The second trial produced the same result as the first—the place they sought lay a few blocks west of Broadway, on Eighth.
Before they tried to find out the precise location of the house, Whitney phoned to headquarters and requested loan of a score of men to assist him in the contemplated raid.
"Tell 'em to have their guns handy," he ordered, "because we may have to surround the block and search every house."
But the taxi tape rendered that unnecessary. It indicated any one of three adjoining houses on the north side of the street, because, as the manager pointed out, the machine had not turned round again until it struck a north-and-south thoroughfare, hence the houses must be on the north side.
By this time the reserves were on hand and, upon instructions from Whitney, spread out in a fan-shaped formation, completely surrounding the houses, front and rear. At a blast from a police whistle they mounted the steps and, not waiting for the doors to be opened, went through them shoulders first.
It was Whitney, who had elected to assist in the search of the center house, who captured his prey in a third-floor bedroom.
Before the Germans knew what was happening Al was in the room, his flashlight playing over the floor and table in a hasty search for incriminating evidence. It didn't take long to find it, either. In one corner, only partly concealed by a newspaper whose flaring headlines referred to the explosion of the night before, was a collection of bombs which, according to later expert testimony was sufficient to blow a good-sized hole in the city of New York.
That was all they discovered at the time, but a judicious use of the third degree—coupled with promises of leniency—induced one of the prisoners to loosen up the next day and he told the whole story—precisely as the taxi tape and Vera Norton had told it. The only missing ingredient was the power behind the plot—the mysterious "No. 859"—whom Dick Walters later captured because of the clue on Shelf forty-five.