I have mentioned. Yet one fact, common
to all these cases, pointed so conclusively to deliberate intention on
the part of the sufferers that we hesitated to take action.

This was, that upon the body of each of the above-mentioned persons
there were found, not only valuables in the shape of money and jewelry,
but papers and memoranda of a nature calculated to fix the identity of
the drowned man, in case the water should rob him of his personal
characteristics. Consequently, we could not ascribe these deaths to a
desire for plunder on the part of some unknown person.

I was a young man in those days, and full of ambition. So, though I said
nothing, I did not let this matter drop when the others did, but kept my
mind persistently upon it and waited, with odd results as you will hear,
for another victim to be reported at police headquarters.

Meantime I sought to discover some bond or connection between the
several men who had been found drowned, which would serve to explain
their similar fate. But all my efforts in this direction were fruitless.
There was no bond between them, and the matter remained for a while an
unsolved mystery.

Suddenly one morning a clue was placed, not in my hands, but in those of
a superior official who at that time exerted a great influence over the
whole force. He was sitting in his private room, when there was ushered
into his presence a young man of a dissipated but not unprepossessing
appearance, who, after a pause of marked embarrassment, entered upon the
following story:

"I don't know whether or no I should offer an excuse for the
communication I am about to make; but the matter I have to relate is
simply this: Being hard up last night (for though a rich man's son I
often lack money), I went to a certain pawnshop in the Bowery where I
had been told I could raise money on my prospects. This place--you may
see it some time, so I will not enlarge upon it--did not strike me
favourably; but, being very anxious for a certain definite sum of money,
I wrote my name in a book which was brought to me from some unknown
quarter and proceeded to follow the young woman who attended me into
what she was pleased to call her good master's private office.

"He may have been a good master, but he was anything but a good man. In
short, sir, when he found out who I was, and how much I needed money, he
suggested that I should make an appointment with my father at a place he
called Groll's in Grand Street