"No, sir; I think not."
"Then you do not know, of your own knowledge, that your solitary passenger was Dr. Cronin?"
"No. But now that you speak of Dr. Cronin," he said after a long interval, "I remember that I thought he was a doctor, and I got an impression somehow from his grave aspect that he had been attending to a very serious case."
"Did you notice whether anybody was with him when he stepped out at Frederick Street to board your car?"
"I didn't notice, but I don't think there was."
"Did you see an undersized man with a heavy mustache and a slouch hat?"
"No; I didn't—but hold on a minute. I did see a man on the sidewalk, standing in the shadow of the building, who I think wore a soft hat, but as I had only a fleeting glimpse at him I couldn't attempt to describe him."
These two stories, the first so clear and direct, and the other so corroborative obtained general credence except among the immediate friends of the physician. These still insisted upon their theory of foul play. Numerous contradictions in the statements made by Dwyer to different people were pointed out. An inspection of the sheet upon which he had made out his report of the trip when he turned in his receipts showed that instead of one passenger on the nine o'clock car he had carried thirty-six. The story told by Miss Murphy was directly challenged, many of the physician's friends declared that it was manufactured for ulterior motives. It was also charged that her father and Dr. Cronin were bitter enemies. This was denied at the time, and it was added that Murphy, who resided on Oak Street near by Alexander Sullivan, had never taken an active part in Irish affairs. Subsequently, during the Coroner's investigation, it was developed that at that very time he was the financial secretary of a Clan-na-Gael camp hostile in its composition to the missing man.
BOGUS "INTERVIEWS" FROM CANADA.
But still more astounding developments in this phase of the case were soon to come. There resided in Toronto, Canada, at this time, one Charles T. Long, a young man whose father was the publisher and part proprietor of an influential newspaper. Some time before this Long had been employed as a reporter on one or two Chicago morning papers, and in the performance of his duties he had met Dr. Cronin on numerous occasions. He had, moreover, for a short period been a member of a secret beneficial society with which the physician was identified, and hence could claim something more than a passing acquaintance with him. When therefore on the night of Friday, May 10th, the morning papers of Chicago and several other cities received dispatches—the majority over the ex-reporter's own signature—to the effect that the physician was alive and in that city, and had actually been spoken to, it was taken for granted that the major portion of the mystery had been solved. No mere resume could do justice to what might well be termed the devilish ingenuity with which these dispatches were framed, and it is necessary to quote them at length. The one received by the Chicago Herald, and which was a fair type of all, ran in this wise: