Evening star., 1911-06-11
Entry No. 20 in Our Prize Story Competition

porter town who had ever beaten
@NA the police at their own job, not only
SK&N1N by tracking bank robber to his lair,
NIeNMa but capturing him single handed and
1AS@6N bringing him in while paid pro-
AZSAN tectors still cropping vaguely
RTI10SNWH along another trail. That
MLGHGMJ good while ago; but who were
WlS6DW interested in him personally had not
WG)W forgotten it, even if the incident had
wv grown trife dim in the public
~ 1/N o. memory.
At the Press Club we gave him
cordial welcome, for glad to
0kS see him again after his six weeks
absence; but all of struck
with the lifelessness of his response What had
over the fellow? We might have ventured a guess if
could have found out where he had passed the inter-
VAL From having been the most vouble talker in
Set however, he had become uncomnunicative, almost
taciturn and, at any reference to his sudden disap
pearance from town and his long stay he contrved to
shift the conversation to other subject find
excuse for dropping it altogether.
On 3The Intelligencer' of whose staff he had for
merly been bright and shining light nobody seemed to
know any about this unexplained hiatus in his
activities than at the club Perkins, the managing
editor, told me- when met him at luncheon after
Masons return, that friend had seemed depressed
for some days before his abrupt departure. AS far
could be learned he broodng the fact that he
had not unearthed sensation in good while and
in danger of losing the emnence he had gained by
or two exploits of unusual brilliaTce.
Il suspect" the speaker went on, "that Joes head
had been little turned by the adulaton heaped upon
him after the bank robbery beat and when he got
scoop the finding of that Dutchmans body, but
couldn't make the police the Coroners Jury follow
the lead he offered
3Id forgotten that case" interrupted. @What was
it2"
@Why, don't you remember? Some workmen who
were sinking foundation for the bridge pier
brought up from the river bottom a gunnysack con-
tanning decomposed and dsmembered male corpse
with few fragments of clothing clinging it. The
sack and the bits of clothing all the police had
work upon. They found the produce warehouse from
which the sack had been discarded and aferward sold
for few cents to named Strom, believe, best
known to them Dutch Frank, comparative new
ryfo h,pu tIa
and picked up precarous living by his wits, but who
had not been his accustomed haunts for more
than month then. Mason wrote up the case for us,
and tried to the detectives and the Coroners Jury
in some direction indicated by him. but the police
seemed to have something their sleeves which didn't
out and all his efforts vain. He had quar-
rel with the chief at headquarters about it, remember"
"And what the verdict"
ooh, the customary form: that Frank or Francis
Strom alias Dutch Frank to his death by violence
at the hands of some person persons unknown-and
that sort OF thing Joe terribly wrought up the
business and more less lost interest in his work. till
day he missing at the Office and my desk lay
note from him saying simply that he going away
for rest and couldn't tell when he would be back
Neither then later did he offer further explana
ton which, in view of the way have treated him,
made me pretty angry But Joe as too good a man to
lose, and took him again when he returned with
no questions asked they put it in the advertise
ments.
WHAT Perkins had said about Mason's appetite
v" for notoriety came back to me with startling
vivdness when picked up my @Inteigencer" the fol-
lowing Sunday morning and found the first page
cred with article whose scarehead in huge capitals
stretched all the top of the sheet. cannot re-
produce here either title text; but the central
fact that stared the reader from this of printers
ink that the night before a very late hour and
when he was at work at his desk, Joseph Mason had
been arrested charge of having certain date
some three months previous murdered Frank or
Francis Srom, better known along the waterfront by
his nickname of Dutch Frank.
The article written in dashing style, as if its
author had been assigned task just suited to his
1t rehearsed the story of the finding of Franks body
about Perkins had given it to me- but in pictur