The Gasché papers were most interesting. They contained some of Rintelen’s letters showing his intimacy with well-known New Yorkers, and letters in which he referred to his “official mission” to the United States that were very important, for they proved what Rintelen steadfastly denied, namely, that he was in this country by orders of the German Government. In one of them to a man in Germany, whom he addressed as “Most Honourable Counsellor,” he wrote: “Your letter of the 25th March [1915] was sent after me when I was on an official journey, and I request you to excuse the delaying in replying.” And another letter, from the National Bank Für Deutschland, dated Berlin, 25th May, 1915, and addressed “To the Landed Proprietor, Von Preskow,” contained this sentence: “Director Rintelen, who looked after Major Von Katte’s account, entered the navy on the outbreak of hostilities, and as he is at present on an official journey is not available at the moment.”
With Rintelen’s internment ended Lamar’s golden fortune and Meloy’s golden vision and Rintelen’s dream of destruction. And now began one of the most difficult and one of the longest tasks of the Department of Justice. For, out of the fragments of evidence at its command, and out of the seemingly innocent public acts of Labour’s National Peace Council, and out of the obscure and isolated outrages to ships and factories in the United States, the Department of Justice had to construct a pattern that should prove, by tangible legal evidence, the guilt of Rintelen and Lamar in a plot to violate the laws of the United States.
RINTELEN AND HIS CONFEDERATES
Above, Rintelen’s photograph on a false passport with which he tried to escape from the United States; left, Andrew D. Meloy; right, David Lamar, “the Wolf of Wall Street”
This long investigation was a fascinating study in human nature. If only Lamar had been a little different in his manners, he might have escaped the clutches of the law. If Rintelen had been as wise as he was clever, he might still be in an internment camp instead of a prison.
Lamar, it may be recalled, had a weakness for automobiles. He hired them on all occasions. They were especially useful to him for conferences with Rintelen. They did not wish to be seen together, so Lamar would drive to an unfrequented spot in Central Park. Rintelen would drive up in another car and get into Lamar’s, and then they would go for a long ride while they discussed their plans. Sometimes they would go for hours on the North Shore of Long Island; sometimes for long excursions in the Pelham region of Westchester County, stopping perhaps at a wayside inn and taking a room for greater privacy in their conferences.
An agent of the Department of Justice spent six weeks making the rounds of the garages in New York. He carried Lamar’s picture in his pocket. He showed it to every chauffeur in every garage. And every chauffeur who had driven a car for Lamar during that summer of 1915 recognized the picture, and every one of them applied the same epithet to its original that Trampas applied to the Virginian in Owen Wister’s book when the Virginian, in response, drew his gun and demanded that “when you call me that, smile!” For Lamar, who was the suave, the gracious, the ultra-polite and charming man to people whom he wished to cajole, was overbearing, fault-finding, and peremptory toward those who served him. His movements in the hotels about the country were several times traced by a rough description completed by a remark about his manner toward servants. No waiter or bell-boy ever forgot him. He was forever “kicking about the service.”
This vivid impression that he made on the chauffeurs contributed greatly to his undoing. They remembered him perfectly, and recalled his companions. They recognized Rintelen’s photograph. And several of them had overheard parts of the conversations that were useful to the Government. Through these men, Lamar’s connection with Rintelen in a conspiracy to violate the Sherman Act by restraining our foreign trade in munitions was established.