A Study in the Fine Art of Murder. executed his note to one B. B. Samuels. The original instrument which Samuels had given to Holmes for the purpose of having signed by Pitezel, was never returned, but in its place Holmes prepared a new note, telling Pitezel, as we may infer, and Samuels, as we know, that the first had been lost. The second note, like the first, was signed by Pitezel under the name of Benton T. Lynian, and, unlike the first, was delivered to Samuels. Having the original in his posses sion, the arch-criminal succeeded in obtain ing all but a few -hundred dollars of the remaining insurance money, telling the widow that it was necessary for her to take up her husband's note. For it must be remembered that all this time Mrs. Pitezel labored under the impression that her hus band was still alive, believing that a substi tuted body had been vised. Under the plea that the danger of detection would be less ened, Holmes persuaded Mrs. Pitezel to en trust to him two more children, Nellie and Howard, whom he brought with him to Indi anapolis, where they met their sister Alice. Holmes then took them to Cincinnati, and back again to Indianapolis, and on his second stay there rented a house at Irvington, one of the suburbs. To this house Howard was taken, the others being left at the hotel, and the child disappeared on October ID. A series of remarkable wanderings now commences. Summoning Mrs. Pitezel from Galva, Illinois, where she had been staying with her family, Holmes begins a tour which it would take too long to follow in detail. The actors in the drama travel in three sep arate parties (for it must be kept in mind that Miss Yoke accompanied him during the entire time, in the honest belief that she was his wife), from Indianapolis to Detroit, to Toronto (where a house was rented at 16 St. Vincent street, and Alice and Nellie Pitezel were murdered and their bodies buried in the cellar), to Ogdensburg, Prescott, Burlington, and finally to Boston. At some of the cities
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they were within a few blocks of each other. The fact that Holmes could have managed such a tour successfully, demonstrates his genius for intrigue. In the early part of November he even visited his parents at the old home in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, where resided his real wife, the first Mrs. Mudgett. Her suspicions he quieted by a remarkable fabrication of having lost his memory in a railroad wreck. In the meantime events were fast drawing to a close. It is scarcely necessary to say that Holmes never paid Hedgepeth the promised five hundred dollars for procuring an introduction to Jeptha D. Howe. What more natural, therefore, than that the train robber should write to Major Lawrence Harrigan, Chief of Police of St. Louis, divulging what he knew relative to the con spiracy to defraud the Fidelity Mutual? The company took immediate action and through the aid of the Pinkertons succeeded in trac ing Holmes to Boston. Realizing that as yet the evidence was scarcely sufficient to warrant conviction, the authorities caused his arrest not for fraud, but having tele graphed to Fort Worth and discovered that he was "wanted there on a charge of horsestealing, he was incarcerated to await extra dition papers from Texas. O. LaForrest Perry, assistant to the President of the Fidelity Mutual, who had met Holmes at the time that Pitezel's body was exhumed, went to Boston to identify the prisoner. On seeing him Holmes immedi ately broke down, and said that he "guessed he was wanted in Philadelphia by the Fidel ity and not in Fort Worth for the horse busi ness." Aware of the fact that the methods employed by the citizens of Texas in dealing with horse-thieves cannot be said to err on the side of excessive leniency, he expressed an entire willingness to go to Philadelphia without extradition papers. At the time, it was generally believed that the body found in the house in Callowhill street was not that of Pitezel, and hence
