Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/80

 THE GREAT

FRED. BIEBUSCH.

This notable character's career is marked by success during a course of unpunished crime that finds parallel rarely in the history of coney men, in this or any other country. For nearly thirty years, Fred Biebusch steadily followed the traffic of the "queersman" in the west and southwest; and his vast line of operations alike extensive, bold and profitable, were extended over the whole country from Illinois to Texas, with wondrous good fortune, and without apparent check, until within a recent period.

His personal head-quarters he established at St. Louis, Mo. His secret agents were scattered in every direction throughout the south-west. From time to time he was placed under arrest, and over fifty times in the course of his erratic life he was in the hands of the local Police authorities. But he contrived as often to escape unharmed and unconvicted; and followed up his illegal vocation with renewed zeal, on each occasion that he so fortunately (though 63