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Show Our workmen all come on duty at six, and after a brief chapel service separate to their various tasks. We detained them all in the chapel, and all their rooms were searched. I personally, with two Chinese, one of them, our Bible woman, who is a very distant relative of the man, and in the presence of the man who shared his room, ransacked this janitor's room from top to bottom. Under his mattress was a two foot length of old iron pipe, not a comfortable nor usual thing to sleep on, and one's imagination can furnish details had he been armed with this on the particular occasion, as he doubtless had been before. Far in the corner in a kerosene tin, with all imaginable things stuffed on top, including a layer of millet meal, I found a roll of silver dollars. Later this was identified in the presence of responsible parties to be without any question the last one hundred taken from the safe, -still in its original wrappings. In another place in his room I found eleven dollars wrapped in a letter from Dr. Marion Yang to me, said letter having been taken from my desk, and the money while not identifiable as all silver dollars look alike, could well be part of the last sum stolen from my desk the week before. In his bill fold I found worthless Shansi ten and twenty cent bills, a number of which had been taken from the safe when it was robbed in the spring. Numerous other hospital articles as soap, a pillow, safety pins, kerosene tins, and the like, also came to light, but the most conclusive evidence from that search were the roll of money, the loose dollars, the Shansi bills, and the iron pipe. I will now return to the incident itself. When he put a key into the door of the business office it roused Dr. Tucker. He crept to the connecting door and saw a man enter, turn toward the safe, and stretch out his arm. Dr. T. then rushed him, and grappled with him, but had only his left arm to use, as he had the revolver in his right. He called to him to stop and tussled till the man had dragged him into the dim corridor, and then threw him off, running at top speed. Dr T. called repeatedly for him to stop and he would not fire, but he kept on, so the first shot was fired in that corridor, low down, and as much to one side as he could, for hs did not wish to hit the man, only make him stop and also send the alarm for help. They tore out of the building, toward the front of the compound, into the hostel yard gate, and up on the dike. The second and third shots were fired out in the compound, in an attempt to stop the thief, and to wake up other workmen to join in the chase. They roused our head coolie, and he joined Dr. T. and followed the man from where he had leaped from the wall into the cotton field. He fell there unable to go further. This head coolie searched his clothing and found one key only, but that opened the door to the business office, the lock of which had been changed for a rather intricate one after the first safe robbery. How he opened the other doors, or the inner safe door, was at this time still a mystery. Mounted police who were riding out to relieve their shifts heard the shots and came to investigate, one of them turning back to the city to report to headquarters. One of our own men was also sent within an hour to headquarters to give a verbal report, while a written one was being prepared. I mention this particularly to refute the accusation made by the "tang pu", (local ultra Nationalists), that we had killed a man and tried to hide the facts. Within the first hour we learned that the man's father had arrived on the compound the night before. His attitude from start to finish was not one to disarm suspicion, but we were unsuccessful in our suggestions that the police investigate his village home. In the struggle with the thief, before he broke loose, Dr. T. sustained a very severe sprain of his left hand and one finger, which we feared at first might be fractured. At writing, two weeks later, it is still very painful. He was clad only in pajamas and barefoot, and in the fast chase over rough ground, and up on the dike, he also got a deep stone bruise on one heel. We wired for the American consul at Tsinan to come for we realized that the affair might bring up the question of extrality, at the same time preferring if possible, to have the thing handled by the Chinese. I wish to bear witness to the Tehchow magistrate's kindly attitude thruout, insofar as we know. Investigation there was of course, from morning till night for days. But the only really unfriendly antagonism was from a small group of the "tang pu." They were bitter indeed, and made the incident a means by which to fill the press with antiforeign propaganda. They held a mass meeting for some six hours on Sunday afternoon and evening, which one of our staff attended. He reported the doings to us the next morning, and it did not make pretty hearing. Our only comfort was that the magistrate in answer to their demands for imprisonment, life,for life, etc., was that he did not have the power to enforce such actions. This was his way of not directly antagonizing this party, of whom he stands in fear, and with reason. A guard was put at the front gate of the compound for a day or so, and bond demanded that Dr. T. should not leave the city. One of our banker friends in the city, and our three Chinese Drs, gave this bond at once. Up until this time, while we ourselves, and our own staff, felt we were wholly justified in what we had done, yet,-we did not have sufficient conclusive evidence that this man had been involved in the larger robberies from the safe, as we had found no keys on the body to open such a door. Neither would the master skeleton he carried open all the doors which we felt thieves had been entering. All Sunday afternoon every inch of the ground over which he ran and the surrounding areas were searched for such keys, in the thought that as he ran he must have thrown them away. The thick growth of shrubbery everywhere made this task a hard one, and up till Tuesday afternoon wewere still un- |
