Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
To this day those who were instrumental in the capture of this scoundrel are uncertain whether his extraordinary ingenuity in harassing Dr. Dix was a madman’s prank or whether it was part of a deep design to extort money. He was convicted of attempt to blackmail and sentenced to serve a term in Sing Sing, where he died.
Yet, from the manner of his persecution, it appeared that money was not the main object he had at heart. In carrying on his campaign against the rector he spent considerable sums and involved himself in almost as much annoyance as his victim; blackmail alone could have been sought with a minimum of labor and of the publicity which his behavior brought about.
In the month of February, 1880, almost every large manufacturing concern in the West received a postal card, purporting to come from Dr. Dix, stating that the writer desired to make large purchases for the supply of certain charitable institutions under his control, and requesting the fullest information regarding prices.
During the same month all the principal boarding schools and female seminaries in America received letters, signed with the rector’s name, asking terms with a view to the placing of three little girls with them.
During the ensuing week hundreds of letters and circulars, together with samples of dry goods, were delivered at the rectory; communications were received from innumerable boarding schools, offering special terms with a view to securing the wards of the distinguished clergyman. Members of faculties, educators and commercial travelers called hourly at Dr. Dix’s home in order to expatiate upon the advantages of their various institutions or firms.
A Method of Torture
Agents traveled from many Western towns and college instructors came from all over the country in order to set forth the advantages of contracting for their goods or putting the little girls to school in the seminaries which they represented, and Dr. Dix was kept busily explaining that a hoax had been perpetrated.
The matter soon became public and the police took up the matter. It was found that all these communications were in the same handwriting, and that the sender had even procured paper engraved with the address of the rector.
It was thought that some clew to his identity might be obtained through the medium of the engraver, but the hoaxer had covered his tracks thoroughly. The order had been received through a messenger boy, and another boy had called and paid the bill. Neither of these boys could be located.
A week or so later, when the matter was beginning to fall into oblivion, several bishops and a number of the leading clergymen of the Episcopal Church received letters, apparently from Dr. Dix, demanding to be informed why his letters had been ignored. As a result Dr. Dix began to be the recipient of numerous replies, some apologetic, some angry, and all insisting that no previous communication had come.
This necessitated an immense amount of correspondence on the rector’s part, and he had just begun to complete his task of explaining that no such communication had ever been sent out by him when circulars, letters, and agents from the various Bible societies began to arrive at the rectory in response to postal cards requesting information as to the price of books for Trinity Sunday school.
The amusing feature of these communications was that, although the fullest publicity had been given to these various hoaxes, the communications were so artfully worded, reference being made to the hoaxes that had previously occurred and assurance being given that these letters were genuine, that the recipients were always deceived.
On February 21 the rector’s tormentor sent him his first communication. It took the form of a postal card, which briefly informed Dr. Dix that on the following Monday he would receive visits from the “old clothes ladies” of Chatham and Baxter Streets, who would be prepared to take his wife’s wardrobe off his hands for a fair price.
Sure enough, while the rector was concluding his breakfast a rickety wagon, drawn by a broken-down horse, rattled up to his door. From the seat descended a fat and stately woman, who climbed laboriously up the steps. Dr. Dix himself opened the door and informed her that this was a hoax.
Competition Among the Ladies
But the story had not penetrated into the recesses of the East Side, and the prospective purchaser saw in this statement of the rector merely a device to obtain a higher price.
“Trade with me once,” said the matron, “and you buys from nobody again.”
“But, madam, I assure you that I have no clothes to sell,” persisted Dr. Dix.
“I gives you money down,” answered the woman, producing a roll of dirty bills, evidently to tempt the rector into immediate acceptance of her terms.
Just at that moment a second cart rattled up to the door and a second matron leaped from the seat and ran nimbly up the steps. “Don’t you buy from that woman,” she cried. “I gives the best price in the market.”
Dr. Dix retreated into his home just in time to escape the ominous rattle of another creaky cart. Soon a congregation of old clothes dealers was assembled upon his doorstep, pulling the bell from time to time, and wrangling and quarreling over the privilege of purchasing the wardrobe of the rector’s wife.
The presence of this throng soon attracted the attention of the street urchins, and the neighbors also began to manifest a considerable interest in these doings. After plainly attempting to force an entrance the women retreated to the lower steps and placidly sat down, evidently determined to starve out the unfortunate gentleman within.
Victime Who Won’t Believe
As none of them evinced any desire to leave, and the number had increased by noon to twenty-eight, not to speak of the innumerable children, Dr. Dix finally telephoned to police headquarters, and a squad of officers was sent to disperse the besiegers — a task which was not accomplished without considerable difficulty.
The last of the carts had finally rattled away and Dr. Dix was beginning to congratulate himself upon his freedom when a carriage whirled swiftly around the corner from Fifth Avenue and stopped before the rectory, and one of the chief physicians of the city alighted and ran up the steps.
When he was admitted he told Dr. Dix that he had been summoned in urgent haste by a messenger, who stated that the rector had suffered an epileptic fit and was in a dying condition.
While he was still explaining and receiving the rector’s explanation two other carriages came racing up and two more physicians came running up the steps. They had received similar notifications. Before this affair had terminated some twenty-five or thirty doctors had called at the rectory, each ready to have the honor of saving the doctor’s life.
On the next day Dr. Dix received a letter from his persecutor in which he stated that he had witnessed these various spectacles from the window of his apartment with great amusement, and suggested that Dr. Dix would have found the old clothes women more agreeable if he had had the forethought to order out the fire engines to play a stream of cologne upon them.
The police at once began a systematic search of all houses that commanded a view of Dr. Dix’s residence, and a complete census of their inhabitants was taken, but without the slightest success. On the same afternoon the shoemakers of the city began to visit the rectory in troops; each of them had received a request to come for the purpose of measuring some children for shoes.
But this was not all, for a peculiarly distressing incident was the appearance of some fifty or sixty men and women who, having advertised for employment, had received communications upon the Trinity Rectory notepaper requesting them to call during that afternoon and evening. These people were very persistent, and many of them refused to believe that the letters they had received were really hoaxes.