cial was home at dinner, and he made a
bee-line for the house. Schaack was there, and into his attentive ear
Dinan poured his tale of the white horse, the buggy and the peculiar
customer.

SCHAACK'S PECULIAR MOVEMENTS.

What possessed the doughty "burgomaster" (as Capt. Schaack was
familiarly called by the residents of the North Division) to follow the
course that he did at this juncture, passes all comprehension. On the
witness-stand before the coroner's jury, some days later, he could only
justify himself by the lame statement that, at the time, he did not
believe that Cronin had been killed. He might also have admitted, and
with truth, that he had placed absolute and implicit confidence in his
subordinates, only--as had been the fate of many as good a man before
him--to be deceived and betrayed. At any rate his treatment of the
information, placed at his disposal by Dinan, was of such a character as
to demonstrate so great a neglect of duty, both toward the chief of
police and his subordinates and the public, that, when its full extent
became known, he was, notwithstanding his previous record, first
suspended from duty and subsequently dismissed from the force.

What Capt. Schaack should have done--what any other official of his own,
or subordinate rank in the city would have done--was to have gone
without unnecessary delay to the chief of police and acquainted him with
the disclosures that the liveryman had made. Instead of this, however,
upon returning to the station, he sent for Coughlin himself, the last
man of all men, who should have been informed of what had transpired.
When the detective responded, he was asked if Dinan's story was true,
and replied that it was. Pressed for further particulars, he said that
he had hired the rig for a man named Thomas Smith. Of this individual he
knew very little, except that he had come to the station and introduced
himself as a friend of Coughlin's brother, who lived in Hancock,
Michigan. He had met this man Smith several times; and on the Saturday
morning the visitor had asked him to procure him a horse and buggy for
that evening, as he (Smith), not being known to the livery-men
thereabouts, might experience some difficulty in securing one. This the
detective protested, was the entire extent of his connection with the
affair. He did not know what use the man had made of the rig, where he
had gone, or what time he returned. In fact he had not set eyes on him
since the d