call into conference with them the mayor
Amarillo, Ernest O. Thompson, a wealthy
ung business man.

Thompson considered gravely what Mac’

ynald had to say. Then he decided.
HusBAND IS ARRESTED

“TIl stand responsible for any damage
its Payne may bring,” he said.

He took up the telephone and gave
structions to several police officials and the
strict attorney.

It was evening, and the detectives were
at to arrest Payne at his home.

Others were instructed to go to the
wyer’s office, break in and search it.
Half an hour later Payne was brought
to the room in the city prison, where
‘ayor Thompson, Gene Howe and Mac-
mnald were waiting for him.

Payne was a tall, strongly built man with

wide forehead, dark eyes, full and direct

their look; his nose and mouth were

caight and strong, his chin and jaws

uare. For the first time the men in the
om saw how deadly his eyes could look.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I hope you
1ow what you are doing.”

Mayor Thompson asked one of the detec-
yes who had brought Payne:

“You've searched him, Joe?”

“Yes, sir,” the detective replied. “Here is

| he had in his pockets.”

“Then take him down to the ‘cooler,’ the

ayor said. “Through that room.”

Mayor Thompson and the two news-
iper men followed the arrested man and
e detectives into the next room.

Here Payne saw Verona Thompson writ-

g what was obviously a confession. Stand-

g over her was the district attorney.
Payne grew even more haggard, but he
st little of his self-possession. He turned
the mayor with an acid smile.

“I suppose this is where I’m supposed
break down and confess!”

A little laugh, not pleasant to hear, was
s comment on the situation.

THE Mayor TAKES A PART

Mayor Thompson took out of his pocket
vo envelopes, and said:
“Suit yourself, Payne, about confessing.

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But take a look at these two envelopes we
found in your office.”

He held them so that Payne could see.
Each envelope bore an uncancelled stamp
and was addressed, one to the chief of police
at Amarillo, the other to the sheriff.

Mayor Thompson then took out their
contents. The two letters were identical in
wording and in handwriting.

The writer described himself as a burglar.
On the night before Mrs. Payne’s death he
parked his automobile near a house where
he was to get three sticks of dynamite for
a burglary the following evening.

When he came out of the house, the
letter continued, he went to an automobile,
and opening a compartment door for pack-
ages he put the dynamite sticks inside. Then
he went back to the house, returning half
an hour later.

The letter went on to say that when he
got home and looked for the dynamite in his
car he was astonished to find it gone. He
must have made a mistake in stowing away
the explosives, he decided, in one of several
other cars of the same make parked near his.

Now he knew, the letter concluded, that
his mistake had caused the Payne tragedy.
He was sending these letters anonymously.
He didn’t want to go to prison. But con-
science had prompted him to write a con-
fession.

Mayor Thompson put the letters back
into their envelopes.

“Payne,” he said, “send me word when
you are ready to talk.”

There was no smile on Payne’s face now
as he left with the detectives.

He was taken down to what was known
in the prison as the “tank,” an isolation
cell walled in iron. He could not even see
the guard who was pacing up and down
the corridor outside his door.

Even a child could foresee what the “bur-
glar’s” letter would do to the case against
Payne. He could claim, of course, that they
were “planted” in his office; but it would
be a hopeless effort.

A whole night Payne pondered in his
cell. There was hidden violence in the man’s
character, but for hours he kept it under
control. His mind worked keenly in search
of some loophole in the case against him.

Then his nerves began to clamour and he
looked for a way out of his cell.

The pacing of the invisible guard out-
side the iron door must have sounded like
the tramp of approaching doom. The
violence in Payne was now no longer hid-
den, and he expended it hysterically on the
walls of his cell; but flesh and blood could
do nothing against sheet iron.

Exhausted finally, he went to the door
and called for the guard.

“T want to speak to Mayor Thompson,”

he said.
A 60,000-worD CONFESSION

The mayor came with his aides. They
found Payne a changed man. It was as if he
had gone through purgatorial fires which
had not softened the iron in the man; in-
deed, he looked sterner than ever. But now
all his hardness seemed turned against him-
self, as if he were a duality, both a judge
and a guilty man, a nemesis and its victim
in one.

“T will confess in full,” he said. “I will
not spare myself and I will not ask to be
spared. What I have been and what I have
done can be expiated only by death. I
want nothing but punishment.”

The confession he wrote came to nearly
60,000 words and made a brutal story.

His love for Verona Thompson had
determined him to get rid of his wife. He
began by trying to poison Mrs. Payne. “But
I didn’t know enough about drugs to do a
good job,” he wrote. “So I abandoned the
plan when a little strychnine did not cause
her death.”

Next he tried to asphyxiate her. One
night while she was asleep he turned on the
gas. But before the room could fill sufh-
ciently she awoke, violently ill, and her
cries put an end to that attempt.

He then decided to take her out driving
and kill her by sending the car over a cliff
after he had jumped out. In private he had
rehearsed what he would do, but the risk
to himself was so great that he lost his
nerve and changed his plan.

In the Payne home there was a small store
room, little more than a large closet, on the
shelves of which lay a miscellany of objects.
Payne loaded a shotgun and so placed it

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UMMER EDITION

Page Sixty-three