Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

And in connection with this review of the case, it contains a highly dramatic episode, suppressed in the press reports of the day and told now for the first time in print to the readers of FLYNN’S WEEKLY DETECTIVE FICTION.

About five miles below Pittsburgh, and on the Ohio River, is situated the little town of Coraopolis. It was comprised of a short main street of shops, a post office and a one story brick village lockup, and that was about all.

Of course, I am writing of the place as it was. As to how much it may since have developed I do not know. Beyond the limits of the tiny town spread a vast area of excellent farm land all under vigorous cultivation.

The dean of the farmers of the locality and the best liked man in all the country round was Ambrose Green. His wife shared his popularity. Green was approaching his eightieth year, and his wife was nearly his age.

In his young manhood and prime he had been a farmer on an extensive scale, and had also turned many profitable land investments. It was estimated that old Ambrose Green was worth fully a hundred thousand dollars, a big fortune for the times in a rural community. Moreover, he was known far and wide as a man who lived up to his professions of Christianity in love for his neighbors.

Any farmer in financial trouble applied to Green for relief. The old man could always be depended upon to lend the money. He would ask interest for it, but more to take the curse of charity off the loan than for profit, because he would charge only a third or fourth the interest a bank would have demanded on the same notes. Also he accepted some notes with which a bank would have had nothing whatsoever to do.

Coraopolis had no such institution of its own and Green was a depositor in the Pittsburgh banks, but he always kept a fairly large supply of cash on hand with which to come to the swift aid of troubled farmers.

His wife was equally kind in her manner and actions toward her neighbors. She visited and comforted the sick and aided the needy. Many of the wretched squatter families along the muddy river banks had from time to time their hunger appeased from the abundance of her larders and the produce of the Green farm.

The reputation of old Green for keeping a large sum of money in his home for the relief of his fellow farmers when they fell into financial travel traveled far beyond his community, due to those who came to know of it and felt that such generosity and kindliness should be praised. And articles had been written regarding him in the Pittsburgh newspapers.

Unintentionally, however, the spread of his philanthropic reputation did aged Ambrose Green a very bad turn, for it came to evil ears.

The aged couple held to the custom of the hard-working days of their younger years and regularly retired at nine o’clock each night. This they had done, as usual, on a certain night in December, 1896, and were both just sinking off to slumber when there came a loud and what sounded like a very excited rapping on the door of their home.

Old Green got up, shoved his feet into his slippers and, going into the hallway, shouted:

“Who’s there?”

“Oh, Mr. Green!” a voice high-pitched and apparently breathless replied. “There’s been a bad accident over to Len Purdy’s farm and—”

Len Purdy was a tiller of the soil who lived about a mile away and was one of Ambrose Green’s best friends. Anything happening to Purdy demanded his instant and active help.

He unbolted and swung open the door.

Five masked men pushed in upon him. The leader, a small, lithe man, pressed the muzzle of a pistol against the old man’s heart.

“I Ain’t Got no Money”

“Stick ’em up!” said this desperado to the aged farmer, clad only in his nightshirt, and with no possibility of being armed, since he had no weapon in his hand. “Stick ’em up or you’re a dead man!”

Instead of “sticking ’em up” and in spite of the pistol prodding against his chest, old Green smashed the leader down flat on his back with a ponderous blow between the eyes. But the four others leaped upon him, and, of course, there could be only one outcome to so uneven a battle.

They soon had him down, a rope was produced, they dragged him to his big, old rocking chair in the living room and bound him in it hand and foot. He made no outcry, knowing it to be useless, for the nearest neighbor was far beyond the reach of his voice.

But while they were finishing the brutal business, one of them raised a sudden cry of alarm and pointed to the bedroom doorway. In it stood Ma Green in her nightdress. Her silver hair held to its tightly drawn and knotted bedroom arrangement, but her face was distorted and her blue eyes snapping. Steadying one hand with the other she was aiming a big, old-fashioned pistol at them.

“If you hurt my husband I’ll kill you!” she cried. With no quaver in her voice either. “You take those ropes off him this instant!”

And when they didn’t do so instantly she opened fire.