THE MURDER OF DR GRADY
The weather prophets declared that it was to be one of the driest and
hottest summers on record; and, for once, the prophets seemed in a fair
way to be justified. The strain of the long, bright, rainless days
began to tell upon Londoners. Two or three terrific thunderstorms shook
the nerves of the feeble. Sundry earthquake shocks, though remote from
these islands, imparted a sense of apprehension, and concurrently with
these stern manifestations of Mother Nature, there were other hints
of dread events--suggestive of a moral cataclysm, a war of classes, a
volcanic outburst that would rend the bounds of social life.
In this state of disquietude, sensational revivalism moved many
neurotic persons to grotesque manifestations in the name of religion.
And, on the other hand, it was well known that vice was rampant in
every class of society, the eagerness of the pleasure-seekers for some
new excitement, however vulgar or debasing, assuming the proportions of
a mania.
“Scenes” in Parliament were of almost weekly occurrence, and signs
of hysteria became manifest, even in the speech and conduct of
men who held office as cabinet-ministers or as judges. Though the
Government was tottering to its fall, the Opposition, torn with
internal jealousies, was not in a position to take advantage of its
opportunities. Difficult problems of international law had arisen,
but the Attorney-General, who had for some time been suffering from
a mortal disease, was practically unavailable as an adviser, while
the second law officer, Sir John Westwood, was said to still be
incapacitated by what eminent doctors described as complete “nervous
breakdown.”
In the midst of this debilitated condition of political and social
life, there was one movement which day by day seemed to gather strength
and audacity. The London Emigration League still stood forward to claim
attention and collect funds. White-washed, in a sense, by the verdict
at the Central Criminal Court, the Leaguers of London, as they were now
generally called, published appeals to the charitable, and organised
marches and demonstrations, which, without committing actual breaches
of the law, made known the ever-increasing numbers of the League, and
its strangely cosmopolitan membership.
It was the foreign element in the League that gave rise to special
uneasiness at the Home Office and Scotland Yard. Ere long the sense
of insecurity already germinating in the public mind was greatly
accentuated by a startling discovery, rumoured, though not yet proved,
to be connected with the Leaguers’ campaign. This was nothing less than
the unmasking by Detective-Inspector Henshaw of a dynamite factory,
only seventeen miles from London. In all probability the discovery
would never have been made but for a murder of revenge, almost
unexampled in its cold and calculated deliberation, and in all respects
notable in the annals of criminology. It was a story of the ruthless
edict of a secret society within a society, and that society was
believed to be none other than the League; it revealed, when the story
became fully known, the remorseless execution of a mysterious mandate,
which yet again illustrated the truth that, however subtle and well
considered the plan of crime, murder, in the end, will out.
The victim of the crime was one Grady, a doctor, who, after spending
some years in New York, had come to England and acquired a fifth-rate
medical practice in the purlieus of Holborn. His house and surgery
were in Red Lion Street, not far from Red Lion Square. Grady was a
man of ill-balanced mind, and given to intemperance. For some reason,
never fully explained, he quarrelled with his friends. And, justly or
unjustly, was suspected of betraying their plans to the police.
The doctor became an object of hatred and fear in the eyes of his
former associates, and the inner circle--or “actives,” as they were
euphoniously styled--deliberately sentenced him to death. Early in June
a man passing under the name of Featherstone took a room in the house
facing that in which the ill-fated doctor carried on his miserable
practice. Some articles of furniture and other things, including
a large packing case, were bought by Featherstone and sent to his
lodgings. At about the same time Featherstone, under the name Rolf,
became the tenant of a house at Rickmansworth, which was let with a
builder’s yard containing sundry sheds and outbuildings. Ostensibly
these premises were to be used for the purpose of manufacturing
Portland cement. At the end of the garden and yard ran the Grand
Junction Canal. Close at hand was the River Colne; and in this way
facilities were available to convey chalk and clay from a neighbouring
estate to the “factory,” and to send the cement, when manufactured, on
barges to London.
Rolf, the “innocent manufacturer,” who was bent on developing this
useful industry, advertised for a medical man to attend his workmen in
case of illness or accident, and a marked copy of the paper containing
the advertisement was sent to Grady. The doctor, compelled, doubtless,
by his needy circumstances, swallowed the bait, and without much delay
a contract was made with him on “club terms.”
The significance of this was that cement-making is not really a
dangerous trade, and that there were many doctors practising nearer to
Rickmansworth.
One night, a few weeks later, a man drove up in a cab, presented Rolf’s
card to Dr Grady, and said his services were required at the cement
works for one of the workmen, who had met with an accident. Grady at
once put his instruments together and drove with Rolf’s representative
to Baker Street. The unnamed agent then accompanied him by rail to
Rickmansworth. In the darkness of the sultry night, he was conducted
to his doom. The house of which Rolf was the tenant was approached by
a lonely lane on the outskirts of the little town. The two men were
seen to enter by the front door, and a labourer who was approaching
at no great distance declared that he heard a smothered cry, followed
by heavy blows, and then a fall. His statement was not made known
until some time had elapsed, as almost immediately after hearing these
ominous sounds, he was knocked down and stunned by a motor-car.
Meanwhile the packing-case had been brought from Red Lion Street to
Rickmansworth. The day after the crime, it was removed in a wagon. The
wagon was seen again later, but in the interval the packing-case had
vanished. It was found, empty, on the following day near Northwood.
Grady’s clothes were found in a portmanteau in a neighbouring
sewer, and the portmanteau was afterwards identified as one that
Featherstone--_alias_ Rolf--had bought and taken to his rooms in
London. Finally, the naked body of poor Grady was discovered in a
backwater of the River Colne. The head of the unfortunate man showed
cuts and wounds in quite a dozen different places. He had been brutally
and determinedly done to death.
The police now overhauled the house at Rickmansworth, and there found
other signs of an awful struggle and a cruel crime. Futile efforts had
been made to paint out the blood-stains on the floor.
From the house, the examinations were extended to the sheds and
workshops, and though there were signs of removal and attempted
concealment, enough remained to show that the place was in truth
designed for the manufacture of bombs and other murderous explosives.
There were invoices, letters, and receipts imperfectly destroyed
by fire, that showed the harmless “cement-maker” to be a buyer of
sulphuric acid, mercury, picric acid, saltpetre, and other ingredients
of explosive compositions. These and other facts the inquest brought
to light, partly owing to the self-importance of a fussy coroner, who
disallowed the efforts of the police to keep back certain features of
the ghastly story. Meanwhile the murderers, who obviously had command
of ample funds, had fled the country.
Sensational journals were not slow to unfold the tale of terror under
startling headlines. Something akin to panic seized the country and
coerced the Government into action. The Solicitor-General, though out
of town, received earnest communications from ministers, and it was
afterwards known that he had framed some of the most drastic clauses
in the Bill which was forthwith introduced in the House of Commons.
This measure obtained a Parliamentary record by passing through both
Houses in a single day. It provided legal machinery for the suppression
of conspiracies. It was part French and part Irish in its origin, and
designed in effect to prevent the illegal manufacture and possession of
explosives.
The country, it was pointed out in Parliament, had been lulled into
a false sense of security by the absence of dynamite outrages for a
considerable time. But not so very far back, in a period of eleven
years, there had been no less than sixty-nine crimes and attempted
crimes by means of infernal machines, bombs, and other engines intended
for the wholesale destruction of life and property. No wonder there
were dark and agonised forebodings; for none could feel assured that
history was not about to repeat that grim and blood-stained page in
England’s capital.