Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1909-07-31

| copyright, 1909 by American Press Asso
ciation.l
Are you detectives as smart as yor
| appear to be in nOyels?" l asked OF
one who had served long while al
| the business
THE smart detective in real life
usually gets left. Instead of letting
the case work itself out he forms the
cries and fits facts to them. It's the
| methodtcal detective who wins He
works on the lines of what would nat
| urally come about, narrowing proba-
bilities till he drives the remaining
few through one hole The interest
ing features in detective work are
the happenings. | have known many
singular circumstances to betray a
criminal. l knew of one case where a
man was brought to the gallows by a
twig growing up out of the ground,
carrying key with it,
please explain"
"My chief called me into his private
office one day and showed me a shoot
of some kind of bush. AS twig it
had come up out of the ground, its
tip running through the elliptical iron
end of key, which it carried up some
five or six feet, growing around the
key at the same time He told me
that some boys had found it in a
thicket, and beneath it under an older
growth lay the moldering body of a
man. The chiefs theory was that the
key had been in the mans pocket and
as the clothing decayed the key fell to
the ground. A twig had sprouted I'M
der it through the ellipse and as it
grew Of course the key came up with
it,
ut was to be supposed that the body
had been hidden there and the man
had been murdered | was put to
work on the case and began, as | al
ways do, methodically. That meant
in this case to inquire into all disap-
pearances as far back as possible. You
may not be aware how many people
will disappear within a given time
found that from the village near by
where the body was found and it's
surroundings no less than six persons
had disappeared in ten years and had
never been accounted for. tried my
key on the doors of the houses, so
far as l could find them, where the
missing ones had lived but it fitted
none of them
"At last l heard of one Peter Moxon,
who had lived alone on a small farm
In the neighborhood, having one hired
man. Some ten years back the man,
Tx Colburn, gave out that Moxon he'd
sold him his farm on easy payments
and gone to Alaska. Colburn had
worked the farm for several years
then deserted it. | learned that his
desertion had occurred shortly after
some one of Moxon's relatives had ar
rived to look up his kinsman. But the
farm had remained unoccupied ever
since Colburn's disappearance
Somehow as soon as | heard this
story it struck me that / had got
clew to the mystery. / went to the
Moxon farm and put the key into the
lock of the front door. 1t was too
small. Going round to the rear, | tried
it on the kitchen door and unlocked
it as easily as was possible for a rusty
key From that moment knew that
the body found by the boys in the
thicket was that of Peter Moxon. AS
told you in the beginning, the inter
est in the case wasn't owing to any
shrewdness of mine, but to the raising
up of a key out of the soil by grow
ing twig. One might fancy the little
sprout the finger of an avenging angel
''The next thing was to find Colburn.
This, of course, was mere matter of
search. Hunting for a known person
is quite different matter from hunt