He finally told them that his name was Walter McArdle, that he’d lately come over from England, and that his occupation was acting for the movies. He had no family and the only people he knew were the Essanay managers who engaged him, and a few of the actors in the company—and those not very well. Morrison was an artist and pushed it along the line of one of his pet rôles. Everything tended to show that the man was Walter McArdle. He later described without effort or hesitation his lodgings on Rand Street and everything in them (I don’t need to say that Spellman had been there first), where to find his accounts, letters from home, how many shirts he had, and so forth and so on. He told them, in answer to questions, all about the picture he’d been working in; you see Spellman had got everything possible out of McArdle before he left. But his crook artistry led to his instructing Morrison to make a slip or two in places where a person with an ordinary memory might not have been quite sure. Remembering too much is often more dangerous than remembering too little. McArdle, except in rare instances, was seen at the studio in North Chicago only with his make-up on, and in these rare instances it would be only for brief moments as he passed in or out of the building on his way to and from his dressing room. As a consequence those associated with him in the picture—directors, photographers, electricians, property men, and his fellow actors in the cast—were misled by Morrison’s close resemblance, and testified to his being McArdle, and that he was at the studio occupied with his work in the picture on the afternoon the robbery and assault was committed. His entire familiarity with the piece they’d been filming and incidents that happened during its progress—some, indeed, on the very afternoon of the arrest—had great weight in the Essanay offices. There were three persons whose evidence cost money, owing to the fact that they knew McArdle too well for Morrison to get by: the manager of the cheap restaurant where the movie actor got his meals; the girl waitress at the same place; and the actor who dressed in the same room with him at the Essanay studios. Particularly the last. He was a bit “fly” and saw that he had them. Also he wanted his in advance. This mass of evidence, with much more—such as that of the janitor of the building where McArdle roomed and many minor things that had been attended to—accomplished its purpose. No doubt existed that the police had arrested the wrong man. The police themselves were convinced of it. And the necessary formalities for his release having been gone through, Bill Morrison made his getaway. Not many days later Max Spellman did the same.