Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
So headquarters cabled to Scotland Yard to hold the tall blond afflicted
with St. Vitus's dance, who was thought to have sailed under the name of
Lewis J. Wright, until the detective sergeant and one of the jeweler's
clerks could arrive with extradition papers. And that's how Mr. L. J.
Wright was arrested in Liverpool, less on account of New York's request
than by reason of the absurd yarn he told. There was no such Dr. Cephas
W. Atterbury as Wright declared he was going to see. The letter of
introduction to the doctor, moreover, was a blank sheet of paper. The
New York police learned about W. W. Lovell in this way and knew they
were on the right trail.
Ten days later there was arrested in Paris, at the office of the
American Express Company, a man answering the description of Whispering
Willie, who had presented some checks signed by W. W. Lowry. The Paris
police reported that W. W. Lowry was probably one of a band, because the
scar on his hand vanished when washed with alcohol. And his voice grew
normal when questioned by the prefect of police. He told an absurd story
of having been hired at the rate of one thousand dollars a week to ask
in a whisper for eleven letters at the American Express Company's office
on February 11th, at 11.11 a.m., and declared that when his employer
bade him good-by on the steamer he painted a scar on the back of his
hand and told him always to wear black gloves. The employer answered the
description of Whispering Willie and also of W. W. Lovell. The police
found that the whisperer's trail led a second time to the _Herald_
office. The clerk, Carroll, remembered the mysterious advertiser very
well indeed. Messrs. Reese & Silliman, real-estate agents, told the
police they had rented Colonel Walton's house for the winter to a Mr.
J. C. Atkinson, an Englishman who had given as references a firm of
international bankers on whom his letter of credit for five thousand
pounds was drawn. The bankers knew nothing about him personally or
socially. Mr. Atkinson had drawn the entire five thousand pounds. He had
occupied the house two months, paid his rent promptly, and had given
a satisfactory deposit against possible damage happening to any of the
furniture.
The police had lost four weeks of valuable time in following clues
that merely led back to the St. Iago Building and to the man with the
paralyzed vocal cords and the scar on the back of his hand, calling
himself W. W. Lovell, who was probably William W. Long, alias William W.
Longworth, alias W. W. Latshay, alias Whispering Willie. The Englishman
was not known to any member of the New York police force, but
fortunately he had a nervous affliction which would betray him without
recourse to the third degree.
Exactly one month after the departure of the real Duke of Connaught from
New York Messrs. Jesse L. Boon, Percival Pierce, J. Sumner Storrs,
and Wilfred Gaylord each received a copy of the following letter,
typewritten on note-paper of the Ritz-Carlton:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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