Far less ingenious but equally damning was his attempt to explain away his relations with Von Papen. The sinister figure of the military attaché of the German Embassy at Washington leers from the background of all the German plots; and this case was no exception. It was known that Fay had had dealings with Von Papen in New York, and on the witness stand he felt called upon to explain them in a way that would clear the diplomatic service of participation in his evil doings. He declared that he had taken his invention to Von Papen and that Von Papen had resolutely refused to have anything to do with it. This would have been well enough if Fay’s explanation had stopped here.
But Fay’s evil genius prompted him to make his explanation more convincing by an elaboration of the story, so he gave Von Papen’s reasons for refusal. These were not at all that the device was calculated to do murder upon hundreds of helpless men, nor at all that to have any part in the business was to play the unneutral villain under the cloak of diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the first interview, seeing only a rough sketch and hearing only Fay’s description of preliminary experiments, Von Papen’s sole objection was:
“Well, you might obtain an explosion once and the next ten apparatuses might fail.”
To continue Fay’s explanation:
“He casually asked me what the cost of it would be and I told him in my estimation the cost would not be more than $20 apiece. [$20 apiece for the destruction of thirty lives and a million-dollar ship and cargo!] As a matter of fact, in Germany I will be able to get these things made for half that price. ‘If it is not more than that,’ Von Papen said, ‘you might go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything whatever.’”
Fay then went back to his experiments and when he felt that he had practically perfected his device he called upon Von Papen for the second time. This time Von Papen’s reply was:
“Well, this thing has been placed before our experts and also we have gone into the political condition of the whole suggestion. Now in the first place our experts say this apparatus is not at all seaworthy; but as regards political conditions I am sorry to say we cannot consider it and, therefore, we cannot consider the whole situation.”
In other words, with no thought of the moral turpitude of the scheme, with no thought of the abuse of diplomatic freedom, but only with thoughts of the practicability of this device and of the effect upon political conditions of its use, Von Papen had put the question before technical men and before Von Bernstorff, and their decision had been adverse solely on those considerations—first, that it would not work, and second, that it would arouse hostility in the United States. At no stage, according to Fay’s best face upon the matter, was any thought given to its character as a hideous crime.
The device itself was studied independently by two sets of military experts of the United States Government with these results:
First, that it was mechanically perfect; second, that it was practical under the conditions of adjustment to a ship’s rudder which Fay had devised; and third, that the charge of trinitrotoluol, for which the container was designed, was nearly half the quantity which is used on our own floating mines and which is calculated upon explosion twenty feet from a battleship to put it out of action, and upon explosion in direct contact, absolutely to destroy and sink the heaviest superdreadnaught. In other words, beyond all question the bomb would have shattered the entire stern of any ship to which it was attached, and would have caused it to sink in a few minutes.