BAFFLED. [BYA SECRET SERVICE DETECTIVE.]

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2236, 6 November 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

BAFFLED. [BYA SE CRET SE RVICE DETECTIVE.]

In the winter 6t 1808 it became plain to tho Secret Servioe Bnreau that there wore a number of people in Washington who made it tUeir business to secure information for tho rebel government. Now and then such people had been unearthed and sent to Fort* Delaware or Lafavetteas prisoner*), but it* now seemed as if tho information cime from a diff<Mvnt class. Sacrets which could have been known to less than a dozen high millttiry and civic authorities were betrayed to iha rebr-ls, and plans hardly lisped beyond tho Cabinet became knownin Richmond be fore they cnnld be acted upon. President Lincoln firmly believed there were official trahVn'B in his camp, and the Chiof of the Buro\urec?!vedinstructionsfromhiindireot. Ho was commanded to spaco no <»ne, and to sh \dow any official of whom he felt the slightest suspicion. I was detailed on tho case, if c.ise it could be called. Tho orders were to do my best to find the leak. Seseral other men were given the same orders, but no two of us worked together. ' Just what move to make was a puzzler, bein? that I suspected no one. Luck, however, soon furnished me a pointer. One night, at a late hour, aa T was passing along Maryland avenue, I came upon two half- drunken officers who were pulling a civilian about in a reckless' manner, and threatening to do him up. lof course interfered on hehalf of the latter, and "she returned thanks. He proved to be the secretary of an important civic functionary. Two nights after on the same avenue, I passed the secretary, and' to my astonishment he was in disguise. He had on a false beard, an old slouch hat and a pair of goggles. How did I recognise him ? He stood under a gas lamp to consult his watch and ilook around. I was under a wooden awning close beside him. I saw the gleam of adian.ond pin on his necktie and the glitter of a diamond ringon his finger. I also noticed that his pants and boots belonged to a gentleman. Without recognising" the person as the secretary I followed him for a suspicious character. He led me a walk j of seven or eight squares, and then furtively entered the front door of a fine-look-ing mansion. He remained two hours, and I waited for him. I then shadowed him until he entered a place I knew was a hightonpd boarding-house. Before entering it, and while in the centre of a square where tho d irknoss was greatest, he pulled off his hat, b"ard and spectacles, and replaced the hat with a cap. I entered the house soon after him to warn the landlady and to make an arrest if circumstances warranted, and I was not long in ascertaining that my suspicious character was the private secretary. Before noon next day I discovered that'the other house was occupied by a suspicious widow. She was not only suspected on the grounds of morality, but she had, while living in Baltimore six months previously, been looked upon as a rebel sympathiser. T then set myself to watch her house, and found that the secretary visited the place every evening at 8 sharp and remained until 10. At a quarter past 10 another man in citizen's dress showed up, but remained only a few minutes.. After the third night I followed and arrested this man, and while taking him to prison hechewei up and swallowed a paper. When questioned he would make no statement, and no one could identify him. I lnd better luck at the house, however, to which I returned in the morning. I plumply told the widow that the man had been arrested with written information for the rebels in his possession, and had m.ide a full confossion. She was terribly frightened, and promptly confessed that she had been pumping the secretary and sending off his news. An hour later she grew defiant and denied everything, and as the ' pal ' refused to peach, and we had no real evidence, the bureau had to content itself with driving (the pair from Washington. When the secretary was informed of I what had occurred h« went to pieces like a ; boy and attempted suicide. When given j his liberty he disappeared, going no one ( ever knew where, but unmolested by tho ■ government. Two weeks after his disappearance our chief received an anonymous letter asking | him to send me to the railroad depot at 10 I o'clock the next night. I would see a man ! dressed so and so, and from him receive a j pointer as to the whereabouts of a certain I counterfeiter. As I was in New Yor!-: at I the time the chief sent another man, having I but little faith that anything would come of ; it, but not eating to throw anything away. i The detective was met by the person I described, walked out on the platform, and of a sudden was dosed with vitriol in a way which blinded one eye and disfigured his face for life. The punishment was no doubt meant for me, and the vitriolthrower was some friend of the suspicious widow's. In the confusion he made his escape, and no clue to his identity was ever had.

Two sons of Dickens, the famous novelist, are in Australia. One, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, is a land appraiser under the New South vVales | Government, and the other, Alfred Tennyson Dickens, is an auctioneer in j [Melbourne, j 1 The Cabinet of Caps polony is a curious mixture. In a speech in London the Hon. Gordon Sprigg said "They had one of the most cosmopolitan Governments in the worlds for one was an Irishman, one was a Scotchman, another a Bavarian, a fourth was a pure Dutchman, while the fifth was an Englishman, who had the honour of addressing them."' Fortunately, however (says a Hon o paper), though Scotchman and Dutchman and Czech they be, they are all of thorn British iv their affection for the Empire and determination to remain part of it. The county court judge in an English borough haa made an "order which may become historical. It seems that a young woman in the district of Haslingden recently obtained at the assizes a verdict for £40 in an action for breach of promise. The defendant is a bookkeeper at a pound a week, aud he the other day asked the judge to relax the severity of an order w hich had been made upon him for payment. His Honour, having regard to the defendant's means, decided that the justice of the case would be met by an order for tho payment of 4s per month. The sum owing is about £80, with costs, and readers with a talent for arithmetical calculation will be pleasantly exercised in ascertaining tho exact number of years which will pass before the defendant, should be survive, will have paid the last instalment. Assuming that he is twenty-five or thirty years of age now — that being the period at which men mostly commit the offence of which he was found guilty — the defendant will be a white-headed old man when he finally shakes the incubus from Ms shoulders. Superstition in Somersetshire.— A correspondent writes to the London Figaro : ■ — " I was by chance an eye-witness, whilst driving from Bndgwater to Athemlney a few days since, of the fag-end of some curious proceedings in a village we pa^sad through en route, which helped to shovr clearly that board schools have not yet availed to extinguish the old superstitious beliefs which still linger, especially in tho more rural districts. It was early morning when I drove by, and all that I really saw of the affair was a crowd of people, one of them being a woman with a baby, the whole being apparently under the escort of tho village policeman. But there wan something in the look of the people that aroused curiosity, and, stopping the horses, I proceeded to make inquiries of an old man, vrifch tho following result. The child I had seen had been bnrn, I was told, with a complication of bodily ills which I need not recapitulate. But what iB worthy of repetition is the fact that the parents, on the urgent advice of several neighbours, resolved to resoit to a supernatural way of curing their offspring. So on that very morning, it BBPIH3, a pilgrimage had been made to a sapling ash, which had been split down the middle by the father of the child, who then, with assistance, inserted wedges, until an opening had been made wide enough to admit of the body of the infant being parsed through without touching the sides of the ash tree. This opening having been made, the child was undtesspd, and with its face towards the rising sun was drawn through the aforesaid split in the sapling. This done, the infant was redressed, the tree-bound up, and the party, when I met it, was proceeding home with confident belief that as the tree grew together again the child would grow out of its ills. This superstition, 1 may add, is not uncommonly believed in the West of England, though tha actual performance of the above rite is, I believe, sufficiently rare to merit publication,"