The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-09-10
CATS TAIL IS
BETRAYER OF 10
IN BIG THEFT

There is the solemn assurance of
responsible Government officials that
this is a true story. Also there is
the cat. Every one rem embers the
Chicago fire and no one remem bers
the name of Mrs. O'Leary's COW.
The cat in question is another unique
figure in history, but no one seems
to know it's name, if it ever had one.
Name or not, it had-and has-a
tail; a gray tail at the beginning, an ,
orange tail when the plot thickened,
| and a gray tail once more as the De-
partment of Justice sleuths, with the
aid of some of the most reconcile re-
sources of chemical science, unraveI
| the mystery.
| at the wrong place and the wrong
| time and betrayed those who gave its
! feline owner asylum and led to the
arrest of nineteen persons in three
| States and the recovery of S250,o0O
worth of German dyes held by the
| State Department as part of the Ger
| man indemnify.
1t was few days after July last
that this long tail of condolences be-
| gan to wave On that date a motor
| truck carrying number of men
| backed up to the warehouse of the
! Textile Alliance at Jackson and Fifth
| streets, Hoboken, where the dyes,
| held like other German property to
reimburse American citizens who sus-
| tanned losses through U-boat warfare
| and the like, were stored. The men
| held pistols at the heads of the
warehouse watchmen, loaded the g.
| 900 pounds of dyes on the truck and
| escaped.
| Enter the cat few days later. An
| ever wary and watchfuI Government
| sleuth spots it in River street near
| the army piers. He has a natural
resentment at nature taking of all
sorts. And when he sees a normally
gray cat proudly waving bright
| orange tail he becomes suspicious
| So he seizes the cat and carries it
| to a. chemist. The chemist analyses
! hairs cut frim the bright hued tail
F, and discovers (by a process not dis
| closed) that they are dyed with Ger
man dyes
Thereupon the agent recalls one of
the simplest and most certain axioms
Of feline lore. The cat comes back.
He reasons that if the cat comes back
he, or she, likewise goes back He re-
leases the cat near where he found it
and it skurries into a house on River
street which proves to be occupied by
a. number of men who recently had
moved into the neighborhood.
After that Chief Stone of the New
Jersey Justice Department agents and
his men shadow every occupant of
that house. The tireless vigil was re-
warded after months when last Satur-
day, Stone and Emmett Drew. one
of his aides, saw truck pass them
in Patterson, followed closely by an
automobile in which were three men
one of whom they knew, they said, to
be an occupant of the house where
lived the cat with the chameleon tail.
In the truck, according to Stone,
were 5000 pounds of the dyes. The
men in the automobile were arrested.
One of them was Joseph Hoskins
known as Scranton Joe,' of 215 River
street, Hoboken. The others were
Christian Miller and Richard O'Con-
nor.
From what they learned in Pater-
son, Stone and his men were led to
visit Brooklyn where they said they
recovered the other 5000 pounds of
stolen dyes from warehouse. There,
too, they arrested Jacob Wilder,
treasurer of the Wilder Dye & Chem
ica1 Company of 155 Broadway,
Brooklyn, and George Davis, a chem
list for the concern, who were held in
$4,000 bail each by the United States
Commissioner on charges of conspir.
ing to receive stolen goods.
Thee 11ief then sent a telegram to
Chicago which led to the arrest there
Wednesday night of Ado1ph Wilder
and SamTeI Weiss who were said 70
| have gone to Chicago to open a
branch of the concern.
| Chief Stone said yesterday that
| about a dozen other men had been
| picked up n connection with the al
| legged crime. The dyes, he said. ap-
| parently were taken to Marlborough,
| N. Y, and kept on the farm OF a man
| who lies in West Hoboken. Part Of
| the dyes then were shipped to Brook
| lyn and the remainder was taken to
| Paterson. Stone added that he
| to HobokeN to be used as samples
and that the cat rolled in some which
| was spilled on the floor.