Three nights passed without result. Halpin sent new instructions to his captains, to insure that police on post would watch every report carefully.
“The fellow has got to come out into the open,” Halpin said. “He’s got to try to forget that scene on the railroad tracks. He’ll go looking for girls — and he may betray himself in doing it.”
The next night a detective phoned Halpin.
“I’ve got something,” he said. “I’ve met a girl in a hall who says she knew a guy that looked like Spencer and was tango-crazy. A few nights ago he danced with her, and he invited her to have a drink at a party at his house. She went out with him, but found that the house was just a rooming place and that there was no party. She left him. She said he mentioned having known Mildred Allison. The fellow was nervous and excited, she said. The house is near the Felecita Club.”
Halpin rushed to the address with half-a-dozen detectives. While front and rear were guarded, the captain and two men entered and found the landlady. They described the man, and she indicated a room at the head of the stairs.
The room was dark, it seemed. Halpin tired the door. It was locked. He rapped. There was no sound within. The three men put their shoulders to it and broke the door open.
The room was empty, but the bed was rumpled as if recently occupied.
The frightened landlady said she had made it up early that afternoon.
“What was this fellow’s name?” Halpin demanded.
“He wouldn’t give a name,” she said. “He paid for a week, four days ago. But he had a suitcase, and it’s gone. It looks like he’s moved out.”
She described the tenant fully. The picture tallied exactly with that of Spencer, but she had not seen gold eyeglasses.
“He had a funny suitcase,” she said. “It was that wood stuff — rattan they call it.”
Mildred Allison’s suitcase had been of rattan!
“He’s our man,” Halpin said, “and we have had a tough break. Missed him by a couple of hours! But he’ll turn up again in this part of town. I’m betting.”
Again, while Spanish rhythms were played in the South Side dance halls and young men and girls and old men and girls swayed and pirouetted in the gyrations of the tango, detectives watched.
Halpin then got a report that a man resembling Spencer had been seen in a cheap dancing resort of unsavory reputation near Twenty-second and State streets. He sent more detectives into the area.
That night a woman told a uniformed patrolman that she had been threatened by a man who had taken a room in her house two days before.
The patrolman told one of Halpin’s detectives. The sleuth had been thinking only in terms of “Mr. Spencer,” and he considered this new development only in that light. He questioned this woman.
“Is the fellow short, brown-haired, with bulky shoulders?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Is he in your house now?”
“No, he went out. I meant to tell him he must vacate the room, but I was afraid to, after he threatened me during an argument because there wasn’t a lock on the door of his room.”
The detective hurried to the house and into the room. A high collar was on the dresser. Under a paper in a small drawer of a dresser he found a loaded .32-caliber pistol. In a corner of the room was a pair of shoes caked with mud.
“Maybe he was a thief. He had a woman’s diamond ring. He showed it to me,” the landlady said.
The detective looked into a clothes closet, and saw a small rattan suitcase.
He rushed to telephone and told Captain Halpin:
“I’ve located Spencer, sure!”
The captain arrived in ten minutes with an automobile load of heavily armed detectives. Quickly he posted his men, one at the rear door, another in a doorway forty feet from the house, two in doorways across the street, out of sight. One took a position in a dark corner of the living room. Halpin and one sleuth stayed in the man’s room.
At midnight the front door downstairs slammed, and a man hurried up the stairs with heavy steps. Halpin heard the doorknob turn. He took one step forward quietly, with his .38 ready. The door swung open and Halpin thrust his gun forward.
There was a gasp and a scuffle. Halpin and his man hurled the newcomer to the floor, and handcuffs were snapped on his wrists.
In the light of the downstairs hall the detectives studied their prisoner. He was short, with thick neck and heavy shoulders. He wore a high collar and a black suit. Brown hair, blue eyes. Halpin fished a pair of gold eyeglasses from the prisoner’s vest pocket and put them on his nose.
“Just like a preacher,” Halpin said. “You could pass for a Madison Street evangelist.”
“Say, you dicks have the wrong man,” the prisoner whimpered. The voice was a drawl, low and soft.
“We’ve got the man who killed Mildred Allison Rexroat, and that’s the one we’ve been looking for!”
At the detective bureau that night Oleson and Mildred’s landlady identified the prisoner as the mysterious Mr. Spencer; and the suitcase was identified as the one carried by Mildred Allison Rexroat on her journey to death.
Then Spencer talked.
“Sure, I killed her.”
“You planned it all long before, didn’t you?”
“Sure, I did. I used to dance with the girl, and, believe me, I sure could do the tango with her. I liked her at first and soon fell head over heels in love with her. I asked her not to dance with other fellows and go around with them. I wanted her for my own. She didn’t mind me, and I got mad about it. I figured if I couldn’t have her I would put her away, and while I was doing it I would get her money and her ring.
“You know, I heard about that place out in the country. Remember, about a year ago, a woman was killed out there with a rock by somebody and they never got a line on the guy that did it? I picked that spot, I like a hammer for that kind of work, so I got a big one and went out there and put it where I could have it handy.
“I made a date with Millie and kidded her along about some people in Wheaton wanting to learn the tango. I said we had to go to Wayne to meet one of them on a farm, and she might need some money to rent a hall and make other arrangements.
“Millie fell for it. On the train I made love to her and promised her a lot, and she believed me. Women are soft for me!
“When we got off the train I said we had to walk along a dark road near the tracks. Millie didn’t mind. She said it was a fine night for a walk in the country. I tried to lead her along to the spot where I had the hammer hidden, but she didn’t want to go there, so I decided I wouldn’t make her suspicious. I didn’t want her to yell for help. I like a hammer; it’s quiet.
“I stopped near the tracks, anyway, and decided to do the work right there. I put my arm around her and held her close while I pulled out my gun. Then I stepped back a little and gave it to her, right in the face.
“She fell right over without saying a word, and I grabbed her purse and her ring. I didn’t take the bracelet. I didn’t think I could sell it for much.
“I had this train idea all figured out. I dragged Millie onto the rail and dropped her there. I figured people would say it was just another train accident. I thought for sure the train would hit her head. It was a tough break for me that I didn’t make sure her head was on the rail.”
Halpin listened grimly to the horrifying story.
As the day for the trial at Wheaton drew near, Spencer obtained a lawyer and said he would fight the charge. Meanwhile he revealed that his real name was Henry Spencer and that he had served a ten-year term at Joliet Prison for burglary.
The trial was one of the most amazing spectacles seen in an Illinois courtroom. State’s Attorney Hadley led the state’s fight to get a swift verdict and a death sentence.