McGahey toiled into the late hours of the night with the message encrypted on the single piece of paper. He took from his cloth carry bag the books and charts he had assembled during his employment as a code breaker for the anti-war movement in the north, abetted and sponsored by the Confederate Government in Richmond. The simplicity of the code gave him to believe an inexperienced operative used it. Someone pressed into service without much training. The warehouse foreman had told him the youngster standing near the loading pier had secreted the message in a crevice in a piling on a riverside dock. McGahey had become familiar with that crude method of communication, using what his organization called dead letter boxes. Again, it registered with him that a relatively unsophisticated operation, one quickly assembled and rushed into service employed such primitive devices. After unraveling the message he stretched out on his uncomfortable bed and closed his eyes. That boy’s profile, where had he seen it before? Since the foreman had pointed him out as the courier, if not the author of the encrypted note, McGahey reasoned, that youngster must be working with the authorities. When in the past had that kind of investigative technique, the use of a young infiltrator, affected his liberty?
McGahey sat bolt upright, cold spasms wracked his frail body. His coughing fit returned causing him to grip his side and writhe in pain. The tavern in Washington, the night of his arrest by Baker’s thugs, the serving boy who seemed to have triggered the sorry episode, it all fell into place. His coughing fit subsided. He took a draft of the elixir he carried with him wherever he went, given him by the widow who ran the boarding house in Maryland where he lived. It seemed to allay the respiratory attacks that plagued him since his near death from the bayonet wound inflicted by the vicious guard at the Old Capitol. He had suffered mightily at the hands of these filthy Yankees.
“Tomorrow morning,” he announced aloud to the empty room, “tomorrow I’ll unmask that sorry wretch. The Society will be pleased when this New York gang disposes of him. I only wish I could be present when that little sneak gets his just deserts. ‘Caleb 13’ indeed, we’ll see how clever he is when his shallow ruse is uncovered.”
He readied himself for bed and tidied up his scattered belongings.
“The people at the warehouse,” he continued aloud, addressing vacant space,” will be deeply indebted to me. They have no idea of the peril they are in. Bah, I should have charged them twice as much.”
A knock on his door brought him painfully to his feet. He grasped his side and lurched a step toward the door. “What is it?” he gasped through gritted teeth.
“It’s the landlady, Mr McGahey.”
“What do you want, this time of night?”
“Er, it’s about your bill, sir.”
“My bill, why in God’s name are you bothering me with that now?” he snarled, taking another painful step.
“Ah, well, I didn’t want you to leave in the morning with this problem unresolved.” the landlady answered.
“Oh, very well if you must pester me now,” McGahey said, his voice barely audible. He wrenched the door open.
The landlady, wide-eyed with fear took a step back, Donellan and Philips pushed against the door overcoming McGahey’s feeble attempt to close it.
“Thank you, Mrs O’Hagan,” Donellan said over his shoulder as she scurried down the stairs.
Both detectives stepped into the room. Towering over McGahey, their top hats made them appear even more imposing. They each took him by an arm and sat him on the bed.
McGahey began to sputter in protest.
“Save your breath, McGahey. We’ll do most of the talking. You just listen,” Donellan said.
McGahey’s face lost all the rest of its color. A ghastly pallor and strangled breathing gave evidence of his terror.
Philips began: “You are facing another trip to the Old Capitol. We know who you are and what you are up to. A telegraphed message to Washington and a return answer told us that.”
“No, you can’t, you can’t, I have done nothing wrong,” the frightened man stammered.
“How much evidence did it take the last time when you were held indefinitely without bail? I’ll answer for you, not very much. You were part of an assassination plot in Washington and were held to account for your participation. Only through the grace of the medical staff at the prison who didn’t want to have another corpse to account for, you are now at liberty. That can change rapidly.”
McGahey ventured another feeble protest.
“Save it,” Donellan said, “unless you want to make a final trip to that hell hole, pay attention.”
“The note the foreman gave you, hand it over,” Donellan demanded.
McGahey struggled to his feet. “I need to get to my travel bag.”
“Stay there,” Philips said. “I’ll get it.” He picked up the cloth bag and dumped its contents on the floor. He kicked the clothing, books and paper aside, assuring himself that their suspect had secreted no weapons among his belongings. “Find the note and your decipherings and hand them to me.”
McGahey bent over, still clutching his side. He rummaged through the scattered contents until he found the original note and his scribbling to decode it. He handed them to Philips. Both he and Donellan read the decoded message silently.
“I don’t know what it means,” McGahey said. “It may be a code within a code.”
“You don’t need to know any more than you do already,” Donellan snapped. “I assume you are expected to return tomorrow with the answer to the cipher, are you not?”
“Y-y-es,” the frightened man stammered, still unable to stem his trembling and the stabbing pain in his side. “The foreman is to collect me in the morning.”
“Decide now whether you want another trip to prison,” Donellan said.
“No, I surely don’t,” came the reply, throttled in the suspect’s throat with the constriction of anxiety.
Philips took hold of McGahey’s shirt collar and dragged him to his feet.
“Here’s what you will do when you are brought back to the warehouse,” he said, his nose inches from the other man’s face. “You report this just as it’s written, do you understand?” He shook McGahey for emphasis.
The man’s face contorted in a rictus of pain and fright. “I understand.”
Philips relaxed his grip and shoved McGahey back onto the mattress.
“Then you leave the warehouse, is that clear?” Donellan said, poking a hard finger into McGahey’s chest for emphasis. “If we get a hint of any sly attempt on your part to indicate there is more to this message than meets the eye, we will know about it.”
McGahey could only nod in agreement.
“If you tell anyone about our visit, you will face a terrible fate. Our retribution will be swift and painful.”
“I will do as you order. I have no other business than to decipher the note.”
“To insure your compliance, we will take you into custody once you have delivered your message. You will be handed over to the local authorities for safekeeping until we are certain that the young man who was pointed out to you is free from any threat of harm,” Donellan said.
“But I won’t survive another incarceration,” McGahey protested.
“You want to run errands for our enemies, you take the consequences. However, it will be for the briefest period of time, just so we are assured of the boy’s safety. You will be detained in a local police station. We won’t have you committed to the City Jail. You will be released once we are certain you have carried out our instructions. Any effort to evade us will be dealt with harshly, am I clear?” Philips emphasized his point with another hard jab with a finger in the pallid little man’s chest.
“Yes, I said yes, you needn’t keep poking me,” McGahey whined.
Nate Boyer delivered McGahey to Simeon’s office in the morning. The code man handed the note with his decryption to Simeon and stepped back.
“What does this mean?” the elderly man asked.
McGahey struggled to keep the tremor from his voice. “I’m sure I don’t know, Mr Barr. I just deciphered the letters as they were written.”
Simeon, intent on the sentence written on the page he held, failed to notice the nervous shift in McGahey’s eyes. Boyer looming behind him caused a clammy sweat to form on his skin, but he swallowed hard and kept some manner of composure.
“Very well, then,” Simeon looked up from his perusal of the message. “Nate will take you to the pier for the Hoboken Ferry.”
McGahey licked his lips, tried to moisten his dry mouth. “Thank you for the offer, Mr Barr, I’d prefer to walk today. I have a long wait for the train. The ferry will get me there much too early. A walk in the brisk air will do me good.”
“As you wish,” Simeon agreed. “Thank you for your service, I just wish I had a clearer understanding of what this message means. Do you have adequate compensation from the money I gave you?”
“You’ve been more than generous, Mr Barr,” McGahey said, anxious to leave the threatening atmosphere of the old man’s office, where one slip might cost him his liberty or his life. He doffed his bowler hat and scurried through the door, having to skirt around the immovable Nate who obstructed his way.
When he left, Simeon looked up and said: “I don’t know what to think, Nate. We were so sure the note left at the pier was a message to the authorities. These innocuous words could mean anything. The boy said it was a note to some girl.”
“I’m still not convinced. That kid is up to somethin’. He always has an excuse for everythin’. I say at least get him outta here. Ya don’t need him snoopin’ around like he does.”
“We need the extra hand, Nate. Now with the draft and people leaving for the army, laborers are hard to come by. I’m certainly not going to hire any darkies. Besides, I’d rather have him around where we can keep an eye on him. If he’s up to no good, he’ll slip sooner or later. In any event, a boy that young in league with the police, I have difficulty believing that.”
“Suit yerself Mr Barr, just remember, I’m against it,” Nate said, spun on his heel and left.
Donellan and Philips took turns keeping surveillance on the warehouse. Johnny seemed to take his regular spot with his crew, working as normal. They avoided further direct contact on the chance that the foreman or anyone from the warehouse might follow Johnny. For his part, now aware that he had aroused suspicion, Johnny made no more trips to the East River pier.
The two detectives picked up the hapless McGahey when he had walked a distance from Barr’s warehouse and escorted him to the near-by stationhouse. They used their authority as Federal detectives to convince the police captain to hold McGahey for twenty-four hours on the pretext that with a suspect in an espionage ring in custody, they needed more time for investigation. A day and a half later Donellan obtained McGahey’s release, drove him to the Canal Street dock and deposited him there in time to board the cross Hudson ferry and the train south.
On the long return train ride, McGahey had time to screw up his courage. Upon his arrival in Baltimore, no longer in fear of the harassing detectives, he reported to Kensington Overstreet, the Confederate agent who ran the Society.
“Barr has an infiltrator working at his warehouse. Apparently, he’s taken this kid into his confidence. What’s worse, I have a horrible feeling that’s the same little wretch that killed Joshua Taylor and caused my arrest at Banks’ Tavern.”
McGahey reminded Overstreet of the group in which he had participated that had plotted a series of assassinations. Johnny had shot Joshua Taylor in a gun battle after Johnny posing as a serving boy, had infiltrated the tavern where Taylor, McGahey and the other conspirators met. Lafayette Baker’s men arrested McGahey and the rest of the conspirators. He tried to avert his eyes from the ruin of Overstreet’s face. He found the man’s bulbous nose and unsightly facial lumps, only partially hidden by a scruffy beard, distracting.
“After I had decoded the message Barr had given me to work on and had retired for the night, two Federal detectives burst into my room and threatened me with incarceration in the Old Capitol again. They demanded to see the decoded message. I had no choice but to show it to them. They warned me of the consequences unless I kept silent about my suspicions concerning the boy who was the presumed author of the note. Next morning I just gave the deciphered message to Barr and left.”
Overstreet asked, “What did the note say?”
“The wording alone was cryptic. It just said, ‘Aunt and Uncle are expected soon’. It was signed, ‘Caleb 13’.”
“That name may have some significance in itself,” Overstreet said.
“What would it mean?” McGahey asked.
“It’s in the Bible. Don’t you read the Good Book?”
“I’m afraid I’m way behind in my Bible studies,” McGahey said with a shrug.
“In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 13, Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan. Caleb was the one chosen from the tribe of Judah. That’s a clue telling us that this kid as you call him, is an operative used by Baker and his gangsters.”
“I’ve got to stay hidden for a while,” McGahey said with a shudder. “I can’t be caught by those people again. No more trips to decode messages. If someone wants that service, I’ll do it here.”
“Stop fretting, McGahey. We won’t send you anywhere again. You’re excused,” the agent in charge of the Society said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Soon after McGahey made his disclosure, Overstreet began to compose a report to send by wire to a telegraph office in western Maryland, for transmittal by mounted courier to counter-spy headquarters in the Confederate capital. The dispatch alerted his chief that Union operatives had penetrated the counterfeiting operation in New York. Shortly thereafter, two hard-faced men slipped out of the building that housed the Society in Baltimore and boarded the train north to Hoboken and New York City.