The Fall
Page 5
“Donner, blitzen, bomben und grenaden,” interrupted a voice mingled with the crash of a thousand falling pieces of stove pipe. At the same moment the door banged in the reporter’s face and the interview with Emma ended.
Mrs. Walsh, the housekeeper of the tenement, said she did not know where the Anarchists were going. She added that the neighbors were very glad to get rid of the unwashed crowd and sympathy would be extended to the people in whatever community they move into.
Friday, August 5, 1892
14
Falconer walked into the Detective Bureau at the Mulberry Street headquarters and sat down at his desk a little before noon. He glanced at a tray that held recently arrived telegrams and messages and noticed that there was one from “E. Levine.”
Well. The professor.
He sat up a little straighter and eagerly opened the envelope to read the contents:
Can you possibly meet me at 1:30 today at the new Hotel Savoy on Fifth Ave. and 58th? I have something interesting to report to you. I will be on the 2d floor landing as you go up the main staircase.
Regards,
Levine
He placed the telegram on his desk again and pondered what the professor had written. Something interesting? Why so vague? Regardless, he decided that he would, indeed, go see his old friend from the prior year’s East River Hotel murder investigation. Levine was always refreshing company—he would be a good break from anarchists, assassins, and smoke-filled German beer joints.
15
The imposing Hotel Savoy, newly opened just two months earlier, stood before Falconer on busy 5th Avenue. The building rose 12 stories and dominated the block. Falconer craned his neck to see the very top floor looming high over the street.
Fancy joint. Now why is the professor wanting to meet here?
He walked up to the front entrance and moved inside. The interior was fancy indeed, with shiny, marbled walls leading upward to gold-colored, coffered ceilings displaying intricate, painted designs within each coffer. The carpets were smooth, colorful, and equally ornate, and hanging from various points in the lobby were huge, crystal chandeliers that seemed to be hand-crafted from the world’s finest jewels.
As various well-dressed customers walked by him in the lobby, Falconer looked over to the main staircase with its delicately lacquered, wooden bannisters.
The professor said he’d be up on the second floor.
He moved over to the staircase and walked up to the first landing. He immediately felt as if he were standing in a lush rainforest in South America: about seven or eight small, circular tables were surrounded by chairs and a forest of sweeping palm fronds growing out of large vases strewn throughout the area. Falconer looked for Levine, but it was difficult to see through all the tropical vegetation decorating the landing, so he decided to slowly walk through the area and scout out for his old friend.
After a few moments of this, he finally caught sight of the professor apparently doing the same scouting. “Professor,” he said as he held up his hand.
“Ah, Detective Sergeant,” Levine replied with a slight smile as he walked toward Falconer. “This is all very impressive, isn’t it? Quite a beautiful place. I wonder why you wanted me to meet you here.”
“What?” Falconer asked quizzically. “Why did I want to meet you here? What do you mean? You were the one who invited me.”
“I beg your pardon?” Levine said, apparently just as confused as Falconer. “I received your message this morning asking me to come and meet you here at 1:30. I’m not sure what you mean by saying that I invited you.”
Then Falconer suddenly heard a voice from behind him, and he immediately recognized its eminently British owner: “Well, well, now that we’re all met, shall we have a drink together?”
Falconer looked at Levine, who appeared slightly in shock, and then they both turned and looked to where the voice had come from. Falconer saw two trousered legs sitting near a vase with its large palm fronds draping downwards, and above the legs, a newspaper held open by two sturdy hands, thus, shielding the reader. Then the newspaper in an instant came down to reveal the mysterious speaker. “Penwill!” Falconer and Levine exclaimed in unison as they both looked admiringly at their old friend from Scotland Yard.
Inspector Charlie Penwill smiled back at them with the faintest n’er-do-well sense of triumph and spoke: “So good to see you both, old chums. And now that my little ruse has apparently worked, I’d say it’s about time I apologized and introduced you to another friend of mine. Come along—he’s waiting in the dining room downstairs.”
16
Penwill led Falconer and Levine into the fancy, grand dining room on the first floor of the hotel. Walking past various tables populated by groups of obviously well-heeled patrons, Falconer thought for a moment that he had been suddenly transported in time to the regal interior of the Palace of Versailles under Louis the Fourteenth. The ceiling of the room was spectacularly high, and was supported by a series of grand, square Corinthian columns topped by gilded capitals that appeared to be wrought from pure gold. Within the coffered ceiling were enormous, detailed paintings of, among other things, angels, planets, and animals that loomed over the diners like giants hovering over a village of miniature Lilliputians. The carpets were like those in the lobby—elaborately decorated and spotless—and the dishware on the tables seemed to have been taken from the cupboards of the finest mansions on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
As the men reached the opposite end of the cavernous room, Falconer saw a lone man sitting at a table, and Penwill hailed the man as they got close. “Ah, here we are,” he said. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Inspector Prosper-Isidore Houllier of the French Surete. Inspector, this is Detective Sergeant Robert Falconer of the New York Police Department’s Central Detective Bureau, and Professor Eli Levine of the Columbia College of Law.”
Falconer saw the man stand up and straighten out his jacket and tie. He appeared to be in his thirties and was on the short side, but stocky and powerfully built. He had dark, slicked-back hair and sported a thick but trimmed, black mustache. He extended his meaty hand to Falconer, and as they shook hands, he spoke in English but with a thick French accent. “Detective Sergeant Falconer, I am most pleased to meet you finally.”
He then turned to Levine and extended his hand again. “Professor,” he said, shaking Levine’s hand, “pleased to meet you, too, sir. Gentlemen, I have heard much of your investigation last year into the murder of Miss Brown and the other unfortunate ladies in New York, and eventually, I would love to speak to you more about it, if you would not mind.”
“Yes, indeed,” Penwill said, “but first, let us sit down and get better acquainted,” and the men joined him in taking a seat at the table. “Well,” he continued, “you’re probably wondering why I asked you meet the inspector and myself here. No particular reason for the setting—I suppose I just fancied a new hotel and wanted to get a look at things. Lovely place, isn’t it? In any event, I do want to catch up on the past seven months or so, but Inspector Houllier and I are actually here on urgent business, and we wanted to fill you in, as they say.”
“Understood, inspector,” Falconer said. “Go on.”
“Do you gentlemen know who Ravachol is?” Penwill asked.
“Ravachol?” Falconer replied. “Can’t say that I do.”
“I do know of Ravachol, actually,” Levine said. “He was just executed as few weeks ago in France for committing certain murders.”
“Yes, he was, professor,” Penwill said. “His real name was Francois Claudius Koenigstein, but he eventually took on his mother’s surname, Ravachol, and that became his nom de guerre. He became politically active in the past couple of years, and eventually became an anarchist devoted to destroying a government that he felt was keeping the workers under the boot, as they say. He was convicted of setting off several bombs and killing a few
men in the process, and he eventually met his day with the executioner just last month.”
“Well,” Falconer said, “too bad for him.”
“Yes, well, the problem didn’t end there, I’m afraid,” Penwill said. “The bombings have continued.”
“Continued?” Falconer asked. “So, this Ravachol character was part of a group?”
“Yes, indeed,” Houllier said. “He was working with several other of these anarchists, and unfortunately, some of them are still on the run.”
“On the run?” Falconer said. “You mean on the run here to the states?”
“Yes, that’s correct, Falconer, unfortunately,” Penwill said, “but only one appears to have escaped to your country.”
“One?” Falconer said. “And who might that be?”
“His name is Theodule Meunier,” Penwill replied, pulling out a photograph of a swarthy, mustachioed, and dark-haired man in his thirties. “Here is a photograph of him.”
Falconer took the photograph and looked at it briefly, then handed it to Levine. “So, he’s tied up with this Ravachol character?”
“Yes,” Houllier replied. “Meunier was associated with Ravachol, and he set off a bomb in an army barracks this past March, but fortunately it did not cause any casualties. But to truly understand his motivations, one must first know what happened to Ravachol. The Surete finally caught him when a waiter at a café overheard him boasting about his bombing exploits. The waiter told the authorities, and the next time Ravachol showed up at the café, he was apprehended after a fierce struggle. Then, this past April, on the day before Ravachol was to be sentenced, Meunier set off a bomb in the same café, and it killed the owner and another patron, but the waiter survived. Clearly, this was an act of revenge for Ravachol’s prosecution.”
“So, what makes you think he’s come here to the states?” Falconer asked.
“When the French government started to tamp down on the anarchists in the past few years,” Penwill explained, “my government allowed some of them to seek refuge in Great Britain, believe it or not. Sort of a free speech thing, I suppose, but I can’t say that I agree with the decision. Anyway, some of Ravachol’s associates have been hiding out in England, and now my unit, the Special Branch under Inspector William Melville, has been rounding them up. But this fellow, Meunier, managed to escape to Canada. We lost his scent in Montreal, but all indications are that he got across the border and headed south, and we think he was headed here, gentlemen.”
“Why here?” Falconer asked.
“Because it is the biggest city in your country,” Penwill answered. “And Meunier wants to make a big statement. He doesn’t want to leave a bomb in a small town. No, he would like to leave a lasting impression on the world by causing the maximum amount of damage on as big stage as he can find—New York City.”
“I see,” Falconer said. “And you gentlemen are asking for our help in tracking down Meunier.”
“I suppose we are, Falconer,” Penwill said. “My Special Branch has been in close contact with your federal government, and now your police department has been briefed, as well. I understand that you are currently assigned to shadowing several anarchists of your own here in the city.”
“That’s true,” Falconer said. “Byrnes and the Pittsburgh police department are trying to find evidence tying our most notorious anarchist agitator, Emma Goldman, to the recent assassination attempt on Frick, the Carnegie Steel man up in Pittsburgh. You’ve heard of that business up there?”
“Yes, indeed, we have,” Penwill replied. “Berkman and perhaps some of his associates have already been arrested.”
“Right,” Falconer said. “Unfortunately, we haven’t found much of anything tying Goldman and her crowd here in the city to Berkman’s act. You know of her, I assume?”
“Yes, that is correct, detective sergeant,” Houllier said. “We are very well acquainted with Miss Goldman and her band of Autonomists.”
“Autonomists,” Falconer repeated. “I keep hearing that word, but I’m not really sure what it refers to.”
“If I may, detective sergeant?” Levine interrupted. “I’ve actually studied the varied forms of anarchism in recent years, and I have grown familiar with the Autonomists. They are members of a particular faction within the anarchist camp that emphasizes the independence of the self from all forms of organized authority. In their view, all collective forms of civil order—the bureaucracy, government, capitalism itself—form the roots of tyranny, and the worker can only find true freedom by being free from the shackles of this organized society. And the ultimate expression of this autonomist creed is propaganda of the deed—attentat. Freeing oneself from the tyranny of the existing system by acts of violence that will serve as a catalyst to revolution.”
“Hm,” Falconer snorted. “That sounds like a lot of bughouse to me, professor.”
“I suppose many people would agree with you, detective,” Levine said. “They are obviously not very popular anywhere around the globe.”
“Yes, well, it looks like you have another one on your hands, I’m afraid,” Penwill said. “And we are here to catch him.”
“I understand, inspector,” Falconer said, “but I have to say, looking at this Meunier person’s photograph, he looks like any one of thousands of dark-haired foreigners walking around the streets of New York. I’m not sure how you can pick him out of the crowd.”
“Well, there is one thing, gentlemen,” Penwill said. “He happens to have a back problem—he’s a hunchback.”
“A hunchback?” Falconer asked. “You mean like the guy in Notre Dame? All malformed and such?”
“Well, not exactly,” Penwill said, chuckling. “He doesn’t look like Quasimodo from the novel, as you can see from the photo, but he clearly has a hunchback and people have said it’s obvious when you see him.”
“Hm,” Falconer muttered. “That would definitely help, I have to agree with you there. So where do we all start with tracking him down, I wonder?”
“Well, he is a Red agitator,” Penwill said, “just like the ones you already have here. And if there’s anything we’ve learned in dealing with these anarchist types on our end, gentlemen, it’s that they like to mingle together and keep in contact. So…”
“So, you’re thinking that he’ll make contact with Goldman and her band of anarchists here in New York,” Falconer said. “To help facilitate his plan.”
“Exactement, gentlemen,” Houllier said. “That is what we believe.”
Falconer set back in his chair and pondered what had been said. What a strange position they found themselves in: shadowing a leader of the anarchist movement here in the states to pin a recent assassination attempt on her and perhaps on some of her followers, and now faced with the very real possibility that a dangerous French anarchist bomb thrower was also in New York and planning—perhaps with Goldman’s help—a big show of it here on American shores. It was a mess, indeed, and also a very dangerous situation: one well-placed bomb could kill dozens or more in the blink of an eye, and he and his men might not be able to do anything about it.
“Well,” he said to the men sitting with him, “the only option now is to get on with it and try to track down Meunier and take him down. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Penwill said.
“Yes, agreed,” Houllier answered.
“I think you have a chance,” Levine said. “And you, of course, must try.”
“Well, the first thing to do is to confront Goldman,” Falconer said, “and question her about Meunier.”
“Confront her?” Penwill asked. “Isn’t she famous for despising police and not cooperating with them at all?”
“Well, yes,” Falconer replied, “but I’ve had a few words with her recently, actually, and I think she’ll at least listen to me.”
“Really?” Penwill said. “What makes you think that?”
“I see,” Penwill said. “So, where shall we find her in the near future, I wonder?”
“She had to leave her flat after we turned it upside down with a search warrant and the landlord kicked her out,” Falconer answered, “and word has it she’s living with her grandmother now over on East Tenth Street. But during the evenings she’s been hanging her hat at a couple of popular anarchist watering holes, and we can probably find her at one of them tonight.”
“Jolly good,” Penwill said. “I’d actually like to meet the woman. She’s known to be quite fearless about speaking her mind—quite the bricky girl.”
“Yes, I’d say that’s fairly accurate,” Falconer said. “There’s a lot of stubbornness in that little body, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, then, where and when shall we meet, gentlemen?” Houllier asked.
“I’ll get my men and we can meet at one of the places this evening,” Falconer replied. “It’s called ‘Zum Groben Michel’—‘Tough Mike’s’—and it’s on 5th Street just east of Bowery. We’ll meet you outside at 9:00 PM. Professor, care to come along?”
“Me?” Levine asked. “Well, if I’m not getting in the way, of course, I’d be happy to join you.”
“Well done, then,” Penwill said, smiling. “Just like last year when we were chasing that demon from the East River Hotel.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Falconer said. “It’s good to be back together again.”
“And I am most grateful to be included in your company, gentlemen,” Houllier interjected. “We shall track down Meunier in your great city, and he will face the guillotine in my country, too.”
“Or he’ll face a bullet from one of our revolvers in this country, inspector,” Falconer said. “Either way, we need to stop him before he lights his dynamite.”