The Barrel MysteryFlynn, William J. (William James)
General
The Barrel Mystery
Flynn, William J. (William James)
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction
I read of the murder in the afternoon newspapers. This was on April
fourteenth. I recalled certain unusual activities among the band of
"Black-Handers" on the night of April 12, which was about thirty-odd
hours before the murder must have been committed. It came to my mind
that I had seen a face new among the members of the gang. I went to
the morgue and looked at the dead man. I identified him as the
stranger who recently appeared at the haunts of the Black-Handers.
(When I say Black-Handers, I mean also counterfeiters.) Two other
Secret Service men also identified him. The body was taken out of the
ice and measured according to the Bertillon method.
For some time prior to the murder I had been closely in touch with
Morello, with Lupo and others of their band. I had them under
surveillance for the purpose of arresting them on a charge of
counterfeiting.
On the night of April 12, having accumulated considerable information
concerning this band, I personally picked up the trail and followed
several members of the band from their counterfeiting headquarters in
the café at Elizabeth and Prince Streets. Just around the corner from
this café was the saloon of Ignazio Lupo, another rendezvous of the
gang. In the rear of Lupo's saloon Giuseppe Morello conducted an
Italian restaurant.
Trailing along, I followed several of the gang to the butcher store of
Vito La Duca, at No. 16 Stanton Street, which is just east of the
Bowery. Among those present in the store was Morello, whom I had
arrested four months previously for counterfeiting. He was the only
one of the gang which I had arrested who had escaped conviction. Two
others of the men present were Antonio Geneva and Domenico Pecoraro,
both of whom I knew well. And while the three whom I have already
named were in animated conversation near the rear of the shop, a
fourth man, a face new to me, stood apart from the others near the
door. He was the same man found less than forty hours later in the
barrel.
While the conversation took place in the rear of the shop I saw a
piece of bagging being hung up as a curtain over the glass in the door
leading from the street into the store. It was but a few minutes later
that I saw a covered wagon driving up to the door. Two men hopped down
from the seat and entered the shop. One of them came out again after a
couple of minutes and drove away. Shortly after eight o'clock that
evening the visitors left La Duca's store. They split up into two
groups, the stranger going toward the Bowery with Morello and
Pecoraro.
* * * * *
I communicated with Inspector McCloskey, then in charge of the
Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters, and told him what I have just
related. Immediately there was a rounding up of the gang, my men
pairing off with the headquarters detectives and locating eleven of
the members of the Black-Hand Society. Here is the list of those
arrested as suspects for the murder:
Giuseppe Morello, of No. 178 Chrystie Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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