The man who called himself Captain Partland rode up to Barr’s Warehouse in a one-horse trap and tethered the animal to a railing alongside the building. A tan three-quarter length jacket set off by a fashionable dark cravat, a wide-brimmed flat-crowned hat, riding breeches and boots completed his well-designed attire. He found his way to Simeon’s office and rapped lightly on the closed door. Simeon still conferred with Gage and Rhodes in his office.
“Come in,” he said.
“Mr Barr, I’m Captain Partland, Confederate States of America, pleased to make you acquaintance.”
Simeon rose and the two men shook hands. “Allow me to introduce visitors from the Society in Baltimore, Captain. This is Mr Gage and Mr Rhodes.”
Both men rose to offer perfunctory handshakes and resumed their seats.
“As you may know, sir,” Partland addressed Simeon, “I accompanied Letitia, your granddaughter, back from Toronto.”
“Yes, I am aware of that and thank you for your courtesy, Captain, most appreciated. Please take a seat. We were just discussing the plans for our most important new venture.”
“Please continue, gentlemen. I’ll just listen for a few moments to catch up on your proposal.”
“You may be aware that our, shall we say, printing business,” Simeon began, “has experienced a temporary interruption. We recently discovered a police informant in our midst. We hired him as a common laborer several weeks back having been taken in by his age and his claim to be a member of the Sons of Liberty. When we uncovered his foul purpose we sent him to Canada with my granddaughter ostensibly to be her escort, since she carried a large sum of money. He was supposed to have been disposed of up there. However, it seems he eluded the men assigned to that task. We understand he’s back. We are taking steps to end this charade now. I had hoped to accomplish that in Toronto and avoid drawing unnecessary attention to ourselves here.”
“And this young spy or informant as you call him, where is he now?” Partland asked.
He glanced over at the two operatives from Baltimore who seemed to regard him with a mixture of suspicion and disdain.
Simeon explained: “My foreman Nate is now in the process of formulating plans to eliminate this interloper. Our immediate concern is to assure ourselves that he is never to testify against us should we ever face prosecution, however unlikely that prospect.”
Gage broke into the conversation and asked in a harsh voice: “Just what role are you to play in our scheme?”
Partland crossed one booted leg over the other and turned slightly to address Gage directly. He brushed an imaginary mote of dust from his carefully creased riding breeches. “I am under orders from Richmond to oversee this most important undertaking, being a man of some military experience.”
“Just what experience is that?” Rhodes snapped.
Simeon interposed himself before the hostility completely disrupted their meeting. “Gentlemen, the Captain comes from the clandestine Confederate organization in Toronto. Only the most trusted agents are tasked with these important matters. As we were discussing before the Captain came, let’s finalize what is to take place and what part each of us will play.”
Gage and Rhodes turned their attention grudgingly to Simeon. Partland barely suppressed a sly smile. The conversation continued into the evening hours, after which Simeon invited the little group to a nearby tavern for a late supper.
Before they left Nate returned to the locked room where Deirdre languished, a prisoner with no idea of when, if ever, she could expect release. He brought a pitcher of water, a tin cup and a loaf of bread on a wooden tray. “Have some of this, Missie. It’ll at least take yer appetite away until we find yer friend. Here’s a bucket case ya need it, too. Hate to be so crude but we gotta keep ya here for a while.”
Deirdre had regained some of her composure, her hysterics had subsided. She stared into space while Nate placed the tray with the pitcher of water and the loaf of bread he had brought on a table near the chair where she sat. Faint daylight filtered through windows high up on the walls hazed over by countless years of grime. Not wishing to leave his hostage in total darkness when the sun set, Nate returned with kerosene lamps which he hung on hooks on the wall.
He paused before leaving and locking the door once more:
“Don’t want to talk?” he asked. “It’s all right, I understand. Glad to see ya stopped caterwaulin’ anyway.”
Choosing not to respond, she remained tight-lipped until Nate left the storage area and relocked the door. Her head still ached from the blows she had received and her legs began to cramp from sitting on a wooden chair. She stood to stretch her legs and wandered around the confined, musty area. To distract herself from the terror that threatened to engulf her, Deirdre examined the stacks of stenciled crates crammed against the walls and the inscriptions on the metal boxes piled in one corner. A drink of the water Nate had brought relieved the thirst that had become magnified by the terror that clenched her throat and the rawness brought on by her screaming and uncontrolled sobbing. Resuming her seat, she reached into her overcoat pocket, extracted her rosary, closed her eyes and began to invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Bridget in prayer. Deirdre had an abiding faith in the efficacy of prayer in perilous moments and began reciting the rosary starting with the Five Sorrowful Mysteries, the trials the Blessed Mother had undergone and borne with equanimity. She stood again and paced across the wooden floor in the room which to her seemed filled with sinister shadows. She fingered the beads and murmured the prayers aloud. Dusk brought an oppressive gloom to the silent storage area.
Early the following morning the two Federal detectives set off for a second visit to the stationhouse to obtain the assistance of the local police and tell them of their suspicion that the girl’s kidnapping may somehow have a link to their counterfeiting investigation. Detective Sergeant Cantly greeted them in his second floor office: “How may I help you, gentlemen?”
Donellan said: “We may have located the place where the counterfeiting machinery from Barr’s warehouse is stored.”
The sergeant interrupted: “My squad has a serious matter on its hands. A young girl has gone missing from a shopping errand she was to run for her mother. Right now all our resources are focused on finding her. We’d like to help but …”
Philips cut him off: “We know about the missing girl, but we think there may be a connection between our investigation and her disappearance.”
“How so, what do you mean?” Sergeant Cantly asked.
Philips continued: “It’s no secret anymore. We’ve had an undercover working at the warehouse where the fake money is printed. He’s a young soldier on loan to our unit. He was able to get himself hired there as a workman. We believe that the counterfeiting gang got wise to him.”
“What’s that got to do with the girl?”
“We have a suspicion that the girl is someone this boy has been seeing while he was working at the warehouse. He was told not to do that, but youngsters being what they are … Anyway, it occurred to us that the gang might have snatched the girl to use as a hostage, as bait to get him to try to find her. We think they plan to kill him, if not both of them.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” the sergeant said. “But where do you think they might be hiding her?”
“That’s just it,” Philips said, “we suspect they may be using the same place where the machinery is hidden. We got a tip that there’s a loft over on Courtland Street above a butcher shop where the printing presses are secreted. There’s good chance they would use that same place to hide the girl. They don’t know we’re aware of that location.”
Donellan added: “Reason we’re asking for help, we don’t know how many there are or what we might run into in numbers of armed men. We could risk the girl’s life if we just go busting in.”
“I see, the more people you have to raid this place, the faster we could wrap up the whole thing,” the sergeant mused.
“Two men smashing in there could lead to more trouble than we need,” Donellan continued. “We thought having a back-up team is the wisest course. It could be a bad lead, but then it’s all we have. If it doesn’t work out we haven’t lost anything.”
“Except lose some time we could use looking for this girl. Well, we don’t have anything else solid right now, may be worth the gamble,” Cantly said. “It’s going to take a while to assemble a squad of men. We’ll need uniformed people as well as a team of detectives. Give me an hour or so until the uniformed day shift comes on and I’ll see what I can put together.”
Donellan turned to Philips: “I wish I knew where Johnny was.”
“We can’t look for him now. We’ve got to raid this loft as quickly as possible. The girl might be there,” Philips answered. “Let’s wait for the sergeant here to organize his men to do this right.”
The weight of his guilt and helplessness bore down on Johnny until the pain in his soul became unbearable. He walked the area in the vicinity of the warehouse all morning, uncertain of a course of action and hoping in vain that something would occur to him to help him find the girl. His one faint consolation became the memory of the dangerous situations he had faced before and survived. The revolver he remembered to carry with him since his return from Canada became a reassuring weight in his pocket. Fear crept through his mind nearly immobilizing his movements. Black storm clouds gathered overhead which seemed to threaten another snowfall. Standing a block away from the warehouse, quiet since the work crews had left, dismissed by Simeon’s orders, he sensed somehow that Deirdre languished as a prisoner there.
Pighead waited until the entire crew had gone. He sauntered out onto the loading dock and scanned the street in both directions. In the distance a figure stood alone looking back toward him. A glimmer of recognition dawned in his mind. It looked like Johnny waiting there, hands thrust in pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. He jumped from the platform and began to walk in the direction of the solitary man who remained motionless, watching the warehouse. Drawing closer, Pighead became certain he saw Johnny. He rehearsed in his mind what he would say to lure him to the room where Nate held the girl hostage.
“Say, Johnny, how are ya? It’s me Bertie Swinton, watcha doin’ standin’ here all alone?”
“Hi, Bertie, work done for the day?” Johnny asked.
“Nah, just ain’t much to do today. Business is slow. They let everybody go home. Nobody left in the old shop, all closed up. Say, listen Johnny, I just got wind of somethin’ goin’ on in the back of the warehouse. Somethin’ ya might wanna hear.”
“Yeah, what’s that, Bertie?”
“I think they got a girl locked up in the back. There’s a storage room, can’t see it from the main part of the building. Nobody’s ever been back there. They said somethin’ don’t happen soon they might just toss her in the river. Not sure what they meant, but it’s just somethin’ I heard by accident, like.”
“Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about?” Johnny asked.
“It’s Nate and some guys I ain’t never seen before, not from around here, judgin’ by the way they talk.”
Conflicting thoughts raced through Johnny’s mind. How much of this had a ring of truth? Had the people in Simeon’s employ set a trap for him?
“I gotta tell ya, Johnny, if ya get there real soon, ya could maybe help her. I can show ya where she is. Nobody’s there now. Y’d never find this room by yerself. But I could show ya real quick.”
“Do you know who she is or why they locked her up?”
“Don’t know, Johnny but I think yer a right kind’a guy, would go to help a girl in trouble.”
“Do you know if Simeon is in his office or if Nate’s around the building?” Johnny asked, torn between suspicion and an impulse to check out Pighead’s lead.
“Like I said, ain’t nobody’s there now. Ya get in real quick, ya could let the girl go. Time goes by, no tellin’ what they might do.”
Johnny had an instinctive mistrust of Pighead Swinton, they never had much to say to one another, but if what he told Johnny proved true and he acted immediately, he could free the girl.
Johnny hesitated, “Maybe I should get the police, going in there alone …”
“I don’t wanna have nothin’ to do with no police, Johnny. ’Sides they may never find her without me to show them. I don’t wanna get caught up explainin’ how I come to know all this. I’ve had enough trouble with them cops. I know how they operate. No siree, I can show ya, but no cops. We’d better hurry, too. No tellin’ when Nate and them might come back.”
Johnny tried to read the thug’s face for signs of falsehood. Pighead’s eyes shifted constantly, but Johnny attributed that to the man’s inherently dishonest nature. Finally he agreed to check out Pighead’s story, but vowed silently to do him grievous bodily harm if this lead proved false or a trap waited for him behind the hidden door in the warehouse.
Pighead looked at Johnny expectantly. “Well, whaddya say, we gonna go or not?”