The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1884-02-16
How "Shadows'' Work.


hired to shadow party, or a shadow,
as we call him, gets about 81 day and
expenses and is paid for the time he
works. A shadow is expected to watch
man from the time he gets up in the
morning till he goes to bed. If it hap
pens to be party who must be shadow
ed night and day, it requires two men
to watch him. A shadow must watch
his man closely without himself being
seen or allowing the party find out that
he is being Swallowed. Inject the shad-
ow, for instance, and tell him he must
keep his eyes on certain man whom l
will designate by brushing on the shout
der with my handkerchief. Then 1
enter place and as the man comes out
l pretend to see bug on his shoulder
and brush it off. Then I 60 away,
knowing that until give the word that
man will never be out of the sight Of
my shadow. The shadow takes him to
dinner and back to his place of bust
ness. Then to supper and then down
town in the evening. Then it is that
his hardest work begins. He may have
to suddenly hire hack at big expense
and follow the man out on some carous-
ing expedition. He finally takes him
home at night, secures a cover and
catches little sleep himself. The
securing of cover is sometimes the
most difficult part of the work, for
your man may live in an aristocratic
locality where there are no rooms for
rent. have known our man Boland
to sleep night after night in coal bunk
on the street when it was nipping cold.
There are in New York certain banks
and large corporations which every
year along about the holidays have
each one of their men Swallowed about
a week. At the end of a week a full
report of a mans habits, haunts, style
of living, and even of his weeks ex-
penses is given his employer. The
EHow Was that S which IF hfeedsnfed IN hs sys
--------c kill tAiS
the Brooklyn watch company of $40, 900
worth of god watch cases, dividing up
with man who aided him. When one
of our men was taken through the watch
compary's works he pointed out Kindt,
to the assistant superintendent, as the man
who, in his opinion, had done the job.
He had been told that Kindt was
splendid mechanic of wonderful ingenu-
ity. Kindt's employers, for whom he
had worked long time, would not at
first listen to the theory of his guilt,
but they finally consented to allow him
to be Swallowed. He lived in small
rooms on the fourth floor of tenement
house, where he had little shop of
his own. 1t was weeks before anything
was discovered. He had a wife and she
was sharper than the average detective.
At length he was seen one night to
board a street car and ride away out in
a thinly settled portion of New York.
When he left the front end of the car
the shadow left the rear platform and
fell out of sight into ditch in a vacant
lot. He lay concealed until the suspic-
ious Kindt, after looking cautiously
about him, had entered the basement of
new house. He remainded there half
an hour and then returned home. AT
last we had gotten clue. We search
ed the court house records and found
that he owned the new house that the
shadow had seen him enter, and that,
although poor man on small salary,
he was building another. Then we
Swallowed his wife, and followed her
one day to the United States mint,
where she took $4,000 nugget of gold
to be coined. 1t had been buried in
the sand, and it was probably to bury
or get this nugget that Kindt entered
his new house that night. We could
learn nothing more, and one of our
men entered the watch factory as a
workman under Kindt. He was COM
PEELED to work at breaking up mortars,
which are treated to get from them the
gold that in almost invisible specks at
taches itself to them. He finally work
ed himself into the confidence of Kindt,
who proposed to him a scheme to rob
the safe the second time. Kindt Sc
cured pair of powerful glasses and
placed them where he could command
view of the safe. He hung his coat
over them when the men were in the
shop. He came before the other en-
ployes did, and with his eye at the
powerful glasses set in the partition,
saw each letter of the combination as
the only member of the firm who knew
it unlocked the safe. He marked these
down on board, and had gotten all the
combination, save one figure, when he
was arrested. He refused to tell where
the rest of the gold was secreted, and
the officers were about to leave his
rooms after fruitless search, when one
of them CHANGED to step on a window
ledge which tipped up and revealed
beneath it a $4,000 nugget of gold and
many dollars worth of gold filings and
scraps. Kindt was sent to states prison
for ten years. His wonderful mechani-
cal abilities stood him in good stead
even there. He invented patent lock
by which a line of cells could all be
locked with the movement of a lever
that controlled them all. He was in
trusted with partial SUPPLEMENTARY
of the job. He worked it, however, so
that the movement of the lever would
lock all the cells but his own, and
walked out free man.