Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1918-01-10

| Cus' ~ WASH HliHe, DuU HS IL OlQ NOT
include me anywhere in its workings,
l was perfectly agreeable the detec-
tive sergeant should hold 1t. All I
asked was forty-eight hours, and I
should be outside the heads on the
rolling decks of the bonnie Wilton.
"Go to It," / encouraged, deciding
to put my dress suit with the stuff
for the storage bins. "Ill be lolling
in steamerchair while you are work
ing your think-tank overtime on the
mess. No further word from my jocu-
lar friend of the revolver note?"
Marcus grinned shame-facedly. "Just
another fool note," he said. handing it
to me. IL paid no attention to H."
read, typed as before:
Search John Gilmore's apartment
for evidence in st. Dunstan murder.
want to dig through here?" I ask
ed, trying not to show concern, for I
was certain that somewhere among
my effects was evidence as damning
as would have been the empty shell
in my revolver.
mo, guess not" the detective re-
piled, looking at the various piles Of
miscellany obviously. tits some
weak Drained josh-artist trying to
make me a goat. You keep it, and IL
you get line on the joker, let me in
and I'll teach him what joshing really
is!"
I tucked the paper away with it's
predecessor, and watched Marcus take
slow and liquid leave with almost
apparent relief. The minute the door
had closed I began the search whicn
he refused to make, and did not stop
until had found what he was intend.
ed to find. At the bottom Of my hand
kerchief box under the pile of linen,
was hat-pin exactly similar. 80 far
| as could remember, to the two had
pointedly called to Marcus's attention
! in the hat which fell from the head Of
the corpse in the automatic lift.
| Then began systematic survey
| OF my connection with this case,
which was beginning to get on my
nerves. Twice had escaped police
suspicion, probably arrest, and these
recurring attempts to make me out a
i criminal were not, to my mind, either
practical Jokes or malicious pettiness.
1t was conspiracy, and 1t was time for
me to take measures to defend N.Y.
SELF
| l have had some success, as Marcus
knew, digging out the solutions of
criminal affairs, and that success has
been largely due to my theory that the
past life of any participant in a mys-
terry, if it could be spread out and
read, would develop the answer in the
reading. / have always begun to
work back for motive, hunting the
past for clue to the present. In this
case my own life was the only possi-
BILE one for study; where in its pages
did the st. Dunstan horror touch?
Eighteen years in a newspaper Of
flee, making the passing friendships
and enmities of r. porter, none so Sc
rious that might give them second
/ thought in this connection. No love
affairs to bear on the solution, fer al
though not Immaculate, had kept
clear Of petticoat scandal, and the
more serious heart troubles feminine
never found time to acquire. Eigh-
teen years of my life could be obliter-
stan affair was concerned.
To start at the beginning, my faith
er, John Gilmore, had been a Califor.
nian pioneer and forty-niner, not f.
nancially successful, but able to take
care of his family fairly well, who died
In his bed when /, the youngest child,
was twelve.
My mother had died at my birth,
and two brothers, much older than /,
lived now in New York. After my faith
er's death I had lived with my sister
who married to wealthy San Fran
ciscan, and was given the opportuni-
ty of university education, gradual
ing into the Sentinel Office.
Marian's husband, an Austrian by
birth, had taken her and the daugh-
ter on a visit to his ancestral land,
and they decided to remain in Vienna.
/ heard from her occasionally and
sometimes through my brothers, but
we were never much of family for
correspondence, any of us, and my
sister had never revisited this coun-
try.
Ihere was the story, Dald, prosalc
enough, and nowhere in its details
could discover cause for any one at
tempting to place on me the necessity
of defending my neck from a false
murder charge Reviewing it care
fully, | must believe that / had been
chosen at random from the occupants
OF the st. Dunstan to bear the onus
of the murder discovered within its
walls.
All day remained in my rooms,
packing boxes and trunks, hoping for
telephone call from the st. Francis
Hotel which never came. At seven
dressed and went to Brenta's on the
remote chance that Isabelle Reade
would come again.
l saw her before l entered, through
the windows, and she was sitting as