EXIT VON RINTELEN
Von Rintelen was on the high seas. He had left $40,000 in the bank in charge of his friends, and some of the plotters tried to get that on the strength of a promise to stop the Anglo-French bond sale of $500,000,000. Before sailing he had applied for a passport as an American citizen named Edward V. Gates, of Millersville, Pennsylvania. But whisperings concerning von Rintelen’s activities had reached the White House from society folk who had heard von Rintelen’s rash talk and who knew of some of the unscrupulous things he had attempted. The State Department ordered an investigation and finally sent his passport on to New York the day before the sailing of the Noordam, in care of Federal agents; but von Rintelen did not claim it. Though he had bought a ticket on the boat under the name of Gates, and had obtained drafts payable on that name, he did not occupy the Gates cabin but at the last minute engaged passage under the name of Emil V. Gasche, a Swiss citizen.
On board ship, he set to work preparing for the close scrutiny of British naval officers when the ship neared Falmouth. He handed over many of his documents to Andrew D. Meloy, his travelling companion, and Meloy’s secretary. He dictated a long document about financial conditions of Mexican railways purporting to be the report of himself as commissioner for a group of English bondholders. He sought to make it appear that he had been sent to the United States as a representative of the bondholders’ committee of Mexican railways. When the British officers came on board and searched him, von Rintelen put up a skilful bluff, but finally surrendered as a prisoner of war. Meloy, who had aided von Rintelen in his application for the American passport, was sent back to this country by the British authorities.