was talking a couple of fellows who had been walking along the
beach came up."

"Boys," said the first man, "this officer says we're away off the road."

"At this they all got into the wagon and drove west on Bryn Mawr avenue
until they reached the Evanston road. Then they started down Evanston
avenue at a rapid gait and I lost sight of them. I noticed a long square
box in the wagon, but it was very dark and I could not see plainly what
it was. The fellow I talked to, however, I'll recognize and identify
anywhere."

From a study of the surroundings, taken in connection with this story,
the conclusion was arrived at by the police authorities that the trunk
had been first taken to the lake, its contents thrown into the surf, and
that it was then brought back into the road and dumped into the ditch.
This, as was developed later, was the original intention of the
murderers. The point on the beach where the tracks showed that the
vehicle had made a halt was about as dreary and desolate a spot as could
be found in the country. Sandy, covered with heavy timber, and removed
nearly half a mile from a house or a shelter of any kind, it was just
the place that a man or a party of men with a murderous job on their
hands would have naturally selected.

To empty a trunk into the lake, or to dig a hole in the sand and drop a
human body in it, would have been the work of but a few minutes, and all
traces of the bloody crime might thus have been obliterated forever.

THE SEARCH REVEALS NOTHING.

For the next forty-eight hours the efforts of the authorities were
re-doubled. All the livery stables on the north side of the city were
visited for the purpose of ascertaining if a white horse and vehicle, as
described by Mrs. Conklin and Frank Scanlan, had been rented out on the
previous Saturday. Several white horses were owned by the liverymen in
that section, but all, apparently, were satisfactorily accounted for.
The one man, who, had he so chosen, could, by answering the question in
the affirmative, have solved at least this portion of the mystery,
preferred to hold his peace for the time being. Scores of men and boys
waded through the pond in the German Catholic Cemetery, the river in the
vicinity was dragged, nearly every sewer and sluice box in the city of
Lake View was examined, and even the clay holes--which were as plentiful
thereabouts as reefs in Lake Michigan--were hunted from end to end. As a
last resort, and at the earn