in Chinatown, for Moy Kip was still
considered an actor, and below the notice of merchants. It seemed
to be as much a question of money as anywhere else in the world,
and until we could save enough up to buy a share in some store, we
were less than nobody, except at the theatre, where they were
always glad to see us both. We often went to see the plays, until,
with my husband’s explanations, I got so I could follow the acting
pretty well.
It’s right interesting when you begin to understand, for everything in
the theatre means something. Moy Kip explained to me how the
carved and gilded dragon over the doors leading to the dressing-
rooms meant a water-spout, and the sign beside it read, “Go out and
change costume.”
They have lots of different kinds of plays, and some of them take
weeks to go through, running night after night until all the doings of
the hero are finished.
One night while we were sitting on the stage in the theatre watching
a new Wae, or painted-face comedian, who had come from China to
take Moy Kip’s place, a man came to my husband with a letter. You
know, in Chinese theatres they have a special column where letters
for anybody in the audience can be pinned up, and this one had
been seen by some one who knew Kip was there. When he read it I
could see that it had bad news. He got up right off, and told me we
must go home.
When we were safe in our house, he told me what was the matter.
The letter was from the president of a highbinder tong. They had
discovered that we were making money some way, and now that if
Moy Kip didn’t pay five thousand dollars right off, he would be
murdered by their hatchet-men. Oh, I was scared! I tried to make
my husband promise to pay the hush-money, but he just wouldn’t do
it. He said he might as well die as be robbed of all he had earned at
so much risk. He said he wasn’t afraid, but if he wasn’t, I was.
From this time on, I had the horrors every time he left me. While we
were together on our trips on the launch, I didn’t care so much, for
the excitement kept up my spirits, but as soon as I was left alone I
burned punks in front of his little joss, just like I was a heathen
myself.
All went on so quiet that I had begun to feel easier, when yesterday
the City of Pekin was reported. It was after dark before we got out
to our wharf and put off, and we passed the steamer at the
Quarantine Station. It was cold and foggy, and we spent hours
cruising out at the mouth of the harbor, in a rough swell, before we
picked up the opium and steamed back to Hunter’s Point.
As we stopped the engines and shot up to the pier, I was steering in
the bow, and Moy Kip was at the engine. Just then I saw two men
rise up from behind a pile on the dock. I screamed to my husband to
reverse the engine and back off at full speed, and he had just done
it when the highbinders jumped into the boat. The shock nearly
rolled her over, and I fell down on my face. Before I could get up, I
saw the hatchet-men strike at Moy Kip two or three times. I drew
my pistol and fired, but the launch was rolling, so I reckon I missed
them. They jumped into the water and swam off. Then I called out
to Moy Kip and ran aft to help him.
My husband didn’t answer. I stooped down to him and turned him
over—oh, it was horrible!—and then I must have swooned away, for
it’s the last thing I remember.
I know the ways of these hired hatchet-men. They’ve been sold out
time after time by their own members, and so now when they go
out for a murder they write down a confession with both names
signed on the same paper. Then they tear it up and divide the
pieces, each one having the other’s name to hold him by, if his
partner tries to sell him out. Wong Yet’s confession is on this paper
you found. He’ll die to-night—murderers can be bought cheap in
Chinatown. Now, if I only had the other half of the paper I’d know
who the second man was, and settle him, too.
By this time the dilapidated laundry wagon had threaded the
Mission, crossed Market Street, and was rolling along the asphalt of
Golden Gate Avenue on its way to the Chinese Quarter. The
quadroon woman’s eyes were afire with hate, and Vango watched
her in apprehension, mingled with a shrewd desire to work further
upon her excitement.
“You see I was able to be of assistance, even when conditions was
unfavorable,” he ventured. “The spirits is unfallible to instruct when a
party approaches ’em right. If I could give you a regular sittin’ and
get into perfect harmony with the vibrations of my control’s
magnetism, I ain’t no doubt I could lead you to find the balance of
that there paper.”
The wheel of the wagon caught in the street-car rail and the medium
was jerked almost off his seat. Or, so an observer might have
explained the sudden lurch and the way Vango’s face went white.
But his imagination or mania, kindled again by the craft of his
trickery, had conjured up the vision of his previous dupe, and Mrs.
Higgins’s spirit arose before him in threatening attitude. He cowered
and stared, exorcising the phantom, rubbing his hands in terror.
But the quadroon woman did not notice. Her mind, too, was full of
horrors, and the desire for vengeance was an obsession. She only
replied, “One thousand dollars if you find that piece of paper before
night!”
 CHAPTER VIII
THE HERO’S ADVENTURE: THE MYSTERY OF
THE HAMMAM

“T en cents!” Admeh Drake muttered to himself, as he felt the

first shock of the cool breeze on Kearney Street, “what in
Jericho can a man do with a dime, anyway? It won’t even buy a
decent bed; it won’t pay the price of a drink at the Hoffman Bar.
Coffee John is full of prunes!”
He walked up the cheap side of the street, looking aimlessly at the
shop windows. “I figure it out about this way,” he thought, “I ain’t
going to earn a million with two nickels; if I make a raise, it’ll be just
by durn luck. So it don’t matter how I begin, nor what I do at all. I
just got to go it blind, and trust to striking a trail that’ll lead to water.
I’ll take up with the first idea I get, and ride for it as far as it goes.”
With this decision, he gave up the unnecessary strain of thought and
floated with the human current, letting it carry him where it would.
Now the main Gulf Stream of San Francisco life sets down Kearney
and up Market Street; this is the Rialto, the promenade of cheap
actors, rounders and men about town. It is the route of the amatory
ogler and the grand tour of the demi-monde. Of a Saturday
afternoon the course is given over to human peacocks and
popinjays, fresh from the matinees, airing “the latest” in garb and
finery; but there is a late guard abroad after the theatres close in
the evening, when the relieving prospect of an idle morrow gives a
merry license for late hours and convivial comradeship. Among these
raglans and opera-cloaks, Admeh’s rusty brown jacket was carried
along like an empty bottle floating down stream.
He turned into Market Street at Lotta’s Fountain, and had drifted a
block northerly, when the brilliant letters of an electric sign across
the way caught his eye: “Biograph Theatre. Admittance, ten cents.”
The hint was patent and alluring; there seemed to be no gainsaying
such a tip from Fate. Over he went with never a thought as to where
he would spend the night without money, and in two minutes Coffee
John’s dime slid under the window of the little ticket office in front.
“Hurry up!” said the man in the box, “the performance is just about
to begin.”
Admeh made his way upstairs, passed through a corridor lined with
a cheap and unnecessary display of dried fishes in a long glass case,
and came to the entrance of a dingy hall, dimly illuminated. At the
far end of the sloping floor was a Lilliputian stage. A scant score of
spectators were huddled together on the front seats and here
Admeh took his place, between two soldiers in khaki uniform and a
fat negress.
As he sat down, the curtain rose and two comedians entered, to go
through a dreary specialty turn of the coarsest “knockabout”
description. Admeh yawned. Even the negress was bored, and the
two infantry corporals sneered openly. Next came a plump lady of
uncertain age who carolled a popular song and did a frisky side-step
to the chorus.
Admeh was gloomily disappointed. He turned his head to inspect the
audience more closely, hoping for some livelier prompting of his
destiny, when with a trill and a one—two—three accompaniment
upon the wheezy piano at the side of the stage, a little soubrette ran
down to the footlights, and with a mighty fetching seriousness,
rolling her eyes to the ceiling, proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen,
with your kind permission, I will now endeavor to entertain you with
a few tricks of sleight-of-hand.”
She was a wee thing with wistful brown eyes under a curly blond
wig, and seemingly a mere child. Her costume was a painful
combination of blue and violet, home-made beyond a doubt. No one
could help looking a guy in such a dress, but Maxie Morrow, as the
placard on the proscenium announced her, had a childish
ingenuousness that forfended criticism.
As she went through her foolish little performance, audibly coached
by some one in the wings, Admeh’s eyes followed her with eager
interest. He wondered how much older she was than she looked,
and what she would be like off the stage. She had a piquant rather
than a pretty face, in form that feline triangle depicted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds. In her movements she was as graceful and as swiftly
accurate as a kitten, and she had all a kitten’s endearing and alluring
charm.
Admeh made a sudden resolve. If he were to meet with an
adventure that night, what could possibly be more entertaining than
to have for his heroine this little puss of a magician? He made a
rapid study of the situation to discover its possibilities. It took but a
few minutes for his wishes to work out a plan of action, and he was
soon at the door urbanely addressing the ticket-taker.
“See here,” said Admeh, “I’m a reporter on the Wave—you know the
paper, weekly illustrated—and I want an interview with Miss Morrow.
I’ll give her a good write-up if you’ll let me go behind and talk to
her.”
The Biograph Theatre did not often figure in the dramatic columns of
the city papers, and such a free advertisement was not to be
refused. The doorkeeper became on the instant effusively polite and,
bustling with importance, took the young man down a side aisle to a
door and up three stairs through a passage leading behind the
wings. Admeh was shown into a tiny dressing-room whose scrawled
plaster walls were half covered with skirts, waists, and properties of
all kinds. The little magician was in front of her make-up table,
dabbing at the rouge pot. The doorkeeper introduced the visitor,
then discreetly withdrew, closing the door after him.
At her discovery by this audacious representative of the press, Maxie
was all smiles and blushes. She was still but little more than a girl,
although not quite so young as she had appeared in front of the
footlights, and more naïve and embarrassed than one would have
expected of such a determined little actress. She offered Admeh her
own chair, the only one in the room, but he seated himself upon a
trunk and began the conversation.
All his tact was necessary to put her at her ease and induce her to
talk. The Hero of Pago Bridge was by no means too ready with his
tongue, usually, in the presence of women, but there was something
in the touching admiration she betrayed for him as a newspaper man
that prevented him from being bashful. He thought the brotherly
attitude to be the proper pose, under the circumstances, and he led
her on, talking of the theatre, the weather, her costume and himself,
while she sat awkwardly conscious of her violet tights, which she
slapped nervously with a little whip. His careless, friendly way at last
gave her confidence, for he asked her few questions and did not
seem to expect clever replies. Before long she had thrown off all
reserve and chatted freely to him.
The Biograph Theatre kept open, as a rule, as long as it could secure
patronage. This night stragglers kept coming in, so that the four
“artists” and the picture machine in the room below still went
through their weary routine. As the conversation proceeded, Maxie
left at times, went through her act and returned, finding Admeh
always ready to put her upon the thread of her story.
So, by bits and snatches, by repetitions and parentheses, in an
incident here and a confession there, this is about the way Admeh
Drake heard, that night, in Maxie Morrow’s dressing-room
 THE STORY OF THE MINOR CELEBRITY

I can’t really remember when I wasn’t acting, and I have no idea

who my parents were, or where I was born, or when, or anything.
I think, though, I must be about nineteen years old, though I don’t
look it, and I have decided on the first of July for my birthday,
because that’s just the middle of the year and it can’t possibly be
more than six months wrong. I used to go on in child’s parts in
London when I couldn’t have been more than four.
Then, the next thing I remember, I was with a company of Swiss
bell-ringers, and we travelled all through the English provinces. I
used to sing and dance in between their turns, and I tell you it was
hard work, practising all day and dancing all night, almost. We were
all fearfully poor, for we weren’t very much of an attraction. I had
only one frock beside my stage costume, and that one was so
patched I was ashamed to go to the pork shop, even, with it on. I
was a regular little slave to old Max, who ran the company, and had
to help cook and wash the dishes in the lodgings we took in the little
towns. Bah! I hate the smell of brown Windsor soap to this day. I
was just a little wild animal, for I never went to school a day in my
life, and I was never allowed to go out on errands alone, unless they
kept account of the exact time it would take to go and come, and
they held me to account for every minute. I hardly think I ever
talked to a child till I was grown up.
Well, the business fell off in England, so we took passage in a sailing
ship for California, around the Horn. That voyage was the happiest
time of my life, for I had nothing to do but practise my steps one or
two hours a day, when the sea was calm enough. There was a very
nice old lady aboard who taught me how to sew, and gave me some
flannel to make myself some underwear, for I had never worn
anything but what showed before, and I didn’t even know that
anyone else ever did. She taught me to read, too, and tried to help
me with arithmetic, but mercy! I never could get figures into my
head.
Well, we got to San Francisco finally—that was about ten years ago.
Bell-ringing didn’t seem to take very well; it was out of date, or
other people did it better, because you know specialty people have
to keep improving their act, and play on their heads, or while they’re
tumbling through the air, or some novelty, nowadays, or it doesn’t go
and it’s hard to get booked. But my act drew well, and it always
saved our turn. I made up new steps all the time and invented
pretty costumes, and so, of course, old Max watched me like grim
death to see that I didn’t get away from him. We travelled all over
the West, and all the time I was a drudge, did most of the work and
got none of the money. They used to lock me into the house when
they went out, and old Max’s wife would give me so much work to
do that she’d know whether I’d been idle a moment. You wouldn’t
think a girl in a fix like that had much chance to get married, would
you?
Well, I am married, or rather I was. I don’t know just how I stand
now. Let me tell you about it.
There was a man used to hang about the Star Variety Theatre in Los
Angeles, who did small parts sometimes, when they wanted a
policeman in a sketch, or things like that, but he mostly helped with
the scene-shifters. I never had more than a few words with him, but
he kind of took a fancy to me, and he used to bring me candy and
leave it behind the flats where the others wouldn’t see it. I don’t
believe, now, he ever cared so very much for me, but I was silly and
had never had any attention, and I thought he was in love with me,
and I imagined I was with him. He tried to make up to Max, but the
old man wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
One day, when all my people were out and had locked me in the
house, with a lot of dishes to wash, Harry—his name was Harry
Maidslow—came down the street and saw me at the kitchen
window. I raised the sash when he came into the yard, and without
waiting for much talk first, for we were both afraid the old man
would be coming back and would catch us, Harry asked me if I
didn’t want to leave the show, and if I wouldn’t run away with him.
I believe I told him I’d run away with an orangoutang if I got the
chance. Remember, I was only seventeen, and I had never been
alone with a man in my life before. In my life—if you call such
slavery as that, living! So he told me not to appear to notice him,
but to be all ready for him and to watch out, and when I heard a
certain whistle he taught me, wherever I was, to jump and run for
him, and he’d do the rest.
You can imagine if I wasn’t excited for the next few days! I would
have jumped off the roof to get to him, if necessary, and I just
waited from hour to hour, expecting to hear his call every minute. I
didn’t hardly dare to go to sleep at night for fear I’d miss him, and I
was listening everywhere I went, meals and all. I think I trembled
for three days. It seemed impossible that he’d be able to get me
away; it was too good to come true. But I had nothing else in the
world to look forward to, and I hoped and prayed for that whistle
with all my might.
One night at the theatre, after my company had done the first part
of their bell-ringing, I went on for my song. I remember it was that
purple silk frock I wore, the one with the gold fringe, and red
stockings with bows at the knees. Well, the orchestra had just struck
up my air—
“Ain’t I the cheese? Ain’t I the cheese?
Dancing the serpentine under the trees!”

and I was just ready to catch the first note when I heard that
whistle so loud and clear I couldn’t mistake it. Heavens! I can almost
hear it now. I was half frightened to death, but I just shut my eyes
and jumped clean over the footlights and landed in the flageolet’s
lap and then pelted right up the middle aisle. Harry had a lot of his
friends ready by the main entrance, and they rushed down to meet
me and while half of them held the ushers and the crowd back, for
everyone was getting up to see what was the matter, like a panic,
the rest of the boys took me by the elbows and ran me out the front
door. The house was simply packed that night, and when they all
saw me jump they set up a yell like the place was afire. But I didn’t
hear it at all till I got out in the corridor with my skirt half torn off
and my dancing clogs gone—and then the noise sounded like a lion
roaring in a menagerie.
Harry was all ready waiting for me, and he took me right up in his
arms, as if I was a doll, ran down the stairs, put me in a carriage
waiting at the door, and we drove off, lickety-split.
I’ve often thought since then that I took a big risk in trusting a man
I didn’t really know at all, but Harry was square, and took me right
down to a justice of the peace. We were married just as I stood,
with no slippers and the holes in the heels of my stockings showing.
What old Max did, I don’t know, but he must have been a picture for
the audience when he saw me fly away like a bird out of a cage. By
the time he found out what had happened it was too late to do
anything about it, for I was Mrs. Maidslow.
Well, I lived with Harry for a few months, and then he began to
drink and wanted me to go on the stage again to support him. The
first time he struck me I ran away and came up to San Francisco,
and went into specialty work for myself. Harry was kind enough
when he was sober; in fact, he was too good-natured to refuse even
a drink; that was just what was the matter. He had no backbone,
and although he had a sort of romantic way with him that women
like he didn’t have the nerve to stay with anything very long.
Now the funny part of the whole thing is this. You’d think that old
Max would have been furious, and so he was at first, but afterward
he had a terrible falling out with the others in his company—his wife
had died—and I guess he wanted to spite them more than he did
me. At any rate, just before he died, a year ago, he inherited some
money from an uncle in Germany, and what did he do but leave a
kind of a legacy to Harry. That is, the old man had a funny idea that
wills didn’t hold very well in this country, and he had a great respect
for the honor of the army officers. So he left $15,000 in cash with a
Colonel Knowlton in trust for Harry Maidslow when he could be
found. Harry had a way of changing his name when he felt like it,
and old Max didn’t know him very well, anyway, so the only way he
could be sure of Colonel Knowlton identifying him was by—well, by a
certain mark he had on his body that Max happened to know about.
The colonel has been invalided home from the Philippines, and every
time he sees me he asks me if I’ve found Harry.
So, that’s all. I don’t really know whether I’m a wife or a widow, but
I do know that I ought to have a share of that money coming to me,
and perhaps if you put the story into the paper, some of his friends
will see it and give me news of him.

Admeh Drake put his pencil into his pocket feeling a sense of shame
at his duplicity with this little waif. He would have been glad to help
her, but it seemed useless to disappoint her credulity by confessing
that his relations with the press were entirely fictitious. “Well, I hope
you get the money,” he said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help
you, I will. But don’t you want me to see you home, Maxie?”
“Sure!” said the girl, frankly, and after pulling on a rather soiled
automobile coat and adjusting a top-heavy plumed black hat, she
descended the stairs of the theatre with Admeh and they found
themselves on Market Street.
“It’s a little late to get anything to eat,” Admeh suggested,
tentatively, trusting to his luck. He was not disappointed.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied the girl. “I always have supper after I get
home, anyway.”
Half the worry was off his mind, but without a cent in his pocket, the
question of transportation troubled him. If worst came to worst,
Admeh decided that he would take Maxie home in a carriage, see
her safely indoors, and then return and have it out with the driver.
But first he ventured another insinuation. “It’s a beautiful night!” he
remarked. At that moment the fog enveloped the upper half of the
Spreckels Building, and the tall and narrow column was visible only
as an irregular pattern of soft, blurred yellow lights.
“Fine!” said Maxie. “Let’s walk.”
She took his arm blithely, happy at her release from work, and they
crossed over, went up Grant Avenue to Post Street and there turned
toward Union Square. A short distance ahead of them a tall man in a
gray mackintosh was walking with somewhat painful carefulness up
the street. His deviations seemed to testify to a rather jovial
evening’s indulgence. The two rapidly approached him, and Admeh
had scarcely time to notice his yellow beard and hair when the
stranger turned into a doorway. The house he entered was gaudily
painted in red and yellow with stars and crescents, and so fiercely
lighted with electric lamps that no wayfarer, however dazed, could
fail to notice the sign: “Hammam Baths—Gentlemen’s Entrance.”
When Admeh turned to Maxie she was as pale as if she had seen a
ghost. She looked up at him with a glitter in her eyes.
“Here!” she exclaimed, opening her purse and thrusting a dollar into
his hand. “Go in there and see if that man who just went in has the
word ’Dotty’ tattooed on his right arm! Find out who he is, and come
to the theatre and tell me.”
With that she pushed him into the doorway and was gone.
 THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMAM

W ith the enthusiasm of an amateur detective, Admeh Drake paid

his dollar for admission, and passed through two anterooms
into an artificially tropical atmosphere. Turkish baths were a luxury
outside the scheme of things; he knew nothing of the arrangements.
He paused, uncertain how to proceed; uncertain, too, as to the best
plan for catching the yellow-bearded man stripped. While he
hesitated, an attendant showed him into a dressing-room. He saw
naked men passing with towels twisted about their loins.
For the first time in many days, he took off his wrinkled, creased
clothes. Pausing on the balcony without the door, he surveyed the
carpeted, gaudily decorated apartment below. It was midnight, the
busiest hour of the twenty-four in the baths. Heavier than the
atmosphere of steam and steamed humanity rose the fumes of
liquor. Few there are sober in a Hammam at that elbow of the night.
Not knowing that the sweating heat takes the edge and fervor from
the wildest intoxication, Admeh wondered, as he watched, at the
subdued murmur of their babblings. His eye ranged over a group
sitting up in towel robes, chatting drowsily, over a drunken satyr
thrusting his heavy limbs from under the covers and singing a sleepy
tune, over two others sunk in stupor. Beyond them was a group of
jockeys, who had come to reduce weight; all were young, small,
keen-eyed, each was puffing a huge cigar. In that bower of
transformation, where all men stood equal as at the judgment, their
worldly goods shrunk to a single bath towel, he found it hard to pick
his man, yet no one could he see with the clay-yellow hair and beard
that marked the mysterious person for whom he was searching.
Following others who slipped down the stairs in the single, levelling
garment, Admeh went across the main salon, through a double glass
door, and into an ante-chamber considerably hotter, where men
were lolling back, wet and shiny, in canvas chairs. He saw the
rubbers working in the room beyond, saw that the men under their
hands were black and brown of hair and beard.
To the right, another glass door caught his eye. He passed in and
gasped at the heavy, overpowering temperature. His glasses, to
which he had clung with the instinct of a near-sighted man, burned
on his nose. Men, glistening and dripping, sat all along the wall, their
feet in little tubs of water.
In the corner sat the mysterious stranger of the yellow hair and
beard. He was singing sentimentally. Admeh, practised in the lore of
intoxication, watched him. “The jag’s growing,” he said to himself. In
fact, the fumes of liquor, heat driven, were mounting steadily.
Crossing the room, so as to command the stranger’s right side, he
saw round his upper arm a black rubber bandage, like those used to
confine varicose veins. The problem resolved itself into a question of
tearing off that bandage.
“Hotter’n the hazes of the Philippines!” babbled the man with the
yellow beard. Piecing together the description of her husband given
by Maxie in the story of her adventures, Admeh was more than ever
persuaded that this was the object of his search, that under the
elastic bandage was the mark of identification by which he was to
know the legatee of the fortune left by the old bell-ringer.
The man of the yellow beard sang maudlin Orpheum songs and
prattled of many things. He cursed San Francisco. He told of his
amours. He offered to fight or wrestle with anyone in the room. “A
chance,” thought Admeh, as he took the challenge. But in a moment
more, the drunken man was running again on a love-tack, with the
winds of imagination blowing free. Nevertheless, this challenge gave
Admeh an idea. What he could not encompass by diplomacy he
might seize by force. In that method, all must depend upon the
issue of a moment. If he could tear away the bandage in the first
dash he would win. But let the struggle last more than a moment
and others would intervene; then he would be thrown out and the
chance would be gone. Mentally he measured bodies against the
stranger; man for man he saw that, both being sober, he himself
was badly over-matched. Broader and taller by many inches, the
stranger was of thick, knotty limbs, and deep chest; Admeh himself
was all cowboy nerve and wire, but slight and out of condition. It
was bull against coyote.
“The question is,” thought Admeh, “can I and his jag lick him and his
muscle?”
The stranger, singing again, lurched along the hot tiling to another
room. Admeh gasped like a hooked trout as he followed through the
door. It was the extra-hot room, where the mercury registered one
hundred and sixty degrees. The stranger’s bristles began to subside
and his lips crept together. The amateur detective drew nearer and,
languid as he was with the terrific heat, gathered his force for the
attempt. At that moment an attendant with trays of ice water
slouched in on his felt shoes. Admeh slipped back into his chair.
This entrance had a most surprising effect on him of the yellow
beard. Some emotion, which Admeh took to be either fear or
anxiety, struggled to break through the veil of his debauch; he
stared with bleary but intent eyes. In a moment he was lurching for
the door. Glad of the relief from that overwhelming heat, Admeh
followed. The trail led through the anteroom, past the rubbers and
their benches, through another double glass door. A rush of steam
fogged his spectacles; when it cleared a little, he saw dimly, through
the hot vapor, that he was in a long, narrow closet, banked on one
side by benches and by pipes which were vomiting clouds of steam.
Groping from one side to the other, he found that they were quite
alone.
With no further hesitation, Admeh rushed on his man and grasped
for the right arm.
By the fraction of an inch he missed his hold. The stranger, with a
quickness amazing for one in his condition—and what was more
surprising, without a word—lashed out and caught Admeh a blow
under the chest which whirled him back on the hot benches and
fairly jerked his spectacles from his nose. The issue was on, and it
was first honors for the stranger. Unsteady on his legs, but still
determined, Admeh closed again, ducked under a ponderous blow
and grappled round the waist. He managed to get one hand on the
bandage, but in no wise could he tear it away, for the stranger held
him in a bear-grip, tight about the neck. So they struggled and
grunted and swayed through the misty clouds from the hot benches
to the slippery floor and back to the benches again. Their bodies,
what with the exertion and the steam, ran rivulets; their throats
were gasping. Once, twice, they staggered the room’s length.
Admeh was beginning to feel his breath and his senses going
together, when the grasp about his neck slackened in tension.
“I and the jag win,” he thought, with what sense was left in him. He
gathered his strength into its last cartridge, and gave a heave and a
fling; they went down to the floor with a wet slap, Admeh above. He
felt his opponent collapse under him. For a moment he, too, saw the
universe swing round him, but with a great effort he tore away the
bandage and pressed his near-sighted eyes close to the right arm.
There, in faded colours, was a tattooed design on the white skin.
Admeh made out the word “Dotty,” framed in a border of twisted
snakes. His quest was done. Faint, weary, languid, he prepared to
get away before his assault was discovered. The door opened; some
one caught Admeh by the arm. With no more fight in him, he raised
himself to one knee and recognised the attendant, the sight of
whom had before so nearly sobered his drunken opponent.
“What the devil——” said the new-comer, and stopped as his eye
caught that mark on the arm. Then he bent down, passed his finger
over the design, studied it, and peered into the white, senseless face
behind the yellow beard.
“My work—it is the very man!” he exclaimed, in tones of the greatest
interest. Turning to Admeh he asked:
“Now why did you want to know about that mark, and what were
you scrapping for?”
“What do you know about him?” retorted Admeh.
“Story for story,” said the attendant.
“Story for story, swapped sight unseen,” agreed Admeh. “But let’s
get him out of here first, because he’s in a pretty bad fix between
his fight and his jag.” Together they carried him to a dressing-room,
laid him on a bench, and closed the curtain. Here Admeh’s last spark
of strength left him; he collapsed in a heap on the floor. With
practised hands the attendant set about reviving them both. In ten
minutes the man of mystery slept heavily, stupidly, on the bench,
and Admeh was sitting against the wall breathing cool relief from the
outer air. Briefly, he told of his singular errand, omitting, from some
hazy idea of policy, the item about the legacy.
“Well,” said the rubber, after Admeh Drake had finished his tale,
“your yarn certainly is curious, but I can beat it. What d’you think of
this?—I tattooed that name and mark on this fellow’s arm, and I
know the history of it, but he has no idea to this day how it ever
come there, nor who ’Dotty’ is, nor why I did it, nor anything at all
about it. He was the hero of as queer a yarn as I ever heard, and he
knew no more about it all the time than a babe unborn!”
He rang an electric bell; a boy answered.
“Tell the boss to send for the extra man,” he said. “I’m done up for
to-night, and I’m going to lay off for a while.”
So saying, he took Drake into an adjoining room, shared by the
employees of the baths, and, after making himself comfortable on a
lounge with a blanket wrapper, he told the following joyous
romance:
 THE STORY OF THE DERMOGRAPH ARTIST

Y ou see, this ain’t my regular job. I’m working here because my

profession is played out in San Francisco. I’m a dermograph
artist. What’s that? Oh, it’s what most people call a tattooer. But
don’t you think we’ve got as much right to be called artists as the
fellows that slap paint on cloth with a brush? I think so. Is anything
nicer than the human skin? Don’t you fix up your walls and your
ceilings, and your floors that you wipe your feet on? Then what’s the
matter with decorating yourself? That’s the line of talk I always gave
people when they asked me why I called myself a dermograph artist.
It was the electric needle and the Jap tattooer that ran me out of
business. With the electric needle, a man could put on a design in
about a quarter of the time that it takes to do a real artistic job by
hand. The blamed little Jap would pretty near pay to get a customer,
he worked that cheap. I quit, and I never get out my needles now
except for a design on some one in the baths.
My parlours were on the water-front, because most of my customers
were sailors. Of course, once in a while some swells from Nob Hill
would come in for a design or two. I used to do my best work for
them, because, I thought, you never can tell when these society
people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a
mile on a painting. Why, the other day I read in the papers that a
Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for a little, dinky canvas
painting. The highest pay I ever knew a dermograph artist to get
was five hundred for doing the Wells Brothers’ tattooed woman. Do
you call that square?
After the Jap and the electric needle chump came to town, business
fell off, as I was telling you. They’d have made me close up my shop
and get out if it hadn’t been for Spotty Crigg. Ever hear of him? Well,
you sure haven’t been in San Francisco long. In those days he kept a
sailor boarding-house and saloon round the corner from my
parlours, and he was sort of boss of the water-front—good any time
to deliver five hundred votes. I ain’t saying that Spotty was a
Sunday-school kind of man, but he stuck to his friends. I was one of
the gang, so he sent me enough jobs to keep me going. Besides, I
helped him once or twice on a shanghaing deal. You see, like most
sailor boarding-house keepers in those days, he was a crimp—used
to deliver a sailor or two when foremast hands were scarce and the
pay was good. Spotty Crigg is dead now, or I wouldn’t be telling you
about his last and biggest shanghaing scrape. I didn’t understand it
at the time, but I learned about it afterward, part from Crigg and
part from people on the other side of the little deal.
One of my society customers was young Tom Letterblair. Maybe you
don’t know about him, either. He belonged to about the richest tribe
of swells on Nob Hill. That fellow was as wild as a fish-hawk, a
thoroughbred dead game sport. His being wild didn’t bother his
people so much as the way he went about it—always doing
something crazy. His people were strong on getting into the society
columns of the papers, but he was eternally getting the family name
on the news pages of the yellow journals, if not in the police reports.
He wasn’t really what you would call bad, either; only wild and
careless and brought up wrong, and stubborn about it when anyone
tried to call him down. He’d never seem sorry if he got the family
into trouble, but just laugh at his sisters when they roasted him. And
instead of treating him quiet and easy, and gentling him into being
good, they’d jaw him. That’s a bad scheme with a gilded youth like
Tom Letterblair.
They were a bunch of orphans. That was half the trouble.
Finally, Tom Letterblair took up with a chorus girl and refused to
drop her. The family tried to buy her off. Now she wasn’t a nice sort
of girl, but she was true to Tom. She told him about it. For once,
although he was such a careless fellow, he got mad and what does
he do but come to me to have her name, “Dotty,” tattooed on his
arm with the double snake border. Says he to me confidentially,
“That’s the girl I’m going to marry when I come of age, which is only
two months, and don’t you forget it.” Seems that he told other
people the same thing, so that it came back to his family.
Now his sisters and the Eastern society swells that they were
married to didn’t hanker any to have Dotty for a sister-in-law. But
they knew by experience that if Tom Letterblair said he’d do it, all
blazes wouldn’t hold him. J. Thrasher Sunderland, one of Tom’s
brothers-in-law, had what he thought was a bright idea. It was to
get the kid shanghaied on a sailing vessel off for a six months’
voyage.
That wasn’t such a bad scheme either. They could keep him away
from Dotty and drink for six months, have him work hard, and make
a man out of him. It’s been done before right in this port. That wild
streak is a kind of disease that strikes young fellows with too much
blood in their necks and money in their pockets. I know. I’ve had it
myself, bar the money. By six months, what doctors call the crisis
would have been over. The risky thing was the chance of raising a
howl when he got back, but they were willing to take chances that
the sense knocked into him with a belaying pin would make him see
it their way. They were going to give it out to the papers and their
friends that he was off for his health.
J. Thrasher Sunderland made his first break when he went to
Captain Wynch of the bark Treasure Trove, instead of going straight
to a crimp, as he ought to have done. Wynch promised to treat the
kid well and try to brace him up. Never having seen Tom Letterblair
he got a description of him, including the tattoo mark. Then the
skipper went to Spotty Crigg and promised him a hundred dollars for
doing the rough work of getting Tom on board the vessel.
Letterblair was such a big, careless fellow, he never suspected
anything, and a lure note fetched him to Crigg’s saloon the night
before the bark cleared. Tom had been drinking hard that day—
showed up badly slewed. ’Twas a jolly drunk, and he was ready for a
glass with anyone.
Now, Crigg hadn’t given much thought to this little transaction, for
he was doing that sort of work almost every day in the week. But
when that young swell, all dressed up to the nines, came into the
“Bowsprit” saloon, the looks of him put a brand-new idea into
Spotty’s noddle. It struck him that a hundred dollars was pretty small
pay for catching a fish of that size and colour; there was evidently a
big deal on somewhere. Like everyone else that read the papers, he
knew considerable about Tom Letterblair, knew him for a young
sport, free as water with his money. Putting two and two together,
he saw that if he could save the kid instead of stealing him, there
might be a good many times a hundred in the affair. Besides, there
was a chance of finding out who was trying to get the shanghaing
done, and then collecting blackmail. So he decided to play both
ends. He would steal the wrong man, and hold on to the right one.
He ran his eye around the place and saw Harry Maidslow, a scene-
shifter in the old Baldwin Theatre, who used to drop in, now and
then, on his nights off. Man for man, Maidslow and Letterblair were
modelled on the same lines—Maidslow wore a moustache, but that
would come off easy enough—yellow hair, blue eyes, big and strong
build. Maidslow hadn’t a relative this side of the Rockies; no one
would miss him. Crigg knew that.
Spotty Crigg went so far in his mind before he thought of the tattoo
mark. Captain Wynch had mentioned it as the proof that there was
no mistake. And then, Crigg thought of me. I suppose lots of people
would have stopped there, but Spotty Crigg had nerve, I’ll say that
for him—nerve of a thousand.
He worked Letterblair to drink himself to sleep, and then had him
packed upstairs and put to bed, dead to the world. The next move
was easy. Crigg took Harry Maidslow into his office, fed him
knockout drops, and carried him up into the same room with
Letterblair. Side by side he laid them both, and stripped them to
undershirts.
That was the way I found them when a hurry call brought me to the
boarding-house. I thought at first they were both dead. It gave me
the horrors to hear Crigg tell me that I was to copy that tattoo mark.
’Twas like working on a dead man. One drunk, the other drugged,
lying on a little, cheap old bed and Spotty, who wasn’t a nice, clean-
looking sort of person anyway, leaning over them with a candle.
When he told what he wanted, I kicked until he put on the screws.
He could drive me off the water-front if he cared. I knew that, and
he reminded me of it, besides offering me fifty dollars. So at last I
went at it, he telling me all the time to hurry. I never worked so fast
in my life. By two hours you couldn’t tell one mark from the other,
except that Maidslow’s was new and Letterblair’s old. Next we
shaved Maidslow’s mustache off, for Tom always wore a smooth
face. Then we changed their clothes, putting the swell rig on
Maidslow and the old clothes on Letterblair.
Next, Spotty Crigg took Maidslow, got him into a hack, drove him to
a dory he had waiting, and rowed out to the Treasure Trove, which
was in the stream waiting to sail next morning. Captain Wynch was
cussing purple because Spotty had been so long. He went over the
description, though, and looked at the right arm to make sure, just
as Crigg expected him to do. It looked all right, because a tattoo
mark don’t begin to swell until the day after; besides, Wynch was
seeing it under a fo’castle lamp.
It was all right so far. But Crigg, who wasn’t so keen by a jugful as
he thought he was, hadn’t figured on one thing. The Letterblairs had
an aunt, Mrs. Burden, a widow without chick or child of her own.
She was an old, religious lady, with oodles of money and a whopping
temper—a regular holy terror. She didn’t cotton to the sisters at all;
in fact, hated them, but she was soft over Tom Letterblair. Whenever
she wasn’t turning loose her money, stringing hospitals and churches
all the way to Sacramento, she was handing it over to the kid, who
had only an allowance until he got to be twenty-one. He and the
parsons were the only ones who got her to loosen up. She had no
son and I rather guess that on the quiet she had a sneaking liking
for the way he was carrying on. Sort of thrilled her. You know how
some of those pious old girls like a man that’s real bad. She coddled
him to death and fought the sisters for being hard on the boy.
Spotty’s luck turned so that she picked the very next morning for a
show-down with the sisters over the way they were treating the kid.
There must have been a regular hair-pulling. Anyway, before they
got through, Mrs. Sunderland was so mad that she poured out the
whole scheme in one mouthful. She said:
“You won’t have a chance to coddle him any more! He’s on the
Treasure Trove, bound for China to get the foolishness taken out of
him. He’s passed the Farralones by this time.”
The old lady was foxy. She would have made a pretty good sport
herself. She shut up like a clam, went home, rushed for the
telephone and called up the wharfinger. She found that the Treasure
Trove was in the stream being towed for the heads, and belonged to
Burke & Coleman, this port. She knew Burke. She got her carriage,
made his office in two jumps, and wouldn’t leave until she had an
order on Captain Wynch to deliver a sailor answering Letterblair’s
description, tattooing and all. In a half-hour more she had a tug
started, chasing the Treasure Trove with that order. She offered the
crew two hundred dollars over regular pay if they got their man back
safe and sound. She herself was afraid of the water, and stayed in
the tug office to wait.
While this was going on, Tom Letterblair woke up. The man
watching him tried to get him drunk again, and the jag turned out
loud and nasty. Crigg saw he’d have to be doing something right off
the bat.
He knew a little how the land lay between Tom and his people, but
not enough. He was sure that some one of Tom’s relatives had done
it. As far as that he was right. He struck the wrong lead when he
picked Mrs. Burden as the one—she being a church member—that
was most likely to be ashamed of the kid. He looked up her number
in the directory, and made for the house hot-foot. She wasn’t in, so
he held up a lamp-post, waiting.
The tug got back. They packed Harry Maidslow into the dock-house.
He was still sound asleep from the knockout drops.
“My precious boy!” said the old lady, and fell on his neck. Then she
screamed so you could hear her all over the water-front and began
to jump on the captain. She said:
“You’re a pack of thieves! You’ve murdered my Tom and dressed
another man in his clothes. Where is my boy? Give me back my
boy!” she said, and a lot of other things.
Said the tug-boat captain: “You’re trying to get out of paying the two
hundred. He’s on specifications, and a nice time we had making
them pass him over. Look here.” He got the coat off Harry Maidslow.
There was the tattoo mark, just beginning to swell up.
“It’s a new mark. You and those hussies have fooled me,” said the
old lady. “I’ll have you all in jail for this,” she said. “I wish I could
find him, I’d show them up. I’d take him right up to the big dance
they’re going to have to-night. I’d shame them!” she said. And she
drove home, laughing and crying out loud. At the doorstep Spotty
Crigg braced her.
He began quiet and easy, working up her curiosity so that she would
let him know how the land lay. That’s just where he went wrong
again. In about a minute she put two and two together and saw
pretty clearly through the whole scheme. She was just one point
smarter than Spotty, and she wormed it out of him finally. He
thought she wanted Tom put out of the way, sure. She played her
hand by letting him think so. It was move and your turn, like a game
of checkers, with the old lady one jump ahead. Said Spotty:
“Two thousand dollars, or I bring him back and give the story to the
Observer.”
Which of course was exactly what she wanted. She pretended to be
scared but mad.
“Not a cent. Do your worst,” she said.
“Then I’ll go that one better,” said Spotty. “I see by the papers
there’s a dance at the Sunderland house to-night. Three thousand
down or I dump him in the front door, drunk as a lord and dressed
like a stevedore. I’ve got him where you can’t find him——” which
was a bluff. “If you tell the police he’ll get worse than a drunk——”
which was another.
“Not a red cent,” she said.
“Settles it!” said Crigg. He went away red-hot, mad enough to back
up his bluff, just as the old lady thought he would.
When he got home he found that Tom couldn’t be kept much longer.
There had been a deuce of a rough house. That clinched the matter
with Spotty Crigg. About half-past eight he woke Tom, gave him
some dinner with a cold bottle to get him started again, and spun
him a yarn about finding him drunk and robbed. The deal went
through on schedule. At half-past nine, Spotty drove up to the
Letterblair house with the kid, rang the door-bell and pushed Tom
right into the hall, nursing a loud, talkative drunk. They say it put
that function on the bum. I heard afterward from Tom Letterblair
that it was about the only time he ever really enjoyed himself at one
of his sister’s parties.
Nobody ever told the police or the papers. Every man-jack in the
deal was afraid to peach on the others, because he couldn’t afford to
tell on himself. All except the old lady and Tom, of course, and they
were too tickled with the way the things turned out to care about
giving it away. Another funny thing: everybody quit a winner. You
can see how Captain Wynch won. Tom paid Spotty Crigg a thousand
for keeping him off the Treasure Trove, and I got fifty dollars for my
job. And even the snob sisters won out. How? Well, sir, Tom
Letterblair braced up from that time on. I suppose he took it that if
he was far enough gone to the devil for his family to have to
shanghai him, he must be a pretty bad egg. So he swore off, got on
the water-wagon, and turned out pretty well, alongside of what
they’d expected of him. His chorus girl, Dotty, ran away with another
man, and that helped him some, too.
Finally, Tom got a case on a swell New York heiress, a dizzy blonde,
who was just simply It in the Four Hundred. He married her, to the
great and grand delight of Mr. and Mrs. J. Thrasher Sunderland.
And right there was where Tom had too much luck for any one man.
I’ll be darned if that girl’s name wasn’t Dotty, and she always
believed Tom had it pricked on his arm just on her account! What
d’you think of that?
But perhaps you’re wondering how Maidslow got square. I’ll tell you.
He came to in the tug office, where the crew had passed him a few
swift kicks and left him. Pretty stupid and dopy yet, he crawled
home to his own room and slept some more of it off.
Then, when his head did finally clear out, he began to look himself
over; to discover and explore, as you might say. When he looked in
the glass he must have nearly fell dead. His yellow moustache was
gone. Then, he’d gone to sleep in old clothes and he woke up in a
swell high-class rig, silk-lined, and without a spot, patch, or sign of
wear. He had on silk gauze underwear, patent leather shoes,
diamonds in his shirt-front, cuff-links, and a pair of pretty hot socks.
Feeling in his pockets, as a man will, he found a gold watch and
chain, a gold cigarette case, a corkscrew mounted in rubies and
three hundred and forty-two dollars in bills and coin. Every one in
the deal had been too busy to touch him while he was drugged.
Long before he got his senses his arm began to feel funny. After he’d
investigated the costume, he took off the Willy-boy coat and stripped
up his shirt sleeve. There was a tattoo mark, smarting like sin, with
the name “DOTTY” in beautiful capital letters! Well, when he saw
that he went right up into the air. He was just like that old woman in
the nursery rhyme—“Lawk-a-massy on us, this is none of I!”
The tattoo mark was his only clue. I was the only one he knew in
the business, so he came down to me and wanted to know how, and
when, and where, and why, and what-the-devil.
“Look here, my son,” says I, “what are you kicking about, anyway?
You go to sleep with eight dollars on your back and two bits in your
jeans. You wake up with about a seven hundred and fifty dollar rig
on, and a wad in your pocket, more than you ever had in your life.
The thing for you to do,” I says, “is to lose yourself before you’re
called for, and to stay lost, good and hard! Next time you fade away
on the water-front, you may wake up in a jumper and overalls,
shovelling garbage! You can’t expect to draw a straight flush in
diamonds every deal: next shuffle you may catch deuces. You take
my advice and drop a part of that roll of yours for a ticket in the
’Owl’ train to-night, before you’re enchanted back again.”
“All right,” he says, “I’ll do it. But for heaven’s sake, tell me just one
thing, and I’ll ask no more questions. Who in blazes is Dotty?”
“Aw,” I says, “she’s the fairy godmother of this pipe dream. She’s
changed into a sea-gull by this time!”

“Well,” concluded the rubber, “he skipped, and I have never seen
him since, from that day till to-night, when I found you scrapping
with him, for this man is Harry Maidslow for sure. If you want to talk
to him now, he’ll probably be all right. He’s had time to have a
plunge, and you’ll find him sleeping upstairs. I’ve got to go home, so
good-by. Come round again some time and tell me about him!”
Admeh Drake, after a swim in the tank himself, passed through the
main salon and upstairs, acting upon the hint of the Dermograph
Artist. The place was lined with cots, now filled with snoring
occupants, and it was not until he had explored a second story that
Admeh found him of the clay-yellow beard. He was alone in a
secluded ward, sleeping peacefully. Admeh touched him, and
Maidslow sat up suddenly with a terrified stare.
“What d’you want? What d’you want of me?” he cried.
Admeh was astonished at his fright, but hastened to relieve the
man’s suspense. “Oh, nothing bad, I hope. Is your name—” here he
hesitated, and the man’s face showed abject fear—“Maidslow?”—and
the mouth relaxed its tensity.
“Yes,” said the man. “What d’you want?”
“I want to tell you that there’s fifteen thousand dollars coming to
you!” said Drake.
The man stared now in bewilderment.
“Ever know old Max Miller, Swiss bell-ringer?” “A little,” said
Maidslow. “Why?”
“He’s your rich uncle. He’s left you his fortune. You caught him when
you stole Maxie from him!”
“See here,” said Maidslow, “what kind of a jolly are you giving me
anyway? I haven’t seen Maxie—I suppose you mean my wife—for
two years. If you know anything about her, tell me the whole thing,
and tell it slow.”
For the second time that night Admeh Drake narrated his
adventures, beginning at Coffee John’s, and ending with the news of
Maxie and the legacy left to Harry Maidslow. But, when he
mentioned Colonel Knowlton’s name as the trustee, Maidslow, who
had listened so far in delight, gave an exclamation of despair.
“Oh, heavens!” he cried, “I can never get that money! Why couldn’t
it have been given in charge of some one else? Colonel Knowlton, of
all men in the world!”
“Why can’t you get it from him?” Drake asked.
“You listen to my story, and you’ll know,” replied Maidslow.
 THE STORY OF THE DESERTER OF THE
PHILIPPINES

I don’t exactly know why I married Maxie Morrow, except that I’ve
always been a fool about women. The thing came so sudden, I
just jumped and caught her on the fly. When she left me, I went
pretty much to the bad. Then Harry Maidslow disappeared, because
of debts and one thing or another, and I turned up as Harry Roberts
in St. Louis. That was just about when the Spanish war broke out. It
was too good a chance to lose, and I decided to begin all over again.
So I enlisted in the regulars, joining the One Hundred and
Fourteenth Infantry. I was hardly more than through the goose step
when we were sent to the Philippines.
I was no slouch nor shirk, either, but I knew more about eating than
anything else, and I naturally gravitated to the cook’s tent and put
him on to a lot of things the boys liked. I got to be rather popular
with the company in this way, and when the Commissary Sergeant
was appointed in Manila, I managed to get the place, though I was
only a rookie. Perhaps the Captain’s wife helped me out some. She,
being an officer’s lady, wasn’t supposed to know I was on earth, but
somehow she noticed me and fixed it up easy.
Commissary work was a snap—little drill, no guard mount, leave of
absence occasionally, and the run of the town in a little pony cart.
You see each company had its quota of rations. We could draw
them, or leave them and get credit. There was maple syrup and
candy, canned fruit, and chocolate, and all sorts of good stuff in the
storehouse that we could get at wholesale rates. By cutting down on
fresh meat and pinching on bacon, I managed the company’s
accounts so that we could have hot griddle-cakes and maple syrup
every day. That’s the way I held my job. If I ever become famous it
will be for having introduced Pie in the Philippines.
Every morning I drove around Manila, visiting the markets with a
man to help me, exchanging sacks of flour for fresh baker’s bread
and cakes, getting chickens, and so on, besides making friends right
and left. About two nights every week I was dancing or flirting with
the half-breed women; Mestizas they called them. That’s how I got
into trouble.
Her name was Senorita Maria del Pilar Assompcion Aguilar, and
nothing that ever I saw could touch her for looks. She was the kind
of woman that makes you forget everything else that ever happened
before. She and her brother owned about the whole of a province in
the middle of the island of Luzon. When she came into the room it
was all over with me. There was more of the Spanish than the
Filipino in her, enough to give her the style and air of a lady, but she
got her beauty from the tropics. Her hair was like one of those hot
black nights they have down there—silky and soft, drifting around
her face—but it was her eyes that made you lose sleep. They were
blue-black, not melting, but wide-awake and piercing. They were
just a bit crossed, hardly a hairbreadth out, but that little cast
seemed to make her even prettier than if they were straight. A
Kansas sergeant told me that the family was in from their country
place, and that the Secret Service people were watching her. She
and her brother were suspected of knowing a good deal about
Aguinaldo’s plans.
You remember that after the battle of Manila the American troops
lay in town for months, just drilling and waiting to see what the
insurgents were going to do. There were all sorts of rumours afloat,
and nobody knew which way the cat would jump. The Filipinos were
camped in a semi-circle outside the city and growing uglier every
day. Our sentries were watching them close enough to see every
nigger that stuck his finger to his nose at us.
I saw more and more of Maria, danced with her, or went to her
house every night I could get off. It wasn’t long before I saw that I
had her going. Her brother looked as if he’d like to bolo me in the
back, and never left us alone for a moment. I didn’t care. I was too
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