Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1908-07-03
Quick Work.
ayVV~O~"~-s
fOrlgtnal ]

ing at headquarters awaiting asSi-' z ments and swapping stories. All bu. one had told of some puZZling ca,>2 that he had solved and he was cali",: upon to help the party pass the time.
 "Come. Billy" said one of the nun Der: "don't sit there mum when We r. giving experiences. Tell us the most difficult case you ever tackled
 You've all been giving that kind of cases. Suppose to vary the entertain ment I give you the easiest case l ever tackled and you fellows guess how l solved it!'
 That's a good idea. Proceed
 Ut was q case of identification. not one to discover a criminal, though l solved that. too, afterward. When l was on the secret service force of the town of Yardley telephone came from q farmhouse dozen miles in the coun- try that the dead body of man had been discovered lying beside a road so stripped and mutilated as to be unrec- ognizable. They wanted police force sent out to attend to the matter. The
 
 wagon and q man or two and drive out to the place where the body lay. He charged me especially to find out the name of the murdered man, since it is bothersome for the police to keep a body and it's bad policy to bury it without identification.
 We drove out to the farmhouse from which the telephone was sent, where I found Farmer Bowers, who led me half a mile down the road and showed me the body Whoever had done the job had taken great precaution to con ceal the identity of his victim. Why he did so afterward gave me cleW by which I brought him to the gal lows. The outer clothing had been taken off the body, and there was not a mark anywhere on his undergar- ments. A small bit of material had been cut out at the bottom of the shirt bosom. where shirtmakers usually place the owners initials. The shoes probably bore the makers name, for they had been taken away. AS to the face. it had been mutilated beyond recognition looked for some defect on the body. like a mole or birth mark, but there was nothing of the kind. No dog whined beside his mur- dered master Indeed, there was 20 living thing about him, except the oc- cupants of a dovecot on a barn near by and a cat in the road watching them
 T confess I was puzzled. The only way l could see to find out who the man was was to take the body to the police station. publish the facts and wait for claimants. But this was not what the chief wanted. So I did q hard job of taking in surroundings and in fifteen minutes hit on an ex- pedient. Two hours and thirty min utes after l arrived on the ground had brought the murdered mans son from a distance of fifty miles to his fathers body. which he identified at once beyond the slightest doubt. Now. how did I do it:''
 There was long silence, broken at last by one of the party, who claimed that some missing article, like q handk erchief with a name or initials on 1t or paper tossed about by the wind. had been found. But the story teller averred there was no such arti- cle of any kind whatever. Then one man guessed that the cat mentioned belonged to the dead man and had his name and address on the collar. The reply to this was that the cat belonged on the farm where the barn stood. Then there was guess that the mans son knew where his father was and came of his own accord. This would not do for Billy had sent him a mes sage to come and where to come to. One superstitious detective guessed that the murdered mans ghost gave the/necessary information, and anoth- CT suggested that it was case of mental telegraphy. Finally every man gave up the conundrum and asked for the solution. The story teller resumed: {:
 Among the doves in the cot he said. Il saw several of a different breed entirely from the rest. They were fraternizing with the others go- IilS stiiti ''IIiuS lC CHN HUH tue tOt. but not at all like them The reason why l noticed these apparent strangers was because 1 have always had pi- geons on my barn al home. and had never seen this variety before. had seen pictures of them. but l couldn't remember the breed.
 While l was thinking boy came up to the crowd carrying q wicker bas- ket with a cover. He said he had found it a short distance up the road l couldn't see any connection between it and the murdered man unless pos sibly he had been carrying something in it. Why it occurred to me 1 don't know, but connected it with the pigeons.
 Suddenly recollccted They werr carrier pigeons. It's wonderful low rapidly sometimes one idea will lead 10 another. Suppose these fnferlopers had belonged 10 the murdered man: Without waiting to think about the 1m- probability of such contingency went to the barn. climbed to the dove cot, caught carrier pigeon, wrote on one of my cards, Come at once to Bowers farm, one mile east of Ger