The House Of Silk Read Online Free PDF Page B

building, though containing a superb collection. I also visited Mrs Devoy and her son. It was while I was in New York that I received a telegram from Stillman, urging me to return. The size of the reward had achieved its aim. McParland had been given a tip-off. The net was closing in on the Flat Cap Gang.
    ‘I returned at once, taking a room at a hotel on School Street. And it was there, in the evening, that I heard from Cornelius Stillman what had occurred.
    ‘The tip-off had come from the owner of a dramshop – which is what the Americans call a saloon – in the South End, a less than salubrious part of Boston and one that was already home to a large number of Irish immigrants. The O’Donaghue twins were holed-up in a narrow tenement house close to the Charles River, a dark, squalid building on three storeys with dozens of rooms clustered together, no hallways and just one privy serving each floor. Raw sewage ran through the corridors and the stench was only kept at bay by the fumes of charcoal, burning in a hundred tiny stoves. This hell-hole was filled with screaming babies, drunken men and mumbling, half-crazed women, but a rough construction, mainly of timber with a few pressed bricks, had been added separately at the back and this the twins had managed to make their own. Keelan had one room to himself. Rourke shared another with two of his men. A third room was occupied by the rest of the gang.
    ‘The money they had stolen from the train was already gone, frittered away on alcohol and gambling. As the sun set that evening, they were crouched around the stove, drinking gin and playing cards. They had no look-out. None of the families would have dared to peach on them and they were sure that the Boston police had long ago lost any interest in the theft of two thousand dollars. And so they were oblivious to the approach of McParland who was closing in on the tenement, accompanied by a dozen armed men.
    ‘The Pinkerton’s agents had been instructed to take them alive if they could for it was very much Stillman’s hope that he would see them in a court of law, besides which there were many innocent people in close proximity making an all-out gunfight something to be avoided if at all possible. When his men were in position, McParland took up the bullhorn he had brought with him and called out a warning. But if he had hoped that the Flat Cap Gang would surrender quietly, he was disillusioned a moment later by a volley of shots. The twins had allowed themselves to be taken by surprise, but they were not going to give up without a fight, and a cascade of lead poured out into the street, fired not just out of windows but through holes punched in the very walls. Two of the Pinkerton men were gunned down and McParland himself was wounded, but the others gave as good as they got, emptying their six-shooters directly into the structure. It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like as hundreds of bullets tore through the flimsy wood. There was no protection. There was nowhere to hide.
    ‘When it was all over, they found five men lying together in the smoke-filled interior, their bodies shot to pieces. One had escaped. At first it seemed impossible, but McParland’s informant had assured him that the entire gang would be assembled in that place and during the gunfight it had seemed to him that six men had returned their fire. The room was examined and at last the mystery was solved. One of the floorboards was loose. It was pulled aside to reveal a narrow gulley, a drainage ditch which sank below the surface of the ground and continued all the way to the river. Keelan O’Donaghue had escaped by this means, although it must have been the devil of a tight squeeze for the pipe was barely large enough to contain a child, and certainly none of the Pinkerton’s agents was willing to give it a try. McParland led some of his men down to the river but by now it was pitch-dark and he knew any search would be fruitless.