390
The Green Bag
had reached the daily press of the city — through its special service — to enable it to print on the morning of the 17th the name "Katherine Dillon" as that of the probable victim of the bungalow murder, and the name "I. J. Dillon" as that of the man with whom she lived. The afternoon press of the same date gave a description of them from the telegram received by the police depart ment. On the morning following the pub lication of these particulars of the Los Angeles tragedy, a man was found dead on the tracks of the Northwestern railroad at Wilmette, a small town fourteen miles north of Chicago. He had been killed by an early morning train, and undoubtedly had invited his own death. The man's name was Dillon — Caiphias Dillon. He was about thirty-eight years old, 5 feet 8 inches in height, and weighed 185 pounds. Details of his description, compared with those given in the telegram from Los Angeles, were found to be identical. Three detectives from police head quarters got into an automobile and went to Wilmette. They wanted to determine whether or not the similarity in these descriptions was only a coin cidence. The conjecture which took them to Wilmette, it seems, was well founded, for Caiphias Dillon, the dead man, was as like C. Dillon, the murderer, as two men possibly could be. An envelope had been found in the pocket of the dead man, addressed to David Churchill. The envelope con tained a sheet of paper, folded like a letter. The paper was blank, but it told a good deal to the detectives; it carried a message that the man could not express in words. Caiphias Dillon had gone to his death impelled by some fear greater than the fear of death. Something more was learned about the
blank sheet of paper that convinced them they were right. The night before his death Dillon had called on some young women in Wilmette. The talk had naturally turned to the story printed that day in the Chicago papers, giving the murderer's name, and des cribing him. "Isn't it strange," one of them re marked to Dillon, "that the man's name is the same as yours, and that the description fits you so exactly?" Her remark was wholly guileless, but the man it was addressed to showed unmistakable signs of disturbance. He made excuses for his lack of ease. "I'm blue tonight," he stammered. "I'm awfully nervous. I don't know what is the matter. I feel as if I was going to be held up on the way home. Let me have a sheet of paper and an envelope, will you? And a pencil." He took the writing material they found for him, addressed the envelope, and stopped. "I can't write!" he ex claimed. The excuse he had offered in explanation of his evident mental distress had suggested a trick to him. He realized there was no escape from the toils of the law closing in about him so completely and relentlessly, and decided to take his own life, but he would do it in such a manner as to lend the appearance that he had been killed by highwaymen; he wanted to save his good name and did not mean to confess the crime he had committed by suicide. So he disposed in some way of his watch and the money he had with him; at least when his body was found both money and watch were gone, and he was known to have both when he left the young women on whom he had been calling earlier in the evening. The detectives soon learned that Caiphias Dillon had worked for an
