TWO ARRESTS IN NEW YORK.
On the same day that the coroner's jury returned its verdict, John J. Maroney and Charles McDonald were arrested in New York on suspicion of complicity in the murder. These arrests were made in accordance with instructions issued by the State's Attorney and Chief of Police, of Chicago, in the belief that Maroney was the man Simonds, who had hired the Clark street flat, and that McDonald answered to the description of the man who drove the Dinan rig. Both men had been prominent in the Clan-na-gael, Maroney especially, having been one of the secret workers for the "triangle." It was claimed by Luke Dillon that he had discovered that Maroney was in Chicago under an assumed name from February 20th to March 20th, that he reappeared on the morning of the day that the physician was murdered under an assumed name, and that he left Chicago for good on the following day. A complaint and information against the two men was sworn out by John J. Cronin, the dead man's brother, and upon this requisitions on Governor Hill of New York were issued by Governor Fifer of Illinois, and entrusted to Detective Farrell. In the meantime the prisoners had been arraigned at the tombs police court in New York, before Justice Hogan, and remanded until the question of extradition could be argued. This, however, did not meet the approval of their friends, of whom over a hundred were in court, and the same afternoon a writ of habeas corpus was applied for and granted by Judge Andrews of the Supreme Court. The prisoners declared that they had been in New York for weeks before and weeks after the murder of Dr. Cronin, and in this they were corroborated by a large number of people. Detective Farrell reached Albany on the following day, but Governor Hill, upon looking over the requisition, promptly denied the application, on the ground that it was not accompanied by an indictment, and that no proof whatever was presented showing that the accused were guilty of the crime charged against them. Upon receipt of this information, Hatfield, the furniture salesman, Martinson, the expressman, and Throgmorton, the real estate agent, started for New York with a view of identifying the prisoners. Upon their arrival, however, they utterly failed to find in either "suspect" the slightest resemblance to the mysterious Simonds, and on the heels of this Judge Andrews in the Supreme Court, handed down a decision upon the matter of the writ of habeas corpus, ordering that the men be discharged from custody, on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence produced before Justice Hogan, in the police court, to justify their committal to prison.
CHAPTER XIV.
OFFICER COLLIN'S SUSPICIONS—MARTIN BURKE AND HIS RECORD—FORTUNATE DISCOVERY OF THE PHOTOGRAPH OF A CLAN-NA-GAEL GROUP—THE CARLSONS AND OTHERS IDENTIFY BURKE—HIS PECULIAR MOVEMENTS AND HIS FLIGHT—AN INDICTMENT AGAINST HIM—THE CAPTURE IN WINNIPEG, WHILE EN ROUTE TO ENGLAND—STUBBORN FIGHT TO PREVENT HIS EXTRADITION TO AMERICAN SOIL—THE LAW TRIUMPHANT—A MEMORABLE JOURNEY HOME.
There is more truth than poetry in the old saying that it is "always the unexpected that happens." The fleeing criminal is oftentimes in the greatest danger when he imagines himself safe from pursuit. Examine the records of the courts and the detective agencies in scores of the largest cities of this and continental countries, and they will be found replete with sensational narrations of the capture of murderers, forgers, embezzlers—and others charged with offences covered in existing extradition treaties—in distant lands and isolated regions, and among people of strange tongues, where they had fondly hoped that detection or discovery was an impossibility, and that they were safe, for all time to come, from the strong arm of the law that they had violated. So too, a criminal will outwit the keenest of detectives, and nonpluss the most experienced of officers, only through his own lack of caution, to run his neck into the noose in an entirely different direction to that in which he is being sought.
And so it was that to a sharp, keen, wide-awake official of the police department of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was due, in no small measure, the capture, at this juncture, of one of the alleged conspirators whose presence was most earnestly desired by the police authorities of Chicago.
It came about in this way—Officer John Collins, an Irish-American, and an energetic member of the force, had been detailed for special work upon this celebrated case. He was familiar with the proceedings of the Clan-na-Gael. He also knew a man named Martin Burke, who occasionally assumed that of Delaney as an alias. This individual had been looked upon as a tool of the local Clan-na-Gael leaders, voicing their opinions in bar-rooms and at street corners. He had been particularly violent in his denunciation of Dr. Cronin, and at the saloons on the north side of the city that he was in the habit of frequenting, more especially those in the neighborhood of Chicago Avenue and Market Street, he had been heard to frequently say that Cronin "ought to be killed as a British spy." Little was known as to Burke's antecedents. Even his uncle, Phil Corkell, who kept a small grocery store on the north side, professed to know little or nothing about him. All that the police could learn at the time in tracing his record was that he had reached the United States from Ireland some time in 1886. A year later he turned up in Chicago. He had not been long in the city when he joined the Clan-na-Gaels. The notorious Camp 20 was the one he chose to gain admission to the order. Dan Coughlin, John F. Beggs, Mike Whelan and other leading lights of the order at this time dominated the affairs of this particular camp. For some reason or other—certainly not because he was particularly sharp or bright, for his uncle described him as a soft sort of a fellow, without any "gumption"—Burke attracted the favorable attention of Beggs, and the latter, aided materially by Alexander Sullivan, procured him employment in the city sewer department. He was assigned to work at the Chicago Avenue pipe yard, which at that time was a hot bed of Irish Nationalists. Accordingly to all accounts he earned no small proportion of his salary by boasting to his fellow workmen of his influential backers. It was his burden of conversation that Alex. Sullivan, Beggs, Coughlin, and other Clan-na-Gael leaders were his staunch friends. He also boasted that he came from the same part of Ireland, on the borders of Mayo and Sligo, in which Michael Davitt and other eminent Nationalists were reared, and he never tired of narrating his experiences with "moonlighting" expeditions in the west of Ireland. After Le Caron had testified before the Parnell Commission, in London, he varied his conversation, and was eternally denouncing and breathing imprecations upon the "British Spy." Early in 1889 he lost his job in the pipe department. From that time on he had no steady employment.
At the same time he had plenty of money and spent it freely in the Market Street saloons.
This of itself was sufficient to arouse suspicions, for when he was at work he was always in debt. Occasionally he varied his saloon loafing by taking trips to Lake View.
To his associates he explained that he had a young female acquaintance in that neighborhood, although it was observed and sometimes remarked that these trips were altogether too prolonged for ordinary courtship. Afterwards it was recalled that they were taken about the time the mysterious strangers were occupying the Carlson cottage.