together in a row, and the fifth, minus the head, was found a short distance away. The bodies of Bell, Swan, Humphreys and Noon had rifle bullet wounds in the back of the head, and when Miller's head was found it was crushed in, evidently by a blow from a rifle which was lying near by, the stock being broken from the barrel.
The appearance of the bodies clearly indicated that Packer had been guilty of cannibalism as well as murder. He probably spoke the truth when he stated his preference for the breast of man, as in each instance the entire breast was cut away to the ribs.
A beaten path was found leading from the bodies to a near-by cabin, where blankets and other articles belonging to the murdered men were discovered, and everything indicated that Packer lived in this cabin for many days after the murders, and that he made frequent trips to the bodies for his supply of human meat.
After these discoveries the Sheriff procured warrants charging Packer with five murders, but during his absence the prisoner escaped.
Nothing was heard of him again until January 29, 1883, nine years later, when General Adams received a letter from Cheyenne, Wyoming, in which a Salt Lake prospector stated that he had met Packer face to face in that locality. The informant stated that the fugitive was known as John Schwartze, and was suspected of being engaged in operations with a gang of outlaws.
Detectives began an investigation, and on March 12, 1883, Sheriff Sharpless of Laramie County arrested Packer, and on the i7th inst. Sheriff Smith of Hinsdale County brought the prisoner back to Lake City, Col.
His trial on the charge of murdering Israel Swan in Hinsdale County on March 1, 1874, was begun on April 3, 1883. It was proven that each member of the party except Packer possessed considerable money. The defendant repeated his former statement, wherein he claimed that he had only killed Bell, and had done so in self- defense.
On April 13, the jury found the defendant guilty with the death penalty attached. A stay of execution was granted to Packer, who immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. In the meantime he was transferred to the Gunnison jail to save him from mob violence.
In October, 1885, the Supreme Court granted a new trial and it was then decided to bring him to trial on five charges of manslaughter. He was found guilty on each charge and was sentenced to serve eight years for each offense, making a total of forty years.
He was pardoned on January i, 1901, and died on a ranch near Denver on April 24, 1907.
While Gilbert was reading this, I got myself a drink. Dorothy stopped dancing to join me. “Do you like him?” she asked, jerking her head to indicate Quinn.
“He's all right.”
“Maybe, but he can be terribly silly. You didn't ask me where I stayed last night. Don't you care?”
“It's none of my business.”
“But I found out something for you.”
“What?”
“I stayed at Aunt Alice's. She's not exactly right in the head, but she's awfully sweet. She told me she had a letter from my father today warning her against Mamma.”
“Warning her how? Just what did he say?”
“I didn't see it. Aunt Alice has been mad with him for several years and she tore it up. She says he's become a Communist and she's sure the Communists killed Julia Wolf and will kill him in the end. She thinks it's all over some secret they betrayed.”
I said: “Oh my God!”
“Well, don't blame me. I'm just telling you what she told me. I told you she wasn't exactly right in the head.”
“Did she tell you that junk was in the letter?”
Dorothy shook her head. “No. She only said the warning was. As near as I remember she said he wrote her not to trust Mamma under any circumstances and not to trust anybody connected with her, which I suppose means all of us.”
“Try to remember more.”
“But there wasn't any more. That's all she told me.”
“Where was the letter from?” I asked.
“She didn't know—except that it had come air-mail. She said she wasn't interested.”
“What did she think of it? I mean, did she take the warning seriously?”
“She said he was a dangerous radical—they're her very words—and she wasn't interested in anything he had to say.”
“How seriously do you take it?”
She stared at me for a long moment and she moistened her lips before she spoke. “I think he—”
Gilbert, book in hand, came over to us. He seemed disappointed in the story I had given him. “It's very interesting,” he said, “but, if you know what I mean, it's not a pathological case.” He put an arm around his sister's waist. “It was more a matter of that or starving.”
“Not unless you want to believe him,” I said.
Dorothy asked: “What is it?”
“A thing in the book,” Gilbert replied.
“Tell him about the letter your aunt got,” I said to Dorothy.
She told him.
When she had finished, he grimaced impatiently. “That's silly. Mamma's not really dangerous. She's just a case of arrested development. Most of us have outgrown ethics and morals and so on. Mamma's just not grown up to them yet.” He frowned and corrected himself thoughtfully: “She might be dangerous, but it would be like a child playing with matches.”
Nora and Quinn were dancing.
“And what do you think of your father?” I asked.
Gilbert shrugged. “I haven't seen him since I was a child. I've got a theory about him, but a lot of it's guess-work. I'd like—the chief thing I'd like to know is if he's impotent.”
I said: “He tried to kill himself today, down in Allentown.”
Dorothy cried, “He didn't,” so sharply that Quinn and Nora stopped dancing, and she turned and thrust her face up at her brother's. “Where's Chris?” she demanded.
Gilbert looked from her face to mine and quickly back to hers. “Don't be an ass,” he said coldly. “He's off with that girl of his, that Fenton girl.”
Dorothy did not look as if she believed him.
“She's jealous of him,” he explained to me. “It's that mother fixation.”
I asked: “Did either of you ever see the Sidney Kelterman your father had trouble with back when I first knew you?”
Dorothy shook her head. Gilbert said: “No. Why?”
“Just an idea I had. I never saw him either, but the description they gave me, with some easy changes, could be made to fit your Chris Jorgensen.”
14
That night Nora and I went to the opening of the Radio City Music Hall, decided we had had enough of the performance after an hour, and left. “Where to?” Nora asked.
“I don't care. Want to hunt up that Pigiron Club that Morelli told us about? You'll like Studsy Burke. He used to be a safe-burglar. He claims to've cracked the safe in the Hagerstown jail while he was doing thirty days there for disorderly conduct.”
“Let's,” she said.
We went down to Forty-ninth Street and, after asking two taxidrivers, two newsboys, and a policeman,
