"Dixie Mason! So she was the one! Dixie Mason—a spy!"
VON RINTELEN—THE DESTROYER
Months of apparent calm followed the plot against the fleet—a calm, however, which existed only on the surface, for beneath the veneer of friendliness for America, Ambassador Von Bernstorff and his aides, Capt. Franz von Papen, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed and Dr. Heinrich Albert still were scheming and working for the downfall of America in their insatiable desires to defeat the Allies. More, they had received aid from abroad, in the person of an intimate friend of the Crown Prince of Germany, Franz von Rintelen, sent to America for the ostensible purpose of promoting friendliness between Germany and America, but in reality with a bank account of more than fifty million dollars, to spend on any form of death and destruction that he might see fit—as long as it harmed the Allies. And whether the harming of the Allies also brought its attendant injury to America, made little difference to Franz von Rintelen or his cohorts. The United States had been described by Dr. Heinrich Albert as "the American front," and so they regarded it—as a battlefield upon which to make their advances and counterthrusts against the Allies, regardless of the consequences to the land for which they professed such friendliness and such regard.
So it was, that in the spending of that fifty million dollars, Franz von Rintelen had built himself up practically a separate organization with which he preyed upon shipping, industry and manufacture. River pirates who swarmed the Hudson to scuttle lighters, to start fires in cargoes, to cut hawsers and mangle the steering apparatus of tugs that they might crash into each other and sink with their cargoes; so called "Peace Councils," which strove for the spreading of propaganda on any kind of peace at any price—as long as it was favorable to Germany; alleged "Embargo Conferences," the sole object of which was to spread a feeling throughout America that it was wrong for the United States to manufacture arms and ammunition which could be sold to the Allies—all these things lay within the province of Franz von Rintelen, to handle as he chose, with only an occasional conference with Ambassador Von Bernstorff at which he told of his progress, and laid forth his expense accounts for the official signature of the head of Imperial Germany's spy system in America. And so quietly had his organization been built up, so thoroughly had Franz von Rintelen concealed himself behind a cloak of supernumeraries and "straw bosses" that even the cleverest of the members of the Secret Service had failed as yet to gain a clue to his real activities. But there were suspicions—and among those who held them was Dixie Mason.
"No Mamette," she was saying as she stood by the window of her apartment, watching the sunset and talking to her negro maid, "I have no positive evidence against Franz von Rintelen. I doubt if I ever will. I only know that there is something about him which makes me believe that he is at the head of the river pirates and commerce destroyers who have sprung up around the harbor recently. But I can't be sure."
"How about Mista Von Lertz?" Mamette spoke the name with a tinge of hatred. For Mamette, black though she was, could see only three colors, the red, the white and the blue. Dixie smiled at her tone.
"I've tried—and tried hard. But Von Lertz seems afraid to tell me much about him. The best clues I've gotten have been through Agnes Taylor, who is working on the switchboard at Von Lertz's apartment. She has reported several conversations between Rintelen and Von Lertz, but they have been generally meaningless. I—"
The tingling of the telephone had interrupted. Dixie answered, to hear the voice of Agnes Taylor, the operative who had been placed at the switchboard of Von Lertz's apartment house.