Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

The other mode in which romances can be written, is that in which the writer only details that which he has enjoyed an opportunity to know, embodying with them such speculations and reflections as seem legitimately to grow out of the subject. This mode is unquestionably an unprofitable one to employ; but unfortunately this narration can be conducted on no other. Actual events and conversations only are given, and no speculations as to what might have been can be indulged. It might have been very easy to depict a disloyal or "secesh" household in this city, and a club of fashionable people with pro-slavery sympathies, meeting periodically, with grips, signs and passwords, and exercising an injurious influence on the National cause by holding clandestine correspondence with rebels in the revolted States. That such households have existed in this city during the entire struggle, and that such combinations of disloyal men have been doing their worst to cripple the government and distract the nation, no rational man doubts for a moment. But no loyal citizen has been admitted behind the curtain, in either of the supposable instances. No one could have been, and still remained loyal, without making such public revelations in the interest of patriotism, that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons themselves, and the government, are the only parties who possess the information.

All this, to say that the materials for this narration have not been gathered from disloyal sources or found in disloyal company, and that, as a consequence, it does not enter within doors closed to true men, by any magic key of the mind or the imagination. And if any mystery suggested, from that cause remains even partially unsolved, truth and loyalty, and not a desire for mystification, must supply the explanation.

And now to detail, very briefly, what is further known of the house on East 5— Street, and its occupation.

It has already been related that Superintendent Kennedy, in spite of his slighting replies to the two young men, did not really undervalue their information, and that two vigilant detectives, with assistants, were entrusted with the duty of watching the two houses. "L—— and another good man" had been ordered to take charge of the house on East 5—Street, and they entered upon their duties at once. Not as ordinary policemen, of course, for such a plan would necessarily have defeated any chance of successful observation. It was as a very modest private gentleman, elderly, with a cane and a slight limp, that L—— managed to lounge by the house repeatedly within the space of an hour; while his assistant, dressed in the clothes of a glass-mender, and with a box of the proper cut strapped on his back, haunted that street and invited business with a cry which the boys irreverently designated "glass pudding!" During the two hours thus spent, no person entered or left the house, nor was there a sign of life at any of the windows,—though what eyes may really have been watching from those closed blinds, it is quite impossible to say. Enough that they kept their watch closely until the coming on of the same heavy thunder-storm which burst upon the visitors to the sorceress in Prince Street; and that when the first drops of that shower were falling, conceiving themselves very unlikely to be repaid for a thorough wetting, they temporarily withdrew to the Station-house, or, as the act would now be expressed, "raised the blockade" for a very limited period.

Within five minutes after their departure, and when the wind and the rain had fairly begun to play together at rough gymnastics in the street, there was evidence that eyes probably had been observing the elderly gentleman with the limp, walking past the house a little too frequently. At all events, a man of tall figure, wrapped in an oil-skin coat, and with a round black hat and umbrella, emerged from the front door and dashed rapidly up the street. He was gone but a few minutes, and returned in the very height of the storm, in a carriage which drew up at the door. Perhaps ten minutes more, and some of the neighbors, who had been observing these singular movements, saw the same tall man, with an elderly lady and two younger ones, come out and enter the carriage, which, after taking on two large trunks, drove away at ordinary speed. The conclusion to which these good people came, was that the party were obliged to go out in the storm for the purpose of catching one of the late evening trains out of the city; and they may have been very nearly correct in the conjecture.

The storm passed over, and the summer evening came on. The two detectives came back to their places, varying their disguises for the evening. The house seemed all quiet, as before, and L—— came to the conclusion that there was either no one within or that the inmates were disposed to lie very close, as they did not even open the front windows to admit the clear evening air, cooled by the shower, or to look at the splendid sunset sky. So time passed on until nine o'clock, when the two detectives agreed to adopt the "ride-and-tie" principle—one keeping strict watch until midnight and the other until morning. This arrangement was duly carried out; and L——, who had taken the turn till midnight, again resumed his place at six o'clock. All was quiet—no one had entered or left the house, and L—— became thoroughly satisfied that it must be unoccupied. He might have haunted the house in one disguise or another, retaining the same correct opinion, until doomsday, had not one of the neighboring houses contained one of those inquisitive gentlemen (sometimes depreciatingly called "meddlers") who can never be content without knowing the business of all others, better than their own.

This person, partially an invalid, and much confined to the house and to very short walks in the neighborhood,—had observed the surveillance of the day before, still continued that morning; and he had also observed the episode of the carriage in the midst of the thunder-storm, of which the officer was as yet happily oblivious. Putting all the appearances together, he concluded that there had been some accusation, a watch and an escape; and about nine o'clock that morning he strolled out to the sidewalk; accosted the detective; informed him, with a knowing wink of the eye, that he understood the whole matter; and finished by advising him that "the birds had flown," and of the particular time when they took wing. As appendiary matter, he also informed the detective that the house was a furnished one belonging to a wealthy grocer who had just gone to Europe with his family—that it had been rented for a few weeks past to some very odd people—and that he had wondered at their being no attention paid to it before, as he was satisfied it was a receptacle for stolen goods.

To say that L—— was surprised at the first part of this intelligence, would be to say nothing; to say that he was mortified and enraged at being obliged to make such a report to the Superintendent, would be to put the case very mildly; and to say that he felt like amputating the head of a large-sized nail with his teeth, would only being doing justice to his feelings at this juncture.

The communicative neighbor finally informed him that he doubted whether the house was fastened, from the suddenness of the departure the day before; and on the hint the detective acted. The front door was found to be secured, but only by the latch-key bolt; and the area door was entirely unfastened. They entered and explored the house. It was a neatly furnished modern building, with everything in its place and nothing to mark any hasty departure of occupants, except a dinner-table left setting in the dining-room, with food on the plates and evidence that the meal had been left unfinished.

No clothing or other articles that could have belonged to the late inmates had been left behind, except half a dozen books, one of which was Simms' "History of South Carolina," another a copy of that odd jumble of short sketches published three or four years ago by Miss Martha Haines Butt, and a third one of Marion Harland's novels—"The Hidden Path." Part of a letter was found, the signature gone and all one side burned off, as if it had been used in lighting a cigar or a gas-burner, but still showing the date; "Richmond, Va., C.S.A., May 28th, 1862," and apparently written by a young officer in the Confederate army to his sister in this city. No other traces were found, though these were quite enough to increase the chagrin of the detectives, in the knowledge that they had allowed persons to escape who certainly must have been in correspondence with the rebel capital; and with this the crest-fallen L—— and his subordinate prepared to make their report to a superior not much in the habit of excusing failure or making allowance for extenuating circumstances.