ICEMAN O'SULLIVAN SUSPECTED.
The opinion was now almost general that Iceman O'Sullivan knew more concerning the tragedy than he was willing to admit. No one was yet bold enough to accuse him of actual complicity in the crime, while at the same time it was apparent that his statements to the police, as well as to the friends of Dr. Cronin, were widely at variance with the discoveries that had been made. The peculiar nature of the contract he was said to have made with the physician, to attend any man in his employ who might meet with an accident, his denial of any acquaintance with the men who had rented the cottage, in the face of the fact that he had been seen in conversation with "Frank Williams," and had guaranteed the payment of the rent by the latter, and numerous other circumstances, some more or less trivial, were sufficient to raise the question as to whether, even had he taken no actual part in the terrible crime, he, in legal phraseology was not "possessed of a guilty knowledge." Hence it was the police decided to place the iceman under surveillance. Thereafter his house, as well as his every movement, when out of doors, was watched both night and day, and any attempt to leave the city would have resulted in his immediate arrest.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WHITE HORSE AND BUGGY—DETECTIVE COUGHLIN HIRES IT FOR A "FRIEND"—THE TROUBLE IN THE STABLE—DINAN GOES TO SCHAACK—THE CAPTAIN'S PECULIAR MOVEMENTS—SCANLAN IDENTIFIES THE HORSE—THE DETECTIVE AND O'SULLIVAN ARE JAILED—THE GRAND JURY INDICTS THEM WITH WOODRUFF—FULL ON THE TRACK OF THE CONSPIRATORS.
"Who owned the rig in which Dr. Cronin was driven to the assassin's den?"
"Who hired the white horse and buggy—if it was hired—that Frank Scanlan saw standing outside of the Windsor Theatre building on that memorable May night?"
These were the questions to which the friends of the murdered physician now directed themselves. The body had been found; the cottage in which the crime had been committed—with all its mute but gory testimony—had been located. But even now the wheels of the mill of justice had scarce begun to revolve. Dr. Cronin had left his home alive; he had reached the cottage alive. Whose rig was it that took him to it?
The question that was uppermost in the minds of thousands of people was soon to be answered—answered, too, in a manner that furnished a still more startling episode to the already startling tragedy. For the man that hired the horse and vehicle that carried the Irish Nationalist to his doom was a trusted officer in the employ of the city of Chicago; a man who, from the day of the disappearance, had, enjoying the full confidence of his superiors, been apparently working with might and main to bring about a solution of the mystery. It was Daniel Coughlin, detective.