Upon landing in Denver in the middle of a day that seemed too bright
and exhilaratingly bracing to be true, I had an adventure which, while
it had no immediate bearing upon my escape, is worthy of record because
it led to a second hasty flight, and so became in a manner responsible
for much that happened afterward.
As I left the train a squarely built man, sharp-eyed under the brim of
his modish soft hat, was standing aside on the track platform and
evidently scrutinizing each of the debarking passengers in turn. Some
acute inner sense instantly warned me, telling me that this silent
watcher was a plain-clothes man from police headquarters; and his first
word when he stepped out to confront and stop me confirmed the
foreboding.
"You're wanted," he announced curtly, twitching his coat lapel aside to
show his badge.
This was another of the crises in which I was made to feel the murder
madness leaping alive in blood and brain; but the publicity of the
place and the blank hopelessness of escape in a strange city made any
thought of resistance the sheerest folly.
"What am I wanted for?" I asked.
"You'll find that out later. Will you go quietly, or do you want the
nippers?"
The cooler second thought reassured me. It seemed entirely incredible
that the news of the broken parole had already been put on the wires.
In the natural order of things I should hardly be missed until after my
failure to report to the prison authorities at the month end should
raise the hue and cry.
"I'll go quietly, of course," I conceded; and then I added the lie of
sham bravado: "I don't know of any reason why I shouldn't. You are the
man who is taking all the chances."
With no further talk I was marched through the station building, out
the long approach walkway to the foot of Seventeenth Street, and so on
up-town, the plain-clothes man keeping even step with me and indicating
the course at the corner-turnings by a push or a wordless jerk of his
head.
As we went I was striving anxiously to invent a plausible story to be
told at headquarters. It was an entirely new experience. Hitherto I
had always told the plain truth, as the law required, and now I found
the inventive machinery singularly rusty. But the wheels were made to
turn in some fashion. By the time we were mounting the steps of the
antiquated City Hall at the crossing of Cherry Creek, I knew pretty
well what I was going to say, and how it must be said.
At first they gave me little chance to say anything. In the
inspector's office my captor and two others got busy over a book of
newspaper clippings, pictures and descriptions of "wanted" criminals.
With wits sharpened now to a razor-edge, I came quickly to the
conclusion that I had been mistaken for some one else. The conclusion
was confirmed when they took an ink-pad impression of the ball of my
right thumb and fell to comparing it with one of the record prints.
After a time the inspector put me on the rack, beginning by demanding
my name.
Meaning to lie only when there should be no alternative, I told him a
half-truth. Though every one at home called me "Herbert" and "Bert,"
and it was as "James Herbert Weyburn" that I had been arraigned and
convicted, that was not, strictly speaking, my right name. I had been
christened "James Bertrand," after my father. My mother had always
called me "Jimmie," but for others the "Bertrand" was soon shortened
into "Bert" and from that a few home-town formalists had soon evolved
the "Herbert," a change which my own boyish and unreasoning dislike for
"Bertrand" was ready enough to confirm. So, when the inspector asked
me my name I answered promptly, "James Bertrand."
"Write it," was the curt command, and a pad and a pencil were shoved at
me across the desk.
Since the name was two-thirds of my own, I was able to write it without
any of the hesitation which might otherwise have betrayed me if I had
chosen a combination that was unfamiliar.
"Where are you from?" was the next question.
Here, as I saw it, was one of the holes in which a lie might be
profitably planted--profitably and safely. So I said, glibly enough:
"Cincinnati."
"Street and number?"
I had given Cincinnati merely because I chanced to be somewhat familiar
with that city, and now I gave the location of a boarding-house near
the river front where I had once stayed over-night.
"Where were you born?"
"In the country, about forty miles from Cincinnati."
"Traveling for your health, I suppose? Where's your baggage?"
I saw that I should have to call a halt somewhere, and this seemed as
good a point as any.
"See here," I broke out; "you've got the wrong man, and you know it,
and I know it! You have no shadow of right to arrest me without a
warrant. Neither have you any right to try to tangle me in my
statements so that I shall fall down and give you an excuse for locking
me up!"
"Say, young fellow--you cut all that out and quiet down!" advised the
plain-clothes man who had nipped me at the railroad terminal.
"That's the one thing I shan't do!" I retorted boldly. "You have
arrested me without authority, and now you are trying to give me the
third degree. You've got me here, and you may make the most of
it--until I can find a lawyer. Lock me up if you feel like it; and are
willing to stand for the consequences."
At this the three of them put their heads together and once more
compared the thumb-prints. Suddenly the inspector whirled upon me with
his lips drawn back and his hand balled into a fist as if he were going
to strike me.
"How about that little job you pulled off with a forged check in
Chicago last week?" he rapped out.
He was evidently counting upon the effect of a shock and a surprise,
but, naturally, the ruse fell flat.
"I don't know anything about a forged check; and I was never in Chicago
in my life," I replied; and since both statements were strictly true I
could make them calmly and without hesitation.
For the third time they put their heads together. I think the
inspector was for letting me go without further ado. But the man who
had arrested me was apparently still suspicious and unsatisfied. As a
compromise they did the thing which determined my second flight. They
took me into a room at the rear of the building; a barn-like place bare
of everything save a screen and a tripoded photographer's camera; and
within the next five minutes I had been posed and "mugged."
"Now you may go," said the harsh-voiced inspector; and I left the
building knowing that the Colorado capital had been effectually crossed
off in the list of possible refuges for me. With my photograph in the
police blotter, discovery and recapture would be only a question of
time, if I should stay where I could be identified by the local
authorities. Once during my prison term I had seen an escaped man
brought back from far-away Alaska.
Since there was no immediate danger, however, there was time to plan
thoughtfully and prudently for a second disappearance. After a
lunch-counter meal, eaten in a cheap restaurant within a block or so of
the City Hall, I made a round of the employment offices. In front of
one of them there was a bulletin-board demand for railroad grade
laborers on the Cripple Creek branch of the Colorado Midland.
At that time I knew next to nothing about the geography of the Rocky
Mountain States, and the great mining-camp at the back of Pike's Peak
was merely a name to me; though the name was familiar, in a way,
because the mine in which Abel Geddis had sunk his depositors' money
was said to be in the Cripple Creek district. What chiefly attracted
me in the bulletin-board notice was the announcement that free
transportation would be given to the work. With only a few dollars in
my pocket, the free ride became an object, and I entered the office.
The arrangement was easily made. I gave the agent his fee of two
dollars, and let him put a name--not my own or any part of my own, you
may be sure--on his list for the evening shipment. It appeared to cut
no figure with this employment shark that I bore none of the marks of a
successful pick-and-shovel man. All he wanted or cared for was his two
dollars and something on two legs and in the shape of a man to put into
his gang against the collected fee. I was told to show up at the Union
Station at six o'clock, sharp; and after spending the remainder of the
afternoon wandering about the city, I reported as instructed, was
passed through the gates with some twenty-five or thirty other
"pick-ups," and so turned my back upon the Queen City of the
Plains--for a time.