"Yes, but damn it, man, it don't come easy for me to go back on them that pay me."
"I know, Scotty, but it ain't treason to fight a German. He lies just as easy as he ruins young girls, or mutilates prisoners and wounded men. Their hearts, throats, teeth, eyes and hands, the very marrow of their bones utter lies perfected for fifteen hundred years. Think it over, Scotty," I said, wiping my hands. "I am going up to the wireless station and will be back in about two hours."
"Don't you think there are some good ones?" he asked, looking injured, evidently shocked by the memory that he had trusted some of them.
"Yes, Scotty, a few who left Germany because they hated it, but to be born and to grow up in Germany adds a virus to the blood that is bad. It can be neutralized about as easy as black can be made white. You can't expect to rival them in general crookedness in a thousand years' practice. They're about to hand you something."
He threw down his wrench wrathfully, wiped his hands, and followed me up on the dock.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, his head hanging.
"If there is another man in the Bulow service you can trust, get me some information, but mind what I have told you about trusting a born German. They revel in deceit and dirty, treacherous lies. When I get back I'll tell you what I want." Instead of Scotty going back to work I saw him go down the wharf where the ocean tug was tied up, but I was not quite sure he was convinced.
I went to the wireless station and the information I got from Washington was mainly satisfactory, but a long way from completing a more or less nebulous theory, pointing to something big.
Coming back past the hotel I found a note there from Ike Barry. It read:
"The big money in Bulow is supplied by the Transatlantic Banking Company, New York. The fat party represents them."