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

Jim Lansdale was at the telephone. He could not understand it all; but he knew that the girl who was supposed to be a criminal was calling in Scotland Yard on the authority of the name of Murray, and was arresting this man Smith for murder. It was bewildering: but he telephoned.

When, at last, Smith had been taken away, maniacal in his wrath, Jim looked at Kitty.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name’s Murray,” she said. “I’m the daughter of Murray, the British Secret Service man who became famous during the war. I was a kid, then, of course. But father retired, and they wanted him to go out against Smith, who is the most notorious criminal alive. I helped — and... well — I became Murray, you know. Father couldn’t make any headway. I’ll tell you the whole story, if you like.”

Jim held out his hands. “Come here a minute,” he said.

She came to him.

Afterward — he whispered: “Would you like to tell me the story over supper somewhere quiet? Or shall we sit in your little room?”

Kitty said judicially: “I think we ought to go round and see father. I want to tell him that Murray has definitely retired — for good.”

Without the Fear of God by H. W. Corley

A Story of Fact

This is a story of mutiny, of every inhuman deed in the history of the seas and of many new deeds placed in that history.

* * *

“Without the fear of God before their eyes” — so ran the indictment in the ancient wording of the law of Anglo-Saxons — “Captain Adolph Pedersen, master of the barkentine Puako, and Adolph Eric Pedersen, second mate, with force of arms, unlawfully, feloniously, willfully, deliberately, premeditatedly, and with malice aforethought did kill Axel Hansen, a human being, by means and in a manner and form hereinafter set forth:

“They did beat and wound Axel Hansen, imprison him, withhold proper food and nourishment, inflict upon him cruel and unusual punishment by means of which Axel Hansen, suffering pain and anguish — in extreme weakness of mind and body, from a sense of danger and from well grounded apprehension of further attacks — did cast and throw himself into the ocean on the high seas.

“Near the stern he was crying for help, struggling to be rescued, he did grasp and cling to the logline attached to the stern of the vessel, all of which the defendants well knew and with means and appliances and duty to rescue and save him — did omit and refuse aid — did increase the speed of the vessel so that he was forced to let go the logline — did leave Axel Hansen in the ocean without sustenance and support by means of which he did drown and die.”

For the first time in many a long year the United States Government asked for a verdict of first degree murder in this case, whose charges parallel no other ever called in Federal Court.

The penalty, had the defendants been found guilty, would have been death by hanging, probably atop the old Federal Building, with United States Marshal Thomas F. MacCarthy the probable executioner. There with the sweet salt air snatched from him with his dying breath Adolph Pedersen would have swung and died.

Mutiny and Murder

But the jury, out ten minutes, acquitted the Pedersens. Premeditation could not be proved they said, and the defendants, later found guilty of cruel and inhuman treatment of their crew on ten counts, wept with joy at the verdict, like youngsters freed from an hour’s isolation in the nursery.

This is a story of mutiny and murder, of every inhuman deed in the history of the seas, of many new deeds placed in that history by these Pedersens, whose trial was called the most amazing in the history of the Federal Courts.

In the spring of 1918 “Hell Fire” Pedersen, as he was known along the wharves of Victoria, strode among the docks and sailors’ hangouts searching for a crew to sign for a voyage to Capetown with a cargo of lumber on his barkentine, the Puako, of which he had been master for twelve years.

With Captain Pedersen on this voyage would sail his two sons — his whelps, the seamen muttered darkly when they saw the boys — sixteen and eighteen, but born with the brawn of old Pedersen and a taste of his hell fire in their black young hearts.

No crew would sign on at first, and Pedersen was forced to get together such as he could, green hands, for few able seamen had a mind to ship with three of a kind. Only old Mattson, the carpenter, who has sailed with Pedersen these seven years, had ever repeated a voyage.

But at last, on April 27, after some weeks’ delay, the Puako and her crew left Victoria’s harbor.

There was young Reilly, a British subject, eager to join the navy and see the world had not the Puako seemed to offer a less exacting way.

Reilly had some trouble about getting aboard because of liability of the draft, it is said, and if Reilly deserted and ran away in time of his country’s need he has been well punished.