by Amy Stewart
As per usual, the police went in the front door, flashing their badges and terrifying the patrons. The manager, Charles Farwell, did his best to interfere with the police and got himself arrested in the process. Meanwhile, Agent Gifford and I took the alley entrance. I slipped in first, headed straight downstairs to the basement, and quieted the girls ahead of a rather boisterous entrance by the police.
It was a small operation, just fifteen girls, but frequented by Germans, along the lines of Martha Held’s old place. You remember how she worked it: Irish girls and German beer, and plenty of quiet corners for thugs and ne’er-do-wells to pass on messages and plan their next explosion at the docks. This was just that sort of place, but less inviting: instead of wallpaper and tufted settees, there was only a dingy room outfitted with what scraps of furnishings the restaurant upstairs might cast off, and behind that, a narrow hall lined with what I can only describe as stalls. They were too small to qualify as rooms under any definition. The walls were nothing but bare lathe, stuffed here and there with horsehair, and for doors they had tattered old moth-eaten curtains.
To my everlasting relief, less than half the rooms were occupied, and the inhabitants all at least partially clothed. I sent the men out into the waiting embrace of the two officers and Agent Gifford, and I herded all the girls into the very rear of the basement, which was outfitted with a dingy sink, a toilet, and a mirror.
“If you’re going to haul us off to jail,” said a girl I later identified as Ginny Monroe, age twenty-two, “take us now before the shift change at the precinct house. The boys on night shift know how to get us in and out before the sun comes up.”
I wasn’t at all interested in taking them to jail, but I didn’t tell them that. Instead I asked, “Spricht einer von Ihnen deutsch?” and was met with blank stares. For good measure I added, “Sie bekommen einen Dollar, wenn Sie es tun.” The promise of a dollar if they admit to speaking German usually wins me a raised eyebrow from anyone who understands what I’m saying. In this case, though, I’m quite certain that none of them picked up a word of it. They looked to be Irish and Scottish, mostly, fair-skinned and red-headed. They were thin to the point of half-starved. Through the scraps of muslin and lace they wore to entertain their customers, I could count their ribs.
“Do you ever hear a man speak German around the place?” I asked them. I was by now sitting on the floor with them, so they could look me in the eye.
They turned to one another, as if making up their minds about what to say, and then Miss Monroe shrugged and spoke for the group. “The Germans seem to like us,” she said, “and they’re cleaner than the Italians.”
It would suit me just fine not to know which class of customer is cleaner than another. I said, “We’re fighting the Huns overseas. I don’t want you offering them comfort at home. What can you tell me about any of them—their activities, their associates, their whereabouts? What do they talk about amongst themselves? Do you hear them making any plans? Any talk of poisons or dynamite?”
Again the girls shrugged, and again Miss Monroe spoke for them. “It’s all in German. To be honest, miss, that’s what we like about them. They don’t bother us with their talk.”
“Do they ever exchange anything amongst themselves? Papers, packages?”
“All the time” came the answer.
“And what do you suppose we’ll find on them tonight?” I asked. The girls didn’t have any idea. I could hear the officers in the other room, shouting at the men in the way that people tend to shout at foreigners in a vain attempt to make themselves understood. Agent Gifford tried twice to quiet the police, and to remind them that the German-speaking lady agent would be along in a minute to interrogate the men.
I searched the ladies myself and watched them dress to make sure they weren’t hiding anything. Then I handed each of them my customary list of doctors, churches, and charity houses, and marched them out into the night so that I could turn my attention to the men.
The fellows, as Agent Gifford no doubt told you, seemed long on ambition but short on execution. They’d gathered up some weapons and a small amount of gun cotton but didn’t appear to have a plan to use them. They might’ve dabbled in forged passports and anti-war propaganda, but as far as I could tell, they hadn’t been doing much lately apart from drinking beer and bothering the girls.
We nonetheless searched the men and then searched all the rooms. That yielded little more than ticket stubs, match-books, some crumpled German newspapers, and a few scribbled notes that don’t amount to much.
One of them did carry a slip of paper with the address of the Hudson Printing Company, in Paterson, written on it. He refused to say why he had the address, but he looked awfully shifty about it. As I happen to live nearby, I told Agent Gifford I would take this one myself. The proprietor is Andrew Wilmington. Do you have anything on him?
Yours very truly,
Constance Kopp
Bielaski to Constance
August 22, 1918
Dear Miss Kopp,
I appreciate, as always, the lively report. We had a look into our files concerning Andrew Wilmington. British citizen, immigrated in 1914, never been in any trouble to our knowledge, but he deserves a closer look. I suggest you find yourself a position with the company under our customary arrangement. As printing is his business, keep an eye out for propaganda, seditious publications, document forgeries, etc.
As per usual, if you turn anything up, take no action and report back. Cable if arrests are to be made and I’ll send our boys in.
Yours very truly,
A. Bruce Bielaski
Constance to Norma
August 24, 1918
Dear Norma,
I’ve only just received Aggie’s letter about the wayward soldiers and the pig farmer’s daughter. She is a literary sensation in Mrs. Spinella’s parlor. I’m sorry to say it, Norma, but we’re a bit disappointed that you put a stop to the soldiers visiting the little café in the pig barn. We just know that there’s further intrigue to be had there, if only you could turn your back long enough to let it happen.
How I wish I could tell you the particulars of the assignments I’m given, the cases I’m pursuing, and the small victories we can claim. But I’m not allowed to utter a word beyond the most general statements, even to my family, even to the girls here at the boarding-house. (Fleurette, when she’s home, finds out more than she should—I don’t know how she gets it out of me.)
Suffice it to say that I’m once again crawling around in the dark and disreputable corners of our city and those nearby. The other agents call it the “sight-seeing tour of the underworld” because we only glance at most criminal enterprises and then move on. For a souvenir we might pick up an odd scrap that leads to an investigation, but we leave the rest for the local police.
I’ve picked up one such scrap, and it’s my good fortune that it’ll keep me in Paterson for a while. Beyond that I can’t say.
Do you remember, back in Hackensack, how Judge Seufert enjoyed the reports I wrote on my probationers? He seemed to value them more as literary entertainments than official filings, but I was always happy to oblige, as it seemed to raise his estimation of me. I think he appreciated that I was frank in my opinions and spared no detail, because it gave him some confidence that he had the full story.
The same has come to be true of Mr. Bielaski. It frustrates him to no end that he’s now tied down to a desk in Washington, reading memoranda, while the rest of us chase down the enemy. The other agents, it seems, dash off only the briefest of notes and tend to omit crucial details. I began as the others did, with no-nonsense reports of only a sentence or two. But I’ve gradually started to write for him something more in the line of what I did for Judge Seufert, quoting conversations as best I can recall them, adding a few lines of descriptive prose to better paint a picture, and, as you might expect, injecting my opinions.
In reply to my most recent letter, he thanked me for my “lively reports.” In return
, his letters have grown more forthcoming. I suspect he tells me more than he does any other agent.
All this correspondence makes for longer nights, but what else have I to do? Fleurette is off with May Ward for weeks at a time and I’m lucky to have a postcard. Bessie and Francis are busy with their own lives (and Francis has taken up League work, I’m sorry to say—more about that another time), and of course you’re “somewhere in France” and I have to beg you for so much as a paragraph. (Although your letter-writing has picked up quite a bit lately, and I do appreciate hearing from Aggie.) I share all your letters with Bessie and Francis, who send their best.
Fleurette has moved on to Camp Grant in Illinois. She complains of mud and boredom. I suspect there’s quite a bit more going on, but she doesn’t tell me about it.
I suppose we ought to get used to knowing less and less about what Fleurette’s up to. Do you think she’ll come back to her family at all, après la guerre? I know there isn’t any point in thinking about what comes next for the three of us, but I can’t help it. Any conversation around here meanders over to that question eventually. I know that someday we’ll wake up, and the war will be over, and the world we knew before will be unrecognizable. But what will our lives look like, the three of us?
I don’t mean for you to answer that question, and I know you won’t, anyway. You’ll keep your nose to the grindstone as you always do.
Last Sunday I helped Bessie with a book drive at the library. There’s an effort under way to collect two million books to ship overseas, and to supply the training camps here. Fleurette says the camp libraries are just terrible. The books are handled so much that they fall apart, the soldiers pass them around and never return them, and there simply isn’t enough of what the boys like to read. They want to be entertained—they’ll fight over any Zane Grey, or Jack London, and they’re happy to have Kipling or O. Henry. A few of them are quite earnest and want to read anything on engines and tanks, road-building, mechanics, warfare, or European history. They tear a new Popular Mechanics or Saturday Evening Post absolutely to shreds.
Bessie heard that in the hospitals overseas, the books given to the men in quarantine have to be burned after. That inspired her to go on a magazine drive in her neighborhood, thinking it better to burn a magazine than a book. Now her neighbors are taking extra subscriptions just to donate to the hospitals. A bit of reading material must be quite a comfort for men who spend weeks in bed, with nothing else for diversion.
I wonder, do any of our books ever make it to Aggie’s hospital? Do the men have enough to read, and could we send anything just for them?
We’re all thinking of you. Write when you can. The censor has struck out a few lines here and there, but (don’t tell General Pershing!) it’s actually quite easy to hold the paper up to the light and make out what you’ve written. So please, proceed!
Yours,
Constance
Constance to Bielaski
August 27, 1918
Dear Mr. Bielaski,
I’ve made arrangements to start work at Hudson Printing Company using, as you called it, the usual method. What follows is my report thus far:
Andrew Wilmington is a mild-mannered British transplant who runs a printing concern specializing in advertising calendars, business stationery, receipt-books, and the like. He employs but one secretary, a Miss Anne Bradshaw, of New Hope, Pennsylvania. She’s been in his employ for fourteen months and lives in a respectable boarding-house very similar to mine. She keeps to herself and has had no trouble with the police.
To secure a position with the company, I followed Miss Bradshaw home at the close of business. I approached her when she stopped at the entrance to her boarding-house to hunt for her key.
I find it best not to dance around the subject. I showed her my badge and told her at once that I worked for the Bureau of Investigation and that I needed to speak to her regarding urgent government business.
“Is it a poster you want printed or a booklet?” she asked. “If it’s a poster, you ought to go over to Hamilton Press. We’re not equipped for it.”
“It does concern the print shop,” I said, “but please do let me come inside and tell you about it. Or we can go to my office if you prefer.” (I haven’t any kind of office, as you well know, but it doesn’t matter. No one ever wants to go to a government agent’s office. That’s why it makes such a useful fiction.)
After considering her options, Miss Bradshaw invited me in. I found myself in the foyer of a rooming house exactly like my own: the boarders’ parlor to the right, a business office and private sitting-room for the landlady to the left, a staircase straight ahead, and behind the stairs, the kitchen, which smelled, as all boarding-house kitchens do, of the morning’s wilted banana peels and the evening’s thin stew.
It was a fish stew this time. “I’d almost forgotten it was Meatless Tuesday,” I said. This was my way of showing Miss Bradshaw that I was a kindred spirit.
She took my remark in the manner intended and laughed. “I don’t mind going without the meat. It’s the Wheatless Wednesdays that bring my spirits down.”
“There is something restorative in a dinner roll,” I said, “or a basket of them.”
Miss Bradshaw and I were now on the friendliest of terms. “I suppose it isn’t a matter to discuss in the parlor,” she said. “You can come up to my room if you don’t inspect it too closely.”
“I won’t inspect it at all,” I said. “I live just as you do, over on Chestnut.”
“Have you lived there long?” she asked.
She was by this time leading the way up the stairs, to the second floor, where four bedrooms were arranged around a little hallway and a shared bath.
“Since the start of the war,” I said. “I’ve one sister in France and another touring with a vaudeville act that goes around singing at the training camps. We had to close up our place in the country, with all of us away.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “My parents live out in the country, in Pennsylvania.”
“What brought you here?” I asked.
“I thought I’d look for war-work in New York, but everyone was applying at once and I seemed to just miss every promising opportunity. I couldn’t wait—I had to take the first position offered, and it happened to be here in Paterson.”
“I might have something better for you if you’re interested,” I said.
She was, of course. I’ve found that it pays to take a little time, and allow the idea to come forth naturally. There’s a tendency among agents to begin with threats and intimidation, but how does that serve us? A bit of gentle maneuvering, along the lines of what I’ve just put down, is almost effortless and takes not a minute longer.
Miss Bradshaw’s broom closet–sized room was outfitted almost exactly like my own. She’d been given the standard-issue brass bed, a bureau, a wash-stand, and a dim old mirror nailed to the wall. In the custom of all entertaining done in furnished rooms, Miss Bradshaw offered me the bed and she perched on her trunk, which was tucked into the corner and undoubtedly held all her worldly possessions.
I looked around for some patriotic display and was relieved to see a bouquet of flag ribbons wrapped around the doorknob. Nodding at it, I said, “I know you’d do anything you can to help us win the war, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. (I always phrase my questions in such a way that they find it impossible to say no.)
“Here’s the difficulty,” I said. “We aren’t entirely sure that Mr. Wilmington feels the same.”
At that she sat up very straight and looked at me with alarm. “Oh, you can’t possibly mean that he’s a traitor,” she said. “I’ve known him for over a year. There’s never been a hint—”
“No, there wouldn’t be,” I said, “because if there had been a hint, you would’ve told the authorities, wouldn’t you?”
I’m sure Miss Bradshaw had never even imagined such a scenario, and it seemed entirely plausible to me that sh
e’d never been given any reason to. Nonetheless, she said, quite insistently, “Naturally, I would’ve gone directly to the police, but I’ve had no cause to. Am I in some sort of trouble myself over this?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You seem to me to be of sound judgment and good character. I only require your co-operation for a few weeks’ time. I’m to take your place at the print shop and have a look around myself. I’m a trained agent, you see, and although the possibility is remote, I might just notice something that you would’ve overlooked. If you’re willing to help, you’ll be rewarded handsomely, and you can return to your post just as soon as my assignment is complete.”
“And what’s to become of Mr. Wilmington?” she asked—half out of concern for his well-being and half, I suspect, out of morbid curiosity over the fate of a suspected traitor.
“Nothing at all, if he’s above suspicion,” I told her. “He’ll never even know he was under investigation.”
I neglected to mention the possibility that I might arrest him. Perhaps Miss Bradshaw assumed as much, and her thoughts had returned to her own fate. “What am I to do, while you’re at my desk?” she asked.
“I can offer you steady work at the War Department as a stenographer. You’d be serving your country and earning a wage. When my work is done, you may return to Mr. Wilmington, or stay at the War Department, as you prefer.”
“But how do I know he’ll take me back, once I’ve left?”
“You’re to request a temporary absence. We must settle on a story that you don’t mind telling. Perhaps your mother is ill and you must return home for a few weeks. Or it could be an illness of your own, if you’re a good actress. Maybe you require a small operation? It’s up to you, really. You’re the one who must tell a persuasive story.”
She smiled at that. We were co-conspirators now. “I hate to wish ill health on my mother, but I suppose I’d have the easiest time convincing him of that. He knows nothing about my parents.”
