The public, hysterical with sympathy and apprehension, disgusted by the police failures and thrilled by Sheedy’s performance in the matter of the stolen painting, received the news of his intervention in the case with signs of thanksgiving. Willie McCormick’s return was breathlessly expected, and many believed the feat as good as accomplished. But this time the task was beyond the powers of even the man who enjoyed the confidence of the foremost professional criminals of the day, counted the Moroccan freebooter and rebel, Raisuli, as an intimate, forced the celebrated international fence and generalissimo of thieves, Adam Worth, to leave London and follow him across the ocean after the lost Gainsborough, rescued Eddie Guerin, the burglar of the American Express office in Paris, from Devil’s Island,[10] and seemed able to compel the most abandoned lawbreakers to his wishes. Days and weeks passed, but Sheedy got no word and could find no trace. [10] Or so says one of the most persistent of underworld legends. On the rain-drenched afternoon of May 10, John Garfield, bridge tender for the New York Central Railroad at Cromwell Creek, worked the levers and lifted the steel span to allow the passage of a steam lighter bound up the muddy estuary for a load of bricks. After he had lowered the platform again he observed that a large floating object had worked its way to the shore and threatened to get caught in the machinery which operated his bridge. He crawled out on the bulkhead with a boat hook, intending to dislodge it. At the extreme end he leaned over and bent down, prodding the object with his pole. The thing turned in the stream and swam into better view. It was the body of a boy. Garfield drew back in surprise and horror, crawled back to the bridge, called to two boys and a man, who were angling near by, and soon put out with them in a rowboat. In five minutes the body had been brought to shore and tied. Before the end of half an hour it had been identified as that of Willie McCormick. While detectives had been seeking him thousands of miles away, and European port authorities had been watching the in-coming ships for the lad or his abductors, he had lain dead in the ooze of the creek bottom, three squares from his home. The churning propeller of the steam lighter had brought the body to the surface.