A studied attempt seems to have been made, by false dispatches, and other agencies in the public press, to create the impression that he is still alive, and that his disappearance is voluntary. I am also authorized to offer a further reward of $2,000 for any satisfactory evidence that will prove that he is not dead, and that would lead to the discovery of his whereabouts. The public is asked to discredit any and all charges, reports, or insinuations reflecting in any manner upon his professional or personal character. He was a man of temperate habits and lived a pure and unblemished life. The above rewards are offered by his friends and fellow-citizens with the full conviction that a terrible crime has been committed, and with the view that law and order may be vindicated. JAMES F. BOLAND, Chairman of Com. from Societies and Friends. CHAPTER VI. HOPING AGAINST HOPE--THE STENCH IN THE SEWER--"MURDER WILL OUT"--A GHASTLY DISCOVERY--WHERE THE BODY WAS FOUND--THE RECOGNITION BY CAPTAIN WING--ITS HORRIBLE APPEARANCE--EVIDENCES OF A FOUL CRIME--THE CORPSE AT THE MORGUE--PITIABLE SCENES OF GRIEF--THE OFFICIAL AUTOPSY--THE BRUTAL WAY IN WHICH THE PHYSICIAN HAD BEEN DONE TO DEATH. It is always the unexpected that happens. Even the closest friends of the missing man, earnest as they apparently were in the declaration of their belief that he had been the victim of foul play, still hoped against hope that their fears would not be realized. As a drowning man clings to a straw, so they clung to the hope that they would again see him alive and in the flesh. But it was not to be. Dr. Cronin did _not_ leave Chicago on the night of his disappearance. He was _not_ seen on a street car apparently en route to the depot. He was _not_ recognized on Canadian soil; nor did he unbosom himself to reporter Long. He was _not_ en route to London to betray the cause to which he had devoted so large a portion of his active life; or to re-enforce the spy Le Caron in his work of infamy. Dr. Cronin was murdered. While these reports and rumors were confounding his friends and making his enemies exultant; his body, hacked and marred and battered, was rapidly decomposing in one of the sewer catch-basins in the town of Lake View. [Illustration: THE CATCH-BASIN--SOUTH VIEW.] WHERE THE BODY WAS FOUND. Ten days after the physician's disappearance the board of public works of Lake View received a complaint that the sewer at the corner of Evanston Avenue and North Fifty-Ninth Street was apparently choked up, and that the foul air in the neighborhood was beginning to be a nuisance. No immediate action was taken. Another complaint came in, and another, and very soon they were counted by the score.