by Blum, Howard
As Physick approached the breakfast room, it occurred to him that it would be a mistake to enter. He’d be leading the intruder straight to Mr. Morgan. Instead, he hurried down a narrow staircase that led to the basement servants’ hall. He’d recruit an army of footmen and valets to subdue the gunman.
Holt tried to pursue the butler, but his deformed leg made running impossible. And then, before he could understand how it had happened, the butler had vanished. He looked down the long hallway, but he might as well have been peering down the wrong end of a telescope. The house was vast and empty. With his gun drawn, he moved forward with caution. He felt completely exposed, and very alone.
“WE WERE AT BREAKFAST IN the room on the ground floor, when the butler was heard shouting from the main entrance by the library to Mr. Morgan to go upstairs quickly,” Sir Cecil would remember. “We did not know what was the matter, whether it was fire or burglars, and the whole party left the table and ran up the rear staircase, which was nearest to the door.”
Morgan led the way. He was a man who always took charge. His authority was instinctive, and a lifetime of experiences had proved that he had the power to shape events to conform to his will. He was not frightened, but he was annoyed. It wouldn’t do to have any sort of disturbance—fire? burglars?—in his house. Especially this weekend, with so many guests, and Junius’s party tonight.
Rosalie McCabe, the ancient nurse who took care of the youngest children, was standing at the top of the stairs. She had also heard the butler’s shouts and wondered what was happening.
“What has gone wrong up here?” Morgan demanded petulantly. “What do you want me for?”
“Nothing has happened up here that I know of,” she answered at once. She wanted to make it clear that she was not the one responsible for disturbing her employer.
Perhaps, Morgan wondered, it had all been a mistake. He’d need to give Physick a good talking-to. But even as his anger started rising, he knew that this sort of thing wouldn’t be like Physick at all. Something must’ve occurred. He told Sir Cecil to take a few of the guests up to the attic floor and check the servants’ rooms. He would inspect the second-floor bedrooms with the others.
JANE MORGAN, THE FINANCIER’S WIFE, saw him first. She was standing outside her bedroom on the second floor with her husband when she turned. And there he was. He was coming up the main staircase. He had a revolver in each hand and a wild look in his eyes. And right behind him were her two youngest children.
Minutes earlier, as Holt was wandering through the downstairs hall, he’d heard voices. He pulled open a door and found Frances and Henry Morgan in the playroom. He pointed a pistol at them. “Come with me,” he ordered. He led them out of the room, and told them to follow as he started up the staircase.
Jane Morgan came from old Boston stock, and she was by nature a quiet woman, happy to read her books and grow award-winning roses while her husband stormed the citadels of finance and politics. But this man had her babies! She let out a small shriek and, sheer instinct pushing her, moved toward him.
The instant he heard his wife’s cry, Morgan turned and saw the intruder. The man held two revolvers, and both were leveled at his wife.
He pushed her out of the line of fire and charged at the gunman.
“Now, Mr. Morgan, I have you,” said Holt.
Morgan was not deterred. He hurled his 220-pound body at the intruder.
Holt fired once. Then again. The noise echoed through the house.
The first bullet entered Morgan’s abdomen. A red stain quickly began to spread across his white linen waistcoat. The second bullet passed through his left thigh. A river of blood gushed down his leg.
Holt pulled the trigger two more times. There were two distinct clicks, and after each one it was as if time had stopped as Morgan waited for the inevitable explosion. But on each occasion the caps did not detonate.
Despite his wounds, Morgan fell on Holt. Bleeding profusely, he wrestled with the thin, spindly gunman, his full weight pressing against the intruder like a massive boulder. Both of Holt’s hands were pinned to the floor, and his grip on the revolvers loosened.
Morgan twisted one of the guns from Holt’s hands. His wife and the elderly nurse worked frantically to pry away the other.
“I have a stick of dynamite in my pocket,” Holt managed to shout.
He might have been warning that he was still a threat. Or perhaps he was begging for some restraint; if they treated him too roughly, the house could come tumbling down around them.
But events were now rushing by so quickly that no one was paying any attention. Morgan’s clothes were soaked with blood. It looked as if he was dying. Then suddenly there was Physick, accompanied by the members of the household staff, charging up the staircase.
The gardener had a shovel, a valet had a broom, and the butler had armed himself with a large chunk of coal. As the man who had introduced himself as Lester lay pinned to the floor, Physick kept pounding and pounding the rock-hard lump of coal into his head until at last the gunman lost consciousness.
MORGAN WAS CARRIED TO HIS bed, and as soon as he was settled in, he demanded a phone.
He dialed the number of his Wall Street office. “I’ve been shot in the stomach,” he announced in a weak voice. “Get the best doctor you can.”
The first doctor to arrive at Matinicock Point, though, was a local man, Dr. William Zabriskie. He had little experience with shooting victims, and his examination of Morgan left him very concerned. The hip wound, he quickly decided, was only an annoyance. The bullet had passed through the thigh muscle and apparently exited. The other bullet, however, had penetrated the lower part of the abdominal cavity, and that was a genuine danger. If it grew infected, the prognosis was dire. Yet since there was no hospital in Glen Cove, he decided the most reasonable course would be to wait for the arrival of the New York specialists.
Matinicock Point, meanwhile, became an armed camp. The partners at J. P. Morgan & Company did not know if the assassin had accomplices, or if he did, whom they were working for, and whether they would attack again to complete the botched job. Police officers from all over Long Island and New York were summoned to protect the estate. A shotgun-toting officer stood at every entrance to the main house. Private detectives patrolled the driveway. A squad of burly armed men stood in front of the now tightly locked entrance gate. Charles Price, the gatekeeper, toted a large repeating rifle and made it clear to curious neighbors that they should stay away. “There are scores of men with shotguns up there on the grounds. They are men who are not taking any chances.”
When the pair of New York doctors arrived, they found that Morgan’s condition was stable, but an extensive examination brought new concerns. The first bullet had traveled through the abdominal cavity and apparently lodged in the financier’s spine. They would need to probe for the bullet, a dangerous, life-threatening procedure.
Since the two-hour ambulance ride to New York risked exacerbating Morgan’s condition further, it was decided to perform the operation in Morgan’s bedroom. The doctors went into his private bath to scrub. But minutes later, one of the doctors hurried back into the room. He ordered the butler to summon all the servants.
“I need your help,” he began fervently. “I need you to find the bullet. If we can establish that it exited, then a probe won’t be necessary.” He knew that they had already conducted a search, but, nearly begging, the doctor asked them, please, to look again.
Twenty minutes later the bullet was found. It had passed through Morgan, ricocheted off a wall, and lain hidden in the dark floral design of the carpet on the second-floor landing.
That night, the relieved doctors issued a statement to the many reporters who had gathered outside the front gate: “A further examination of Mr. Morgan’s wounds shows that the bullets did not involve any vital organs. The condition of the patient continues excellent.” The crisis had passed.
As for the gunman, he had regained consciousness. Dr. Zabriskie trea
ted the cuts on his skull and forehead and, after washing away the blood, found they were superficial.
Erich Muenter (center) after his capture. On his left is chief constable Frank McCahill, who arrested him at Matinicock Point.
(© Bettmann/Corbis)
“Who are you?” the doctor asked as he applied antiseptic to the wounds. “The butler says your name is Lester.”
“I am a Christian gentleman,” was the cryptic reply, the words spoken with pious conviction.
Before the doctor could ask another question, the local justice of the peace and the chief of constables hurried into the room. They snapped handcuffs onto the assassin’s wrists. Then they led him out the front door and into a waiting police car.
A THICK WHITE CLOTH BANDAGE was wrapped around Lester’s head like a turban. One eye had been blackened. The other was a narrow slit. But as soon as Lester was brought into the Glen Cove jail after his arraignment, he informed the arresting officers that he wanted to draw up a statement. They brought him ink and a sheet of paper, and he started to write:
I, F. Holt of Ithaca, N.Y., formerly professor of French of Cornell University, make the following statement: “I have been in New York ten days, and made a previous trip to Mr. Morgan’s a few days ago. My motive was to try to influence Mr. Morgan to use his influence in the manufacture of ammunition in the United States and among millionaires who are financing the war loans, to have an embargo put on shipments of ammunition so as to relieve the American people from complicity in the deaths of thousands of our European brothers.”
As he wrote, he hoped this would appease them. He would give them this much: I am not Thomas Lester but rather a college professor named Holt. And they would not bother to dig for other, more deeply buried secrets.
Chapter 47
Some old athletes live forever in their glory days, preferring the memories of their youthful triumphs to the present. Tom was not one of them. But on a single afternoon each year he’d relive the moment seventeen years earlier when as a rookie he won the hundred-yard dash at the annual Police Field Day. Now, though, Captain Tunney would stand at the finish line, the celebrated past champion awarding the gold medal to this year’s young winner.
He had risen on the morning of the meet at the Gravesend Bay track, July 3, looking forward, he’d recall, “to a day of relaxation and pleasure.” He felt he needed it. For months he’d been grappling with mysteries whose solutions remained just beyond his grasp. The ship fires, Koenig, Fay, and now von Rintelen—they all were, he was growing convinced, tied together, strands of the same conspiracy. But the old track star didn’t need to remind himself that he was a long way from the finish line. Or that only winners received gold medals. Nevertheless, “it was a holiday, with another to follow, and I proposed to enjoy it,” he remembered.
He rode a streetcar from his Prospect Park home across Brooklyn to the track, reading the newspaper on the way. A front-page bulletin reported last night’s Capitol bombing. There were few details—the morning edition went to press at 1:00 a.m.—yet he gave the story a professional’s attention. He wondered what group was responsible, and what sort of device had been detonated. But once he was at the park, it was a sunny summer’s day, and there were old friends from precincts around the city, and many other things to talk and think about.
At about noon the runners were warming up on the track, and Tom decided he’d better make his way to the finish line. “Duty calls,” he joked to the circle of detectives he’d been talking to, finishing his beer with one long swallow and excusing himself. He was headed across the grass when an officer found him. “Captain,” the officer announced with urgent excitement, “the PC needs to talk to you. He’s on the phone.”
“Mr. Morgan has been shot by a German,” Commissioner Woods revealed as soon as Tom got on the line. He wanted Tom to get to Glen Cove at once. “Find out the man’s motives and any accomplices he had,” Woods ordered. “Keep in touch with me.” He hung up without another word.
BY THE TIME TOM ARRIVED at Glen Cove at about three that afternoon, the sleepy little town had shaken itself anxiously awake, and rumors were spreading quickly. Many residents had grown convinced the Gold Coast was under siege.
Sir Cecil Spring-Rice had reported that only hours after the attack on Morgan, he had been motoring to a neighboring estate when a “low, long, dark-colored touring car” filled with six men had tried to abduct him—but Paddison, the Morgan chauffeur at the wheel, had bravely outrun the assailants. A garage owner claimed that “two young Germans” were asking questions about Morgan. Someone else notified the police about a bicyclist “with a German accent.” And F. Worthington Hine, the owner of the Keystone National Powder Company, which manufactured much of the munitions being sent overseas, had spotted two strangers sprinting across the lawn of his estate. When he called to them, they turned and ran. Joined by Donald Bane, the son of the president of the Seaboard National Bank, he hurried to his car and gave chase. He sped down the road, only to lose control at the first sharp turn and crash into the brick wall of a neighbor’s estate.
There was no proof that these incidents were tied to the shooting, or that German agents were involved in them. People might have simply been on edge, willing to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. In the end, no arrests were made.
But by the afternoon dozens of reporters were milling around the entrance of the tiny Glen Cove police station. When they saw Tom, they converged on him in a ravenous pack. At Gravesend, while he searched for an available car, Tom had spotted Detective James Coy from his squad and recruited him to come along. Coy spoke German, and Tom thought an interpreter might come in handy. But now Coy might have been a blocker on a football field as he roughly cleared a path through the scrum of reporters shouting questions at his boss.
Inside, the station house was a hive of noisy activity, officers and civilians scurrying about feverishly. Tom took it all in with a critical eye. It looked as though the country cops were in over their heads.
He was led into the office of Frank McCahill, the constable in charge. Heavyset, with a red drinker’s face, McCahill quickly confirmed Tom’s initial suspicions. Never had anything like this before, the constable confided, a desperate note in his voice. A maid pinches the silver, we can handle that. But an assassination, Germans running all over the place, that’s out of our league.
Tom asked McCahill to tell him all he knew. He spoke evenly, hoping his calm would help settle the constable.
McCahill pulled himself together to give a broadly accurate account of the attack. Then he handed Holt’s one-page statement to Tom.
With some embarrassment, he added that it was already out on the wires; both the Associated Press and United Press had somehow gotten hold of it.
Tom did not think this was a problem. Since it was out there, he told McCahill, there was no telling what would turn up. It might even be a blessing, he suggested. Then Tom focused all his attention on Holt’s words.
He read slowly, as if he was trying to uncover something hidden in each sentence. But all he found, he decided when he reached the end, was an assassin who was smart enough to understand that silence would be impossible. Holt had attempted to gain control of the dialogue, volunteering what he wanted them to focus on. Tom knew he needed to learn the rest of the story.
“I’d like to talk with the prisoner,” he said finally.
THERE WAS NO INTERROGATION ROOM, and Tom thought commandeering McCahill’s office would be a rudeness that might make any future cooperation with the locals problematic, so the interview took place in a corridor. Two camp stools were placed in the hallway; Holt sat on one, and Tom across from him on the other.
With the thick bandage still wrapped around his head, one eye blackened, the other now swollen shut, and handcuffs on his thin wrists, Holt looked very vulnerable. Tom began by asking the prisoner his name, age, and profession; he hoped to establish a perfunctory rhythm that would keep the conversation moving forward. But once the frail,
slight man started talking, Tom realized he was entering a world of madness, and he would have to journey through it patiently before he could discover what lay at the end.
“What did you try to kill Mr. Morgan for?” Tom asked.
“I didn’t intend to kill him,” Holt corrected prissily. “I want to persuade him to use his influence to stop the shipment of ammunition to Europe.”
“Well, you chose a pretty strong means of persuading him, didn’t you?” Tom joked, all deliberate lightness. “What was the dynamite for?”
“I was going to show him what was causing all the trouble—explosives.”
The explanation made no sense at all, so Tom simply let it go. Instead, he tried to learn where Holt had bought the dynamite. But this was territory into which the prisoner adamantly refused to enter. “No amount of questioning would bring an answer,” Tom would later explain.
He decided that Holt had drawn this line because crossing it would reveal his accomplices. If Tom tried to push him across it, he feared, Holt would retreat completely. Besides, Tom had the sticks of dynamite that had been found in Holt’s suitcase and jacket pocket. They could be traced, and the resulting intelligence fed back to the prisoner. If Holt felt the authorities already had most of the story, he’d be more likely to cooperate and fill in the blanks.
For now, Tom offered Holt a compromise, and the prisoner grabbed it. Without any hesitancy, he revealed the names of the shops in New Jersey where he’d purchased the guns and the bullets.
“These facts gave me something to work with,” Tom rejoiced. Earlier, Coy had reached out to Barnitz, and the sergeant had assembled the entire team in the Centre Street offices, waiting for the captain’s instructions. Tom asked McCahill to bring the prisoner back to his cell while he went off to find a phone. It was time to set his squad off on the hunt.