THE SINN FEIN PLOT
FORTUNATELY for O’Sheill’s peace of mind, he left the house before
Williams made his discovery. He stepped into the street painfully
conscious of the large sum of money he carried. It seemed to him that
every man looked at him suspiciously. A request for a match was met with
an oath and the two women who asked him the location of a certain hotel
drew back nervously at his scowl.
He boarded the Elevated at the Ninety-third Street station and alighted
at Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, still glancing about him
suspiciously. It was not until he was in his room on the top floor of a
cheap and old hotel on the far West Side that he ventured to feel safe.
He sighed with relief as he stuffed a Dublin clay with malodorous shag.
Twenty thousand dollars! Four thousand pounds! Some would go to the
traitorous work he was employed to prosecute, but a lot of it would go
to satisfy private hates. And when it was exhausted there would be more
to come. It would be easy to conceal the notes about his person, and,
anyway, he reflected, he was not under suspicion.
He was aroused from his reveries by the sudden, gentle tapping on his
door. After a few seconds of hesitation he called out:
“What is it ye want?”
The voice that answered him was strongly tinged with the German accent
to which he had recently become used. It will not be forgotten that
Anthony Trent had a genius for mimicry.
“I’m from Mr. Williams,” said the stranger gutturally. He had followed
O’Sheill with no difficulty.
“What’s your name?” O’Sheill demanded.
“We won’t give names,” Trent reminded him significantly. “But I can
prove my identity. I was in the house at Ninety-third Street when you
came. The money was given you to stir up trouble in Ireland and
circulate rumors that will embarrass the British government and made bad
blood between English and American sailors. You have twenty
one-thousand-dollar bills and you put them in a green oilskin package.”
“That’s right,” O’Sheill admitted, “but what do you want?”
He was filled with a vague uneasiness. This young man seemed so terribly
in earnest and his eyes darted from door to window and window to door as
though he feared interruption.
“Mr. Williams sent me here to see if you had been followed. Directly you
went we had information from an agent of ours that your visit was known
to the Secret Service. Tell me, did any person speak to you on your way
here?”
“No,” answered O’Sheill, now thoroughly nervous by the other’s anxiety.
“Are you sure?” he was asked.
“There was one fellow who asked me for a light, but I told him to go to
hell and get it.”
“Anything suspicious about him?” Trent demanded.
“Not that I could see.”
“That will be good news for Mr. Williams,” Trent returned. “Our agent
said the Hunchback was on the job.”
“Who’s he?” O’Sheill said.
“One of our most dangerous enemies,” the younger man retorted. “He’s a
man of forty, but looks younger. He had one shoulder higher than the
other and he limps when he walks. He’s the man we’re afraid of. I think
we have alarmed ourselves unnecessarily.”
O’Sheill’s face was no longer merely uneasy. He was terror-stricken.
“And I guess we haven’t,” he exclaimed. “_The man who asked me for a
light was a hunchback._ There was two women who asked me the way to some
blasted hotel. They looked at me as if they wanted never to forget my
face.”
“Stop a minute,” said Trent gravely. “Answer me exactly about these
women. I want to know in what danger we all stand. The only two women
known by sight to us who are likely to be put on a case of this kind
wouldn’t look like detectives. There’s Mrs. Daniels and Miss Barrett.
They work as mother and daughter. Mrs. Daniels is gray-haired, tall and
slight, with a big nose for a woman and eyes set close together. When
she looks at you it seems as if the eyes were gimlets. The girl is
pretty, reddish hair and laughing eyes.” Trent paused for a moment to
think of any other attributes he could ascribe to the unknown women he
had directed to their hotel just after O’Sheill had scowled at them a
half hour back. “And very white little teeth.”
“My God!” cried O’Sheill, his arms dropping at his side, “that’s them to
the life! What’s going to happen to me?”
“If they find you with that money you’ll be deported and handed over to
your British friends. How can you explain having twenty thousand
dollars? Mr. Williams thought of that, but he didn’t actually know they
were on your trail. You must give me the money. I shan’t be stopped. You
are to stay here. They may be here in five minutes or they may wait till
morning, but you may be certain that you won’t be allowed to get away.
You must claim to be just over here to get an insight into labor
conditions.” Mr. Williams’ messenger chuckled. “I don’t believe they can
get anything on you.”
“But if they do?” O’Sheill demanded. It seemed to him that the
stranger’s levity was singularly ill-timed.
“If they do,” Trent advised, “you must remember that you’re a British
subject still--whether you like it or not--and you have certain
inalienable rights. Immediately appeal to the British authorities. Give
the Earl of Reading some work to do. Make the Consul-General here stir
himself. Tell them you came over here to investigate labor conditions.
That story goes any time and just now it’s fashionable. As an Irishman
you’ll have far more consideration from the British Government than if
you were merely an Englishman.”
“But what about this money?” O’Sheill queried uneasily.
“I’ll take it,” Trent told him. “If it’s found on you nothing can do you
any good. You’ll do your plotting in a British jail.”
O’Sheill was amazed at the careless manner in which this large sum was
thrust into the other man’s pocket. Surely these accomplices of his
dealt in big things.
“When you’re ready to sail you can get it back,” Trent continued. “That
can be arranged later. Meanwhile don’t forget my instructions. Be
indignant when you are searched. Call on the British Ambassador.” Trent
paused suddenly. An idea had struck him. “By the way,” he went on, “you
have other things that would get you into trouble beside that money.”
“I know it,” O’Sheill admitted. “What am I to do with them?”
“I’m taking a chance if they are found on me,” the younger man
commented. “But they are not after me. Give me what you have,” he cried.
Into this keeping the frightened O’Sheill confided certain letters which
later were to prove such an admirable aid to the United States
Government.
It was as Trent turned to the door that he heard steps coming along the
passage as softly as the creaking boards permitted.
He placed his fingers on his lips and enjoined silence. The furtive
sound completed O’Sheill’s distress. He felt himself entrapped. Trent
saw him take from his hip pocket a revolver.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Wait.”
He turned down the gas to a tiny glimmer. Through the transom the
stronger light in the passage was seen. It was but a slight effort for
the muscular Trent to draw himself up so that he could peer through the
transom at the man tapping softly at the door.
Unquestionably it was Williams, and the hand concealed in his right hand
coat pocket was no doubt gripping the butt of an automatic. He was a man
of great physical strength, that Trent had noted earlier in the evening.
Although of enormous strength himself, and a boxer and wrestler, he knew
he would stand no chance if these two discovered his errand. There was
no other exit than the door.
Anthony Trent stepped silently to O’Sheill’s side.
“It’s the Hunchback,” he whispered. “If once he gets those long fingers
around your throat you’re gone. Listen to me. I’m going to turn the gas
out. Then I shall open the door. When he rushes in get him. If he gets
you instead I’ll be on the top of him and we’ll tie him up. Ready?”
The prospect of a fight restored O’Sheill’s spirits. Every line of his
evil face was a black menace to Friedrich Wilhelm outside.
“Don’t use your revolver,” Anthony Trent cautioned.
“Why?” O’Sheill whispered.
“We can’t stand police investigation,” said the other. “Get ready now
I’m going to open the door.”
When he flung it open Williams stepped quickly in. O’Sheill maddened at
the very thought that any one imperiled his money, could only see, in
the dim light, an enemy. The first blow he struck landed fair and square
on the Prussian nose. On his part Williams supposed the attack a
premeditated one. O’Sheill was playing him false. The pain of the blow
awoke his own hot temper and made him killing mad. He sought to get his
strong arms about the Sinn Feiner’s throat.
It was while they thrashed about on the floor that Anthony Trent made
his escape. He closed the door of the room carefully and locked it from
the outside. Then he unscrewed the electric bulb that lit the hall. None
saw him pass into the street. It was one of his triumphant nights.
Next morning at breakfast he found Mrs. Kinney much interested in the
city’s police news as set forth in the papers.
He was singularly cheerful.
“What is it?” he demanded. “Some very dreadful crime?”
“A double murder,” she told him, “and the police don’t seem to be able
to figure it out at all.”
Trent sipped his coffee gratefully.
“What’s strange about that?” he demanded.
“I don’t see,” Mrs. Kinney went on, “what a gentleman like this Mr.
Williams seems to have been----”
Anthony Trent put down his cup.
“What’s his other name?” he inquired.
“Frederick,” said the interested Mrs. Kinney. “Frederick Williams, a
Holland Dutch gentleman living in Ninety-third Street near the Drive. He
aided the Red Cross and bought Liberty Bonds. What I want to know is why
he went to a low place like the Shipwrights Hotel to see a man named
O’Sheill from Liverpool, England?”
“A double murder?” he demanded.
“Here it is,” she returned, and showed him the paper. The two men had
been found dead, the report ran, under mysterious circumstances, but the
police thought a solution would quickly be found. Anthony Trent smiled
as he read of official optimism. He was inclined to doubt it.
When Mrs. Kinney was out shopping he read through the documents he had
taken from O’Sheill. They seemed to him to be of prime importance. There
was a list of American Sinn Feiners implicating men in high positions,
men against whom so far nothing detrimental was known. Outlines of plots
were made bare to embroil and antagonize Britain and the United
States--allies in the great cause--and all that subtle propaganda which
had nothing to do with the betterment of prosperous Ireland but
everything to do with Prussian aggrandizement. It was a poisonous
collection of documents.
The chief of the Department of Justice in New York was called up from a
public station and informed that a messenger was on his way with very
important papers. The chief was warned to make immediate search of the
premises at Ninety-third Street where a highly important German spy
might be captured.
In the evening papers Anthony Trent was gratified to learn that the
highly-born, thin, haughty person was none other than the Baron von
Reisende who had received his _congé_ with Bernstorff and was thought to
be in the Wilmhelmstrasse. He had probably returned by way of Mexico.
And certain politicians of the baser sort were sternly warned against
plotting the downfall of America’s allies. Altogether Trent had done a
good night’s work for his country. As for himself twenty thousand
dollars went far toward making the total he desired.
Consistent success in such enterprises as his was leading him into a
feeling that he would not be run to earth as had been those lesser
practitioners of crime who lacked his subtlety and shared their secrets
with others.
But there was always the chance that he had been observed when he
thought he was alone in some great house. Austin, the Conington Warren
butler, looked him full in the face on his first adventure. And that
other butler who served the millionaire whose piano he had wrecked
might, some day, place a hand on his shoulder and denounce him to the
world. Yet butlers were beings whose duties took them little abroad.
They did not greatly perturb him.