The Spruce Street Tragedy; or, Old Spicer Handles a Double Mystery. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury

little rooms, each of which was furnished with one or two chairs, a lounge, table, and a stove. Most of these rooms could be reached from two or three different sides.

      In the rear were two doors leading to the back yard, and a covered passage leading to a little alley through which York Street could be reached. Four doors opened out of the room where the body of Mrs. Ernst was discovered by the milkman.

      No one who was unfamiliar with the premises had any idea that there were more than two rooms in the basement. The officials, Chief Bollmann, Coroner Mix, and all the detectives, including Spicer, Stricket and Morgan, who had a pretty good knowledge of the various haunts of vice in the city, were surprised to find such a thoroughly mixed-up piece of underground architecture.

      Old Spicer, while inspecting the apartments and the several dark passages by which the rooms were reached, compared the surroundings, because of the abrupt and unexpected halls and turns, the scanty furnishings, and the like, to some of the celebrated structures that carried notoriety to the old Five Points in New York years ago.

      In the southeast corner of the basement, where the uninitiated might expect to find a coal bin or a hole in the ground to store away wood, they discovered a room with three or four chairs and a lounge. Even the tenants on the floor above had no idea that there was such a room in existence.

      One of the passages from the bedroom opened into what must have been a sort of social apartment for the patrons of the widow. It might also answer the purpose of a card or smoking-room. A cheap stove, a couple of tables, and three or four chairs comprised the furniture of this room.

      Then there was discovered another apartment which was probably used as a storehouse for ale and beer barrels. Besides these there were found a woodshed and tool-room, and a suspicious looking trap-door that covered what Old Spicer was privately informed was a secret underground tunnel that extended far in the rear of the building.

      He raised the heavy door and looked in; the entrance was nearly choked up with ashes.

      He removed some of the rubbish with his foot, and peered eagerly into the black darkness. The hole had a mysterious look about it, and he could not but regard it with strong suspicion.

      One of the tenants of the house approached, pointed to the black opening, mysteriously shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and then mumbled, in what he meant to be a confidential tone:

      "That there underground passage leads clear across the back-yard, Mister Detective; and just let me tell you it'll be a mighty interesting thoroughfare for you to inspect."

      "Thoroughfare, eh?" questioned Old Spicer, thoughtfully.

      "That's what I said, sir."

      "Thank you for the hint, my friend; most likely I shall act upon it later." Then he closed the trap-door, and once more turned toward the bar-room.

      This apartment was of comfortable dimensions, and was the principal room in the basement. It was furnished on the same scale of poverty as the rest, and the first glimpse into it would not have been very reassuring to the spectator. The bar resembled those that bloom in cheap groggeries.

      There was an evident purpose on the part of the owner to keep the public from sharing the brilliancy of the interior, for a paper screen two and a half feet high and two feet wide stood at the end of the bar as a barrier to the glow of an oil lamp that shed its exclusive light through the gloomy apartment.

      A dilapidated, small-sized looking-glass adorned the partition wall back of the bar. In the tool-room were a hatchet and a butcher's knife, besides a bunch of rusty keys.

      Suspended from the bar-room wall and right over the dead woman's head, was a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte surveying a battlefield with his generals. A picture of Richard Wagner looked down on the corpse from another part of the interior.

      "When I first came in here this morning with the milkman," said Morgan, "there were bottles and half-filled glasses on the bar."

      "What was in the glasses?" asked Stricket.

      "In one there was nothing but soda-water. The other contained claret."

      "How long was it after you got here before the police arrived?" asked Old Spicer.

      "I had had hardly time enough to take a good look at the murdered woman when Policeman Cannon, who resides in the brick block next south of this, came in. He had only just returned from his night patrol and lain down. His wife heard the outcry in the street and aroused him."

      "I suppose he assumed authority at once?"

      "Why, he found the place pretty well filled by an excited throng, and men, women and boys making excursions through the several apartments; but before he could clear out the people, Detective Reilly arrived."

      "Ah! somebody telephoned to headquarters, I suppose?"

      "I suppose so, for very soon the coroner came rushing in, then Detective Brewer made his appearance in hot haste; and finally Chief Bollmann, Policeman Hyde and other officers."

      "By that time there was a scattering, I fancy," said Stricket, with a smile.

      "Yes," assented George, "everybody was hunted from the basement except those you see here now."

      At this moment Coroner Mix joined them.

      "Going to look into this case a little, Old Spicer?" he asked.

      "I have some thoughts of doing so," was the reply.

      "I hope you will," said the coroner. "If there is any information I can give you, I will impart it gladly."

      "Are there any clews to work on as yet?" asked Old Spicer.

      "Very few, so far as I have been able to learn."

      "What do you know about the woman, anyway?"

      "Very little indeed. The fact is, Spicer, there seems to be a blissful ignorance on every hand, even regarding the history of the victim and her family affairs."

      "Ah-ha! she kept her family affairs to herself, did she?"

      "It seems so. A mystery looms up at the very outset of the case. But of that hereafter."

      "All right, the mystery can wait, if you say so. But with regard to her relatives, surely something is known about them. What have you been able to find out?"

      "In the first place, I have ascertained that Mrs. Ernst had been in this country between thirty and forty years, coming from Germany; and that her financial manager, for a long time past, was Maier Zunder."

      "She was a widow, I believe?"

      "Yes, a good deal of a widow. She had been married three times, and her three husbands are dead."

      "Indeed?"

      "Yes; the first died in Germany."

      "What was his name?"

      "George Pfaff. After his death she came to the United States and met her second husband, Franz Natolph, in New York."

      "He came to New Haven with her, didn't he?" asked Stricket.

      "Yes," was the reply, "and they started in the saloon-business in this very place."

      "There was a pretty serious row, wasn't there, in which Natolph got hurt?"

      "Yes, one night, in this very room, Natolph was struck in the head with a bottle, nearly cracking his skull. Typhoid fever set in, and that and the injuries from the bottle soon after caused his death."

      "How long is it since Ernst, her third husband, died?" asked Old Spicer.

      "Less than ten years," was the reply.

      "She left no children, I believe?"

      "No – never had any, so far as I have been able to learn."

      "She has kept up the business, married or single?"

      "Yes: to the very hour of her death."

      Old Spicer glanced at the dead body on the sofa.

      "She was a very stout woman," he remarked, "but, I believe, was not in good health."

      "No," answered the coroner, "she has been troubled of late