The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-25

mailing Men Who ate Trying to Live
 Down a Criminal ReeOrd-sOme who
 Come tO GrIsf-Byrnes' Way With Them.
 .There are more barneys living easy around this town right now than ever had line on before,'' remarked a vete- ran detective of the headquarters staff.
 The man to whom the detective was speaking naturally inquired, Whats a barney?"
 Crooks batter for barnacle," replied the detective. You know what a bar nacle's's long suit is-getting next and hanging on. A barney is mean mutt of crook who preys upon and black mails fellows with whom he has done time-one-time offenders, generally, who, after doing their bits, have pulled themselves out of the mire and gone to work to make Something of themselves.
 New York is always headquarters for the barneys, but it is chocka-block full of them just now. It's hard to snag them, for nineteen out of twenty of lll6lI NlCllttiS are dLfdlu lO Squedl, SNSll when they are being crucified.
 ITO illustrate this phase of it, there is a contractor and builder in this town who did five-specker at Sing Sing for forgery back in the sos. He got into a business hole, floated some bad paper to tide him over a tight place with the idea that he'd be able to take it up be- fore discovery, and was landed.
 He did his bit uncomplainingly and when he got back to New York his friends, convinced that he was an hon. est man at heart, gave him the hand and sent him along. Not many years passed before his business became something huge, and his business asso- ciates, in these days of his advancing prosperity. were all men who had no idea whatever of the one blot on his re- cord.
 Then the barneys, a crew of whom fastened themselves upon him as soon as he began to do we'll, became some thing fierce in their demands. He pro- duced samething to them for years, un- til the amount had run away up in the tens of thousands, until one day, driven to distraction by the leeching of the buyers, he came down here to head quarters and saw the old man-it was a short time before MT. Byrnes turned in his badge.
 MT. Byrnes simply wrote down a list of the barneys' names and sent word to them that he'd like to see them at Headquarters at eleven o'clock on the X frII in q, bunch-no crook ever even thought of ducking an invitation from the old man in those days.
 You remember what a poor fist MT. Byrnes made of it when it came to su- per1uous eonversation-he was the least garrulous man that ever knew. He only said a few things to that bun ale of barneys, but what he said was enough. -# He told them that he didn't feel dis posed to crowd them any, but that he considered that twenty-four hours sgwould be ample time for all of them to pack their duds and get out Of New York He added that if one Of them was found in New York after eleven o'clock on the following morning-and there'd be little quiet hunt after that holir-that one would be heal sorry, so he would, that he hadn't taken a polite and civil tip and sought a change of air.
 That was all. They slouched out They hiked, to a man, from New York before eleven o'clock on the next day. and none of them ever set foot in New York again until MT. Byrlles had left the police department. Even then, when they did come back, they didn't try to barney the contractor and build CT any more.
 But that wah only one case, and, as Il say, the barneys' great bulge is that not one in twenty of their victims has the nerve to make straight for head quarters with his story. If they'd all do this, instead of going on yielding to the demands of the barneys for years at stretch, we could handle the barneys all right and wipe their graft out, if by no other process than that of oinching them every day or so as suspicious characters or on general principles and wearing them out that way.
 My running mate and did corral one of them not long ago. We'd been running across him, logged to the tops and with a pink shave and shine and good eats in him all the while, around the upper Broadway hotel district, for some time, and we were pretty well convinced, for various reasons, that he was making barneying his graft.
 So, when we saw him swing onto downtown Broadway car one afternoon, we jumped the car, too, having nothing in particular on hand. He left the car at an office building below Trinity church, and we skated along at pro- per distance behind him. He entered the office of a real estate man on the third floor. and when he came out. about five minutes later, we observed that he looked as if he hadn't anything to complain about.
 'When he had gone my partner and I strolled into the office of the real es- tate man, and I at once recognized him as a man who had got into mix while acting as executor of an estate some years ago, the wind-up of which was that he had had to put in two-spot up on the Hudson. I introduced myself and my wockmate to the real estate man-he was middle-aged-and I didn't make any bones about coming out and telling him that we were after the crook who was, we knew, barneying him.