The Swindler Is Back, and He's Bought a New Suit

N. H. McLean, the timber-land swindler who has just completed a term in the penitentiary at Walla Walla, has returned to this city and is looking about for something to do. When asked if he was going back into the timber-land business he replied: “No, there is too much talk now. I'm going into something else. I've got to make some money somehow, you know, for my board. I only got out Tuesday, but I'm busted and don't you forget it. I'll be wearing diamonds when some of those fellows who sent me up will be in the poor house, and I'll kill myself working for it either.”

McLean looks as hearty and debonair as ever and does not seem to appreciate the fact that there is a certain stigma attached to an ex-convict, for he goes about among his old chums cracking jokes and telling of his experience in the penitentiary. Said he yesterday: “You know I was only in the penitentiary four months and four days, and they treated me fine. I have been in prison only ten months altogether. They gave me the worst of it in the county jail, but they fixed me up fine at the pen. They allowed me time for the time I was in the county jail here and also five days off each month for good behavior. I arrived at the pen just two days after the death of Warden Coblenz, and I can tell you I was glad when he killed himself, and so were all the cons. It is funny how quick the report spread of his death. Why, his blood was not cold before we heard of it; we knew about it before the people in town did.”

“The pen is not such a bad place, but, of course, a fellow has to associate with a lot of hobos and he doesn't like to do that, but there is no way out of it and he has to stand it. I had a soft job—I was in the officers' range, down in the cooking department, and did not have ten minutes' work a day, and they let me walk around in the yard as much as I cared to. There is one fellow I would like to see out, and that is Matt Reis. He has fifteen months to serve yet. He has a nasty job, for they put him in the laundry. But a fellow is all right if he minds his own business.”

McLean has a peculiar faculty for getting money that the police seem to have no means of fathoming. Some months ago he was released from the government penitentiary on McNeil's Island and landed in Seattle without a penny. In two days he was wearing a fine new nobby suit of clothes, and a week later had a $50 overcoat and a whole pocket full of $20 gold pieces. Last Tuesday he was released from the penitentiary at Walla Walla, but since that time he has managed to buy a new suit of clothes, and he says himself that he will have a lot of money inside of a week, but how he will get it he has not yet made up his mind.