FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[2]Franz Schulenberg was a deserter from the German army who advertised in the Spokane newspapers in February, 1915, for land on which to colonize a number of Spanish families. These families turned out to be Hindus, whom he proposed to employ in obtaining information of Canadian shipping, to be relayed by secret wireless to German raiders in the Pacific. Schulenberg was captured on December 5, 1917, in an automobile on the road from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, two days after he had left a woman spy who was associated with von Papen's office, and who directed Schulenberg's movements in the United States. He admitted having bought, in 1915, a ton of dynamite, fifty Maxim silencers, fifty rifles, and a quantity of fuse for shipment to Hindus near the Canadian border, between Victoria and Vancouver.

[2]Franz Schulenberg was a deserter from the German army who advertised in the Spokane newspapers in February, 1915, for land on which to colonize a number of Spanish families. These families turned out to be Hindus, whom he proposed to employ in obtaining information of Canadian shipping, to be relayed by secret wireless to German raiders in the Pacific. Schulenberg was captured on December 5, 1917, in an automobile on the road from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, two days after he had left a woman spy who was associated with von Papen's office, and who directed Schulenberg's movements in the United States. He admitted having bought, in 1915, a ton of dynamite, fifty Maxim silencers, fifty rifles, and a quantity of fuse for shipment to Hindus near the Canadian border, between Victoria and Vancouver.

Kaltschmidt and the Windsor explosions—The Port Huron tunnel—Werner Horn—Explosions embarrass the Embassy—Black Tom—The second Welland affair—Harry Newton—The damage done in three years—Waiter spies.

In the check-book of the military attaché was a counterfoil betraying a payment of $1,000 made on March 27, 1915, to "W. von Igel (for A. Kaltschmidt, Detroit)." That stub was part of a bomb plot.

A young German named Charles Francis Respa was employed in 1908 by Albert Carl Kaltschmidt in a Detroit machine shop. Seven years later Kaltschmidt had occasion to hire Respa again. To a group which included Respa, his brother-in-law Carl Schmidt, Gus Stevens and Kaltschmidt's own brother-in-law, Fritz Neef, he outlined a plan for destroying factories in Canada. Neef was the Detroit agent for the Eisemann magneto, and had a machine shop of his own.

"We are not citizens of this country,"Kaltschmidt reiterated to his accomplices. "It is our duty to stand by the Fatherland. The Americans would throw us out of work after war started." (The Americans, on the contrary, gave the ringleaders of the conspiracy plenty of hard labor after the war started.) To seal the bargain Kaltschmidt paid the men a retainer, and sent Stevens and Respa to Winnipeg to see whether it might not be feasible to blow up the railroad bridge there.

Respa reported back. His next assignment was to go to Port Huron and determine whether enough dynamite might be attached to the rear of a passenger train bound through the international tunnel under the St. Clair River to destroy the tube. Respa came to the conclusion that it was not practicable, for the authorities were taking precautions against just such an operation. Respa and Stevens were then despatched to Duluth, where they met Schmidt and a fourth member of the group, each carrying a suitcase containing numerous sticks of dynamite, and the quartette returned with its explosives to Detroit.

Kaltschmidt then hired him for $18 a week. Respa had left Germany before his term of military service came due; Kaltschmidt used this information as a club over his head, for he knewthe young man could not return to the Fatherland. On June 21 Kaltschmidt called Respa to his office in the Kresge Building, and showed him two elaborate time-clock devices which could be so set as to fire bombs at any specified hour, and Respa, at Kaltschmidt's command, carried the clocks across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, late that afternoon. His sister, Mrs. Schmidt, went with him, and together they wandered about until the hour when they knew that William Lefler, the night watchman of the Peabody Overall Company factory in Walkerville, would go on duty.

Under cover of darkness, the brother and sister met Lefler, who gave Respa two suitcases full of dynamite which Kaltschmidt had smuggled piecemeal into Canada under the front seat of his automobile. Respa attached the clocks to the charges, set one of the infernal machines near the factory, and planted the other in the rear of the Windsor armory, in which Canadian troops were asleep, and near which was a Catholic girls' school. Then he and Mrs. Schmidt scurried back to the ferry and took the last boat to Detroit. At three o'clock in the morning they heard a muffled roar from the Canadian side; the factory bomb had gone off. The other charge failed to explode: Respa said he deliberately set thepercussion cap at the wrong angle, because he knew that soldiers were sleeping in the armory, and he had no stomach for murder.

One of the gang was presently arrested, and Respa was spirited away to the retirement of a mechanic's job in a West Hoboken garage. But he grew restless, and spent his money, and Kaltschmidt refused him more. He pawned his watch and his ring, bought a ticket to Detroit, and presented himself before Kaltschmidt with a demand for money, in default of which Respa proposed to "squeal." He was immediately returned to the payroll.

The Canadian provincial detectives had begun to search for the night watchman, Lefler. They found him, and from him they extracted a full confession. Respa's arrest was easy, and the United States willingly returned him, although Kaltschmidt did attempt to establish a false alibi for his underling. Respa was sentenced to life imprisonment, Lefler to ten years, for the destruction of the factory.

The dragnet closed in on Kaltschmidt. William M. Jarosch, a German-born, who later enlisted in the United States Army, had been introduced to Kaltschmidt in Chicago in 1915 by a former German consul there, Gustav Jacobsen. Jacobsen recruited two other men, andKaltschmidt took the three to Detroit. Jarosch was directed to secure employment at the plant of the Detroit Screw Works, but he was rejected, so Kaltschmidt told him to watch the plant for a good opportunity to set a bomb there. In the course of his sojourn in Detroit he went to the Respa home in the placid little village of Romeo and returned with a generous quantity of dynamite. This he delivered to Neef, and in a conference at the magneto shop Kaltschmidt explained the operation of the time-clock, and ordered Jarosch to set the device at the Detroit Screw factory that night. He and his Chicago confederates set out for the scene, but there were guards about, and Jarosch had no desire for arrest, so he took the bomb to his hotel room, disengaged the trigger, and calmly went to sleep. Next morning Kaltschmidt reproached him, and Jarosch resigned, to return months later to show Federal officers where he had buried some 80 pounds of dynamite, nitroglycerine, and a bomb.

Kaltschmidt also conspired to destroy the Port Huron tunnel. For this enterprise he contrived a car which he proposed to load with dynamite set to explode with a time fuse. Fritz Neef, the Stuttgart graduate and expert mechanical engineer, was his able assistant and adviser in this project. The car was of standard railwaygauge. It was to be set on the Grand Trunk tracks at the mouth of the Port Huron end of the tunnel and released, to roll down into the darkness under the river. At the low point in the tunnel's curve the charge would explode, bursting the walls of the tube, and completely interrupting the heavy international freight traffic at that point.

The "devil car" never was released. Kaltschmidt was arrested, and finally, in December, 1917, tried and convicted on three counts. He was given the maximum sentence, of four years' imprisonment and $20,000 fine. His sister, Mrs. Neef, who had been an active intermediary, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and was fined $15,000; Carl Schmidt and his wife were each condemned to two years in prison, and assessed a fine of $10,000 each, and only old Franz Respa, the father of the dynamiter, was acquitted.

The activities of this group received tangible approval from the German Embassy. Even before von Papen drew the check on March 27 for Kaltschmidt, the attaché's secretary, von Igel, had transferred $2,000 to the Detroit German from the banking firm of Knauth, Nachod and Kuhne (January 23). On October 5, long after the Walkerville explosion, but while thePort Huron venture was still a possibility, the Chase National Bank of New York transferred to Knauth, Nachod and Kuhne $25,000 from the joint account maintained there by Count von Bernstorff and Dr. Albert, and next day the money was placed to Kaltschmidt's credit.

The Port Huron tunnel was the object of German attentions from the active San Francisco consulate. Crowley, who had been von Brincken's messenger in the Van Koolbergen affair, and one Louis J. Smith, were hired by Herr Bopp to go east on a destroying mission. They ran out of money in New York, and called at the New York consulate for assistance. They were told that the New York consulate had nothing to do with Pacific coast activities, so they wired von Schack for funds. He replied, chiding them for not having called on von Papen.

Late in June Smith left New York and joined Crowley at the Normandy Hotel in Detroit. "Then we went to Port Huron," he said, "where we planned to dynamite a railroad tunnel and a horse train. We didn't do it, though.

"Then we went to Toronto, and Crowley told me to plant a bomb under a horse train in the West Toronto yards. But I saw a policeman, and I got out quick. Then we took some nitroglycerine, cotton, sawdust, and a tin pan andsome other things to Grosse Isle, Ontario, and went out back of a cemetery and made some bombs.

"Well, we got back to San Francisco late in July, and Crowley and I cooked up an expense account of $1,254.80, and took it up to the consulate. Von Schack locked the door behind us, and then he said: 'I don't want any statement. Tell me how much you want?' We told him, and he said he would get it the following day. Then all of a sudden he asked: 'How do I know you fellows did any jobs in Canada?'

"'Wire the mayor of Toronto and ask him!' Crowley answered."

On one occasion at least the Germans respected American property, for the protection America might afford. Werner Horn, a former lieutenant in the Landwehr, was in Guatemala when the war broke out. He made an attempt to return to his command, but got no farther than New York, where he placed himself at the disposal of Captain von Papen. On January 18 the military attaché paid him $700. On February 2 Horn exploded a charge of dynamite on the Canadian end of the international bridge at Vanceboro, Maine, spanning the St. Croix River to New Brunswick. The explosion caused a slight damage to the Canadian half of the bridge.A few hours later Horn was arrested in Vanceboro, and admitted the crime.

When the Canadian authorities applied for his extradition, the warrant which Judge Hale issued was not executed, the United States Marshal for Maine having received word from Washington that a well-preserved treaty between Great Britain and the United States would cover just such a case, and Horn was indicted on a charge of having transported explosives from New York City to Vanceboro. His attorneys naïvely attempted to secure his liberty by casting a protective mantle of international law about his shoulders: Werner Horn, they said, was a First Lieutenant of the West-Prussian Pioneer Battalion Number 17, and as such was sworn by His Royal Majesty of Prussia to

" ... discharge the obligations of his office in a becoming manner, ... execute diligently and loyally whatever is made his duty to do and carry out, and whatever is commanded him, by day and by night, on land and on sea, and ... conduct himself bravely and irreproachably in all wars and military events that may occur...."

Yet he was tried, and that without much delay, and convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment.

Although the destruction of railways was an attractive means of stopping the progress of munitions to the seaboard, and although it was arecognized practice during 1915, it made the Embassy at Washington uneasy. Bernstorff protested to the Foreign Office in Berlin that if a German agent should be caught in the act of dynamiting a railroad it would be exceedingly embarrassing for him, and increase the difficulties of his already ticklish rôle of apologist and explainer-extraordinary. The Foreign Office accordingly sent a telegram to von Papen:

"January 26—For Military Attaché.... Railway embankments and bridges must not be touched. Embassy must in no circumstances be compromised."(Signed) "Representative of General Staff."

"January 26—For Military Attaché.... Railway embankments and bridges must not be touched. Embassy must in no circumstances be compromised."

(Signed) "Representative of General Staff."

And thereafter American railway bridges and embankments were safe, though their owners may not have been aware of the fact at the time.

It is no mere metaphor to say that during 1915 and 1916 the smoke of German explosions in factories in the United States was spreading across the sun, casting the deepening shadow of war over America. There was dynamite found in the coal tender of a munitions train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Callery Junction, Pa., on December 10, 1915, the day on which enormous quantities of wheat were destroyed by fire in grain elevators at Erie. A few hoursearlier a two-million-dollar explosion had occurred at the Hopewell plant of the du Pont works. Shortly before Christmas a ton and a half of nitroglycerine exploded at Fayville, Illinois.

During 1916 there were a dozen major explosions in the du Pont properties alone and literally dozens of lives were lost. Two arms plants at Bridgeport, Conn., were blown up. An explosion in May wiped out a large chemical plant in Cadillac, Michigan. A munitions works of the Bethlehem Steel Company at Newcastle, Pa., was destroyed. The climax in violence came, however, in the sultry night of August 1-2. Shortly after midnight the rocky island of Manhattan trembled, and the roar of a prodigious blast burst over the harbor of New York. Two million pounds of munitions were being transported in freight trains and on barges near the island of Black Tom, a few hundred yards from the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty. Some one, somehow, supplied the spark. The loss of life was inconsiderable, for that neighborhood was not inhabited, but the confusion was complete. Heavy windows in the canyons of lower Manhattan were shivered, and for a few moments many of the streets rained broken glass. Shell-laden barges near the original explosion set up ascattering fire which continued for some time, most of the projectiles losing their power through lack of a substantial breech-block. But the immigration station on Ellis Island was in panic, and its position became more unpleasant as one of the blazing barges drifted down upon it. The shock was felt far out in Jersey, and northward in Connecticut. An estimate of damage was placed at thirty millions of dollars, probably as accurate as such an estimate need be; the event was utterly spectacular, and from the point of view of the unknown destroying agent, effective.

Exactly one year after von Papen gave up the first attempt upon the Welland Canal, a second enterprise began with the same objective. Captain von Papen felt that von der Goltz had bungled. This time he intrusted the mission to the doughty and usually reliable Paul Koenig. On September 27, 1915, Koenig, with Richard Emil Leyendecker, a "hyphenated American" who dealt during the daytime in art woods at 347 Fifth Avenue, New York, and Fred Metzler, of Jersey City, Koenig's secretary, went to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, accompanied by Mrs. Koenig. They had no trouble in crossing the border and making a thorough investigation of the canal, its vulnerable points, its guards and the patrol routes of those guards. Koenig selected men whom hedetailed to watch the guards, and he fixed on satisfactory storage places for his explosives. The party then returned to Niagara Falls and later to New York.

They did not know that they were being trailed. All three men had been under surveillance for nearly a year, and after their migrations near the canal, the guard was reenforced. It became impossible to carry out the plan. A few weeks later the detectives who were shadowing Koenig noticed that George Fuchs, a relative whom he employed at a meagre salary, was seldom seen in his company. They sought Fuchs out and plied him with refreshment. A few glasses of beer drew out his story: Koenig owed him $15, and he therefore bore no affection for Koenig. The detectives turned him over to Superintendent Offley of the Department of Justice, who sympathized with Fuchs to such an extent that the latter retailed enough evidence of the Welland plot to secure Koenig's indictment on five counts. Thus did a debt of thirty pieces of silver—in this case half-dollars—rob the Hamburg-American Line of a six-foot, 200-pound detective, and the German spy system in America of one of its roughest characters, for, thanks to Fuchs' revelations, Koenig was indicted for a violation of Section 13 of the Penal Code.

Herald Square, New York, was the center of open-air oratory every evening until after America entered the war. Those who had stood and fought their verbal battles during the day about the bulletin board of theNew York Heraldremained at night to bellow to the idle passersby along Broadway, and one night Felix Galley, a leather-lunged contractor, gave an impassioned discourse justifying Germany's entrance into the war. When the meeting broke up he was followed home by one who rather passed his expectations as a convert.

The stranger was Harry Newton. He had been employed in a munitions plant in St. Catharine's, Ontario. He suggested to Galley that he would take any orders for arson which the Germans had in mind, and recommended that as proof of his ability he would oblige with a dynamiting of the Brooks Locomotive Works at Dunkirk, N. Y., for a retainer of $5,000. Or, he said, he could arrange to destroy the Federal building or Police Headquarters. This was more than the German had bargained for, and assuring Newton that he would first have to consult the "chief," he ran straightway to the police and in great agitation told what had happened. Captain Tunney, of the Bomb Squad, assigned Detective Sergeant George Barnitz to the case.

The detective, posing as a German agent, found Newton at Mills Hotel No. 3, and opened negotiations with him. After several talks, they met on the afternoon of April 19, 1916, at Grand Street and the Bowery. Barnitz said: "Now, I'm in a hurry—haven't much time to discuss all this. You say you're in the business strictly for the money. The chief is willing to pay you $5,000 if you will smash the Welland Canal or blow up the Brooks Locomotive Works or burn the McKinnon, Dash Company's plant at St. Catharine's. But how do we know you won't demand more from us after you are paid? Maybe you'll want more cash for your assistants."

Newton was quick to reply that he worked alone and wouldn't trust any assistant. He was anxious to start with the Brooks "job" at Dunkirk and told Barnitz he had left in the baggage-room of the New York Central Railroad at Buffalo a suitcase containing powerful bombs. (The suitcase actually contained a loaded 4-inch shell, with percussion cap and fuse.) It would be necessary only for him to go to Buffalo, get the suitcase, hasten to Dunkirk and blow up the locomotive works.

"Fine," said Barnitz. "You are under arrest."

Newton stared a moment, then laughed. "You New York cops are a damned sight smarter thanI ever thought you were," he said, "and you made me think you were a German!"

At Police Headquarters he described his plan for blowing up the Welland Canal. Having worked in a town located on the canal, he was familiar with the position of the locks. "It would be a simple matter," he said. "You see these buttons I am wearing on my watch chain and in my coat lapel. The plain gilt one reads 'On His Majesty's Service.' The blue and white one reads 'McKinnon, Dash Company, Munitions. On Service.' Those buttons are passes that would let me into any munitions plant in Canada or this country. They would pass me through the guards of the canal. It would be easy for me to pretend to be a workman, get a boat and, carrying a dinner pail, filled with explosives, to pick out a weak spot in the canal works and destroy the whole business.

"It would be a cinch to burn the McKinnon, Dash plant. I could go back to work there as foreman. Any Saturday night I could be the last to leave. Before going I could saturate flooring with benzine and put a lighted candle where within a half hour or so the flame would reach the benzine."

Newton also suggested his willingness to dynamite the banking house of J. P. Morgan & Co.,at 23 Wall Street, or to dynamite the banker's automobile. He had a series of postcards in his own handwriting, which, in case he was hired for a dynamiting, were to be mailed from distant points every day while he was on the assignment, in order to establish an alibi.

He was an irresponsible person, and one who could not be said to be under orders from the attachés in lower Broadway. Yet he is typical of the restless and lawless floating population of which the Germans made excellent tools. When he heard Galley he promptly offered his services; his boldness would have made him a capital destroying agent, and it was fired by the speech in Herald Square, a speech inspired from Berlin. Here was his opportunity to make money. Thus, by a word of encouragement, by the whisper of "big money" to discharged, dissatisfied or disloyal employees of munitions plants, the seed of German violence was sown everywhere. Men who were well dressed and of good appearance would be remarked if they prowled about factory districts; men must be employed who would fade into the drab landscape by the very commonplaceness of their clothing and action. They could be hired cheaply and swiftly disowned, these Newtons!

TheNew York Timeson November 3, 1917,recapitulated the damage wrought by German incendiarism as follows:

"A graphic idea of what the fire losses in the United States owe to the work of war incendiaries may be gained from consideration of the fact that the total fire insurance paid in the United States in 1915, according to the figures of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, was $153,000,000. It is estimated that 60 per cent. of the loss by fires in this country is represented in insurance. Therefore, the total fire loss in the United States in 1915 was something over $200,000,000. Of the $153,000,000 paid out by the insurance companies, $6,200,000 was represented by incendiary fires. A total of $62,000,000 was charged to fires from unknown causes.

"In 1916 the total jumped by 20 per cent., meaning an increase of about $40,000,000. The biggest items in this loss were those sustained in munition fires and explosions. Black Tom holds the record with a loss of $11,000,000; there was the Kingsland explosion, the Penn's Grove explosion, and others, all generally admitted to be the work of spies, which caused losses running into millions.

"It was estimated yesterday by an insurance official that the incendiary loss in 1916 was easily $25,000,000, or $15,000,000 above normal. Andthese figures take into consideration only fires where the origin was proved to be incendiary. On the books of the underwriters the Black Tom munitions fire is not listed as incendiary, because it was never legally proved that a German spy set it going.

"This increase in losses for 1916 when the big munition explosions occurred, derives significance in the discussion of losses by spy fires since this country entered the war, because the figures of fire losses in the United States for 1917 may reach $300,000,000, or a larger increase over 1916 than 1916 losses showed over 1915. An estimate made yesterday by the head of a fire insurance company shows that if the average of the losses in the first seven months of the year is maintained until Jan. 1 the total would reach well above $250,000,000, and with the increases of the past few months might easily total $300,000,000 as the cost of the American ash heaps for 1917."

How did the Germans know where munitions were being manufactured? Rumor fled swiftly through the labor districts, and the news was reported through the regular channels of espionage, cleared through the consulates and German business offices, and forwarded to the attachés and the Embassy. But the collection of information did not stop there; it was verified from anothersource—a serviceable factor in the general system of espionage.

The American manufacturer shared his nation's predilection for talking at meal-time. As the war contracts were distributed about the country, every machine shop worthy of the name became a "munitions plant" and the romance of having a part in the war strained the discretion of most of America's war bridegrooms; they simply "had to tell some one"; not infrequently this some one was a reliable intimate, sitting across a restaurant table at lunch.

There was in America an organization bearing a title which suggested a neutral origin, but whose officers' names, down even unto the official physician, were undeniably German. It was ostensibly for the mutual benefit of the foreign-born waiters, chefs and pantrymen who composed its membership. But its real significance was indicated by the location of its branches (its headquarters were in New York). Trenton, New Jersey, for example, was not a "good hotel town," and foreign waiters usually are to be found in a town which boasts a hotel managed by metropolitan interests, and supplied with a foreign staff; but Trenton was a munitions center, and there was a branch of this association there. Schenectady, the home of the General ElectricCompany, had no first-class hotel; there was a branch of the association in Schenectady. Conversely, numerous cities whose hotels were manned by foreign waiters and cooks had no branches. The organization was founded in Dresden in 1877.

Many a confidence passed across a table was intercepted by the acute ears of a German spy. Members of the Anglo-French Loan Commission who were staying at the Biltmore in 1914 were served by a German agent in a waiter's uniform. It would have gone well for America and the preparations of supplies for her later Allies if there had been posted in every hotel dining-room the French admonition,

"Taisez-vous! Ils s'ecoutent!"

The leak in the National City Bank—TheMinnehaha—Von Rintelen's training—His return to America—His aims—His funds—Smuggling oil—The Krag-Joergensen rifles—Von Rintelen's flight and capture.

There was a suggestion in the newspapers of dates immediately following Paul Koenig's arrest that the authorities had been lax in allowing the Germans to have later access to the safe in his private office in the Hamburg-American building. As a matter of fact the contents of the safe were well known to the authorities—how, it is not necessary to say. The multitudinous notes and reference data kept by the industrious "P. K." uncovered a plentiful German source of information of munitions.

They knew the factories in which war materials were being turned out. They knew the numbers of the freight cars into which the materials were loaded for shipment to the waterfronts. They knew the ships into which those cargoes were consigned. How they knew was revealed byKoenig's secretary, Metzler, after he had been arrested in the second Welland episode.

Franz von Rintelen

Down in Wall Street, in the foreign department of the National City Bank, there was a young German named Frederick Schleindl. He had been in the United States for several years, and had been employed by various bankers, one of whom recommended him to the National City Bank shortly after the outbreak of war. In the foreign department he had access to cables from the Allies concerning the purchase of munitions. It was customary to pay manufacturers for their completed orders when the bank received a bill of lading showing their shipment by railroad or their delivery at points of departure. Close familiarity with such bills of lading and cablegrams gave Schleindl an up-to-the-minute survey of the production of supplies.

In late 1914 Schleindl registered with the German consul in New York, setting down his name and address as liable to call for special service. In May, 1915, he was directed by the consul to meet a certain person at the Hotel Manhattan; the unknown proved to be Koenig, who had been informed of Schleindl's occupation by the alert German consul. Playing on the youth's patriotism and greed, Koenig agreed to pay him $25 a week for confidential information from the bank.From that time forward Schleindl reported regularly to Koenig. Nearly every evening a meeting occurred in the office in the Hamburg-American building, and Koenig and Metzler would spend many hours a night in copying the letters, cables and shipping documents. In the morning they would return the originals to Schleindl on his way to work—he made it his custom to arrive early at the bank—and the papers would be restored to their proper files when the business day began.

On December 17, 1915, Schleindl was arrested. In his pocket were two documents, enough to convict him of having stolen information: one a duplicate of a cablegram from the Banque Belge pour Etrangers to the National City Bank relating to a shipment of 2,000,000 rifles which was then being handled by the Hudson Trust Company; the other a cablegram from the Russian Government authorizing the City Bank to place some millions of dollars to the credit of Colonel Golejewski, the Russian naval attaché and purchasing agent. From a German standpoint, of course, both were highly significant. Schleindl's arrest caused considerable uneasiness in Wall Street, and other banking houses who had been dealing in munitions "looked unto themselves" lest there be similar cracks through whichinformation might sift to Berlin. There had been many such. Koenig was tried on the charge of having bought stolen information, and convicted, but sentence was suspended, although the United States already looked back on two years of waterfront conspiracies to destroy Allied shipping.

The City Bank episode gave a clue to the source of those conspiracies, by the white light which it cast upon an explosion in hold number 2 of the steamshipMinnehahaon July 4, 1915. Thousands of magnetos were stored there destined for automobiles at the front. The only person besides the officers of the bank and of the magneto factory who could have known of the ship in which they were transported was the man who wrote the letter to the bank enclosing the bill of lading for the shipment. Naturally the officers were not suspected of circulating the news; the leak therefore must have occurred in handling the letter. That theory was a strong scent, made no less pungent by the activities in America of one Franz von Rintelen.

Rumor has credited Franz von Rintelen with relationship to the house of Hohenzollern. Backstairs gossip called him the Kaiser's own son—a stigma which he hardly deserved, as his face bore no resemblance to the architecture of the Hohenzollern countenance. It was one of strongaquiline curves; with a coat of swarthy grease paint he would have made an acceptable Indian, except for his tight, thin lips. The muscles of his jaws were forever playing under the skin—he had a tense, nervous habit of gritting his teeth. From under his pale eyebrows came a sharp look; it contrasted strangely with the hollow, burnt-out ferocity and fright which peered out of the tired eyes of his fellow prisoners when he was finally tried. He had a wiry strength and easy carriage. If he had not been a spy, von Rintelen would have made an excellent athlete.

Like Boy-Ed he had a thorough gymnasium training. He specialized in finance and economics, entered the navy, and became captain-lieutenant. At the end of his period of service he went to London and obtained employment in a banking house. He then went to New York, where he was admitted to Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., and found time during his first stay in America to serve as Germany's naval representative at the ceremonies commemorating John Paul Jones. The German Embassy gave him entrée wherever he turned. He was a member of the New York Yacht Club, was received at Newport and in Fifth Avenue as a polished and agreeable person who spoke English, French and Spanish as fluently as his native tongue, and he acquired a broadfirsthand knowledge of American financial principles and methods. He left New York long before the war, saying he was going to open Mexican and South American branches of a German bank. When he returned to Berlin in 1909, he was well qualified to sit in council with Tirpitz and the navy group and advise them on the development of the German Secret Service in America. American acquaintances who visited Berlin he received with marked hospitality, and some he even introduced to his august friend, the Crown Prince.

In January, 1915, von Rintelen, then a director of the Deutsche Bank, and the National Bank für Deutschland, and a man of corresponding wealth, was commissioned to go to America, to buy cotton, rubber and copper, and to prevent the Allies from receiving munitions. So he went to America. And from his arrival in New York until his departure from that port, he threw sand in the smooth-running machinery of the organized German spy system.

He eluded the vigilance of the Allies by using a false passport. His sister Emily had married a Swiss named Gasche. Erasing the "y" on her passport he journeyed in safety to England as "Emil V. Gasche," a harmless Swiss, who observed a great deal about England's method ofreceiving munitions. Then he evaporated to Norway. His arrival in the United States was forecast by a wireless message which he addressed from his ship on April 3, 1915, asking an American friend of his to meet him at the pier. The American owned a factory in Cambrai, France, which had been closed by the German invasion on August 29, 1914. The American had hastened to Berlin in late 1914 and asked his friend Rintelen to see that the plant be opened. Rintelen had succeeded, and was come now to break the good news, knowing perfectly well that the American would be under deep obligation and would secure any introductions for him which he might need. When the ship docked, the friend was not there, for some casual reason. But Rintelen, always suspicious, hired a detective, who spent a week investigating; then the friend was discovered, and became Rintelen's grateful assistant.

So it happened that "Emil V. Gasche," the harmless Swiss, dropped out of sight for the time being, and von Rintelen assumed the parts of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." "Dr. Jekyll" visited the Yacht Club and called upon wealthy friends, proving a more charming, more delightful von Rintelen than ever. He met influential business men who were selling supplies to the Allies. He was presented to society matrons and débutanteswhom he had use for. To these he was Herr von Rintelen, in America on an important financial mission. "Mr. Hyde" sought information from von Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, von Papen, Boy-Ed, Captain Tauscher and George Sylvester Viereck about the production of war supplies. Astounded by what he learned from them and had corroborated from other sources, he began to realize how utterly he had misjudged America's potential resources and what a blunder he had made in his predictions to the General War Staff. He saw with a chilling vividness the capacity of America to hand war materials to the Allies, and her rapidly increasing facilities to turn out greater quantities of ammunition and bullets. The facts he obtained struck him with especial force because of his knowledge of the greater strategy. It is upon a basis of the supplies of munitions in the Allied countries, particularly Russia, as von Rintelen knew them, that his acts are best judged and upon this basis only can sane motives be assigned to the rash projects which he launched.

When he arrived in New York the German drive on Paris had failed because in two months the Germans had used up ammunition they confidently expected to last three times as long; the English and French in the west could not take up the offensive because ammunition was not beingturned out fast enough; the Russian drive into Germany and Austria would soon fail for lack of arms and bullets. In the winter and spring of 1915 the Russians had made a drive into Galicia and Austria, hurling the Austro-German armies back. They advanced victoriously through the first range of the Carpathian mountains until May. Meantime the German General Staff, as von Rintelen knew, was preparing for a retaliating offensive. The War Staff knew Russia's limited capacity to produce arms and ammunition, knew that during the winter, with the port of Archangel closed by ice, her only source for new supplies lay in the single-track Siberian railway bringing materials from Japan. Rintelen realized that by spring the Russian resources had been well nigh exhausted and he resolved that they must be shut off completely. He knew that England and France could not help. But spring had already come, and the ships were sailing for Archangel laden with American shells.

Von Rintelen's reputation was at stake. The work for which he had been so carefully trained was bound to fail unless he acted quickly. He exchanged many wireless communications with his superiors in Berlin—messages that looked like harmless expressions between his wife and himself, messages in which the names of Americanofficers who had been in Berlin were used both as code words and as a means to impress their genuineness upon the American censor. He received in reply still greater authority than he had on the eve of his departure from Germany. In his quick, staccato fashion he often boasted (and there is foundation for part of what he said) that he had been sent to America by the General Staff, backed by "$50,000,000, yes $100,000,00"; that he was an agent plenipotentiary and extraordinary, ready to take any measure on land and sea to stop the making of munitions, to halt their transportation at the factory or at the seaboard. He mapped out a campaign, remarkable in its detail, scope, recklessness and utter disregard of American institutions.

Germany made her first mistake in giving him a roving commission. Germany was desperate, or she would have restricted von Rintelen to certain well-defined enterprises. Instead he ran afoul of the military and naval attachés on more than one occasion, offended them, and did more to hinder than to help their own plans.

In early April he made his financial arrangements with the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, where he was known by his own name. Money was transferred from Berlin through large German business houses, and he deposited $800,000in the Trans-Atlantic and millions among other banks. He rented an office in the trust company building, and had his telephone run through the trust company switchboard. He registered with the county clerk to do business as the "E. V. Gibbon Company; purchasers of supplies" and signed his name to the registry as "Francis von Rintelen." In the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company he received the forces whom he proceeded to mobilize; he was known to them as "Fred Hansen." If he wanted a naval reservist he called on Boy-Ed; if an army reservist was required von Papen sent him to "Hansen." Boy-Ed gave him data on ship sailings, von Papen on munitions plants, Koenig on secret service.

His first task was to buy supplies and ship them to Germany. He boasted that there was no such thing as a British blockade. Using his pseudonyms of Gibbon and Hansen he made large purchases and with the aid of Captain Gustave Steinberg, a naval reservist, he chartered ships and dispatched them under false manifests to Italy and Norway, where their cargoes could be readily smuggled into Germany. Through Steinberg he importuned a chemist, Dr. Walter T. Scheele, to soak fertilizer in lubricating oil for shipment to the Fatherland, where the valuable oil could be easily extracted. Through the sameintermediary von Rintelen gave Dr. Scheele $20,000 to ship a cargo of munitions under a false manifest as "farm implements"; Dr. Scheele kept the $20,000 and actually shipped a cargo of farm machinery.

Rintelen's next venture attracted some unpleasant attention. The United States Government had condemned some 350,000 Krag-Joergensen rifles, which it refused to sell to any of the belligerents. Rintelen cast a fond eye in their direction. President Wilson had told a banker: "You will get those rifles only over my dead body." Rintelen heard, however, that by bribing certain officials he could obtain the guns, so he sent out agents to learn what they would cost, and found a man who said he could buy them for $17,826,000, part of which was to be used for effective bribery. "So close am I to the President," said the intermediary, "that two days after I deposit the money in the bank you can dandle his grandchild on your knee!" But just when the negotiations were growing bright, Rintelen was told that the man who proposed to sell him the rifles was a secret agent from another government. A certain "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was known to have been groping for those rifles, and the newspapers and government officials became suddenly interested in his real identity. A dowdy woman's implication reached a reporter's ears;presently the newspapers burst out in the "discovery" that "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was none other than Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt, a German Red Cross envoy then in the United States. Like the popping of a machine gun, "correct versions of the facts" were published: "Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt denied vigorously that he was 'Dr. Alfred Meyer,'" then "'Dr. Alfred Meyer' was known to have left the United States on the same ship with Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt," then "an American citizen came forward anonymously and said that he had posed as 'Dr. Alfred Meyer' in order to test the good faith of the Government."

This last announcement may have been true. It was made to a New YorkSunreporter by a German, Karl Schimmel, who professed his allegiance to the United States, and by the "American citizen" who said he had posed as "Dr. Alfred Meyer." It may have been made to shield Rintelen himself, for the "American citizen" was an employe of a German newspaper in New York, a friend of Rintelen's, a friend of Schimmel's and Schimmel himself was in von Rintelen's pay.

Let a pack of reporters loose on a half dozen tangents and they will probably scratch the truth. ATribuneman heard a whisper of the facts and set out on a hunt for "two Germans, Meyer and Hansen, who have been acting funny." Hefrightened the personnel right out of the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Captain Steinberg fled to Germany with a trunkful of reports on the necessity of concerted action to stop the shipment of munitions to the Allies, and Rintelen migrated to an office in the Woolworth Building. Some one heard of his activities there and he was evicted, taking final refuge in the Liberty Tower, in the office of Andrew M. Meloy, who had been in Germany to interest the German government in a scheme similar to Rintelen's own. In Meloy's office Rintelen posed as "E. V. Gates"—preserving the shadow of his identity as "Emil V. Gasche." So effective was his disappearance from the public view, that he was reported to have gone abroad as a secretary, and he sat in the tower and chuckled, and sent messages by wireless to Berlin through Sayville, and cablegrams to Berlin through England and Holland, and enjoyed all the sensations of a man attending a triple funeral in his honor. "Meyer," "Hansen" and "Gasche" were all dead, and yet, here was Rintelen!

Although his sojourn in New York covered a period which was the peak of the curve of German atrocities in the United States, Rintelen was a fifth wheel. No man came to America to accomplish more, and no man accomplished less.No German agent had his boldness of project, and no German executive met a more ignominious fate. Whatever he touched with his golden wand turned to dross. He was hoodwinked here and there by his own agents, and frustrated by the vigilance of the Allied and the United States governments. He has been introduced here because of his connection with subsequent events, and yet this picturesque figure played the major part in not one successful venture.

Four months he passed in America, until it became too small for him. In August the capture of Dr. Albert's portfolio and the publication of certain of its contents frightened Rintelen, and he applied for a passport as "Edward V. Gates, an American citizen of Millersville, Pa.," but he did not dare claim it. Though he had bought tickets under the alias, and had had drafts made payable in that name, he did not occupy the "Gates" cabin on theNoordam, but at the last minute engaged passage under the renascent name of "Emil V. Gasche," the harmless Swiss. He eluded the Federal agents, and sailed safely to Falmouth, England, where, after a search of the ship, and an excellent attempt to bluff it through, he finally surrendered to the British authorities as a prisoner-of-war. Meloy and his secretary were captured with him.

Rintelen was returned to the United States in 1916. He was convicted in 1917 and 1918 on successive charges of conspiracy to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust law, to obtain a fraudulent passport, and to destroy merchant ships—which combined to sentence him to a year in the Tombs and nine years in a Federal prison.

Mobilizing destroying agents—The plotters in Hoboken—Von Kleist's arrest and confession—TheKirk Oswaldtrial—Further explosions—TheArabic—Robert Fay—His arrest—The ship plots decrease.

The reader will recall a circular quoted in Chapter VIII, and issued November 18, 1914, from German Naval Headquarters, mobilizing all destroying agents in harbors overseas.

On January 3, 1915, there was an explosion on board the munitions shipOrton, lying in Erie Basin, a part of New York harbor. On February 6 a bomb was found in the cargo of theHannington. On February 27 theCarltoncaught fire at sea. On April 20 two bombs were found in the cargo of theLord Erne. One week later the same discovery was made in the hold of theDevon City. All of which accounts for the following charge:

"George D. Barnitz, being duly sworn, deposes and says ... on information and belief that on the first dayof January, 1915, and on every day thereafter down to and including the 13th day of April, 1916, the defendants Walter T. Scheele, Charles von Kleist, Otto Wolpert, Ernst Becker, (Charles) Karbade, the first name Charles being fictitious, the true first name of defendant being unknown, (Frederick) Praedel ... (Wilhelm) Paradis ... Eno Bode and Carl Schmidt ... did unlawfully, feloniously and corruptly conspire ... to manufacture bombs filled with chemicals and explosives and to place said bombs ... upon vessels belonging to others and laden with moneys, goods and merchandise...."

Ninety-one German ships were confined to American harbors by the activities of the British fleet, ranging from theNeptun, of 197 tons, in San Francisco Bay, to theVaterland, of 54,000 tons, the largest vessel on the seven seas, tied up to accrue barnacles at her Hoboken pier, and later, as theLeviathan, to transport American troops to France. Every one of the ninety-one ships was a nest of German agents. Only a moderate watch was kept on their crews, and there were many restless men among them. Every man aboard was liable to command from Captain Boy-Ed, for the German merchant marine was part of the formal naval organization. The interned sailors found shortly that they could be of distinct service to their country without stirring from their ships.

Not far from the North German Lloyd piersin Hoboken lived Captain Charles von Kleist, 67 years old, a chemist and former German army officer. One day there came to him one who spoke the German tongue and who said he came from Wolf von Igel, in von Papen's office. Those were good credentials, especially since the gentleman was inquiring on von Igel's behalf whether Kleist needed any money in the work he was doing. The polite caller returned a few days later with another man, who spoke no German. Von Kleist asked whether he was also from the Fatherland, and was told no, but "we have to use all kinds of people in our business—that's how we fool these Yankees!" Von Kleist laughed heartily, and wagged his head, and went out in the garden and dug up a bomb-case and showed the visitors how it had been made. The visitors were Detectives Barth and Barnitz.

They assured Kleist that von Igel wanted to know precisely what he and his associates were doing, so no money might be paid to the wrong parties. The aged captain wrote out a memorandum of his activities, which he signed, and the detectives proposed a trip to Coney Island as an evidence of good faith, so the three had a pleasant afternoon at the Hotel Shelburne, and the officers then suggested: "Let's go up and see the chief." "Chief" to von Kleist meant von Igel;he agreed, and was taken gently into the arms of the chief of detectives.

He implicated, as he sat there answering questions, Captain Eno Bode, pier superintendent of the Hamburg-American Line, Captain Otto Wolpert, pier superintendent of the Atlas Line, and Ernst Becker, an electrician on the North German Lloyd linerFriedrich der Grosse, tied up at Hoboken. The other conspirators were induced to come to New York, and were arrested at once. Bode and Wolpert, powerful bullies of Paul Koenig's own stamp, proved defiant in the extreme. Becker, knowing no word of English, was pathetically courteous and ready to answer. But it remained for von Kleist to supply the narrative.

Becker, working on the sunny deck of theFriedrich der Grosse, had made numerous bomb cases, rolling sheet lead into a cylinder, and inserting in the tube a cup-shaped aluminum partition. These containers he turned over to Dr. Walter Scheele at his "New Jersey Agricultural Company," where he filled one compartment with nitroglycerine, the other with sulphuric acid. Scheele supplied the mechanics with sheet lead for the purpose. The bombs were then sealed and packed in sand for distribution to various German gathering places, such as, for example,the Turn Verein in the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. Wolpert appeared there at a meeting one night and berated the Germans present for talking too much and acting too little; he wanted results, he said. Eugene Reister, the proprietor of the place, said that shortly afterward Walter Uhde and one Klein (who died before the police reached him) had taken away a bundle of bombs from the Turn Verein and had placed them on theLusitania, just before her last voyage, and added that Klein, when he heard of the destruction of the ship, expressed regret that he had done it. Karl Schimmel—the same who had negotiated for the Krag rifles—said later to Reister: "I really put bombs on that boat, but I don't believe that fellow Klein ever did."

Following Kleist's information, agents of the Department of Justice and New York police inspected theFriedrich der Grosse, and found quantities of chlorate of potash and other chemicals. They brought back with them also Garbode (mentioned in the charge as "Karbade"), Paradis and Praedel, fourth engineers on the ship, who had assisted in making the bombs, and Carl Schmidt, the chief engineer. All of the group were implicated in the plot to the complete satisfaction of a jury which concluded their cases in May, 1917, by convicting them of "conspiracy to destroy shipsthrough the use of fire bombs placed thereon." Kleist and Schmidt received sentences of two years each in Atlanta Penitentiary and were each fined $5,000; Becker, Karbade, Praedel and Paradis were fined $500 apiece and sentenced to six months in prison. Dr. Scheele fled from justice, and was arrested in March, 1918, in Havana. A liberal supply of vicious chemicals and explosives discovered in his "New Jersey Agricultural Company" implicated him thoroughly, if the evidence given by his fellows had not already done so. When he was finally captured he faced two federal indictments: one with Steinberg and von Igel for smuggling lubricating oil out of the country as fertilizer, under false customs manifests; the other the somewhat more criminal charge of bombing.

On April 29, 1915, theCressingtoncaught fire at sea. Three days later, in the hold of theKirk Oswald, a sailor found a bomb tucked away in a hiding place where its later explosion would have started a serious fire. So it came about that when the four lesser conspirators of the fire-bomb plot had served their six months' sentences, they were at once rearrested on the specific charge of having actually planted that bomb in theKirk Oswald. The burly dock captains, Bode and Wolpert, who had blustered their innocence inthe previous trial, and had succeeded in securing heavy bail from the Hamburg-American Line pending separate trials for themselves, were nipped this time with evidence which let none slip through. Rintelen was haled from his cell to answer to his part in theKirk Oswaldaffair, and the jury, in January, 1918, declared the nine plotters "guilty as charged" and Judge Howe sentenced them to long terms in prison. Rintelen, alone of the group, as they sat in court, had an air of anything but wretched fanatic querulousness. He followed the proceedings closely, and once took the trial into his own hands in a flash of temper when the State kept referring to the loss of theLusitania. It went hard with the nobleman to be herded into a common American court with a riff-raff of hireling crooks and treated with impartial justice. In Germany it never could have happened!

If those trials had occurred in May, 1915, the history of the transport of arms and shells would not have been marred by such entries as these:

May 8—Bankdale; two bombs found in cargo.May 13—Samland; afire at sea.May 21—Anglo-Saxon; bomb found aboard.June 2—Strathway; afire at sea.July 4—Minnehaha; bomb exploded at sea. (The magnetos.)July 13—Touraine; afire at sea.July 14—Lord Downshire; afire.July 20—Knutford; afire in hold.July 24—Craigside; five fires in hold.July 27—Arabic; two bombs found aboard.Aug. 9—Asuncion de Larriñaga; afire at sea.Aug. 13—Williston; bombs in cargo.Aug. 27—LighterDixie; fire while loading.

May 8—Bankdale; two bombs found in cargo.

May 13—Samland; afire at sea.

May 21—Anglo-Saxon; bomb found aboard.

June 2—Strathway; afire at sea.

July 4—Minnehaha; bomb exploded at sea. (The magnetos.)

July 13—Touraine; afire at sea.

July 14—Lord Downshire; afire.

July 20—Knutford; afire in hold.

July 24—Craigside; five fires in hold.

July 27—Arabic; two bombs found aboard.

Aug. 9—Asuncion de Larriñaga; afire at sea.

Aug. 13—Williston; bombs in cargo.

Aug. 27—LighterDixie; fire while loading.

On August 31 the White Star linerArabic, nineteen hours out of Liverpool was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank in eleven minutes, taking 39 lives, of which two were American. Germany, on September 9, declared that the U-boat commander attacked theArabicwithout warning, contrary to his instructions, but only after he was convinced that the liner was trying to ram him; the Imperial Government expressed regret for the loss of American lives, but disclaimed any liability for indemnity, and suggested arbitration. On October 5, however, the government in Berlin had changed its tune to the extent of issuing a note expressing regret for having sunk the ship, disavowing the act of the submarine commander, and assuring the United States that new orders to submarines were so strict that a recurrence of any such action was "considered out of the question." If the cargoes could be fired at sea, no submarine issue need beraised. And so fires and bombs continued to be discovered on ships just as consistently as before. The log, resumed, runs thus:

Sept. 1—Rotterdam; fire at sea.Sept. 7—Santa Anna; fire at sea.Sept. 29—San Guglielmo; dynamite found on pier.

Sept. 1—Rotterdam; fire at sea.

Sept. 7—Santa Anna; fire at sea.

Sept. 29—San Guglielmo; dynamite found on pier.

Now von Rintelen's handiwork was revealed in the adventures of Robert Fay, or "Fae," as he was known in the Fatherland. In spite of the imaginative quality of the enterprise, and the additional guilt which it heaped upon the executives of the spy system, it was not successful. There were vibrant moments, though, when only the mobilization of police from two states and special agents from the Secret Service and Department of Justice averted what would have developed into a profitable method of destroying ships.

Lieutenant Robert Fay was born in Cologne, where he lived until 1902. In that year he migrated to Canada, where he worked on a farm, and later to Chicago, where he was employed as a bookkeeper until 1905. He then returned to Germany for his military service, and went to work again in Cologne, in the office of Thomas Cook & Sons. After a period in a Mannheim machine shop he went home and devoted himselfto certain mechanical inventions, and was at work upon them when he was called out for war service on August 1, 1914.

His regiment went into the trenches, and the lieutenant had some success in dynamiting a French position. Conniving with a superior officer, he deserted his command, and was sent to America by a German reputed to be the head of the secret service, one Jonnersen. Jonnersen gave Fay 20,000 marks for expenses in carrying out a plan to stop shipments of munitions from America, and Fay arrived in New York April 23, 1915, on theRotterdam.

Dr. Herbert Kienzle, a clock-maker, of 309 West 86th Street, had written to his father in Germany bitterly assailing the United States for shipping munitions, and enclosed in his letters information of certain American firms, such as Browne & Sharp, of Providence, and the Chalmers Motor Car Company, of Detroit, who were reputed to be manufacturing them. These letters had been turned over to Jonnersen, who showed them to Fay as suggestions. Upon his arrival in New York, then, Fay called on Kienzle, who, though he was friendly enough, was reluctant to know of the details Fay had planned. Dr. Kienzle introduced Fay to von Papen, and laterto Max Breitung, from whom he purchased a quantity of potassium chlorate.

The deserter found his brother-in-law, Walter Scholz, working as a gardener on an estate near Waterford, Connecticut, and brought him to New York on a salary of $25 a week. The two crossed the Hudson to Weehawken, N. J., and set to work to make bombs. Fay had a theory that a bomb might be attached to the rudder of a ship, and so set as to explode when the rudder, swinging to port, wound a ratchet inside the device which would release a hammer upon a percussion cap. Their plan was to have the parts manufactured at machine shops, assemble and fill them themselves, and then steal up the waterfront in the small hours and attach the infernal machines to outward bound vessels. Fay even counted on disarming the police boats before setting out.

It took the two some three months to get the parts made and properly adjusted. Meanwhile they employed their spare hours in cruising about the harbor in a motor-boat. A machinist in West 42nd Street, New York, made the zinc tank which they used as a model, and the two conspirators shortly opened a garage in Weehawken where they could duplicate the bomb cases unmolested.

There came a time when the devices were satisfactory, and Fay actually attached one to therudder of a ship to make sure that his adjustments were correct. The next move was to obtain explosives. Fay's prejudice against bombs placed in a ship's hold was that they rarely succeeded in sinking the craft; seventy or eighty pounds of high explosive detonated at the stern of a vessel, however, would blow the rudder away and not only cripple the ship but would probably burst a hole in the stern, mangle the screw, and split the shaft.

Captain Tunney, of the Bomb Squad, heard in October that two Germans were trying to buy picric acid from a man who stopped at the Hotel Breslin, and who called himself Paul Seib and Karl F. Oppegaarde, as the occasion demanded. Tunney's men located the two Germans, and some days later learned that they had placed an order for fifty-two pounds of TNT, to be delivered at the Weehawken garage. The delivery was intercepted, a similar but harmless substance substituted for the explosive, and two detective-truckmen took the package away on their truck to deliver it to Fay and Scholz. While they were in New Jersey, Detectives Coy, Sterrett and Walsh found Fay at the Breslin, and followed him back to Weehawken. As he left the garage in the evening in his automobile, the automobile of Police Commissioner Woods followed at a discreetdistance. Up the Palisades the two cars paraded, until in a grove near Grantwood, Fay and Scholz got out of their car and disappeared into the woods with a lantern. After a time they reappeared, and returned to the garage, the police following.

Next morning Chief Flynn was called into the hunt—the morning of Saturday, October 23—and he assigned two special agents to the case. The police department directed two detectives to watch the woods at Grantwood where the conspirators had gone the night before. Detectives Murphy and Fennelly, each equipped with linemen's climbers, arrived at the wood-road about noon, and spent the next eleven hours in the branches of a great oak tree which commanded the road. The perch was high and the night wind chilly, but the watchers were rewarded at last by the twin searchlights of an approaching car. Out of it stepped Fay and Scholz. The men in the branches saw by the light of the lantern which Scholz carried that Fay placed a package underneath a distant tree, walked to a safe distance, exploded a percussion cap, watched the tree topple over and went away, apparently satisfied with the power of his explosives.

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