A postcard received by Commissioner Woods after the arrest of the Anarchists
The message reads:
“Mr. Woods
My Dear Sir
Your police Espionage may go as far as you like for the promotion of your Bankrupt Law & Order of Society. The Anarchists of New York have but one Life to give for the Ideal of Humanity and absolute Freedom of mankind the world over. yours The Society for the Propagation of absolute Liberty and Human Freedom....”
High noon of the following day saw the three plotters cheerfully at work in the furnished room. Abarno and Carbone measured carefully the proportions of sulphur, sugar, chlorate of potash and antimony; Carbone filled the tins with the mixture, and led the fuses into the heart of the mass, glancing up from time to time to the detective with real pride, as if to say: “See, Baldo? That’s how an expert works!” “Baldo” had contributed his share of the materials—a few lengths of iron rod. Carbone bound these to the outside of the cans with cord, and added a few bolts which he found in a bureau drawer, and a coat-hanger, twisted out of shape. Round and round this shapeless tangle of metal he wove copper wire, and so produced two heavy, compact bombs. Polignani had grown almost gray when, after boring the fuse holes in the can-tops, Carbone casually picked up a hammer and began to tattoo the cans. The detective promptly took refuge behind the bed, near the floor.
“No use to hide there, Baldo!” This with a laugh from Carbone. “If she goes off she’ll blow the whole house down. How’s that, Frank?” he added, showing the finished product to Abarno.
“I’ll throw that one and you can throw the other, Carbone,” Abarno said. “Now listen. We will meet here Tuesday morning at six o’clock to the minute. We will get to the Cathedral just at 6.20. Then we’ll light the bombs, and the fuses will burn slow for twenty minutes, so as we can get over to the Madison Avenue car and then we can all get to work on time, and we will have a good alibi all right. Then we’ll get together Tuesday night and go some place and have a good time to celebrate throwing a scare into Fifth Avenue, boys! Tuesday morning, six o’clock sharp?”
Carbone and Polignani assented, and Abarno left.
Polignani kept in close touch with me from that moment forward. Ever since the day when Carbone had sent him to the drug store for black antimony, with instructions to bribe the drug clerk if he could not easily obtain it, we had had a double check on the conspirators, for I had assigned two men to shadow them constantly. The case was building towards a climax. Polignani had shrewdly kept the slip on which Carbone wrote the prescription for the explosives, and when Carbone asked where it was he said, “I tore it up. I didn’t want it to be found on me. It would get me into trouble.” The anarchist praised the detective for his forethought. The two men from the Bomb Squad never let Abarno and Carbone out of their sight, so that for a month we had not only the direct evidence of Polignani of what the conspirators said and did in his presence, but evidence from the two shadows which accounted for their time more fully, probably, than they could have recalled themselves. And so when Polignani—who did not know he was being observed—told me of the final plans, I passed the information on to the two shadows, and we formulated a counter-campaign for Tuesday morning.
Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, Polignani tumbled out of bed and into his clothes. He ate a hasty and nervous breakfast at a cheap lunch-room around the corner, and hurried to the sidewalk before 1341 Third Avenue, arriving a few minutes after six. Abarno joined him at 6.30.