Chapter One
August 27, 2026
B.B. WOLF PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
MUTUAL LIFE BUILDING RM 618
SEATTLE, WASH
OFFICE TELEPHONE: ELLIOTT 6983
August 27th, 1946. 9:18PM PDT
CONFIDENTIAL
To the Custodian of this File:
These are the first papers concerning the Waltham Building, 311–313 Occidental Avenue South located in Pioneer Square in Seattle. Keep them together and do not share with anyone. This is a duplicate of my files I send to you for safekeeping.
I have been retained by five men lodging at the Liberty Hotel, 311½ Occidental. Their spokesman is Franklin J. Dwyer, the night clerk and boiler attendant. The men met with me and explained there was ugly business in the basement last year. Several persons were poisoned. The hotel manager and four other men were arrested. Before the place was cleared, dangerous material disappeared from a locked room and was never recovered.
On August 22, workmen opened an old recess behind the coal bins. Inside they found the missing items, but Dwyer reports the original brickwork from 1890 appeared undisturbed and cannot explain how this could be.
There have been other complaints that alone might not be noteworthy but together seem odd enough to investigate. Certain items have vanished only to return days later in better condition, several men have smelled supper cooking in an empty room below the hotel, a woman’s red cloak has appeared and then vanished in the cloakroom, and there are areas of the building where flames simply will not ignite and even electric bulbs appear to dim.
The complainants suspect someone is entering through the old sidewalk areaway. I am not yet satisfied that anyone is. My next step will be to examine the basement in full.
Further papers will follow.
Yours very truly,
B. B. WOLF
Private Investigator
“ALL CASES STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL”
Liberty Hotel (1937) King County Property Record Card
Mutual Life Building (1937) King County Property Record Card
Clipping of the map showing the Wholesale District, known today as Pioneer Square, and the locations of B.B. Wolf’s office in the Mutual Building on 1st and Yesler and the Liberty Hotel, on Occidental between Main and Jackson.
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