the fall of the year 1914, certain changes came over the waterfront.
Great German liners of the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd
Lines, freighters of the Atlas Line, and a miscellany of other vessels
flying the red-white-and-black lay idle in port when England’s fleet
blockaded the seaward channels. Some eighty German vessels were tied
up at their piers. They dared not move, for Germany’s only available
convoys were in southern waters trying to dodge the British and prey
upon shipping. The Hamburg-American Line and Captain Boy-Ed made
several abortive attempts to supply the raiders, but the considerable
merchant fleet caught in port by the war stayed in port. This dumped
on the longshore population some thousands of ardent Boches. Meanwhile
the great steamship lines owned by neutral and allied capital entered
on a period of activity such as they had never seen before. The first
ships from abroad brought purchasing agents and European money to
barter for American supplies, for immediate delivery. Any man who owned
anything that bore a speaking likeness to a cargo-boat suddenly found
himself potentially wealthy. The whole United States began to pour into
the New York waterfront a huge volume of supplies for the Allies--and
for a time for Germany, via neutral Holland and Scandinavia--and out of
the Hudson and East rivers flowed a steady, swelling current of this
overseas trade.
By the arrival of the year 1915 the current was well under way.
The piers were extremely busy and the facilities for trouble were
multiplying. On January 3 there was an explosion on the steamship
_Orton_ in Erie Basin for which there was no apparent explanation.
A month later a bomb was discovered in the cargo of the _Hennington
Court_, but no one could say how it came there. Toward the end of
February the steamship _Carlton_ caught fire at sea--mysteriously. Two
months passed, then two bombs were found in the cargo of the _Lord
Erne_. We might have had a look at them, for that was the business of
the Bomb Squad, if those who had found the bombs had not dumped them
overboard rather hastily. A week later a bomb was found in the hold of
the _Devon City_. Again no explanation. Nor any reasonable cause why
the _Cressington Court_ caught fire at sea on April 29. Our attention
had been directed to each of these instances, and we had investigated,
and folders waited in the files for the reports which properly
developed would lead to an arrest, and the sum total of those reports
was--nothing. Then our luck turned for a moment.
The steamship _Kirkoswald_, out of New York, laden with supplies for
France, docked at Marseilles, and in four sugar-bags in her hold were
found bombs. The French authorities commandeered them, and removed
and analyzed the explosive charge. The police commissioner cabled at
once to Marseilles requesting the return of one of the bomb-cases,
together with the bag in which it had been found, and an analysis of
the contents. No answer. So he cabled again. The bomb-case then began
a journey back to the United States, presented with the compliments
of the Republic of France by M. Jusserand to the State Department
at Washington, and forwarded in turn to Mayor Mitchel of New York.
Our study disclosed that it was of a new type: a metal tube some ten
inches long, divided into two compartments by a thin aluminum disc. One
compartment had held potassium chlorate, a powerful explosive, and the
other had contained sulphuric acid. The acid had been expected to eat
through the thin disc separating the compartments, and explosion was to
have followed, but for some reason it had failed. The metals were of
good quality, and the workmanship was thorough.
Here was our first clue on the case. Many policemen work on theory
so determinedly that they exclude really important facts which do
not fit comfortably into the theory. I have always believed in
taking the evidence, building a theory upon it, and then trying to
confirm or reject that theory as new facts appear. It was well that
we followed such a policy here, for we had nothing but the bomb-tube
itself to build our theory upon. What did it offer? First, we were
fortunate in having a bomb to study, for usually the fire following
an explosion leaves no trace of its origin. We had its construction
and ingredients as real, if vague, clues. Second, we knew that
the _Kirkoswald_ had carried supplies to France, and that all of the
vessels on which bombs had been found or fires had broken out, had
also been carrying supplies to the Allies. The list, by this time, had
grown, for there were three more ship cases of fires or bombs in May,
one in June, and five in July. Our primary theory was, therefore, that
the bombs were made and placed on the vessels either by Germans or
their paid agents.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y._
Lieut. Robert Fay (on right) and Lieut. George D. Barnitz after Fay’s
arrest]
[Illustration:
_Copyright, by Underwood and Underwood_
From left to right: Fay, Daeche and Scholz, arraigned in Court]
The _Kirkoswald_ carried sugar. By examining the cargo-records of the
other ships which had suffered near or actual mishaps, we found that
they had also carried sugar, and that in the instances when fire broke
out, the highly inflammable sugar gave a lot of trouble to the fire
crew. The vigilance of the waterfront and harbor police had of course
been keyed up to detect anything suspicious, but a bomb-planter does
not often carry his bomb under a policeman’s nose, and it seemed not
unreasonable to suspect that the bombs had gone aboard with the sugar.
So I went to a sugar refinery to see how sugar was made.
I followed the process from the entry of the raw sugar to the bagging
and shipping of the finished product. All of the sugar shipped abroad
went in bags, which were sewn tight either by hand or by machinery.
After considerable testing I found that it was fairly easy to open a
hand-sewn bag and sew it up again without leaving evidence of what I
had done; the machine stitches, however, resisted any intrusion, and
were hard to duplicate once they had been taken out. I put that fact
away for future reference and looked in on the shipping department, to
learn there that the only two persons who could know of the destination
of a consignment of sugar before it was actually loaded into a vessel’s
hold were the shipping clerk of the refinery and the captain of the
lighter who took the sugar from the refinery to the ship.
So we first paid court to the lighter captains and their aids. We
followed shipments of sugar from the refinery doors to the lighters,
saw the shipping clerk hand over his bill to the captain, saw the
lighter pull out for a pier somewhere about the harbor, followed him to
the pier, and watched the transfer of the cargo into the vessel’s hold.
If a lighterman knew that hand-sewn bags could be ripped open, and
wished to insert a bomb and close the bag again, he would have to do it
on the way from the refinery to the pier--of that we were confident,
for as soon as the lighter pulled up to the vessel’s side the
stevedores rushed the cargo into the hold, the hatches were sealed, and
the cargo-checker, employed by the vessel, turned over to the lighter
captain his receipt for the consignment. There was apparently no other
time for tampering with the bags.
How to watch the bags themselves from the refinery into the vessel was
a troublesome problem. The river, during the daytime, is in constant
traffic, and navigation for a cumbersome lighter in the river-paths is
about as comfortable as crossing Fifth Avenue on foot at rush hour.
The river at night was comparatively free, and it was then that most
of the lightering was done. A waterman can identify the uncouth shapes
of queer craft on dark waters, a landsman cannot, but we had to make
the best of a bad bargain and chase the lighters in a motorboat, often
diligently following a blinking light through the mist for hours to
discover finally that it was on the wrong ship. Ships on a dark river
are like timid spinsters in a dark street--they exhibit, perhaps
through fear of collision, perhaps because ships are feminine, a strong
suspicion of anything that approaches. Our barking motorboat advertised
itself half a mile away. If we drifted we lost our quarry. We tried to
smuggle men aboard the lighters, but there were so many, and they were
bound in so many different directions, that we were not manned for this.
So passed June and July. It was a thankless task, and one which had
its risks. Detective Senff fell into the river one night when he was
chasing a suspicious character around under a pier at the foot of West
44th Street and nearly drowned before he could be pulled out. The case
seemed to be getting no further than abstractions. Ashore, however, we
learned that most of the lighter captains in the harbor were Germans,
and in an effort to reduce the field we learned the names of the
captains of the lighters which had most frequently visited the vessels
on which fires had occurred. This took time and an exhaustive study of
lighterage receipts, but it brought out the fact that in every case
of a delivery of sugar to an outward bound vessel, the captain of the
lighter had returned a full receipt--which exploded the possibility
that a lighterman might take a bag from one shipment, put a bomb in it,
and add it to the next.
I am happy now to say that we did not give up. We couldn’t, for the
ship fires were going right on, increasing in frequency, and somebody
was making bombs, for they continued to be found. On the assumption
that a lighter captain who would place a bomb in a sugar-bag must first
get the bomb, we began to shadow the captains, not only afloat but
ashore, and then suddenly the case took a queer twist and our theory of
German intrigue got badly balled up.
We followed certain lightermen to their homes, their drinking haunts,
and their other places of business, and among their other places of
business found the residence--on the lower West Side of Manhattan--of a
man known to be a river pirate. That was enough for an arrest, and on
August 27 we brought Mike Matzet, Ferdinand Hahn, Richard Meyerhoffer
and Jene Storms, Germans, and John Peterson, Swede, to headquarters
for examination. Matzet confessed that he, and “all the rest” of the
lighter captains, as he expressed it, had been regularly stealing sugar
from the consignments, and selling it to river pirates for ⅙ the market
price, which allowed the pirates to re-sell it at ⅚ the market for 400
per cent. clear profit. The pirates in a motorboat would steal into the
shadow of a lighter as she lay at her anchorage, take off a few bags,
and slip away. We had seen such boats, but had never been able to close
in and see what they were doing. The checkers who were supposed to
render a true and just account of the number of bags which later passed
into the hatches of the ocean vessels were merely accomplices who
shared in the profits when the stolen sugar was sold.
There were no bombs on the captains (who presently went to jail) but
they were all fully aware of the conditions along the waterfront, for
one said to a pirate who was “buying” sugar: “Take all you want--the
damn ship will never get over anyway!” No bombs--and what if there had
been? We were reasonably certain that the ships were being fired, but
we did not know now whether it was for German reasons, or merely to
efface the sugar thefts before the cargoes reached the other side of
the ocean and were discovered by the consignees. The conviction of the
thieves was not much consolation for the slow development of the case,
and it fixed no guilt for bombs.
But when you are bound on a long trip, and you have mislaid your
ticket, it is second nature to go through your pockets one by one,
knowing full well that it is not in any of them, for you “just looked
there.” Then you find it in one of the pockets where you knew it could
not be. Acting on a not dissimilar instinct we began to retrace our
steps from June to September, and to follow again the progress of
sugar from the refinery to the hold of the outward bound steamer. Our
theory that the bombs had some connection with the sugar was either
to be proven or destroyed this time. It was in this more or less dull
review that we made the acquaintance of the Chenangoes.
They were nothing more romantic than fly-by-night stevedores whom the
lighter companies engaged at the sugar wharves to load cargoes. They
worked by the day, or by the job, there were always plenty loitering
around to be hired, and they drew their pay and went their way. No
one ever had to wonder who they were or where they came from, for a
stout body was all the recommendation a Chenango required. They were
a nondescript type of common labor, the same, I suspect, that carried
materials for the Tower of Babel, and speaking almost as many tongues.
The same face rarely appeared a second time to be hired--not that there
was anything particularly unpleasant about the work, but rather that
all work is repulsive to a Chenango. He is the hobo of labor and if the
same man had been re-hired, no one would have noticed or cared. We paid
such attention to them as their variety permitted--followed them to all
the points of the compass, and watched them closely while they worked,
to see whether any of them seemed to linger aboard in the cargo, or
carried any suspicious package. The wickedest thing we found was an
occasional pint flask on the hip, which was no proof of any special
criminal affairs.
Ever since we had examined the _Kirkoswald_ bomb we had had lines
out to follow the sale of chlorate of potash and sulphuric acid--the
ingredients of the bomb. We examined reams of sales’ records submitted
by explosive and chemical manufacturers, traced dozens of reports from
drug stores, and found nothing of consequence. Those two substances are
widely and harmlessly used, and rarely purchased in small quantities by
any individual whose intentions might excite suspicion. Under our rigid
city explosives’ laws investigation of purchases was facilitated for
us, but all the facility in the world could not help the case without
anything to investigate. So passed September and a part of October, and
just about the time when the bomb case was growing dull and the ship
fires which were constantly occurring had almost found us calloused,
the French Government, with traditional courtesy, helped us out again,
and blew our sugar theory into many and small pieces.
[Illustration: The Fay Bomb Materials
Suit cases containing an atlas, two maps of the harbor, drawing
instruments, tools, a wig and two false mustaches, a telescope bomb,
and several packages of ingredients]
Captain Martyn, the French military attaché in New York, telephoned to
say that he thought we would be interested in a man who he believed was
trying to buy some explosive. What kind? Trinitro-toluol, or “TNT,” one
of the most violent propellants used in modern shell. Yes, we would be
interested.
A war exporter, Wettig by name, had told Captain Martyn that a fellow
with whom he shared office space had asked him to obtain a quantity of
TNT--a small quantity, for trial purposes. The purchaser, who was known
both as Paul Siebs and Karl Oppegaarde, and who lived at the Hotel
Breslin, directed Wettig to deliver the material to a Jersey address
and said he would then receive payment. On the axiom that a bomb in the
hand is worth two in someone else’s, we were introduced to Wettig, and
formulated with him a plan to follow the explosive. So on Thursday,
October 21, Detective Barnitz accompanied Wettig to a “dynamite store”
at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where the latter bought some 25 pounds of
TNT. The two returned to New York with their package. We looked up Mr.
Oppegaarde and asked him what he proposed to do with his purchase. He
said he really hadn’t the slightest idea: an acquaintance of his, a war
broker named Max Breitung, had referred a certain Dr. Herbert Kienzle,
a German clock-maker, to him as a likely person to obtain explosives.
Dr. Kienzle had placed the order, had wanted it delivered at a garage
in Main Street, Weehawken, to a man who bore the name of Fay, and who
had assured Siebs that when he had it delivered he would be paid for
his services. Further than that he knew nothing. Nobody seemed to know
anything, although here was a considerable amount of vicious explosive
in which five men were very much interested. We spent the rest of that
day in looking up what we could of the players in this little game of
“passing the TNT”--from Kienzle to Breitung to Siebs to Wettig to Fay.
Six men were assigned to the case: Murphy, Walsh, Fenelly, Sterett,
Coy and Barnitz, and they most admirably stayed on the job. On Friday
Detectives Barnitz and Coy took the explosive to the Weehawken garage.
Fay was not there, but a man who was there told the detectives he lived
at 28 Fifth Street, so the men from the Bomb Squad and their package
called at the boarding house where Fay lived. Again he was not to be
found, but our men had a chat with the landlady, who told them that Mr.
Fay was a real nice gentleman who had lived there with his friend Mr.
Scholz for a month, always paid his bills, subscribed to a magazine,
and was working on inventions, or at least so she thought, because he
used a table to draw plans on. Sociable, too--
They left the TNT for him. I ought to remind the reader that it is
harmless unless confined or heated, and cannot be properly exploded
without a proper detonating charge. It may have been a bit rough on the
boarding house, but we had gone to deliver the goods to Fay; Wettig had
told him they would be delivered (though not by whom) and we had to
carry out the plan even though Fay was not at home.
At the same hour, across the Hudson Detectives Coy, Walsh and Sterett
learned why Fay had not been receiving visitors, for they found him in
Siebs’s company in the Hotel Breslin. Effacing themselves until the
interview was over, they tailed Fay to the West 42nd Street ferry, then
across the river to Weehawken, up the long hill to the town, and to his
garage at 212 Main Street. In the early evening an automobile emerged
from the garage, driven by Fay and containing another passenger, and
wound out of town in a northerly direction along the Palisades. Behind
it was a police car. North of Weehawken a few miles where the country
is inhabited by installment-plan “villas,” moving-picture studios and
scrub-oak trees, Fay stopped his car at the roadside and disappeared
with the other man into the underbrush and then into the deeper woods.
The police car waited until they returned, and followed them back to
their boarding house, where the detectives took up a vigil outside.
A New York policeman has not the power of arrest in another state, and
it began to look as though we might have to make an arrest in Jersey,
so Chief Flynn assigned Secret Service Agents Burke and Savage to
the case and they joined forces with us Saturday morning. Detectives
Barnitz, Coy, Walsh, Sterett, Fenelly and Murphy were watching the
house in Weehawken. About noon Fay and his companion appeared, and got
aboard a Grantwood street-car. The Bomb Squad followed at a discreet
distance to the point where the men had dodged into the woods the
night before. Barnitz, who was in command, sent Sterett and Coy in
after them. But nature was against us, for the fallen leaves carpeting
the woods crackled under foot, and to snap a twig was to shout one’s
presence through the clear air. Twice Fay turned sharply around and
peered through the trees. The two detectives were nearly discovered
on both occasions. They finally decided that it would be impossible
to approach their men without alarming them, so they returned to the
waiting automobile. The police party waited an hour or more, and then
realized that Fay and his companion had evidently gone out the other
side of the woods and so worked their way back to civilization.
Barnitz thought and acted swiftly. He sent Sterett and Coy at once to
New York to cover Dr. Kienzle, on the chance that Fay might get into
communication with him--it was a long chance, but the only one that
offered, for the men were now lost to us. Barnitz, Murphy, Fenelly and
Walsh returned to Weehawken to watch Fay’s house. For two hours nothing
happened to interest them, and Barnitz was beginning to wonder whether
he would ever see his quarry again when an express wagon drove up and
stopped at 28 Fifth Street. The driver presently trundled a trunk out
of the house, swung it up into his wagon and drove off. The police car
idled along behind him for a mile or so through the Weehawken streets,
and the wagon stopped at another house. While the driver was indoors
this time, Fenelly, who was roughly dressed and light of foot, slipped
up behind the wagon, vaulted into the back of it, took one look at the
trunk and rejoined the others. “There’s a plain calling-card on the
trunk. It reads ‘Walter Scholz,’” he said. Again the expressman headed
a small parade, which terminated when the detectives saw him leave
the trunk in a storage warehouse. Barnitz dared not follow it there
for fear of arousing suspicion, and he figured that the trunk would
probably not be removed during the week-end at least. The detectives
once more returned to the boarding house and resumed their tedious
watch.
The evening passed, and there was no word either from Coy and Sterett
or the lost men. Late fall evenings in Weehawken are cold. Some time
after midnight two figures came up the street, and as they turned in
to the boarding house we saw they were Fay and Scholz. Out of the
shadows a moment later Sterett and Coy slipped up to the car--“I could
have kissed ’em both,” Barnitz said afterward. They had covered the
office of the Kienzle Clock Company at 41 Park Place, picked up Dr.
Kienzle as he left the office, tailed him until five in the afternoon,
and then saw him enter the lobby of the Equitable Building at 120
Broadway--where he met Fay and Scholz! The men conversed for a few
moments, and Fay excused himself. He went to a telephone booth and
closed the door. Sterett went into the next booth. Through the thin
partition he heard Fay call the garage, ask whether a package had been
delivered to him there, then say “it hasn’t, eh?” and hang up the
receiver. He rejoined Scholz and Kienzle and the three went to a Fulton
Street restaurant to dine. The detectives went to the restaurant but
did not dine, and when the Germans left, and Kienzle parted from the
others, they tailed Fay and Scholz to Grand Central Palace, saw them
appropriate two young women, dance with them, pledge them in a few
drinks, and finally leave them and return to Weehawken.
That trunk episode made us uneasy. It might have meant that they
had been frightened and were going to disappear, and it certainly
signified their intention of moving. We decided to force the issue, and
accordingly in the small hours of Sunday morning we directed Wettig,
of whom, of course, Fay had no suspicions, to call at Fay’s house
later in the forenoon to arrange to test the TNT. From the automobile,
which was parked at the street-corner some distance from the house,
the detectives saw Wettig enter, and in a few moments saw him come
out-of-doors with Fay and Scholz. They strolled to the street-car line,
allowed two cars to pass unsignalled, and then, suddenly, hailed a
third. It had closed doors, and when Murphy, Fenelly, and Coy, seeing
the men climbing aboard, tried to reach the car themselves, the doors
had slammed in their faces and the car was on its way. Somewhere in
the shuffle Walsh had been mislaid--he had been last seen up the block
covering an alley which led back of the boarding house. There was no
time to pick him up, and the automobile followed the car to Grantwood
and the now familiar woods. At times the car was out of sight of the
pursuers, and they fully expected to lose their men again. But from far
in the rear they saw the car stop opposite the woods. The doors snapped
open, and the first person to set foot on the ground was Walsh. The
second and third were Fay and Scholz, and the last, Wettig. Walsh had
seen them climb aboard in Weehawken, and had promptly sprinted for the
next corner ahead, where he caught the car! That was good shadowing
technique.