Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

“Leave the nutty crook to us — we’ll fix him if he don’t keep his trap tight shut!” the sheriff flings back. “Much obliged for the lift and, remember, if anything’s said, you made the pinch and turned this fellow over to me on the other side of the county line.”

“Sure, sheriff. Good day.”

The next minute I seen Mr. Gray Eyes pulling out a motor cycle from somewheres behind the trees and go trudging down the path.

As I sat there on the ground, mussing and dirtying Red’s good suit, I couldn’t help admiring that fellow’s slickness even if he didn’t have no guts. I began to see just how smart he’d doped things out.

He knew in a second, when he first caught sight of the sheriff and his men, that some one had given them the right tip, and that they were sure to make some kind of a pinch. Just at that time, eight hundred and ten dollars didn’t look so big — not near as big as those walls around the pen.

It was easy enough to get rid of the money, but it wasn’t so easy to get rid of the sheriff. He’d have to have a prisoner of some kind before he’d be satisfied.

It was more than likely when Rita first went into the big tent, before any of them got wise to the sheriff’s party coming, that she’d told them all about the rube sucker she had in tow, and how she hoped to make forty bucks quick.

So when Mr. Gray Eyes hears a car stop and steps out to see the sheriff coming, he loses his nerve, but not his head. If the sheriff had to have a prisoner, he’d get one — not him, but that rube sucker over in Rita’s “budwoir!”

He just about got it all figured out when Rita comes running from the big tent. So he grabs her and rushes her back in. Then he tells her what he’s up against, and slips her the wad he stole from the freight station, asking her to sew it into the sucker’s coat instead of the phony bundle which she had got ready.

But even to this day I could never believe that Rita saw through all his game. ’Cause I’m sure she was awful sweet on me, cutting out all about the forty bucks. No girl could have smacked her lips on my cheeks the way she did unless she had been hit — and hit hard. And it wasn’t much to be wondered at if you stop to think of it — she, a girl of the great outdoors, and me, a regular he-man — and Spring!

The only way I could ever figure it out was that Mr. Gray Eyes had never told her anything about his intending to palm me off as the crook. She thought he only wanted to hide the money in a safe place until the sheriff left.

Then what did those bunch of rubes do, just about the time I’d got things all straightened up in my mind, but come and pick me off the ground and march me into their car. Stepping down on the gas, they had me in Greenwood in a little over an hour and locked me up in the jail.

I guess I’d be in the hoosegow yet if I hadn’t managed to coax the keeper into phoning to the captain. He came rushing over in his Hudson Super and got me out.

Did I get my forty bucks back? Not so’s you could notice it! Me and the captain stopped at Cold Springs on the way back, but them gypsies had flew the coop.

And Mr. Gray Eyes? They’re looking for him yet!

Who Killed Helen Jewett? by Zeta Rothschild

A Story of Fact

Public opinion was divided; and a rev. Mr. Brownlee openly supported the murder as “a deed to be commended”

* * *

All New York took sides in the manner of an old-fashioned spelling-bee when Helen Jewett was found murdered in her bed one night in April, 1836.

Was Frank Robinson, the last man seen in the girl’s room that night, responsible for her death? Did the blue cloak found in a neighboring yard belong to him? And did the hatchet, with which the girl’s head had been smashed before her bed was set afire, come from the store where Frank Robinson worked?

A large faction of vengeful New Yorkers would have shouted “Yes” to these questions. It urged the district attorney, by way of the New York Sun, to hold Frank Robinson for trial.

The same paper held up for ridicule the one man who provided Frank Robinson with an alibi for the time during which Helen Jewett was murdered and boldly asserted in its columns that nobody who knew him would believe him under any circumstances.

And later the prosecution was blamed for the alleged lackadaisical manner in which it conducted the trial. Was it possible that political pressure had been able to persuade the State to go softly? — insinuated the press.

On the other side was a small minority who saw Frank Robinson as a victim of a series of unhappy coincidences. The only witnesses against him, or rather, the most important ones, were Helen Jewett’s companions in the house she called home. And was the word of these fallen women to be taken seriously?

The jury had not much difficulty in making up its mind as to the guilt of Frank Robinson. In less than half an hour it brought in a verdict of “Not Guilty.”