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. [Illustration: _Copyright, by International News Service_ Carmine and Carbone in Court]