"I am going to get it through a Knight of Labor," I replied, and gave the gentlemen a short outline of the plan I had evolved in my mind for getting the confession. After I had finished the lawyers all thought my scheme was a good one, but not one of them thought it could be carried out. I will admit that, because of the peculiar situation in Wyandotte County at that time, I knew I would have to be very careful or my scheme would not work. The mayor, sheriff, jailor and, in fact, all of the city and county officials, even policemen and constables, excepting Judge Hineman of the Circuit Court, were members of the Knights of Labor, and of the same local lodge as the prisoner, consequently were very friendly disposed towards him. As every one familiar with such organizations as the Knights of Labor knows, I would have had but little trouble to find a member among them who would betray the secrets of the order for a few paltry dollars and thus enable me to obtain the information I so much desired from Lloyd, but I decided on another plan, as I never considered a man who would violate his obligation to be upright and honorable. In a word, in trusting such men one is liable to receive what is known in slang parlance as "the double cross."
Locked up in a safe in my office was a ritual and by-laws of the Knights of Labor, and a book of instructions showing how to initiate new members, together with the annual and semi-annual pass words, and the "hailing" and "distress" signs and various signals used by the members of the order, so I decided to set up a little Knight of Labor factory of my own and make a member that I could trust with the work in hand. I had an operative in my employ at that time named George Fowle. He had for a long time been in the train service of different railroads of the country, and I selected him as the man to be trusted with securing the confession from Lloyd. I took Fowle into my private office, and after instructing him carefully as to how to carry out my plans, he was initiated into the mysteries of the order. We took our time and went through the initiatory work carefully, so that when Fowle left for Wyandotte the next day to play the part of Brother Alfred in the drama that I had staged for that town, he was as well posted on the secret work of the order as though he had just passed through the Grand Assembly, as the governing body of the order was called.
On arriving at Wyandotte, Brother Alfred proceeded at once to the headquarters of the organization, where he made himself known as a special envoy and minister plenipotentiary of the head assembly of the order at Scranton, Pa. His mission was to investigate the conditions as he found them in Wyandotte, so that the head officers at Scranton would know exactly what was going on in the west. He also hinted that the General Master Workman and Grand Treasurer Hayes had empowered him to use his own judgment about what was to be done in the case of Lloyd, who was in jail on the train wrecking charge.
Brother Alfred also called on the sheriff, who was a Knight of Labor, and after giving him the grip, asked to be allowed to consult with Lloyd. The sheriff readily granted the request and Brother Alfred was ushered into the jail, where he was closeted with Lloyd for more than an hour and a half. After introducing himself to Lloyd, Brother Alfred dispensed with all formalities and at once began a discussion of the charge against the prisoner. "Of course, Mr. Powderly, Mr. Hayes and the other head officers of the order and myself, know that you are all right, Lloyd, and that you will not make a confession, but in cases of this kind, where there are so many on the job, some one will squeal when they are arrested, as they all will be, for the Goulds have a lot of detectives on the case, headed by Tom Furlong, and it is only a question of time until they are all run down. Furlong, as you know, is not only a great detective, but he is also very unscrupulous and will not stop at anything to secure a conviction in these cases. Now, the order at this time cannot afford to have this crime laid at its door. If one of the men implicated in it would confess, which some of them would be sure to do, as I stated before, it would be a great blow to the order and cast an odium over it that would take years to eradicate. Another thing, the men charged with this crime could not get a fair trial here at this time, as the people here are very sore, as are the members of the Brotherhood of Firemen and Brotherhood of Trainmen, of which orders the two men killed in the wreck were members. I have, therefore, evolved a scheme to outwit these capitalistic bloodhounds, and thus save the order. I have a lawyer over in the city from headquarters, Brother Thomas, who will get you out of here on bond, and I will take you east and get you a job on a railroad where Furlong cannot find you, and will do the same thing with the other men who were with you."
"That is true about some of the gang squealing," replied Lloyd. "We have been afraid of at least two of them giving the snap away, and I know they will do it if they ever fall into the clutches of Furlong and his hirelings."
Lloyd further expressed himself as being delighted with the scheme, and within a few hours he was released from jail and taken by Brother Alfred in a circuitous route through Kansas City to Independence, Mo., where the two boarded a train for St. Louis. I had been informed of their movements by wire, and had one of my operatives meet them at the Union Station and escort them to the room of another operative in my employ at 17th and Pine Streets. That evening Marshall F. McDonald and myself and a stenographer called at the room, and I was introduced to Lloyd as the "headquarters' attorney," Brother Thomas. I corroborated all that Brother Alfred had told Lloyd, and O. K.'d the scheme to get all of these men in the job out of the country, and promised to do all I could to further the scheme. Lloyd then gave us the names of his partners in the crime. They were George H. Hamilton, Mike Leary, Robert Geers, Fred Newport and William Vassen, all prominent and active members of the local executive board of the Knights of Labor.
The next morning, Lloyd, in charge of Operatives Bonnell, McCabe and two guards, and myself, boarded a special car at Union Station, and it was attached to west-bound passenger train No. 1. Of course, Lloyd did not know he was in charge of officers. At Independence the special car was placed on a siding and I went on to Kansas City. The next morning, which was Sunday, a conference was held at the St. James Hotel between the attorneys for the Pacific Company and myself. It was late in the evening when the conference ended, after which I decided to at once arrest the men named by Lloyd as his partners in the Wyandotte crime. I proceeded to Wyandotte and procured the warrants. As the arrests had to be made quickly, and all my experienced men in that vicinity were in Independence guarding the special car, I secured the services of Frank Tutt, who had been employed by me as a guard for the railroad during the strike, to go with the sheriff and myself to make the arrests.
The first man arrested was George Hamilton, chairman of the executive committee in charge of the strike. We found him in ViceRoy Park, Armourdale, where he was acting as a special policeman. When Hamilton was pointed out to me, I approached him saying:
"I want you, officer."
"What for?" asked Hamilton.