pretext of recent insult to flag. Atlantic Fleet ordered to your support.
"The rest of the story," concluded Quinn, "is a matter of history. How the fleet bottled up the harbor at Vera Cruz, how it was forced to send a landing party ashore under fire, and how seventeen American sailors lost their lives during the guerrilla attack which followed. All that was spread across the front pages of American papers in big black type--but the fact that a steamer named the Ypiranga had been held up by the American fleet and forced to anchor at a safe distance offshore, under the guns of the flagship,
was given little space. Apparently it was a minor incident--but in reality it was the crux of the whole situation, an indication of Germany's rancor, which was to burst its bounds before four months had passed, another case in which the arm of Uncle Sam had been long enough to stretch halfway across a continent and nip impending disaster."
"But," I inquired, as he paused, "what became of Dawson and Stewart?"
"That I don't know," replied Quinn. "The last time I heard of Jack he had a captain's commission in France and was following up his feud with the Hun that started in Mexico City four months before the rest of the world dreamed of war. Dawson, I believe, is still in the Department, and rendered valuable assistance in combating German propaganda in Chile and Peru. He'll probably[41] be rewarded with a consular job in some out-of-the-way hole, for, now that the war is over, the organization to which he belongs will gradually dwindle to its previous small proportions.
"Strange, wasn't it, how that pair stumbled across one of the first tentacles of the World War in front of a cafe in Mexico City? That's one beauty of government detective work--you never know when the monotony is going to be blown wide open by the biggest thing you ever happened upon.
"There was little Mary McNilless, who turned up the clue which prevented an explosion, compared to which the Black Tom affair would have been a Sunday-school party. She never dreamed that she would prevent the loss of millions of dollars' worth of property and at least a score of lives, but she did--without moving from her desk."
"How?" I asked.
But Quinn yawned, looked at his watch, and said: "That's entirely too long a story to spin right now. It's past my bedtime, and Mrs. Quinn's likely to be fussy if I'm not home by twelve at least. She says that now I have an office job she can at least count on my be-ing round to guard the house--something that she never could do before. So let's leave Mary for another time. Goodnight"--and he was off.
[42] IV
THE CLUE ON SHELF 45
"Of course, it is possible that patriotism might have prompted Mary McNilless to locate the clue which prevented an explosion that would have seriously hampered the munitions industry of the United States--but the fact remains that she did it principally because she was in love with Dick Walters, and Dick happened to be in the Secret Service. It was one case where Cupid scored over Mars."
Bill Quinn eased the game leg which he won as the trophy of a counterfeiting raid some years before into a more comfortable position, reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch, and settled himself for another reminiscence of the Service with which he had formerly been actively connected.
"Mary was--and doubtless still is--one of those red-headed, blue-eyed Irish beauties whom nature has peppered with just enough freckles to make them alluring, evidences that the sun itself couldn't help kissing her. But, from all I've been able to gather, the sun was in a class by itself. Until Dick Walters came upon the scene, Miss McNilless held herself strictly aloof from masculine company
17
and much preferred to spend an evening with her books than to take a trip to Coney or any of the other resorts where a girl's kisses pass as current coin in payment for three or four hours' outing.
"Dick was just the kind of chap that would have appealed to Mary, or to 'most any other girl, for that matter.[43] Maybe you remember him. He used to be at the White House during Taft's regime, but they shifted most of the force soon after Wilson came in and Dick was sent out to the Coast on an opium hunt that kept him busy for more than a year. In fact, he came east just in time to be assigned to the von Ewald case--and, incidentally, to fall foul of Mary and Cupid, a pair that you couldn't tie, much less beat."
The von Ewald case [Quinn continued, after pausing a moment to repack his pipe] was one of the many exploits of the Secret Service that never got in the papers. To be strictly truthful, it wasn't as much a triumph for the S. S. as it was for Mary McNilless--and, besides, we weren't at war with Germany at that time, so it had to be kept rather dark.
But Germany was at war with us. You remember the Black Tom explosion in August, nineteen sixteen? Well, if the plans of von Ewald and his associates hadn't been frustrated by a little red-headed girl with exceptional powers of observation, there would have been a detonation in Wilmington, Delaware, that would have made the Black Tom affair, with its damage of thirty millions of dollars, sound like the college yell of a deaf-and-dumb institute.
As far back as January, nineteen sixteen, the Secret Service knew that there were a number of Germans in New York who desired
nothing so much as to hinder the munitions industry of the United States, despite the fact that we were a neutral nation.
From Harry Newton, the leader in the second plot to destroy the Welland Canal, and from Paul Seib, who was implicated in the attempt to destroy shipping at Hoboken, they forced the information that the conspirators received their orders and drew their pay from a man of many[44] aliases, known to his associates as "Number eight fifty-nine" and occasionally, to the world at large, as "von Ewald."
This much was known in Washington--but, when you came to analyze the information, it didn't amount to a whole lot. It's one thing to know that some one is plotting murder and arson on a wholesale scale, but discovering the identity of that individual is an entirely different proposition, one which called for all the finesse and obstinacy for which the governmental detective services are famous.
Another factor that complicated the situation was that speed was essential. The problem was entirely different from a counterfeiting or smuggling case, where you can be content to let the people on the other side of the table make as many moves as they wish, with the practical certainty that you'll land them sooner or later. "Give them plenty of rope and they'll land in Leavenworth" is a favorite axiom in the Service--but here you had to conserve your rope to the uttermost. Every day that passed meant that some new plot was that much nearer completion--that millions of dollars in property and the lives of no-one-knew-how-many people were still in danger.
So the order went forward from the headquarters of the Service, "Get the man known as von Ewald and get him quick!"
Secret Service men, Postal inspectors, and Department of Justice agents were called in from all parts of the country and rushed to New York, until the metropolis looked like the headquarters of a convention of governmental detectives. Grogan, the chap that landed Perry, the master-counterfeiter, was there, as were George MacMasters and Sid Shields, who prevented the revolution in Cuba three or four years ago. Jimmy Reynolds was borrowed from the Internal Revenue Bureau, and Althouse, who[45] spoke German
like a native, was brought up from the border where he had been working on a propaganda case just across the line.
There must have been forty men turned loose on this assignment alone, and, in the course of the search for von Ewald, there were
a number of other developments scarcely less important than the main issue. At least two of these--the Trenton taxicab tangle and the affair of the girl at the switchboard--are exploits worthy of separate mention.
But, in spite of the great array of detective talent, no one could get a line on von Ewald.
In April, when Dick Walters returned from the Coast, the other men in the Service were frankly skeptical as to whether there was a von Ewald at all. They had come to look upon him as a myth, a bugaboo. They couldn't deny that there must be some guiding spirit to the Teutonic plots, but they rather favored the theory that several men, rather than one, were to blame.
Walters' instructions were just like the rest--to go to