THE ASTOUNDING CRIME ON TORRINGTON ROAD

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT MIGHT BE TERMED “THE PENTECOST EPISODE” IN A MOST AUDACIOUS CRIMINAL CAREER

BY William Gillette

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS New York and London, Mcmxxvii

THE ASTOUNDING CRIME ON TORRINGTON ROAD COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY WILLIAM GILLETTE PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. E-B

THIS RECITAL

—AS TAKEN DOWN AND THEN SET FORTH HEREIN—IS DIVIDED INTO SEVEN PARTS OR SECTIONS WHICH MAY BE ROUGHLY DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS:

THE ASTOUNDING CRIME ON TORRINGTON ROAD

PART I

At the request of Mr. Andrew H. Barnes I make the following statement in order to explain how it came about that I entered into the arrangement for taking down from his dictation an Account of a Certain Extraordinary Affair.

Horace McClintock

My name is signed above. I am a staff reporter on one of the town papers. New York, I mean. Several times in the past three or four years when some special work in my line—which has come to be mostly interviewing—was required there, they have sent me over to Boston.

This last time I went over—which is now, for I am there yet—I was particularly glad to get the assignment, as my friend Dudley Knapp had recently made a shift from a big Life Insurance Company in the West to a very much bigger one in Boston, and it was a great pleasure to see him.

Duds (his schoolboy name still sticks with me and I forgot to state that we were boys together in a small town in northern Ohio) has got to be quite a “high up” in the Insurance line. I don’t know exactly what they call him, but he’s an expert of some kind, and is a sharp one on any fraud or tangle that has to be attended to. I don’t mean to say he’s a detective or anything like that, but in nine cases[Pg 2] out of ten he saves them from having to get one. He has the gift of knowing a man pretty well when he gets a good look at him—with a little conversation thrown in—and they put him on cases that have the look of being a bit off color. There’s plenty of that kind in the Life business. That’s how he happened to be in Boston, and we got ahold of each other almost the minute I arrived there.

We’d been having dinner together in the men’s café at a specially good hotel—one of the few cafés left where they hadn’t let women and dancing in and changed the name to the Wild Rose Room or something like that, and where—as Dudley put it—you could still get a feed without having girls’ legs flashed in your face with every mouthful.

It was down to coffee and cigars—that is, cigars for Duds and cigarettes for me—and we were lolling back talking over our experiences, when I happened to think of an odd thing that occurred on my last trip over—which was before Duds had made the shift to the Boston Company; and I started in to give him an idea of it by asking if he knew anything about a suburb called Roxbury.

“No,” he said, “but for God’s sake” (lowering his voice) “don’t let anyone hear you call it a suburb—you’d be mobbed.”

“Well it looked like that to me,” I returned. “I struck a place where I thought I was out on a farm.”

“When was this?” he asked.

“About a year ago.”

“What were you doing?”

“Following a man.”

“Who was it?”

“Never found out.”

[Pg 3]

Dudley looked at me a couple of seconds; then settling back in his chair struck a match and began to light a cigar.

“Anything—er—out of the way?” he mumbled between puffs.

“No,” I told him, “just odd, that’s all. Peculiar way a couple of people acted on the train coming over got me guessing to that degree that when we arrived here about eleven o’clock at night I trailed the man through the south station till he got into a taxi, and then jumped into one myself and followed him out into that Roxbury region looking for the answer—which I never got.”

“Slipped you, did he?”

“Amounted to that. Went into an old house out there—gloomy-looking place—long way back from the road—no other houses near. I had him down for some sort of a yegg, and when I saw him go into that murky old mansion I called it a day and quit.”

“What made you think he was crooked?”

“One or two things I overheard on the train—and then he played a few queer games when I was trailing him in the taxi.”

“Get the address?”

“There wasn’t any number at the gate, but I got the name of the street on a lamp post. Not sure what it was, though. Something like Torreytown—or Torringtown—or one of those——” I broke off suddenly.

Duds gave me a quick look.

“Table behind you!” I muttered.

“What’s the matter with it?” he grunted, his voice down with mine.

“Man got a shock when I mentioned that street.”

[Pg 4]

“Maybe he lives on it.”

I shook my head slightly.

“Well, go on—what do you care?”

I was just going to speak when Duds stopped me.

“Wait a minute!” he said, his voice down several pegs more. “That street you mentioned—I’ve read about it somewhere—in some paper.”

“About the street?”

“Yes—or—or something that happened on it. Remember there was a lot of excitement—everybody guessing. What did we get from Boston along then?”

“One of their murders most likely—if it was something you read about outside.”

“Hold on—I’m getting it! It was that case the police tried to hush up—lot of queer stuff to it—everybody wondering what in God’s name it was all about. Inventor in it somewhere—don’t you remember that? It was first-page stuff all over the country.”

“No—they had me down in Panama after that Boston trip, covering a Senate Investigating Committee. Saw some headings but didn’t know what it was all about.”

“Peculiar case all right. What was it you overheard on the train?”

“Began at the Grand Central. I was running for the five-eleven Boston express—P.M. I needn’t say. Just as I got to the gate an excited old woman—poorly dressed—queer hat on sideways—dangling gray hair and all that—came hurrying across from somewhere and plunged in ahead of me trying to pass the gateman. He held her up for a ticket of course, and there was quite a time, she calling out that her son was on the train—she’d got to speak to him—he had no business[Pg 5] to be there, and a flood of talk like that. It made a kind of a riot—for the gateman put her down as crazy and didn’t like to pass her in among the rolling stock; and in a minute there was a crowd of people about, and a station policeman coming over on the run, and the assistant station master arriving a second or two later: with the result that the two of them—the station master and the policeman—took her through and down the incline to the train, to see if she really had a son on board.

“She was a queer old thing, this dame, and kept mumbling to herself that she wasn’t going to let him (her son, I took it) go to that place—not if she could help it. The officer tried two or three times to fix her hat on straight as they walked along, one on each side of her—but it wouldn’t stay.

“Most of the passengers who came along while the old woman was blocking the left-hand passage of the gate—where I was—were passed in on the other side; there’s two ticket punchers, you know. But I hung back till they took her through, and then followed them down to the train and through the cars. Wanted to see if there was anything to it. Might be a story if I followed it up.

“After they’d gone through nearly the whole train, including the Pullmans, she spotted the chap she was after in the first coach forward, next behind the smoker, and commenced to call out to him to get off and come home with her. He was a decent-appearing young chap, but what struck me as peculiar was that his face didn’t show the least surprise or anger or even annoyance when he saw his mother—in fact, it didn’t show anything at all. He shook his head a little when the old woman told him to get off, but he wouldn’t budge, and finally when the station master told her she’d[Pg 6] have to leave the coach or go along with it, she plumped down in the seat with him and a few seconds later the train was under way.

“The nearest seat I could get was in with another man next behind. I’d have preferred to be in front—you know how well you can hear people sitting behind you in a car—but the whole seat was occupied. So I sat down there behind them in the aisle seat (the other man was next the window) and getting out a newspaper, leaned forward as far as I could as though trying to get a good light on it, and keeping an ear turned in the right direction to catch anything they might say.

“We must have passed Stamford before a word was spoken by either of them, but along near that place the old woman opened up suddenly and began remonstrating—I judged by the tone (her voice was too low to catch any words) with tremendous earnestness. She hadn’t been talking long though, when something he muttered got her excited and she raised her voice enough for me to hear, ‘Well you’re goin’ to get off this train the next place they stop at an’ come home—yes ye be Jamie—I won’t have you goin’ on with this—I won’t have it!’

“‘Listen here!’ Jamie said under his breath but with an earnestness that carried it over the back of the seat to me: ‘I got an A-1 situation as butler an’ general house man!’

“‘An’ don’t I know how you came by it? It’s them same people in that agency! Look at the trouble they’ve got you into, Jamie! Wasn’t you arrested twice an’ wasn’t it them who——’

“‘Aw, can that! Didn’t they push me into some o’ the[Pg 7] finest houses there was—an’ didn’t I get recommendations that takes me anywheres?’

“‘First off they did but sense then there’s nothin’ but trouble—an’ you comin’ nigh to bein’ put in Sing Sing!’

“‘Well I wasn’t, was I?’

“‘—An’ one dreadful mess after another—an’ put with people you’d ought ter know better’n to be with! Don’t ye s’pose I know ’em, with your father what he was! I tell you I ain’t goin’ to have it!’ (Her voice rising into a loud wail.) ‘You got to stop, Jamie. You got to git off this train an’ come back home with me! You ——’

“‘Quiet down, can’t ye—people might get it!’

“There was silence between the two for a while, and I noticed, as the train was running into the Bridgeport station—the first stop after One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street—that Jamie was watching for something out of the window, his quick glance shifting up and down the west-bound tracks.

“The old woman got to her feet as the train came to a stop, and told him he must come with her and get the next train back. But he pulled her down into the seat again—not roughly but rather protectingly in a way—saying as he did, ‘Not here, Jenny! We can get a better train out of New Haven.’

“‘You’ll come then?’ the old woman asked.

“‘Sure,’ said Jamie.

“She seemed greatly relieved.

“He had a time-table, and studied it for quite a while, and as we neared New Haven (the next stop) he kept the same keen watch on the west-bound tracks as he’d done at Bridgeport. But this time he saw what he wanted, for there was a New York Express three or four tracks over,[Pg 8] roaring and sizzling to get away. It was No. 21 from Boston, and as luck would have it, running nine minutes late. He had his mother up and at the door before our train had come to a standstill, and they were off the car in a jiffy and disappearing down the stairway—for he had to cross to the New York tracks in a subway. It was an even bet whether he made it or not, and I got off the train—keeping close to it, though, in case it started—and ran along the platform trying to find a place where I could see across into the windows of the other train—there were roofs or something that cut off the view here and there. Just as I came about opposite to the last coach of the New York Express I got a view through, and saw them in that car, walking down the

aisle looking for a seat,—so I knew they’d made it. Jamie was carrying his heavy valise—the old woman close herding on him as the cattle men say.

“It was only a few seconds after they got aboard when No. 21, after hissing contemptuously a few times as the brakes went on and off, got under way for New York.

“The train I was on—the Boston train—left the station about five minutes later, and I was sitting down, nursing my balked curiosity and the story that didn’t pan, when it dawned on me that I had a seat reserved in one of the Pullmans, which, in the case of this train, were trailing at the rear with the dining car. So I got my bag and started back to find it.

“I had to go through several coaches before reaching the parlor cars, and as I was walking down the aisle of the last one I suddenly caught sight of Jamie sitting quietly in a seat on my left.—Sat there as if he’d never been off the train.”

“Take it that’s the man you followed?”

[Pg 9]

“The very one. Kept an eye on him through the station when we got in—South Station, not Back Bay—and when he took a taxi and drove off I skipped into another and slipped the driver a ten to keep his machine in sight but not get up too close. When Jamie’s taxi had led us six or eight blocks out Columbus or Huntington or one of those avenues, it made a sudden turn and shot around a corner to the right. Then there were more corners right and left until you couldn’t even tell where the State House was, but my man was on the job and kept behind like a shadow with a string to it.

“All of a sudden he ran up to the curb and jumped off, coming to the door. ‘If it’s the fare ye want out o’ that car, he’s payin’ off and goin’ into the station.’ ‘What station?’ I asked. ‘North,’ says he, ‘down there where all them lights is. He’s on to us, an’ he’ll wait long enough to make ye think he’s took a train, an’ then git a taxi in there where they go in—out o’ sight. I got ye where ye can keep a squint on ’em as they come out. He’s liable to stoop down or cover up his face. Ye might know him by that.’

“And sure enough that’s just what happened. In, say, half an hour (he waited inside that long) we were after him again, but this time keeping so far away that he must have thought he’d thrown us off, for we got out into a sort of country region—houses far back into grounds and that sort of thing—most of ’em dark, too—people gone to bed.

“At a corner out there, where Jamie’s taxi had made a turn to the right, my driver stopped before rounding it and listened, as he’d been doing since we’d got to where it was quiet. Rather suddenly he jumped off and hurried on to the corner, and after one look came running back and told me[Pg 10] the other machine had pulled up near a street lamp some distance down the road and the fare was paying off. I got out and told him to wait for me—that I’d walk down a bit and look around.

“I edged along at the side of the road and could see that Jamie had gone in at a gate or entrance; and very soon the taxi that brought him went plunging by on its way back to town. After some careful work to keep in the shadow, I came to the old gate, or rather old posts—there wasn’t any gate—and looking up the weedy and overgrown drive (I could see it for a little way by the light of the street lamp) I made out the black bulk of what must have been a large house back in among trees, and gloomy as a prison. There was a pale yellowish light in one window—that was all.

“While I was trying to make out something in the dense gloom, a door of the house opened, the dim light showing through it from inside, and the form of a man—which must have been Jamie—could be seen passing in, the door closing quickly after him. That’s all there was to it. I told you the rest. Got the name of the street when I went back to the corner.”

“Taxi there all right?”

“Yes—but I didn’t see it at first. Chauffeur had backed up into some private grounds so the other driver, rattling by toward the city, wouldn’t see him.

“‘I don’t know what your man that you’re trailin’ amounts to,’ he said as I got in, ‘but that ain’t no amateur what run him out here!’”

“Strikes me you picked a pretty good one yourself,” observed Dudley.

“I sure did,” I agreed; “and his parting words put the[Pg 11] flag on it. When I’d paid him off at the hotel he stood looking at me with a queer twist to his face and then gave a quick glance about. ‘Say, cap,’ he said, moving quite close, ‘I don’t know as it’s any use to ye, but we was shadowed too.’ And he was gone before I could——”

I stopped in the midst of what I was saying. The man who’d been sitting behind Duds—the one who’d started slightly when I mentioned the name Torringtown—was standing beside our table. I hadn’t noticed him come up.

“Pardon this intrusion, gentlemen,” the stranger said in a low voice and with a most courteous inflection, “but it was impossible to avoid overhearing what you were saying. I should hardly have thought it wise to trouble you with an apology for this, but it occurred to me that the very remarkable coincidence involved might possibly be of some slight interest.”

We’d both risen as he began to speak, and now assured him that the apology was unnecessary and that the coincidence would interest us in the extreme, and begged him to be seated. But he shook his head in a manner to convey that what he had to say would only take a moment.

On the first glance the man wasn’t remarkable in any way that I could see: medium height—medium weight—medium age—no particular expression to his face. But in an instant it was different, for he’d hardly begun to speak before I felt—and so did Dudley as he told me afterward—that a person of powerful or compelling character stood before us. Powerful in some peculiar way. I never took much stock in hypnotism and don’t now; at the same time I can see how things like that, carried a bit further, might put a man where he couldn’t see straight. These things occurred to me afterward—I[Pg 12] couldn’t have got away, at the time, from what the fellow was talking about.

He went on at once, after declining our invitation to sit down: “A few moments ago I heard, from the direction of your table, the name of a street which is intimately associated with an affair I’ve been investigating for nearly two years.”

Something made me murmur, without the slightest intention of doing so, “Torringtown Road.”

“That was it—not quite the correct name, but so near that I shuddered with the fear that other parties were looking up the same case—which would, of course, head my work for the discard. With that fear in mind I was unable to prevent myself from listening. I am sorry.”

We both begged him not to speak of such a thing as no offense could possibly be taken, and I asked him to tell me the right name of the street.

“Torrington Road,” he answered. “Of course I saw in a moment—or rather heard—that although the case was the same that I’d been working on, you gentlemen were making no special drive at it. But in addition to thus dispelling my anxiety, the few words I overheard supplied me with the answer to the only question that has completely baffled me up to the present time. For two years I’ve been making fruitless efforts to find out who shadowed Jamie Dreek from the South Station in Boston to the old mansion in Roxbury on that August night, and what object he could have had in view, seeing that nothing ever came of it; and this evening I happen to drop in for dinner at a place I’ve never patronized before, and the answer comes across to me from the next table!”