The Wealthy Tramp of the Waterfront

Confidence men around the police court were rigorously kicking themselves for having overlooked a good big trick when it was revealed that a poor, dilapidated-looking and apparently feeble-minded rancher named John Pomrehn had been knocking about the lower port of town all night with $1,788 in his pockets. About 4 o'clock yesterday morning, Officer Glasscock found Pomrehn leaning against a boxcar on the waterfront, apparently intending to climb into it. As Pomrehn, when questioned, could not give a very clear account of himself and his actions seemed suspicious, the officer took him to the station. Glasscock asked him if he had any money to get a bed with, and Pomrehn said yes, he had money but did not want to go to bed. He talked queerly, hardly comprehending what was said to him, with a stolid look of utter indifference upon his countenance. The officer thought he was a hobo and that he was safer in jail than roaming around at that hour of night. His surprise can be imagined when a small fortune was fished out of his pockets in the shape of certificates of deposit, notes, and cash. He was given a hearing before Judge Glasgow and wore the same look of stolid indifference as when arrested. He said he had been living on a claim on the Stillaguamish for the past ten years and had come to this country from Germany eleven years ago. His hands were very much swollen as if they had been poisoned, and he could not give any reason why he came to Seattle. He looked thin and emaciated and apparently had worked and starved himself almost crazy. On being released, the police decided that the man was demented and that it was not safe to let him have so much money without informing his friends. A representative of a local firm arrived and said his firm had a certificate of deposit for $600 on the suspended Washington Savings bank which it was trying to collect for Pomrehn, and he thought that perhaps the fear of losing the money had something to do with his derangement. He succeeded in persuading Pomrehn to go to the hospital for a few days, his money and effects meanwhile remaining at the police station. By this action of the police, the confidence men were deprived of their prey a second time.