"ADOLPH LA G----,
"P.S.--I leave here for the East this morning. Please answer on immediate receipt.
A. L."
This was posted on the eastern-bound train not an hour after my son"s arrival from the West; and another note was written upon the back of an envelope which had pa.s.sed through the mail, and had got a very much used appearance, and ran thus:
"FATHER OF LIZZIE:
"Treat Adolph well, you can trust him. Give him one of the "photos" taken at Atlanta in my full-dress uniform; keep one other of the same for yourselves; but destroy all the rest.
Have been so hurried and worried that I don"t remember whether I have said anything about photographs before. But this is a matter of _imperative necessity_. Adolph will explain how he met me.
"Good-by,
"H. ----"
It was impossible to detect any difference between this handwriting and that of Captain Taylor"s in his business correspondence to Kuhn Brothers; and, armed with this doc.u.ment, with the a.s.sistance of the epistolary self-introduction which had preceded it, I directed my son to leave for Philadelphia that evening, secure admission to Taylor"s residence and the family"s confidence, agreeable to the appointment made by mail, and thus not only secure the man"s photograph, but other information that would be definite.
On arrival at Philadelphia, he secured the services of an operative from my agency in that city, to follow any member of the Taylor family who might call for the letter, to their residence, in the event of an answer not being received at his hotel in due time from the one a.s.sumed to have been sent from the hotel in Chicago from La Grange, who found Taylor"s home, an unpretentious house on Locust street, while my son remained at the hotel, fully expecting the coveted invitation to visit the Captain"s beautiful sister, which arrived at his hotel only a half day after he did, and strongly urged him to call at his convenience.
He was satisfied from this that our theory regarding his being in Texas, or Mexico, was correct; that the family had not the slightest suspicion of his ident.i.ty, and that, wherever Captain Taylor might be, communication with his people had been very infrequent, and that, with what he would be able to invent after being received at Taylor"s house, he could secure at least sufficient information to put him upon his son"s trail. Not desiring to play upon their feelings and friendship as another person any longer than necessary, however, he sent word by a messenger, not daring to trust his own handwriting, that he would call that evening, though necessarily at a late hour; and, accordingly, that evening, about nine o"clock, found him at the door of a pleasant Locust street cottage, ringing for admission.
A tall, handsome young woman greeted him at the door, and accordingly bade him enter, saying pleasantly, as she ushered him into the cozy little parlor, that she was Miss Lizzie Taylor, and presumed he was Mr.
La Grange, with whom she had had so long and so pleasant a correspondence; and of whom "poor Harry," as she said with a shade of sadness and tenderness in her voice, had so often written, before he had made his terrible mistake, and become a wanderer.
After hastily satisfying her that he was the genuine La Grange, and profusely apologizing for his not having written for so long a time previous to his arrival at Chicago, from Cheyenne, he took up the thread she had dropped, as quickly as possible, and said that he felt sure that Harry would retrieve himself soon, and return the money, as he had no bad habits, and everything would be all right again.
"But yet, Mr. La Grange," she continued, "it makes me shudder whenever I think of all my brothers being away off there on the Rio Grande, among those terrible people!"
"But, you must remember," he replied, encouragingly, "they are strong men, and can well defend themselves under any circ.u.mstances."
"Harry is strong and brave, I know," answered Miss Taylor, rather admiringly; "but brother Robert is not fit for such a life. Why, he is but a boy yet."
"Ah, a younger brother?" he thought, making a mental note of it, in order to a.s.sist in shaping his conversation after which he said aloud: "I almost forgot to give you this note;" and he took the piece of envelope out of his note-book, as if it had been sacredly guarded, and handed it to her.
Miss Taylor read the hastily written lines with evident emotion; and after studying a moment, as if endeavoring to reconcile matters, while her face was being searchingly read by an experienced detective, she rose, and, apologizing to him for the absence of her father, who was in New York, on business, and of her mother, who was confined to her apartment, a confirmed invalid, she asked to be excused so as to show the note to her mother.
The instant the door closed, my son had seized the alb.u.m, which he had located during the preceding conversation; and rapidly turned its leaves to a.s.sure himself that he was not treading on dangerous ground. He found a half-a-dozen different styles of pictures of the Captain, including three of the copies taken in Philadelphia of the original Atlanta picture, and felt rea.s.sured beyond measure at the lucky turn things had taken. He would have abstracted one of these, but it was impossible, and had barely time to return the alb.u.m to the table, and himself to his seat, when he heard the woman"s step along the hall, and in a moment more she entered the room.
III.
Giving the door a little impulsive slam, as she closed it, Miss Taylor at once came to where my son was sitting upon the sofa, and seated herself beside him. She said that her mother was anxious beyond measure to learn how and where he had met Harry, how he was looking, and what he had said.
The imagination and resources of the able detective are fully equal to those of the most brilliant newspaper reporters, and a pleasant and plausible fiction was invented, how he (as La Grange, of course), having taken a run from Louisville down to New Orleans, by boat, was just landing at the levee, when he suddenly came across Harry, who had hastily told him all; how great had been his transgression, how deeply he had regretted it; but that now he was situated in his business matters so that, if let alone, he would be able to return to Kuhn Brothers every dollar which he had taken, and have a fine business left; how it had been necessary for him to come to New Orleans on imperative business, and that he should not come east of the Mississippi again under any circ.u.mstances. He further said, that Harry seemed hopeful; that he had stated that his younger brother Robert was well and enjoying the frontier life; and that, further than that, he had no time or disposition to talk, as he was on the very eve of departure for Texas, only having time to write the little note concerning the photographs.
Miss Taylor excused herself for a moment to convey the truthful intelligence to her anxious mother; and on her return suggested that they go through the alb.u.m together at once, and attend to the photographs, an invitation which was accepted with unusual readiness.
Every gentleman who has had the experience, and there are few who have not, know that looking over an alb.u.m with a beautiful woman who has some interest in her companion, is a wonderfully pleasant diversion. In this instance it was doubly pleasant, for it meant success to my son, whose zeal is as untiring as my own when once on the trail of a criminal.
"I wonder why," asked Miss Taylor, as if wondering as much about Mr. La Grange as about any other subject; "I wonder why Harry desires those photographs destroyed?"
He was turning the leaves for her and, as La Grange, of course, had a perfect right to take plenty of time to explain the matter soothingly and sympathetically.
"But do those horrid detectives track a man out and run him down, when, if he were let alone, he might recover from his misfortune, and right the wrong he has done?"
Mr. La Grange remarked that he had heard that some of them were very much lacking in sentiment and sensibility, and would go right forward through the very fire itself to trace the whereabouts of a criminal; and all those little things helped, he could a.s.sure her.
She began to see how it was, she said; but suddenly firing up, she shook her pretty fist at some imaginary person, exclaiming:
"Oh, I could kill the man who would thus dog my brother Harry." And then, after a little April shower of tears, quite like any other woman"s way of showing how very desperate they can be under certain circ.u.mstances, began slowly taking the Captain"s pictures from the alb.u.m, commenting upon them, and then handing them to the bogus La Grange to burn, who would occasionally step to the fire-place for that purpose, where he would quickly subst.i.tute miscellaneous business cards, which answered the purpose excellently.
An hour or two was pa.s.sed with Miss Taylor in conversation upon various topics which might lead the really estimable young lady to divulge all she knew about the Captain, or concerning his whereabouts and business, which was certainly not much.
It appeared that, immediately after the embezzlement, and while at St.
Louis, Taylor had telegraphed to his brother Robert to meet him at New Orleans at a certain time, as he was going into business in that section, and should need his services, for which he would be able to pay him handsomely; the brothers had met there and had proceeded to some other point; the Captain claiming that it would be injudicious to make that fact known, as he had also sent a full and complete confession to his parents of his embezzlement from Kuhn Brothers, which he had directed them to burn, and which he finished by requesting his family not to write to either himself or his brother for some time to come; or at least until he should indicate to them that it would be safe to do so; and under no circ.u.mstances to give any person an iota of information concerning himself or his brother.
My son left Miss Taylor"s hospitable home with a pang of regret for the deception which had seemed necessary in this case; for whatever may be the opinion of the public regarding the matter, a detective has often quite as large and compa.s.sionate a soul as men of other and apparently more high-toned professions.
So long as intelligent crime is the result of a high standard of mental culture and a low standard of moral conscience--conditions which now exist and have for some years existed--intelligent minds must be trained to battle criminals with their own weapons; and these two questions, of speedy detection of crime and swift punishment of criminals will be found quite as essential to a preservation of law and society as lofty arguments or high moral dissertations on the right or wrong of the expediencies necessary to bring wrong-doers to immediate and certain justice.
As soon as I had received a full telegraphic report of the success of the Philadelphia experiment, I directed him to proceed to Louisville, where he would be met by operative Keating, from Chicago, who would bring letters of introduction from myself to Colonel Wood, commanding the First Infantry at New Orleans; Captain White, chief of the detective force of that city; General Canby, commanding the Department of Texas, at Austin; Col. Hunt, Chief Quartermaster of the Department of Texas, and other army officers, requesting them to render my son and his a.s.sistant any aid in their power should the necessity for such a.s.sistance arise; the requisition from Governor Foulke, of Dakotah Territory, for Henry G. Taylor, upon Governor Pease, of Texas, and general instructions concerning his conduct of the search for the handsome captain after he had got beyond mail and telegraphic communication.
I was sending him into a country which was at that time in many portions utterly unsafe for the securing of a criminal should the pursuer"s mission become known, so as to allow the person desired time to apprise his friends of his danger, or give him even an opportunity to rally any number of acquaintances for defense; for the reason that, as Texas had become a sort of refuge for ruffians, they became clannish through the general peril of being pursued each experienced; and would, as a rule, on the slightest provocation, a.s.sist in the rescue of any person under arrest, not knowing how soon it might be their turn to cry for help; but I have invariably sent my sons into danger with the same expectation that they would do their duty regardless of consequences, as I have had when sending other men"s sons into danger. Happily I have never mistaken their metal; and, in this instance, felt sure that I could rely upon him to exercise both discretion and intrepidity in exigencies to which his long experience and careful training have at all times made him equal.
The two detectives met in Louisville, and at once proceeded to New Orleans, where they arrived early in the morning of the 7th of January, 1868, and were driven to the St. Charles Hotel. No time was lost; and while my son presented his letters to different parties, and made cautious inquiries regarding the recent appearance in New Orleans of Taylor, Keating, in the character of a provincial merchant, investigated as far as possible the business houses dealing in stock, leather, or wool, as to whether any such person had made arrangement for consignments from the interior or seaport Texan cities. No trace of their man was found, however, until my son was able to get at the register of the St. Charles Hotel for the preceding three months, which was attended with some difficulty, on account of the crowded condition of things at that house; and any detective, or other expert, will understand how much time and patience are required to discover one signature from among ten thousand, when that one may be an a.s.sumed name, and perhaps five hundred of the ten thousand be so similar to the one sought, that a disinterested person could scarcely be convinced it was really not the person"s handwriting desired; but after a good deal of trouble and searching, the names of "H. G. Taylor & clerk," were discovered on the last half line at the bottom of a page under date of November 30th, 1867, which, by constant wear and thumbing in turning pages, had been nearly defaced, but which, in his handwriting, beyond a doubt told the story of their presence.
Further inquiry of the clerk on duty at that time, and with his memory refreshed by a glance at Taylor"s photographs, developed the facts that he had certainly been at the St. Charles on the date shown by the register, and that he was accompanied by a young man about nineteen years of age, who was recognized as Taylor"s clerk.
The peculiar register then kept at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans was also instrumental in a.s.sisting the detectives. It gave the guest"s name, residence, hour of arrival, and hour of departure, with name of conveyance at arrival and departure, in the following manner:
_H. G. Taylor and Clerk,Mobile,12 m.Ped.
2 Dec.7 a. m."Bus._
This told anybody curious about the matter that H. G. Taylor and clerk, a.s.suming to reside in Mobile, arrived at the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans, at noon on Sat.u.r.day, the thirtieth day of November, 1867, either afoot or by some mode of conveyance unknown to the clerk of the house, and that they left the house in an omnibus at seven o"clock on the morning of the third day following.
Naturally the next inquiries were directed to ascertaining to what boat or railroad lines omnibuses could be ordered at that hour of the morning; if to different ones, then to discover who had driven the particular omnibus which conveyed Taylor and his brother from the hotel; and then make an effort to learn to what point they had been conveyed.
This, however, proved less difficult than had been feared; for it was found that on the morning in question the omnibus had gone from the hotel to but one point, and that was to the ferry connecting with Berwick Bay route, by the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad and the Gulf, to Galveston, although a large number of pa.s.sengers had been booked, and it was impossible to ascertain whether Taylor and his brother had actually gone that route or not, though everything was in favor of that presumption.
The death of General Rosseau had caused quite a commotion in New Orleans, and it seemed a pretty hard matter to get anything further of a definite character in that place; and I therefore instructed my son and detective Keating to proceed slowly to Galveston, stopping at Brashear City, where Taylor might have diverged,--supposing he had taken that route with the other pa.s.sengers from New Orleans,--and to particularly search pa.s.senger lists aboard any lines of boats, and all hotel registers, before arriving at Galveston, so as to have the work done thoroughly nearest the base of operation; as I knew that for any party to get on the wrong scent in that vast state, thinly settled as it was, with no means of quickly conveying needful intelligence, was to enter upon both a needless waste of money for my patrons, and an objectless and wearying struggle against insurmountable obstacles for my detectives, whom, whatever may be said to the contrary, I have never in a single instance needlessly or injudiciously exposed to privation or danger.
In Brashear conductors of trains were applied to; the hotel and omnibus men were questioned, the postmaster was appealed to, and even the pa.s.senger-lists of the boats which had been in port, and to which they were able to gain access for a period of three months, had been searched in vain. Every trace of the man seemed lost; and I was appealed to for a decision as to whether they should proceed to Galveston by boat, with the presumption that Taylor had taken pa.s.sage under an a.s.sumed name, or take a few days" trip up along the line of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad and seek for information of their man at different points through Central Louisiana.