Part 5

Polignani bought the antimony and the chlorate of potash, and at a subsequent meeting watched uneasily while Carbone tried to pulverize the antimony with a hammer. It was too hard work, however, and “Baldo” was directed to buy a small quantity of the pulverized substance. This he did. The three had meanwhile been trying to pick out a good room in an English-speaking lodging house in 29th Street, but finally gave it up and hired a furnished room at 1341 Third Avenue. There they brought their materials, consisting of twelve yards of copper wire, a trunk full of odds and ends, tools, fuse cord, and various ingredients. To this supply they wanted to add some hollow iron balls, but the hollow iron ball market was sparse, and they finally substituted three tin hand-soap cans. On February 27 Polignani and Abarno made a tour of inspection of St. Patrick’s, and as they were descending the steps Abarno remarked that when he had destroyed the Cathedral they would turn their attention first to the Carnegie residence at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then to the Rockefeller home. “We won’t wait till March 21,” he observed impatiently. “Let’s get this job done soon. Say Tuesday morning.”

[Illustration: A postcard received by Commissioner Woods after the arrest of the Anarchists

The message reads:

“MR. WOODS My Dear Sir

Your police Espionage may go as far as you like for the promotion of your Bankrupt Law & Order of Society. The Anarchists of New York have but one Life to give for the Ideal of Humanity and absolute Freedom of mankind the world over. yours The Society for the Propagation of absolute Liberty and Human Freedom....” ]

High noon of the following day saw the three plotters cheerfully at work in the furnished room. Abarno and Carbone measured carefully the proportions of sulphur, sugar, chlorate of potash and antimony; Carbone filled the tins with the mixture, and led the fuses into the heart of the mass, glancing up from time to time to the detective with real pride, as if to say: “See, Baldo? That’s how an expert works!” “Baldo” had contributed his share of the materials--a few lengths of iron rod. Carbone bound these to the outside of the cans with cord, and added a few bolts which he found in a bureau drawer, and a coat-hanger, twisted out of shape. Round and round this shapeless tangle of metal he wove copper wire, and so produced two heavy, compact bombs. Polignani had grown almost gray when, after boring the fuse holes in the can-tops, Carbone casually picked up a hammer and began to tattoo the cans. The detective promptly took refuge behind the bed, near the floor.

“No use to hide there, Baldo!” This with a laugh from Carbone. “If she goes off she’ll blow the whole house down. How’s that, Frank?” he added, showing the finished product to Abarno.

“I’ll throw that one and you can throw the other, Carbone,” Abarno said. “Now listen. We will meet here Tuesday morning at six o’clock to the minute. We will get to the Cathedral just at 6.20. Then we’ll light the bombs, and the fuses will burn slow for twenty minutes, so as we can get over to the Madison Avenue car and then we can all get to work on time, and we will have a good alibi all right. Then we’ll get together Tuesday night and go some place and have a good time to celebrate throwing a scare into Fifth Avenue, boys! Tuesday morning, six o’clock sharp?”

Carbone and Polignani assented, and Abarno left.

Polignani kept in close touch with me from that moment forward. Ever since the day when Carbone had sent him to the drug store for black antimony, with instructions to bribe the drug clerk if he could not easily obtain it, we had had a double check on the conspirators, for I had assigned two men to shadow them constantly. The case was building towards a climax. Polignani had shrewdly kept the slip on which Carbone wrote the prescription for the explosives, and when Carbone asked where it was he said, “I tore it up. I didn’t want it to be found on me. It would get me into trouble.” The anarchist praised the detective for his forethought. The two men from the Bomb Squad never let Abarno and Carbone out of their sight, so that for a month we had not only the direct evidence of Polignani of what the conspirators said and did in his presence, but evidence from the two shadows which accounted for their time more fully, probably, than they could have recalled themselves. And so when Polignani--who did not know he was being observed--told me of the final plans, I passed the information on to the two shadows, and we formulated a counter-campaign for Tuesday morning.

Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, Polignani tumbled out of bed and into his clothes. He ate a hasty and nervous breakfast at a cheap lunch-room around the corner, and hurried to the sidewalk before 1341 Third Avenue, arriving a few minutes after six. Abarno joined him at 6.30.

“Where’s Carbone--isn’t he here?” he said by way of greeting.

“No,” replied “Baldo.”

“Well, we can’t wait for him. We can’t lose any time. I got to be at work at 7.30. Come up and get the bombs with me. We’ll probably meet him on the way down the street. Or maybe he’s at the shoe-shop.”

The two men went upstairs and into the third-floor-back. “Give me the key,” Abarno muttered. Polignani did so. Abarno opened the trunk and took out the two bombs. “You take one and I’ll take the other,” he whispered. “Come on. Put it under your coat.”

When they started down Third Avenue the two shadows--who had also risen early--disengaged themselves from the doorways where they were idling and proceeded at an even pace down the Avenue behind the men. A few hundred yards or so in the rear of the procession was a limousine, and I was in the limousine. I could spot the men distinctly, and I had to chuckle when I saw them catch sight of a uniformed officer a block or so ahead and hastily cross the street. The same thing occurred twice again in the course of the march. Our parade continued. No one but ourselves paid any attention to the two laborers who were carrying lumpy bundles under their coats.

At Fifty-third Street my chauffeur turned west and slipped into high speed. We were at the Cathedral in a minute more, and I jumped out and hurried into the vestibule. No one there but three or four scrub-women, puttering around in the half-light with their mops and pails. Several hundred worshippers were already gathered in the front of the nave, where Bishop Hayes was conducting early mass. As I passed into the body of the church there was no one near except an elderly usher, with white hair and beard. I stepped into a dark corner and waited.

[Illustration: 1. Detective George D. Barnitz

2. Detective Patrick Walsh

3. Detective James Sterett

4. Left to right: Patrick Walsh, Jerome Murphy and James Sterett]

A matter of two or three minutes passed, though it seemed much longer. Then I saw Abarno and Polignani enter the vestibule, cross it and enter the church itself, taking their cigars out of their mouths as they turned towards the north aisle. Abarno led the way. At the tenth pew he motioned to Polignani to sit there, and Polignani obeyed, dropping to his knees in prayer. Abarno continued to the sixth pew ahead. Two of the scrub-women had deserted their mops, and were dusting the pews along the north aisle near the newcomers. Abarno rested for a moment in his pew, with his head and body bent as if in prayer, then rose and rejoined Polignani. Again he rose, and this time moved toward the north end of the altar, where he crouched for several seconds, placing his bomb against a great pillar. With his other hand he flicked the ashes from the coal of his cigar and touched the glowing end to the fuse. He had taken perhaps three steps down the aisle again when the scrub-woman stopped plying her dust-cloth. She fastened an iron grip on Abarno’s arms and hustled him down the aisle so swiftly that no one remarked the affair. The scrub-woman was Detective Walsh, disguised. The elderly usher passed the two and hurried to the spot where Abarno had crouched by the pillar. He saw the lighted fuse and pinched it out with his fingers. The elderly usher, underneath his makeup, was Lieutenant Barnitz. Polignani was promptly placed under arrest and led to the vestibule with Abarno--for the evidence was not yet all in.

Abarno immediately suspected Carbone of treachery. He protested violently that the missing conspirator had instigated the whole affair, that it was his idea, that he had made the bombs, and that he could be found living with a Hungarian-Jewish family on the fourth floor of a house at 216 East 67th Street. He was fluent in the accusations he made against Carbone, and he grew more fluent as he recovered from the fright of his arrest. So while we escorted the two bombs and the two prisoners to headquarters, other members of the Bomb Squad visited Carbone and placed him under arrest.

From them at headquarters we verified the story as we already knew it. Each man accused the other. Both men exonerated Polignani of any part in suggesting the plot or in making the bombs for several days after their arrest. But Polignani’s true identity could not be unknown to them indefinitely, of course, and when they found out that they had been confiding in a full-fledged detective--ah, then the storm broke! Prompted, I suspect, by pseudo-legal advice, they cried “Frame-up!” until they grew hoarse, but it was too late, for in the possession of Assistant District Attorney Arthur Train was already a sworn statement which fixed their guilt by their own confession.

[Illustration: 1. The Dagger Threat to Polignani

2. The Black Hand Threat

3. Frank Abarno

4. Carmine Carbone]

The anarchists rushed to their rescue, but their efforts were chiefly verbal. At the Brescia Circle, and at I. W. W. headquarters at 64 East 4th Street, it was common gossip that counsel for the defendants were going to supply 45 or 50 witnesses to swear that Polignani had invited them to make bombs. This I had enjoined him strictly not to do, as a newcomer who talks bombs is a suspicious character in anarchist circles. I know he obeyed. There was organized a “Carbone ed Abarno Defence Committee” with headquarters at 2205 Third Avenue, which solicited other neighboring Italian clubs with anarchistic tendencies for support of the two. Polignani’s photograph appeared presently in a New York Italian newspaper with this caption:

“The filthy carrion who by order of the Police of New York devised the bomb plot which led up to the arrest of Abarno and Carbone, now before the Courts. All of us comrades will keep this in mind.”

He received several threatening anonymous letters, some bearing the familiar “black hand,” others sketching on newspaper photographs of him the point in his anatomy at which he might expect to feel the dagger of revenge; others mere bombastic defiance. (The anonymous letter-writer is very often a courageous soul who spells out his messages with letters and words clipped from newspapers, so that his handwriting will not betray him.)

What was the reward of those five months invested in patience? The two prisoners convicted and sentenced to terms of from six to twelve years, was one result. But a far greater one was a sharp decrease in bomb-throwing in New York, and perhaps the most gratifying was the discord which grew in the Brescia Circle. The group was frightened, and the members began to suspect each other of espionage. One former anarchist was quoted as saying that he wouldn’t even trust himself--he had been dreaming the night before that he was a spy. The Brescia Circle became disorganized, and several other similar groups in the city suffered the same fate. Their leaders drifted away--and got into more trouble, as we shall see later.

We never found the original of the treatise on bombs. Carbone said he had destroyed it. But there are probably other copies from the same press in the hands of accredited bomb-throwers. If not, they may apply to the New York police department.

IV

THE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES

Bret Harte said that “the heathen Chinee” was peculiar. The British have learned long since that the Hindu, being an Oriental, cannot help being equally “peculiar,” and it is a great tribute to British persistence that it has labored so hard and so successfully in the good government of a people so temperamentally complex. They have studied the Hindu, and have understood him as well as may be. Understanding him they have watched him. When war broke out, this great Oriental empire presented to Britain a grave problem, for as a Hindu editor in the United States phrased it, “England is Germany’s enemy. England is our enemy. Our enemy’s enemy is our friend.”

It is not in my intention or power to discuss the methods which England employed to maintain strict loyalty in the Indian peninsula, but to outline here the part we played in uncovering a plot which threatened seriously to complicate her efforts around on the other side of the earth.

Scotland Yard told us in February, 1917, that Hindus were conspiring in bomb plots with certain Germans in the United States. If it was true, it was against the laws of our country. They supplied us with a few names, but tactfully suggested that inasmuch as it was our country and our laws which the plotters were attempting to disturb, we would prefer to develop the case ourselves. Various authorities in this country had already had strong suspicions of the British claims, but as yet those suspicions had not grown to proof of any specific act. So we went to work.

Among other names which were furnished us was that of one Chakravarty, whose address was 364 West 120th Street, New York. For more than a fortnight men of the Bomb Squad under Mr. (now Lieut.-Col.) Nicholas Biddle, as special aid to the commissioner, watched that house. They hired a room opposite, where through a slit in the window shade they could keep the doorway under observation. At the hours when working New York leaves its home to make money, and comes home at night having made it, the door was rarely used, but sometimes at mid-forenoon, sometimes in the small hours of the morning, the men on watch saw several dark-skinned individuals pass in and out of the house. The building itself gave no sign of suspicious activity. We were on the brink of war, and as was the case in most of the other houses in the block, an American flag hung draped in the front window. What went on behind the camouflage screen we did not know. Now and then our men, hiding in the shadow of the areaway, would go quietly up into the dark doorway and listen, but the house never gave out a sound. There was certainly no indication that these Hindus were conspiring with the Imperial German Government in dynamite plots.

We knew certain East Indians who could be depended upon, and told them to call upon Chakravarty. This ruse failed because Chakravarty never presented to the callers anything but a guileless reception. So far as they could learn his occupation was that of manufacturer of pills; he and a certain Ernest Sekunna constituted the Omin Company, which company packed in aluminum boxes and sold to a limited clientele pills which like most patent remedies were recommended for any ailment from indigestion up or down--if the pill sold, then it was a success. This news did not quiet our impatience, and we decided on a raid.

On the night of March 7, 1917, Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Randolph, Murphy, Jenkins, Walsh, Sterett and Fenelly called at the house, Sterett, pretending to be a messenger, and carrying a dummy package, presenting himself at the front door, and the rest of the party covering other avenues of escape. The portal was opened by a little Hindu who looked up innocently to Sterett and said that Dr. Chakravarty was not in--he had gone to Boston. The detectives announced their intention of searching the house. The little man protested, and was given certain short reasons why the search was in order. Surprise, injured innocence, and irritation crossed his olive-drab face, and he announced that he was a patriotic American and that he had never done anything to break the laws of the United States. If we wanted Dr. Chakravarty, he said, we should go and get him, and not disturb a peaceful household in this way, and he added that Chakravarty had left for New England months before, leaving no address. In this the little Hindu was borne out by the answers which the other occupant of the house gave to our questions--this was Sekunna, a German of thirty-five or so. We searched the house, and took the two prisoners and considerable material to headquarters.

[Illustration: A Handbill, printed in Hindu, used by the Hindu-Boche Conspirators]

The search disclosed a supply of literature of the Omin Company describing the properties of its pills, a photograph of Sekunna and Chakravarty as the turbaned benefactors of an unhealthy world, and a number of express money-order receipts, deeds and a bank book which showed the missing Chakravarty to be one who had acquired a good deal of money during the past two years. The photograph on closer inspection revealed that the little prisoner was Dr. Chakravarty himself. Sekunna verified this, and Chakravarty, confronted by it, admitted it.

We asked the prisoner how he had suddenly come by the $60,000 which his books showed. He said that it was his inheritance from the estate of his grandfather in India, and that no less a personage than Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, had paid him, in December, 1916, $25,000 of the $45,000 due from the estate. About $35,000 had been given him, he added, by a lawyer named Chatterji, from Pegu, Burma, in March, 1916.

So far as he gave us his history, it related that he had graduated from the University of Calcutta, and had lived for a time in London, and later in Paris, before coming to the United States. He had heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest in India for sedition, probably due, he suggested, to his having written several articles on the subject of British Rule.

“Have you been to Germany recently?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he answered. “How could I get there, with the British watching for me? They would arrest me if I tried to go. Why do you ask that?”

“Because I wanted to know,” I answered. I had good reason to believe that he had been there because among his effects we found several exhibits which pointed toward such a trip. A letter from a woman in Florida dated December 13, 1915, said:

“I would never for one moment try to deter you from the effort or achievement of your lofty ideals and noble aims, for in this as in many other things my spirit accords with yours. Brother dear, _do_ nothing, _say_ nothing, _trust_ nobody, without extreme caution. God speed you. God hasten your return to those who are interested in you, and in all in which you are interested. Bless you, precious brother.”

This indicated a journey, clearly. A cablegram dated Bergen, Norway, Dec. 23, 1915, addressed to Sekunna, read, “Safe arrival here,” and took him as far as the Continent, at least. Three postcards supplied the rest of the information; they were addressed by Sekunna to himself at a Berlin address, and bore the instructions, “Return to Sender, E. A. Sekunna, Omin Company, 417 E. 142nd Street, New York City”; postmarked Berlin in December and January, they suggested that Chakravarty had used them as part of a pre-arranged system of communication with America in which he did not wish his own name used.

I found among the papers a photographic print of Chakravarty wearing a fez, which I knew was not an orthodox head-dress for a Bengalese. Furthermore, it struck me that the print was of the size and finish usually used on passports for identification of the bearer. I showed it to him, with the remark:

“Why do you tell me you haven’t been in Berlin, when you used this photograph so you could get a passport as a Persian?”

He bit. “I see you got me,” he replied. “I lied to you. I want to tell you a different story--the real one. I did go to Germany.”

“Why?”

“To see Wesendonck. He is a secretary for India of the German foreign office. He wanted to make plans for propaganda for the liberation of India from British rule.”

Chakravarty sat there and unfolded an amazing story. He touched gingerly upon his own part in it at first, then evidently sensed the fact that there were others in the plot guilty of perhaps no less reprehensible but more violent crimes, and the little doctor’s capture and confession not only gave clues to the authorities which enabled them to follow up the outstanding German-Hindu plots in America, but developed prosecutions of the first magnitude and the keenest general interest.

[Illustration: 1. Franz Schulenberg

2. Ram Chandra

3. Ram Singh (on the left)

4. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty and Dr. Ernest Sekunna

5. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty in his Persian Dress]

The enterprises must be recounted out of their actual sequence. The first he claimed to have had little part in--the project of an uprising in India which its sponsors hoped would repeat the Mutiny of 1857--but with a more successful outcome. Captain Hans Tauscher, the New York agent of the Krupp steel and munitions works, was in Berlin when war broke out. He reported for active duty to Captain von Papen, in New York, as soon as he could cross the Atlantic, and one of his earliest services was the purchase of a large quantity of rifles, field guns, swords and cartridges, which he stored in 200 West Houston Street, New York. On January 9, 1915, he shipped a trainload of arms and ammunition to San Diego, California. There it was loaded into a little vessel, the _Annie Larsen_, which had been chartered by German interests, and the _Annie Larsen_ put to sea, ostensibly for Mexico, where revolutionary arms were in demand. Her real destination was a rendezvous off Socorro Island with the _Maverick_, a tank-ship which had been bought in San Francisco with German money. The _Maverick_ was to trans-ship the arms, flood them with oil in her cargo tanks in case she might be searched, and proceed by way of Batavia and Bangkok to Karachi, a seaport in India which is the gateway to the Punjab. There she would be met by friendly fishing vessels who would land her cargo, and if all went well, there would be a massacre of the garrison of Karachi, and hell would break loose over India. The effect of such an uprising upon Great Britain’s sorely tried military condition of early 1915 would have been incalculable. The native troops in France who were helping to stop the breach until England’s great armies could be trained would have to be recalled, the semi-loyal tribes would have seen their opportunity, Germany would hardly have hesitated to throw a Turkish force at the northern passes, and altogether it would not have been pleasant for the integrity of the British Empire.