PHILADELPHIA, July 16—Ros: The reason we did not respond to yu answer was we had to go a bit out in the country an the blasted old orse give out so we could not get back in time. We went as much as anything to se how Charley was. Yu have our word that he is yet safe—in health an no harm done him thoug he is uneasy to get home with Walter. he is afraid he won’t get home in time to go to Atlantic City with his mother when Saly comes back. —as we said befor after we gits the mony we have no further use for the child but we have a big object in restoring him to yu safe and sound. We shall be redy we think by Saturday to efect a change with yu (the child for the mony). we wil give you this much incite into our bisiness—that if any arest is made it wil be an inocent person who wil be ignorant of the part he is actin. but it is imaterial with us wether it be an inocent person or one of our own party the moment any arest is made or any clandestine movements in transmiting this mony to us it will be conclusive evidence with us that yu have broken yu faith with us. we want yu to nail this mony up in a smal strong ruf box an have it were yu can git it at a minutes notice. mark on it (Drugs for H H H.
IN MID-JULY, A YOUNG WOMAN SETTLED INTO HER NEW APARTMENT in a working-class neighborhood of South Philadelphia. A family named Henderson rented a house on Monroe Street, and they sublet rooms to a few different tenants. In addition to being a landlord, Mr. Henderson worked as a handyman, a peddler, and a salesman; often, his neighbors noticed he would return home from auction houses with used furniture to refurbish, and sometimes, they saw packages of dresses and shawls delivered to the house. After receiving a shipment or finishing a wood-working project, Henderson would load up a wagon and leave home for days to sell his wares in the country.
The new renter was introduced to the Hendersons’ three sons: Willie was about seven, Charley about four, and Georgie younger still. Her landlord wasn’t home when she moved in, but just as she arrived, the landlady was preparing to give birth. The night before the baby was born, Mr. Henderson showed up with a much younger male friend. The friend was also taller, and he had red hair.
Outside of the Henderson home, searchers walked through alleys and into the bars advertising oyster sales. They moved farther into South Philadelphia, peeping around the shanties and shacks of the increasingly black neighborhoods. Throughout the city, the streets were cleaner than normal—July’s frequent storms had washed them. Hunters marched through the indoor markets where farmers leased space to sell their crops. They snuck behind row homes and flats and walked quickly through alley tenements. In the wealthy Rittenhouse square district in Center City, colonial townhomes with faux Victorian fronts did not harbor many hiding spaces, but further east, a few blocks closer to the river, ghosts whispered through the old, squeaky wooden frames of clapboard houses.
Back in Kensington, a stable keeper named C. M. Foulke responded to the flyers posted around the city. Two men who resembled descriptions of the kidnappers had rented a wagon from his livery stable in the days preceding the kidnapping. Foulke didn’t like the men—he didn’t like how they looked. As someone had recently stolen a wagon from him, Foulke told police, he asked the men for a reference, and they provided one from a nearby restaurant owner. He let them take it out for a few days toward the end of June but didn’t like the hours they kept: 8:00 A.M. through 3:00 P.M. didn’t seem like a proper workday, and the men didn’t seem the type to rent a wagon for reasons other than business. So when they asked at the end of the month if they could rent it for a week straight, he told them only if they made a deposit for the full value of the wagon. They couldn’t, and Foulke didn’t see them again.