The Kessler mail was flooded with tips, and with abuse. Chief of Police Schramm told us that nearly all of his men were working extra shifts, with leaves cancelled, for a veritable epidemic of kidnapping threats had broken out on the South Side, and along the North Shore’s Gold Coast, too. It was always like that after a big crime, he said, but this was the worst.
And actually, three youngsters, sixteen-year-olds, sent messages and made a rendezvous in an elaborate plot to have Kessler bring $25,000 or risk the abduction of his other children. The plotters were caught and arrested. But the imitative fever and the released flood of evil continued unabated. All the quiet-faced people of the city, all the open-faced youngsters – were they all cunning madmen? “You dirty, stingy -! If I had you here I would strangle you to death. We will go a little farther, so watch yourself. You couldn’t keep your dirty mouth closed. To hell with the police. You are crying. You made your money honest. Hah hah. But you will suffer minute by minute you low-down skunk. So low you could walk under a snake. And now every time you disobey us we will strike. Go ahead.” Anonymous.
From these hate letters, police turned again to the revenge theory. But not one out of a thousand of those letters could have come from people who ever had known Charles Kessler. What weird, filthy, primordial imaginings were revealed, carried around behind unidentifiable city faces, walking around in coats and pants of ordinary men, in dresses of ordinary women! The police passed around to us a number of their scrawls, the obscene symbols, the daggers and mystic suns and moons, and the religious quotations and admonitions! Surely so ghastly a punishment, they wrote, was a visitation for some ghastly sin.
Yet each day what was known for sure seemed to be diminishing. Even the suspected teacher, Steger, had not confessed, and doubtlessly the police had used everything on him. Mike Prager came out with a story that Steger had finally admitted to an unnatural liking for young boys. But no one could find out where the teacher was being held. We kept asking Captain Nolan. We kept trying the office of State’s Attorney Horn. Then suddenly, instead of merely shrugging, “I haven’t got him,” Horn changed his reply. “For all I know, he’s home.”
We rushed to the apartment building on Dorchester. Within seconds, a half-dozen cabs with other reporters pulled up. No one answered the bell, no one responded to our knocking. Through the teacher’s door, Mike Prager called offers for an exclusive story. “Name your own price.” We kept calling questions. “Are you going to sue for false arrest? Did you get the third degree?” And finally a tormented, imploring howl came through the closed door. “Let me alone, can’t you!” The questions, the offers increased. But the siege proved futile. After some time, a brother of the teacher arrived with a doctor. “Leave him alone, can’t you! Be human, can’t you!” they pleaded, and managed to slip inside. After more useless badgering, we finally gave up.
Even the idea we had had of the criminal as an educated man seemed to become uncertain. For this idea had been founded on the wording of the ransom letter. Now, from New York, came a story that the letter was virtually copied from a ransom letter in the previous month’s issue of Detective Magazine. The murderer could be anyone who could read and copy what he read.
Yes, the murderer would be caught soon, soon, everyone declared. As fright increased in the city, the Tribune’s front-page cartoon showed a cowering man, huddling in a dingy hotel room, clutching a newspaper, with other papers scattered over the floor. “Closing In” was the caption.
But Artie and Judd, following the editions, as yet felt no such dismay. Only once during those days was Artie irked. A late edition of the News appeared without the murder in the banner headline. Instead, the headline was about some exclusive interview obtained in Rome. The new boss of Italy had given an audience to a crack foreign correspondent. “Fascism is a spiritual movement,” Artie read. And he suggested to Judd, “Say, while you’re over there in Italy, how about buying a couple of those black shirts? They look pretty snazzy.”
Judd read the rest of the interview, becoming rather excited. “Listen, I must try to see him!” This Mussolini certainly understood the philosophy of Nietzsche. It was by the will to power, Mussolini declared, that Italy would rise again.
Artie laughed and pulled away the paper to turn to the pictures of the newest murder suspects. There were some good ones.
A picture of a young woman, a showgirl type, a gangster’s moll. Yes, she really was. She had been living with a confidence man and she herself had phoned the police. She suspected her friend was the murderer. He kept all kinds of poisons in their room, she said, and he possessed a portable typewriter.
And the police were also investigating a man who lived only a block away from Hartmann’s Drugstore and who had formerly taught science at the Twain School. The man’s neighbours had tipped off the police. They were suspicious of him because he owned a portable typewriter and he liked small boys.
Police were checking, too, on relatives of the school’s athletic coach. Several of them had been picked up for questioning. Meanwhile, Artie read, preparations were being made to provide absolute privacy for the funeral of Paulie Kessler.
That night, a floral bouquet arrived at the Kessler home, with condolences from “Harold Williams”. Police cars, cabs rushed to the florist shop, not ten blocks away. The shop was closed. Four of us located the owner in a nearby flat. Yes, he had sold the bouquet, but he had not noticed the name on the card. We told him – the same name as on the ransom letter. Slowly, his first fright-reaction was replaced by a sense of importance, for was he not the sole being who had actually seen the kidnapper-fiend in person? The florist concentrated on recalling the appearance of the customer. Only a few hours ago. Yes. A tall man, about thirty, wearing grey clothes. Wearing glasses? No, but he squinted slightly.
From this, a portrait of the killer was evolved; newspaper artists drew the picture, everyone was alerted to be on the lookout for a thinnish man – long face, high forehead, age about thirty – wearing a grey suit.
Moreover, he drove a Winton car! The florist was certain he had seen his customer drive away in a Winton. Thus he corroborated the story told by the little boy who had seen Paulie get into a grey Winton with a tall, thin man!
And on Sunday morning we were all pretty sure of his identity. He was a druggist named Clement Holmes, who had just tried to commit suicide. Holmes had been taken to the South Side Hospital. He was tall and thin. Police had questioned his wife and daughter, who told how strangely Holmes had been acting. He had been terribly worried about money matters, having recently lost his drugstore. Saturday, he had left the house… Was it at the time “Harold Williams” had appeared at the florist? It proved to be during the very same hour. Later, Holmes had returned in a terribly agitated state and had chased his wife and daughter out of the apartment. When they ventured back, they had found him on the bed, an empty phial of poison in his hand.
At the hospital, Holmes had been restored to consciousness, but to all questions he gave only babbling, meaningless replies. In the morning, the florist was rushed to the hospital to identify the suspect. But Holmes had vanished! SUSPECT FLEES HOSPITAL! Would the madman turn up at the funeral?
Somehow, the funeral was held with a degree of dignity. On the plea of the bereaved millionaire and of his friend Judge Wagner, all editors were prevailed upon to restrain their coverage. A police cordon kept photographers at a distance. We agreed among ourselves not to try to interview Paulie’s mother, watching respectfully from across the street as she walked, trancelike, almost carried by her husband and his brother, to the black limousine. Judge Wagner had given us the list of pall-bearers, Paulie’s classmates, the richest boys on the South Side. We watched from across the street as they came out, in their knickers and black stockings; each of them might have been the victim.