They continued to talk for over an hour, referring to the murder and robbery repeatedly, and furnishing evidence enough to establish beyond any question the guilt of both Schwartz and Watt.
Meantime Watt had been arrested in Chicago, also charged with murder, and in several examinations had shown signs of breaking down and confessing, but in each instance had recovered himself and said nothing. The evidence of Schwartz himself, however, in the interview at the jail, taken with the mass of other evidence that had accumulated, was sufficient to secure the conviction of both men, who were condemned at the trial to life-imprisonment in the Joliet penitentiary. They would undoubtedly have been hanged but for the conscientious scruples of one juryman, who did not believe in capital punishment. Watt has since died, but Schwartz, at last accounts, was still in prison.
About a year after the trial Schwartz's Chicago wife died of consumption. On her death-bed she made a full confession. She said that her husband's mind had been inflamed by the constant reading of sensational literature of the dime-novel order; and that under this evil influence he had planned the robbery, believing that it would be easy to intimidate a weak little man like Nichols, and escape with the money without harming him. Nichols, however, had fought like a tiger up and down the car, and had finally forced them to kill him. In the fight he had torn off the mask that Mrs. Schwartz had made out of one of her husband's old coats. It was Watt who fired the pistol, while Schwartz used the poker. Schwartz had given Watt five thousand dollars of the stolen money, and had kept the rest himself. He had carried the money away in an old satchel bought for the purpose. A most unusual place of concealment had been chosen, and one where the money had escaped discovery, although on several occasions, in searching the house, the detectives had literally held it in their hands. Schwartz had taken a quantity of the cartridges he bought for his shot-gun, and emptying them, had put in each shell one of the fifty- or one-hundred-dollar bills, upon which he had then loaded in the powder and the shot in the usual way, so that the shells presented the ordinary appearance as they lay in the drawer. The detectives had even picked out some of the shot and powder in two or three of the shells; but, finding them so like other cartridges, had never thought of probing clear to the bottom of the shell for a crumpled-up bill.
Thus about thirteen thousand dollars lay for weeks in these ordinary-looking cartridges, and were finally removed in the following way: While Schwartz was in jail, a well-known lawyer of Philadelphia came to Mrs. Schwartz, one day, with an order from her husband to deliver the money over to him. She understood this was to defray the expenses of the trial and to pay the other lawyers. Superintendent Robertson remembers well the dying woman's emotion as she made this solemn declaration, one calculated to compromise seriously a man of some standing and belonging to an honored profession. Her body was wasted with disease, and she knew that her end was near. There was a flush on her face, and her eyes were bright with hatred as she declared that not one dollar of that money was ever returned to her, or ever used in paying the costs of her husband's trial. Nor was one dollar of it ever returned to the railroad company, or to the bank officials, who were the real owners.