“They’re going,” he said. “It’s luck.... Maybe the biggest luck would be to go—and not come back.”
CHAPTER XVIII
It was July before Potter Waite saw Detroit again for more than a few hours. His business lay in Washington, and in Washington he remained. It was his privilege to hear from the gallery the most momentous utterance ever to issue from the New World when Mr. Wilson guided this country down into the abyss of war. Later he met on equal terms with the great automobile minds of the country when they were called together to give to their flag the dearly bought knowledge of motor construction which was their most precious possession. He saw his own motor placed before him, and waited in a sort of white glow of eagerness for what would be the outcome of that herculean labor performed by two men called to give to America the motor needed for her mighty air fleets. That moment when he saw his year’s work had not been in vain was one of the splendid moments of his life, for his motor had been the basis upon which those engineers had worked, and from it they developed the perfect thing.
In July he came home, not empty-handed. The honor of receiving the first contract had been awarded to the Waite Motor Company and Potter carried it, a sacred treasure, buttoned against his breast.
Then began in earnest the conversion of an enormous wing of the Waite Motor Company’s plant to the production of that wonderful and delicate mechanism which was to drive America through the air to victory. It began in secrecy and silence. The part of the plant undergoing the change might have vanished from the world, for all the news that issued from it. It was guarded as the vaults of the national Treasury are not guarded, by a little army of government men trained in the arts of vigilance.
“But,” said the chief of them to Potter, “we can work with a sweet confidence that Germany has her men inside. We’ve investigated every employee to his birth—we think—but I’ll bet my hat more than one spy is planted there.... So we trust nobody.... There are German spies and then there are German spies.”
Potter looked a question.
“Well,” said the chief, “there’s the ordinary spy that the country’s full of. I can catch you one in half an hour if you want him.... And there are the spies who do the real work—and I’d give a year of my life for every one of them I could lay hands on.... The garden variety of spy is a comic-supplement fellow. Tell you how to spot him. Go and stand in a hotel lobby and read a letter. If you feel somebody breathing on the back of your neck, turn around and grab—and you’ve got your man. It’s part of the technique—to breathe on the back of your neck. They’re drilled in it like the army is in the goose step. The German is constructed by nature to be obvious. If he’s a spy he acts like a spy—as he conceives a spy to be.... There was the fellow we caught trying to blow up a mighty important railroad bridge. Lieutenant in the navy. He disguised himself as a bum; let his beard grow and rubbed grime on his hands. Then he took him his little bomb in a suit-case and went out to do his day’s work. Now did he ride to that railroad bridge on a freight, or back in a day coach on a slow train? Not him! He bought a section on the Millionaires’ Special—six days’ beard and all. Of course we spotted him, and I asked him why the devil he boarded that sort of train in such a get-up. He looked me over supercilious and says, says he: ‘I’m a gentleman. You couldn’t expect me to ride second class.’”
Potter laughed. “They’re not all like that, though,” he said.
“You bet they aren’t,” said the chief, with compressed lips. “You had some experience, didn’t you?”