The House Of Silk

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. The Flat Cap Gang was destroyed but one of its ringleaders had got away.
    ‘This was the outcome that Cornelius Stillman described to me in my hotel that night, but it is not by any means the end of the story.
    ‘I remained in Boston another week, partly in the hope that Keelan O’Donaghue might even now be found. For a slight concern had risen in my mind. Indeed, it might have been there from the very start, but it was only now that I became conscious of it. It referred to that blasted advertisement which I have already mentioned and which bore my name. Stillman had made public the fact that I had been party to the reward and to the posse which had been sent after the Flat Cap Gang. At the time I had been gratified, thinking only of my sense of public duty and, I suppose, the honour of being associated with the great man. It now occurred to me that to have killed one twin and to have left the other alive might make me a target for revenge, particularly in a place where the very worst criminals could count on the support of so many friends and admirers. It was with a sense of nervousness that I now walked in and out of my hotel. I did not stray into the rougher parts of the city. And I certainly didn’t go out at night.
    ‘Keelan O’Donaghue was not captured and there was even some doubt that he had actually survived. He could have been wounded and died of blood loss, like a rat, underground. He could have drowned. Stillman had certainly persuaded himself that this was the case by the time we met for the last time, but then, he was the sort of man who never liked to admit failure. I had booked passage back to England on the SS
Catalonia
, run by the Cunard line. I was sorry not to be able to bid farewell to Mrs Devoy and her son, but I did not have the time to return to New York. I left the hotel. And I remember that I had actually reached the gangplank and was about to board the ship when I heard the news. It was being shouted out by a newsboy and there it was, on the front