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The curiosity existed because of the individuality of the various, accused people. Mrs. Hall, a thick, proud, aging, enigmatic woman whose money made possible her murdered husband's churchly and social eminence; Willie Stevens, her grinning, giggling brother, who, older than she, looks upon her as a mother, wears heavy spectacles and a prodigious growth of mustache and hair, loves fire-engines and faced the accusation that he cut the throat of Mrs. Mills; Henry Stevens, another brother, tight-mouthed, an expert marksman, said to have fired the fatal shots. The curiosity existed also because of the ghastly disposition of the bodies, in the dismal field, under the spectre tree. Curiosity was awake because of the time that had elapsed since the murder—four years. Finally, curiosity was awake because the newspapers had been stampeded by a grimy little sheetlet bleating, "Awake, awake!"
And how did this stampede occur? That story begins with a man, a "Tabloid Ringmaster."
Young like the sheetlets that he has built, Philip A. Payne is a managing editor at 32. Soon after the War, by working on Mr. Hearst's Chicago Herald-Examiner and New York American, he found what "news" the gum-chewers of his country will swallow. Then, the New York Daily News, first of the tabloids, was started by the two rich, hard-boiled publishers of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph Medill Patterson, Robert R. McCormick. Mr. Payne, an earnest, bespectacled Puck, was invited to become an assistant editor. He rose to fame as the Daily News leaped upward to the highest circulation in the U. S. Last year, Publisher Hearst, who had grabbed Arthur Brisbane from the World 30 years ago, lured Philip Payne to the Daily Mirror. Many a circulation war did these snarling sheetlets wage. The Mirror once decided to help the Government popularize the $2 bill by printing the numbers of such bills and giving away $100 daily to whoever found them in circulation. Incidentally, chicle-masticators began to buy the Mirror to find lucky numbers. The News replied with the same stunt for $1 bills. Whereupon the Mirror bleated:
"We are TIRED of being imitated by the Daily News and are willing to pay $10,000 to any intellectual giant that will tell us how we can SHAME them, DISCOURAGE them, CAJOLE them, COAX them, PERSUADE them, or SCARE them into stopping their infernal chameleon-like imitations of the Daily Mirror."
Before the Daily Mirror was born, before Philip Payne became its managing editor, there was the double murder beneath the crab-apple tree. The first investigation ended without indictments; the case was hushed up. . . .
Last December Editor Payne suddenly decided that New Brunswick had not bared its bosom of all it knew. From the Mirror staff he despatched confidential investigators. Able Reporter Herbert M. Mayer became "sick" and left the office to direct the activity from an uptown Manhattan hotel. A county detective, George Totten, was engaged to aid him.
By June they had crammed four drawers of a steel filing cabinet with evidence and were ready to "break" the story. Editor Payne took his material before Governor Harry A. Moore of New Jersey, who promised to follow up with a state investigation.