Hijinks on Herkimer, Pt. II
(To see Pt. I of Hijinks on Herkimer) It was not too long before, on one specific occasion, Wolfram took notice of Clayton approaching and entering their apartment building. Wolfram must have had a mouse’s ear, because he discerned from the top floor of the building that Ransom had not come upstairs but had entered an apartment on one of the first two floors. Wanting further evidence against Mrs. Oakley, Wolfram slipped down the stairs and went around the side of the house and “walked slowly by” the windows attached to Mrs. Oakley’s apartment, one of which belonged to her bedroom. As the blinds to the flat were “just a little open,” Wolfram peered though and saw the married man, Ransom, in Mrs. Oakley’s bedroom, a scandalous show of moral laxity at the time. Two nights later, Wolfram viewed Ransom returning to the apartment building and, subsequently, to Mrs. Oakley’s apartment. Wolfram must have drawn murmurs from the gathered crowd in the courtroom when he said what he observed next: Ransom did not depart Mrs. Oakley’s apartment until 6 am the following day. Determined, on the third try, to get the evidence that he needed to have Oakley banished from his building, Wolfram decided he would convince himself once and for all that what he had seen was enough to have her removed. Going out into the house’s front yard, he took a piece of thin wire with him and “fastened it to the gate so that when it was […]
