A Detective’s Experience

The Bandit

The dark shadows hung dense around the old gray building. The grass on the lawn was tangled and weedy, and the graveled walks were overgrown with turf. Only a single light shone out on the blackness of night. It glinted on the tree-tops, and formed weird shapes far out on the ground. “We watched it intently, Mr. I—— and myself,” said Mr. F——, as silently we stood at the gate. The house is far down in the Third District, ruinous now and hastening to decay. The river rolled along, only a single street intervening, and the splash of its dark waves was heard, strangely mingling with a wail of distress that came from the house. It had been tenanted but a few hours; a foreign lady and her two children had applied to the agent for a lease, and as she tendered the rent in advance, no questions were asked. This we subsequently ascertained; but at the moment of which I speak we only knew that the old house had procured a tenant. This had arrested our attention as we passed along the street. Then the face of a woman appeared at the window, trying vainly to peer out into the darkness. The first glance at the anxious but beautiful countenance electrified me. I had seen it before. Framed there in the golden light of the window—the bright glow resting on the beautiful brow and wealth of ebon tresses, it looked like a picture of the Madona or a radiant vision seen in sleep.

I knew it as the face of the wife of a Mexican bandit. For months we had looked for him incessantly. His picture, with that of his wife, had been sent to every city in the Union. His deeds of fearful atrocity had compelled him months before to seek an asylum here, but despite the greatest vigilance, he had evaded an arrest, and it was then generally believed that he… Read More