“ ‘Great Scott, Murray! They didn’t steal your mustache, did they?’
“Finally a new democrat wagon disappeared. It belonged to James Tolwarthy, a grocer, who had left it in front of his store the day after he had paid two hundred and seventy-five dollars for it. The democrat had gone, as completely as if a modern Elijah had impressed it for chariot service to the skies. Tolwarthy was angry. He kept his wagons usually in a hotel shed near his store. When he went there to look for his new democrat he found an old crackey wagon standing in its stead. It stood there for weeks, and every day we went to look at it, as if its tongue could tell us who left it there.
“We searched every stable and every vacant building in the town. Not a trace of Tolwarthy’s democrat or of any other vanished property did we find. A little child can lead us, however, and I came across a boy who said he thought he had seen the man who left the wagon in Tolwarthy’s shed. He described him as best he could. It was not much of a description, but a poor description is as good as a good photograph any day. I would rather have a fair description than a dozen photographs when it comes to going after a man I never saw. I took the lad’s description and started out to visit every farmhouse on every road leading out of Erie. I nosed into all of them for a radius of several miles. I found no such man as the lad described, and no haymow’ hid any plunder, either, for I climbed into all.”
“At last I found a farmer who had seen a fellow’ drive by his house in a new democrat about the time Tolwarthy’s wagon vanished, and the description of the democrat tallied with that of Tolwarthy’s democrat, while the description of the man proved him the same fellow seen by the lad.
“Crowley, Officer Snyder and myself got a team and started to drive over the road the stranger went with Tolwarthy’s wagon. We stopped at every house along the way, but not a sign or trace of him could we find. For a dozen miles we made this farm to farm search. After fifteen miles or more we decided to put up the horses for a feed and rest. We turned off the main road, and in a secluded, out of the way place, in a clearing with about twenty-five acres of pine woods around it, we saw a house. No one was in sight. We hailed, and presently a buxom, blooming woman, about twenty-five years old, seemed to pop out of nowhere and ask us if we wanted anything. Crowley asked for the man of the place, as he wanted to feed his horses. The woman whistled, and out from a clump of bushes near the barn came a little, weazened old fellow, about fifty years old. He reminded me of a muskrat. The moment I laid eyes on him I recalled the description by the lad of the man who left the crackey wagon.
“We alighted and fed the horses. The old man eyed them keenly and looked at their teeth.
“ ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.
“ ‘George Knapp,” he said.
“ ‘Lived here long?’
“ ‘Me and my wife been here about a year,’ he answered.
“ ‘Your wife?’ I said.
“ ‘Yep, ain’t she a bloomer?’ and the old man chuckled hideously as he leered at the young woman who was standing in the doorway of the house.
“He was as keen as a scythe. I innocently asked him if he had seen any stranger driving past his house in a new democrat wagon.
“ ‘Nope! No one ever drives past here,’ said he, ‘there ain’t no past; the road stops here.’
“He parried us at every point. We searched his place, barn, house, and outbuildings and found nothing. Yet I was morally certain we had our man. As I sat in the shade by the barn I gazed idly at the stretch of cleared land running down to the creek. I noticed a place or two where the sod had been turned recently. It is the little things that point the way to big results. A sign-board a foot long often tells you the road for the next forty miles.
“ ‘Knapp,’ I said, ‘I am going fishing in that stream.’
“ ‘All right,’ said Knapp.
“ ‘Lend me a spade,’ I said.
“ ‘What for?’ said Knapp, with a sudden sharpening of his glance.
“ ‘I want to dig some bait,’ said I.
“Knapp hesitated, then brought a spade, and followed me as I set out for the stream. I halted at one of the spots where the sod had been turned.
“ ‘No good digging here,’ said Knapp. ‘Come on farther down.’
“‘Why?’ said I.
“ ‘This has been dug,’ said Knapp. ‘It’s worm-scarce right here.’
“ ‘Never mind,’ said I. ‘I only want a few, and it’s easier digging.’
“The perspiration started on Knapp’s weazened, wrinkled face. I never dally in my garden with my spade, but I see a vision of Knapp dripping like an April shower.
“I drove in the spade. It struck something hard. I turned back the soil and there lay one of the wheels of Tolwarthy’s democrat buried beneath a foot of earth. I looked at Knapp and he was grinning in a sickly sort of way. I called Crowley and Snyder and arrested Knapp. Then we led him down to the stream and sat down and informed the old man, on the edge of the water, that the wise thing for him to do was to confess the whole series of thefts. He looked at us and then at the water and then back at us. I think he understood. At any rate he stood up.
“ ‘Come on,’ he said, and led the way to the house.
“The buxom woman met us at the door.
“ ‘Get the shingle,’ said Knapp.
“Without a word she went indoors and returned with a broad shingle. It was covered with red dots, which Knapp explained were made with chicken blood. One big blotch was to show where the barn stood. The smaller dots spreading out beyond it showed where Knapp had buried the plunder.
“We began to dig. The first thing we struck was a coffin.
“ ‘You murderer!’ said Snyder. ‘Now we know why you used blood to dot the shingle.’
“We lifted the coffin carefully out of the grave. It was very heavy. We pried off the lid, expecting to see the mutilated body of one of Knapp’s victims. Instead of a pallid face and glazed eyes we found dozens of boxes of shoes. Knapp chuckled.
“ ‘Coffins ain’t only for corpuses,’ he said.
“We unearthed samples of everything from a needle to an anchor, a shroud, a toilet set, a baby carriage, forty silk dresses, gold watches, seven ploughs, a harrow, surgical instruments, a churn, a log chain, a grandfather’s clock, a set of grocer’s scales, hats, overcoats, pipes, a barber’s pole, even a policeman’s shotgun, that cost one of the Erie policemen eighty dollars, and that Knapp had stolen from his house. One of us would dig for awhile, then Knapp would dig, and if any one dug more than his share it was Knapp. We uncovered ten wagonloads of stuff, including Tolwarthy’s democrat, which Knapp had buried piece by piece.
“We took Knapp and his wife to Erie, and locked them up. We hired a large vacant store in the Noble block in Erie, hauled in the plunder from Knapp’s, and put it on exhibition for identification.
“In burying his plunder he had boxed it up, preparatory to sending it away in the fall. He said frankly that he had been stealing for years. He explained that the way he did it was to drive into town in a wagon pretending he was selling farm produce or garden vegetables, and seize opportunities in that way to familiarize himself with houses, and then sneak in later, and steal whatever he could carry away.