One day last week a stocky, swarthy, middle-aged man ate luncheon, as was his wont, in the Coffee Shoppe of the Hotel Sherman, Chicago. When he was finished he bought a cigar and a form sheet for that afternoon's horse races at Washington Park. Smoking and reading he walked toward the Illinois Central railroad station, entered the crowded pedestrian tunnel passing under Michigan Avenue. As he neared the tunnel's exit, another man stepped behind him, thrust a "belly-gun" (sawed-off revolver) close to the back of his head, fired a .38-calibre bullet through his brain. With the cigar still clenched in his teeth, the form sheet still clutched in his hand, the short, stocky man plunged forward on his face, dead. The killer leaped over the body, ran through the stupefied crowd, flung away the gun and a black silk left-hand glove (anti-finger print), disappeared in the swarm of Chicago's midtown traffic. A warm corpse lying in a bloody welter is not an unusual sight for Chicago. This was Chicago's eleventh murder in ten days, its 43rd thug-killing of the year. But the newsgatherers, camera men and police who soon congregated in the pedestrian tunnel were profoundly impressed, agitated, angry. For this corpse had not been a gangster, or a policeman, or a mere citizen. He was a Newspaper Reporter — Alfred ("Jake") Lingle, the loud and powerful Chicago Tribune's seasoned expert on Chicago crime, a man acquainted with under-worldlings from the meanest racetrack tipster to Alphonse ("Scarface") Capone himself, whom he visited for the Tribune winter before last at the Capone estate in Miami Beach, Fla. From the Tribune's tower on upper Michigan Avenue soon issued a grim proclamation: "The Tribune accepts this challenge. It is war. There will be casualties, but that is to be expected, it being war. . . . The challenge of crime has been given with bravado. It is accepted, and we'll see what the consequences are to be."
As its first move the Tribune offered $25,000 reward for capture of the killer. Next it caused its own lawyer, Charles F. Rathbun, to be appointed Special Assistant State's Attorney in charge of the Lingle case.
Quick to put aside professional rivalries were the rest of Chicago's newspapers. They joined the Tribune in demanding vengeance for Martyr Lingle. The Daily News demanded the instant removal of Police Commissioner William J. Russell and Chief of Detectives John Stege. The Hearst Herald-Examiner matched the Tribune's $25,000 reward offer. The Evening Post offered $5,000. The Chicago Press Club ''stood ready" to post $10,000 more. By the end of the week there was $55,725 on the killer's head. The newspapers reprinted each other's editorials proclaiming that the shot which killed Reporter Lingle must end forever gangland's power in Chicago.