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Searching for Americas Mysterious
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o’ M Ethel A. Durant, sometimes
known as Gladys Vane, one
o 9 .
of the most notorious of shop
lifters, whose “specialty” is
the theft of costly garments
from exclusive fur shops. She is shown here wearing a $23,000 fur
cloak similar to a part of her loot. By one of the cleverest schemes yet
devised she stole from fashionable stores within a few days not only
this coat but others aggregating very large values. Below is her
“Police Record Card” giving facts about herself, her arrest and her
escape from justice, She is still at large,
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Astonishing Exploits of a Nation-Wide Organization
Skilled Professionals Led by a Great Criminal Gen-
Startling Achievements Outmatch Any-
Detective Novels or 1n the Motion
HE writers of detective stories and the crime mysteries of
T the movies delight in dealing with the ‘‘master criminal”’
~the cool, resourceful, desperate leader of the gang who
matches his wits against the police detectives.
Thus the great Sherlock Holmes was constantly blocked by
the sinister genius of Moriarty; the great French scientific de
tectives were outmatched by Leblanc’s famous master criminal,
Arsene Lupin; and Fu Manchu was the elusive leader of the
gang in Sax Rohmer’s novels, :
These fascinating super-criminals are the fletion characters
of the novels and the movies; there was no Moriarty, nor Arsene
Lupin, nor Fu Manchu, of course.
And yet there is at this moment in real life a real master
eriminal whose actual exploits outrank anything these great
imaginative criminals of fiction have ever achieved.
This real, living super-crimival is now in New York, now in
Boston, then in Chicago, then in a Western city—his trail is easy
to follow, some of his gang have been caught, but the great mas
ter criminal himself has always eluded every trap that detective
genius has set for him.
Who is this master oriminal whose guiding hand controls a
OHAPTER IIL
The Case of the $23,000 Fur Coat.
(Continued from Last Sunday.)
THEL DURANT was born in a tenement house of
New York’s Hast Side. Her father’s name was Mal
loy and he was the driver of an ice wagon. Ethel
never went to school except when the truant officer threat
ened her with the reform school unless she kept off the
streets and went with other children to the house of learn
ing. On such occasions her father sent her for a few days
to the nearest school. Then she didn’t go any more until
she was caught again, :
As Ethel Malloy she worked in a sweat shop until she
was fifteen or sixteen and then she got a job in a depart
ment store as a cash girl.
Just a few days ago this same Ethel Malloy, now
known as Ethel Durant, stood in one of New York’s most
fashionable shops trying on a mink and sable fur coat,
which was one of the most costly garments the attentive
salesman could show her.
“This looks as if I might like it—although, after all,
it is not exactly what I wish,’’ said Miss Durant. ‘‘What
is the price of this?’’
“It is a splendid'bargain and madame looks exquis
itely stunning in it,”’ said the salesman, while he glanced
surreptitionsly at the price tag. ‘‘ln the Fall I imagine
this cloak will run close to $40,000. Good mink is very
searce now, you know, and sable of this quality is almost
unprocurable since the great exporting houses in Russia
are unable to reach the market. We have marked this
cloak now, however, at only $23,000. It is a rare good
bargain, madame.’’
1 think I shall take it,’* said Ethel Durant, she who,
a sow years before, had been glad to take—not a mink
and sable cloak but a job at $6 or $7 a week. But in the
way she said it there was an indecision that alarmed the
salesman. He was about to dwell longer on the beauty
of the cloak and its enhancement of madame’s beauty
when Miss Durant sand, as if on sudden impulse:
“Still, I believe I like that mink and mole cloak best—
the one I looked at & moment ago. Get it, please, and let
me see it on me again. I shall take one of these.”’
The salesman hurried away to fetch the other cloak—
which was only a few hundred dollars cheaper. He had
made a sale; madame had said she would buy one of
these two coats; it would be a rare good sale for him to
mark up in his salesbook.
If, while he was reaching the second cloak out from
the rack of high-priced fur eloaks, some one had stepped
up to him and whispered quietly, ‘‘Be eareful, that young
lady is Ethel Durant,”’ the salesman would not have
stopped to fetch the second cloak. He would have hur
ried to the corner of the room, where, hidden by a framed
engraving, there was an electric push button. He would
have pushed this button with that nervous agitation
which would bring instant response from some one in
that far corner of the store where the button caused a
bell to ring. In an almost incredible space of time—
even while the salesman would have been explaining to
madam that the second cloak was mislaid ang would be
brought presently—a store detective would have come
briskly into the room. .
He would have gone directly up to the customer. He
would not have been polite and ogsequioul as the sales
man would have been. He would have spoken sharply—
gruffly, perhaps—and what he would have said might
have been:
“(ome with me, Ethel; I'll show you to the door!"’
But no one whispered to the salesman. He bronght
the second cloak—the one made up in mink and mole
and marked at $22.000. Madame was ready to try it on.
She had laid the other one aside. She decided quickly
that she would, indeed, take this one. To reach this de
cision she walked to the other end of the showroom to
look in one of the mirrors there. This mirror was no
different from the one before which she had put on
the cloak, but women shoppers always are odd-—the sales
man appreciated her nervous effort to explore every mir
ror in sight, hoping to catch some new reflection of the
soft, luxurious beauty of the cloak.
Some slight alterations were necessary—a row of skins
() 1019, International Feature Service, Ine, Great Britaln Rights Reserved
to be removed from the bottom. ‘‘l shall come in to
morrow to talk about the exact length I think best,”” said
madame. ‘‘ln the meantime, I will give you a hundred
dollars deposit—that will be sufficient, will it not?”’
Madame —or Ethel Durant—was in a hurry now.
She asked the salesman, as she dropped the cloak onto
his arm, to take her name quickly, get her a receipt for
the hundred dollars, that she might not be delayed—she
had an appointment. The salesman hurried at once to
the cash desk. He obtained a receipt quickly. Madame
turned away and soon was out of sight in the crowd
which sauntered along the main aisles.
Searcely three minutes later the salesman was fran
tically pushing that electric button hidden behind the
framed engraving. While he waited for the chief store
detective to come he rushed about the room apparently
panic-stricken. The mink and sable cloa k—the one
madame had previously tried on and almost had decided
to purchase—was nowhere to be found.
There were only two other customers in the room.
One of them wae well known to the store attaches—a
regular customer, The other was a stranger—a young
woman of not better than an average appearance and per
sonality. This customer was examining inexpensive neck
gearves. Even asg the detective glanced at her she made
her choice of a piece costing S6O and asked that it be
boxed for her, giving a saleswoman the money. She was
dressed quite trimly—there was no possibility of her hav
ing a heavy fur cloak hidden about her person. The de
tective glanced at her but once and rushed out into the
store with the salesman, hoping madame had not yet left
the building.
But madame had gone. There was no trace of her.
The salesman accompanied the detective to the office of
the store’s detective department, and there examined a
thousand or more photographs of women with eriminal
records—photographs ‘which nowadays are on file in
every department store and women’s shop of the first
magnitude. Suddenly he recognized a face. The detec
tive, w:fching him, glanced at the picture. One glance
auan b - RS
was sufficient,
Ethel Durant, most fa
mous of shoplifters, had
“walked away,’”’ in the
parlance of the store de
tectives, with another fur
cloak valued at thousands
of dollars,
How was it 'done?
Easily—so easily, in
fact, that when, after a
week or so, Ethel Durant
was arrested in Boston,
just as she was in the act
of escaping from another
store with another fur
cloak, the officers of the
law were dumfounded.
Ethel Durant, trapped,
proudly described the ease
with which ecoats worth
hundreds of thousands of
dollars were stolen by her
at the bidding of Ameri
ca’s mysterious master
criminal, thus explaining
the loss of almost half a
million dollars’ worth of
them among large stores
in the big cities during the
last few months. :
She, of course, was just
one of the ‘‘organization,”’
that mysterious, but amaz
ingly efficient band of men
and women organized into
one loyal army by that
shrewd master eriminal for
whom the police of scores
of cities now are search
ing. Behind her, and
around her, were grouped
a company of modern-day
pirates whose exploits are
nation-wide organization of criminal operators—who sits far be
hind the danger line, like a commanding general at his headquar
ters, and secretly plans, plots and executes wholesale robberies
with a daring and ingenuity outrivaling anything in the novels
or on the screen? The police chiefs of a dozen great American
cities, the private detectives of the leading mercantile establish
ments are now slowly closing in on him.
Recently there has been formed in New York City a great
organization, comprising the detective departments of the best
known stores in the United States, ‘which has no other purpose
then the trailing and discovery of this master rogue and members
of hig band. The hunt is on in every city in America. Never has
there been a chase so thrilling or exciting.
Every woman, every man, who makes purchases in the nation’s
big or little stores—department stores or specialty shops—is in
terested in this hunt, because every time a woman buys a dress,
or a hat, or a coat, she pays seven per cent more than she would
if this rogue did not exist.
On these pages to-day and on following Sundays will be re
vealed for the first time some of the extraordinary exploits of this
master mind as executed bv his well-trained organization.
How Ethel Durant and Her Two Con-
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After considering the $23,000 cloak for sometime Ethel Durant sent
the salesman for a less expensive one. Behind her, near a window,
was a confederate, ostensibly a shopper for an inexpensive neckpiece,
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As soon as the salesman’s back was turned the Durant woman, with
the quickness of a mountain trout darting for a fly, tossed the $23,000
garment to the counter near the window where her confederate stood.
far more menacing than ever
were the deeds of the pirates
on the seven seas.
This is how, said Ethel Du
rant, that particular coat,
worth $23,000, was stolen that
afternoon:
Days before an agent of the
master criminal visited that
store—a store which is one of
the widest known of the great
fur shops in the United States
—a Fifth avenue store, where
women of unlimited wealth
habitually purchase their ex
pensive skins. This agent
chosen by the chief of the
shoplifters’ organization was
not an ordinary eriminal. He
was an expert trained in an es
pecial science—that of obser
vation. Also he was of a per
sonality which permitted fiim
to freely visit the salesrooms
of the most exclusive stores
and shops. His mind was
trained to take an indelible
impression of a scene spread
out before him, to photograph
a room angl its exits, its doors
and windows, its furniture and
decorations, so that he might
from his memory reproduce a
scene or room hours after he
had envisioned it.
From the chief of his band
this a%fit was instructed, so
Ethel Durant told the police,
to visit stores where expensive
furs were sold and to devise
some new plan for the theft of