The Mistress of Mysteries

True Stories from the Notebook of Mary E Holland, a Woman Detective (1868-1915)

Illustrated by R.M. Brinkerhoff (1880-1958)

The Problem of the Second Stain

       EDITOR'S NOTE — Mrs. Holland's proficiency was materially recognized by the United States Government when she was engaged to teach the Bertillon System to the men of the United States Navy Department, the United States Marine Corps, the National Bureau of Indentification, Washington, D. C, and police departments of several cities. Mrs. Holland is not a writer; she is a detective. However, all of the stories in this series have been written from her own notes.

A FROST-SILVERED country road in the cold, early light of a November morning. At its side, an automobile, pulseless, silent. On its front seat, a fur-overcoated man, huddled over the steering wheel. In his back, two bullet-holes. Down over his coat, zig-zagging its way to the cushions of the seat, a frozen red stream —

       A thrifty farmer, jogging by, brought up his blinking horse with a jerk, stared, descended slowly to the road, and extended his hand with a strange hesitancy toward the figure in the motionless automobile. It was rigid. The cheek which he touched was marble-cold. The man was dead.

       Such is the skeleton of the first fugitive facts in the Bate automobile mystery, which flashed their way to the Chicago police headquarters on the morning of, November 19, 1904, and pitchforked the first group of the law's avengers out through the grime and bustle of the great city, on past the neat suburban streets until the abrupt boundary of metropolis and country was reached and passed, and before them stretched the lonely belt of the Archer Road. Twenty miles farther and they would have brought up at the frowning gates of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet. The automobile with its ghastly occupant had been found perhaps fifteen miles from the prison walls. Only a slight stretch of the imagination would have been needed to place the firing of the murderous shots within the shadow of the great penitentiary.

       Your city detective is not a Sherlock Holmes. He is bluntly, gruffly direct, in his appraisals. Imagination he avoids as unworthy of his craft. To him, a crime, whether of wallet-pilfering or blood-letting, is an incident of the day's work, to be reckoned with from a business angle.

       The more imaginative details in the automobile tragedy of the lonely Archer road — the dead chauffeur still huddled by his motionless wheel, the bullets in his body obviously fired from the brooding silence of the night, the gaunt countryside surrounding, which would have at once appealed to the emotional temperament, had no place in the police digest. Rather were they concerned with the number of the automobile, the cards in the chauffeur's pocket, the address from which the car had made the start of its tragic journey. And by noon-time, the wires of justice, buzzing with relentless swiftness, had at least sketched the circle of the crime.

       The murdered chauffeur was a young man in his early twenties, with the unassuming name of William Bate, employed at the stand of a professional taxicab company at the Auditorium Hotel. The "death car" had left the hotel at nine o'clock the preceding night, containing in addition to the chauffeur one passenger. Here is the police description of the man as I placed it in my files:

       "Name, Mr. Dove, as given at the automobile stand. First name unknown.

       "Middle aged, smooth-shaven, perhaps five feet, six inches in height, slender build, quiet manners, brown hair. Dressed in a neat checked business suit, light overcoat, derby hat, red cravat. Carried a small suit case."

       Two more facts, and the police circle of the obvious features in the problem was completed. The mysterious "Mr. Dove," betraying a slight nervousness, had stepped up to the car, driven by Bate, at nine o'clock, and without announcing his destination, had engaged it for a period of three hours.

  THE medical examination of the dead man, the condition of the frozen, clotted blood, showed that the murder had been committed a number of hours, before the discovery of the crime. The physicians united in the- statement that anywhere from six to ten hours, had elapsed between the shooting and the finding of the body. This would fix the time of the murder — a fact substantiated later by other evidence, you will see — at about midnight. Quite apparently the errand of the nervous "Mr. Dove," whatever its nature and wherever it had led him, had taken longer than the passenger had expected.

       Query, shrieked in the fat-lettered head-lines of the newspaper "extras," "Where is Dove?" And forth from the captain's desk of detective headquarters went the curt message which made dozing police operators straighten into a sudden tenseness, "Find Dove! Wanted for murder of chauffeur, William Bate, on the night of November 18th."

       The obvious facts, you will see, had led to the obvious conclusion.

 
THE Chief, veteran of a hundred "big" police cases, ascended from an obscure roundsman's beat to the executive head of the second largest American department of public safety, was holding forth on his favorite topic — the artist in crime. And as usual, his was the negative angle. A round-faced, twinkling-eyed man he was, with cheeks as red and plump as an apple. Had he been ten years older, with benign spectacles, he would have been a second edition of Mr. Pickwick. Few persons would have divined that the twinkling eyes and apple cheeks were a mask, and that their owner, behind the locked doors of his private office, was the cunning and relentless inquisitor of the "Third Degree" who had earned the soubriquet of the "Gimlet" in the underworld.

       The Chief exposed a section of plump red socks as he crossed his legs and thoughtfully exhaled his cigar smoke.

       "There are only two real classes of crime — crimes of passion and crimes of money. And in nine cases out of ten," his twinkling eyes turned guilelessly in my direction, "the criminal, five minutes beforehand, had no more idea of breaking the law than I have. This talk of the artist in crime, of careful preparation and daring imagination is — bosh! Outside the pages of the detective novel, crime is the least interesting and most commonplace subject in the world. And what is more," he removed his cigar in emphasis, "it is also punished by the least interesting and most commonplace methods in the world. Take the average murder cases for instance, and I will guarantee, say in three cases out of five, to find the murderer simply by advertising for him. Fifty or one hundred dollars spent in post cards and stamps, another fifty or one hundred dollars for a reward — and the job is done. Sherlock Holmes is well enough to read about. But modern advertising has put him out of a job — if he ever had one outside of a novel!"

       "How about the statistics of ten thousand murders a year in the United States?" I returned pleasantly. "And in not more than one case in five the criminal brought to justice?"

       The Chief shrugged.

       "That is because the American police have not yet generally learned to apply the possibilities of modern advertising. Man-hunting is a business proposition. What our detectives need is a course at a good business school."

       At his elbow, his desk telephone flung its muffled whirr across the room. Without shifting his position, the Chief took the receiver from the hook. It spoke volumes for his self control that although the voice at the other end of the wire gave him the first synopsis of what was destined to be one of the most absorbing murder cases of ten years, not a muscle of his face nor a note of his voice changed. He replaced the receiver with a deepening of his twinkle.

       "Presto! We discuss crime and its detection, and behold! the day's budget gives me an example, ready at hand, to clench my argument. Here we have an automobile chauffeur murdered, shot in the back, and left dead in his car on an obscure country road, and his passenger vanished. Now watch the power of police advertising. Within, let us say a week, we should have a definite clew to the identity and whereabouts of the assassin."

       Is that a wager?" I rose.

       The Chief brought his feet to the floor. "How much?"

       "Let us say a box of gloves against a box of cigars."

       "Make it Carolina Perfectos!" the Chief laughed.

       I held out my hand. "My glove size is number seven!" I reminded him.

 
TWENTY-FOUR hours later, the caprice of fate had sharpened the point of our wager. I, too, was flung into the vortex of the automobile murder, which the developments of the day had swollen from an impulsive midnight-shooting to one of the great cases of the year. My retention was one of those semi-official employments of my career, in a measure in the police confidence, and yet at liberty to pursue my investigations from an independent angle, a free lance as it were. And I will confess a task thoroughly to my liking.

       The day's progress had been of a negative rather than a positive character. The missing "Mr. Dove" had vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him. From the moment that he had stepped into the rented automobile before the doors of the brilliantly lighted Auditorium Hotel, to be whirled on his midnight mission out the lonely country highway of Northeastern Illinois, he had apparently dropped from the sight of men.

       There remained behind him the blood-stained motor car, the dead chauffeur — and nothing else. The body of the murdered man had been duly placed in the care of an undertaking establishment, the police cry had shrilled nation-wide on the trail of his vanished passenger — and the car, the scene of the crime, had been left undisturbed. It was to the car that I first turned my attention.

 
IT was a five-passenger machine of a pattern which eight years of automobile improvements have rendered obsolete. The ominous blood trail of the tragedy was dried in dull red splotches on the cushions and sides. A crimson circle on the front seat showed where the victim had sat when he met his death. Apparently it had come on him swiftly, relentlessly with the suddenness of an unexpected ambush in the dark.

       And then as I raised my eyes and stepped farther along the side of the car, I saw a second stain. The rear seat was also splotched with an irregular pool even deeper than that disfiguring the front seat!

       I climbed onto the steps and whipped out my magnifying glass. There could be no doubt that it also was blood. On a sudden impulse, I made my way to the front cushions, and sat down in as nearly as possible the same position occupied by the murdered chauffeur. Cautiously I turned my head around. The swift explanation that had flashed to me was correct. The blood spots in the death-car had come not from one person but from two! It was simply out of the question that the splotches on the rear seat could have oozed from the dead driver.

       What then was the explanation of the second stain? My friend, Lieut. Raymond, of Headquarters — not his real name, incidentally, as he is still connected with the force — was surveying me with a puzzled frown.

       "What's up?"

       I pointed to the second seat. "That car contained two persons with bullet wounds!"

       Raymond's lips tightened over his cigarette — on the trail of a big case he must have consumed four or five boxes a day — and he bent over the side of the car. He shook his head.

       "Impossible! The blood must have spurted back from Bate. We know his wounds bled for hours before he was found."

       I stepped to the front cushions in my turn. "The blood from Bate went down, not back. The seat where he sat is soaked. If you were right, there would have been scarcely any marks here."

       Raymond lighted a fresh cigarette, and smoked for a moment in silence.

       "But there were only two persons in the car," he said at length. "The murderer of Bate would hardly have turned the weapon on himself. And Bate was shot down before he could have fired a shot, even if he had had a weapon. No, you are assuming —–"

 
HE paused again with a smile. The police are good friends of mine — good enough to forget that I am a woman. But in Raymond's smile there was just the hint of a too-patronizing indulgence. I flushed, and then sprang forward with a thrill of triumph.

       "You are wrong, Lieutenant! There was a third person in the automobile!"

       Raymond dropped his cigarette. "A third person?" he stammered.

       "Yes!" I snapped. "And here is what proves it!"

       I was down on my knees in the car — a disheveled, excited figure I must have presented! — with my magnifying lens over another splotch of blood streaking the farther door. A long, regular smudge, it was — such as might have been made by a blood-dripping garment brushed over the wood. The lieutenant peered over my shoulder.

       "By Jove!" he cried. I stepped back to the ground and closed my lens and turned to him.

       "Are you satisfied?" I queried. "There is only one thing that could have made a mark like that —–"

       "A human body!" he completed, nodding in bewilderment.

       "And the chances are ten to one the body of a woman," I supplemented. "A man's overcoat would have made a lighter, more uneven streak. This is the kind of a smudge that would have been produced by a skirt."

       Raymond drew on a fresh cigarette.

       "I was wondering how long it would be before the hand of Eve appeared!" he said cynically. The lieutenant was a bachelor!

 
IF this were a detective story of imagination now, at this point a mysterious note would probably reach the police with directions to call at a certain lonely house where the body of the second victim of the tragedy would be located. Or perhaps the author would introduce a clue to the life of the vanished "Mr. Dove," tending to establish the motive of the murder. In any event his ingenuity would provide a chain of incidents to keep the trail "warm." Unfortunately for the purposes of cleverly developed plot, this is a chronicle of facts. And I must confess that I spent a day absolutely and completely "stumped," and with nothing to keep alive the sequence of developments. Nor had the probe of the police yielded better results — not even the Chiefs campaign of advertising!

       A dozen times I tried to reconstruct the tragedy backwards. Starting from the Auditorium Hotel, what did we have? A chance passenger hiring a rented automobile. Quite obviously he was a complete stranger to the chauffeur. For his purposes, he might have selected as well any other of the half a dozen cars at the curb. Certainly when he stepped into the machine there was no reason why he should stain hands with the blood of the unknown young man on the driver's seat. The reason, therefore, must have developed later. What motive is strong enough to induce the murder of a complete stranger?

       Robbery first. And this was not a case of robbery.

       What remained? The strongest underlying factor of crime — fear. My eyes glistened. Mentally I pictured the car pausing to take in its third passenger, perhaps a woman, bearing strained relations toward the mysterious "Mr. Dove," hot words, a sudden crisis, the report of A revolver, and the chauffeur staring back in terror on the details of a tragedy. It was easy enough to sketch the sequel, the murderer protesting an accident, simulating frantic remorse, and ordering the driver to make his way to the nearest physician or police station, deliberately focusing his weapon again as the young man turned, and removing the only witness to his crime.

       And the second body? A glance at the road map showed me a brush-covered territory surrounding the scene of the tragedy, and a deep stream over across the road. A dozen hiding places for the corpse had been ready at hand. I started to my feet. A search of the adjacent ground was obviously the next point of procedure.

       The telephone on my desk jingled sharply. I snatched the receiver from the hook. The message that came over the wire shattered my patiently formed chain of reasoning abruptly.

 
OVER the wire came Lieut. Raymond's voice, crisp with excitement.

       "First blood for business methods!" he announced, with something that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. I wondered suddenly if the Chief had told him of our wager! "Would you like to interview the first 'catch' of our dragnet?"

       "Who is she?" I asked.

       I could feel his voice change. "Then you have already heard?"

       "Not a word! But I knew it would have to be a woman! Was she in the car?"

       "That's what we don't know. She says — not."

       "I'll be down at once!" I answered.

       A slightly built, superficially pretty girl of an obvious blonde type glanced at me suspiciously as Lieut. Raymond ushered me into one of the rear rooms of Headquarters. With the first notes of her metallic voice, I placed Margaret Johnson at once as either a waitress or a telephone girl. Only an incessant calling for "Ham and —–" or "Number," can produce that peculiar, rasping ring in a woman's tones. She proved to be a waitress at a Congress Street lunch room.

       "I fancy this young lady can tell us considerable of Mr. William Bate," began the lieutenant pleasantly.

       "Why not?" she bristled. "I was his steady!"

       I glanced at her with heightened interest.

       "He was rather a reckless driver, don't you think?" I remarked.

       "I don't know. I — was only out with him once," she answered.

       "The night he was shot, eh?" shot the lieutenant.

       She glanced at him with a toss of her blonde curls. "No, not the night he was shot! I was on duty at the 'hash joint' from four until twelve. Ask the boss, since you seem to be one of those there gents that doubt a lady's word!"

       I slipped over to her side, and motioned the lieutenant to leave. I have always maintained that only a woman can understand a woman's emotions!

       "Now, my dear, I said, as the door closed behind Raymond's somewhat reluctantly departing figure, "tell me who had it in for Billy!"

       She glanced at me in surprise.

       "Why, no one! He was considered the quietest, steadiest driver at the garage — although he did have his spells of temper, I will admit."

 
I NOTED with satisfaction that her voice and attitude were again approaching the normal.

       "You were to have been married this winter, weren't you?"

       "Why, how did you know?"

       I laughingly patted the ring on her left hand. "I wonder how much this cost Billy a week?"

       "Two dollars," she responded promptly. "He had only twelve dollars more to pay on it. I was against his buying it in the first place, but 3"

       "He came into your restaurant for supper, didn't he, the night that, that 3–"

       She shuddered.

       "He was a little late. He generally got there a little after six. Thursday, he was delayed. It was after seven when he got around. I remember it was not quite eight when he left."

       I made a swift note. And it was just at nine that he had started on his fatal ride.

       "He was rather nervous at the time, didn't you think?"

       "Nervous! Why, no! He told me he was going to take me to a matinee Saturday. And, and, now —–"

       I smoothed her hair mechanically. A man with the fear of death on him, however remote, would scarcely talk of matinees!

       "Did you ever hear him speak of a man by the name of Dove?" I asked suddenly.

       She shook her head.

       "He was the gent that was killed, wasn't he? I'll stake my life Billy never saw him before!"

       I rose slowly, and crossed over to the window.

       "You believe me, don't you?" she asked with a sudden catch in her voice.

       "Yes, my dear!" I said turning. "And I do yet —" I pressed the bell reluctantly for the lieutenant. The fog in the automobile riddle was deeper than ever.

 
FOR three hours I had zig-zagged down the belt of the Archer Road. In the six miles stretching citywards from the scene of the tragedy I had patiently stopped my car at every lane and farmer's gate. Persistently I had focused the combined memories of the neighborhood back to the events of Thursday night. If was a locality that went to bed at eight o'clock, and rose at four in the summer and five in the winter. The passage of the death car must have occurred when the residents along the road were buried in the first deep hours of sleep. Perhaps, however, a belated farmer returning from a city errand, or a swain lingering in the parlor of his sweetheart, or the occupants of a house of sickness had been astir. My questions, however, could not have met a more discouragingly uniform "no" had I been a tax investigator. Apparently the automobile of Bate had traversed the highway with the silence of a ghost car — and with as little trail.

       And then at a cross-roads store, the rendezvous of the neighborhood gossips, the first ray brightened my discouragement. A corsetless woman in a loose blue wrapper, whose attention was divided equally between the cutting of a plug of tobacco for a farm hand and cuffing two aggressively insistent children at her skirts, looked across the counter at me with sudden interest.

       "Be you a detective?"

       "Why?" I countered.

       A smirk of understanding crossed her face. She leaned closer.

       "Those fly Chicago cops have missed somethin' that I reckon they'd give a handsome price to know. Not that I want their money!" She pushed the plug of tobacco across the counter, and fumbled in her apron pocket for change for a quarter.

       "Of course not!" I returned promptly. "If you can assist me in any way, however, it would only be right that I pay you for your time."

       "Now that is real clever-like of you!" she said admiringly. "Betsy Ann, let loose o' my skirt or I'll larrup you within an inch o' your life! No, you can't have a ginger cake! I was awake Thursday night," she continued significantly. "Up with John Peter," my second boy, who was took with croup. It must ha' been all o' midnight when I turned in."

       "Yes?" I glanced toward the door. Too pronounced an interest sometimes spoils the most promising witness.

       "And I heard an ortermerbile tear by. I was afeard o' rain, and was puttin' down the front winder. About five minutes afterward there was a shot, and then another, spiteful-like, you know. I went to the winder ag'in, but that was all."

       "What time was this?" I asked disappointedly.

       "It may ha' been eleven, and it may ha' been nigher twelve. I know I wondered as how which o' the three men did the shootin'. If there had been a man in the house, I would have sent him out to the road in a hurry!"

       Three men! I gripped my hands.

       "You must be mistaken," I protested. "There were only two men in the automobile."

       "Three, I said!" she repeated sharply. "Or leastwise, they all looked like men. Nowadays, a woman togs herself up so outlandishly in those there motor contraptions that you have to look twice to see she has skirts!"

 
I GLANCED across at Betsy Ann, who was seizing the opportunity to make, surreptitious investigation of the cookie box. "You are quite sure about three persons in the machine?" I repeated.

       "Say, look here, do you think my eyes have gone back on me at my age?"

       Opening my purse, I thrust a five-dollar bill across the counter. "May I use your telephone?" I asked.

       But I was destined to receive rather than give a surprise over the wire. My connection with Headquarters brought me Lieutenant Raymond's desk.

       "Hello!" he called. "Have you heard the latest? Our net has made two more catches!"

       "Two more?" I echoed.

       "Yep. That is, one in hand and one in prospect, both women. I say, that Bate chap must have been a regular Lochinvar. Three women now — and all have evidence that they were sweethearts of his! Coming down?"

       "Yes, I said, "in record-breaking time!"

       I hung up the receiver. I had looked for a woman in the case — but three! And somehow I had the belief that the right one had not been located yet.

 
THE girl at headquarters was of a distinctly opposite type from the blonde waitress of Congress Street. Miss Leah J. Hale glanced at me haughtily as I entered the room. A tall, black-haired, black-eyed girl, with more than the suspicion of a "temper" in her glance. Not a working woman. It was easy enough to divine that she had come from a home in at least well-to-do circumstances.

       "I was visiting relatives at Janesville, Wis.," she explained, "when I saw the accounts of Mr. Bate's death. He was a friend of mine."

       "Evidently he was a young gentleman with numerous friends among the ladies!" contributed the lieutenant grimly.

       Miss Hale's shoulders stiffened.

       "Have you any explanation of his death?" I asked abruptly.

       "Me? Of course not! I had not seen him for a month. I wish merely to set my own position right in the case. I have not been in Chicago for four weeks

       The lieutenant bit an unlighted cigarette with a scowl.

       "You didn't know that Mr. Bate was engaged to be married to a girl in this city, or that he was on apparently endearing terms with another girl in New Haven, Connecticut?"

       "Certainly not! Are you quite done with me?"

       The lieutenant shrugged.

       "Well," he snapped, when we were alone again, "what do you make of it?"

       "The wrong trail!" I said positively. "The woman in the case was concerned with Dove, and not with Bate. This isn't a murder by a girl jealous of the chauffeur, or an outraged relative taking the law into his own hands."

       "Still strong on that theory of a third passenger in the car?" the lieutenant grinned.

       "I am sure of it now," I said, and told him of my evidence at the crossroads store.

       Raymond whistled.

       "Looks like it is getting warm, doesn't it?"

       "I hope so!" I answered. But we were both wrong.

 
THE main difference between the true detective story and the mystery narrative of imagination is that the writer of the latter outlines his various threads, his successive climaxes, and the final unmasking of the guilty person before he puts his pen to paper. His reader has always the pleasant assurance that at the close of the story the tangled clues will be more or less plausibly explained, and justice presumably satisfied. In the chronicle of real life, the detective is not always so ingenious or the criminal so obliging. In the present instance, much as I would like to answer the curiosity of my reader — and incidentally that of the police, I must confess that the explanation of the tragic event of Archer Road is still as baffling a mystery as on that November morning when the news first thrilled headquarters.

       The vicinity of the crime was searched literally with a fine comb — but with no avail. If there was in truth a double murder in the shadowy automobile, the body of the second victim had vanished as completely as though it had been whisked into thin air. Nor of the fugitive "Mr. Dove" has there been a trace — unless the belated evidence of the residents of Morris, Illinois, a village twenty miles distant from the crime, is to be taken as a hint. On the morning following the murder, a mysterious stranger, hugging a small suit case, appeared at the Morris tavern, endeavored ineffectually to engage a livery horse, and vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. The stories of the villagers tallied more or less closely with the general description of the missing man, as gathered at the taxicab stand.

       Whether the evidence at Morris is to be taken as a clew of "Mr. Dove's" trail, whether he was a victim of a double crime and not the assassin, and finally the motive of the murder, whether it claimed one or two persons, are questions which remain among the unanswered riddles of the Chicago police force. Frankly I must admit my complete inability to answer them. That my first theory is correct, however, and that the death car held three persons I am confident. Some day, perhaps, a dying confession will tell the truth.

 
WHAT became of Margaret Johnson, the waitress, or the imperious Miss Hale I don't know. I have often wondered.

       It was, perhaps, a month after the events I have described that I received a box of gloves with the Chief's card. Enclosed was a characteristic note:

       "You will remember that I said advertising will find three criminals out of five. I allowed myself a margin of two failures."

       Wily chief! But then I never did believe in rubbing it in! And, besides, I had failed myself!

[THE END.]

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