Part 13

“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.

The first wild report from Mineola had it that Holt had been shot by a German. The international consequences of the case, which had been hovering just out of reach for the past four days, now seemed certain. A nation which was still bitterly angry over the recent _Lusitania_ sinking would certainly not brook the violation of its Capitol and the attempted assassination of one of its chief figures by a German agent, and if Holt had been shot by a German, it was more than likely that he had been killed to prevent a further confession which would implicate the Imperial German Government. These thoughts passed through our minds as we motored back across the Queensboro Bridge, and retraced the route Barnitz and I had just traveled.

Holt was not shot by a German. Holt was not shot at all. An aged guard had been left to watch him that evening, just after Barnitz and I had left, for the prisoner, despairing over the Muenter identification, had already made one attempt with a bit of tin from a lead pencil to cut the arteries of his wrists, and we did not want him to try again. The old bailiff who sat outside the cell cage had not only left the cage door unlocked, but had been careless enough to leave Holt’s cell door ajar. The prisoner seemed quiet enough, and the bailiff fell asleep. He woke to find Holt’s body in a twisted heap in the center of the floor of the cell corridor. Holt had evidently been feigning sleep and while the bailiff dozed had crept out, climbed to the top of the cage, and dived headforemost to the concrete floor.

There we found him. The man’s skull was crushed from the impact of his dive. Rumors that he was shot by a mysterious rifle bullet from outside notwithstanding, Holt bore no wound except the bruise Physick gave him with the lump of coal, and the wound which was the result of his fall. If Holt was a German agent, he died with his secret.

We had no time to analyze the question. We knew that Holt had written his wife he had placed dynamite aboard a ship which was at sea, and that July 7, the date on which he had promised an explosion, was less than two hours away. On the theory that he might have shipped an express parcel containing a bomb overseas from some nearby station, Mr. Scull and I spent the night in an exhaustive canvass by telephone and motor of every station in Nassau County. Many of the station agents were asleep, but we woke them, and searched until dawn. The net result was record of two shipments to Europe since the day Holt received the dynamite: One from Syosset the other from Oyster Bay. Back to New York again we raced, and at the office of the Adams Express Company found the Syosset package, opened it, and found--no dynamite at all. The Oyster Bay package had already been shipped to Europe; we telephoned the consignor, and learned that it contained clothes for a poor relative in England.

Apparently Holt had not shipped a bomb. While we were opening his trunk at the warehouse the night before, the government was issuing from Washington a wireless bulletin to all ships at sea, warning them to search the cargo thoroughly for a bomb. One by one the vessels which had sailed during the past week reported that they had investigated with no result, and as these reports came in we began to rest easier in our minds. Yet he had so persistently refused to tell us of the dynamite “until Wednesday” that we could not ignore the prophecy he had made to his wife--“With God’s help, a ship that sailed from New York July 3 will sink on July 7.” At noon, of Wednesday, July 7, an explosion occurred in the hold of the steamship _Minnehaha_, in mid-ocean, so strong as to blow out a section of the upper decks. The _Minnehaha_ had left New York on July 3. Happily there was no loss of life, and she reached port safely.

Two and two make four, but we must not add them for a moment. Holt--or Muenter, as he was fully and finally identified--may have placed a bomb in the _Minnehaha_. His promise may have been valid, but there is another possible origin for that explosion, namely, the activities of Paul Koenig’s little group. He may have placed a bomb on the _Minnehaha_ which was exploded by a bomb placed there by another. He may have placed a bomb on quite another ship--which did not explode, and which may have traveled harmless to its consignee in England. That consignee may have been fictitious, or he may have been an accomplice; if an accomplice he may have been German. We must not add two and two until we have gathered up the loose threads as they were gathered up during those last active days, and begin to sort them out.

If we do, we shall see that the Ithaca police found in Holt’s rooms a scrapbook curiously replete with newspaper reports of crimes, fratricides, patricides and plain murders. But no cases of wife-murder, nor of arsenical poisoning. And no clippings dating back of 1906; for all the evidence of the scrapbook, Holt had never existed before 1907. His wife, who, by a queer coincidence, bore the same maiden name, Leona, as the one whom he had poisoned, apparently knew nothing of Holt’s life before she met him in Texas in 1909, loved him, and married him. She did not know that he was born in Germany, and educated in Germany or that he had fled from Chicago to Mexico in 1906 and had then worked back into Texas as a student. He probably wrote to her from Ithaca in September, 1914, that he had just had the pleasure of meeting Professor Ernest Elster, of Marburg, Germany, who was visiting Cornell, and that Elster had highly commended him for his articles on Goethe--but if he did write to her, what then? Perhaps Herr Professor Elster had commended Holt for some other past or projected service to _Kultur_. There is a queer development of the story in the fact that on September 4, 1915, Mrs. Frank Holt, writing from Dallas, Texas, to Griffithe’s warehouse, enclosed one dollar to pay for storage on a trunk left there by her husband July 2, and signed her name: “F. H. Henderson.” Perhaps the rumor is true that a woman appeared at the offices of J. P. Morgan and Company in New York on July 2, 1915, and attempted to warn Mr. Morgan of “something that was going to happen the next day” and perhaps she was a friend of von Rintelen’s. Mr. Morgan never saw her. But it is a fact that Rintelen had said to an American with whom he was dealing: “Morgan and Root ought to be put out of the way!”

Probably--not perhaps--speculation has already carried this story too far. The facts are that Mr. Morgan recovered from his wounds, and that two and two make four.

IX

THE NATURE FAKER

Richard Harding Davis could have done justice to this story.

In December of 1917 we had been eight months at war. We would be an innocent and purposely ignorant nation if we did not acknowledge that even after we had been eight months at war there were German spies in the United States practising their quiet trade in order to make our waging of war as difficult as possible, just as for three years they had practised to keep us out of the war entirely. It would be as absurd to assume that there are not German spies in America to-day who have been here throughout our part in the war, and who have done their utmost to cripple us.

But there is one who will not be here indefinitely....

In December, 1917, I received a complaint that valuable papers had been stolen from a certain Captain Claude Staughton, who lived at 137 West 75th Street, Manhattan. The Captain himself said that the lives of thousands of American soldiers were in jeopardy, and that neither they nor he would rest in conscious security until those papers were found. So two other Thomases of the Bomb Squad, Sergeant Thomas J. Ford and Detective Thomas J. Cavanagh, were sent to investigate the theft.

They found that Captain Staughton lived in an apartment on the second floor of the premises at 137 West 75th Street and that his rooms were shared by a Captain Horace D. Ashton. Staughton, they learned, was a captain of West Australia Light Horse--or was supposed to be--and a photograph they found of the captain in his uniform revealed four gold wound-stripes on his sleeve, which suggested an interesting and heroic experience overseas. The detectives’ first assumption was that the missing papers had had to do with British war work on which the captain was detailed to the United States. Then they found several photographic prints in which he was dressed in the uniforms of other nations than Great Britain, and their second assumption was that he might be another of the nervy little band of counterfeit officers which had done all its fighting in the restaurants and sympathetic check-books of New York during the war.

The detectives learned that Ashton had his mail forwarded to the “Argus Laboratories” at 220 West 42d Street. They called upon Ashton, and inquired about his room-mate. Duquesne was all right, Ashton said--was employed by an engineering company downtown as an inspector of airplanes, was in Pittsburg at the moment, but was expected shortly to return. Duquesne returned, and was placed under arrest on the charge (we had no better one at the moment) of unlawfully masquerading in the uniform of one of our allies, a uniform to which he had no title. A thousand questions sprang up in our minds about the man: why was he in disguise, how long had he been posing, how could he carry out the bluff without being discovered, especially by the highly reputable firm which employed him?--those were a few. We began to investigate, and from Ashton and other sources we pieced together the checkered pattern of his career. Many of the fragments are missing, and some of them are probably in the wrong places, but this is the picture we found.

He had applied for work at the J. G. White Engineering Company on September 18, 1917, and in his rather detailed application for employment set forth that his name was Fred du Quesne. He stated further that he was 39 years old, married, and a United States citizen, though born in a British colony. His nearest relative was “A. Jocelyn du Quesne,” in Los Angeles, and he had evidently had some trouble in parting the name in the middle, for it was written over an erasure. His next nearest relative was set down as “Viscount François de Rancogne, Prisoner of War, Germany,”--an address safe enough from prompt investigation. Last of all his relatives was cited Edward Wortley, “Colonial Secretary, Jamaica, B. W. I.” The three names were impressive, and with the possible exception of Los Angeles, the addresses were too remote to enable the J. G. White Company to find out quickly what sort of man this du Quesne might be.

He described himself as a graduate of St. Cyr, the French West Point, as master of French and English (not German or Portuguese or Spanish), and as having lived in England, France, Africa, Australia, Central America, Brazil, Argentine, and the United States (but not Germany). Present position he had none, but he would like one as “Inspector of military devices, purchasing agent for same, or army supplies transportation.” You or I, were we working for the Kaiser, would have liked just such a position. He gave as references the name of Thomas O’Connell, a relative employed by the J. G. White Company in Nicaragua; Ashton, Senator Robert Broussard of Washington, and the Marquis (not “viscount” this time) de Rancogne, “Lieutenant General of Cavalry, France.”

He then set forth his previous experience, which I may quote direct in the light of later events:

“1898 to 1899. Secretary to board of selection on military devices and contracts. South Africa reporting Genr. de Villiers. (salary) £10 weekly.

“1899 to 1902. South African War. Was inspector of military communication and reported secretary of war.” (_He does not state which secretary of war_) £12.2.6 weekly.

“1902 to 1903. Lived in United States to start residence. Had an experience job in the subway looking on. $25.00.

“1903 to 1904. Went on tour of Congo Free State in the interests of making favorable publicity in this country for King Leopold. Gerard Harry in charge of campaign for the King. Received $10,000 for the job, with expenses.

“1904–5–6. Headed Eldu expedition and industrial research party in Australia. Sir Arthur Jones financed me. Received £2,000 yearly.

“1907–8. Toured Russia for _Petit Bleu_. Publicity. 1,000 florins weekly.

“1908–9–10. Organized and built string of theatres in British West Indies. Financed and erected hydro-electric plant for S. S. Wortley & Co., Kingston, Jamaica. Made percentages.

“1911–12. Lived in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Was with Mr. Thomas O’Connell in Nicaragua for one year. Made industrial and investment investigations, especially ore, fibre, rubber. $5,000 and expenses yearly. Mr. Hite financed. Address New Rochelle.

“1913–14–15–16. Explored and travelled in South America, Brazil, Argentine, Peru, and Bolivia, on own account. Also conducted special expedition for Horace Ashton of 220 W. 42d St., New York.”

An eventful record, certainly. We asked Ashton to cast a little light on it. Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, he said, was a scout in the Boer war--“the leading scout” were his exact words--but not for the British, but the Boers. There may have been a touch of irony in Duquesne’s description of himself as “inspector of military communications” for he had been captured eight or nine times in his migrations through the British lines and had escaped each time--until the last, when he was made a prisoner of war at Cape Town, and according to an entry in the records of Scotland Yard, “was sent to Bermuda, whence he escaped after the declaration of Peace.” The same records say: “The man Duquesne was acting as correspondent for a Belgian paper, the _Petit Bleu_; he was however in reality working for the Boers....” Duquesne fancied photographs of himself, as he made up rather dashingly, and an old print which the Bomb Squad men found in his effects bore out the fact of his imprisonment, for there he stood in his Bermuda jail with the shackles on his ankles and a grim, martyred expression on his face.

The lure of Africa called to him, evidently, and he went back. We need not take too seriously his statement that he made a junket for King Leopold through the Belgian Congo, but anyone who remembers the uproar over the slavery by which the depraved old monarch was turning his colony into gold to pay for his excesses will also recall the international complications which the Congo threatened. It was a likely spot for an international spy. During his survey of the publicity possibilities of the jungle Duquesne conceived a few publicity possibilities for himself, and he came to America as a mighty hunter of big game.

“I ran across him first,” said Ashton, “in 1909.--At that time he was writing an article for _Hampton’s Magazine_ called ‘Hunting Big Game in Africa.’ In publishing his articles he needed photographs, and he came to me. I was interested in his conversation and I said to him: ‘Why don’t you lecture?’ So he went down to the Pond Lyceum Bureau. He went on a lecture tour for the Lyceum and later on a tour of the Keith circuit....”

We found in his effects a program of the lectures he gave, its cover decorated with a small round photograph of Colonel Roosevelt in hunting costume and a large studio photograph of Duquesne in khaki, wearing boots and a revolver, and looking sternly out of the picture as tradition says a lion-hunter should look. Page two carried a synopsis of his lecture, of which one topic was “Hunting with Roosevelt,” and a reproduction of a number of newspapers which were then publishing his “Hunting Ahead of Roosevelt,” an article written for _Hampton’s Magazine_. On page three Captain Duquesne figured again in effigy, this time standing beside the prostrate form of “A Rare Specimen--the ‘White Rhinoceros,’” and we are to believe that he killed the beast. Page four (and last), reproduced a cartoon from the _Washington Star_ of January 26, 1909, which portrayed President Roosevelt pointing to a picture of an elephant, and enthusiastically inquiring of a hairy hunter labelled “Duquesne”: “I want to know his vital spot!”

[Illustration: Fritz Duquesne prepared for a Lecture Tour as Captain Claude Stoughton]

A quotation from _Hampton’s Magazine_, also printed in this program, gives a new vision of the man’s life from 1900 to 1909. It is probably as truthful as any--here it is:

“When the British succeeded in cutting cable communications between the Boer Republic and the rest of the world, Duquesne carried the news of the Boer victories over the Mozambique border, and from there he wrote his despatches to the _Petit Bleu_, the official European organ of the Boer Government. He was once captured by the Portuguese and thrown into prison at Lorenzo Marques. Later he was taken a prisoner to Europe at the request of the British Government. When the ship that conveyed him and his guard touched at Naples, he was suffering from a fever and in consequence was placed in an Italian hospital. On his recovery he was allowed to go free. He went to Brussels and was sent back to the front by Doctor Leyds, with plans for the seizure of Cape Town by the Boer commandos then mobilized in Cape Colony.

“Everything was ready for the taking of the city when, a traitor having revealed the plot, Duquesne and a number of others were captured in Cape Town inside the British defenses. This was the climax of what has come to be known as the ‘Cape Town Plot.’ Some of the prisoners were shot and some sentenced to death who later had their sentences changed to life imprisonment. Captain Duquesne was among the latter. Ten months later he escaped from the Bermuda prisons, got aboard the American yacht _Margaret_ of New York while she was coaling at the dock, and was conveyed to Baltimore.

“Back to Europe he went again, as war correspondent and military writer on the _Petit Bleu_; thence to Africa, where he took a commission on the Congo. In East Africa he hunted big game for sport and profit, and finally he came to New York to do newspaper and magazine work.”

He cut a figure in America as a hunter. Back in 1910, when Congress amused itself with light diversions, when President Taft was in the White House and when President Roosevelt was in Africa, the eyes of the nation were turned perforce toward that great preserve of wild game. On March 24, 1910, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Agriculture went into session with the Honorable Charles F. Scott in the chair. Late March in Washington has a hint of spring, and that Thursday was probably an off-day, with nothing much to do, for the committee’s business was the consideration of H. R. 23261--a bill “to import into the United States wild and domestic animals whose habitat is similar to government reservations and lands at present unoccupied and unused.... _Provided_, that such animals will thrive and propagate and prove useful either as food or as beasts of burden, and that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars ... be appropriated for this purpose.” The bill was Representative Broussard’s, of Louisiana; he had in mind the re-population of the unyielding backwaters of his constituency with happy families of--what? Foreign sheep, or parrots, or egrets, or fish? Not at all. Families of hippopotamuses.