Читать книгу The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin - Henry M. Hunt - Страница 14

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"The wagon was to be brought to a corner a few blocks from our stable, where King was to be in waiting. At three o'clock in the morning I hitched a white horse to a light wagon and drove to the corner, where I found King. He told me it was all right, and that there was $25 in it for me. King got into the wagon and told me to drive to the rear of 528 North State Street. When we got there, we met a man that I supposed was Dr. Cronin, also a sporting man named Dick Fairburn, who I knew to be a desperate character. They went into the barn and hauled out a trunk. The man I supposed was Cronin was extremely impatient and nervous, and urged the others to hurry up. They called him 'Doc.' and when he was inclined to get mad, Fairburn said, 'all right, Doc., we'll hurry.' When the trunk was put into the wagon, King and Fairburn got in and the rig started north, 'Doc.' being left behind. The horse was guided up the Lake Shore drive to the north end of Lincoln Park. Here a strange man in a high cart, driving a buckskin-colored horse, approached the wagon from behind, and the men told me to hurry out of the way. I turned off the road into a parallel driveway and went up about a quarter of a mile. Then King told me to stop. While going up the driveway, King gave me $25, and I heard him say:

'If we'd have let Tom alone, we'd have had the Doc. in here too.'

When the wagon stopped, King remarked as he jumped off:

"Here's where we drop Alice."

"Then the trunk was opened and a stench came out. The horse became restless and I had to get out and attend to him. What I saw led me to believe that the body removed from the box was that of a woman in a mutilated condition. I saw a leg that had been cut off at the thigh. The corpse was wrapped in cotton batting. After the remains had been dumped near a clump of bushes, the batting was placed in the trunk, which was then thrown into the wagon. Then King said: "Leave us here. You drive on a piece and hide the trunk some way or another, and then go home."

"I drove on for about fifteen minutes," the fellow resumed, "and then I stopped at a hole and threw the trunk into it. Then I made straight for the barn, driving as fast as I could. I reached there at five o'clock, and managed to get in without any one seeing me."

"How was it possible for you to get the rig out without being detected," Woodruff was asked.

"O, that's easy enough," he replied, with a laugh. "You could go there yourself, almost any night, and do the same thing. Howard (one of the employes) is usually out, seeing his girl, and as for Charlie (another employe), you might fire a sixteen-pound cannon under his ears, and he'd never wake up. I went to bed as usual that night, just about eleven o'clock, in the room near the stable. I lay quiet until I knew that the boys were asleep, and then I slipped out and went down the stairway to the floor where the horses were, carrying my shoes in my hand. I had left the wagon in the alley outside, so as to be sure of it."

"What kind of a rig was it," asked the Lieutenant.

"It was a red gear wagon, with a black box and a high dashboard in front. The doors leading to the barn are folding doors, which open easily, and the floor is sprinkled with sawdust. I got the horse out all right, after muffling its hoofs, and led it to the wagon in the alley, where I hitched it up. I am sure nobody saw me when I got back. Somebody used the mare later in the day (Sunday), and said when she came out, 'It doesn't seem to me she's fresh, to-day.' I heard it all, but I didn't say a word."

Woodruff was sharply questioned, with the view of testing his veracity, but he stuck closely to his statements. He admitted that he had taken the horse and wagon that he was charged with stealing from Dean's stable two days before, and inquiry by telephone developed the fact that Dean had reported his loss at the nearest police station. The prisoner admitted that he had made up his mind to leave the city just before being arrested, because he was afraid of Fairburn, who had told him to say nothing about the midnight ride, and had warned him that if he "peached" he would kill him (Woodruff), if he had to wait twenty years to do it. Fairburn, he described as being short, heavy-set, with gray hair and moustache. He was a desperate man, and one not afraid to commit murder. King was about thirty-two, six feet tall, stout, dark-complexioned, and of gentlemanly appearance.

No time was lost by Lieutenant Beck in communicating the developments of the day to his superiors, and Captains Schaack and O'Donnell were at the station as fast as horseflesh could bring them. The records of the two men mentioned by the horse-thief were first looked up, and both turned out to be hard cases. Fairburn was recognized from the description as a desperate thief, and who, under the alias of Neil White, had "done time" in the penitentiary. At one time he was a resident of Minneapolis.