“You still say that that affidavit is true in every respect?”
“I do,” emphatically replied Hubner.
“It is not so, and it is not true,” stoutly replied Engel.
“Well,” said I, “there are other people, and we will have more, who will prove that you did make a revolutionary speech and submitted a plan calling on your people to get ready with their arms and do violence. If other witnesses are produced, will you still have the same answer to give?”
“It would not be true; it is not so,” reiterated Engel.
“But,” I added, “suppose I produce twenty more men who will accuse you the same as Waller and Hubner have accused you, what then would you have to say?”
“My answer,” responded Engel, “would be that I have never spoken as charged against me. It is not true.”
Engel had evidently made up his mind to deny everything, and, knowing his character for stubbornness, I made no further efforts to secure a statement from him. A man who could originate such a cold-blooded scheme as he had proposed—and part of it was actually carried out in bloodshed—was evidently not the kind to yield, and I allowed him to ruminate over his predicament in a cell below until the 27th of May, when he was sent to the County Jail. As will subsequently appear, he never showed signs of weakness during his incarceration from the time he was taken from his house that night until he dropped from the gallows, dying the hardest of them all. A half dozen such men at a critical time could upset a whole city, and it was fortunate for Chicago that there were not more like him during the troublous days of 1886.
GOTTFRIED WALLER.
From a Photograph.