The day passed without the defendant's whereabouts being discovered. Sheriff O'Neil reported that he had been unable to find the fugitive, but expressed his belief that he would be able to do so eventually. With that understanding court adjourned for the day. The day following, Ruef's attorneys appealed to the State Appellate Court[148] for a writ of prohibition to prevent Judge Dunne and others from further proceeding against Ruef in the extortion cases, and to show cause why the writ should not be made permanent. Ruef being in hiding, the application was not signed by the petitioner. The Appellate Court, after twenty-four hours, denied the petition. Ruef's representatives then went before the State Supreme Court with the same representations. And here, again, eventually, Ruef lost. In the meantime, Ruef had not been found. The day following his disappearance, Judge Dunne disqualified the Sheriff and named the next officer in authoritative sequence in such matters, the Coroner, W. J. Walsh, as elisor, to arrest Ruef and bring him into court. Coroner Walsh had no better success than had Sheriff O'Neil. Ruef had disappeared on the night of Monday, March 4. On Friday, March 8, after three days of unavailing search by O'Neil and Walsh,[149] Judge Dunne disqualified Walsh and appointed William J. Biggy[150] as elisor to arrest the fugitive. Within two hours Biggy, accompanied by Detective William J. Burns, had located Ruef at a road-house in the San Francisco suburbs and had placed him under arrest.[151] Having taken his man,[152] the elisor was at a loss to know what to do with him. To put him in the city prison was to turn him over to the police; to put him in the county jail was to turn him over to the Sheriff. The Chief of Police was even then under indictment with Ruef, a co-defendant; the Sheriff had been disqualified. The only alternative was for Biggy himself to hold Ruef until the court could act. Biggy accordingly secured suitable quarters at the Hotel St. Francis, and there held Ruef a prisoner until the following Monday, when he was taken before Judge Dunne. Judge Dunne refused to admit Ruef to bail, remanded him to Elisor Biggy's custody, and continued his trial until the following morning, Tuesday, March 12. Ruef immediately made application to the Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus, asking to be released from the custody of Elisor Biggy and placed in charge of the Sheriff. But here again Ruef was defeated. Elisor Biggy continued his keeper for many months following. Ruef, after his appeal to the Federal Supreme Court, had exhausted every legal device known to himself and his attorneys to escape trial in the extortion case pending before Judge Dunne.[153] His last recourse gone, Ruef found himself brought face to face with trial before a jury. On March 13 the selecting of jurors to try Ruef began in Judge Dunne's court.