Читать книгу The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin - Henry M. Hunt - Страница 17

"IT IS A CONSPIRACY"—DR. CRONIN'S FRIENDS CLAIM THE MURDER WAS A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION—THE PUBLIC SCEPTICAL UNTIL STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS ARE MADE—THE PHYSICIAN IN DANGER OF HIS LIFE FOR YEARS—PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS TO "REMOVE" HIM—THE TROUBLE IN THE CLAN-NA-GAEL—CHARGES AND COUNTER CHARGES—THE BUFFALO CONVENTION—WHY HIS "REMOVAL" BECAME A NECESSITY TO CERTAIN PEOPLE.

"He is dead I feel sure of it." So said Mrs. Conklin, when the news of the finding of the bloody trunk, the cotton batting, and the locks of matted hair, had been brought to her.

"This is the work of political enemies" echoed Frank T. Scanlan.

"Dr. Cronin has been the victim of a political assassination" was the immediate verdict of a number of prominent Irishmen of New York, Philadelphia and other places. And the developments soon to come showed that they knew whereof they spoke.

But the general public, while it listened and eagerly discussed the mystery, was inclined to be sceptical.

A political murder in the free, liberty loving United States. It could not be! Two Presidents had, it was true, been shot in cold blood by madmen; and in different parts of the country and on divers occasions men had been killed in scrimmages at the polls as a result of troubles growing out of election affairs. But these were not political murders in the general acceptation of the term, not the deliberate well planned taking of life; not the outgrowth of a conspiracy to "remove" some one whose particular political predelictions or position had rendered him obnoxious to those politically associated with him. "Such things might happen abroad it is true" said the sceptics, "but on American soil it would be an impossibility."