When the case had been worked up to the discovery of the leading facts at this time, the reporters for the various papers in Chicago began to gather at the Chicago Avenue Station, and they plied me with all sorts of questions. They desired all the information I possessed, but their laudable ambition was not gratified. Nothing respecting the merits of the case was furnished them. This provoked quite a number of the newspaper craft, and they sought to even up things by scoring me and my assistants in the columns of their papers. They continued their attacks, evidently expecting that I would weaken and tell all I knew, but in this they were mistaken, as their shafts fell harmless at my feet. The more the papers blamed us, the better we liked it. It made our work much easier, because we received a great deal of good information from persons who would not have told us anything without positive assurance of secrecy. This was in fact a potent factor in our success, and the newspaper-reading public really lost nothing by it. The latest news respecting the Anarchist conspiracy was always presented by the dailies, and, while there may have been wanting many of the essential and interesting facts, the public demand was measurably satisfied. At any rate, the interests of justice could not be permitted to be overshadowed by those of the newspapers, and I held unflinchingly to the course mapped out until the day of the trial. The result proved the wisdom of the plan, and the encomiums bestowed on me by the press on the evidence I finally accumulated more than offset the former bitter attacks. [Illustration: THE EAST CHICAGO AVENUE STATION. From a Photograph.] Had it not been for the caution and secrecy which we made our rule all through the investigation, the plot would not have been successfully unraveled. Recognizing this trait in my management of the case, men close to the Anarchists gave points they otherwise would not have dared to give, and there was scarcely an hour during the investigation that I did not find some trails leading up to the arch-conspirators. I even received private letters on my way home to meals. Persons would meet me on the street, hand me letters and pass right on. Some of these letters were purposely misleading, while others contained good points; but by putting one thing with another, and working up everything, something tangible was generally produced. In many of the notes a few words would signify a great deal, and the clues would be run down to the last point. Of course, sometimes the detectives made long and weary walks with no results. But whenever the boys met with disappointments in not getting just what they expected, and even when they were kept up all night, they never grumbled or expressed dissatisfaction.