The Marshal's Staged Room Inspection
A Seattle detective relies on the local marshal to nab a mail thief hiding out in a Cosmopolis hotel.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last Friday, Detective Rogers of Seattle was on his way to the Harbor in search of a man who had been robbing mail lock boxes of Seattle businesses. He learned the suspect had headed for this section, likely hoping to catch a ship to San Francisco. Meeting our city marshal on the train, Rogers gave him a description of the man and turned the case over to him. Pearson learned from the conductor that a man matching the description had disembarked in Cosmopolis. Inquiring at the station, he found the suspect’s baggage was still there. Pearson eventually tracked the man to the St. Charles Hotel. By a bit of maneuvering, he got the landlord to take him up to the room. Pushing the door open, Pearson caught a glimpse of the man and realized he had his suspect. To prevent the man from becoming suspicious, he turned to the landlord and said, 'I thought you told me this room was empty?' The landlord took the hint, and a few minutes later, Detective Rogers arrived to make the arrest.
“I thought you told me this room was empty?”
This detective work—relying on local knowledge to root out a suspect in a local hotel—remains the hallmark of small-town law enforcement. The St. Charles Hotel, like many of Aberdeen's early timber-era buildings, has long since vanished, leaving these transient spaces to the ghosts of history.
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