Transcriber’s Note

Cover created by Transcriber, using images from original book, and placed in the Public Domain.

THROTTLED!

Inspector Thomas J. Tunney

THROTTLED!

THE DETECTION OF THE GERMAN
AND ANARCHIST BOMB PLOTTERS

BY

INSPECTOR THOMAS J. TUNNEY
Head of the Bomb Squad of the New York
Police Department

AS TOLD TO

PAUL MERRICK HOLLISTER
Author, with John Price Jones, of “The German
Secret Service in America”

ILLUSTRATED
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1919
By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)

TO
ARTHUR WOODS

Formerly Police Commissioner of the City of New York, now colonel in the United States Army, whose vision and coöperation made the work of the Bomb Squad possible, this volume is respectfully dedicated

INTRODUCTION

Inspector Tunney’s Squad was formed early in August, 1914, to specialize in organized crimes of violence. It did some radically effective work against Black Handers, and handled several cases against domestic enemies of law and order, but as time wore on and war developed, the Squad’s energies became directed solely against the nefarious activities of Germans among us.

Inspector Tunney is a most skilful detective, resourceful, persistent, understanding human nature, a good leader. He picked a squad of fearless, tireless men, who not only worked long and hard, but showed marked skill and tact. They proved themselves to be Americans all the way through, aggressive, loyal, bound to put the job through, no matter what the difficulties might be. They were occupied in hunting out Germans who were outraging our neutrality; and then—after we finally started to make war against those who had so long been warring against us, on the high seas and in our very midst—they set to work to thwart and capture active German enemies. The results they got went far toward making it possible to maintain order in New York during those months and years which were full of such menace to the safety of the city, when the national danger seemed so plain—so increasingly plain—and the national military strength was so woefully weak. In many cases the Inspector worked in coöperation with one or more of the Federal Secret Service forces. The Federal work was seriously hampered, however, at first by hopelessly inadequate organization, and, later, by the existence of several entirely distinct forces, instead of one powerful, unified body.

Inspector Tunney has written a most interesting book. Much of what he tells I knew about at the time, from conference with him, or with Major Scull, Colonel Biddle, or Major Potter, and some of the events described I had intimate knowledge of because of personal attention to the cases. Some, however, I personally know nothing about, as they have taken place since I left the Department on January 1, 1918. And a vast amount of good work, of real public service, was done by Inspector Tunney and his men that is not touched upon in this book, that probably will never be written, since, though of great value to the public peace, it lacks some of the dramatic features which characterize the tales that are told.

No one can read the book without seeing how brutally active our enemies were here in this country, even while we were at peace with them, how they flouted our neutrality brazenly and contemptuously, how they busied themselves through their accredited officials and their many secret agents in trying to paralyze our industrial life. Their deliberate effort was to prevent the shipment of all vital supplies to the Allies, and they sought this end by fomenting labor troubles, by burning factories, by blowing up ships. It mattered not the slightest to them that in this kind of activity they destroyed the property of a people at peace with them, nor did they give a deterring thought to the fact that they were maiming and killing human beings with their burnings and blastings. It did concern them, however, to keep things dark, to work under cover, so that they might continue this underhanded war against us without being found out. It was the warfare of the savage, who knows not fair play, who is guided by no rules or customs, who strikes down his enemy in the dark, from behind.

The lessons to America are clear as day. We must not again be caught napping with no adequate national Intelligence organization. The several Federal bureaus should be welded into one, and that one should be eternally and comprehensively vigilant. We must be wary of strange doctrine, steady in judgment, instinctively repelling those who seek to poison public opinion. And our laws should be amended so that while they give free scope to Americans for untrammeled expression of differences of opinion and theory and belief, they forbid and prevent the enemy plotter and propagandist.

There was another part of the Squad’s work, which had to do not with foreign, but with domestic, enemies. The industrial condition of unemployment, which was so sharp in 1914 and 1915, was exploited by those who believed in propaganda by violence, hoping to find eager and bitter listeners in the thousands who could not get work. To ameliorate the hardships of the situation the police in New York tried several plans which were at that time rather new as police methods. They found jobs for people; they afforded relief in cases of distress from funds, more than half of which were subscribed by policemen. When street meetings were held and excitement ran high, they held unswervingly to the line of conduct mapped out for them. They not merely permitted free assemblage but protected meetings so long as they kept the laws; and the law was kept if the meeting did not incite to violence or obstruct the highways. In case of threatened violence, action, prompt and strong, was taken to prevent it. Order must be maintained. Inspector Tunney’s Squad were actively engaged here, not in trying to bottle up the preachers of any particular doctrine, but simply in finding out who were the plotters of violent deeds and bringing them to justice.

I believe the police methods in these times were wholesome and effective, and are the right ones to follow in times of public excitement and industrial disturbances. They make it clear in practice that leeway will be given to all for the full exercise of their lawful rights; and equally clear that adequate means will be taken to prevent recourse to unlawful measures. In many places in this country where serious disorder and bloodshed have come to pass, the trouble seems to have been fostered, at least, by the denial to groups of people of some of their lawful rights.

I hope this book will help to teach another lesson also: the need in our police forces of brains and high morale; the need of cultivating the professional spirit in them, that shall dignify the work, shall banish political influence and all other influences that go to break the heart of the policeman who tries to do his plain duty; the need of having the public take an intelligent interest in police methods and results, doing away with the smoke-screens of mystery and concealment which are traditionally employed to cover dishonesty or incompetency.

Arthur Woods

February, 1919.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THROTTLED!

I
THE BOMB SQUAD

For the past twenty-three years I have been a member of the police department of the City of New York. It is a long time, in any single job. The department is comparable in size to a manufacturing establishment of the first magnitude—it employs more than ten thousand men—and its occupations are varied enough to suit the inclinations and ambitions of any man. And so I went through the mill, graduating from one duty to another until in 1914 I was an acting captain, and had been in charge of various branches of the Detective Bureau in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

My duty was the detection of crime, my specialty, meaning by that the special branch of crime with which I had been most often thrown into contact, was bomb-explosions. As far back as 1904 there were a number of mysterious explosions in New York which caused considerable property damage, and there I made the acquaintance of the bomb itself. It was an interesting subject for study, and a wicked weapon in use. I managed to pick up information of bomb-manufacture in several ways: Black-Handers, in prison, told me how they had made their missiles; at the New York office of the Du Pont explosives company I had an opportunity to study blasting; the publications of the Bureau of Mines furnished more information, the practice of the Bureau of Combustibles of our own department proved interesting and instructive, and I found myself before long forced to become something of a student of chemistry.

The difference between our work and the work of the laboratory chemist, however, was that in our case there was no time to make an explosive mixture and test it—some criminal usually had done that for us, and we were called to the scene to find out, from such clues as the wreckage afforded, the name and address of the criminal. The laboratory chemist mixes ingredients and counts his work done at the moment of explosion; the detective begins at that moment a stern chase, and a long one, back to the ingredients and the man who mixed them.

By the early part of 1914 I had seen a good deal of experience in tracing bomb outrages to certain of the anarchistic and Black Hand elements in the population of the city. As the year wore on these occurrences became so numerous as to warrant special attention, and on August 1, the approximate date of the outbreak of war in Europe, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods created in the police department the Bomb Squad. I was in command, and reported direct to the Commissioner. As the volume of work increased, and more men were taken on, the Commissioner delegated his supervision of the Bomb Squad to Guy Scull, who was then Fifth Deputy Police Commissioner, and who is now a major in the United States Army. That supervision was later passed on to Nicholas Biddle, a Special Deputy Commissioner, who, as I write this, is lieutenant-colonel in the United States Army, in charge of the Military Intelligence Bureau in New York; and following Mr. Biddle, Fuller Potter, another special Deputy Commissioner, and now a major in the Military Intelligence, directed the policies of the Squad.

Within a few months the personnel of the Bomb Squad included the following picked men: George D. Barnitz, Amedeo Polignani, Henry Barth, George P. Gilbert, Edward Caddell, Patrick J. Walsh, Jerome Murphy, James J. Coy, Valentine Corell, James Sterett, Henry Senff, Michael Santaniello, Joseph Fenelly, Joseph Kiley, Charles Wallace, William Randolph, Thomas Jenkins, and Anthony Terra—all detective sergeants, and George Busby, a lieutenant. To this list were added the names of James Murphy, Robert Morris, Thomas J. Ford, Walter Culhane, Vincent E. Hastings, Thomas J. Cavanagh, Louis B. Snowden, Thomas M. Goss, Daniel F. Collins, Frederick Mazer, Edward J. Maher, Walter Price, William McCahill, and Cornelius J. Sullivan. It made a list of fine material for the work which we were called upon to do, and no one will begrudge me here a word of tribute to their aptitude, their courage—to all of the qualities which made them such able and vigilant guardians of the neutrality of our country during the years preceding our entrance into the war. Many of the Bomb Squad went to war later: Barnitz became a junior lieutenant in the United States Navy, in intelligence work of a high order. Barth, Caddell, Corell, Fenelly, Jenkins, Walsh, Sterett, Santaniello, Randolph, James Murphy, Morris, Ford, Culhane, Hastings, Cavanagh, Snowden, Goss, Collins, Price, Mazer, Maher, McCahill and Sullivan became sergeants in the Corps of Intelligence Police of the National Army. And after I became connected with the Military Intelligence Branch of the War Department, I had frequent occasion to deal during the war in coöperation with the men whom I have mentioned in service.

Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Military Intelligence

My first desire in taking charge of the Squad was to suppress the activities of persons using explosives to destroy life and property. What knowledge of the physics and chemistry of explosives my experience had accumulated I passed on to the men. These periods of instruction went into considerable detail. We discussed the kinds of explosives used, their relative strength, their ingredients, the methods of detonating them, the containers into which they were loaded, and the use of clockwork, fuses, acids and gas-pressure to explode them. Special and explicit instruction was given for the handling of unexploded bombs—a bomb bearing an electrical attachment should not be placed in water, for example, as water is a conductor of electricity; it is wise never to smoke in the presence of explosives, even if you think you know that certain kinds of explosives “never explode by fire.” The only thing you can depend on explosives to do one hundred times out of one hundred, is what you don’t expect them to do. The Bomb Squad was told never to—and why never to—carry bombs on passenger trains, cars or ferries, or anywhere near where metals were being shipped. The Bomb Squad was instructed not to remove a bomb found in a position where its explosion would not endanger life and property, but to send for an expert and wait until he arrived on the scene, and was told which positions were dangerous and which were not. Altogether we conducted a rather thorough course in explosives.

As the war grew in proportions, and the interest of America in the conflict became more and more intimate, the activities of the Bomb Squad became somewhat diverted from the object for which it had been primarily organized, and its title was changed to the “Bomb and Neutrality Squad.” We had not expected in August that the German would try to tip over our neutrality with bombs, but that is what he did, and that is what kept us grimly busy for three years, until our own nation had gone to war with those who had so long been waging war upon her. And that is how the stories which follow come to be told.

Not that the entrance of the United States into the war put a stop to the activities of the Squad. I have already cited those who entered the national service. Their presence in the Naval and Military Intelligence, their close relations with those whom they left behind in headquarters, with such men as Commander Spencer Eddy and Lieutenant Albert Fish of the Navy, Colonel Biddle and Major Potter of the Army, and with the Corps of Intelligence Police, made possible a degree of coöperation in spy-hunting in New York which would have been impossible to develop within a short time with any other set of men, and which went far towards preserving our domestic security.

II
WESTPHALIAN EFFICIENCY

The trend of events in early 1915 made it apparent that the Bomb Squad would be called upon to handle more and more cases of attempted violation of neutrality. Anyone who remembers our national mind at that time will recall that it was not yet made up and very liable to attacks of brainstorm. Every person was seeing events of unheard of violence and magnitude pass him pell-mell, giving no warning, and not waiting for comment, and he was too dazed to watch any single event with any high degree of balanced judgment or reasoning partisanship. It was a troubled hour, and one in which it behooved us of the Police Department to keep our heads cool and our eyes open. The Bomb Squad had to act as a safety valve.

By the summer of 1915 war orders placed by the Allied governments in the autumn and winter of 1914 were being filled and shipped overseas in great quantities. By this time, too, the German navy showed no more sign of coming out of Kiel in force than it had shown for a year past. The task of delaying, diverting or destroying those shipments devolved upon the Germans in America. It took no superhuman amount of reasoning to combine the abnormal destruction of property in New York with the strong suspicion of German activity and to arrive at a decision to check up wherever it was humanly possible the sources and agencies of destruction.

Late in the autumn, in our work on the waterfront, we found a man who, we decided, was worth watching. We learned gradually that Paul Koenig was a pretty well-known figure along both banks of the Hudson, and that he carried, as chief detective for the Hamburg-American Line, a certain amount of authority. That steamship line, which within a week of the outbreak of war had attempted to send ships to sea under false cargo manifests to supply the German naval raiders, now had more time than business on its hands as its entire fleet was tied up in Hoboken. And yet in spite of the dull times which we knew had been thrust upon them, their man Koenig was curiously busy, and we became busily curious to find out why.

We were more curious than successful at first. We assigned men to follow him and observe his habits and haunts. This was not as easy as it might have been with another man, for the Department of Justice had already tried it and had come to the conclusion that he was not worth following.

Now a good shadow is born, not made. The moment the man followed realizes or even suspects that he is being followed, he becomes a problem and either gets away or conducts himself in a way which disarms suspicion and sometimes embarrasses the pursuit. Koenig, a man of keen animal senses, was unusually quick in discovering his shadower. It used to confuse certain agents considerably to have him disappear around a corner, and when the agent quickened his pace and swept around the same corner after him, to have Koenig pop out of a doorway with a laugh for his pursuer which meant that the day’s work had gone for nothing. I have known men who were excellent detectives and poor shadows. Sometimes they were too large and conspicuous, sometimes they were over-zealous, sometimes they excited suspicion by being over-cautious; rare enough was the combination of artlessness and skill which made a man a good shadow, told him when to saunter away in the opposite direction, when to pass his man, and how to efface himself. It is, I think, the instinct of the good fisherman who knows just how much line to run out, and just when to exert the pressure. For Koenig was a slippery fish.

Copyright, International Film Service

Paul Koenig, the Hamburg-American employe, who supplied and directed agents of German violence in America

By a new method of “tailing” or shadowing, we learned that he frequented several popular German places in the city, such as Pabst’s in Columbus Circle, the German Club, in Central Park West, where Dr. Albert, Boy-Ed and von Papen frequently went, Luchow’s restaurant in 14th Street, as well as the good American hotels Belmont and Manhattan. Both of the hotels are centrally situated, and have several entrances, including direct connection from the basement with the Subway—one of the easiest places to lose oneself in the city. (A murderer not many months ago avoided arrest for two days by riding back and forth in Subway trains.) But such places as these were no more than the natural points towards which any German might gravitate, and we could never pick up a scrap of conversation to give us a lead in any specific direction.

The fact remained that he was busy, going and coming, and that he conducted a good deal of his business from his office in the Hamburg-American building at 45 Broadway. We might as well have tried to penetrate to Berlin with a brass band as to have entered the building for information. But there was one advantage we could take: we could “listen in” on his telephone wire.

When the men tailing him reported in that he was in the Hamburg-American Building, and probably in his office, we cut in on his wire, and posted an officer at our receiver to take down all conversations which passed. The outgoing calls were disappointing. Koenig was no fool—or rather was a highly specialized fool—and was not careless enough to give information of aid and comfort to the enemy through such a gregarious medium as a public telephone wire. We listened for a long while, in vain....

Then came a call which offered possibilities. A man’s voice told Paul Koenig that it thought Paul Koenig was a “bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” and added other more lurid remarks. The conversation was short, but while it lasted indicated that someone was not pleased with Mr. Koenig. Within the next few days the same voice called “P. K.” again and told him several things it had forgotten to mention, all pointing to the fact that the owner of the unknown voice had been misused.

We hunted up the number from which the disgruntled calls had been made. It was a public telephone pay-station in a saloon. Crucial events can almost always be traced to some trivial circumstances—the poem “for the want of a nail the battle was lost” is an illustration of what I mean. We are not dealing here with possibilities but with facts, yet I cannot sometimes help speculating on the extent to which German atrocities might have been carried in New York and Canada, if we had not found a bartender with a good memory in that saloon. Yes, he remembered a fellow who had come in there at certain times to telephone. Yes, he came in once in a while. Didn’t know his name, but thought he lived around the corner at such and such a number. At that number we found out the man’s name—the bartender’s description had been accurate. The name was George Fuchs.

So to George Fuchs we mailed a letter, typed on the stationery of a wireless telegraph company, suggesting that we had a position for which we believed he was the proper man, and that we would be pleased to have him call at the office of the company, at an appointed hour, to discuss the work and wages. Fuchs did not show up at the appointed hour, which disturbed the plans momentarily, but when he did arrive, he was greeted cordially by an executive of the “company” who proceeded to get acquainted with the applicant. The manner of the wireless person was so disarming, his German was so good, and his certainty that Fuchs was the man for the job so taken for granted that the two adjourned to a nearby restaurant. (Detective Corell had a very good working knowledge of German.)

“Who did you say you were working for?” Corell asked, across the crater of Fuchs’s glass of beer.

“That bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” Fuchs sputtered. “He is some relative of my mother’s. She was a Prussian, though, Gott sei dank!”

Corell laughed at the right time, and in the conversation which ensued drew out the man’s grievance against Koenig. In September Mr. and Mrs. Koenig had paid a visit to the Fuchs household in Niagara Falls, N. Y., where Fuchs lived with his mother in the Lochiel Apartments. The wonders of the Falls had received proper attention from the strangers, and Koenig showed some interest in the Welland Canal, the channel through which shipping circumnavigates the Falls. He said that the waterway was closely guarded, otherwise he would like to go over and have a look at it, and suggested, as a convenient substitute, that Fuchs go over to Canada and take some snapshots of the locks for him.

“Why don’t you go yourself?” Fuchs asked.

“They would probably pick me up if I did,” Koenig replied.

“Well, that’s just why I won’t take any camera over there with me,” Fuchs rejoined. “But I’ll go if you want a report.”

The bargain was closed. Fuchs, Koenig said, was the very man, as he was known on the Canadian side as George Fox, was an American by birth, and would not excite suspicion. So at 7 P. M. of September 30—slightly more than a year since Horst von der Goltz and Captain von Papen had made their first abortive attempt to destroy the Canal—“Fox” registered at the Welland House in Welland, close by the waterway. There he spent the night. The next morning he went to Port Colborne, the Lake Erie mouth of the Canal, and during the balance of the day followed its course northward, making mental notes of the shipping and the construction and guarding of the locks. By night he had reached Thorold, where he found a room, jotted down his observations, and spent the night. The next day he covered the balance of the 27 miles to Lake Ontario, noting the number of locks, and the fact that there were two or three armed soldiers on guard at each. With his head full of good ideas for bad plans he reached Niagara Falls again that night—October 2.

Koenig was enthusiastic over his report, but when Fuchs had written it down he decided that it would be hazardous to have such a document found on his person. “Mail it to me at Post Office Box 840 in New York. Sign it just ‘George’—nobody would know who that was even if they did find it.” He went back to New York. Fuchs heard nothing from him for a few days, except that action had been deferred. Then the country cousin began to importune the city cousin, and Koenig suggested that he come down to New York to work for him. Which Fuchs did, and on October 8 was placed on the payroll of the “Bureau of Investigation” at eighteen dollars a week. Koenig arranged that Fuchs was to hire men who would row a boatload of dynamite across the upper Niagara River to smuggle it into Canada, and he had meanwhile arranged with two others, Richard Emil Leyendecker, his chief assistant, and Fred Metzler, his secretary, to carry out a definite plan to sever the main artery of lake traffic by blowing it to pieces.

By Sunday, November 7, Fuchs had been occupied in several odd jobs for Koenig, such as spying on outward-bound cargoes along the waterfront, doing special guard duty at Dr. Albert’s office, and going over to Hoboken to frighten a poor German agent named Franz Schulenberg, who had come on from the west to collect money from von Papen. On that Sunday he was sick and did not report for duty. He asked for his regular pay, however, and Koenig refused it, doubting that Fuchs had really been too ill to report, and holding that illness should never interfere with service to the Fatherland. This created bad blood between the two. On November 22 Koenig discharged him for “constant quarrelling with another operative, drinking, and disorderly habits,” and announced that he would not be paid for his services of the previous day, when he had refused to go on duty in a river-launch. That $2.57 due Fuchs had poisoned his soul against Koenig, and he had grown so bitter that the result we already know—evidence was at last in our hands for an arrest.

It was a case for federal prosecution, obviously, so we called in Captain William Offley and Agent Adams, an able operative of the Department of Justice. A few hours later Koenig was placed under arrest. He resented the intrusion, and snapped to Barnitz: “Anyone who interferes with Germans or the German Government will be punished!” His house up-town was searched and that search disclosed, among other matters, an item which is unquestionably one of the richest prizes of the spy hunt in America.

It was Paul Koenig’s little black memorandum book—a loose-leaf affair, scrupulously typewritten, and brought down to within a day of his arrest. A fanatic on office efficiency might have conceived it, but none but a German would have kept it posted up. For it told the story of his Bureau of Investigation with a devotion to detail almost religious.

The Hamburg-American Line probably never thought that when they assigned a shrewd ruffian named Paul Koenig to investigate an alleged case of wharfage graft in Jersey City away back in 1912 they had established a “Bureau of Investigation.” But Paul Koenig knew better. He surrounded his lightest activities with an air of mystery and efficiency true to the best of amateur-detective tradition. He called his first case by a mystic number, he conferred the ominous alias of “xxx” upon himself, hired a man named Fred Metzler as his secretary, and convinced himself that he and Metzler were a bureau. In the light of the all-absorbing importance which his bureau held for him, we are not surprised (and we must not smile), when we see chronicled neatly in his little black book that on May 13, 1913, he rented a room at 45 Broadway for “new offices,” on May 24 his first private telephone was installed, on Nov. 19 a steel cabinet was purchased for the files of the department, on May 28 of 1914 the adjoining room was added to Room 82, and Room 82 was converted into a private office for the chief, and on July 14 a new safe was purchased and placed in the office. It may be that the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand had something to do with that last item, for it is certain that the Hamburg-American Line knew that war was coming well in advance of the declaration. At any rate, we find that on July 31, 1914, before England and Germany had actually gone to war, and on the same day that the director of the Hamburg-American in New York received instructions from Berlin that war was coming and that he was expected to supply German naval vessels in American waters—on that day Paul Koenig began his war duties by placing a special guard on all the piers and vessels of the Line in New York Harbor.

Up to this time the cases Koenig had handled were matters of shipping—stowaways, fires, steerage rates, charges against ships’ officers. On August 22 he became a German military spy. We find it entered in his own words:

“Aug. 22. German Government, with consent of Dr. Buenz, entrusted me with the handling of a certain investigation. Military attaché von Papen called at my office later and explained the nature of the work expected. (Beginning of Bureau’s services for Imperial German Government.)”

The “certain investigation” consisted in sending two men to Canada to spy on the Valcartier training camp where the first Canadian Expeditionary Force was being mobilized, and to report to the military attaché their state of readiness, in order that he might try some means of keeping them at home if it were not already too late. What von Papen had in mind was dynamiting the Welland Canal; it failed, but the case is of momentary interest to us here because it marked the beginning of a service on Koenig’s part which grew very fast and extended in many and diverse directions.

The Bureau was divided into three parts, the pier division, the special detail division, and the secret service division, or “Geheimdienst.” No one was allowed to forget that P. K. was head of all three. In his rules and regulations he records, among other gems, these:

“#2. In order to safeguard the secrets and affairs of the department prior to receiving a caller, hereafter my desk must be entirely cleared of all papers excepting those pertaining to the business in hand.

“#9. All persons related to me, however distant, will be barred from employment with the Bureau of Investigation. This does not apply to my wife.

“#6. It has been found detrimental to the discipline of the Office to invite direct employees of the Bureau to my residence or other place socially, or to accept their invitations, therefore this practice must cease. This ruling does not apply to agents of the Secret Service Division nor to direct employees if engaged with me on an operation which requires either social entertainment or travelling.”

He had an elaborate and complicated outlay of badges, shields and photographic identification cards for each operative, for which each operative stood the expense. His meticulous attention to detail, and the diligent caution which he observed at all times is indicated in a list of aliases which he set forth in the memorandum book. In 26 cases listed he used 26 different names—none of them his own. For example, in what he called “D-Case 250,” in dealing with an operative named “Sjurstadt” Koenig was known to Sjurstadt only as “Watson”; in D-Case 316, when he negotiated with his agent von Pilis (a propagandist who was later interned, by the way) Koenig was “Bode.” He devised a new name for himself for every new case, and sometimes used two or three names in dealing with different individuals in the same case. Naturally a man of as many identities as Koenig had to keep a record of who he was, and so his list of aliases furnished the government with an excellent catalogue of the pies in which he had his tough fingers. Each of his own employees in the Secret Service Division was known to him in three ways: by his Christian (or rather, his German) name, by a number, and by a special pair of initials. Thus Richard Emil Leyendecker, the art-woods dealer associated with him in the Welland Canal affair, was Secret Agent Number 6, known as “B. P.”; Otto Mottola, a member of the New York Police Department was Secret Agent Number 4, known as “A. S. (formerly A. M.).” The connections of the bureaus were mentioned in his reports by numbers, the Imperial German Embassy being 5000, von Papen being 7000, Boy-Ed 8000, and Dr. Heinrich Albert, the commercial attaché of the embassy, 9000.

SECRET SERVICE DIVISION.

List of Aliases Used by XXX.

SECRET SERVICE DIVISION.

Ciphers Used In
Confidential Reports
(Oct. 1914-Sept. 1915)

——oOo——

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

SECRET SERVICE DIVISION.

SAFETY BLOCK SYSTEM

Operatives of the S. S. Division, when receiving instructions from me or through the medium of my secretary as to designating meeting places, will understand that such instructions must be translated as follows:

For week Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 (midnight)

A street number in Manhattan named over the telephone means that the meeting will take place 5 blocks further uptown than the street mentioned.

Pennsylvania R. R. Station means Grand Central Depot.

Kaiserhof means General Post Office, in front of P. O. Box 840.

Hotel Ansonia means Cafe in Hotel Manhattan (basement).

Hotel Belmont means at the Bar in Pabst’ Columbus Circle.

Brooklyn Bridge means Bar in Unter den Linden.

For week Dec. 5 to Dec. 12 (midnight)

Code to remain the same as previous week.

For week Dec. 12 to Dec. 19 (midnight)

A street number in Manhattan named over the telephone means that the meeting will take place 5 blocks further downtown than the street mentioned.

SECRET SERVICE DIVISION.
(Geheimdienst)

Rules and Regulations.
—1915—

#1. Beginning with November 6th, no blue copies are to be made of reports submitted in connection with D-Case #343, and the original reports will be sent to H.M.G. instead of the duplicates, as formerly.

#2. In order to accomplish better results in connection with D-Case #343, and to shorten the stay of the informing agent at the place of meeting, it has been decided to discontinue the former practice of dining with this agent prior to receiving his report. It will also be made a rule to refrain from working on other matters until the informant in this case has been fully heard; and all data taken down in shorthand. (11-11-15)

#3. Beginning with November 28th, 1915, all operations designated as D-Cases will be handled exclusively by the Secret Service Division, the Headquarters of which will not be at the Central Office, as heretofore. This change will result in discontinuing utilizing operatives or employees attached to the Central Office, Division for Special Detail and Pier Division. On the other hand, great

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

In the same way he disguised his meeting places. In his instructions to the Secret Service Division we find this:

“Operatives of the S. S. Division when receiving instructions from me or through the medium of my secretary as to designating meeting places will understand that such instructions must be translated as follows:

“For week Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 (midnight).

“A street number in Manhattan named over the telephone means that the meeting will take place 5 blocks further uptown than the street mentioned.

“Pennsylvania R. R. Station means Grand Central Depot.

“Kaiserhof means General Post Office, in front of P. O. Box 840.

“Hotel Ansonia means café in Hotel Manhattan (basement).

“Hotel Belmont means at the bar in Pabst’s Columbus Circle.

“Brooklyn Bridge means bar in Unter den Linden.”

Each week he rearranged this code, so that anyone who thought that cutting in on a telephone call meant knowing where Koenig was bound was not likely to find him there. The man knew his German New York, and had numerous convenient meeting places where he could meet an agent and converse undisturbed, such as a German hotel at Third Avenue and 42d Street, or a German bar at Broadway and 110th Street, or a lodging house at South and Whitehall Streets, near the lower tip of the island, or a saloon connected with a Turkish bath in Harlem. He not only made it almost impossible to trace him by tapping his own wire, but his operatives were instructed to call him from pay-station telephones in locations where there was not one chance in a million of identifying the person who had called. Fuchs, of course, was the one-millionth chance, but Fuchs was no longer obeying Koenig’s orders, was persistent, and careless. Altogether Koenig had built up a system of caution on paper which almost beat the game, and which enabled him to conduct a large volume of business.

The functions of his departments were clearly defined. The pier division guarded the piers and vessels of the Line, and furnished him information of sailings from the New York waterfront, which he in turn passed on to the naval attaché, Boy-Ed. Through this division he was able to keep in touch with the waterfront element for whatever service of violence might be necessary, and to keep a fairly complete record of shipping. The special detail division was assigned to the guarding of von Bernstorff’s summer place at Cedarhurst, Long Island, Dr. Albert’s office in the Hamburg-American building, von Papen’s office at 60 Wall Street, and the Austrian consulate in New York. This division conducted every week a test to determine whether or not Dr. Albert was being shadowed. We find entered in his notes on his operatives this:

“H. J. Wilkens is commended by me for good service rendered thus far as attendant on Dr. Albert. This commendation is based on a note received from the latter under date of November 12, reading as follows:

“‘Dear Mr. Koenig:

“‘The service rendered by your bureau’s operative, H. J. Wilkens, have proven entirely satisfactory.

“‘Yours truly,
(Signed) H. T. Albert.’”

Apparently Koenig’s performance of his duty to the German cause encouraged the high officials of the German government in the United States to rely upon him, for these posts were gradually placed under his direction during the summer of 1915, the Embassy at Cedarhurst on July 3, Dr. Albert’s office on Sept. 1, von Papen’s office on Oct. 26, and the Austrian Consulate on December 15—three days previous to Koenig’s arrest, and less than a week after Captain von Papen, who was returning to his own country by the request of our country, had called P. K. to the German Club to “express his thanks for the services this Bureau have rendered to him.” “At the same time,” the little notebook confides, “he bid me Good-Bye.” We find these functions mentioned with a suggestion of reverence.

But the autobiography of Paul Koenig resumes its dark shroud of mystery when it turns to the functions of the division of secret service. There he is the dominating figure, a sort of cross between a Dr. Moriarity and a gorilla, a slippery conniver one minute and a pugnacious bully the next, convicted by his own complimentary reports. It was in handling the “D-cases” already mentioned that he employed his many false names, his secret numbers, his elusive places of appointment, and his essentially Teutonic discipline. The nature of the work of this division may best be suggested by citing a case which appears rather often in his records—Case D-343.

may not be in my interest. The stenographer of the Central Office, however, will continue to write out checks as heretofore, but the check-book itself, will always be kept under lock and key. (11-23-15)

#11. Operatives of the Pier Division in future will carry as their means of identification only the Bureau’s identification card, on the reverse side of which a photograph of the bearer will be pasted, with my signature written above and below the photo. The front side of the card will also bear my signature. These men will not carry any more shields, as in the past. Any changes in the personnel of the Pier Division, such as attachments and detachments, will be brought to the attention of the Marine Superintendent or other Superintends at whose piers they are stationed. There will be special operatives selected to check up operatives of the Pier Division and employees of the piers, who will not be named to anyone in advance, but who will, at Intervals, make their inspections, carrying with them as their means of identification, a commission consisting of a letter on Company’s stationery, setting forth their authority, which will be duly signed by me and counter-signed by one of the Company’s Vice Directors. These special operatives

are to be known as Central Office men, and do not come under the jurisdiction of the Pier Division. (11-23-15)

#12. Beginning with today, specific plans have been decided upon as to the best manner in which to keep newspapers and clippings dealing with the war and political subjects. Clippings that refer to D-Cases of this Bureau will continue to be placed in the private files, together with their respective reports. An exception to this particular rule may be made in the event that there are too many clippings at hand, in which case they may be bound together and kept separate, as is being done in the case of operation D-#332. Other clippings are to be mounted on cardboard, and the name of the newspaper and date typewritten thereon. Articles of interest that cover an entire page or more will not be clipped, but will be kept whole in a temporary folder in view of binding same later. This, also applies to copies which deal with matters on which reports have been rendered. (12-7-15)

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

covering G. G. Station #3 on Sunday, November 21st, from 10 A.M. until 5 P. M. Contrary to the list of assignments for the Pier Division he did not do guard duty at the Hoboken Piers during the night of November 20th to 21st. In order to be at his new post, G. G. Station #3, he was given this night off with pay, to be charged to Case #242. Wages while on duty at G. G. Station #3 will be the same as heretofore.

H. v.Staden on November 22d, at 10 A. M., reported to Central Office duty as instructed. He will work jointly with Opt. W.H.M., his salary to remain unchanged.

H. Pearsall, on Saturday, November 20th upon being instructed by Opt. H.J.W. that he was to be assigned to the Pier Division, declared that he refused to accept this post, and tendered his resignation. According to a written report submitted by Opt. H.J.W., H. P. acted insolently, and belittled this Bureau’s service. As H. P. did not tender his resignation to me personally or by mail, I did not take cognizance of what he told Opt. H.J.W. regarding leaving the department, but discharged him at once upon hearing of his conduct. His services ended on November 21st at 10 A.M. While he has been an alert watchman, he has often proven to be a cranky, quarrelsome employee, who was the cause of a great deal of trouble while on the piers.

I congratulate myself on having ridden this Bureau of an ignorant, stubborn and hot-headed man of the caliber of Pearsall, whose last words to stenographer F. Metzler were that he would not trust me for a dollar. While it is understood that this former employee is disbarred from reinstatement, he will never be given any sort of a recommendation, nor will I receive him. He is to be kept out of the office entirely.

George Fuchs was dismissed from the Bureau’s services on November 22d at 4.30 P.M. The reason for his discharge is general conduct displayed on Company’s piers, constant quarreling with another operative, drinking and disorderly habits. He will receive no pay for the night of November 21st to 22d, during which he refused to join Opt. J.P.C. in his duties on Company’s Launch #4.

William McCulley, on November 16th at 3 A.M., was appointed Chief of the Secret Service Division, his duties to commence on Sunday, November 28th, at 9 A.M. Salary $28. per week. Upon his word he promised to remain in this capacity for at least six months and to be at my disposal at all hours. He is to take a residence in New York City, and will be known as “William MacIntyre” at the Headquarters of the Secret Service Division to be established on December 1st, 1915.

R. E. Leyendecker, on November 23d, at 11 P.M., was appointed Assistant to the

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

Rule number 1 of the division stated:

“Beginning with Nov. 6 (1915) no blue copies are to be made of reports submitted in connection with D-Case 343, and the original reports will be sent to H. M. G. instead of the duplicates, as formerly.”

“H. M. G.” we learned from the key to special personages for whom the division was conducting investigations, was von Papen himself. Rule 2 reads:

“In order to accomplish better results in connection with D-Case 343, and to shorten the stay of the informing agent at the place of meeting, it has been decided to discontinue the former practice of dining with this agent prior to receiving his report. It will also be a rule to refrain from working on other matters until the informant in this case has been fully heard, and all data taken down in shorthand.”

The book revealed that in D-Case 343 Koenig’s alias was Woehler, and his agent’s name Schleindl. In his notes on operatives Koenig had written that “Friedrich Schleindl ... who was first known as Operative #51, and later as Agent C. O., beginning with October 21st will be called Agent B. I.” This enabled us to interpret a further regulation of the division, to this effect.

“Agent B. I. has been requested not to call again at the Central Office, this ruling to take effect immediately. Other arrangements will be made to meet him elsewhere. Whether or not the stenographer of the Central Office will continue to write reports covering D-Case 343 will be determined later.”

Rule 4 read:

“Supplementing Rule 2, it has been decided that I refrain from drinking beer or liquor with my supper prior to receiving Agent B. I., for the reason that I wish to be perfectly fresh and well prepared to receive his reports.”

And Rule 3 contained this passage:

“... great care is to be taken that operatives and agents of the Secret Service Division remain entirely unknown to members of the Central Office and other divisions. These regulations do not apply to D-Case 343, which has been handled since the beginning of July (1915) with the knowledge of employees not belonging to the Secret Service Division. Until more favorable arrangements can be made this practice may be continued.”

Here clearly was an unusually important case. The notes indicated that Koenig was receiving frequent reports of great value from this Schleindl, had been receiving them for at least five months, was reporting them to von Papen, and intended to safeguard his obtaining further information. When a German voluntarily forswears his beer, something serious is on foot.

Lieut. Barnitz, with Detectives Walsh and Fenelly, arrested Schleindl the same day we closed in on Koenig. In his pocket was a cablegram referring to Russian munitions. He was a German reservist, born in Bavaria. At the outbreak of war he was a clerk in the National City Bank of New York, and lived away up in the Bronx, and in the first reaction to war he reported at the German Consulate for duty. Months passed, and he had not been called upon, when one night he met a German who told him to report at the Hotel Manhattan to meet another German named Wagoner. “You’ll find him in the bar,” added his informant.

“Wagoner,” who was Paul Koenig himself, met the youth, and playing on his patriotism drew from him the information that he had access to many cablegrams to and from the Allied governments through the bank concerning the purchase and shipment of war supplies. Offering Schleindl a retainer of $25 a week, Koenig told him to steal from the files all such messages he could lay his hands on, together with copies of express-bills showing when the goods were delivered to the piers for shipment, all data relating to the prices paid, detailed descriptions of the purchases, and any other particulars which would help the German Government to complete its knowledge of what supplies America was shipping abroad. Schleindl grew quite enthusiastic in the work. Starting with light thefts, he gradually grew bolder, until he was in a position to steal documents night after night, take them to his appointment with Koenig, have them copied, and arrive at the Bank early enough the following morning to put them back where they belonged. Friday night was the regular appointment, but often messages of big shipments came in and he relayed the news at once to his chief. The extra $25 a week practically doubled his earning power, and made devotion to the Fatherland very attractive—so much so that he began to be afraid that Koenig, who was merely the receiving station for his reports, and who took no risks himself, would receive more than his share of credit. If there were any iron crosses to be given out, or any ribbons for foreign service, Schleindl felt that he had earned his, so he forwarded to his brother in Austria from time to time stenographic notes written in the Bavarian dialect which would be especially difficult of translation. In order to evade the censor he tore them into scraps and sifted them into the folds of newspapers which went unmolested through the British mail censors at Kirkwall. These scraps, pieced together and translated into reports, were forwarded by his brother to German officials.

Alexander Dietrichens

International Film Service. Inc.

Frederick Schleindl

Schleindl and Dietrichens at a German party

Schleindl’s zeal had led him into other channels of German activity. At college in Germany he had had a friend named Alexander Dietrichens, later known variously as Willish, Sander, Glass, and Lizius—one of those Riga Russians of German parentage who have served Bolshevism so eminently in Russia. In 1915 Dietrichens was in America, and the two renewed their friendship. He said he was eager to serve the Fatherland, and that he only wanted to know who was supplying munitions to the Allies to start a campaign of destruction against them. He suggested the Du Pont factories at Wilmington, and asked the young bank clerk to come along. Schleindl, impressionable and emotional, had not the courage. He confessed to me that he wept at the thought, and that he asked Dietrichens whether any harm could come to him if the explosion killed anyone. “Very likely,” Dietrichens answered cheerfully. Schleindl then declined, but he helped the dynamiter to the extent of keeping an occasional bomb or a package of dynamite for him during the day in his locker or under his desk at the bank. The main cache where Dietrichens stored his explosives was near Tenafly, New Jersey, but when Schleindl and I visited it, in a deserted spot almost a mile from the nearest building, the shanty was empty.

Schleindl was tried, convicted and sentenced to an indeterminate term in the penitentiary, for the theft of documents. Koenig pleaded guilty to the charge, but sentence was suspended on him owing to the greater importance of the Welland charges.

The Schleindl and Dietrichens cases are only two examples of many to which the little black book gave clues. It suggested investigations into many others, for it was a real storehouse of names, and knowing Koenig’s close relationship with the highest German authorities in the United States, it contributed a large number of items to the bill of complaint against Germany which provoked the President’s Flag Day warning of 1916. Koenig’s mere mention of the name of “Horn” in D-Case 277 gave evidence of the German sponsorship of the attempt of Werner Horn to blow up the Vanceboro bridge in February, 1915; the name “Stahl” in D-Case 328 indicated by Koenig’s own hand that it was he who paid Gustave Stahl for the false affidavits that the Lusitania had carried guns; the name “Kienzle” in D-Case 316 was the name of a man who was involved in trying to blow up vessels sailing for France and England; the name “Hammond” in D-Case 357 led to the disclosure that the Bureau of Investigation, although chiefly engaged in spying and destroying plots, sometimes ran other and more delicate errands for von Bernstorff.

Posing this time as “W. H. Becker” Koenig called on one J. C. Hammond, a writer and publicity man who had offices at 34th Street and Broadway. To Hammond he stated that from the standpoint of the Germans in America two newspapers were taking irritating and unfriendly attitudes. These were the New York World and the Providence Journal. Both papers had taken, soon after the outbreak of war, definite stands on the American issues involved, and both pursued the subject in a typically thorough fashion, the Providence paper obtaining much of its information from sympathetic British sources, and the World having an influential position politically which led it across the trail of what the newspaper men call “big stories.” The Providence Journal in fact emerged from comparative obscurity during the early months of war with startling charges against German agents both here and abroad, supported by evidence which seemed incredible though of sound origin. These stories were republished widely through the country. It was undoubtedly having a powerful effect upon the public, for the country, dazed with the fact of war, was ready to take sides against the nation which was apparently guilty of the worst acts. Some of those charges were true, and although they seemed at that time so fantastic as to be almost impossible, the members of the German Embassy knew they were true and squirmed inwardly every time a fresh one burst out. The World had a habit of not only spreading exciting news articles over its front page, but lending color to them by publishing photographs of supporting documents to prove their authenticity. So von Bernstorff and the attachés, after having tried to bring influence to bear in many subtle ways to curb the publications, called in Koenig, and he made his little pilgrimage to Hammond’s office.

He offered the publicity agent a large sum of money to find out what exposures the two papers had still in the ice-box, ready to release. Later, he increased this to a blanket offer of any sum which Hammond should name, provided the latter could induce the papers to turn over to him the articles and affidavits in their possession. The offer was not accepted. Hammond did not bite at the offer of a later reward of $100,000 which Koenig hung up to silence the publication of anti-German news in certain other large newspapers in the country, nor did he, as Koenig requested, go to England to visit Rintelen, to find out where Rintelen had left a trunk full of valuable papers when he fled the United States.

The name “Lewis” mentioned in the citation of another case in the little black book revealed a further variation of the services of the Secret Service Division. The United States owned a large quantity of Krag-Joergensen rifles for which in that year of peace it had no use, but which several foreign governments would have been glad to buy. Commercial bachelors who were looking for war brides all took turns paying court to the rifles, and all without success. Readers of the newspapers may recall a small tempest which raged around the alleged sale of the rifles, and the charges levelled at one after another German of the attempt to purchase. Each new charge was denied by its victim, and it finally developed that a Mrs. Selma Lewis had been involved in the negotiations, and was willing to pose as the purchaser. The “man behind” was Franz Rintelen, acting for the German Government, and the name “Lewis” here in Koenig’s notes, amplified by the full name and address of Mrs. Lewis in a small address book which we also captured, indicates that Koenig worked for Rintelen as well as the abler and more authentic members of the embassy of destruction which Germany kept in America.

I think I have made it clear that when the United States interned Paul Koenig it made prisoner one of the busiest men of the German spy system, and one of the strangest. He was physically powerful and mentally quick with a German sort of quickness. He had the most supreme self-confidence it has been my pleasure to meet, and that caused his downfall. If he had administered his bureau in a manner calculated to breed loyalty in his employees he would have been more successful, but he conceived his work as a one-man job, and made his subordinates goose-step to his tune. It is certain that had he not set down with such care every item which would be useful to the United States in unearthing his actions, no one can say how long they would have continued. Napoleon had his Waterloo, however, and Paul Koenig had his notebook, and with the same scrupulous foresight the indomitable “xxx” left that notebook where we would be most likely to find it.

HEALTH RULES.

#1. I have decide to refrain from chewing tobacco in the office, as it disagrees with my health, thereby interfering with my work. (12-1-15)

#2. I shall drink no more whiskey. (12-6)

HEALTH TABLE #1.

XI.

9-12-14-17-17-21-23-24-25-28-28- 11

XII.

1-3-5-8-9-11-13-16-

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

safeguarding of the Imperial German Embassy at Cedarhurst, L. I.

Sept. 1. Bureau was entrusted with the safeguarding of the offices of Commercial Attache Dr. Albert.

Oct. 26. Bureau was entrusted with the safeguarding of the offices of the Military Attache.

Nov. 12. Began first investigation for Austro-Hungarian Government.

Dec. 13. As 6.30 P.M. Captain von Papen, German Military Attache, received me at the German Club to express his thanks for the services which this Bureau have rendered to him. At the same time he bid me Good-Bye.

Dec. 15. Bureau was entrusted with the safeguarding of the offices of the I. & R. Austro-Hungarian Consulate General.

LIST OF
IMPORTANT CASES HANDLED.

- 1913 -

C.#17. Investigation Re: Jersey City Wharfage Graft.

C.#24. Investigation of Baggage Department, Hoboken.

C.#32. Chinese Stowaways on S.S. “PRINZ JOACHIM”, Voy. 77.

C.#40. Investigation Re: Thefts of Cargo on the Atlas Pier, New York City.

C.#41. S.S. “FRIEDRICH DER GROSSE”, Arrival at New York July 2, 1913.

C.#49. Charges Made Against W. Barbe, Chief Officer, S.S. “CARL SCHURZ”.

C.#54. Investigation Re: S.S. “PRINZ FRIEDRICH WILHELM”, Arrived at New York on June 3.

C.#67. Fire on Board S.S. “IMPERATOR” on August 28.

C.#69. Fire Patrol on S.S. “IMPERATOR”, & etc.

C.#70. Max Ludwig Thomsen, Alias Thomspson.

C.#95. Charges Against Paul Koenig.

Random Pages from “P. K.’s Little Black Book”

It is a rare treat, aside from its now past informative value. And it contains one real mystery which the Westphalian himself can alone clear up. The page headed “Health Rules” reads as follows:

“#1. I have decided to refrain from chewing tobacco in the office as it disagrees with my health thereby interfering with my work. (12-1-15.)

“#2. I shall drink no more whiskey. (12-6.)”

Which leads one to believe that he saw the practical value of an exemplary life. But we must wait for him to explain the page headed “Health Table,” which reads:

“XI

“9-12-14-17-17-21-23-24-28-28.

“XII

“1-3-5-8-9-11-13-16.”

The “XI” is evidently November, of 1915, the “XII” December. What did he do on those dates so accurately mentioned? Did temptation lead him twice from the path on the 17th and 28th of November? If so, what could this temptation have been? Is it possible that the same conscience which made him typewrite his rules of conduct weakened, and then remorse turned about and forced him to set down his lapses from grace? Is it further possible that each of the dates cited means that Paul Koenig broke his brand new health rules ten times in November and eight times in December, and chewed tobacco in office hours?

We must wait in patience—some day his Westphalian conscience may answer.

III
PLAYING WITH FIRE

The business of crime prevention and detection depends largely on the confidence one man has in another. That is one reason why a “stool-pigeon” is an uncomfortable ally on a case. You can not be sure that a man who associates with criminals and is giving them away is not giving the case away at the same time. His gang hates him for squealing, his evidence is the evidence of a traitor, and he is a good person not to depend on. I make that point here because I have always tried to avoid using stool-pigeons, and because the story to follow will illustrate what can be accomplished by a dependable man.

The story really starts about twenty years ago. In the spring of 1900, an Italian from Paterson, N. J., Brescia by name, attended a meeting of anarchists in a house in Elizabeth Street, New York. The group was composed of two parties, one which we may call the progressives, and one the inactives. Brescia assailed the inactives, denounced them as cowards, and stirred up so much dissension that the meeting broke up for fear of a police raid, and several of the members retaliated at Brescia by accusing him of being a police spy. He sailed for Italy, and on July 29, in the little Lombardi town of Monza, murdered King Humbert the Good. When the news was cabled to America it was hailed with proper grief by the public and with great joy by the anarchists who had called Brescia a traitor. His execution, which followed swiftly, made him a martyr. So to do him honor, the group was named the Brescia Circle.

By 1914 the membership of the circle was nearly 600. A cosmopolitan lot: Italians, Russians, Russian Jews, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards and Americans, of both sexes. The leaders were agitators whose speaking ability had lifted them out of the ranks and who found an easier living by their wits than by their hands. The Bomb Squad knew something of their activities and habits, for the past history of anarchist cases linked up certain names in a pointed way. We knew their fondness for bombs, and the records of the police department contain many instances of anarchists inspired to violence by the inflammatory speeches of such agitators, as their idol, Francisco Ferrer, had preached violence in Spain. The outbreak of war in Europe, from which so many of the group had migrated to America, and the promise of social confusion which it held for them had stirred the Brescia Circle more than a little. The active members met regularly in the basement of a building at 301 East 106th Street, a shabby house in a shabby district east of the New York Central tracks. These meetings, which occurred usually on a Sunday, as many of the members were working during the week, were addressed by such notorious anarchists as Emma Goldman, Becky Edelson, Frank Mandese, Carlo Tresca and Pietro Allegra—names probably unfamiliar to the general public, but names with which the Police Department had “auld acquaintance.” Occasionally an editor of an anarchist newspaper in Lynn, Massachusetts, Gagliani by name, came to speak in the cellar, and Plunkett, Harry Kelly, and Alexander Berkman were usually to be found in the group.

The winter of 1913–1914 was one of industrial depression. Many of the radical labor element rallied to the I. W. W. and the unemployed readily joined them. The methods of the anarchists and I. W. W.’s were similar, and the advocates of unrest were enlisted under both standards. In the late winter demonstrations began and multiplied until in March a youth named Frank Tannenbaum, to whom Emma Goldman later took a fancy, led a mob of I. W. W.’s into St. Alphonsus’ Church demanding food. The police waited until they had passed inside, then locked the doors, and arrested the whole lot. This was but one instance of a number which promised more trouble. Whatever nice distinctions of creed separated the Industrial Workers from the anarchists were paper distinctions; the performances of both bodies made it fairly plain that if you scratched an anarchist you found an I. W. W. underneath.

There may have been some intimation from abroad of the impending war, among the anarchists, for in July certain of them began to grow demonstrative. On Independence Day Mandese was arrested in Tarrytown, in uncomfortable proximity to the estate and person of John D. Rockefeller. Carron, Berg and Hansen, three members of the Brescia Circle, were engaged on that same day in perfecting a bomb in their rooms at Lexington Avenue and 104th Street, when the machine exploded prematurely and killed them. That bomb had been intended for the Rockefeller family. Naturally everyone with a shred of respect for order who read of these episodes recoiled from them, but it was necessary to judge them from the anarchist’s own standpoint to see that while one of the cases had resulted in death, and the Mandese incident in arrest, both had been successful in creating a disturbance. The anarchist likes disturbance as well as he dislikes order, for unrest is contagious, and means new recruits to the cause. It became our duty, therefore, to make a careful investigation of these disturbances at their source, and we insinuated a detective into the Brescia Circle itself.

He spoke only English—a good language for social intercourse, but not the key to the affairs of the group in the 106th Street basement. Whenever the more prominent agitators had a really important matter to discuss they used the Italian tongue, and it was impossible for our man to eavesdrop. Perhaps he was over-eager, for twice he was brought to trial by the Circle charged with spying. Twice he was acquitted. But when his enemies had him formally charged a third time with treachery, the anarchists decided that although they had no evidence against him beyond a powerful suspicion, he would be better outside. Outside he went.

On October 3, the anarchists gave a grand ball at the Harlem Casino in honor of Emma Goldman, and at that affair announcement was made that October 13 would be observed by those of the cause with a celebration at Forward Hall, in East Broadway, fitting to the anniversary of the “assassination” of Francisco Ferrer. The orator, Leonard Abbott, also reminded the gathering that “the Catholic Church had been responsible for Ferrer’s death.” At five o’clock in the afternoon of October 12 a vicious explosion occurred in the north aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was an anarchist’s bomb. The nave of the church held numerous worshippers, who were panic-stricken, but who fortunately escaped injury with the exception of a young man struck in the face by a flying splinter from one of the altars. Shortly after midnight of the next day a bomb placed in the front area of the priests’ house of St. Alphonsus’ exploded with violence enough to break every window in the house and every window in the house across the street. Ferrer’s “assassination” had evidently been appropriately observed.

The situation was disturbing. We had to put a stop to bombing before the anarchists grew bolder and began to kill someone beside themselves. Of course we wanted all the evidence we could lay hands on, and yet the evidence we had been able to obtain had not prevented two outrages. We felt that undoubtedly the best place to look for it was still the Brescia Circle, as it constituted the chief organization and headquarters for the element which we believed guilty. And we now return to the question of the stool-pigeon.

It would have been possible to employ one of the Circle, perhaps. It is certain that I should have been uneasy with only his evidence to depend upon, for a bomb does not wait to be investigated. Planting a man in the Brescia Circle had not been successful, but I felt that it could be made successful. So out of five or six candidates from the department I chose Amedeo Polignani for the work.

He was a young Italian detective who kept his own counsel, short, strong, mild-mannered and unobtrusive. And he knew Italian. “Your name from now on is Frank Baldo,” I said. “Forget you’re a detective. You can get a job over in Long Island City, so as to carry out the bluff. You are an anarchist. Join the Brescia Circle and any other affiliated group, and report to me every day. The older members may be suspicious of you, and they’ll probably follow you, so we had better arrange when you are to telephone and I’ll let you know whenever and wherever I want to see you.” We discussed every possible angle of the work in order to anticipate and forestall whatever accident either of omission or commission might occur to make Polignani’s position suspicious. He was instructed to call me by telephone at certain hours, using a private number, telephoning from a public pay-station in a store in which there was not more than one booth, so that no one might follow him and hear his conversation through the flimsy walls of a booth adjoining. He was to deport himself in a retiring manner, and to throw himself earnestly into the part he was to act. I felt sure that his quiet, agreeable nature would disarm any suspicion of him as a newcomer, and that complete concentration upon the spirit of the masquerade would gradually draw out important information. First and foremost, he was to be on the watch for evidence of the man who had committed the two bomb outrages in October; secondly, he was to cover the activities and intentions of the anarchists in general; thirdly, he was to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut, and to deal with any emergency which might arise.

Copyright, by International News Service

Carmine and Carbone in Court

It often happens in fiction that a man journeys to a far country and somewhere on the voyage sheds his identity like an old suit of clothes to proceed through years of adventure as another individual; in the movies it is no feat at all for a girl to disguise herself as a man and hoodwink the rest of the actors through several hundred feet of film; but it remained for a New York detective to discard his name and his associations for six months, and without once stirring outside his jurisdiction, without any disguise, and without miraculous power, to add to the records—and consequently to the efficiency—of his department a store of information of one of the most troublesome groups of anarchists in the United States.

He bade his little family in the Bronx good-by, got employment at manual labor in a Long Island City factory, and hired a cheap room at 1907 Third Avenue. Throughout November he attended meetings of the Brescia Circle, listening to bitter speeches full of wild plans to overthrow the government, and the organized church, and getting the lay of the land. To such members as chose to speak to him he was courteous and friendly, but they were not many. The more important members had a way of gathering in corners and whispering to each other, and the new member was not invited to join the charmed inner circle. So he held his peace, and memorized names and faces, and presently his opportunity came.

Polignani had noticed on November 30 a young Italian cobbler, named Carbone, who seemed to have influence in the Circle, and he confirmed this judgment on the next two Sunday evenings as he saw Carbone in whispered conversation with Frank Mandese and one Campanielli. The next Sunday night the same trio was in star-chamber session when a good-natured wrestling match started in another part of the room, and Carbone turned to watch it. Polignani was tossing various members to the floor, and as he was smoothing his ruffled hair after a short bout, Carbone tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’re a strong fellow—I’m glad to see you a member of the Brescia Circle!” The detective smiled, and the two fell into conversation, which continued as they left the society’s rooms and strolled up Third Avenue.

“The trouble with those fellows,” said Carbone, “is that they talk too much and don’t act enough. They don’t accomplish anything.”

“That’s right,” Polignani agreed.

“What they ought to do is throw a few bombs and show the police something,” Carbone continued. “Wake them up! Look—” he held up the stumps of five fingers of his right hand—“I got that making a bomb. Some day I’ll show you how to make ’em.”

That arrangement suited Polignani perfectly. He had a lead, after tedious “watchful waiting,” which had been punctuated by the explosion of a mysterious bomb at the door of the Bronx County Court House on November 11. He had listened to reams of oratory against the ruling classes, law, order and the churches, had heard his fellow members chided because the bombs at St. Patrick’s and St. Alphonsus’ had been too weak, and had heard speakers advise any members who contemplated the use of dynamite not to take too many people into their confidences. Carbone was deliberately confiding in “Baldo,” and the detective made up his mind to cultivate him.

This extract from his notebook will illustrate how the acquaintance ripened:

“I did not see Carbone again until Sunday the 27th. On this day he spoke to me of a friend named Frank and said that if all anarchists were like his friend they would be all right. He thinks nothing of making and throwing a bomb. On January 1st about 1.45 P. M. Carbone met me as per appointment. We went to where the meeting of the unemployed was being held and both of us shook hands with Louise Berg, Mandese, and Bianco.... He introduced me to his friend Frank....”

Enter the third conspirator, Frank Abarno, 25 years old, and a native of San Velle, Italy. Almost on the heels of his introduction to the promising new member, the new member began to take a new interest in life, for on January 3 Carbone drew Polignani out of the meeting after the speeches and said quietly, “Come on up to the 125th Street Station. It’s warm up there, and we won’t be bothered. I’ll tell you something about making bombs.” And on the way up Lexington Avenue Carbone explained that he needed some caps about two inches long. All the dynamite he wanted he could get from his uncle, a contractor “out in the country.” “We’ll get some dynamite, and then you and Frank and me will blow up some churches, see?”

“Sure,” the detective answered. “What church?”

“St. Patrick’s is the best. This time it’ll be a good one too—not like before.”

“Did you hear what Mandese was saying the other night?” Polignani asked. “He was scrapping with another fellow and the fellow says, ‘If they wouldn’t give me no work I’d throw bombs.’ And Mandese said to him, ‘The only kind of bombs you shoot are the kind you shoot with your mouth,’ and he says, ‘What kind of bombs do you shoot then?’ And Mandese says, ‘The kind that went off at Madison Square and the two churches, see!’”

Carbone apparently did not care for the results of the previous explosions, for he said:

“Well, they were no good. That bomb that killed Carron and Berg and Hansen wasn’t made right. It was wound too tight—that’s why it went off too soon. I can make a bomb from a brass ball off a bed-post that will start something.”

A fortnight passed, and Carbone turned up at the Brescia meeting-place in company with Abarno. They beckoned to Polignani and the three walked down Third Avenue, Abarno mouthing anarchy, and suddenly suggesting that he would like to go into St. Patrick’s, find Cardinal Farley alone, and choke him to death. The gentle soul then remarked: “Carbone, you make some bombs!”

“If I can get those caps I’ll make a bomb that will destroy the Cathedral clear down to the ground, but if I can’t get the caps then I’ll have to make the other kind.”

“Well, you make two bombs,” said Abarno. “We’ll set them off on the outside of the church about six o’clock some morning and then we can get away clean and get to work on time and nobody will know the difference.”

Carbone asked Abarno to get him some sulphur, and turned to Polignani a slip pencilled, “Collorate di Potase, 1 lb.” and “Andimonio.” “You get that at a drug store, Baldo,” he said.

“Baldo” complied, and a few weeks later the materials were assembled. Carbone instructed Polignani to call on Abarno for a booklet on bomb manufacture, and about six in the evening of February 4 Abarno gave the detective the pamphlet to read while he went out to get some spaghetti, as the two had an appointment with Carbone at 7.30. Polignani was hardly out of Abarno’s sight when he sprinted to a telephone and called me. I met him at once, at headquarters, and turned the booklet over to the photographer, who got to work immediately photographing the pages. Our time was short, and before we had the job done I had to restore the book to Polignani. On Lincoln’s Birthday Carbone gave the book to our man again, to study, and this gave us time to finish the photographic copying.

Raccomandiamo a coloro che si vogliono mettere a questi lavori, di procurarsi prima di tutto il denaro necessario; altrimenti arrischiano di doversi fermare a mezza strada, di tirar le cose in lungo ed esporsi inutilmente.

Raccomandiamo agli stessi di non trascurare nessuna delle precauzioni necessarie per non attirare l’attenzione della polizia, di non mettersi in vista colla propaganda pubblica, di non farsi vedere coi compagni conosciuti, e di non lavorare mai nelle case soggette ad essere perquisite.

Sopratutto raccomandiamo non mettersi a fabbricare esplosivi per il gusto di fabbricarli. Tutto ciò che si può avere bello e fatto, è inutile, è stupido il volerlo fare da sè, quando non si ha la pratica ed i mezzi che hanno quelli del mestiere. Nei posti in cui si può avere la dinamite—e oggi la si può avere quasi dappertutto—perchè mettersi a fabbricarla?

Bisogna poi che fra i diversi esplosivi, le diverse bombe, ecc., ognuno scelga le cose che per lui sono più facili e più pratiche ricordandosi sempre che: E’ meglio una cosa piccola fatta, che una grande restata in proposito.

—13—

stessa: si legano bene con fil di ferro intorno alla rotaia, si mette capsula e miccia, si copre con terra e la mina è pronta. Questa produce una rottura di mezzo metro. Per avere rotture più estese non v’è che preparare parecchie di queste mine, a debita distanza e munirle di miccie di eguali qualità e lunghezza; e raccogliere insieme i capi delle miccie, in modo che dando fuego alle miccie lo scoppio è contemporaneo in tutti i punti. Spesso è vantaggioso per far saltare gli scambii, cioè i punti dove s’incrociano diverse linee. Per mettere fuori d’uso una locomotiva o una macchina a vapore qualsiasi, basta far scoppiare 3 o 4 petardi in un tubo intemo della caldaia.

BOMBE

Sono recipienti di metallo pieni di materia esplosiva, che scoppiando si rompono in pezzi e feriscono i circostanti. Possono avere qualunque forma, ma la sferica è più efficace. Per farle scoppiare si può adoperare una capsula con miccia che brucia rapidissimamente tanto da aver giusto il tempo per accenderle e lanciarle. Si può anche applicarvi tutto a l’intorno dei luminelli con capsule o altri apparati, in modo che per l’urto della caduta il fulminato scoppi e faccia scoppiare la carica della bomba, come in quelle all’Orsini.

La bomba fa tanto più effetto quanto più il metallo è resistente, sempre che la carica abbia la forza di farla scoppiare. Quindi il miglior metallo è il ferro o l’acciaio, poi il rame, l’ottone, il bronzo, quindi la ghisa ed infine lo zinco solo o legato con stagno; il piombo non serve. Lo spessore delle pa-

—39—

Pages from the bomb-thrower’s textbook

I realized when I saw the translation how Carbone knew so much about making bombs.

“La Salute e’ in voi!” read the cover, or “Health is in you!” Evidently a toast to the brotherhood for which it was prepared. It was a pamphlet of some sixty pages, measuring about four by eight inches, and cleanly printed in Italian. It was nothing less than a text-book on how to go about making bombs—a sort of guide to anarchist etiquette. It would be unwise to reproduce its instructions here in detail, as they were too accurate for the general peace, but the index which follows will give a conception of the thoroughness with which the anonymous writers in far-off Italy covered their subject.

“Index—

Yes, it was accurate—and very practical. To quote from its advice to struggling anarchists:

“We recommend most earnestly that if you wish to engage in this line of work, you procure, before all else, a sufficient amount of money, otherwise you risk being put out in the middle of the street, only to find your long work and trouble all in vain. We recommend at the same time that you do not omit any precaution necessary to avoid attracting the attention of the police, and avoid mixing with the public, nor be seen with known companions. And do not work at it in the house except when necessary....

“The work should be done in a well ventilated room provided with a good chimney place and furnished in such a way that you can hide things if anyone enters, and this room ought to be on the top floor of the house on account of the odors that are always being produced....

“Above all we recommend that you never make explosives for the mere pleasure of making them. All you do beyond enough is useless and stupid—especially so when you have neither the practice nor the proper means for making them. As to the place to keep the dynamite, why make it until it is needed? Take heed that among the various kinds of explosives, bombs, etc., always choose the one that will be most easily used and most practical, remembering always that it is better to do a little thing well than to leave a big thing half done....”

The little booklet contained a list of the necessary tools with their estimated costs, and said of the chemicals to be used, “The materials to be employed should be sufficiently pure. They may be had of dealers in chemical and pharmaceutical products, and it is well not to buy all the stuff from the same merchant, in order that he may not know what you wish to make....” It explained the relative forces of explosives in this way: “The relative force which the various explosives have is as follows: Shot-gun powder has a force of 1; an equal amount of ‘Panclastite’ has the force of 6; of dynamite 7; of dry gun-cotton 9 (if with 50% of salts of nitre, 5); of nitroglycerine 9; of fulminate of mercury 10 or 3½; of nitromannite 11.... All the other explosives of which we speak, such as melenite, etc., have nitroglycerine for their bases, therefore have no greater force than that of nitroglycerine.”

After an exposition of the method of making nitroglycerine—the mere reading of which would make your hair bristle—the compilers conclude “... it is not very dangerous to use when cold, notwithstanding all that has been said. It would be a great work if some American manufacturer would devise some means of congealing it so that it would be less sensitive to shock, so that it might safely be carried on the railways.” Of fulminating cotton they remark, “As it ignites with instantaneous rapidity it is best to use a fuse that burns the most quickly; for example, when for use in bombs made to throw at a person, it will be enough to twist the cord, etc., etc.” Minute directions are given for the home-laboratory manufacture of the explosives listed, and the experimenter who cared to attempt their manufacture was warned in the simplest and most emphatic terms of the caprices of the different materials. He was told how to make cord-fuses that would burn at the rate of 8 hours to the yard, and of 6 hours to the yard; paper fuses which would reach the explosive two hours after a spark had touched the corner of a sheet of prepared paper; thread fuses which would sparkle fifteen seconds to the metre, or three minutes to the metre; and, finally, an instantaneous fuse which “Because it will burn with all the speed of electricity ... may be made to serve many important purposes: to fire a mine under a passing train, under gatherings, or troops of cavalry.”

If the bomber wished to blow up a wall, he was told how to compute by simple mathematics the quantity of explosive required. A bridge “will require twice the charge needed for a wall”—and the vulnerable points of the bridge were indicated. Telephone and telegraph poles and wires, street gratings, street railways, locomotives, steam-boilers, all came in for their share of attention. “It is very easy to find suitable receptacles for bombs,” the writer went on. “For example, large inkwells, brass handles such as are used on letter-presses.... For certain purposes a bottle may be made to serve as a bomb—they are suitable for throwing from a window.... Fragile glass bottles when filled with this solution (an incendiary mixture) make handy incendiary bombs to hurl among troops, official gatherings, etc.; also to pour from windows upon troops, or to throw from a drinking glass or pail....” I have wondered whether Gavrio Prinzip of Sarajevo ever saw this book, and whether it may not have been translated into Italian from the original German.

Mere possession of this wicked treatise would suggest that the owner was up to no good, especially if the owner, as in this case, was known to be a volatile member of an anarchistic circle who had already declared his intentions of wrecking something. It was reasonable to assume that there must be such a book of instruction in existence, that the bombers had not been handling delicate explosives with no better knowledge than word-of-mouth, hearsay chemistry, but I am free to confess that my first sight of the pamphlet brought the plots of the men we were watching very close to grim reality. I never knew just when we would get an ambulance call and have to go and pick Polignani out of the wreck of a premature explosion, and I never heard him report in on the telephone that I didn’t experience a momentary apprehension of his latest news. The detective himself was calm enough, and enthusiastic over the fact that the trail was growing hotter all the time. The question of evidence of the previous explosions was in the background now, and the activities of the Brescia Circle as a political unit did not concern us nearly as much as the activities of three of its members with their “andimonio, collorate di potase” and their pamphlet, and their hatred of the Catholic Church.

Polignani had seen this hatred demonstrated many times by Carbone. They passed two Sisters of Charity one chilly evening near the Harlem station, and the anarchist spat, and cursed them. So the detective was not surprised by Abarno’s proposal on the night of St. Valentine’s Day that the three conspirators plant their bombs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “We’ll go over there some day soon and look for a good place to set them. And then we’ll plant the bomb on some good holiday—say on March 21, eh?”

“What’s that day?” Polignani inquired.

“The Commune!” Abarno answered.

Polignani bought the antimony and the chlorate of potash, and at a subsequent meeting watched uneasily while Carbone tried to pulverize the antimony with a hammer. It was too hard work, however, and “Baldo” was directed to buy a small quantity of the pulverized substance. This he did. The three had meanwhile been trying to pick out a good room in an English-speaking lodging house in 29th Street, but finally gave it up and hired a furnished room at 1341 Third Avenue. There they brought their materials, consisting of twelve yards of copper wire, a trunk full of odds and ends, tools, fuse cord, and various ingredients. To this supply they wanted to add some hollow iron balls, but the hollow iron ball market was sparse, and they finally substituted three tin hand-soap cans. On February 27 Polignani and Abarno made a tour of inspection of St. Patrick’s, and as they were descending the steps Abarno remarked that when he had destroyed the Cathedral they would turn their attention first to the Carnegie residence at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then to the Rockefeller home. “We won’t wait till March 21,” he observed impatiently. “Let’s get this job done soon. Say Tuesday morning.”

A postcard received by Commissioner Woods after the arrest of the Anarchists

The message reads:

“Mr. Woods
My Dear Sir

Your police Espionage may go as far as you like for the promotion of your Bankrupt Law & Order of Society. The Anarchists of New York have but one Life to give for the Ideal of Humanity and absolute Freedom of mankind the world over. yours The Society for the Propagation of absolute Liberty and Human Freedom....”

High noon of the following day saw the three plotters cheerfully at work in the furnished room. Abarno and Carbone measured carefully the proportions of sulphur, sugar, chlorate of potash and antimony; Carbone filled the tins with the mixture, and led the fuses into the heart of the mass, glancing up from time to time to the detective with real pride, as if to say: “See, Baldo? That’s how an expert works!” “Baldo” had contributed his share of the materials—a few lengths of iron rod. Carbone bound these to the outside of the cans with cord, and added a few bolts which he found in a bureau drawer, and a coat-hanger, twisted out of shape. Round and round this shapeless tangle of metal he wove copper wire, and so produced two heavy, compact bombs. Polignani had grown almost gray when, after boring the fuse holes in the can-tops, Carbone casually picked up a hammer and began to tattoo the cans. The detective promptly took refuge behind the bed, near the floor.

“No use to hide there, Baldo!” This with a laugh from Carbone. “If she goes off she’ll blow the whole house down. How’s that, Frank?” he added, showing the finished product to Abarno.

“I’ll throw that one and you can throw the other, Carbone,” Abarno said. “Now listen. We will meet here Tuesday morning at six o’clock to the minute. We will get to the Cathedral just at 6.20. Then we’ll light the bombs, and the fuses will burn slow for twenty minutes, so as we can get over to the Madison Avenue car and then we can all get to work on time, and we will have a good alibi all right. Then we’ll get together Tuesday night and go some place and have a good time to celebrate throwing a scare into Fifth Avenue, boys! Tuesday morning, six o’clock sharp?”

Carbone and Polignani assented, and Abarno left.

Polignani kept in close touch with me from that moment forward. Ever since the day when Carbone had sent him to the drug store for black antimony, with instructions to bribe the drug clerk if he could not easily obtain it, we had had a double check on the conspirators, for I had assigned two men to shadow them constantly. The case was building towards a climax. Polignani had shrewdly kept the slip on which Carbone wrote the prescription for the explosives, and when Carbone asked where it was he said, “I tore it up. I didn’t want it to be found on me. It would get me into trouble.” The anarchist praised the detective for his forethought. The two men from the Bomb Squad never let Abarno and Carbone out of their sight, so that for a month we had not only the direct evidence of Polignani of what the conspirators said and did in his presence, but evidence from the two shadows which accounted for their time more fully, probably, than they could have recalled themselves. And so when Polignani—who did not know he was being observed—told me of the final plans, I passed the information on to the two shadows, and we formulated a counter-campaign for Tuesday morning.

Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, Polignani tumbled out of bed and into his clothes. He ate a hasty and nervous breakfast at a cheap lunch-room around the corner, and hurried to the sidewalk before 1341 Third Avenue, arriving a few minutes after six. Abarno joined him at 6.30.

“Where’s Carbone—isn’t he here?” he said by way of greeting.

“No,” replied “Baldo.”

“Well, we can’t wait for him. We can’t lose any time. I got to be at work at 7.30. Come up and get the bombs with me. We’ll probably meet him on the way down the street. Or maybe he’s at the shoe-shop.”

The two men went upstairs and into the third-floor-back. “Give me the key,” Abarno muttered. Polignani did so. Abarno opened the trunk and took out the two bombs. “You take one and I’ll take the other,” he whispered. “Come on. Put it under your coat.”

When they started down Third Avenue the two shadows—who had also risen early—disengaged themselves from the doorways where they were idling and proceeded at an even pace down the Avenue behind the men. A few hundred yards or so in the rear of the procession was a limousine, and I was in the limousine. I could spot the men distinctly, and I had to chuckle when I saw them catch sight of a uniformed officer a block or so ahead and hastily cross the street. The same thing occurred twice again in the course of the march. Our parade continued. No one but ourselves paid any attention to the two laborers who were carrying lumpy bundles under their coats.

At Fifty-third Street my chauffeur turned west and slipped into high speed. We were at the Cathedral in a minute more, and I jumped out and hurried into the vestibule. No one there but three or four scrub-women, puttering around in the half-light with their mops and pails. Several hundred worshippers were already gathered in the front of the nave, where Bishop Hayes was conducting early mass. As I passed into the body of the church there was no one near except an elderly usher, with white hair and beard. I stepped into a dark corner and waited.

1. Detective George D. Barnitz 2. Detective Patrick Walsh
3. Detective James Sterett
4. Left to right: Patrick Walsh, Jerome Murphy and James Sterett

A matter of two or three minutes passed, though it seemed much longer. Then I saw Abarno and Polignani enter the vestibule, cross it and enter the church itself, taking their cigars out of their mouths as they turned towards the north aisle. Abarno led the way. At the tenth pew he motioned to Polignani to sit there, and Polignani obeyed, dropping to his knees in prayer. Abarno continued to the sixth pew ahead. Two of the scrub-women had deserted their mops, and were dusting the pews along the north aisle near the newcomers. Abarno rested for a moment in his pew, with his head and body bent as if in prayer, then rose and rejoined Polignani. Again he rose, and this time moved toward the north end of the altar, where he crouched for several seconds, placing his bomb against a great pillar. With his other hand he flicked the ashes from the coal of his cigar and touched the glowing end to the fuse. He had taken perhaps three steps down the aisle again when the scrub-woman stopped plying her dust-cloth. She fastened an iron grip on Abarno’s arms and hustled him down the aisle so swiftly that no one remarked the affair. The scrub-woman was Detective Walsh, disguised. The elderly usher passed the two and hurried to the spot where Abarno had crouched by the pillar. He saw the lighted fuse and pinched it out with his fingers. The elderly usher, underneath his makeup, was Lieutenant Barnitz. Polignani was promptly placed under arrest and led to the vestibule with Abarno—for the evidence was not yet all in.

Abarno immediately suspected Carbone of treachery. He protested violently that the missing conspirator had instigated the whole affair, that it was his idea, that he had made the bombs, and that he could be found living with a Hungarian-Jewish family on the fourth floor of a house at 216 East 67th Street. He was fluent in the accusations he made against Carbone, and he grew more fluent as he recovered from the fright of his arrest. So while we escorted the two bombs and the two prisoners to headquarters, other members of the Bomb Squad visited Carbone and placed him under arrest.

From them at headquarters we verified the story as we already knew it. Each man accused the other. Both men exonerated Polignani of any part in suggesting the plot or in making the bombs for several days after their arrest. But Polignani’s true identity could not be unknown to them indefinitely, of course, and when they found out that they had been confiding in a full-fledged detective—ah, then the storm broke! Prompted, I suspect, by pseudo-legal advice, they cried “Frame-up!” until they grew hoarse, but it was too late, for in the possession of Assistant District Attorney Arthur Train was already a sworn statement which fixed their guilt by their own confession.

1. The Dagger Threat to Polignani
2. The Black Hand Threat 3. Frank Abarno
4. Carmine Carbone

The anarchists rushed to their rescue, but their efforts were chiefly verbal. At the Brescia Circle, and at I. W. W. headquarters at 64 East 4th Street, it was common gossip that counsel for the defendants were going to supply 45 or 50 witnesses to swear that Polignani had invited them to make bombs. This I had enjoined him strictly not to do, as a newcomer who talks bombs is a suspicious character in anarchist circles. I know he obeyed. There was organized a “Carbone ed Abarno Defence Committee” with headquarters at 2205 Third Avenue, which solicited other neighboring Italian clubs with anarchistic tendencies for support of the two. Polignani’s photograph appeared presently in a New York Italian newspaper with this caption:

“The filthy carrion who by order of the Police of New York devised the bomb plot which led up to the arrest of Abarno and Carbone, now before the Courts. All of us comrades will keep this in mind.”

He received several threatening anonymous letters, some bearing the familiar “black hand,” others sketching on newspaper photographs of him the point in his anatomy at which he might expect to feel the dagger of revenge; others mere bombastic defiance. (The anonymous letter-writer is very often a courageous soul who spells out his messages with letters and words clipped from newspapers, so that his handwriting will not betray him.)

What was the reward of those five months invested in patience? The two prisoners convicted and sentenced to terms of from six to twelve years, was one result. But a far greater one was a sharp decrease in bomb-throwing in New York, and perhaps the most gratifying was the discord which grew in the Brescia Circle. The group was frightened, and the members began to suspect each other of espionage. One former anarchist was quoted as saying that he wouldn’t even trust himself—he had been dreaming the night before that he was a spy. The Brescia Circle became disorganized, and several other similar groups in the city suffered the same fate. Their leaders drifted away—and got into more trouble, as we shall see later.

We never found the original of the treatise on bombs. Carbone said he had destroyed it. But there are probably other copies from the same press in the hands of accredited bomb-throwers. If not, they may apply to the New York police department.

IV
THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES

Bret Harte said that “the heathen Chinee” was peculiar. The British have learned long since that the Hindu, being an Oriental, cannot help being equally “peculiar,” and it is a great tribute to British persistence that it has labored so hard and so successfully in the good government of a people so temperamentally complex. They have studied the Hindu, and have understood him as well as may be. Understanding him they have watched him. When war broke out, this great Oriental empire presented to Britain a grave problem, for as a Hindu editor in the United States phrased it, “England is Germany’s enemy. England is our enemy. Our enemy’s enemy is our friend.”

It is not in my intention or power to discuss the methods which England employed to maintain strict loyalty in the Indian peninsula, but to outline here the part we played in uncovering a plot which threatened seriously to complicate her efforts around on the other side of the earth.

Scotland Yard told us in February, 1917, that Hindus were conspiring in bomb plots with certain Germans in the United States. If it was true, it was against the laws of our country. They supplied us with a few names, but tactfully suggested that inasmuch as it was our country and our laws which the plotters were attempting to disturb, we would prefer to develop the case ourselves. Various authorities in this country had already had strong suspicions of the British claims, but as yet those suspicions had not grown to proof of any specific act. So we went to work.

Among other names which were furnished us was that of one Chakravarty, whose address was 364 West 120th Street, New York. For more than a fortnight men of the Bomb Squad under Mr. (now Lieut.-Col.) Nicholas Biddle, as special aid to the commissioner, watched that house. They hired a room opposite, where through a slit in the window shade they could keep the doorway under observation. At the hours when working New York leaves its home to make money, and comes home at night having made it, the door was rarely used, but sometimes at mid-forenoon, sometimes in the small hours of the morning, the men on watch saw several dark-skinned individuals pass in and out of the house. The building itself gave no sign of suspicious activity. We were on the brink of war, and as was the case in most of the other houses in the block, an American flag hung draped in the front window. What went on behind the camouflage screen we did not know. Now and then our men, hiding in the shadow of the areaway, would go quietly up into the dark doorway and listen, but the house never gave out a sound. There was certainly no indication that these Hindus were conspiring with the Imperial German Government in dynamite plots.

We knew certain East Indians who could be depended upon, and told them to call upon Chakravarty. This ruse failed because Chakravarty never presented to the callers anything but a guileless reception. So far as they could learn his occupation was that of manufacturer of pills; he and a certain Ernest Sekunna constituted the Omin Company, which company packed in aluminum boxes and sold to a limited clientele pills which like most patent remedies were recommended for any ailment from indigestion up or down—if the pill sold, then it was a success. This news did not quiet our impatience, and we decided on a raid.

On the night of March 7, 1917, Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Randolph, Murphy, Jenkins, Walsh, Sterett and Fenelly called at the house, Sterett, pretending to be a messenger, and carrying a dummy package, presenting himself at the front door, and the rest of the party covering other avenues of escape. The portal was opened by a little Hindu who looked up innocently to Sterett and said that Dr. Chakravarty was not in—he had gone to Boston. The detectives announced their intention of searching the house. The little man protested, and was given certain short reasons why the search was in order. Surprise, injured innocence, and irritation crossed his olive-drab face, and he announced that he was a patriotic American and that he had never done anything to break the laws of the United States. If we wanted Dr. Chakravarty, he said, we should go and get him, and not disturb a peaceful household in this way, and he added that Chakravarty had left for New England months before, leaving no address. In this the little Hindu was borne out by the answers which the other occupant of the house gave to our questions—this was Sekunna, a German of thirty-five or so. We searched the house, and took the two prisoners and considerable material to headquarters.

A Handbill, printed in Hindu, used by the Hindu-Boche Conspirators

The search disclosed a supply of literature of the Omin Company describing the properties of its pills, a photograph of Sekunna and Chakravarty as the turbaned benefactors of an unhealthy world, and a number of express money-order receipts, deeds and a bank book which showed the missing Chakravarty to be one who had acquired a good deal of money during the past two years. The photograph on closer inspection revealed that the little prisoner was Dr. Chakravarty himself. Sekunna verified this, and Chakravarty, confronted by it, admitted it.

We asked the prisoner how he had suddenly come by the $60,000 which his books showed. He said that it was his inheritance from the estate of his grandfather in India, and that no less a personage than Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, had paid him, in December, 1916, $25,000 of the $45,000 due from the estate. About $35,000 had been given him, he added, by a lawyer named Chatterji, from Pegu, Burma, in March, 1916.

So far as he gave us his history, it related that he had graduated from the University of Calcutta, and had lived for a time in London, and later in Paris, before coming to the United States. He had heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest in India for sedition, probably due, he suggested, to his having written several articles on the subject of British Rule.

“Have you been to Germany recently?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he answered. “How could I get there, with the British watching for me? They would arrest me if I tried to go. Why do you ask that?”

“Because I wanted to know,” I answered. I had good reason to believe that he had been there because among his effects we found several exhibits which pointed toward such a trip. A letter from a woman in Florida dated December 13, 1915, said:

“I would never for one moment try to deter you from the effort or achievement of your lofty ideals and noble aims, for in this as in many other things my spirit accords with yours. Brother dear, do nothing, say nothing, trust nobody, without extreme caution. God speed you. God hasten your return to those who are interested in you, and in all in which you are interested. Bless you, precious brother.”

This indicated a journey, clearly. A cablegram dated Bergen, Norway, Dec. 23, 1915, addressed to Sekunna, read, “Safe arrival here,” and took him as far as the Continent, at least. Three postcards supplied the rest of the information; they were addressed by Sekunna to himself at a Berlin address, and bore the instructions, “Return to Sender, E. A. Sekunna, Omin Company, 417 E. 142nd Street, New York City”; postmarked Berlin in December and January, they suggested that Chakravarty had used them as part of a pre-arranged system of communication with America in which he did not wish his own name used.

I found among the papers a photographic print of Chakravarty wearing a fez, which I knew was not an orthodox head-dress for a Bengalese. Furthermore, it struck me that the print was of the size and finish usually used on passports for identification of the bearer. I showed it to him, with the remark:

“Why do you tell me you haven’t been in Berlin, when you used this photograph so you could get a passport as a Persian?”

He bit. “I see you got me,” he replied. “I lied to you. I want to tell you a different story—the real one. I did go to Germany.”

“Why?”

“To see Wesendonck. He is a secretary for India of the German foreign office. He wanted to make plans for propaganda for the liberation of India from British rule.”

Chakravarty sat there and unfolded an amazing story. He touched gingerly upon his own part in it at first, then evidently sensed the fact that there were others in the plot guilty of perhaps no less reprehensible but more violent crimes, and the little doctor’s capture and confession not only gave clues to the authorities which enabled them to follow up the outstanding German-Hindu plots in America, but developed prosecutions of the first magnitude and the keenest general interest.

1. Franz Schulenberg 2. Ram Chandra
3. Ram Singh (on the left)
4. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty and Dr. Ernest Sekunna
5. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty in his Persian Dress

The enterprises must be recounted out of their actual sequence. The first he claimed to have had little part in—the project of an uprising in India which its sponsors hoped would repeat the Mutiny of 1857—but with a more successful outcome. Captain Hans Tauscher, the New York agent of the Krupp steel and munitions works, was in Berlin when war broke out. He reported for active duty to Captain von Papen, in New York, as soon as he could cross the Atlantic, and one of his earliest services was the purchase of a large quantity of rifles, field guns, swords and cartridges, which he stored in 200 West Houston Street, New York. On January 9, 1915, he shipped a trainload of arms and ammunition to San Diego, California. There it was loaded into a little vessel, the Annie Larsen, which had been chartered by German interests, and the Annie Larsen put to sea, ostensibly for Mexico, where revolutionary arms were in demand. Her real destination was a rendezvous off Socorro Island with the Maverick, a tank-ship which had been bought in San Francisco with German money. The Maverick was to trans-ship the arms, flood them with oil in her cargo tanks in case she might be searched, and proceed by way of Batavia and Bangkok to Karachi, a seaport in India which is the gateway to the Punjab. There she would be met by friendly fishing vessels who would land her cargo, and if all went well, there would be a massacre of the garrison of Karachi, and hell would break loose over India. The effect of such an uprising upon Great Britain’s sorely tried military condition of early 1915 would have been incalculable. The native troops in France who were helping to stop the breach until England’s great armies could be trained would have to be recalled, the semi-loyal tribes would have seen their opportunity, Germany would hardly have hesitated to throw a Turkish force at the northern passes, and altogether it would not have been pleasant for the integrity of the British Empire.

The Maverick and the Annie Larsen missed connections at Socorro. The Annie Larsen wandered about the Pacific for some weeks and eventually put into Hoquiam, Washington, where the United States seized the arms. The Maverick blundered from Socorro to San Diego, to Hilo, Hawaii, to Anjer, Java, by way of Johnson Island, then to Batavia, Java, where she was received with disappointment by a German agent and where she was finally sold. The filibuster ended in flat and costly failure: the arms cost not less than $100,000 and probably $150,000, the freight to the Pacific Coast some $12,000, the charter of the Annie Larsen $19,000, the purchase of the Maverick involved hundreds of thousands, not to mention the individual fees of the numerous agents employed.

We knew in a general way of this plot, though it remained for the tireless efforts of United States District Attorney John W. Preston in San Francisco to unearth the details. In a raid which had been made on the office of Wolf von Igel, von Papen’s secretary, at 60 Wall Street, New York, agents of the Department of Justice had found von Igel’s memoranda of correspondence in arranging the expedition through the San Francisco consulate. But Chakravarty said that the revolutionary end of the project had been handled by another Hindu, Ram Chandra, and denied that he was guilty of any part in it. Ram Chandra had negotiated with the German consuls in Seattle and San Francisco, and through them with Tauscher and von Papen. Chakravarty supplied the names of Hindus who had sailed on the Annie Larsen, said that there had been Filipinos and Germans aboard as well, and added that the Filipinos had been transferred to a German ship, and had later escaped from her in a motorboat while she was being pursued by a Japanese cruiser. But, he said, he had nothing to do with it—it was Ram Chandra who was the real agent.

It was this Ram Chandra who was editor of the Hindu revolutionary newspaper Ghadr (Mutiny) published at Berkeley, California. He succeeded to the editor’s chair in 1914 when his predecessor, Har Dayal, out on bail after an arrest for ultra-free speech, had fled across the continent and the Atlantic Ocean to Berlin. There Dayal established the Hindustani Revolutionary Committee, collaborating with, taking orders from, and financed by the German Government, under the direction of Herr Wesendonck of the Foreign Office. Ten million marks had been placed to their credit, and German consulates throughout the neutral world had instructions through their parent-embassies to render all possible assistance to the revolutionary project, and to spend whatever money might be necessary, charging it to the account of the Indian Nationalist Party. Three hundred thousand dollars was invested in China and Java. Hindus were sent through Persia and Afghanistan into India with German credit to foster unrest, and Afghanistan itself was full of spies trying to break the Amir’s promise, given to the British Government at the outbreak of war, that he would maintain strict neutrality. It was this same Har Dayal who conferred with Chakravarty when the latter made his visit to Berlin in December, 1915. The reason for this visit to Berlin came out very soon, and that will lead us in turn to the second of the German-Hindu plots hatched in America.

The Annie Larsen’s Cash Account Gupta’s Code Message