8

ARREST

The success of this interview provoked other attempts on the part of the
reporters who now flocked into the Southwest. Ere long particulars began to
pour in of Mr. Fairbrother's painful journey south, after his illness set in.
The clerk of the hotel in El Moro, where the great mine-owner's name was found
registered at the time of the murder, told a story which made very good reading
for those who were more interested in the sufferings and experiences of the
millionaire husband of the murdered lady than in those of the unhappy but
comparatively insignificant man upon whom public opinion had cast the odium of
her death.

It seems that when the first news came of the great crime which had taken place
in New York, Mr. Fairbrother was absent from the hotel on a prospecting tour
through the adjacent mountains. Couriers had been sent after him, and it was
one of these who finally brought him into town. He had been found wandering
alone on horseback among the defiles of an untraveled region, sick and almost
incoherent from fever. Indeed, his condition was such that neither the courier
nor such others as saw him had the heart to tell him the dreadful news from New
York, or even to show him the papers. To their great relief, he betrayed no
curiosity in them. All he wanted was a berth in the first train going south,
and this was an easy way for them out of a great responsibility.