Tracing a Murderer

A man was standing one day, with a kind of unoccupied air, a few steps from the door of the telegraph office, on Second street, Sacramento. What was remarkable about him was that there was nothing remarkable about him at all —to the casual eyes. He was a man of very ordinary appearance, of ordinary size, of ordinary complexion, with an ordinary face, and especially with an ordinary eye. He stood with his hands idly down in the pockets of a long, loose coat, as though they had dropped there themselves, and he had not taken the trouble to pull them out, and he seemed to be neither thinking of, nor caring about, nor looking at anything.

A boy messenger came tripping out of the telegraph office, taking two or three steps at once, as has been handsomely expressed, and happening to see the uninterested man whom he had seen before, he stopped short and said:

“Oh, here’s one for you; I suppose I might as well give it to you here. You’re Mr. Black?”… Read More