A Strange Passenger

by Edward Heins

WHEN my packet-ship, the Hermione, was preparing to sail from Liverpool for New York, I was warned to take precautions against receiving as passenger a certain Mary Youngson, who, while nursing her sick husband—a man considerably her senior —had poisoned him to death, laid hold of all the money and valuables she could get, and then had made off. It was thought that she would try to leave England on some outward-bound ship—most likely for America, where she had friends—and therefore I sharply scrutinized the passengers, eight in number, who were brought off to my vessel in a tender. As they stepped aboard I was relieved to perceive that none of them tallied with the description I had obtained of Miss Youngson, who, I was told, was a beautiful woman, over thirty-five years of age, about five feet six inches in height, and very slender, with brown hair, dark eyes, and a clear complexion. She had been born and educated abroad, but her father had been an Englishman, and an amateur actor, from whom she had inherited a remarkable capacity for deceiving people as to her character.

Two of the female passengers who now came aboard were married ladies, and of dark complexion; there were also two young women of about twenty-one: one, a Miss… Read More