Lights and Shadows of New York Life or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City. James Dabney McCabe

night-dress; and said to me, ‘it is too early to get up yet;’ I said to her, ‘being as I am up I guess I will dress myself;’ as I was dressed I went out into the hall; I heard a knocking down stairs; I said to Mrs. Haggerty, ‘it sounds as if it was at the Comptroller’s door;’ I went over to the kitchen, unlocked the kitchen door, and went down stairs to the head of the stairs that leads to the Comptroller’s hall; I saw Charley Baulch knocking at the Comptroller’s door, and calling, ‘Murphy, are you there?’ Murphy is a watchman; I came up stairs and went back to the kitchen; shortly after I went down stairs again and saw Charley Baulch with the door of the Comptroller’s office open, he holding it back on the outside, and I saw Mr. Haggerty come out of the door with bundles of papers in his arms and bring them up to his bedroom; the door where he came out is at the foot of the stairs, where the glass is broken, going into the County Bureau; I came back, and did not go down any more; each bundle of papers was tied with either a pink tape or a pink ribbon round them; the next thing, I went over from the kitchen out into the hall for a scuttle of coal; in this hall Mr. Haggerty’s bedroom door faced me; I saw a man with gray clothes going in there with another bundle of papers like what Mr. Haggerty had; then I brought back the coal to the kitchen, and put it on the fire; the next I saw was this man with the gray clothes going down with a pillow-case on his back, full, that looked as though filled with papers, shaped like the bundles Mr. Haggerty had; at the same time he went down the stairs Charley Baulch said to him, ‘This way;’ I kind of judged there was something up, and I went to look in the drawer where the pillow-cases were, and I missed one of the linen pillow-cases; I did this soon afterward; soon after the man went down with the pillow-case, Mrs. Haggerty came into the kitchen, giving me a key, and telling me to go over to the drying-room; that is a room separate from the bedrooms; there was a chest there full of linen, table linen and bed linen, and silver right down in the bottom; she told me to get a nut-picker and bring it over, as Mr. Haggerty wanted one; I took all the clothes out of the trunk, and got the nut-picker and brought it back to her, and before I got into the kitchen I said to Mrs. Haggerty, ‘What is the matter? The kitchen’s all black with smoke, and the dining room’s all black with smoke.’ She said, ‘Mr. Haggerty wanted these papers burned, I told him not to put them in, but he wants them burned;’ I went over to the range to cook some eggs for breakfast; it was full of burned papers on the top and in the bottom; there lay a bundle of papers on the top that were about half burned, with a piece of pink tape around them; I put on the cover again; they were partly smothered, going out; Mrs. Haggerty had a poker stirring up the papers on the top and underneath, where the ashes were; the bottom of the range was full of burning papers, and Mrs. Haggerty had the poker stirring them up so that they would burn faster; from underneath the range and the top she took three or four pailfuls of burned papers and emptied them up stairs on the attic floor, in a heap of ashes.

      “On Tuesday next, when Mrs. Haggerty came home from the market, she asked me if there was anything new about this robbery in the Comptroller’s office; I told her I did not know; I didn’t hear nothing, no more than a man came up stairs to-day, and asked me if I let anybody in on Sunday, or if I knew anybody to come into the building on Sunday; I told him I did not know who came in; I didn’t attend to the front door; I was cooking, and had nothing to do with the front door; and I asked the man who sent him up stairs; and he said a man down in the hall sent him up stairs to inquire; next, I told Mrs. Haggerty that if I had known it was Charley Baulch sent him up stairs to find any information from me, I should have told the man to go down stairs, that Charley Baulch knew as much about it as I did, and more, for he was one of the men that helped to rob it; she said to me, ‘Christ! If Charley Baulch knowed that, he’d run into the East River and drown himself—if he knowed you saw him;’ this was on Tuesday night I told her this; Mr. Haggerty left town on Tuesday, saying he was going to Saratoga with Hank Smith, and he would be home on Thursday or Friday, and on Wednesday night he got home from Saratoga; Mrs. Haggerty told him the remarks that I made to her on Tuesday night about the robbery; that I saw all that passed; she told me on Thursday morning that she told Mr. Haggerty about it all, last night; that he was going to wash his feet, but he felt so bad over it; they sat up for two hours in the room talking, and he didn’t wash his feet; on Thursday morning when Mr. Haggerty came into the kitchen, he came to me, running in, and said, ‘Mary!’ I said, ‘Sir!’ Said he, ‘I don’t want you to speak of what you saw passed here on Sunday morning; I don’t want you to tell these old women or old men in the building; Charley Baulch done it for me, and I done it for another man;’ I said, ‘I haven’t told it to anyone;’ He said, ‘You did tell it to Kitty’ (his wife); I said, ‘She knew as much about it as I did; she saw the papers burning;’ on next Friday of that same week I saw Mark Haggerty, Mr. Haggerty’s brother, who is a detective in the Mayor’s office, I think; I called him up stairs and asked him to come in; he said, ‘No, I am afraid to come in; I am afraid of Ed.,’ that is, Mr. Haggerty; they have not been on speaking terms in a year; I then told him the occurrences that happened in the Court-House on Sunday morning; I told him I didn’t feel like staying there; that I was almost crazy about it; he told me to keep it still; that if anybody would hear about it outside they would be collared; I asked him would it be prison; he said certainly.

      “On Saturday night I went down to the market where Mrs. Haggerty keeps a stand, and told her that I was going to leave for a few days until this mess would be settled, for fear there would be any arrest, and I should be a witness; she told me all I had to say was that I knew nothing about it; I told her a false oath I would not give; what I saw with my eyes I would swear to; she told me I could do as I chose about it; that I might go against Mr. Haggerty if I chose; she said, ‘It’s foolish of you to think so; you ought to go to headquarters and consult Mr. Kelso about it;’ I told her no, it was none of my business to go and consult him about Mr. Haggerty’s robbery; then she and I came together to the Court-House; I got a couple of dresses and a night dress; I went down stairs; she went with me; I met a policeman at the door, and he asked me where I was going; I told him I was going to see my uncle’s wife; she was sick; I then went down to Washington street; I came up for my clothes yesterday (Tuesday); the rooms were locked; I went down to the market to where Mrs. Haggerty does business, and the first thing she said to me was, ‘By Christ Almighty, Mr. Haggerty will take your life!’ I says to her, ‘What for?’ she said, ‘What you told Mark;’ I said, ‘I’ve told him the truth about the robbery;’ she says, ‘Your life will be taken, by Christ Almighty!’ I said, ‘I want my clothes;’ She said, ‘You can get your clothes any time, what belongs to you;’ she did not come up, and did not open the door; I left my trunk in the hall of the Court-House, that I brought to put my clothes in; they are over there yet; on that day, before I saw Mrs. Haggerty, Mr. Murphy came to me and asked me if I knowed anything about the robbery; if I did, please to tell the Comptroller; I kind of smiled, and said I knew nothing about it; ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I know you know something about it;’ I was making the bed in Mr. Haggerty’s room when Mr. Murphy came up and asked me if I knew anything about it; I kind of smiled, and said ‘No;’ Mr. Murphy says, ‘I know better, you do;’ I says, ‘Why?’ says he, ‘Suppose you should be arrested, then you’d have to prove about it whether you knew anything about it or not;’ that was in the hall; said I, ‘When I’m arrested, it’s time enough to prove it then;’ I then promised to see him on the stoop on Saturday night, but I did not; I came up on Sunday morning, and left word at the Hook and Ladder House to have Mr. Murphy come and see me on Sunday night at No. 95 Washington street; Murphy came to me, and I told him I would go up to the Comptroller’s house with him and tell the Comptroller all I knew about it, and that I was not doing it for any reward or money; I was doing it to clear the Comptroller in the eyes of the people; I went on Tuesday morning with Murphy to the Comptroller’s house, and made the above statement; this morning there was a policeman came into the house where I was staying at No. 95 Washington street; the woman in the house told me he would give me advice about the clothes I had left in the Court-House; he asked me if I had any charge against Haggerty; I told him no, no more than what happened there and what I saw on Sunday morning week, and I explained it to him; he asked me, ‘Have you been speaking to Mr. Connolly?’ I said, ‘Yes, certainly;’ the policeman went out of the house; the captain (as the woman called him) came to the door and knocked, and asked the woman about me; she said I had stepped out; he brought her out on the sidewalk, and was talking to her a little while, and as I was in the room I heard him speak