“The name she gave was Miss Francis.”
“Then did you make your plans with the girl on the way out here?”
“We was to come out and register and catch the next train out to the city.”
“What time did you go to the hotel?”
“It was a little after 8 o’clock when we went to the hotel. A little after 8 o’clock. We didn’t get there in time to register and catch the train back to the city.”
“As soon as you did that did you start for the station?”
“We saw there was two single beds, and then we came out and I tried to get a taxicab back to the station. I couldn’t get a taxicab so I tried to get back to Patchogue.”
“I am trying to get out how you earned your $5. What would you have established by what you did?”
“What I intended to do was to leave the young lady in the room to-night, and I told her I’d stay out and if I saw we registered as man and wife.”
“You’d stay out in the morning and go back to town? You wouldn’t tarnish her reputation?”
“No, sir, I’d no intention of doing that.”
“How would you do that and go back by the next train?”
“I would not have stayed if I could have got this train.”
“No, you said you planned to stay in the room for the night.”
“That was after we missed the train. We made the plan when we missed the train.”
“What did you tell the hotel people when you came in?”
“I just registered as Mr. Pendleton from Kansas City.”
“And did you tell the clerk the occasion of your being there?”
“Not a word that.”
After Adkins answered their questions, the agents also questioned Miss Francis. She looked down at her shoes and refused to answer any questions. Except that her first name was Adeline and that she lived with Mrs. Humiston. After Adkins and Miss Francis were examined, they were sent back to the hotel, where they were required to register under their own names and were assigned to separate rooms, the young girl being placed in the charge of the matron of the hotel.
The next morning, Adkins left on the first train. Miss Francis followed on the ten o’clock. General Bell told reporters that Grace had not given him any of the names of the supposed “dead girls” or of any eyewitnesses who saw them. Bell said she was “peddling gossip.”
That day, a search was made of the barracks. A letter was found addressed from Adkins, who had been a carpenter during the camp’s construction, to Sergeant Penland, who was currently in the Army Cooks and Bakers School. Penland, at one time, had been Adkins’s bunkmate.
Dear Friend:
Will now try to write you a few lines to ask a favor of you as well as to tell you what to do in order to get tickets to the dance free. I am helping Mrs. Humiston by doing (keep this to yourself) some detective work in regards to girls under 17 years of age being enticed from their homes to white slavery and I have told her about the way girls done near the ice plant when we were working on same one Sunday and also about two girls being found dead near the camp while I was working there, and now she wants as many of your sergeants 1st class as she can get to do so to come over to her office and tell her what you know about the conditions of the camp and how the girls stay over night there.
Come over Wednesday and bring all the men you can get to come with you and I will show you all a good time. Hoping to see you all on Wednesday evening and with best wishes to all the boys I am
Your Friend,
Jas. C. Adkins
435 East 15th St.
The letter was dated November 20, five days after Grace’s speech before the Women Lawyers Association.
On November 26, Grace received a telegram from Secretary of War Baker. “You are quoted in morning papers as making serious charges against United States soldiers,” he wrote. “It is requested that you come to Washington immediately.”
“I made no serious charges against United States soldiers,” Grace replied. “But at a dinner of women lawyers, I mentioned certain conditions which have been reported personally and by letter to my office. Mr. Fosdick’s telegram is not expressive of the sentiment of my address.” Grace offered to work for six months—for free—to help the Department of War get to the truth. She even hoped that she and Major Bell would become good friends. “It takes two to make a right, you know” she said.
William H. Zinsser, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Civilian Cooperation in Combating Social Diseases, had his own views on Grace’s behavior regarding Camp Upton. “She has not been willing to cooperate with any of the bodies that have been working to see whether anything has been done or to report any ‘hearsay evidence’ that has come to her,” he said. “She rather chooses to adopt a sensational method of flaunting a hysterical charge, outlining a condition which does not exist, and perhaps in one interview doing more to spoil the work of months than anything which has yet come before the public, at least in this locality.”
The next day at Grace’s office, two military men walked in. They were not potential clients. They sat down with Grace and Miss Francis to take their official statements. Grace admitted to the whole plan of sending the couple to Upton. The only reason Grace’s plan had failed was because of a dance she gave a few days previous where one of the attendees—Sergeant Penland—saw Miss Francis for the first time. On the night of Adkins and Francis’s secret visit to Upton, Penland recognized her as she passed him by in camp. He then tipped off the military police and Secret Service, who hightailed it to the hotel room.
The press, who had begged Grace for evidence during this long ordeal, were not kind to her now. The New-York Tribune editorialized that “Mrs. Humiston may, in her way be doing what she considers good work, but is it necessary that twenty-five or thirty thousand members of a United States army unit, or any other organization, should have their character shaded in this manner?” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle called it “a disgraceful experiment”:
Charges of wholesale immorality at Camp Upton or any other camp are not to be sustained by casual experiments designed to trap hotel clerks, they are to be sustained only by the production of evidence. No such evidence has been presented by Mrs. Humiston. All that has been so far received from her is a proposal that if the Government pay her expenses she will go after the “evidence.” The Government does not need to waste a penny on her. An indignant public opinion has sufficiently discounted her charges.… To the man who lent himself to this disgraceful experiment nothing need be said.… As to the girl … she should be removed by law, if need be, from all contact with the woman who employed her on this disgusting errand.