"I'll tell you all when I get to the station."
The officers laughed. Their dull comprehensions failed to connect the remark with the trunk mystery. When the station was reached, however, and the attention of Lieutenant Beck had been called to what the man had said, he at once jumped to the conclusion that the horse was the one attached to the wagon that had hauled the mysterious trunk. He ordered the man into his private office and at once began to put him in what is known in police parlance as "the sweat box," or in other words, to put him through a rapid course of questioning. At first the man—a mild mannered young fellow, attired in clothes of cheap material, with bad complexion, square features, heavy jaws, and a pronounced squint in one eye—gave his name as Frank J. Black, although he afterwards admitted that it was Woodruff. He was, he said, 26 years of age, a Canadian by birth, and a railroad laborer by occupation.
"I want to make a confession," he remarked, after the preliminaries had been completed. He was warned that it would have to be entirely voluntary, and that no immunity could be promised. To this understanding he gave his assent, and Sergeant Cosgrove, having been called in as a witness, the prisoner commenced his story:
"A week ago last Wednesday," (May 1) he said, "I was in Sol Van Praag's gambling house, at 392 South State Street, playing poker. I lost $8, and, just before 11 o'clock, I got up from the table saying: I ought not to gamble, I can't afford to lose any money. Just then William H. King, an old friend of mine, who was standing by, said to me: 'I'll put you on the road to make a few dollars if you want to.' I told him I was willing," went on Woodruff, "and that I could be found at D. G. Dean's livery stable, at 406 Webster Avenue, where I was working. We had several drinks, and then went down State Street to Madison, where King left me. He did not say how I was to make the money. But last Sunday he came up to the stable in the afternoon, and called me out. We went into a saloon near by, and King said to me: 'I want you to get a horse and some light rig in which to carry a trunk, about 2 o'clock to-morrow morning, if you can. I want you to do it quietly, and be sure to come out before three or four o'clock. If you can't get out as early as that, I don't want you at all.'"
Woodruff had been talking rapidly. He paused a moment for breath, and then went on.
WOODRUFF'S LURID STORY.
"The wagon was to be brought to a corner a few blocks from our stable, where King was to be in waiting. At three o'clock in the morning I hitched a white horse to a light wagon and drove to the corner, where I found King. He told me it was all right, and that there was $25 in it for me. King got into the wagon and told me to drive to the rear of 528 North State Street. When we got there, we met a man that I supposed was Dr. Cronin, also a sporting man named Dick Fairburn, who I knew to be a desperate character. They went into the barn and hauled out a trunk. The man I supposed was Cronin was extremely impatient and nervous, and urged the others to hurry up. They called him 'Doc.' and when he was inclined to get mad, Fairburn said, 'all right, Doc., we'll hurry.' When the trunk was put into the wagon, King and Fairburn got in and the rig started north, 'Doc.' being left behind. The horse was guided up the Lake Shore drive to the north end of Lincoln Park. Here a strange man in a high cart, driving a buckskin-colored horse, approached the wagon from behind, and the men told me to hurry out of the way. I turned off the road into a parallel driveway and went up about a quarter of a mile. Then King told me to stop. While going up the driveway, King gave me $25, and I heard him say:
'If we'd have let Tom alone, we'd have had the Doc. in here too.'
When the wagon stopped, King remarked as he jumped off:
"Here's where we drop Alice."