THE EXPRESSMAN IS FOUND.
There now remained but a single link to establish the connection between the furniture left in the cottage and that sold by Hatfield. The expressman who hauled the goods from the Clark street flat was still to be found. But there were several hundred men in the city engaged in that line of business, and although the police and detectives worked like beavers, it looked for a while as though their labor would be thrown away. Success came at last, however, although it was nearly two week's before the much wanted man was run to earth. He proved to be a Swede named Hukon Mortensen, a simple, unsuspicious young fellow, not possessed of more than the average intelligence of men of his occupation. From him it was learned that one day in the latter part of March, while at his stand, at the corner of Chicago avenue and Market street, he was approached by a man who asked him his terms for hauling a load of furniture from 117 Clark street to the corner of Lincoln and Belmont avenues. He offered to do the job for $2, but the man was not willing to pay more than $1.50, and this he accepted. This man, whose description tallied exactly with that given by the Carlsons of "Frank Williams," was assisted by another man in carrying the furniture down-stairs. When the wagon had been loaded Mortensen was told to go out to Lincoln and Belmont avenues and wait, his customer saying that he would take a cable car. The expressman was first on the ground; but the man did not put in an appearance for over an hour, when, with a companion, he drove up in a buggy, explaining the delay by saying that the cable had broken down. After the pair had carried the furniture into the cottage, young Carlson, meanwhile looking on, they took the expressman to a tobacco store two blocks away, where, after securing change for a five dollar bill, he was paid the amount agreed upon. After this he drove back to the city. It was after eight o'clock, and consequently pitch dark when his wagon was unloaded. Three or four times during the next few days the same man passed the stand, and then he was not seen again in the neighborhood.
The plot, according to the surroundings, could now be outlined. Preparations for the "removal" of the unfortunate physician had been commenced as early as February, when the flat was hired and the furniture purchased. Apparently it was the original intention to lure him into the third story of the Clark street building, where isolated, and, as "Simonds" remarked, "with no tenants on the same floor," he could be summoned from his office on the other side of the street and speedily done to death. For some reason or other, however, possibly because a single outcry might have alarmed the people on the floor below, this idea was abandoned, and the lonely cottage was hired. For over six weeks the assassins must have plotted and planned the carrying-out of their murderous intentions. Then came the summons of the night of May 4th, the crime, the efforts to dispose of the body in the lake, its concealment in the catch-basin, the throwing away of the bloody trunk, the endeavor to efface the blood-stains in the cottage with paint, and finally the strenuous effort to continue its occupancy, in order that its condition might not be seen by other eyes. So far the authorities were satisfied with the results accomplished.