The Monmouth inquirer., 1926-12-30
Beau BrummeI Safe Cracker
and Outlaw Among Out
laws, Slain in Revenge.

and outlaw Among Gut
laws, Slain in Revenge.
San Francisco.--Clyde billiard, Beau
Brummel safe-cracker, outlaw among
outlaws, and feared for his trigger
finger, lived by strangely cynical
code:
Never accept any man as your
friendr'
Forsaking that code billiard died
recently, bullet in his brain, fired
by an unknown hand.
With his death, San Francisco's
underworld chortled. In the dank,
smelly places where criminals planned
and piled their trade there were
smirks that. bespoke grim jest.
For the underworld had won a long
and cunning race with the police to
deal justice" to this self-styled lead
er of its realm.
1t had evened the score with Clyde
billiards too-well-known automatic.
Long ago the dapper 'lady's-man-
crook" had set cold lead as the pen
atty for those who should seek to
cross his path, and he paid the same
price.
They found his body, face down,
In the dirt alongside the Skyline boule-
ward, south of San Francisco, early
on the morning of September 20. A
bullet wound was in the back of his
head Clyde billiard had never had
chance.
Half mile distant, crawling on her
hands and knees through the brush,
blood streaming from bullet wound
in her temple, they found Gladys
Fleming.
billiard, disbeliever in men, was
never without his woman"
Identification of the two was not
Immediately established on the morn
ing Of the crime, but when police had
wiped aside the shroud of mystery
they nodded knowingly.
''Well, boys, the scores ted" said
one of them.
Hilliard had gone the way he had
sent Gene Bowen, ex-convict and
member of the formers gang Of mas
ter craftsmen, in a Green street apart
ment on the night of August 5.
Gladys Fleming, by chance of fate,
had taken the same medicine that
billiard melted out to the dashing Dor
othy Wilson on the same night he
killed Bowen-a bullet in the temple.
Both women lived.
Score Is Tied.
So the score, in the main at least,
was tied, so far as the underworld
went. But this same underworld was
now a good jump ahead of the police.
True, long ago the police had cor
nered Jim Fleming, second husband
of the wounded Gladys, and sent him
away to the big house" at San
Quentin for the killing of copper"
but in this race to s'get" Clyde Eli
lard the selement" had won-hands
down.
With combination of hair dye, an
alias and native cunning, Hilliard had
slipped through the police net when
it seemed that naught could save
MIN. lie udQ luOFSu LII q Lille ~ lily
circle that knew him best. undetect-
ed. He had played his game with the
affections of women. and we'll.
But Clyde billiard discounted fate,
and once placed on the defensive, he
forgot the code by which he had
lived:
Never accept any man as your
friendl"
Then they "got him."
The murder of Gene Bowen and the
shooting of Dorothy Wilson in the
Green street apartment, police said,
had been ''plain slaughter" The vic
tins never had chance. It was
failing out Of thieves" the detectives
held, and later Mrs. Wilson bore them
out
billiard, she said. had not liked
Eugene Bowen's division of the spoils
in a recent gem robbery. So he took
his long-avowed method of settling
such disputes. Knocking at the door
Of the apartment in which Bowen and
his sweetheart lived, he had spoken
his greeting to the two within with a
fusilade of pistol shots.
Bowen fell dead Dorothy Wilson,
Iapsing into state of coma from the
effects Of her three wounds, was de-