our of midnight, the
members of the Grand Jury entered the Court and returned indictments
against six individuals for conspiring to thwart the ends of justice by
endeavoring to bribe jurors in the Cronin case. These individuals were
Thomas Kavanaugh, steam-fitter; Alexander L. Hanks, court bailiff; Mark
L. Soloman, court bailiff; Fred W. Smith, hardware agent; Jeremiah
O'Donnell, gauger; Joseph Konen, fruit dealer.

The mystery that enveloped the proceedings of the previous day was now
dispelled. The tentacles of the devil fish had reached into the court of
justice. The desperation of the mysterious power behind the five men who
were on trial for their lives for the murder of the Irish physician had
reached a climax. From the moment that the prisoners had first faced
Judge McConnell, their attorneys had waged a stubborn and a bitter war
against the veniremen passed by the State. Eight jurors had, however,
been selected. The peremptory challenges of O'Sullivan, Burke, Coughlin
and Kunze had been exhausted, and Beggs alone of all the prisoners
possessed the right of exercising the power of peremptory dismissal. All
this time the mighty and unseen power behind the prisoners and behind
the lawyers was hard at work. It had never been still from the time that
the doom of the physician had been sealed. Its machinery had ground him
to death and been then torn down, built up again, and set in motion to
conceal the gory corpse. The shafting encircled the entire boundary
within which a juror could be drawn, and the leviathan proportions of
the murderous machine could not be measured until a cog had dropped out
here and there and been carried to the office of the State's Attorney.
The machine had assisted in the escape of Cooney. It had tried its best
to get Martin Burke far beyond the reach of the clutches of the law. It
had inspired the police officers of the State to ignore their duty. It
was probably, at that very time, instructing possible witnesses in the
art of perjury. It had gone farther and had actually attempted to suborn
by bribes the men who had been summoned as jurors in the trial in
progress.

The facts, as narrated first to the State's Attorney and later to the
Grand Jury, admitted of no controversy. George Tschappatt, a German,
who for ten years had been employed as foreman of an extensive lard
manufactory, had been one of the veniremen approached. His wife was a
friend of Mark L. Soloman, a bailiff of the Crimina