Quite still the room was, except for the whirr of the pages and the slight crinkle of the many sheets of papers as he referred from one to the other. There was little need for reference, however, for every page bore the same numerals, the same messages written in strange conglomerations of numbers that were apparently meaningless—even to many of the persons who had brought or sent them to this wrinkled, nervous being who sat beneath the painting of the Kaiser. And reason enough—for those pages of numbers, those jumbled sequences of numerals, were nothing more nor less than the smuggled code messages by which Wilhelm Hohenzollern, Emperor of Imperial Germany, sent his daily instructions via the great wireless at Nauen, Germany, to the man who directed his spider's web of spy activity in the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff, Imperial Ambassador!
Each morning since the war began, Von Bernstorff had received those numeral inscribed pages, caught on wireless outfits owned privately throughout the United States by German spies, who had been placed in America for that very purpose. Each day the instructions had come from Berlin—instructions for the beginning of propaganda campaigns, for connivance against the Allies, for the handling of the thousand and one methods by which Germany sought to strike its enemies through neutral America.
Each morning at 3 o'clock, American time, those messages flashed from the tremendous wireless tower at Nauen, Germany—to find spies waiting everywhere in America for them. On interned ships, in shacks, built far from the roar and bustle of the city, even in Fifth Avenue residences, were wireless outfits concealed, each equipped with its Audien detector, so necessary to the catching of wireless waves from a great distance. Nor had the members of the Embassy itself neglected to take a part in the reception of orders from across the sea. Nearly every morning at 3 o'clock found Capt. Franz von Papen, military attache of the Imperial German Embassy, and Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, naval attache, at a secluded part of Long Island, standing beside a racing motor car, to which was attached antennae, detectors and receiving apparatus, that they might personally assure themselves that the code messages from overseas were received and started on their way to Bernstorff, the master spy.
So it was that one day in April, 1915, Count Johann von Bernstorff worked hard at his task of deciphering the maze of numerals that had come to him during the night. One by one he traced out the numbers, matching them first with the page of the old German dictionary, then with the words of the aged book, each of which was carefully numbered for easy transcription. When he had finished, his head bobbed slightly, he pressed a button and almost snapped an order at the hurrying man servant.
"Send Dr. Albert in," he announced.
"Yes, Your Excellency."
A moment later a tall, dark-haired man, his left cheek scarred from a schoolday duel at Heidelberg, stepped into the room. He was Dr. Heinrich Albert, fiscal spy for Imperial Germany, master of its exchequer in America, and second only to Bernstorff in what he termed "the battle on the American front." Just a second he hesitated, and then:
"You sent for me, sir?"
"I did. Just got a message from Wilhelmstrasse." Bernstorff was talking jerkily, somewhat excitedly. "The Lusitania must be sunk on its next voyage."
"Yes?" Dr. Albert asked the question with the calmness of a person ordering a cab—or choosing a meal. "Well—all arrangements are made, are they not?"