As Tyrrell, Washburn, and the two Pinkerton detectives meet up at Chicago’s Palmer House hotel on the night of November 6, the streets reverberate with campaign parades for the two presidential candidates, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. On the way to the train station, Lewis Swegles joins them briefly to tell them that the Hub gang will be taking the nine o’clock train to Springfield, and one of the detectives, John McGinn, tails him to keep an extra pair of eyes on Hughes and Mullen.

At the station, Tyrrell has a moment of panic when the train begins to pull out with no sign that the Hub gang has boarded; but then, he sees them leap onto the moving front car, and he and his men manage to jump onto the back car at the last moment. In the front car, Swegles cleverly suggests to the gang that, to avoid suspicion, they should sit in different parts of the train. This allows Billy Brown to jump off the train unnoticed. Having played his part in the operation, Brown goes back to his law-abiding life as the bricklayer Bill Neely. When the train pulls into Springfield at 6 am, Swegles tells Hughes and Mullen that Brown is fast asleep in the next car.