This precaution was taken in expectation of a call to the Haymarket, and the Anarchists, in the damnable conspiracies of that evening, had anticipated such preparations. They were accordingly on the ground. Fifteen members of the North Side group, as appears plainly from the confessions of some of the Anarchists, loitered around the station, waiting for orders or signal, or to abide their own pleasure as soon as they could see for themselves that the riot had begun on the West Side. When that time arrived, they were to watch the windows of the roll-call room from the alley and throw their infernal machines into the midst of the officers the moment the room was full.
The cut-throats skulked around the station like so many Indians around the cabin of a helpless settler, constantly dodging around in the darkness, fearful that they might be discovered. True to their instincts, however, these Chicago reds could not do without their beer while awake, and they made frequent trips to neighboring beer-saloons. About 9:30 o’clock Lieut. Baus and Lieut. Lloyd, each with a company of officers, returned from the Central Station, where I had sent them as a reserve during the Haymarket meeting, and when the Anarchists saw them in the roll-call room of my station, they sneaked around on the dark side of the alley and selected the third and fourth windows as those through which their deadly bombs should crash on their destructive mission. These windows are in the center of the large room. They had with them a number of bombs, both of the round lead and the long gas-pipe variety. While they stood underneath those windows, they got into a whispered quarrel about the kind of bomb that should be used.
Bock had a round lead bomb, and he said:
“I don’t think this will go off. Let one of you throw a larger bomb.”
Then Abraham Hermann became angry and said:
“You d——d fool, what the d——l are you here for, if your d——d bombs are no good? You are too much of a coward to throw them.”
Just at this point two officers left the station to visit a cigar-store, and stopped for a moment at the entrance of the alley to finish their conversation.
The Anarchists saw them, and, thinking that they had been discovered, they hurriedly made their exit in an opposite direction, running to the rear of the building on its dark side and then emerging on Superior Street. Some of them went over to the West Side, to the Haymarket meeting, and others sought different saloons on Clark Street.
