PART I—­DETECTIVE STORIES FROM REAL LIFE

Arthur Train

A Flight into Texas

The flight and extradition of Charles F. Dodge unquestionably involved one of the most extraordinary battles with justice in the history of the criminal law.  The funds at the disposal of those who were interested in procuring the prisoner’s escape were unlimited in extent, and the arch conspirator for whose safety Dodge was spirited away was so influential in political and criminal circles that he was all but successful in defying the prosecutor of New York County, even supported as the latter was by the military and judicial arm of the United States Government.  For, at the time that Dodge made his escape, a whisper from Hummel was enough to make the dry bones of many a powerful and ostensibly respectable official rattle and the tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth in terror.

(The District Attorney’s office in New York City is undoubtedly one of the best watch-towers known from which to observe “Real Life Detective Stories.”

Arthur Train, sometime member of this prosecuting staff, has opportunity to record several of these curious and exciting “True Stories of Crime” (copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribners Sons).  None yields less to fiction save in the fact that it is true, and not at all in quality of dramatic interest, than “A Flight into Texas,” here given.

Readers of the newspapers a few years ago will remember the names of Abraham Hummel and Charles F. Dodge.  The latter, a railroad conductor, was alleged to have committed perjury at the dictate of the former, known as one of the brightest, least scrupulous lawyers in this city.  It was one of District Attorney Jerome’s great ambitions to bring Hummel to justice.  Here was an opportunity.  If Dodge could only be forced to testify to this perjury before a court, Hummel could undoubtedly be convicted of a crime that would not only disbar him from the legal profession, but would put him in jail.

Dodge had run away and disappeared as the storm seemed about to burst.  Where was he?  Who could find and bring him back—­against Abe Hummel’s wish?—­Editor.)

Who could accomplish that in which the law was powerless?—­Hummel.  Who could drive to the uttermost ends of the earth persons against whom not a shadow of suspicion had previously rested?—­Hummel.  Who dictated to the chiefs of police of foreign cities what they should or should not do in certain cases; and who could, at the beckoning of his little finger, summon to his dungeon-like offices in the New York Life Building, whither his firm had removed from Centre Street, the most prominent of lawyers, the most eminent of citizens?—­Surely none but Hummel.  And now Hummel was fighting for his own life.  The only man that stood between him and the iron bars of Blackwell’s Island was Charles F. Dodge—­the man whom he had patted on the knee in his office and called a “Mascot,” when quite in the nature of business he needed a little perjury to assist a wealthy client.