"The letters were all typewritten on a machine belonging to a public
stenographer whom the girls knew. Jane Ford would stop in at this
woman's place late in the afternoon and asking permission to use one of
the machines would type the threatening letters. The paper she used was
procured especially for her by her sister at a stationery store
downtown.
"The seal, a curious thing, had belonged to the girls' father, and she
conceived the idea of signing the letters with it to add to the grimness
of her threats. As a matter of fact, I do not think she ever had the
least intention of carrying them out. It was to be solely a campaign of
fear. She probably thought that she could so frighten you, Miss Morton,
that your health would be broken down, and your work consequently
interfered with to such an extent that you would lose your position. As
I say, I think she is mentally somewhat unbalanced. I cannot account for
some of her actions, otherwise.
"The mailing of the first letter, the telephone messages, were
comparatively simple. It was the delivery of those at the apartment that
taxed her ingenuity. Yet the method was simple enough.
"The girls' father, I am told, had been an animal trainer in a circus,
and one of his bequests to his daughters was a pet monkey named Jack,
that had been taught to do all sorts of tricks. The girls brought this
monkey to New York with them after their father's death. When the
question arose of delivering the letters in your room, Miss Morton, she
decided to make use of the animal.
"Creeping out of Marcia Ford's bedroom to the roof of the back building,
and taking the monkey with her, she crossed the roof of the second house
and reached the wall of the apartment. From here she was in a position
to reach either of your bedroom windows in the following manner.
"The monkey was led by means of a long, thin rope, attached to a sort of
harness about his neck and shoulders. By going to the rear edge of the
back building they could readily swing him over to the fire-escape,
while by ascending to the top of the attic roof overlooking the court,
they could in the same way enable him to reach the other window. The
monkey had been trained to carry objects in his mouth. This accounts for
the row of indentations on the letters found in your room. I had
supposed they came from some mechanical device, fastened to the end of a
long pole, but as a matter of fact, they were made by the monkey's
teeth.
"The animal being light in weight, and the pads of his feet being, of
course, soft, no traces of his presence were left on the newly painted
surface of the fire-escape. The handkerchief that I found there had been
knotted about his neck as the collar to which the rope was fastened had
seemed a bit weak. In some way it became detached, probably when the
girls jerked on the cord to summon him back after he had completed his
task.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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