A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses the public as nothing else can, not even murder. This state of general alarm, indignation, and alertness is the first peril of the kidnapper. Again, the problem of getting the ransom from even the most willing victim without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most intricate and unpromising one. It is well known that child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions. The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these recognized discouragements probably accounts for the proneness of policemen and citizens to interpret into every abduction case some moving force other than mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs of action, whether real or surmised, are often the inner penetralia of child stealing mysteries. So with the famous Whitla case. At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909, a short, stocky man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse, in the little steel town of Sharon, in western Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned to Wesley Sloss, the janitor. “Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right away,” said the stranger. It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to be summoned from his classes in this way, but in Sharon no one questioned vagaries having to do with this particular child. Willie Whitla was the eight-year-old son of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla, who was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was also, and more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of Frank M. Buhl, the multimillionaire iron master and industrial overlord of the region. Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside to Room 2, told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that the boy was wanted, helped bundle him into his coat, and led him out to the buggy. The man in the conveyance tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his thanks, and drove off in the direction of the town’s center, where the father’s office was situated. When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for luncheon at the noon recess, there was no special apprehension. Probably he had gone to a chum’s house and would be along at the close of the afternoon session. His mother was vexed, but not worried. At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla veranda, blew his whistle, and left a note which had been posted in the town some hours before. It was addressed to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand, read: