From them at headquarters we verified the story as we already knew it. Each man accused the other. Both men exonerated Polignani of any part in suggesting the plot or in making the bombs for several days after their arrest. But Polignani’s true identity could not be unknown to them indefinitely, of course, and when they found out that they had been confiding in a full-fledged detective—ah, then the storm broke! Prompted, I suspect, by pseudo-legal advice, they cried “Frame-up!” until they grew hoarse, but it was too late, for in the possession of Assistant District Attorney Arthur Train was already a sworn statement which fixed their guilt by their own confession.
1. The Dagger Threat to Polignani
2. The Black Hand Threat 3. Frank Abarno
4. Carmine Carbone
The anarchists rushed to their rescue, but their efforts were chiefly verbal. At the Brescia Circle, and at I. W. W. headquarters at 64 East 4th Street, it was common gossip that counsel for the defendants were going to supply 45 or 50 witnesses to swear that Polignani had invited them to make bombs. This I had enjoined him strictly not to do, as a newcomer who talks bombs is a suspicious character in anarchist circles. I know he obeyed. There was organized a “Carbone ed Abarno Defence Committee” with headquarters at 2205 Third Avenue, which solicited other neighboring Italian clubs with anarchistic tendencies for support of the two. Polignani’s photograph appeared presently in a New York Italian newspaper with this caption:
“The filthy carrion who by order of the Police of New York devised the bomb plot which led up to the arrest of Abarno and Carbone, now before the Courts. All of us comrades will keep this in mind.”
He received several threatening anonymous letters, some bearing the familiar “black hand,” others sketching on newspaper photographs of him the point in his anatomy at which he might expect to feel the dagger of revenge; others mere bombastic defiance. (The anonymous letter-writer is very often a courageous soul who spells out his messages with letters and words clipped from newspapers, so that his handwriting will not betray him.)
What was the reward of those five months invested in patience? The two prisoners convicted and sentenced to terms of from six to twelve years, was one result. But a far greater one was a sharp decrease in bomb-throwing in New York, and perhaps the most gratifying was the discord which grew in the Brescia Circle. The group was frightened, and the members began to suspect each other of espionage. One former anarchist was quoted as saying that he wouldn’t even trust himself—he had been dreaming the night before that he was a spy. The Brescia Circle became disorganized, and several other similar groups in the city suffered the same fate. Their leaders drifted away—and got into more trouble, as we shall see later.
We never found the original of the treatise on bombs. Carbone said he had destroyed it. But there are probably other copies from the same press in the hands of accredited bomb-throwers. If not, they may apply to the New York police department.