Edmund Deuss was also sought for with some interest. He had been city editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung under Spies. The first week after the bomb had been thrown the authorities at police headquarters were informed that Paul Grottkau and Deuss, both ex-employés of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, were then living in Milwaukee. Mr. Furthmann thought some points might be gathered from them, and accordingly went to that city. He found them both. Grottkau, who has since tasted the bitterness of prison life for his preachments of violence in the “Cream City,” expressed himself as pleased that Spies had been placed under arrest and charged with responsibility for the murder at the Haymarket.
“I knew long ago,” said Grottkau, “that August Spies would thus end his crazy and ambitious career.”
Grottkau and Spies had not been on very friendly terms since the latter had succeeded in displacing the former from the editorship of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. But, however strong his enmity, Grottkau would not give us any information regarding Spies, or dynamite practices, or anything else that would tend to put a rope around Spies’ neck or hurt any of his companions. He referred Mr. Furthmann to Deuss, who was then depending upon Grottkau for a livelihood and who received a dollar now and then for writing a firebrand article for a paper Grottkau was editing in Milwaukee.
Deuss was found in a neighboring saloon without a cent in his pocket. He stood wistfully eyeing the saloon patrons, hoping to fall in with some one willing to buy him a glass of beer or a cigar. Mr. Furthmann at once opened a conversation about the Chicago Anarchists. Deuss promised to tell everything he knew in regard to the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the dynamite brought there, the men in the building of that paper and the nefarious things practiced by them, on condition that Mr. Furthmann would first buy him a good cigar, several sandwiches and the necessary beer. The conditions were complied with, and Deuss rattled away a long story. He proved to be the first man to inform Mr. Furthmann as to when the dynamite that was afterwards found in the Arbeiter-Zeitung had been brought there, and where it had been placed. A grease-spot caused by dynamite was afterwards found exactly where Deuss said the explosive material had been placed, which was right next to the desk used by Malkoff, a reporter for the paper and an exiled Russian Anarchist. Rau at that time, it appears, did not know the properties of dynamite, for on one occasion a stray match was thrown upon the dynamite sack in the office and he was nearly frightened out of his wits.
“Don’t you know what you are doing?” he exclaimed.
“You greenhorn,” was the answer, “Malkoff has handled this stuff for years and knows by this time, as you ought to know, that dynamite cannot be exploded by contact with fire in such a form.”
This information, though unimportant on its face, assisted Mr. Furthmann greatly in making Deuss talk, and served also as a straw showing that the man had given up all the information he possessed.
LINGG’S CANDLESTICK.
From a Photograph.
So far Mr. Furthmann had managed to secure many valuable clues, and we studied at once the best method of following them up. In running down the pointers, one day Mr. Furthmann sought Dr. Newman, one of the surgeons who had rendered heroic service in attending the wounded on the night after the explosion. The doctor was asked with reference to the metal and pieces of lead which he had taken from the bodies of some of the men wounded at the Haymarket. He informed Mr. Furthmann that a young man named Hahn, a shoemaker on the West Side, had come to the hospital wounded by the explosion, and that upon examination a wound had been found in the fleshy part of his thigh, from which a piece of iron had been removed. This piece was nothing less than the nut which had been used to assist in holding together the two halves of the composition bomb which had been exploded at the Haymarket. This discovery was a most important one. It proved at the trial the best piece of evidence used, by the prosecution, as it demonstrated that the bomb exploded at the Haymarket was one of the bombs manufactured by Louis Lingg, since fifty bolts and nuts of the same size and description were subsequently found in Lingg’s possession.