Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb PlottersTunney, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters
Tunney, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Germany
It took just 28 minutes to cover the 20 miles to Fifty-Ninth Street
and Fifth Avenue, and we turned south to the section around Fortieth
Street. We found the office of the storage company--empty. The
warehouse itself was at 342 West 38th Street, and we hurried over
there, arriving simultaneously with the detectives who had been tracing
the check number from the Pennsylvania station. An old watchman was
in charge who knew nothing whatever of the records of the office, but
who turned bright green when we told him what we were after. While
Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Murphy, Sterett, Walsh and Fenelly went up
into the recesses of the warehouse to hunt for the trunk, I called
headquarters.
“Commissioner Woods just called and wants you to call him at the
Harvard Club,” the office said. I did so, and reported our progress.
“Get that trunk as fast you can and find out exactly what’s in it,”
said the Commissioner. “Washington just called me to say that Governor
Colquitt down in Dallas just wired them. He says Holt’s wife got a
letter from Holt dated July 2 saying that he’s put dynamite on a ship
now at sea, and that it will sink on the seventh!”
On the fifth floor of the great dark barn they discovered the trunk,
with a dozen others on top of it. There were no lights, and it was
necessary to roll it over, haul it out, snake it across other piles,
and carry it down four flights of steep stairs in the dark to the
office. Barnitz picked up an axe and hacked the lock away. He lifted
the cover, and there we found one hundred and thirty-four sticks of
dynamite--one hundred in their original box, and the rest packed in
small spaces between hammers, nails, bolts, and other tools, several
bottles of sulphuric and nitric acid, and 197 detonating caps--a pretty
package to trundle down four flights of dark stairs and open with an
axe!
Fifty sticks of the original 200 were unaccounted for. I telephoned the
report to the Commissioner, and followed it to the Harvard Club, in
44th Street, while Barnitz telephoned for the inspector of combustibles
to come and take possession of the explosives. The Commissioner, with
Guy Scull, were sitting in the lounge, and I was reporting in greater
detail when the Commissioner was called to the telephone. He returned a
moment later, and his first remark was this:
“_Holt is dead at Mineola!_”
And there went our case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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