the murder in Madison Square and
apparently continued up Fifth Avenue. He testified at the Coroner's
inquest that he walked directly to his hotel, The Terrace, near the Park
entrance. It was first important that I should determine about this
fact. For that purpose I went to the hotel and interviewed the desk
clerks. There are two of them who divide the night work, one relieving
the other at 1.30 A.M. Littell, on that night, had not reached the hotel
during the hours of the first clerk; he did come in about fifteen or
twenty minutes after the second one had taken the desk; therefore he
arrived about ten or fifteen minutes before two o'clock. There was no
trouble in fixing the occasion with the witnesses I interviewed.
Littell's association with so sensational a case had made all his
actions of that night a matter to be remembered by those who had seen
him. I had thus established the fact that nearly an hour had elapsed
between the time Littell left Mr. Dallas and that at which he arrived at
his hotel. It was altogether improbable under these circumstances that
he had gone directly home as he said he had done, but this was still
unimportant unless I could track him to the neighborhood of White's
house. It was evident that I could not expect to actually locate him
there, but I had another means available of establishing his probable
presence on the scene if such were a fact. The hour that intervened
between his parting with Mr. Dallas and his arrival at the hotel was too
much time to have been consumed in a direct walk there, but it was
insufficient to admit of his returning to White's house unless he later
used some quicker means of reaching the hotel than by walking. In such
event he must either have taken the elevated road or a cab. The former
seemed the more probable and the easier to determine, so I tried it. I
found that at about half-past one o'clock on the night of the murder, a
man wearing a long light coat and a soft gray hat, such as Littell had
on, took a north-bound train at the Eighteenth Street station. This I
learned from the night-guard, whose attention had been especially
directed to the passenger because of the necessity of changing a
five-dollar bill to make the fare. By itself this was not sufficient to
establish the identification but I had a further means at hand. If that
man was Littell he must have gotten off at some station near his hotel.
At the Fifty-eighth Street station on the same night about t