The Devil's Gentleman (21 page)

38

I
n commissioning Harlan P. Halsey’s daughter to produce a mystery story based on the Adams-Barnet case, Hearst’s paper was not simply offering its readers a bit of weekend diversion but taking a swipe at the New York City police. “The detectives of real life have studied, guessed, and theorized and arrived at no solution of the mysterious poisoning of Henry C. Barnet and Mrs. Kate Adams,” the editors explained in a prefatory note. “The letters from ‘Blanche,’ the relations of Roland Burnham Molineux and his wife with Barnet, the bottles of poison, the addresses on the wrappers, and a dozen other interesting discoveries have apparently led to nothing. The
Journal
has therefore asked ‘Old Sleuth,’ the famous detective of fiction, to take the facts as known to the public and work out a solution to the mystery.”
¹
The message couldn’t have been clearer: even a make-believe detective could do a better job than the city’s so-called professionals.

As the days passed without an arrest, the yellow papers became increasingly harsh in their criticism of the detective bureau. The
Journal
was especially nasty. In one jeering cartoon, a fox labeled “Poisoner” runs circles around a big lumbering dog with a police helmet and the face of Captain McCluskey. In another, a hapless police bloodhound sniffs the air for clues, completely oblivious of the big wooden sign directly above his head that points to the solution of the poisoning case.

In its relentless persecution of McCluskey, the paper described a half dozen murder mysteries that his bureau had failed to “unravel,” from the strangling of a young woman named Margaret Clarkson Crowley in March 1898 to the Christmas Eve stabbing of an “old florist” named Jean Baptiste Colin in his West Twenty-eighth Street tenement.
MUST THE ADAMS CASE GO ON THIS FAILURE LIST
? the headline demanded.
²

The paper was even more scathing on its editorial page, accusing the police not merely of incompetence but of corruption. “It will be time to credit the police having an honest intention in this matter when they have accomplished something,” one editorial thundered. “So far, they have only muddled the case, and have added to their customary stupidity the criminal offense of premeditated indifference.”
³

A few days later, Hearst leveled even more damning charges against McCluskey and his men:

The same old farce is being played in the poisoning case. No arrests and no possibility of any. The police keep up a semblance of activity but they are very careful not to take any positive step.

In the handling of this important case they have failed to demonstrate the slightest ability. No clew of value has been discovered by them. They have blundered at every point.

With a stupidity that must have behind it the incentive of an authoritative suggestion, the police have avoided confirming suspicions that might reveal the identity of the murderer. They have applied neither energy nor skill to the work, leaving to others the task of bringing the offense to justice.

The public cannot be deceived by a pretense of eagerness. The promises of the police are valueless. They are only part of the carefully planned scheme to conceal the most brazen exhibition of official negligence that even the Police Department of New York has been guilty of.
⁴

To incite his readers to an even higher pitch of outrage, Hearst argued that the failure of the police to bring the poisoner to justice was worse than reprehensible; it was an active threat to the well-being of the public.
POLICE TIE-UP IN THE ADAMS MYSTERY BREEDS NEW POISONINGS
, blared one of the
Journal
’s more inflammatory headlines.
⁵
According to the article, the poisoner’s success in eluding capture had emboldened other killers to emulate him, setting off a rash of copycat crimes.

In Paducah, Kentucky, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Raab were poisoned “with a deadly drug in their breakfast.” William Bauer, a little boy from Sandusky, Ohio, “ate some candy which was given to him and died.” Poisoned tea was the culprit in the case of C. A. Glesner, a farmer from Carlinville, Illinois, who found a package of pekoe in his buggy, took it home, and drank a fatal cup with dinner. Pearl Holmes, “a little colored girl” from Annapolis, Maryland, perished after eating oatmeal spiked with arsenic, though “who would want to poison the little one is a mystery.” And in New York City, a young hairdresser named Marie Appell fell violently ill after eating an arsenic-laced “chocolate drop” from a box ostensibly sent to her by an unknown admirer.

All of these cases and more—so many as to amount to a veritable “poison epidemic”—were directly inspired by the Adams-Barnet case, at least according to the yellow papers. The situation had grown so dire that, as a public service, Hearst’s
Evening Journal
began running a graphic front-page warning: a drawing of a box of bonbons with a death’s head superimposed on it and a caption reading: “Don’t Accept Presents of Candy Unless You Know Who Sent Them!”
⁶

Hearst’s attack on the police was, of course, perfectly in keeping with his self-appointed role as fearless defender of the common man. If the murderer of Katherine Adams and Henry Barnet had been a common criminal, the
Journal
maintained, he would have been arrested long ago. The man believed guilty of the crimes, however, had extraordinary advantages. Thanks to his family’s “financial resources,” he had the finest “legal and expert assistance” available. He was also being shielded by friends of his father, who were exerting “powerful influence of a political character” to keep the authorities from doing their job. “The Police Will Have to Be Unraveled Before They Can Unravel the Poison Mystery,” read the caption of one editorial cartoon, which showed a uniformed officer being trussed up and gagged by a pair of powerful hands labeled “Politician.”
⁷

That influential friends of General Edward Leslie Molineux had intervened in the case was not beyond the realm of possibility. A politician described as a “power in Tammany Hall” had reportedly paid a visit to police headquarters, where he “delivered an ultimatum from his superiors which has effectively tied the hands of the police.”
⁸
And the district attorney, Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner, was known to be an old friend and battlefield comrade of the General’s who had socialized with him many times at the city’s innumerable veterans’ functions.
⁹

Confronted with such charges, Gardiner vehemently denied that the suspect was being shielded by powerful friends. The police, he asserted, were conducting their investigation in precisely “the right way.” “This will take time,” he stressed. “It is only proper that the police should proceed carefully and have matters in shape before any definite action is taken. There are still missing links in the chain of evidence that make it impossible to take a decisive step at this time.”
¹⁰
McCluskey, too, scoffed at the notion that his men were “being held back by some potent influence.” “It is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” he replied when confronted by a group of reporters. “Since I have had charge of this office I’ve been permitted to investigate every case without the slightest interference. The statement that my hands are tied and that I’m being prevented from making an arrest is absolutely without foundation. It’s almost funny.”
¹¹

And indeed, even as the yellow papers were accusing the detectives of deliberately dragging their feet, McCluskey’s men were pursuing a significant new clue—one that would cause Hearst himself to revise his low opinion of their efforts and lead to what his paper would call “a startling new chapter in the Great Poisoning Mystery.”
¹²

39

I
t had been a difficult two weeks for Herman and Gustav Kutnow. Ever since the story of Henry Barnet’s death broke, their business had fallen off dramatically. To stem the damage, they had issued a string of reassuring statements, declaring that no toxic chemicals were used in the making of their product, an all-natural “pleasant-tasting effervescent salt” derived from the Carlsbad mineral springs. But their efforts had made little impression on a public exposed to daily graphic descriptions of a healthy thirty-two-year-old clubman who had suffered a miserable death after taking a dose of their medicine.

“The fact that the murderer employed a bottle of our powder as an instrument in his design against Barnet has given our preparation the most undesirable kind of advertising,” Herman Kutnow told one reporter in mid-January. By then, sales of the once-popular patent medicine were essentially “at a standstill.”
¹

Desperate to see the case resolved, the Kutnows posted a $500 reward “for the conviction of the poisoner.” “We make the offer,” Herman explained, “to stimulate the detectives to exercise their greatest efforts.”
²
They also let it be known that they were eager to assist the investigation in any way possible. And so, when Arthur Carey showed up at the Kutnows’ Astor Place office, the brothers were ready to give the detective whatever help he needed.

Carey had brought along the little tin from which Barnet had taken the fatal dose. Examining it, Gustav Kutnow confirmed that it was one of the company’s free samples. Stuck to the bottom was a label that warned: “Any person selling or exposing for sale this sample at any time will be liable to all the punishments and penalties of the law.”
³
The company had only begun attaching this notice to its samples in July 1898, six months earlier.

How, Carey wanted to know, were the samples distributed?

There were three ways, explained Kutnow. During the previous summer, he had spent a week in Asbury Park, New Jersey, handing them out from a booth on the boardwalk. People could also receive a sample by coming to the Kutnow brothers’ office and asking for one.

The vast majority of the little tins, however, were distributed through the mail as the result of the company’s newspaper ads. Anyone sending in a letter with his name and address would receive a free sample by return mail.
⁴

Carey asked if the Kutnows kept records of the people who wrote in for samples.

Indeed they did, said Gustav. In fact, they carefully preserved the actual letters in order to compile a mailing list of potential customers.

This was good news to Carey, who was eager to find any piece of physical evidence that would link the suspect to the Barnet murder.

The bad news was that, during the six-month period in question, the Kutnows had received approximately 100,000 of these letters.
⁵

Beginning that day, Carey—seated in his shirtsleeves at a desk in the Kutnow brothers’ office—methodically went through stack after stack of the letters. In this task he was assisted by two of his colleagues, Detectives Herlihy and McCafferty, along with the Kutnows’ bookkeeper, a young woman named Elsie Gray. To help her identify the letter he was looking for, Carey gave her a facsimile of the handwriting on the poison package received by Harry Cornish.

Exactly one week after the search began, as the four of them were huddled at the desk, Miss Gray let out a little gasp. “I think I’ve found it,” she said. Feeling a jolt of excitement, Carey reached out and took the sheet of paper from her hands. Even at a glance, he could see that the penmanship bore a striking resemblance to the writing on the poison package. But as he read the letter, his excitement gave way to confusion.

The one-line request for “a sample of salt” was written on a sheet of what was obviously expensive stationery. The paper was eggshell blue in color and embossed with a distinctive silver crest, consisting of three small interlinked crescents. Only a man of hopelessly snobbish habits, thought Carey, would use such fancy stationery for his everyday communications. A man like Roland Molineux.

Like most of his colleagues on the force, Carey felt sure that Molineux was the poisoner. He’d been hoping that, once it turned up, the request for the Kutnow’s Powder would confirm that belief—that it would be signed with Molineux’s name, or have, as a return address, the Morris Herrmann factory or the New York Athletic Club or perhaps even the imposing house on Fort Greene Place.

But the return address supplied by the sender was none of those places. It was 1620 Broadway in Manhattan. And the letter wasn’t signed “Roland Molineux.”

It was signed “H. Cornish.”
⁶

40

T
he Kutnow brothers were sticklers for record keeping. Whenever a sample tin was sent out, a clerk stamped the mailing date on the letter of request. The date on the letter Elsie Gray had found was “Dec. 23, 1898.”

Carey was puzzled by this. He was sure that the letter he now held in his hands had come from the poisoner; there was no mistaking the handwriting. And yet, Henry Barnet had died on November 10—six full weeks before the date rubber-stamped on the robin’s-egg-blue stationery.

Carey could think of only one explanation: the killer had sent in a request for
another
sample tin of Kutnow’s Powder more than a month after murdering Barnet. And he had done so under the name of Harry Cornish.

Carey and his partners proceeded directly from the Kutnow brothers’ office to the address on the letter: 1620 Broadway. It turned out to be a small-time operation with the grandiose name of the Commercial Advertising Company. The proprietor was a man named Joseph Koch, who derived much of his income from renting private letter boxes—little pigeonholes built into a wall behind a wooden counter—for fifty cents a month or five dollars a year.

Shown the letter from Kutnow’s, Koch checked his ledger and confirmed that, on December 21, he had rented box Number 10 to a man calling himself Harry Cornish. Though “Cornish” had taken the box for two months, neither Koch nor his clerk had ever seen him again.

Carey, who was hoping to collect as much physical evidence as possible, asked Koch to check box Number 10. To the detective’s disappointment, the box was empty.
¹

Two days later, on January 14, Koch made a surprising discovery.

While distributing the morning mail, he noticed that two small packages addressed to “H. Cornish” had inadvertently been placed in the wrong letter box—Number 9. One was a manila clasp envelope, the other a small cardboard box. Koch put the packages aside, intending to bring them down to police headquarters later that afternoon, though he didn’t make the trip until the following day, when he turned them over to Captain McCluskey.
²

Seated at his desk, McCluskey opened each package in turn. The first, from Von Mohl & Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, contained a small box labeled “Calthos.” Inside were five conical gelatin capsules, along with directions for their use. Studying these instructions, McCluskey saw that the pills were intended as a remedy for “male debility”—impotence. He immediately sent a telegram to the Cincinnati Police Department, asking them to check the records of the Von Mohl Company for any communication from “H. Cornish.”

The second package, postmarked December 23, contained a tin of Kutnow’s Powder—obviously the sample mailed out in response to the request turned up by Elsie Gray.

At McCluskey’s orders, Detective Carey sought out Harry Cornish and brought him down to Koch’s office. Though admittedly nearsighted, Koch had no trouble confirming what the detectives already believed: that Cornish was
not
the man who had rented letter box Number 10.
³

Like Carey, McCluskey wondered why the poisoner had sent for another tin of Kutnow’s Powder more than a month after killing Henry Barnet—and why he had written the request and rented the letter box under Cornish’s name. Perhaps, McCluskey thought, it was all part of a diabolical plot to frame Cornish for Barnet’s murder if the attempt on Cornish’s own life failed. According to McCluskey’s theory, the poisoner “probably thought that, if Cornish didn’t take the deadly bromo-seltzer, the letter-box scheme would eventually become public and show that Cornish had written for the samples sent to Barnet. That would connect Cornish to Barnet’s death. And the next best thing to killing an enemy is to have him accused of murder.”
⁴

Upon receipt of McCluskey’s telegram, Superintendent Detsch of the Cincinnati Police Department dispatched a detective named Herman Witte to the offices of Von Mohl Company at 506 Lincoln’s Inn Place. Witte spoke to the manager, Joseph Brewster, who referred him to a clerk named C. B. Pugh.

Within the hour, Pugh, searching through the company files, turned up a letter from “H. Cornish” requesting the free “5 day trial” offered in the company’s newspaper ads. Witte took the letter with him and, that afternoon, mailed it special delivery to Captain McCluskey.
⁵

It arrived late the following afternoon, Tuesday, January 17. Seated at his desk, the “boss-sleuth” examined the letter. McCluskey was no graphologist, but to his eyes, the letter had clearly been inscribed by the same hand that had addressed the lethal package to the real Harry Cornish. And like the request that Elsie Gray had found among the files of the Kutnows’ firm, it was written on a robin’s-egg-blue sheet embossed with a little crest of three interlinked silver crescents—the kind of ostentatiously elegant stationery that was meant to proclaim the writer’s superior taste and that, to a man like “Chesty” McCluskey, seemed positively effeminate.
⁶