True Detective Stories Part 5

Mr. Pinkerton listened with interest to all this, but was less edified than Schwartz imagined, since two of his most trusted "shadows," who had been following Schwartz, had given him reports of the latter's movements, making it plain that the red-haired desperado was a myth, and that no such meeting as Schwartz described had taken place.

Nevertheless, professing to be well pleased with Schwartz's efforts, Mr. Pinkerton sent him out to track the fabulous desperado. Schwartz continued to render false reports. Finally, without a word to arouse his suspicion, he was allowed to resume his work on the railroad.

The "shadows" put upon Schwartz after this reported a suspicious intimacy between him and Watt, and a detective of great tact, Frank Jones, was detailed to get into their confidence, if possible. He was given a "run" as brakeman between Des Moines and Davenport, and it was arranged that he should come in from the west and lay over at Davenport on the same days when Schwartz and Watt laid over there, coming in from the east. Jones played his part cleverly, and was soon on intimate terms with Schwartz and Watt, taking his meals at their boarding-house and sleeping in a room adjoining theirs. They finally came to like him so well that they suggested his trying to get a transfer to their "run," between Davenport and Chicago. This was successfully arranged, and then the three men were together constantly, Jones even going to board at Schwartz's house in Chicago.

About this time Schwartz began to talk of giving up railroad work and going to live in Kansas or the far West. It was arranged that Jones should join him and Mrs. Schwartz on a Western trip. Meantime Schwartz applied to the company for leave of absence, on the plea that he wished to arrange some family matters in Philadelphia.

Mr. Pinkerton, being informed by Jones of Schwartz's application, used his influence to have it granted. When the young man started East he did not travel alone. His every movement was watched and reported, nor was he left unguarded for a moment, day or night, during an absence of several weeks, in New York, Philadelphia, and other Eastern cities.

To one unfamiliar with the resources and organization of a great detective system it is incomprehensible how continuous "shadowing" day after day and week after week, through thousands of miles of journeying, can be accomplished. The matter is made none the simpler when you know that there must be a change of "shadows" every day.

However adroit the detective, his continued presence in a locality would soon arouse suspicion. The daily change of "shadows" is easy when the man under watch remains in one place; for then it is only necessary to send a new "shadow" from the central office early each morning to replace the one who "put the man to bed" the night before.

But it is very different when the subject is constantly traveling about on boats or railways, and perhaps sleeping in a different town each night. Without the network of agencies, including large and small bureaus, that the Pinkertons have gradually established all over the United States, the "shadowing" of a man in rapid flight would be impossible. As it is, nothing is easier. Schwartz, for instance, spent several days in Buffalo, where his actions were reported hour by hour until he bought his ticket for Philadelphia. As he took the train a fresh "shadow" took it too, securing a section in the same sleeping-car with him, and taking his meals at the same time Schwartz took his, either in the dining-car or at stations. No sooner had the train left the station than the Pinkerton representative in Buffalo reported by cipher-despatch to the bureau in Philadelphia, whither Schwartz was going. The exact form of the despatch, which well ill.u.s.trates a system in constant use in the Pinkerton bureaus, was as follows:

"R. J. LINDEN,

"441 CHESTNUT STREET,

"PHILADELPHIA, PA.

"Anxious shoes sucker Brown marbles man other dropping eight arrives put grand fifty marbles articles along or derby coat ship very tan seer wearing these have and is ribbon ink dust central Tuesday for dust to rice hat and paper vest yellow ink get must jewelry morning depot on.

"D. ROBERTSON."

In despatches of this sort important information regarding criminals is constantly flashing over the wires, with no danger of any "leak."

Thus, from one city to another, and through every part of the country, any criminal may be "shadowed" to-day as Schwartz was "shadowed," one set of detectives relieving another every twenty-four hours, and the man's every word and action be carefully noted down and reported, without his having the faintest suspicion that he is under observation. The task of "shadowing" a person who is traversing city streets is intrusted to men especially skilled in the art (for art it is) of seeing without being seen. This is, indeed, one of the most difficult tasks a detective is called upon to perform, and the few who excel in it are given little else to do. Where a criminal like Schwartz, upon whose final capture much depends, is being followed, two, three, or even four "shadows" are employed simultaneously, one keeping in advance, one in the rear, and two on either side. The advantage of this is that one relieves the other by change of position, thus lessening the chance of discovery, while, of course, it is scarcely possible for several "shadows" to be thrown off the trail at once. An adroit criminal might outwit one "shadow," but he could scarcely outwit four. A "shadow," on coming into a new town with a subject, reveals himself to the "shadow" who is to relieve him by some prearranged signal, like a handkerchief held in the left hand.

The result of the "shadowing" in Schwartz's case was conclusive. No sooner was the brakeman out of Chicago than he began spending money far in excess of his income. He bought fine furniture, expensive clothing, articles of jewelry, presents for his wife, and laid in an elaborate supply of rifles, shot-guns, revolvers, and all sorts of ammunition, including a quant.i.ty of cartridges. The "shadows" found that in almost every case he paid for his purchases with fifty-or one-hundred-dollar bills. As far as possible these bills were secured by the detectives from the persons to whom they had been paid, immediately after Schwartz's departure. It will be remembered that the money taken in the robbery consisted of fifty-and one-hundred-dollar bills.

IV

In addition to this, it was found, by the investigations of detectives at Philadelphia, that Schwartz was the son of a wealthy retired butcher there, a most respectable man, and that he had a wife and child in Philadelphia, whom he had entirely deserted. This gave an opportunity to take him into custody and still conceal from him that he was suspected of committing a higher crime. The Philadelphia wife and child were taken on to Chicago, and Schwartz was placed under arrest, charged with bigamy.

Mr. Pinkerton went to the jail at once, and, wishing to keep Schwartz's confidence as far as possible, a.s.sured him that this arrest was not his work at all, but that of detectives Smith and Murray, who were, as Schwartz knew, working in the interests of the railroad people and of the Chicago "Daily News." Mr. Pinkerton told Schwartz that he still believed, as he had done all along, that Watt was the guilty man, and promised to do whatever he could to befriend Schwartz.

The latter did not appear to be very much alarmed, and said that a Philadelphia lawyer was coming on to defend him. The lawyer did come a few days later, when a bond for two thousand dollars was furnished for Schwartz's reappearance, and he was set at liberty. Matters had gone so far, however, that it was not considered safe to leave Schwartz out of jail, and he was immediately rearrested on the charge of murder.

Whether because of long preparation for this ordeal or because he was a man of strong character, Schwartz received this blow without the slightest show of emotion, and went back into the jail as coolly as he had come out. He merely requested that he might have an interview with his wife as soon as possible.

Mr. Pinkerton had evidence enough against Schwartz to furnish a strong presumption of guilt; but it was all circ.u.mstantial, and, besides, it did not involve Newton Watt, whose complicity was more than suspected.

From the first Mr. Pinkerton had been carefully conciliatory of the later Mrs. Schwartz. At just the right moment, and by adroit management, he got her under his direction, and by taking a train with her to Morris, and then on the next morning taking another train back to Chicago, he succeeded in preventing her from getting the advice of her husband's lawyer, who was meantime making the same double journey on pursuing trains with the design of cautioning her against speaking to Mr. Pinkerton. She had come to regard Mr. Pinkerton more as a protector than as an enemy, and he, during the hours they were together, used every device to draw from her some damaging admission.

He told her that the evidence against her husband, although serious in its character, was not, in his opinion, sufficient to establish his guilt. He told her of the bills found in Schwartz's possession, of the torn piece of the draft taken from the valise, of the marks on his hands and the lies he had told. All this, he said, proved that Schwartz had some connection with the robbery, but not that he had committed the murder, or done more than a.s.sist Watt, whom Mr.

Pinkerton professed to regard as the chief criminal. The only hope of saving her husband now, he impressed upon her, was for her to make a plain statement of the truth, and trust that he would use this in her husband's interest.

After listening to all that he said, and trying in many ways to evade the main question, Mrs. Schwartz at last admitted to Mr. Pinkerton that her husband had found a package containing five thousand dollars of the stolen money under one of the seats on conductor Danforth's train, on the night of his return to Chicago. He had kept this money and used it for his own purposes, but had been guilty of no other offense in the matter. Mrs. Schwartz stuck resolutely to this statement, and would admit nothing further.

Believing that he had drawn from her as much as he could, Mr.

Pinkerton now accompanied Mrs. Schwartz to the jail, where she was to see her husband. The first words she said, on entering the room where he was, were: "Harry, I have told Mr. Pinkerton the whole truth. I thought that was the best way, for he is your friend. I told him about your finding the five thousand dollars under the seat of the car, and that that was all you had to do with the business."

For the first time Schwartz's emotions nearly betrayed him. However, he braced himself, and only admitted in a general way that there was some truth in what his wife had said. He refused positively to go into details, seemed very nervous, and almost immediately asked to be left alone with his wife. Mr. Pinkerton had been expecting this, and was prepared for it. He realized the shock that would be caused in Schwartz's mind by his wife's unexpected confession, and counted on this to lead to further admissions. It was, therefore, of the highest importance that credible witnesses should overhear all that transpired in the interview between Schwartz and his wife. With this end in view, the room where the interview was to take place had been arranged so that a number of witnesses could see and hear without their presence being suspected; and the sheriff of the county, a leading merchant, and a leading banker of the town, were waiting there in readiness.

As soon as the door had closed and the husband and wife were left alone, Schwartz exclaimed:

"You fool, you have put a rope around Watt's and my neck!"

"Why, Harry, I had to tell him something, he knew so much. You can trust him."

"You ought to know better than to trust anybody."

The man walked back and forth, a prey to the most violent emotions, his wife trying vainly to quiet him. At each affectionate touch he would brush her off roughly, with a curse, and go on pacing back and forth fiercely. Suddenly he burst out:

"What did you do with that coat--the one you cut the mask out of?"

"Oh, that's all right; it's in the woodshed, under the whole woodpile."

They continued to talk for over an hour, referring to the murder and robbery repeatedly, and furnishing evidence enough to establish beyond any question the guilt of both Schwartz and Watt.

Meantime Watt had been arrested in Chicago, also charged with murder, and in several examinations had shown signs of breaking down and confessing, but in each instance had recovered himself and said nothing. The evidence of Schwartz himself, however, in the interview at the jail, taken with the ma.s.s of other evidence that had acc.u.mulated, was sufficient to secure the conviction of both men, who were condemned at the trial to life-imprisonment in the Joliet penitentiary. They would undoubtedly have been hanged but for the conscientious scruples of one juryman, who did not believe in capital punishment. Watt has since died, but Schwartz, at last accounts, was still in prison.

About a year after the trial Schwartz's Chicago wife died of consumption. On her death-bed she made a full confession. She said that her husband's mind had been inflamed by the constant reading of sensational literature of the dime-novel order; and that under this evil influence he had planned the robbery, believing that it would be easy to intimidate a weak little man like Nichols, and escape with the money without harming him. Nichols, however, had fought like a tiger up and down the car, and had finally forced them to kill him. In the fight he had torn off the mask that Mrs. Schwartz had made out of one of her husband's old coats. It was Watt who fired the pistol, while Schwartz used the poker. Schwartz had given Watt five thousand dollars of the stolen money, and had kept the rest himself. He had carried the money away in an old satchel bought for the purpose. A most unusual place of concealment had been chosen, and one where the money had escaped discovery, although on several occasions, in searching the house, the detectives had literally held it in their hands. Schwartz had taken a quant.i.ty of the cartridges he bought for his shot-gun, and emptying them, had put in each sh.e.l.l one of the fifty- or one-hundred-dollar bills, upon which he had then loaded in the powder and the shot in the usual way, so that the sh.e.l.ls presented the ordinary appearance as they lay in the drawer. The detectives had even picked out some of the shot and powder in two or three of the sh.e.l.ls; but, finding them so like other cartridges, had never thought of probing clear to the bottom of the sh.e.l.l for a crumpled-up bill.

Thus about thirteen thousand dollars lay for weeks in these ordinary-looking cartridges, and were finally removed in the following way: While Schwartz was in jail, a well-known lawyer of Philadelphia came to Mrs. Schwartz, one day, with an order from her husband to deliver the money over to him. She understood this was to defray the expenses of the trial and to pay the other lawyers. Superintendent Robertson remembers well the dying woman's emotion as she made this solemn declaration, one calculated to compromise seriously a man of some standing and belonging to an honored profession. Her body was wasted with disease, and she knew that her end was near. There was a flush on her face, and her eyes were bright with hatred as she declared that not one dollar of that money was ever returned to her, or ever used in paying the costs of her husband's trial. Nor was one dollar of it ever returned to the railroad company, or to the bank officials, who were the real owners.

The Destruction of the Renos

The first, and probably the most daring, band of train robbers that ever operated in the United States was the notorious Reno gang, an a.s.sociation of desperate outlaws who, in the years immediately following the war, committed crimes without number in Missouri and Indiana, and for some years terrorized several counties in the region about Seymour in the last-named State. The leaders of this band were four brothers, John Reno, Frank Reno, "Sim" Reno, and William Reno, who rivaled one another in a spirit of lawlessness that must have been born in their blood through the union of a hardy Swiss emigrant with a woman sprung from the Pennsylvania Dutch. Of the six children from this marriage only one escaped the restless, law-despising taint that made the others desperate characters, this single white sheep being "Clint" Reno, familiarly known as "Honest" Reno, and much despised by the rest of the family for his peaceful ways. Even Laura Reno, the one daughter, famed throughout the West for her beauty, loved danger and adventure, was an expert horsewoman, an unerring shot, and as quick with her gun as any man. Laura fairly worshiped her desperado brothers, whom she aided in more than one of their criminal undertakings, shielding them from justice when hard pressed, and swearing to avenge them when retribution overtook them after their day of triumph.

During the war the Renos had become notorious as bounty-jumpers; and at its close, with a fine scorn for the ways of commonplace industry, these fierce-hearted, dashing young fellows, all well-built, handsome boys, cast about for further means of excitement and opportunities to make an easy living. Beginning their operations in a small way with house-breaking and store robberies, they soon proved themselves so reckless in their daring, so fertile in expedients, so successful in their coups, that they quickly extended their field until, in the early part of 1866, they had placed a wide region under contribution, setting all forms of law at defiance.

John Reno and Frank Reno, the elder brothers, were at this time the dominating spirits of the band, and they soon a.s.sociated with them several of the most skilful and notorious counterfeiters and safe-burglars in the country, among these being Peter McCartney, James and Robert Rittenhouse, George McKay, John Dean, _alias_ "California Nelse," and William Hopkins. The band soon came to be named with the greatest dread and awe, good citizens fearing to speak a word of censure, lest swift punishment be visited upon them. The Reno influence made itself felt even in local politics, corrupt officials being elected at the instigation of the outlaws, so that their conviction became practically impossible.

The Renos, toward the end of 1866, began a series of train robberies which were carried out with such perfection of organization, such amazing coolness, and such uniform success as to attract national attention. The first of these robberies took place on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, being accomplished by only four men, Frank and John Reno, a.s.sisted by William Sparks and Charles Gerroll. Other train robberies followed in quick succession, the same methods being used in each, with the same immunity from capture, so that people in this region would say to one another, quite as a matter of course, "The Reno boys got away with another train yesterday."

But while indulging in its own acts of outlawry, the Reno band strenuously objected to any rivalry or compet.i.tion on the part of other highwaymen. A train robbery was perpetrated on the Jeffersonville Railroad early in 1867. The Renos had no connection with this robbery. It was accomplished by two young men named Michael Collins and Walker Hammond, the two men escaping with six thousand dollars, taken from a messenger of the Adams Express Company. But their horses had carried them only a short distance from the looted train when they found themselves surrounded by the formidable Renos, who had quietly watched the robbery from a place of concealment, and now unceremoniously relieved the robbers of their plunder. Not content with this, and as if to intimidate others from like trespa.s.ses on their preserves, the Renos used their influence to have their rivals arrested for the crime by which they had profited so little; and both were subsequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to long terms in the Indiana penitentiary. The Renos, meantime, although they were known to have secured and kept the six thousand dollars, were allowed to go unmolested, and continued their depredations.

Up to this time the Reno gang had confined their operations, for the most part, to Indiana; but now they began to make themselves felt in Missouri, where a number of daring crimes were committed, notably the robbing of the county treasurer's safe at Gallatin, in Daviess County.

In this last act John Reno was known to have been personally concerned. The case was placed in the hands of Allan Pinkerton.

Taking up the investigation with his accustomed energy, Mr. Pinkerton traced John Reno back to Seymour, Indiana, where the gang was so strongly intrenched in the midst of corrupt officials and an intimidated populace that any plan of open arrest was out of the question. Recognizing this, Allan Pinkerton had recourse to the cunning of his craft. He began by stationing in Seymour a trustworthy a.s.sistant, who was instructed, on a given day and at a given hour, to decoy John Reno to the railroad-station on any pretense that might suggest itself. Then he arranged to have half a dozen Missourians, the biggest and most powerful fellows he could find, led by the sheriff of Daviess County, board an express-train on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad at Cincinnati, and ride through to Seymour, arriving there at the time agreed upon with his a.s.sistant. Along with them was to be a constable bearing all the papers necessary to execute a requisition.

When the train reached Seymour there was the usual crowd lounging about the station, and in it were John Reno and Mr. Pinkerton's lieutenant, who had entirely succeeded in his task. While Reno was staring at the pa.s.sengers as they left the train, he was suddenly surrounded and seized by a dozen strong arms; and before his friends could rally to his aid, or realize what was happening, he was clapped in irons, carried aboard the train, and soon was rolling away to Missouri, under arrest.

Reno's friends stoutly contested the case in the Missouri courts, arguing that the prisoner had been kidnapped and that the law had therefore been violated by his captors. The courts decided against them on this point, however; and John Reno, with several less important members of the gang, was tried and convicted. He was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor in the Missouri penitentiary.

This was the first break in the ranks of the band, the first instance in which they had suffered for their crimes. But the bold spirit of the organization was still unbroken. Three brothers still remained to replace the one who was gone; and so far from learning caution, the band launched forthwith into still more daring and frequent offenses.

Trains were "held up" right and left; robberies were committed; and early in 1868 the gang made a famous raid across the country through Indiana and Illinois, robbing safes in county treasurers' offices in a number of places. In several instances some of the members were arrested; but they always managed to have the prosecution quashed, or in some way to escape conviction. In the spring of 1868 their operations became so outrageous, and the situation so serious, that Allan Pinkerton was again called upon to do something in the cause of public safety.