Lincoln, the unknown

252 • LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNnow employed as a stool-pigeon by the Secret Service. He hadno team and wagon waiting in the ravine; but he did have eightdetectives waiting for him in the memorial room of the tomb.So he raced around there and gave them the signal they had allagreed upon: he struck a match, lighted a cigar, and whisperedthe password "Wash/'The eight Secret Service men, in their stocking-feet, rushedout of their hiding-place, every man with a cocked revolver ineach hand. They dashed around the monument with SwegJes,stepped into the dark tomb, and ordered the ghouls to surrender.There was no answer. Tyrrell, the district chief of the SecretService, lighted a match. There lay the coffin, half out of thesarcophagus. But where were the thieves? The detectivessearched the cemetery in all directions. The moon was comingup over the tree-tops. As Tyrrell rushed up onto the terrace ofthe monument, he could make out the forms of two men, staringat him from behind a group of statuary. In the excitementand confusion, he began firing at them with both pistols, andin an instant they were firing back. But they weren't the thieves.He was shooting at his own men.In the meantime, the thieves, who had been waiting a hundredfeet away in the darkness, for Swegles to return with thehorses, dashed off through the woods.Ten days later they were caught in Chicago, brought toSpringfield, thrown into a jail, and surrounded by heavy guardsday and night. For a time there was intense public excitementand indignation. Lincoln's son Robert, who had married intothe wealthy Pullman family, employed the best lawyers in Chicagoto prosecute the gang. They did what they could, but theyhad a hard time. There was no law in Illinois, then, againststealing a body. If the thieves had actually stolen the coffin,they might have been prosecuted for that, but they hadn't stolenit; they had not taken it out of the tomb. So the best the highpricedattorneys from Chicago could do was to prosecute theghouls for having conspired to steala coffin worth seventy-fivedollars, the maximum penalty for which offense was five years.But the case did not come to trial for eight months; public indignationhad died down by that time, and politics were atwork; and, on the first ballot, four jurors actually voted foracquittal. After a few more ballots the twelve men compromisedand sent the ghouls to the Joliet prison fox one year.