accident—then close the door again, slam it, and return to his chair to see what might happen next. Or he could flood the vault, right now, with gas. The hiss and repulsive odor would tell her just as clearly as a smile that something extraordinary was under way.
He could do any of these things.
He had to concentrate to hear the sobs from within. The airtight fittings, the iron walls, and the mineral-wool insulation deadened most of the sound, but he had found with experience that if he listened at the gas pipe, he heard everything much more clearly.
This was the time he most craved. It brought him a period of sexual release that seemed to last for hours, even though in fact the screams and pleading faded rather quickly.
He filled the vault with gas, just to be sure.
Holmes returned to the Wrightwood apartment and told Minnie to get ready—Anna was waiting for them at the castle. He held Minnie and kissed her and told her how lucky he was and how much he liked her sister.
During the train ride to Englewood, he seemed well rested and at peace, as if he had just ridden his bicycle for miles and miles.
Two days later, on July 7, the Oker family received a letter from Henry Gordon stating that he no longer needed the apartment. The letter came as a surprise. The Okers believed Gordon and the two sisters still occupied the flat. Lora Oker went upstairs to check. She knocked, heard nothing, then entered.
“I do not know how they got out of the house,” she said, “but there were evidences of hasty packing, a few books and odds and ends being left lying about. If there had been any writing in the books all traces were removed, for the fly leaves had been torn out.”
Also on July 7 the Wells-Fargo agent in Midlothian, Texas, loaded a large trunk into the baggage car of a northbound train. The trunk—Anna’s trunk—was addressed to “Miss Nannie Williams, c/o H. Gordon, 1220 Wrightwood Ave., Chicago.”
The trunk reached the city several days later. A Wells-Fargo drayman tried to deliver it to the Wrightwood address but could not locate anyone named Williams or Gordon. He returned the trunk to the Wells-Fargo office. No one came to claim it.
Holmes called upon an Englewood resident named Cephas Humphrey, who owned his own team and dray and made a living transporting furniture, crates, and other large objects from place to place. Holmes asked him to pick up a box and a trunk. “I want you to come after the stuff about dark,” Holmes said, “as I do not care to have the neighbors see it go away.”
Humphrey showed up as requested. Holmes led him into the castle and upstairs to a windowless room with a heavy door.
“It was an awful looking place,” Humphrey said. “There were no windows in it at all and only a heavy door opening into it. It made my flesh creep to go in there. I felt as if something was wrong, but Mr. Holmes did not give me much time to think about that.”
The box was a long rectangle made of wood, roughly the dimensions of a coffin. Humphrey carried it down first. Out on the sidewalk, he stood it on end. Holmes, watching from above, rapped hard on the window and called down, “Don’t do that. Lay it down flat.”
Humphrey did so, then walked back upstairs to retrieve the trunk. It was heavy, but its weight gave him no trouble.
Holmes instructed him to take the long box to the Union Depot and told him where on the platform to place it. Apparently Holmes had made prior arrangements with an express agent to pick up the box and load it on a train. He did not disclose its destination.
As for the trunk, Humphrey could not recall where he took it, but later evidence suggests he drove it to the home of Charles Chappell, near Cook County Hospital.
Soon afterward Holmes brought an unexpected but welcome gift to the family of his assistant, Benjamin Pitezel. He gave Pitezel’s wife, Carrie, a collection of dresses, several pairs of shoes, and some hats that had belonged to his cousin, a Miss Minnie Williams, who had gotten married and moved east and no longer needed her old things. He recommended that Carrie cut up the dresses and use the material to make clothing for her three daughters. Carrie was very grateful.
Holmes also surprised his caretaker, Pat Quinlan, with a gift: two sturdy trunks, each bearing the initials MRW.
Storm and Fire
BURNHAM’S WORK DID NOT CEASE, the pace at his office did not slow. The fair buildings were complete and all exhibits were in place, but just as surely as silver tarnishes, the fair became subject to the inevitable forces of degradation and decline—and tragedy.
On Sunday, July 9, a day of heat and stillness, the Ferris Wheel became one of the most sought-after places to be, as did the basket of the Midway’s captive balloon. The balloon, named
At three o’clock, however, the manager of the concession, G. F. Morgan, checked his instruments and noted a sudden decline in barometric pressure, evidence that a storm was forming. He halted the sale of new tickets and ordered his men to reel in the balloon. The operators of the Ferris Wheel, he saw, did not take equivalent precautions. The wheel continued to turn.
Clouds gathered, the sky purpled, and a breeze rose from the northwest. The sky sagged toward the ground and a small funnel cloud appeared, which began wobbling south along the lakeshore, toward the fair.
The Ferris Wheel was full of passengers, who watched with mounting concern as the funnel did its own
At the base of the captive balloon, Manager Morgan ordered his men to grab mooring ropes and hang on tight.
Within Jackson Park the sudden shift from sunlight to darkness drew Burnham outside. A powerful wind reared from all directions. Lunch wraps took flight and wheeled in the air like gulls. The sky seemed to reach into the exposition, and somewhere glass shattered, not the gentle tinkling of a window extinguished by a stone but the hurt-dog yelp of large sheets falling to the ground.
In the Agriculture Building a giant pane of glass fell from the roof and shattered the table at which, just a few seconds earlier, a young woman had been selling candy. Six roof panes blew from the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. Exhibitors raced to cover their displays with duckcloth.
The wind tore a forty-square-foot segment from the dome of the Machinery Building and lifted the roof off the fair’s Hungarian Cafe. The crew of one of Olmsted’s electric launches made a hasty landing to evacuate all passengers and had just begun motoring toward shelter when a burst of wind caught the boat’s awning and whipped the five-ton craft onto its side. The pilot and conductor swam to safety.
Giant feathers rocked in the air. The twenty-eight ostriches of the Midway ostrich farm bore the loss with their usual aplomb.
In the wheel, riders braced themselves. One woman fainted. A passenger later wrote to
