curtailed were the airplane pilots who, at $2.50 a ticket, were flying over the house and grounds all the sunny day long, to the delight of their rubbernecking passengers and the annoyance of all us on the ground.
On Tuesday, two weeks since the kidnapping, Colonel Schwarzkopf held a press conference about, among other things, Henry “Red” Johnson; seemed the sailor had been deemed innocent of any wrongdoing in the Lindbergh case, but was in federal custody awaiting deportation for entering the country illegally. What Schwarzkopf didn’t tell the newshounds—because he didn’t know it—was that I’d suggested to Frank Wilson of the IRS that Johnson’s deportation proceed at a snail’s pace, in case later on Johnson turned out not to be quite so “innocent.”
Wilson continued to be cooperative with me, and I with him, but he had confirmed my suspicion, the night of the cemetery rendezvous with “John”: nobody had trailed Condon and me, and nobody had, accordingly, been able to tail and trail John home.
“The orders come straight from the top,” Wilson told me. “Lindbergh and Mills are pals, you know.”
Wilson meant Ogden Mills, Secretary of the Treasury.
“That’s insane,” I said.
“We’ve been told to lay off,” Wilson told me gloomily. “No stakeout on Condon, no interference in any way in how Colonel Lindbergh wants the case handled.”
Hamstrung as they were, Wilson and the IRS agents were continuing their own investigation, including the ongoing search for Capone’s man Bob Conroy; but Jafsie, John and the whole sorry crew were getting a free ride.
Around ten-thirty Wednesday morning at his house in the beautiful borough of the Bronx, Professor Condon received a pliant oblong brown-paper package, obviously the sleeping suit, though the old boy didn’t open the bundle. Instead he called Breckinridge, at the attorney’s office, to arrange for Lindbergh himself to come do the honors. Condon said he had his reasons for this, and one of them was obviously a desire to have Lucky Lindy as a houseguest.
But it was well after dark before Lindbergh and I were able to sneak away from the estate. The place was still crawling with reporters and sightseers. I drove the flivver, and Lindy crouched in back, wearing a cap and large- lensed amber glasses and a flannel shirt and well-worn, faded denim pants; it was a cool night, but he wore no topcoat—he looked like a delivery boy. He had the baby face for it.
We arrived at Condon’s Bronx bungalow a little after 1:00 A.M. The professor answered the door and, for a moment, didn’t know who Lindbergh was, till the amber glasses were removed. Not that Slim’s disguise was impenetrable: I figured Condon gave himself the same puzzled expression every morning in the mirror.
“I have something for you,” Condon told Lindbergh archly, as we followed him through the hallway and into the living room, where Colonel Breckinridge—still Condon’s houseguest—waited.
The brown-paper bundle was on the grand piano, on the paisley shawl.
“Are you quite sure,” Condon said, touching Lindbergh’s arm, “that you wish—that you can
Lindbergh said nothing; he just reached for the package and began to carefully unwrap it, like a fussy woman undoing a Christmas present, wanting to save the colorful paper for next year. A note had been enclosed, which he set aside. He lifted out a small woolen garment—a gray sleeping suit. A red label in the back collar identified it as a Dr. Denton’s, size two.
Lindbergh looked at it curiously. He sniffed it. “I think it’s been laundered,” he said.
“Let me have a look,” I said.
He handed it to me hesitantly, as if the slack suit were the child itself.
“It could’ve been washed,” I said, taking it, examining it. “Or it could be new. Whoever sent it might’ve had to go out and buy it.”
Lindbergh’s face squeezed in on itself. “How would they know what to buy? The description we gave the papers was purposely misleading.”
That was true: the press had been told, and printed, that the sleeping suit was a “fine, white balbriggan” that buttoned in front with a backflap. This one buttoned in back, and was gray, with a breast pocket.
“Somebody who worked around your kid would know,” I said.
He grimaced irritably and said, “I’m convinced this is the sleeping suit.”
“Well, then. You’re convinced. Better have a look at the note.”
He did. We all did. It was signed with the by-now-familiar interlocking-circles signature. It said:
Dear Sir: Ouer man fails to collect the mony. There are no more confidential conference after the meeting from March 12. Those arrangements to hazardous for us. We will note allow ouer man to confer in a way like before. Circumstance will note allow us to make a transfare like you wish. It is impossibly for us. Wy should we move the baby and face danger to take another person to the plase is entirely out of question. It seems you are afraid if we are the right party and if the boy is alright. Well you have ouer singnature. It is always the same as the first one specialy these three hohls
It continued on the reverse:
Now we will send you the sleepingsuit from the baby besides it means 3 $ extra expenses because we have to pay another one. Pleace tell Mrs. Lindbergh note to worry the baby is well. We only have to give him more food as the diet says.
You are willing to pay the 70000 note 50000 $ without seeing the baby first or note, let us know about that in the New York-american. We can’t do it other ways, because we don’t like to give up ouer safty plase or to move the baby.
If you are willing to accept this deal put these in the paper.
