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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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