Illustration by Modest Stein of a scene from The Auctioneer, a silent-film adaptation of the play by Charles Klein and Lee Arthur. From an advertisement for the film in Motion Picture News, May 8, 1926.

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Modest Stein was a very popular illustrator in the 1920s, one who was ubiquitous enough that he bears some responsibility for the characteristic look of the magazines of that era. Who was he? Dr. Boli, having noticed his signature on many of the magazine covers of a century ago, decided to look him up.

It turns out that Stein was momentarily quite famous under another name way back in 1892. He was part of the trio of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Modest Aronstam who plotted to assassinate Henry Frick in 1892. He got away with his part in the conspiracy, changed his last name, and prospered. (And, to be fair, it’s hard to say whether trying to assassinate Frick should earn you a jail term or a government pension.)

Now, isn’t it a shame that the age of two-reel silent comedies is over? We can imagine how Mack Sennett would have taken this hint from Stein’s Wikipedia article and turned it into a perfect scenario.

On his way to blow up Frick’s house with pockets full of dynamite, Stein—then still called Aronstam—saw a newspaper with a headline warning against “Aaron Stamm” as a Berkman conspirator. He became frightened, dumped the explosives in an outhouse, and returned to New York.

That is how Wikipedia tells the story. But in the Mack Sennett version, the big gag comes when the cop who’s been chasing him for the past reel and a half decides he has to go to the outhouse and takes his cigar with him.