It took the two some three months to get the parts made and properly adjusted. Meanwhile they employed their spare hours in cruising about the harbor in a motor-boat. A machinist in West 42nd Street, New York, made the zinc tank which they used as a model, and the two conspirators shortly opened a garage in Weehawken where they could duplicate the bomb cases unmolested.
There came a time when the devices were satisfactory, and Fay actually attached one to the rudder of a ship to make sure that his adjustments were correct. The next move was to obtain explosives. Fay's prejudice against bombs placed in a ship's hold was that they rarely succeeded in sinking the craft; seventy or eighty pounds of high explosive detonated at the stern of a vessel, however, would blow the rudder away and not only cripple the ship but would probably burst a hole in the stern, mangle the screw, and split the shaft.
Captain Tunney, of the Bomb Squad, heard in October that two Germans were trying to buy picric acid from a man who stopped at the Hotel Breslin, and who called himself Paul Seib and Karl F. Oppegaarde, as the occasion demanded. Tunney's men located the two Germans, and some days later learned that they had placed an order for fifty-two pounds of TNT, to be delivered at the Weehawken garage. The delivery was intercepted, a similar but harmless substance substituted for the explosive, and two detective-truckmen took the package away on their truck to deliver it to Fay and Scholz. While they were in New Jersey, Detectives Coy, Sterrett and Walsh found Fay at the Breslin, and followed him back to Weehawken. As he left the garage in the evening in his automobile, the automobile of Police Commissioner Woods followed at a discreet distance. Up the Palisades the two cars paraded, until in a grove near Grantwood, Fay and Scholz got out of their car and disappeared into the woods with a lantern. After a time they reappeared, and returned to the garage, the police following.
Next morning Chief Flynn was called into the hunt—the morning of Saturday, October 23—and he assigned two special agents to the case. The police department directed two detectives to watch the woods at Grantwood where the conspirators had gone the night before. Detectives Murphy and Fennelly, each equipped with linemen's climbers, arrived at the wood-road about noon, and spent the next eleven hours in the branches of a great oak tree which commanded the road. The perch was high and the night wind chilly, but the watchers were rewarded at last by the twin searchlights of an approaching car. Out of it stepped Fay and Scholz. The men in the branches saw by the light of the lantern which Scholz carried that Fay placed a package underneath a distant tree, walked to a safe distance, exploded a percussion cap, watched the tree topple over and went away, apparently satisfied with the power of his explosives.
Robert Fay, who made bombs with which he hoped to
cripple the shipment of munitions to Europe
Meanwhile other detectives were watching the rooming house at Union Hill where Fay and Scholz lived, and they saw the two come in about 4 o'clock in the morning. Scholz had very little sleep, for there was a ship leaving next day for Liverpool. He left the house at 7 A. M. and went to the garage. Thereupon three detectives returned to the great oak tree at Grantwood. About noon Fay and his brother-in-law drove up, and unlocking the door of a rude hut in the wood, took out a bag, from which they poured a few grains of powder on the surface of a rock. Fay struck the rock with a hammer; a loud report followed, and the hammer broke in his hand. A moment later he heard a twig snap behind him. He turned, and saw a small army of detectives with drawn revolvers closing in on him. Fay protested and pleaded, and offered to bribe the detectives for his freedom, but he was locked up with Scholz. The two had stored in a warehouse several cases containing their completed bomb mechanisms; the police confiscated from their various caches five new bombs, 25 pounds of TNT, 25 sticks of dynamite, 150 pounds of chlorate of potash, two hundred bomb cylinders, 400 percussion caps, one motor-boat, one chart of New York harbor showing all its fortifications and piers, one foreign automobile, two German automatic pistols and a long knife—a considerable arsenal.
Their confessions caused the arrest of Paul Daeche, who had furnished them with explosives, Dr. Kienzle, Breitung, and Engelbert Bronkhorst. Fay received a sentence of eight years in the penitentiary, but after America went to war, Atlanta became too confining for his adventurous spirit, and he escaped the prison, and is believed to have crossed the Mexican border to safety. Scholz was sentenced to four years, and Daeche to three. Kienzle, Breitung and Bronkhorst were not tried, their apparent ignorance of Fay's designs outweighing in the jury's mind their obvious German sympathies. Kienzle, upon the declaration of war of April 6, 1917, became an enemy alien, and was interned.