Page:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf/76



You will remember the sensation caused by Alvin Benson's murder. It was one of those crimes that appeal irresistibly to the popular imagination. Mystery is the basis of all romance, and about the Benson case there hung an impenetrable aura of mystery. It was many days before any definite light was shed on the circumstances surrounding the shooting; but numerous ignes fatui arose to beguile the public's imagination, and wild speculations were heard on all sides.

Alvin Benson, while not a romantic figure in any respect, had been well-known; and his personality had been a colorful and spectacular one. He had been a member of New York's wealthy bohemian social set—an avid sportsman, a rash gambler, and professional man-about-town; and his life, led on the borderland of the demimonde, had contained many high-lights. His exploits in the night clubs and cabarets had long supplied the subject-matter for exaggerated stories and comments in the various local papers and magazines which batten on Broadway's scandalmongers.

Benson and his brother, Anthony, had, at the