f Charles Long, the ex-Chicago reporter, not only had a
tendency to give the case an international aspect, but also to confirm
the suspicions of the dead man's friends, that he had fallen a victim to
a conspiracy wide in its ramifications, and planned, moreover, by a
master mind. The dispatches were false, for the finding of Cronin's body
in the Lake View catch-basin admitted of no possible argument to the
contrary. It was equally certain that it could not have been a case of
mistaken identity--not merely because Long's acquaintance with Dr.
Cronin had been of a nature to render a mistake of that kind improbable,
but because the detailed character of their conversation, as reported by
Long, had been such that Cronin's part in it could not have been taken
by any but Cronin himself, or some one of a few men familiar with the
inner workings of the Clan-na-Gael or United Brotherhood. For example, a
week after the disappearance, and before the finding of the body, Long
had concocted in Toronto the story of the troubles in the Clan-na-Gael,
with Cronin's charge that nearly $100,000 of its funds had been
misappropriated, while papers elsewhere were still confusing the
organization with the Irish Land League and its Detroit treasurer. "No
one not a member of the Clan-na-Gael could have gotten up these
interviews," Irishmen had said; and they were right. To the general
public also, unacquainted with these facts, it seemed incredible that a
presumably reputable journalist, with an utter absence of malicious
motive, would, of his own free will, and simply for the advantage of
the small pecuniary recompense that his labors might bring, so deceive
and mislead the numerous and prominent newspapers to which his
dispatches were addressed. It was a prostitution of the liberty and
license of a correspondent such, perhaps, as had never been parallelled
in the newspaper history of the country, while, moreover, it was of a
character calculated to wreck, for all time, the journalistic reputation
of the man most directly concerned.

What, then, were Long's motives in giving currency to these dispatches?
Whose was the guiding hand that induced him to take so great a risk? The
Chicago _Tribune_--one of the papers that had been victimized--took it
upon itself to answer these questions. A member of its staff was
dispatched to Toronto, with instructions to sift the matter to the
bottom. He was fully equal to the task, and within a few hours of his