El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1913-04-26

| ISOLATED in political affairs ana WORKED
together in PoAee maItefs5 lhueeG ~
nized my aptitude for detective WORK
He was not slow in telling others that
] had a deductive faculty OF mind, ana
so when a notorious elecJlon LFaud OF
the early eighties was being inyest-
gated, the district attorney employed
me to make out a case against the
guilty election officials.
This I did, and after that the crlml-
nal puzzles Of the Columbus police de-
partment began to be brought to me
regularly for solution Private cases
came along. so many, in fact, that 1
was compelled to lefve my tather.s
business that had sprung up for me
almost before ] realized it
Burns Called to First Big Case.
It was while I was thus engaged, and
~en1oying myself hugely-dOr l felt that
at last i had hit upon the vocation that
I was born to foIlow-that I met Tom
Furlong, one Of the brainiest and most
successful detectives OF his m Fur
long, like Barney McCabes seemed 10
take a hin to me as the saying IS
and it was in response to a call from
him to try my hand at solving the puz-
zling arson mysteries in St Louis that
1 set out upon my first big case.
A number OF rented houses in St
Louis had been burned. one by one,
under suspicious circumstances that IN
cluded, in several instances a
plugged" fire-alarm box and q smell
OF in~cendiarism- The owners or the
houses were obviously innocent, and
they had lost by the fires; but h ten
ants. in ach case, had been protected
by insurance upon household furniture
unusually expensive.
Detectives hired By the insurance
companies had found evidence on which
to found a theory that the original
contents OF the had Deen sec
reilly replaced by second hand goods
and the companies into pay
ing an excessive fire loss on the sub
stituted furniture. These detectives
had made various reports OF 'shadoW-
ing and 'ropings' and such prOIeS-
sional activ1ues-reporIs nat aI"ass
showed a warm trail OF suspicion. put
arrived nowhere.
It had not been possible. even after
months Of work, TO find enough eVl-
dence to establish a case; ana me m
surance companies had been compelled
to swallow their suspicious and pay
many Of the claims of the sWlndIers-
as well as the bills Of the detectiFeS
These companies had many re
tanned. as special counsel, an eminent
criminal lawyer named Marshall Nc
Donald to resist some Of the later
claims. Mcdonald and detective Fur-
long a worked together successfully
on the MaXWell-Prelier murder case
n Mcdonald called Furlongs atten-
ton to the arson mysteries and to the
failure Of the other detectives TO
solve them
ut seems to me" he said to Furlong,
that if you would go to work on these
cases you would get some results II
shouldn't be impossible TO catch h
men. And il would be a fine feather IN
your cap, Tom, If you ran them down
now. after everybody else has failed
Burns Deduces Solution OF the Puzzle.
As a result OF that conversation. Fur
long wrote for me, and when arrived
we examined the reports upon the
case together in FurlOngs office. n
discussed them.
I argued that, though it had been -,
apparently impossible to bring home
the guilt Of arson in any instance
and equally impossible to prove, from ]
the furniture salvaged from any fire, ]
that it was not the same that had
been insured before the fire-stin, If a
band of swindlers had been insuring
furniture and then switching" II, they
must have had the expensive furniture
hauled away from the house and the
cheaper furniture brought to replace
it. Through that gate, over that
bridge each separate conspiracy had TO
pass-in a moving van
I put aside all the other involved
and ~debatable incidents Of the crimes, Z
pointed at the hypothetical moving
van and said: There's the solution. II
we can get the van we can prove that
the furniture was switched And. If
we can prove that, we can make a
case"
This may seem a disappointingly
simple key to offer for the elucida-