News Writing Part 30

Miss Helm died as the police were carrying her into the Chicago Union Hospital, and the man from Kentucky died later in the Alexian Brothers' Hospital. Before he went he told Detective William Rohan that he was a tobacco salesman and a professional card player.

"I drew for a queen to fill a bobtail flush," he said, with a queer smile, "but I didn't better my hand."

_CHAUFFEUR'S FEET BURNED OFF_

Herbert T. Middleton lives on Anderson Avenue, at Palisade, N.

J. While driving his automobile along the avenue he saw an overturned car burst into flame at the roadside, about half a mile south of Fort Lee. Two men and a boy were struggling to lift the rear end of the car, and shouting for help. Middleton hurried to their aid and found that the legs of the chauffeur were pinned to the ground by the back of the rear seat and flaming gasoline running over his limbs was burning him like a torch.

The chauffeur, Amendo Alberti, 32 years old, raised himself to a sitting posture and tried to direct the efforts of his rescuers. With the aid of another autoist and several drivers of pa.s.sing wagons, they finally got Alberti free. The burning gasoline had spread upward to his body. It was smothered by rolling the man in lap robes from the cars.

Dr. Max Wyley of Englewood Hospital, who came with an ambulance, found that the chauffeur's feet had been almost burned off, and the burning fluid had seared his limbs and body as far as his chest. At the hospital Doctor Proctor a.s.sisted Doctor Wyley in an effort to keep him alive. They decided he had one chance in five of living. If he survives he will be a cripple.

_BLAMES ALL ON WOMAN HE KILLED_

"The woman Thou gavest me tempted me and I did eat."--Adam, thousands of centuries ago.

Shortly after the world began, Adam sinned--and blamed a woman.

What Adam did in fear of G.o.d, a twentieth-century Adam did yesterday in Chicago--blamed a woman.

Here is the story:

Attaches of a saloon and cafe at 714 North Clark Street were startled early yesterday afternoon by revolver shots just outside the door. Rus.h.i.+ng into an alley at the rear, they found the bodies of a man and a woman.

The man was Was.h.i.+ngton Irving Morley, son of a wealthy contractor of Kansas City. The woman was Mrs. May Whitney, 29 years old, cabaret singer and mother of a 3-year-old child.

As they picked the bodies up, a letter dropped from the man's coat. It told everything that need be told about the dead man, the dead woman, and the dead man's deed.

It was addressed "To Anybody," and read:

This is an awful deed, but this woman is and has been ten thousand times worse than the vampire of fiction, and may G.o.d have mercy on her soul and mine. Yes, I guess I am crazy and have been for a year, but she has driven me to it. I left her in K. C., but she followed me to Chicago and then to Green Bay and all over.

But it is too late to cry about our mistakes.

I have had my chances, but I have thrown them all away.

Oh, if I had only taken the advice years ago of that grandest of all men, my father. But I let the three W's get me--wine, women, and w--. But, young men, remember, do not get infatuated with a woman of doubtful character.

They never can lead to anything good.

I have had my fling, but now I am going to the great beyond and I'm going to take the creature with me that has caused me more bad luck, heartaches, and everything else. I cannot live with her and I cannot live without her.

Good-by all. W. S. Morley.

P. S.--My belongings are all in her trunk, which is at Spangenberg's. I think her mother's address is 123 Pinckney Street, Somerville, Ma.s.s., Mrs. D. T. Whitney.

The bodies were taken to Gavin & Son's undertaking rooms. There a second letter was found in the man's pocket. It was addressed to his father, P. J. Morley, in Kansas City, and read as follows:

You no doubt will be horrified, but I couldn't help it. I have been crazy for a year, and this woman has driven me to it. You have been the grandest father in the world to me, and if only I had taken your advice, what a change it would have made in my life! But it is too late. Good-by, and may G.o.d have mercy on my soul. Yours, Irving.

P. S.--Father, if you want to do anything, take care of that boy in Hamburg, Iowa. He will be some boy if he doesn't inherit too many of his parents' bad faults.

Until recently Morley was a partner in the expressing firm of Ryan & Morley, Fifth Avenue and Randolph Street.

_SLAIN IN FIGHT ON BRIDGE_

A horrified crowd to-day saw a fight sixty feet in the air on an arch of the new high-level bridge over the Cuyahoga River in which Frank Wright, storekeeper for the bridge contractors, was killed by a fellow workman with an iron bar. The killing was witnessed by Wright's wife, who was making her way up to him with his lunch. Police have arrested Jack Browning in connection with the crime. The killing was preceded by a grim struggle in which the two men wrestled back and forth on the arch and both nearly fell into the river several times. After Wright had been slain his a.s.sailant jumped from platform to platform until he reached the ground and then fled.

_AGED MAN GAINS HEARTS DESIRE_

Joseph Stang has gained his heart's desire. He is dead.

For Joseph Stang death drew aside its mask of horror and revealed itself the fair prize and ultimate reward of mankind, impartially awaiting the winners and losers in life. And the aged man pursued it for a year with patient resolution, undiverted by the inconsequential parade of the world's affairs.

During the last year Mr. Stang, who was 81 years old, and a retired real-estate man, living with an invalid wife at 4855 North Paulina Street, made three ineffectual attempts to commit suicide. His first effort was discovered before he had succeeded in injuring himself. On Oct. 30 he sent a bullet into his brain in his bedroom. Persons in the household ran to him and found him lying on the floor, the revolver beside him. He was placed on the bed, and during the excitement of telephoning for an ambulance and a physician, the members of the household left him alone, believing him unconscious, if not dead. He got out of bed and crawled to his revolver, which had been picked up and placed on the bureau. Then he fired another shot over his heart.

He was taken to the hospital, where his wounds, although both in vital parts, healed rapidly, and he was soon discharged. Because of his infirmities and the illness of his wife he was later taken to the German-American Hospital to be cared for.

Sat.u.r.day morning he told his nurse that he was tired of life.

She cajoled him into a better humor, however, and he ate three hearty meals during the day. Shortly after supper he was left alone in his room. He went to his window, which overlooks a cemented court twenty feet below, and dived out, striking on his head. He was dead within a few minutes.

Physicians at the hospital declare that Mr. Stang must have calculated his jump carefully, as a falling body would not strike head first unless by design.

_DARK STREETS MAKE THREE ESCAPES POSSIBLE_

Policemen on posts in the Bronx have frequently complained to their superior officers because the turning off of street lights before daylight often gives burglars and other criminals an hour or more of heavy darkness in which to carry on their operations unmolested. The most emphatic of such complaints was made yesterday morning, after three burglars had escaped from pursuit at 4:30 A.M.

According to the policemen who attempted to capture the men, all of the lights in the Bronx were out at the time and heavy clouds made the streets black as midnight in a country village. The policemen attributed the escape of the burglars entirely to the darkness. Not only did the men escape, but they fired revolvers at the policemen and narrowly missed one of them, who heard the bullet as it pa.s.sed his head.

Sergeant Hale and Policeman Regen of the Morrisania Station were standing in Westchester Avenue near Union Avenue shortly before 4:30 o'clock, when they heard the cras.h.i.+ng of a pane of gla.s.s.

They ran to Union Avenue in time to see the dim shadows of three men running from the corner. The two policemen shouted to the men to stop and fired their revolvers, but the fugitives, returning the fire over their shoulders, darted down Union Avenue, separated, and disappeared into apartment house doors.

Policemen Rooney and O'Connell, who were several blocks away, heard the shots and ran to the scene. The alarm was sent to the precinct station, and while the four policemen were following the burglars into the apartment houses, the reserves were hurrying to their a.s.sistance.

Hale and Regen surprised one of the men on a roof and opened fire on him, but, as far as they could tell in the inky darkness, he was not hit. As he fled to the roof of an adjoining house he fired at the policemen, and Hale could tell from its sound that the bullet pa.s.sed within a few inches of his head.

The man disappeared into the darkness, and the policemen were unable to find him again.

Other policemen followed the other two burglars, the reserves surrounded the block, and many of those living in the neighborhood who were aroused from sleep by the revolver shots, joined in the hunt; but the trail of none of the fugitives was picked up. It was so dark, the searchers said, that they were not able to see more than a few feet ahead of them at any time.

All agreed that the burglars probably hid almost under the noses of those who were looking for them, for every roof, alley and possible hiding place in the block was searched as carefully as was practicable under the conditions.

The men had thrown a brick through the window in the jewelry store of M. Baldwin, at Westchester and Union Avenues. They s.n.a.t.c.hed about $100 worth of novelty objects from the window, but dropped all of them in their flight. The property was later picked up from the street.

Many complaints have come to the _New York Crescent_ from all over the city because there is often an hour or more of darkness between the time of turning out street lights and daylight. The lighting companies, it is said, are within the law of their contracts with the city.

_CHAPTER XI_

Indicate the places at which paragraphs should be made in the following stories:

_CHARACTER INDICATED BY THE LIPS_

To all daughters of Eve who have leap-year intentions, the vocational guide and well-known bachelor, William J. Kibby, to-day offers advice concerning the habits, characteristics, and dispositions of various sorts of men, which is intended to help the girls win their hearts' desires without suffering rebuff in the process. A good deal of what Kibby says is based upon phrenology. A man who has thin, straight lips is branded a cold-blooded, stony-hearted creature upon whom the dearest girl's appeal would have no effect. This sort of man will do his own proposing, run his own wedding, and rule his household; and he'll do it more with his head than with his heart. But if the man of your choice has full, well-formed lips, Kibby says you may depend upon his capacity for, and inclination to, love. He also is susceptible to the right sort of feminine approach.