The Forged Check and the Third-Story Leap
J. R. Seeley tried to cash a check bearing another man's name, then fled across the college campus and out a third-story dormitory window. His father is searching for him in Moscow.
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.
PULLMAN.—The student who tried to cash a forged check, purporting to bear the signature of E. H. Letterman, a local capitalist, is J. R. Seeley, whose home is near Plaza, in Spokane county. The young man disappeared after the hazardous leap from a third-story window of the boys' dormitory, and all efforts to secure trace of him have failed. His father arrived here Tuesday afternoon and left for Moscow in hopes of finding his son.
It is believed the young man is merely the tool of some older person, as S. G. Sargent, cashier of the bank, compared the signature of the check with the writing of young Seeley and declared it is quite different. The boy excited suspicion when he entered the bank and presented the check by stating that the check was given to him by another student whom he did not know very well and who had asked him to cash it for him.
When Mr. Sargent went to the telephone to ask Mr. Letterman about the check, Seeley fled. He was followed to the administration building of the college, where he was captured by Mr. Sargent and members of the faculty, but escaped and was followed to the dormitory and chased to his room on the third floor. He locked the door on the inside and refused to open it. While his pursuers were taking off the lock, he escaped through the window and all trace of him was lost.
“While his pursuers were taking off the lock he escaped through the window and all trace of him was lost.”
A forged check, a campus chase and a leap from a third-story dormitory window turned a small-town banking suspicion into a missing-person case. The story reads like a caper, but it also shows how quickly a young person could be drawn into an older person's scheme and then vanish from public view.
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