however, begin with events closely following his vanishment and try to
trace their succession through more than eight years. When once the
idea of kidnapping had been formed the neighbors whose interest in the
affair was partly sympathetic but more morbid, sat about shaking their
heads and sagely talking of Charlie Ross. No doubt there would be a
demand for ransom in a few days. When the few days had passed without
the receipt of any request for money, the wiseacres shook their heads
more gravely and opined that the kidnappers had taken the boy to some
safe and distant place, whence word would be slow in coming. But time
gave the soft quietus to all these speculations. Except for an obvious
extortion letter received the following year, no ransom demand ever
came to the Glasses or any one connected with the case.
Therefore, since neither the living boy nor his dead body could be
found, and since there seemed to be no sustenance for the idea of
kidnapping for ransom, the theorists were forced into another position,
one full of the ripe color of centuries.
On the day Jimmie Glass had vanished, a traveling carnival show had
been at Lackawaxen, and with it had toured a band of Gypsy fortune
tellers. Later on, Mr. John Bentley, the director of public safety in
Jersey City, and Captain Rooney of the Jersey City police, found that
these Gypsies, two or three men and one woman, known sometimes as Cruze
and sometimes as Costello, had suddenly left the carnival show. It
could be traced, but not they. But the mere fact that there had been
Gypsies in the neighborhood was enough to give fresh life to the old
fable. Gypsies stole children to bring luck to the tribe. Ergo, they
had taken Jimmie Glass, and the way to find him was to run these nomads
to earth and force them to give up the child.
Besides, a woman promptly appeared who told Captain Rooney that she
had seen a swart man and woman in an automobile on the day of the
kidnapping, not far from Greeley, struggling with a fair-haired boy.
Now the Gypsy baiting was on. Captain Rooney and many other officers
engaged in a systematic investigation of Gypsy camps wherever they
were found, following the nomads south in the winter and north again
with the sun. Again and again fair-haired children were found about
the smoky fires of these mysterious caravaners, with the result that
Mrs. Glass, now fairly set out upon her travels in quest for her son,
visited one tribe after another, but without finding the much-sought
Jimmie.
The discovery of blond or blondish children in Tzigane encampments
always stirred the finders and the public to the same emotions,
to the indignant belief that such children must have been stolen.
All this is part of the befuddlement concerning the Romany people
and the American Gypsies in especial. No one knows just what the
original Gypsies were or whence they came. The only hint is contained
in the fact that their language contains strong Aryan and Sanscrit
connections and suggestions. They appeared in Eastern Europe, probably
in the thirteenth century and in France somewhat later, being there
mistaken for Egyptians, whence the name Gypsy. The original stocks
were certainly dark skinned, black haired, and black or brown eyed.
But several Gypsy clans appeared in England all of five hundred years
ago and there soon began to mix and marry with other vagabonds not of
Tzigane blood. In the course of the generations the English Gypsy came
to be anything but a swart Asiatic. Tall, straight, dark men, with
piercing eyes and the more or less typical Gypsy facial characteristics
appeared among them, but these usually occur in cases where there
has been marriage with strains from the Continent, from Hungary
and Roumania. For instance, Richard Burton, the great traveler and
anthropologist, was half Gypsy, and one of the first scholars of the
last century.
The Gypsies in America to-day are mostly of English origin, though
there are a good many from Eastern Europe. Among both kinds there is
frequent intermarriage with American girls from the mountain countries
of the southern and central regions. With these Gypsies pure blond
children are of frequent occurrence and one often sees the charming
contradiction of light hair and dark, emotive eyes.
Now I do not say that Gypsies do not steal children. Nomads have very
little sense of the property rights of others and may take anything,
animal, mineral or vegetable, that strikes their fancy. But so much for
the facts on which rests what must be termed a popular superstition.
Nevertheless, these light children in the Gypsy camps kept the police
and Mrs. Glass herself constantly on the move. The Cruze party gave
them especial trouble and contributed one of the high dramatic moments
of the eight years of search and suspense.
When Captain Rooney found that the Gypsy woman called Rose Cruze had
been near Greeley on the day the child vanished, he set out to trace
her down with her male companions. The Gypsies were moving south at
the time, separating sometimes and meeting once more, a most puzzling
matter to one who does not understand the motives and habits of
nomads. Rose Cruze and the blond boy she was supposed to have with
her kept just a little ahead of the authorities. She crossed into
Mexico and continued southward with her band, having meantime married
Lister Costello, the head of another clan. Later she was heard of in
Venezuela, then in Brazil.
One morning in the summer of 1922, a cablegram was brought to Director
Bentley in Jersey City. It came from Porto Rico, was signed with the
mysterious name Ismael Calderon, and said that Jimmy Glass or a boy
answering his description was in the possession of Gypsies encamped
near the town of Aguadilla. The cablegram also gave the information
that the men were Nicholas Cruze and Miguel, or Ristel, Costello, and
the woman was Costello’s wife.
Mr. Bentley acted at once, but the Porto Rican authorities, probably
a good deal more skeptical about Gypsy stories than are Americans,
questioned whether the thing was not a canard and moved cautiously.
By the time they finally got to Aguadilla, spurred too late by the
American officials on the island, the band had moved on into the
mountains.
Ismael Calderon turned out to be a young man of no special standing,
and he was severely questioned. But this time there was no foolery. He
stuck to his story very closely, produced witnesses to substantiate
practically everything he said, and firmly established the fact that
among the Gypsies were the much-sought Costello-Cruze family.
The pursuit began at once. It failed. The report went out that the
hunted nomads had crossed to Cuba. In Jersey City, Captain Rooney made
ready to sail. Further reports came from Porto Rico which caused him
to delay a little. Then came fresh news that set him to packing his
bags. He was almost ready to embark when the thing dropped with sudden
and sad deflation. The Costello-Cruzes had been found. The boy was not
Jimmie Glass.
This pricking of a hope bubble strikes the keynote of the eight years
of quest. Ever and again, not ten times but ten hundred, came reports
that Jimmy Glass had been found. Many of them came from irresponsible
enthusiasts and emotional sufferers. Others were honest but mistaken. A
few were cruel hoaxes, like that of the marked egg.
One morning an egg was found in a Jersey City grocery store with the
following scrawled on the shell:
“Help. James Glass held captive in Richmond, Va.”
The police chased themselves in excited circles. One of them was off to
Richmond at once. The eggs were carefully traced back to the nests of
their origin. It was found that they came from a place much nearer than
Richmond, and that the inscription was the work of a fifteen-year-old
boy.
Long before the Gypsy excitement had been abated by the final running
down of the much-sought band, another form of thrill had played its
fullest ravages with the unhappy parents and given the public its
crooked satisfactions. The constant advertising for the boy, the
showing of his picture on the screens and the repeated newspaper
summations of the strange case, all had the effect of putting idle
brains and fevered imaginations to work. From almost every part of the
country came reports of missing children who looked as though they
might be Jimmie Glass.
The distracted mother, suffering like any other woman in a similar
predicament from the idea that her child could not fail to be restored,
traveled from one part of the country to the other under the lash of
these reports and the spur of undying hope. I believe the newspapers
have estimated that she traveled more than forty thousand miles in all,
seeking what she never found.
As happens in many excitements of this kind, the hunt for James Glass
resulted in the finding of many other strayed or stolen children,
from San Diego to Eastport. In one case a pretty child was found in
the possession of a yeggman and his moll. They were able to show that
the child had been left with them, and they readily gave it up to the
authorities for lodgment in an institution. But, alas, none of these
was Jimmie Glass.
The affair of the one demand for money came near ending in a tragedy.
The blackmail note demanded that five thousand dollars be placed in
a milk bottle near a shoe-shining stand in West Hoboken. The Glasses
filled the milk bottle with stage money and placed it at the agreed
spot, after the police had taken up watch near by. The bottle stayed
where it had been placed for hours. Finally the proprietor of the
stand saw the thing. His curiosity got the better of him; he broke the
bottle, and was promptly pounced upon and taken to police headquarters,
protesting that he did not mean to steal anything. It developed that
this honest workman knew nothing about the whole affair. The real
extortioners had, of course, been much too alert for the police.
One other piece of dramatic failure must be recited before the end. The
quest for Jimmy Glass was at its height when news came from the little
town of Norman, Oklahoma, that the boy had been left there in a shoe
store. The Glasses, not wishing to make the long trip in vain, asked
that photographs be sent, and they were received at the end of the
week. What they thought of the matter is attested by the fact that they
caught the first train West, alighted in Oklahoma City, and motored to
Norman.
Their coming had been heralded in advance, and the town had suspended
business and hung the streets and houses with flags in their honor.
Mrs. Glass and her husband were taken immediately to one of the houses
of the town, where the child was being kept, and ushered into the
parlor, while a large crowd gathered on the lawn or stood out in the
streets, giving vent to its emotion by repeated cheers.
Mr. and Mrs. Glass being seated, a little blond boy was brought in.
Mrs. Glass saw her son in the flesh and held out her arms. The child
rushed to her and was showered with kisses. Asked its name, the child
promptly responded: “Jimmy Glass.” The mother, choking with sobs,
clasped the little fellow closely to her. He struggled, and she
released him. He ran to sit on Mr. Glass’ lap.
“It was then,” said Mrs. Glass afterward, “that I was convinced. Surely
this boy was Mr. Glass’ son. He had his every feature. For the time
there was no doubt in either of our minds. We were too happy for words.”
But then the examination of the child began and the discrepancies
appeared. The child was Jimmie’s size and age. His hair and eyes were
of the same color and the facial characteristics were remarkably alike.
This child even had the mole on the ear that was one of Jimmie’s
peculiar marks. But the toes were not those of Mr. Glass’ son;
there was an old scar on one foot that was unlike anything that had
disfigured Jimmie, and there were other slight differences.
Even so, it was more than two hours before Mrs. Glass could make up
her mind, and the crowd stood outside crying for news and being told
to wait, that the child was still being examined. Finally the negative
word was given, and the disappointed townsmen went sorrowfully away.
Even then the Glasses stayed two days longer in the town, eager to find
other evidence that might yet change their minds.
A few weeks afterward the true mother of the child was found. She
confessed that her husband had abandoned and would not support her,
that she had been unable to feed and rear the little boy properly, and
that in a desperate situation she had left the boy in the shoe store,
hoping that some one would adopt him. The little boy had learned to say
he was Jimmie Glass through the overenthusiasm of the storekeeper and
other local emotionals.
So the years went by in turmoil for the poor nervous man who had gone
to the country to recover and been struck with this fatality, and for
the sorrowing mother who would not resign her hope. The Glasses seemed
about to be engulfed in the slow quagmire of doubt and grief that took
in the Rosses years before.
One morning on the first days of December of 1923, Otto Winckler, of
Lackawaxen, went hunting rabbits not far from Greeley, where Jimmie
Glass had disappeared. There had been a very dry autumn and the marshy
ground about two miles from the Frazer farmhouse, ordinarily not to
be crossed afoot, was caked and firm. A light snow had powdered the
accumulations of brown leaves, enough to hold the rabbit footprints for
a few hours till the sun might heat and melt it away.
Over this unvisited ground Winckler strode, hunter fashion, his shotgun
ready in his hands, his eyes fixed ahead, covering the ground for some
sudden flurry of a furred body. His foot kicked what looked like a
round stone. It was light and rolled away. He stepped after it; picked
it up. A child’s skull! Instantly the man’s memory fled back over the
eight and one half years to the hunt for Jimmie Glass in which he, too,
had taken part. Could this be---- He did not stop to ponder much, but
looked about. Very near the spot from which he had kicked the skull
were a pair of child’s shoes. He picked them up carefully and found
them to contain the foot bones. The rest of the skeleton was missing,
carried away in those long seasons by beasts and birds, no doubt.
Winckler immediately went back to Lackawaxen and telegraphed to Charles
Glass. The father responded at once and went over the ground with the
hunter and with Captain Rooney. They found, judging from the relative
positions of the shoes and the skull, that the little boy must have
lain down on his side and wakened no more.
Little was found in addition to the shoes and the skull, except a few
bone buttons, the metal clasps from a child’s garters and such like.
The skull and shoes furnished the evidence needed. The former, examined
by experts, revealed the double crown which had caused the upstanding
of the missing boy’s back hair. The shoes, washed free of the encasing
mud, showed the maker’s name still sharply cut into the instep sole.
All the facts fitted. Only a new pair of shoes would have retained the
mark so remarkably, and Jimmie had worn a brand new pair the morning he
strayed out.
Charles Glass was satisfied that his son had wandered away that
seductive May morning, gone on and on, as children sometimes do, got
into the boggy ground and been unable to get out. Exhaustion had
overtaken him, and he had lain down and never risen. Perhaps, again,
this place had been the edge of a little pool in the spring of 1915,
and Jimmie, venturing too close, had fallen in and been drowned, only
to have his bones cast up again by the droughty fall eight years later.
With these views Mrs. Glass agreed, but Captain Rooney refused
absolutely to entertain them. He had been over the ground many times.
It was of the most difficult character, loose and swampy, and literally
strewn with jagged stones that cut a man to pieces if he tried to do
more than creep among them, absolutely impassable to a child. Again,
there was the matter of distance. How could a child of four years,
none too firm a walker on easy ground, as many a childish bruise and
scar will testify, have made its way for more than two miles over this
hellish terrain into a morass? Must it not have fallen exhausted long
before and rested till the voices of the searchers in that first night
had wakened it?
And how about those little shoes? Captain Rooney asks us. Of what
leather were they made to have lain for eight and one half years in
that impassable bog and yet to have been so well preserved as to retain
the maker’s imprint?
“No, sir,” the gallant captain concludes, “those may be the bones of
Jimmie Glass, but if they are, some one must have taken him there.”
Perhaps--and then again? How far a lost and desperate child will stray
is not too simple a question. If, as Captain Rooney suggests, Jimmie
Glass probably would have tired and lain down to rest, would he not
also have risen again and blundered on? As for the durability of the
leather, any one may go to any well-stocked museum and find hides of
the sixteenth century still tolerably preserved. And if some one took
the pitiful body of the child and tossed it into that morass, who was
it?
It is much easier to believe with the parents. The enchantment of
spring and sunshine, the allure of unvisited and undreamed places
unfolding before a child’s eyes, and straying from flower to flower,
wonder to wonder, depth to depth. And at the end of the adventure,
disaster; at the wane of the sunshine, that darkness that clouds all
living. It is more pleasant to think of the matter so, to believe that
Jimmy Glass, four years in the world, was but a forthfarer into the
mysteries, who lay down at the end of mighty explorations and went to
sleep--a Babe in the Woods.
XIII
THE FATES AND JOE VAROTTA
On an afternoon in the autumn of 1920, Salvatore Varotta took his
eldest son for a ride on Long Island. Perhaps it was not quite the
right thing to do. The big motor truck did not belong to him. His
employers might not like the idea of a child being carted about the
countryside in their delivery van. Still, what did it matter? The day
had been hot. Little Adolfo had begged to go. No one would ever know
the difference, and the boy would be happy. So this simple-hearted
Italian motor driver set out from the reeks and throngs of New York’s
lower East Side on what was to be a pilgrimage of pleasure.
There was a cool wind in the country and the landscape was still green.
The truck chauffeur enjoyed his drive as he rolled by fields where
farmers were at their late plowing. The nine-year-old Adolfo sat beside
him, chattering with curiosity or musing in pure delight. After all, it
was a bright and perfect world, for all men’s groans and growls.
Presently, Salvatore came to a crossing. Another truck lurched
drunkenly across his path. There was a horrid shriek of collision,
the shattering tinkle of glass, the crunch of riven steel. Salvatore
Varotta was tossed aside like a cork and landed in the ditch. He picked
himself up and staggered instinctively toward the wreck and little
Adolfo. There was a volcanic spout of flame as one of the tanks blew
up. The undaunted father plunged into the smoke and managed to draw
out the boy, cut and crushed and burned to pitiful distortions, but
breathing and alive.
Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a frightfully
cut and burned face and a crushed leg. The surgeons looked at the
mangled child and shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that
wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it might be possible
to restore that ruined face to human semblance, but the work would
take many months. It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free
hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of the doctors.
The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a rookery on East
Thirteenth Street, the father, the mother and five children, of whom
the injured boy was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as
truck driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such a family
an accident like that which had overtaken Adolfo means about what a
broken leg does to a horse: Death is the greatest mercy. In this case,
however, some one with connections got interested either in the boy or
in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and charitable woman
for aid. This lady came down from her apartment on Park Avenue and
stood by the bedside of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that
he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested not only in the
boy but his family.
One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were appalled to see
the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress drive up to their
tenement. They watched her enter the humble home, pat the children,
talk with the burdened mother, and then drive away perilously through
the swarms of children screaming and pranking in the street. The “great
lady” came again and again. It was understood that she had paid much
money to help little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family.
That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his son had brought him
the patronage of the rich. Surely, he would know how to make something
of his good fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness is
no more than weakness and must be taken advantage of accordingly. The
neighbors of Salvatore Varotta were such men and women.
[Illustration:
_Pacific & Atlantic Photo._
~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~]
Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched and mended, when
his father sued the owner of the colliding truck for fifty thousand
dollars, alleging carelessness, permanent injury to the child, and so
on. The neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore
_was_ a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he would get it, too.
Did he not have a rich and powerful patroness?
Thus, through the intervention of a charitable woman and a lawsuit,
Varotta became a dignitary in his block, a person of special and
consuming interest. He had or would soon have money. In that case he
would be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and guileless
fellow. A way would be found.
In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from the hospital with his
leg partly restored but with his face still in need of skin grafting
and other treatments, Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap,
second-hand automobile. He could make money with it and also use it to
give his family an airing once in a while. The car, for which only one
hundred and fifty dollars had been paid, attracted the attention of the
East Thirteenth Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an
automobile? Then there must have been a settlement in the damage suit
over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore had money, then. So, so!
One of the neighbor women happened to pass when the rickety car was
standing at the curb, and Mrs. Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest
child in her arms.
“Ha! Salvatore can’t have much money when he buys you a
hundred-and-fifty-dollar car,” mocked the woman.
“He could have bought a thousand-dollar one if he wanted to,” said the
wife with a surge of false pride.
That was enough. That was confirmation. The damage suit had been
settled. Salvatore Varotta had the money. He could have bought an
expensive car, but he had spent only a hundred and fifty. The niggardly
old rascal! He meant to hold on to his wealth, eh? So the word fled up
and down the street, to the amusement of some and the closer interest
of others.
As a matter of fact, the damage suit had not been settled. It was even
doubtful whether Salvatore would ever get a cent for all his son’s
injuries and suffering. The man whose car had collided with Salvatore’s
had no means and could not be made to give what he did not possess. So
it was an entirely false rumor of prosperity and a word of bragging
from a sensitive wife that brought about many things.
At about two o’clock on the afternoon of May 24, 1921, Giuseppe
Varotta, five years old, the younger brother of the wounded Adolfo,
put on his clean sailor suit and his new shoes and went out into East
Thirteenth Street to wait for the homecoming of his father and the
automobile. Giuseppe, familiarly called Joe, did not know or care
whether the car had cost a hundred or a thousand dollars. It was a car,
it belonged to his father, and Joe intended to have a ride in it.
For some minutes Joe played about the doorstep. Then his childish
patience forsook him, and he ran down the block to spend a penny
which a passer-by had given him. Other children playing in the street
observed him by the doorstep, saw him get the penny, and watched him
go down the walk to the confectioner’s. They did not mark his further
progress.