It was at this point that he discovered the probable cause of Gardstein’s death. The Russian terrorist had been something of a chemist, experimenting with oxygen and blow-pipes. But he had little experience with the mechanical side of safe-breaking. And so he persuaded the gang to hire a thug called Max. Max may have known everything about safe-breaking, but he was a beginner when it came to handling firearms. He was working at the safe, as Wensley learned, when the alarm sounded. A gun was lying on the table. He picked it up and ran out after the others, firing wildly. By mistake he struck Gardstein in the back.
Miraculously the three men and the woman managed literally to carry their colleague to Svaar’s place on Grove Street one mile away without arousing attention. For that feat, Wensley grudgingly extended his admiration. It would have been safer and simpler to let Gardstein die in the street.
The police now had a fairly accurate picture of the ten men who composed the shock-troops of the Anarchist Club, their descriptions, their characters. But laying them by the heels was another matter.
The first break, a minor one, came on December 22nd, exactly eight days after the Houndsditch massacre. A constable patrolling Galloway Road in the suburb of Shepherd’s Bush spied a man answering to the description of Zourka Duboff. He nabbed him, dragged him to the nearest police station and detained him for further questioning.
That same evening, Inspector Wensley received word that another of the terrible ten, Jacob Peters, had been seen to leave a lodging on Turner Street. Presumably the man lived there. Accompanied by Detective Inspector Collinson, Wensley went to the house, waited. At 8:30, Peters walked unsuspectingly into the arms of the law. Wensley smiled, counted off two men on his proscription list.
Grilling Peters resulted in the revelation of a second address, a tenement in Romford Street. This was supposed to be the home of the man known as Federoff.
Wensley burst in upon him towards midnight. The Russian turned pale, admitted under examination that he had visited Svaars and Peter the Painter from time to time in Grove Street. “You realize,” Wensley warned him, “that these men are suspected of the murder of three police officers.”
“I can’t help that,” the Russian replied in halting English. “I had nothing whatever to do with it.”
Duboff, Peters, Federoff and the two were then charged with complicity in the triple murder. The hunt for the others went on. Here the detectives were not so fortunate. At least three of the ten had succeeded in escaping to France. Many years later, one of them was to hold a prominent place in the Russian Government. Rosen and Hoffman were still laying low. No trace of them could be found.
The interlocking statements of the apprehended anarchists now led the detectives to Gold Street, near Stepney, where a Russian using the name of Morin had maintained lodgings. Morin was one of the many aliases employed by the dead Gardstein. A raid upon his room disclosed some amazing findings.
There was a vast armory of weapons and ammunition, enough to arm a small army. It was ammunition of a type found in Gardstein’s death chamber at Grove Street. The very bullets were of the same caliber and manufacture as those extracted from the slaughtered policeman. Inspector Wensley’s hands were twitching to clap handcuffs on the last of the ten. Among them were the three who had pumped blazing death into London’s “finest.” But which ones? Gardstein undoubtedly. He was beyond jurisdiction? Who were the other two? There was not yet a definite answer to that question.
The hunt dragged on into February. Rosen, alias Zelin, tumbled into the police dragnet. His hide-out in Hackney had been spotted. He surrendered meekly. Fast upon this triumph came news of another house in Canon Street. It was thought to be the house of Karl Hoffman, the man with whom at least two of the assassins had taken refuge after the massacre. At two o’clock in the morning, a cordon was thrown around the house. Hoffman was upstairs in bed. A policeman went up, roused him, arrested him.
One of the most intiguing suspects arrested at this time was a tall, beautiful, sloe-eyed Russian Jewess whose name had been linked romantically in the Whitechapel underworld with that of Gardstein. Cool, self-possessed Nina Vassileva had been Gardstein’s sweetheart. She disappeared from her old haunts after the murders, dyed her hair black. Once she decided to escape to Paris. She got no further than the corner. She felt she was being watched, which she was, and returned to the house of the Jewish folk on Burros Street where she had been hiding.
Inspector Wensley found her, hiding, half-dressed, her black hair in striking disarray, in a back room. She was reading her own fortune by cards. “I’m a Russian and I make cigarettes for a living,” she stated haughtily in answer to Wensley’s questions.
“Do you deny that you are a member of a certain club on Jubilee Street?” Wensley asked.
“I was. Yes.”
“Good. Then perhaps you know that some of the men who committed the Houndsditch murders were members of that club. Do you know who they were?”
“Perhaps I do and perhaps I don’t!”
That was all that could be got from Nina Vassileva, but a clue, almost forgot since the early days of the investigation, cropped up to destroy her innocense. The fingerprints on the candle-holders found at No. 9 Exchange Buildings matched the girl’s! At last one of the fatal foursome who had escaped from that building!
The beautiful Jewess was eventually tried and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. But the verdict was quashed on appeal. After all, there was no proof that she had fired a single shot. Her only sin had been consorting with the killers who had. She was freed.
As for the others, Rosa Trassjohnski, Luba Milstein, and the five men, nothing could be proved against them beyond the fact that they had known and associated with the killers. And only Rosa would identify them. For the first time the names of Gardstein’s two murderous mates were definitely linked with the murders. They were Fritz Svaars and the man known only as Joseph! Shortly after making this important revelation, the Trassjohnski woman went mad, had to be put under restraint.
The six others were released. Max, Joe Levi, the man who had rented No. 9, and Peter the Painter dropped out of the picture altogether. There remained only the two human savages, Svaars and Joseph. By a process of elimination these appeared to be the two wanted men.
Had they, too, fled? Were they still alive? Who was protecting them and how long could they escape the avenging arms of the police?
The answer came abruptly, startlingly. It was the first act in the incredible Siege of Sidney Street.
The chiefs of the City Police and New Scotland Yard were summoned suddenly to a conference at the Old Jewry Police Station. When they were all assembled, Detective Stark rose, uttered the news they had all been waiting for.
“The two murderers, Svaars and Joseph, were seen to enter No. 100 Sidney Street last night!” A hum of excited voices interrupted him. He lifted his hands for silence. “Wait! It is also known that they are armed with Mauser pistols and an unlimited supply of ammunition. You all know the fate of three of our colleagues. I don’t want another man to lose his life at the hands of those assassins. They’re desperate, savage men. They have nothing to lose by killing again. They must be caught without loss of life!”