The murder of Hartwell was long a mystery. He was alone in his editorial
office at the time. The reports of the revolver were heard by the office
boy, who rushed in to find Hartwell expiring in his chair. What puzzled
the police was the fact, not merely that he had been shot with his own
revolver, but that the revolver had been exploded in the drawer of his
desk. The bullets had torn through the front of the drawer and entered
his body. The police scouted the theory of suicide, murder was dismissed
as absurd, and the blame was thrown upon the Eureka Smokeless Cartridge
Company. Spontaneous explosion was the police explanation, and the
chemists of the cartridge company were well bullied at the inquest. But
what the police did not know was that across the street, in the Mercer
Building, Room 633, rented by Emil Gluck, had been occupied by Emil Gluck
at the very moment Hartwell’s revolver so mysteriously exploded.
At the time, no connection was made between Hartwell’s death and the
death of William Sherbourne. Sherbourne had continued to live in the
home he had built for Irene Tackley, and one morning in January, 1933, he
was found dead. Suicide was the verdict of the coroner’s inquest, for he
had been shot by his own revolver. The curious thing that happened that
night was the shooting of Policeman Phillipps on the sidewalk in front of
Sherbourne’s house. The policeman crawled to a police telephone on the
corner and rang up for an ambulance. He claimed that some one had shot
him from behind in the leg. The leg in question was so badly shattered
by three ’38 calibre bullets that amputation was necessary. But when the
police discovered that the damage had been done by his own revolver, a
great laugh went up, and he was charged with having been drunk. In spite
of his denial of having touched a drop, and of his persistent assertion
that the revolver had been in his hip pocket and that he had not laid a
finger to it, he was discharged from the force. Emil Gluck’s confession,
six years later, cleared the unfortunate policeman of disgrace, and he is
alive to-day and in good health, the recipient of a handsome pension from
the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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