The two Federal detectives decided to pay a call on Letitia Barr in an effort to uncover what she may know about the conspiracies that swirled about her grandfather’s warehouse and her involvement with Johnny. They expected her to greet them with cold reserve at best, but often subjects of interrogation blurted out things under the stress of questioning they hadn’t intended to reveal.
At the town house on Fifth Avenue where Johnny had told them she and her grandfather lived loud raps on the brass door-knocker brought Henry, the servant, to answer the sound. He peered around the partial opening, displaying only the right side of his face.
“May I help you, gentlemen?”
Donellan stepped closer to the door against the possibility that Henry might slam it shut. He displayed the star pinned to his vest under the jacket and overcoat he wore. “We’re Federal detectives. We’d like to speak to Miss Letitia Barr about an important matter.”
Henry seemed to hesitate a moment. “Will you Gentlemen wait? I’ll see if Miss Barr is receiving visitors.”
Philips placed his palm firmly on the door and pushed it open. Both men stepped across the threshold. “Thank you, we’ll wait in the foyer. You go tell Miss Barr we’re here to see her.”
“Certainly, sir, I won’t be a moment,” Henry said, backing away from the two imposing lawmen.
He disappeared into the adjoining room, closing the door behind him. Moments passed. Henry reappeared and Letitia swept into the foyer from behind him.
“What is it you want to talk about?” she said, struggling to remain self-possessed.
“May we continue this conversation in your parlor, Miss Barr?” Philips asked, indicating the room through which she had just come.
She turned, held the door open and said: “Won’t you have seats in here?”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Donellan said. Both men removed their top hats. They all took seats in comfortable chairs.
“We are aware, Miss,” Philips began, “that your grandfather runs a criminal enterprise from his warehouse and that you may be complicit in the day-to-day operation of this business.”
The color faded from Letitia’s cheeks, she took a handkerchief from the pocket of her gown and held it to her mouth.
“We are also aware, that you recently made a trip to Canada to deliver certain funds to Confederate conspirators in Toronto,” he continued.
Letitia began to tremble visibly. The first tears appeared in her eyes.
“Ma’am,” Donellan said, “We will require a full statement of the activities in and around Barr’s Warehouse and who you contacted in Canada. It would be well for you to begin to cooperate now.”
“Johnny,” she sobbed. “He’s with the police. That’s how you know so much about everything.”
“Forget Johnny for the moment, we need to know what else besides counterfeiting and funding rebel espionage goes on in that warehouse,” Donellan’s voice became harsh. “Who is the man that accompanied you from Toronto?”
Letitia tried to gather herself. “I only know him by the name he used when he introduced himself, Captain Partland of the Confederate States of America. He put me on the train in Toronto forcibly while I was waiting for Johnny. He didn’t tell me what he is doing in New York. I haven’t seen him since I arrived back here at home. We took a cab from the train, he saw me to the door and left.”
“What did he tell you about the activities at the warehouse and his connection to the Copperhead movement?” Donellan asked.
“We didn’t discuss anything like that,” Letitia replied. “He was polite. We talked about everything but the war, and why he was coming to New York. Can I ask about Johnny? I’ve been so worried about him. I hope he’s all right.”
“Johnny came back on the same train you did. He rode in a separate car when he saw you with the man you call Captain Partland,” Philips said.
Letitia heaved a long sob. “I’m so relieved that he’s come back. I feared he would be killed. He cared for my safety more than his. I can’t believe someone like him is involved with detectives and uncovering crime.”
“Suffice to say, Johnny is performing his duty on behalf of the United States government,” Donellan said.
“What will happen to Grandfather now?” Letitia asked in a timorous voice.
“That will be for later decisions. Just now, for your own sake, you must tell us whatever you know about the counterfeiting ring Mr Barr heads. The more cooperation you provide, the easier it will go for you later.”
Letitia buried her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. “I can’t betray Grandfather, I just can’t.”
“Miss Barr,” Philips said, taking a more persuasive tone, “We are giving you an opportunity to help yourself. Mr Barr will be given the same chance. Bear in mind that the citizen’s right to habeas corpus and speedy trial has been suspended for the duration of this war. That means you may be held indefinitely in one of our prisons. They are decidedly unpleasant places. You can spare yourself all that.”
Letitia’s spate of weeping began to verge on hysterics.
“Miss Barr,” Donellan tried to stem his impatience, “we don’t have a great deal of time. We need to know immediately what an agent of the Confederacy is doing in New York, presumably plotting with Mr Barr and others in that warehouse. Johnny may be in danger. Now is your opportunity to avoid much unnecessary suffering and possibly violence.”
Letitia took a moment to dry her tears and stifle her uncontrollable sobbing. “All I know is that Grandfather has counterfeit money printed in a back room at the warehouse. We trusted Johnny to deliver packages to people who purchased them. Grandfather and the foreman Nate became suspicious of him. They sent him to Canada with me and gave me instructions to betray him to the Confederate spy ring up there. What else they have planned, I have no idea. They never confided more than that to me.”
“Where did they move the printing machinery?” Donellan asked.
“I honestly don’t know. I wasn’t here when they did that and Grandfather never told me. He’ll be angry when he finds out Johnny escaped being killed in Toronto, which is what was supposed to happen.”
Both detectives stood.
“Miss Barr, may we have your parole that you will remain here in this house until we complete our investigation?” Philips asked. “We will discuss your involvement with our superiors at a later time.”
Letitia groped for an answer. Her composure shattered, the words spilled out between convulsive gasps: “I have nowhere to go, now. I give you my word I will stay here.”
Nate and Bertie Swinton waited on Mulberry Street in the surrey with the collapsible top drawn up, watching the tenement building where Nate had determined that Deirdre lived. The horse stood patiently, its nose immersed in its feed bag. They hoped that Deirdre would have an errand to run and appear alone on the crowded street.
Two hours passed and Pighead became anxious. “I don’t think nuthin’s gonna happen. Suppose she don’t come out?”
“Keep yer shirt on, will ya?” Nate snapped, “she’s always doin’ stuff like goin’ to the market. I’ve watched her comin’ and goin’. Y’ll see. ’Sides ya wanna earn yer twenty-five bucks don’tcha?”
“Yeah, I guess. Just sittin’ here is startin’ to get to me.”
Nate noticed the horse had stopped feeding. “Pighead,” he said, “jump down and take the feed bag off the horse.”
Pighead slipped the harness of the feed bag from the neck of the animal just as Nate barked at him: “Quick, get back up here, there she is.”
Pighead stopped to look around.
“C’mon, will ya? Hurry, let’s go. She’s headed for the train tracks and the market. Get up here, now.”
Pighead scrambled into the seat next to Nate who flicked the reins and started the horse down the street. “That’s her, the one in the white bonnet and blue overcoat. She’s headed for that open space behind the train station where the greengrocer is. When we get next to her, jump down and take that blanket I brought. Throw it over her, pick her up and toss her in the back of the surrey. She ain’t that big. If she puts up too much of a fuss, whack her one in the head.”
Pighead’s close-set porcine eyes glittered in anticipation. “That the one, the one with the red hair stickin’ outta her hat?”
“Yeah, that’s her. We gotta be fast. Don’t want to draw a crowd. Just grab her, throw the blanket over her and yank her up into the back.”
“Aw, this is gonna be fun, Nate.”
“Never mind fun, this is business. Ya do this, that’s all I need. Then I give ya the money. Ya don’t have nuthin’ more to do with it. And keep yer mouth shut after. Too much loose talk and we’ll have the cops on us.”
Nate urged the horse to pick up its pace, east on Canal, across the Bowery and over the tracks. Deirdre scurried on her way oblivious to the horse-drawn rig closing up behind her. When she reached the open area behind the train station Nate slewed the surrey around in front of her and Pighead jumped down with the blanket.
“C’mere girlie,” he cackled, and threw the foul smelling covering over the girl’s head and shoulders.
Deirdre screamed, but the coarse woolen wrap muffled the sound. She started to slip to her knees to escape the blanket and Pighead’s powerful arms encircling her. Pighead punched her once in the side of her head and she went limp in his grip. Picking her up, he levered himself onto the carriage and dumped her roughly behind the seats. She started to cry out again. He wrapped the blanket tightly around her and snarled: “Shaddap, girlie or I give ya another whack.”
He held her down and she began to squirm and thrash against the suffocating wool. He hit her head against a brace bar in the rear of the carriage and she became motionless once again.
“Hey, go easy.” Nate said. “We need her in one piece.”
Pighead leered. “Ya told me to give her a whack, didn’t ya?”
“Just make sure she doesn’t get loose is all,” Nate said, while the horse trotted at a rapid pace north toward the warehouse.
Nate drove the surrey around to a side entrance to the warehouse, tethered the horse and together he and Pighead bundled the unconscious girl through the door, down a long musty corridor past stacks of goods awaiting delivery to Barr’s customers. Deirdre began to moan and then emitted a long shriek. She writhed against the restraint of Pighead’s powerful arms grasping her firmly. He gripped her more tightly as she struggled. Nate slid back a false front set of shelving on greased skids, took a set of keys from his pocket and used one to open the lock that secured the hidden door. The shelving concealed the only admittance to the inner recesses of the warehouse, a place where none of the workmen had access or even knew about.
“Take the blanket off her,” Nate told Pighead, “but cover her mouth until we get her inside.”
Pighead whipped the blanket from around Deirdre’s head and stifled her outcry.
“Let’s go, girlie,” he sneered. “In ya go.”
Both men dragged her into the storage room. Nate slammed the door and pointed to chair in a corner.
“Sit her over there,” he instructed his accomplice.
Now hysterical, Deirdre verged on the brink of collapse. Pighead stood over her expectantly. Nate turned to him: “Ya go wait outside with the rest of the crew. Not a word to anyone, ya hear? The cops’ll be all over the place lookin’ for her.”
Pighead hesitated, looking from Nate to the terrified girl.
“G’wan scram, I told ya. And stay nearby. I got somethin’ else for ya to do,” Nate snarled.
Pighead backed toward the door, still hesitant.
Nate repeated with a harsh growl: “Git, I said. No harm is gonna come to her. We’re just usin’ her as bait. Wait outside ’til I tell ya what to do.”
When Pighead closed the door behind him, Nate turned to Deirdre. “We don’t intend any injury to ya, Miss. We just wanna talk to yer friend Johnny. Now you sit still and I’ll get ya a drink of water and somethin’ to eat. Ya’ll be in here for awhile. There’s no way out ’cept through that door and when I leave it’ll be locked.”
Deirdre struggled to speak through her convulsive sobs: “Why do you want Johnny? What’s he done?”
“Never mind, Miss. We just wanna talk to him, is all. Just don’t carry on like this. It’ll be a lot easier on ya.”
“Why have you kidnapped me?”
“Like I said, we need to talk to yer friend Johnny. When he gets here, ya can go.”
Deirdre’s whole body wracked with tremors, the piteous sound of her weeping made no impression on Nate. He walked to the door and opened it.
“Just stay still, ya hear me?”
“Don’t leave me in here,” the girl screamed.
Nate closed the door behind him and set the lock through the hasp. He slid the shelving back into place. Deirdre leapt to her feet and ran to the locked door, pounding on it while emitting shrieks of terror. No one else could hear the noise. Nate ignored it and walked down the corridor to Simeon’s office. Both Gage and Rhodes sat near his desk discussing the next phase of their strategy. Nate knocked once and entered. “Boss, is yer granddaughter comin’ in today?”
“Why do you ask and why do you need her?”
“Me and Pighead just snatched the girl, that friend of Johnny’s. I was hopin’ Letitia could sorta sit with her for a while. She’s gettin’ a case of hysterics back there.”
“Far as I know, she won’t be here today. She’s in a kind of bad way herself after the trip to Canada.”
“No matter, I’m gonna send Pighead out, see can he find that rat police spy. Have him come runnin’. Then we take care of him – permanently.”
Nate found Pighead out near the loading pier and called him aside. “Here’s what I want’cha to do. Ya know what that Sullivan kid looks like. Ya nose around tomorrow, see can ya find him. Tell him we got the girl. Tell him he doesn’t get here soon, we gonna dump his little friend in the river. Ya tell him he don’t have a lotta time.”
“Sure Nate, I’ll scare him good. He’ll be here.”
The two detectives left the Barr house and drove to Houston Street and the hollow tree trunk which they and Johnny had occasionally used as a repository for written communications. They found his coded note which told them the location of the printing machinery. Uncertain whether the loft would have a guard from the gang posted, they made a decision to involve the local police in the event they needed additional manpower. At the local stationhouse the precinct detectives had gone out on investigations. The Federal men left word with the uniform desk sergeant that they would return in the morning.
Johnny spent an anxious night and arose early to pay another visit to Deirdre or speak with her mother about when she might return. The weather brightened somewhat and the wind abated. He headed for Mulberry Street hoping that Deirdre had come back from her visit to the convent in the Bronx. When he turned into Deirdre’s street he noticed a milling crowd in front of her tenement building. He approached the group, his instinctive sense of alarm growing in his belly. The people murmured among themselves, some of the women wept openly.
One of the voices said: “I feel so badly for the mother. Poor dear is nearly beside herself.”
Another said: “That poor girl, walkin’ about alone in this neighborhood, all these ruffians runnin’ loose around here. A body’s not safe any time of day or night.”
Johnny asked a man closest to him: “Something wrong?”
“Ah dear God, a poor girl’s gone missin’, so she has. Her mother sent her to buy groceries and she’s never come back.”
Panic immobilized Johnny for that moment. Looking around quickly he saw two detectives from the precinct he recognized as Stafford and Williams. He pushed through the crowd and asked the detectives: “Can I ask who it is went missing?” fearing in his bones he knew the answer.
“Is it any of your business?” Stafford snapped.
“I might know her, is all,” Johnny said, with all his effort directed toward not letting his utter dread show on his face.
“You know someone named Deirdre Loughlin?” Williams asked. “You know something about her disappearance?”
“Deirdre?” he asked, “oh my God, not Deirdre. No, I have no idea what might have happened, but I know her, I know her very well. I was just coming to call on her.”
“Well,” Stafford said, “if you hear anything let us know quick as you can. She didn’t come home yesterday afternoon when she went shopping.”
Johnny muttered: “Thanks,” and bolted from Mulberry Street headed for the warehouse.
Frantic and out of breath, Johnny raced up to the loading pier outside Barr’s building. He searched the faces of the men idling there waiting for the next wagon to unload. A few of them greeted him perfunctorily, most pointedly ignored him.
He noticed Spike. “Can I have a quick word with you,” he said, and gestured for the diminutive man to step a few paces away from the prying ears of the other workmen.
“What’s wrong, Johnny? Ya look all worked up. Somethin’ bad happen?”
“Spike, you didn’t happen to hear about anything out of the ordinary happening around here?”
“Like what? Nothin’ I know about goin’ on around the old shop, ’cept a’ course the usual stuff.”
“There’s a girl I know missing from the neighborhood up the ways around Mulberry …”
“Missin’? Gee John, I ain’t heard nothin’ like that. That’s awful. If I hear anythin’ I’d sure let ya know. She a friend of yer’s?” asked Spike, unwilling to discuss what he had inadvertently seen Nate and Pighead carry into the warehouse. Fearful of retribution, he cast an anxious glance back at the men watching him from the loading pier.
“Yeah, she a good friend, I gotta find her fast.” Johnny’s voice broke at the mention of Deirdre’s relationship with him. A tidal wave of guilt and regret swamped his spirit. He realized he should have waited to get in touch with Deirdre until he had completed his task for the Detective Service. Months before he had placed her in a dangerous situation when confronted together on the East River docks by Ned Crandall and the Baxter Street Boys. He had to shoot Ned then to prevent a terrible crime against both him and Deirdre. That night she had lost control of her fragile emotions out of fright, witnessing violence first-hand.
Now, because he had arranged to meet her in public during the past few weeks, they had been seen together. This gave Johnny a strong suspicion that Nate Boyer had lashed out in a final effort to capture and kill him.
“Keep your ears open, Spike, let me know fast if you get wind of anything. I think these people,” he said, gesturing toward the warehouse, “are somehow involved.”
“Ya bet, pal. Soon as I get any whisper I’ll go find ya.”
“Thanks Spike,” Johnny said and walked away, his mind churning. He needed to find some clue that would lead him to where the girl might be hidden.
Detectives from the precinct squad fanned out into the teeming neighborhood stopping people at random, asking for any indication of where, when or how the girl might have disappeared. They acted from a certainty that Deirdre would never just leave home on an impulse. On information from her mother, Stafford and Williams took the train to the Sisters of Charity convent that Deirdre had visited to inquire whether she had returned there. Other members of the squad concentrated on the area around the greengrocer and the train station. No one would or could say they saw anything that might have indicated the forcible removal of a girl from the street. When their trip to the convent in the Bronx produced no results they returned to re-interview Mrs Loughlin.
Detective Stafford asked: “Ma’am, we’re sorry to bother you again, but we wanted to ask if you could remember anything else, someone your daughter may have spoken to or met.”
Maggie, stricken with grief and fear for her daughter, could barely compose herself. Detective Williams asked her to sit down and take a moment to gather her thoughts. They took seats on the sofa in the parlor opposite her and waited for her to speak.
“Of course,” Maggie said, “I should have mentioned it before. I had forgotten for the moment when this first happened. There’s a soldier Deirdre has been meetin’ hereabout.”
“A soldier,” Williams repeated with a look of incredulity, “around here?”
He and Stafford exchanged puzzled looks.
“I’m not sure what it’s all about meself, she’s always so secretive about him. She says he doesn’t wear a uniform.”
Sudden awareness dawned on both policemen at the same time. They stood to take their leave. Maggie rose to see them to the door.
At the door Stafford said, “Thank you, Mrs Loughlin, you’ve been helpful. We’ll let you know of any developments.”
Maggie collapsed in tears once again on the chair where she sat staring out the tenement window, trying to will her daughter back home.
Outside on the street, Stafford said: “That’s the kid making inquiries when we were here the last time. He keeps popping up like a bad penny.”
Donellan and Philips went to the stationhouse and asked to speak to a superior officer of detectives. The sergeant in uniform at the desk told them all the members of the squad on duty at that moment had responded to a report of a missing teen-aged girl. She had vanished earlier in the day while out running an errand. The Federal investigators left the precinct house and set out to look for Johnny. They tried his rooming house and the landlady said she hadn’t seen him. A knock on his door elicited no response. They doubted he had gone back to his place of employment, so they drove in their carriage to the dead drop locations in case he had left a message for them. Not finding any they paused to consider where he might have gone.
“You don’t suppose this girl that disappeared has anything to do with Johnny, do you?” Philips asked his partner.
Donellan thought for a moment. “Could be, maybe the gang has lashed out, it could be a trap for him if they hold her as a hostage.”
“If that’s so, he’s made a bad mistake against all our advice,” Philips said with an edge of chagrin in his voice.
“We’ve got to make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish. I wish I knew where to find him,” Donellan said.