MEMORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

MEMORIES.

SOMETHING LIKE A "D;"

THE UNDOING OF AN IMMIGRANT.

HOW A MURDERER WAS TRAILED.

(By NEVILLE FORDER.)

Away back in the early eighties there arrived in Auckland, per emigrant ship, a. stunted, furtive-eyed man who gave out that his mission was farming, and to prove the truth of his statement he left fur tlie Xorth as soon as ever arrangements could be made, and took up a block of swampy country somewhere north of the Bay of Islands. He made no friends and few of even the most casual of acquaintances. Indeed, he seemed to shun the slightest approach to familiarity, and to suspect every advance from neighbouring settlers, wllo were only too ready to tender the advice of experience to a "new chum" from a far land. Mr. Ryan remained surly and unapproachable; cut off from his kind by his own churlish disposition and suspicious nature.

There was one countryman, however, who did not seem to mind being nextloor neighbour to a morose churl, and =ang and whistled the heavy hours away as he cut the teeming flax, tea-tree and fern and worked up to his thighs in the ditch that divided his holding from the secretive new arrival. Day in and day out, in all sorts of weather, this big, strapping, quiet-spoken settler toiled away as long as neighbour Ryan was out and about. When the new-comer had called it a day, gone into his hut and lit up for the night, the chap on the next selection downed tools and retired also, taking care, however, to see that the light was still in Ryan's shanty and that his interesting neighbour had not stolen away from the scene of his slavish ! labour a—4or slave be did, from daylight

to dark, to tame the swampy wilderness -and make it repay his arduous toil. But always be kept glancing furtively over his shoulder, turning suddenly around rat-like suspicion in his haggard eyes, .and acting generally like one who! V\a \

J "Spotted" on Arrival. For the brawny toiler of the swampy/ | selection was Patrick John Herbert, the] ibravest and brainiest detective Auckland had ever known up to hie appearance lon the scene as custodian of a bloody murderer, the fratricidal killer of two sisters and a brother—fellow workers on the little farm left to the four of them on the death of their father.

Mails were few and far between in those days, and though a warning, that there was possibly a murderer aboard came by the very ship that brought the vile wretch to Auckland's shores, a lot of red tape and formalities had to be gone through, and the warrant for his arrest to-be waited for, before the local police dared to take decisive action. Ryan was spotted on arrival, and. the new detective from the South, Herbert, was put upon his trail. Hence his months of slavery amid horrible surroundings; ostensibly a new chum Irish settler, but really a sleuth hanging hungrily over a cold scent, waiting, waiting, wearily and ever watching for his master's wave and "view halloo," to pounce on the prey. It was the most dramatic thing ever done by officers of the law in sleepy, smiling Auckland, and it caused tremendous excitement and no end of congratulatory comment when the blow fell and Herbert delivered his odious charge at the old police headquarters at the corner of High .Street and Chancery Lane; thence to be extradited and hanged near the scene of his detestable crime.

Ryan had begrudged his sisters and brother sharing itf the tinpot farm in Ireland, and from the day the will was read he called his mind to get rid of his rela-

tions and grab the lot. It was a very' paltry lot to brutally murder two sisters' and a brother for, and when he had butchered the three and thrown their bodies down the well, he had, in his haste to get away and put the wide sea between himself and the scene of his most monstrous crime, to sell the holding for a paltry sum to add to the £40 or so, the poor, pitiful savings of his dead father's life. With that he entered as an emigrant, and thought when he left Auckland city behind and buried himself in the silent North, that he had shaken off pursuit and was safe. Misguided wretch! He little dreamed that his almost equally silent fellow ditcher was the great detective thai; came to be recognised as such, and rose to be one of the highest police officials in the land. Brief Liberty. I had the pleasure of becoming very friendly with Pat Herbert, and accompanied him. in more than one man-hunt in the city, in my capacity as an omniverous gatherer of news. In these nights I was invariably heeled, and ready to render assistance to the law, if called upon. One night-hunt comes vividly to mind, and I feel that the story will be interesting.

I met Herbert casvclly, striding softfooted along Chapel Street. I asked him what was in the wind. He informed me—whom he thoroughly trusted —that se-and-so, the notorious housebreaker and dangerous armed burglar, had left Mount Eden only that morning, and he, Herbert, had kept him under observation ever since. As soon as it was dark the fellow, with only about ten hours of more or less virtuous liberty, had hied him to a back yard in the northern end of one of those streets that now run parallel with Queen Street on the western ridge, and had acquired - to himself Mother Dossabob's wood-chopper; by which sign and token Herbert deduced that the crook was on burglary bent, and would not hesitate to chop down any intrusive person who tried to show him the error of his ways.

To this day I never knew why he marched, as straight as the streets allowed, right ahead, down Victoria Street West, and pulled up at a Bide window, fronting the short street (Hardinge, isn't it?) leading thence to the cliffs, of the then new hotel on the corner (the Oxford), I think it was called. Sure enough the window was open an inch or two, and there were marks of a clumsy tool on the sash. "He's in here, all right," said Pat, as cool as an iceberg, and throwing up the window,-quietly hopped inside, disdaining my offer of my gun as a protection against a reckless criminal armed with a chopper. I stood on guard, gun in band, ready to intercept my gentleman if he made a br -k for the window. He did, too, but I had no need to shootHerbert rushed him just as he reached the window and the struggle did not hut seventeen seconds.