Copyright, by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.
The Rudder Bomb A Closer View of the Rudder Bomb
His answer was truthful. We had to admit it for there was absolutely no evidence to connect him with any specific act outside his confession, and we had to find comfort in the fact that he was guilty at least of having intended to continue the reign of terror along the wharves. Bombs had been found or fires had broken out on no less than twenty-two vessels bound out of New York up to the time we closed on Fay—and not one was his prey. He was tried with Scholz and Daeche. The only law then applying to his case, and the one under which he was tried, charged him with “conspiracy to defraud the insurance underwriters” who had insured cargoes on certain ships. When the charge was read to him, Fay innocently asked: “What are underwriters?” He found out. Fay went to Atlanta for eight years, Scholz for six, and Daeche for four. Kienzle and Breitung were not brought to trial and after we went to war were invited to join various other Germans in an internment camp. Fay had been at Atlanta a month when he escaped. German friends gave him clothes and helped him to Baltimore, where Paul Koenig met him and paid him $450, with injunctions to go to San Francisco and get more. For some reason the fugitive feared that there was a plot against his life in San Francisco, although he had protected the “great people,” so instead of going west he fled immediately to Mexico. From there he fled to Spain, and it was not until the summer of 1918 that he was caught there.
He was a bold and important criminal in his field, and we were glad to have brought him in. He was not the one we wanted most, not if our sugar theory was sound. The pursuit of Fay had certainly scared that theory up an alley. It was high time we got out of the alley and back into Main Street.
VII
ALONG THE WATERFRONT
II
“Damn Him, Rintelen!”
The pursuit of Robert Fay unearthed what trial lawyers delight in calling “not one scintilla of evidence” that he had actually set fire to a ship. Fay was punished for what he intended to do and not for any real achievement for the German cause.
Yet the thought persisted in our minds that he knew who was making and placing ship bombs. He professed ignorance. “I do know this much,” he said, after a long session of futile questioning, “I do know that a certain man paid another man $10,000 to make those bombs. I won’t tell you who he is, because I think he is now a prisoner in the Tower of London, and he might get into more trouble. You can make what you like out of that.”