Curiously Caught Criminals. mouthpiece was found to be worn away by the teeth of its owner, but the dead man's teeth did not fit the indentation. The ser vants were one by one examined, and it was then found that the hollows of the mouth piece compared exactly to the formation of the front teeth of the cook, to whom no sus picion had been attached. He afterwards confessed to the murder. The belief that " murder will out," sooner or later, was amply justified in the following curious instance. One day Dr. Airy was pas sing through St. Sepulchre's Churchyard in London. The gravedigger was excavating a grave, and the doctor, unaccountably at tracted, stood looking on. While he was there a skull was thrown out 'which appeared to have the power of motion. Taking it up, the doctor found the cause to be a live toad. The casual examination disclosed the pres ence of a nail embedded in the temple bone. Merely calling the sexton's attention to this, the doctor went away. The sexton, thinking the matter over, remembered that the skull was that of a young man who had died suddenly twenty-two years before, and gradually there came back to his mem ory certain fleeting rumors of that time. Putting this and that together, he became more than suspicious and laid the whole matter before a magistrate. The widow of the long-buried man was arrested and taxed with having killed her husband. Ultimately she confessed her guilt, and was duly hanged for the crime so long hidden and so strangely brought to light. While on his way to one of the stations at Budapesth, a French gentleman went into a hatter's shop and bought and put on a hat which had attracted him by its unusual color and shape. After reaching the sta tion, and walking up and down there for a few minutes, he was astonished to find in one of his overcoat pockets a purse full of money, and in the other a gold watch. He at once went to the station-master, whom he found listening to the tale of a man who had lost
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his purse. The purse turned out to be the identical one the Frenchman was returning, but when lost it had contained but ios., while now it held as many pounds. The mystery was explained when a policeman brought in a pickpocket he had just ar rested. He confessed to the theft of the purse, into which he had put the proceeds of previous robberies. These and the watch he had passed into the Frenchman's pockets because of his hat, explaining that hats ofthat particular pattern, made only by one firm, were the badge of an international gang of pickpockets, so that he had taken the un suspecting traveler for a confederate. The hatter, when questioned, stated that he had sent out a large consignment of that partic ular hat to a place named by the thief, but he was able to prove that he had no complic ity in the base uses for which his wares were utilized. Detectives are not over scrupulous in the means they sometimes use to assist them in making captures. Nothing quite so bad can, however, be laid to their charge as the accusations made against the terrible Rus sian police, who are said to give suspected prisoners a drug which renders them deli rious, and when in that state they are watched and interrogated, in the hope that they may utter remarks incriminating themselves and perhaps others. A wily French detective, sent to the country in a murder case, disguised himself as a hawker, and put up at an inn frequented by a gang of poachers, with whom he soon ingratiated himself, playing cards with them nightly, until, at a favorable opportunity, he offered to treat them to a couple of bottles of hot wine. While this was being prepared, he managed to pour a flask of pure alcohol .into the pan, with the result that the gang became intoxicated, talkative, and boastful, so that he found no great difficulty in draw ing out of them enough to justify him in having one of the crew arrested, who after wards made full confession.
