Free Killer Colt by Harold Schechter Page A

refresh himself with a cup of tea, returning at around 7:30 p.m.
    He and Wheeler sat together in the office until 9:00, at which point the exhausted older man took his leave. About a half hour later, Delnous, who had promised to keep vigil all night if necessary, was suddenly roused to attention by a sound from the hallway. As he would eventually describe it, he
    heard someone unlock Mr. Colt’s door from the inside, come out, lock it again, and go away. The person returned in about five minutes, and in about five minutes more, I heard someone in Mr. Colt’s room tearing something resembling cotton cloth. The next sound was the rattling of water—after that, some person scrubbing the floor, continually putting his cloth in the water and rinsing it. 6
    Afterward, all was silence again in Colt’s room. Delnous continued to listen closely until weariness overcame him. Stretching out on the bench by Wheeler’s worktable, he promptly fell asleep.
    •   •   •
    Normally, John Colt was back at the boardinghouse room he shared with his mistress Caroline Henshaw by 10:00 p.m. On the night of September 17, however, he was later than usual. Tired of waiting up for him, the pregnant Caroline went to bed.
    She woke up to see him standing at the foot of the bed, slipping on his nightshirt.
    “What time is it?” she asked.
    “A little after eleven,” he said.
    “Why are you home so late?”
    “I was with a friend from Philadelphia,” said John. “He leaves by boat tomorrow morning. I should go see him off.”
    A short time later, he blew out the candle and slipped into bed. By then, Caroline had already fallen back to sleep.
    When she opened her eyes the next morning, John was already dressed and about to leave. Through the lace-curtained window, she saw that it was still dark outside. Peering at the clock that stood upon the bed table, she saw that it was not quite 5:30.
    “Where are you going so early?” she asked.
    “To the boat,” he said. “I might be back soon, or I might not.”
    When breakfast was served downstairs several hours later, however, John had still not returned. 7
    •   •   •
    In his later testimony, John Delnous could not say whether the sound he heard issuing from the neighboring room at around 6:00 in the morning of Saturday, September 18, was “the first noise I heard after I awoke, or the noise that awakened me.” He had no doubt, however, about its source.
    The noise from John Colt’s office, Delnous would state, was “as of someone nailing a wooden box, which sounded as if it was full.” 8

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    A round daybreak that Saturday, the rain began to fall.
    Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Law Octon returned to the Granite Building from an early morning errand. As he approached the staircase, he looked up and saw, standing on its end at the top of the first-floor landing, a pine box measuring roughly three feet long and two feet in height and width. A moment later, John Colt emerged from his office, “laid hold of the box,” lowered it onto its side, and—with his face toward the crate and his back to Octon—began grappling it down the stairs, “placing his shoulder against the box to prevent it from going too fast.” Octon waited at the foot of the staircase until Colt made it all the way down with his burden, then headed up to begin his custodial chores for the day. 1
    •   •   •
    At the same time, a young man named John B. Hasty arrived at the Granite Building. Hasty lodged at a rooming house whose proprietress, in addition to her duties as landlady, managed “the business of carving, gilding, and making picture frames.” He had come to deliver a message on her behalf to one of the artists who rented studio space in the building, a portrait painter by the name of Verbruyck.
    As Hasty stepped from the street into the entranceway, he saw, as he later recalled, a man in his shirtsleeves taking a large wooden box down the first flight of stairs “with his back towards