Neimeister rose to the heights. He pretended unbelief and Heideman had to convince him by telling the gory details:
“When the little girl passed me on the road I asked if she wanted some flowers to take to her mother. I took her into the greenhouse; but I pretended I could not cut any flowers for her because I must have dropped my knife while I was cutting some ferns in the woods. I asked her to help me look for it. I led her by the hand. In the woods I frightened her and she screamed. I tried to quiet her with her own stocking cap. I couldn’t. There was a hatchet in the pocket of my overalls. I had to use it for fear she would tell.”
All of this was recorded by the stenographer as the breathless listeners heard it through the tell-tale dictograph.
Walter telephoned the great news to Ray, who came down from New York on the first train.
It had not been hard to persuade Hetrick and Miller to come to Atlantic City and steal into that adjoining room. The problem now was to rope Heideman into repeating his blood-chilling performance.
The almost incredible Neimeister pretended that he was still incredulous, and forced Heideman to insist on his own guilt and prove it by adding further ghastly details.
Still Neimeister had to remain with the terrible Heideman while Ray and Miller and Hetrick hastened to Asbury Park to lay the report before the Prosecutor.
The corroboration by the Banker and the Sheriff swept away Applegate’s last doubts and his old beliefs. He took it big. He confessed his complete conviction and offered his complete cooperation.
There was a final exquisite touch; to avoid the complication of arresting Heideman in Atlantic City, Neimeister was told to promise that he would take the wretch with him to Germany. Their train to Hoboken would pass through Monmouth County.
So Heideman went gratefully along on what he supposed to be a return to Germany. As the train stopped at Red Bank, a county detective who knew Heideman took him off the train and Karl Neimeister put on a last show. He waxed so violent in protest that he was taken along and thrown into the same cell.
Even yet there was danger that Heideman would engage a lawyer and be advised to repudiate the confession. Once more Ray had one of those one-copy newspapers of his printed. It carried a story telling of Heideman’s confession and giving a number of the details wrong. Neimeister showed it to Heideman and the Prosecutor and the Schindler brothers listened by way of a dictograph in the next cell.
“It says here that you hit the girl on the head with an axe, then choked her,” said Neimeister.
“That’s wrong,” Heideman snapped, “I choked her first with the stocking cap. When she still screamed I hit her with the hatchet.”
“It says here you threw away the axe in the woods.”
“No, it was a hatchet. I buried it behind the greenhouse. They haven’t got anything on me yet. We can still go to Germany, can’t we, Karl?”
The next day Ray Schindler entered the cell with the confession all typewritten out. Heideman was stunned, but that magnetic way of Ray’s soon had his signature. The hatchet was found where he had said it was buried.
The trial was held promptly and the jury’s verdict was inevitable—death. The long-suffering Williams was released and the county paid him far more money for false arrest than he would ever have earned if he had been free. His ex-sweetheart confessed that she had maligned him because she was mad at him.
Sheriff Hetrick was elected Mayor of Asbury Park and kept the office for 22 years.
Monmouth County refunded to Hetrick and Miller the money they had spent for the investigation by the Schindler Bureau.
Heideman was naturally bitter against Karl Neimeister whose magnificent artistry he could hardly be expected to applaud. He would never speak to his old friend again.
But toward Ray Schindler, who had invented and stage-managed the whole drama, Heideman had no bitterness. He said Ray had a job to do and did it. A good detective story seems to be irresistibly fascinating even if you are the victim of it. And it would be hard to find a better detective story—almost as hard to find as to tell well.
Shortly before Heideman’s last day in the death cell, he sent for Ray and had a long and friendly talk with him. He offered to answer any further questions and said he was not averse to paying the penalty.
That sordid tragedy in low life cost Ray Schindler more time and toil for less reward than any other in his crowded career. He says of the young murderer:
“When Heideman sent for me and I visited him in death row in the Trenton, New Jersey prison, I was very curious to know what he wanted of me, and was also interested in the fact that he had sent for the very man who caused his conviction.
“Heideman had been away from his home in Germany for eight or ten years and had not kept in close touch with his family. They did not know of his conviction for the murder of little Marie Smith, and he did not want his sister or his mother to know of it. He wanted to talk over with me some plan by which eventually after his death, I could arrange to have some kind of a letter written as though I were an acquaintance of his and that he had met with an accidental death. If by any chance his family should hear that he had committed a murder, he wanted me to assist in having a proper letter of explanation written to his mother so that the true facts would not be so revolting.
“He apparently had no feeling against me. He complimented me on the job that I had done, and said it was all in my day’s work, but he said that he would give anything if before he died he could get his hands around the neck of Karl Neimeister, the man I had used in roping him and getting him to confess the killing of Marie Smith.
“Heideman, like Dr. Waite (and there are few such instances), refused to allow his attorneys to ask for a stay of electrocution. Practically all persons convicted of murder are granted a stay and a later date is set for the death penalty. Heideman and Waite wanted to get it over with at the first possible moment. Heideman wished to plead guilty to the charge of murder, but, properly, the State of New Jersey does not accept a plea of guilty in a capital case.
“In actions, looks, manner of speech, he greatly resembled Bruno Hauptman, who kidnapped and killed the child of Charles Lindbergh. Both boys committed similar terrible crimes; both were from Germany, and they were the same age, about twenty-seven years.”
6.
THE WOMAN OF TOO MANY PASTS
When a young woman has beauty, brains, ambition, and courage but no money and no morals, she is apt to go far—too far for the good of one or more deluded, infatuated, otherwise useful men.
There was the poor little Lithuanian orphan named Martha Skovronsky, whose guardians married her off to a Swedish dragoon. She did not live with him long, but rose steadily in her social career by serial degradation as the mistress of a private soldier, then of a corporal, a sergeant, and so on and on till she was captured by the Russians and presented to a Prince. In his house the young Czar, Peter the Great, met her, gave her a child, then divorced his Czarina, and made his mistress the Empress of Russia under the name of Catherine I.
He loved her so well that, when she was accused of flirting with a young man of the court, Peter the Great simply had the young man’s head cut off and put in a bottle of alcohol, which he compelled his wife to keep in her apartment. That did not keep him from continuing to visit her there. He let her nurse him when he was dying. She made a wonderful Empress.
The second and more famous Catherine the Great, was a German girl who was married to the nephew of the Czarina Elizabeth. Elizabeth had a lover but they cut his tongue out lest he should talk too much. Rugged fellows those Russians!
When Catherine II’s husband became Czar she brushed him aside and finally had him brushed off by a little murder party. She reigned magnificently thereafter.
Then there was Madame de Maintenon. There was Madame du Barry; there was the West Indian adventuress, Josephine, who married Napoleon. But why go on?
This is the story of an American girl, who began humbly as the daughter of a Chicago bu
tcher and made the most of her opportunities with as little scruple as those royal mistresses. She never got a chance at a King, but she did her best with what she could find. She obtained great riches; but she was robbed of her just dues of fame. And I am not going to give even her name.
For her final defeat Ray Schindler was to blame. He was called in to suppress both her and her ambitions. And he snuffed her out like a candle, leaving only a little bad smell not discoverable at any distance.
He never had less trouble finding evidence against anybody. It was dumped upon him till he was knee-deep in it. She had collected it herself and kept it together for her own purposes. Then it was accidentally spilled at the feet of her stupefied husband, whose love and trust were annihilated in one dreadful moment.
Once more we have an elegant story to study. This is no shabby and toilsome account of saving a low Negro convict from being put to death for killing the child victim of a young German gardener.
This is a story that opens in the mansion of a millionaire and runs backward through palaces in Europe and the splendor of titled folk.
Ray’s problem was what to do with his evidence. It was an embarrassment of riches. But the finding of it did not stop the lady. She had just begun to fight. Her ways were dark, but she was perfectly willing to face the glare of publicity —which was the one thing her latest victim dreaded.
This story is a kind of duel in the dark. Ray Schindler’s principal aim was to keep it dark.
It would be hard for the most reckless melodramatist to concoct a scene of such paralyzing surprise as befell the hero of this tale. Since suppression was of the essence of his appealing to Ray Schindler for salvation from the front pages, all the names in this chapter will be imaginary except Ray’s.
John Andrew Belton (so to speak) was a famous plutocrat whose first wife had died leaving him children and grandchildren. He mourned her for fifteen years before he was infatuated by a beautiful American—call her Mrs. Bogus—whom he met in Europe. She was forty, she said; he was sixty, he admitted.
They met again in America after their separate homecomings, and he proposed marriage. She consented and he gave her the title to his great Fifth Avenue home along with a quarter of a million dollars in cash.
In her travels she had accumulated much fine furniture, bric-à-brac, and souvenirs of all sorts. She had kept her precious belongings in storage in Chicago and he gallantly offered them more convenient shelter in one of his warehouses. Forgetting all about a deskful of letters, she agreed and went to New England for a brief visit.
During her absence, her husband was called to the telephone by the warehouse superintendent with a tale of woe. One of Mrs. Belton’s desks had been broken in transfer and a mass of personal papers had fallen out. They were so confused that the superintendent sent them to the house for Mr. or Mrs. Belton to rearrange.
If he had had more curiosity Mr. Belton would never have married Mrs. Belton without looking into her past a bit. So he got it all in an avalanche.
As he was toting the cardboard boxes filled with her papers into her room, a passport caught his eye. Even a passport photograph could not disguise his wife beyond his recognition.
But the name under it was not Mrs. Bogus. It was—say, Mrs. Frieda De Seaver. Furthermore, her age, as he rapidly computed it with trembling fingers, would now be fifty-one, not forty-one.
It is a minor sin for a lady to lop a few years off her age, but when she takes off ten and fails even to mention two or three previous husbands, her latest worshipper may be excused for feeling a major disillusionment.
Mr. Belton could be also excused for going through the rest of her papers. From neat bundles of letters, he learned that his trusted spouse had been on most intimate terms with at least a score of men. Mrs. Belton, in her modest way, had collected as many lovers as Catherine the Great.
If he had had a weaker constitution the latest recruit to her regiment would have crawled to the telephone and panted for a doctor. Instead, he dialled a famous lawyer.
The lawyer was a famous one and a wise one. After a brief glance at the memoirs of the polyandrous Pollyanna, the lawyer said that this was not a matter for one who tried cases in courts. It was a case for a keeper-outer of courts. It was a case that only Ray Schindler could handle.
Within an hour the bushels of documents were transferred to Ray’s private apartments. He set about sorting and arranging the chaos and he found what he has described as “a library of novels in which the plots were identical and only the names and locations different.”
That butcher’s daughter must have had more than her share of charm and less than human scruples about pouring it on. One German baron, after squandering a fortune on her, had shot himself because she had said she had no further use for him. A rich American had heard of his son’s mad passion for the woman and had dashed to the rescue, only to tumble head over heels in love with the siren himself.
Freida’s first important conquest, after she began business in Chicago, was one of America’s greatest and most profligate railroad promoters. He made a serious mistake—or had the good luck to take her to a concert, where a Danish pianist stirred Frieda’s musical emotions—also her ambitions.
She met the pianist and married him up. He took her to Europe and introduced her to the artistic and aristocratic world over there. They entertained in their home the King of Belgium and other high titles. But when he lost his health and with it the use of his gifted hands, he lost his Frieda.
She did not return home to the parental butcher shop. In fact, her mother and father died without knowing what had become of her; and when Ray began ransacking her labyrinthine career he turned up two brothers and a sister, who had not heard from her for thirty-five years. They had supposed her dead long since.
The first thing Ray had to do was to unmarry her from the millionaire. If her Danish pianist had not divorced her by dying, she was still his wife, and “Mrs. Belton” was only a sort of pen-name with no legal force.
So Ray packed up a mass of papers concerning her European adventures, and took ship for Copenhagen. There he learned that the Dane, who had once been a court pianist, had retired to a hamlet in Scotland.
Edinburgh was Ray’s next stop. In its outskirts he found the first of Mrs. Belton’s husbands. He was nearly eighty years old, and was earning Scottish pittances as a piano teacher.
Ray’s arrival was an earthquake in the old man’s eventless existence. But he ridiculed Ray’s story of Frieda’s livelihood, because she had been dead for years and years. He proved it by a newspaper clipping that he still possessed.
Divorces are difficult in Denmark, so Frieda, with fine American impatience of delay, had simply paid to have her own obituary published in an American newspaper. Nothing could be easier. She had seen to it that a clipping reached her husband, and that was that. Whom God had joined, a newspaper notice had put asunder.
Evidently the Dane still believed anything he read in an American newspaper. Distance lends not only enchantment, but conviction. So the pianist decided that he had been divorced by the Great Reaper, and he was now free to marry again. Which he did.
A divorce by way of a fraudulent obituary notice is not legal in America—not even in Nevada—at least not without establishing what is laughingly known as a “residence” and paying a few fees. Even then, for the plaintiff to demand a divorce on the ground that she was dead, would puzzle those demarriers. They would not be sure just where she had established her residence. So Frieda sued the Dane she had deserted and alleged that he had deserted her. A genial judge granted her the divorce.
Ray offered the Danish pianist another pleasant and profitable tour of America without the necessity for beating his livelihood out of the ivories. The Dane refused but Ray persuaded his present wife that he had better go and contradict the slanders Frieda would utter if he didn’t. So he went.
Having provided for his transportation to America, Ray went South and East as far as Leipzig where ther
e was an enormously rich manufacturer who had a grudge against Frieda, because she had given him whatever the German is for the double-cross. My Deutsches Lexikon gives “Doppel-Kreuz” but refers it to the sign of the double sharp used in music.
In any case, the Leipzig millionär was still bitter enough against Frieda to consent to visit America.
Paris was Ray’s next station and there he hunted for a French Count whose letters were numerous in Frieda’s dossier. But the Count had lost his chance to join the convention in America. He had been dead for many years. The insatiable Schindler, however, traced an old family butler who knew things about Frieda that only a butler can know. He thought it would be rather nice to have a look at l’ Amerique at Ray’s expense.
Then Ray sped back across the Atlantic with three unimpeachable witnesses to prove that Frieda had married wisely but too often.
On his arrival he found a new complication. In addition to his mansion on Fifth Avenue, Belton owned a majestic castle on the Hudson. His lawyer planned to have a quiet annulment of the marriage in a little village near by, where reporters would not break in and break out in headlines. It had been easy to get the unsuspecting Frieda into the castle. But getting her out was something else again. And Belton wanted that ancestral home at any cost. He wanted Frieda out of it as well as out of his life.
Relying on the power of her old thrall, Frieda insisted on talking things over. Belton had to consent. But he took Ray along to the tryst. As soon as Frieda saw her once so compliant slave, in Ray’s words, “she flowed toward him. ‘John darling!’ she sobbed in a rich contralto.”
She made what Ray considered an excellent speech. But she suffered the handicap of repeating the fascinating tricks she had already used, not only on Belton, but in the letters that had already made his eyes pop and flare.
He coldly advised her to get a lawyer and get out. Ray served the annulment papers on her, and departed with the husband in name only.
The Complete Detective Page 13