Lester, then, was not Lester at all, but Frank Holt.
Meanwhile I knew nothing of what had transpired. I had risen that Saturday morning looking forward to a day of relaxation and pleasure, for there was to be a field day for the police at Gravesend Bay. On the way down to the track I read with some interest of the explosion in the Capitol, and then dismissed it from my mind: the newspapers, which had been printed about one o’clock of that morning, carried no news except a description of the effects of the explosion. Furthermore, it was a holiday, with another to follow, and I proposed to enjoy it.
About noon Police Commissioner Woods called me to the telephone, told me hurriedly that Mr. Morgan had been “shot by a German,” and told me to get down to Glen Cove as fast as possible. “Find out the man’s motives and any accomplices he had,” the commissioner said. “Keep in touch with me.” And hung up. I found Detective Coy of the Bomb Squad, and a patrolman who knew German in case we should need an interpreter, and after some delay in getting a car, we hastened to the little Glen Cove jail.
Then, at four o’clock, for the first time, I was told the facts as Glen Cove knew them. A search of Holt’s person had disclosed two revolvers, three sticks of dynamite, a number of loose cartridges, a cartoon clipped from a Philadelphia newspaper, an express receipt, and a scrap of paper bearing the names in pencilled handwriting of Mr. Morgan’s children. Frank McCahill, the constable in charge, showed me the statement Holt had made, and supplied the further information that Holt had been identified by some of Mr. Morgan’s employees as a man who had been seen on the estate two days before—on Thursday. Glen Cove had been in a turmoil since the shooting. Newspaper reporters and photographers had flocked to the jail, had taken photographs of the prisoner, and already prints of the photographs were on their way to every large newspaper in the country. His statement, as well as a description of the man, had been telegraphed over the Associated and United Press wires in every direction. So I decided to have a talk with the prisoner himself.
He was brought out of his cell, and we sat in comparative privacy on two camp-stools in the corridor. He was a frail, slight fellow, with deep eye-sockets, a prominent hook-nose, and a retreating chin. His accent was certainly German. His name, he said, was Frank Holt, and he was born in the United States. He told me he was forty years old, that his father and mother had been born in America, although they had both French and German ancestors, and that his wife and two children were in Dallas. For several years, he said, he had taught in Vanderbilt University, and during the year just past had been instructor in German in Cornell University, at Ithaca. He had left Ithaca two weeks before, and had stopped at a Mills Hotel in New York before coming down to Glen Cove.
“What did you try to kill Mr. Morgan for?” I asked.
“I didn’t intend to kill him. I want to persuade him to use his influence to stop the shipment of ammunition to Europe.”
“Well, you chose a pretty strong means of persuading him, didn’t you? What was the dynamite for?”
“I was going to show him what was causing all the trouble—explosives.”
He answered frankly, but not completely. The scrap of paper bearing the names of the Morgan children, he said, was only a memorandum; he had intended to hold them hostage until Mr. Morgan promised to exert himself to stop the export of supplies to the Allies. No amount of questioning would bring an answer as to where he had bought the dynamite, but he readily volunteered the approximate addresses of the shops where he had purchased the revolvers and cartridges. These facts gave me something to work on, and I went outside to a telephone while he was locked up again.