The ruddy blond face of Otto Littman’s companion wore usually the gentlest of smiles—the few who had ever met him in Sabinsport thought him a harmless man, devoted to his laboratory—talking little, playing his piano often late after a busy day’s hard work, friendly to little children, troubling nobody. “Never had a better man,” said Cowder, who almost daily visited the laboratory and listened to his explanations of difficulties both physical and chemical and how they could be overcome—watched his ingenious experiments, discussed long with him future developments.
“German parentage—born here,” he had told Cowder. He never talked of the war more than to say sadly, “It’s bad business.”
Cowder and the children who ran to him on the street at night would not have recognized him now as he leaned over Otto Littman—his blue eyes glittering like steel points, his lips drawn back until two full rows of white teeth showed—they would not have known the voice with its hateful sneer.
“Too late, Otto. You’re in. You can’t get out. Do you suppose we are going to let as good and prosperous an agent as you are, with a father above all suspicion, go when we’ve got him? We’ve got you, Otto Littman, and you’ll do what the High Command orders. Come, come, boy, don’t be an ass. And remember where your interests are. This country is doomed if she doesn’t soon see where her advantage lies. You’re made, whatever happens, for His Majesty never forgets. Your name is on his books.”
Otto Littman made no reply, but, swinging his car around sharply, drove rapidly back, only slowing up as he approached the dusky turn where his passenger had stepped in. He stepped out now as skillfully, and the car went on. One hearing it pass would have been quite willing to swear that it had not stopped.
“Poor fool,” Max said to himself. “Thought he could mix in great affairs and pull out at will. That’s your American education for you—willing to blurt into anything that’s new and promises excitement, pulling out the instant it gets dangerous or pinches their cheap little notions of morality. Gott in Himmel! what does he expect?—that Germany will tolerate such nonsense from any country on the globe? Our time has come and they must learn to understand what valor and power mean in the world.”
He took out his pipe and lit it and strolled, softly humming, into the rooms he occupied; they made up the second story at Katie Flaherty’s. It was a convenient arrangement for a single man who liked to come and go according “to things at the plant.” The little frame house was built like many on the South Side, into the hill; its first story opened on one level, its second on another a street above. Max had this second floor to himself now that Mikey had flown. He had said to Mrs. Flaherty that he’d be glad to take both rooms, his books and papers having outgrown the one. He had made it very pleasant and convenient—wonderfully convenient for a gentleman who occasionally had late callers and preferred they should not be seen coming or going.
Poor Otto reached home in a very different state of mind. The exciting game he had been playing for months now with a proud conviction that he was indeed on the inside, an actor in world affairs, a man trusted by great diplomats and certain one day to be recognized as one of those that had helped hold the United States when she was on the verge of losing herself to England—the game had taken a new turn. It was out of his hands. He was no longer the player—he was the puppet. What could he do? Was it true they “had” him?
Otto Littman was one of not a few prosperous young German-Americans who were caught in 1914, 1915, and 1916 in the coarse and rather clumsy web that German intrigue spun over spots in this land. Otto’s trapping had begun at least half a dozen years before, when he had made his first visit to Germany. He was then twenty-four, a handsome, rather arrogant, excellently educated young man. Rupert Littman had done his best for his only son. He himself was the best of men. He had come here in the early fifties—a lad of ten or twelve, with his father, a refugee of the revolution of 1848. They had found their way to Cincinnati and finally to a farm near Sabinsport. The land had thrived under the elder Littman’s intelligent and friendly touch. He was a prosperous man when the opening of the coal vein under his farm made him rich. He came into Sabinsport and with others, made rich like himself, started a farmers’ bank. This bank Rupert had inherited, and it was to carry it on that he had educated Otto, sending him to Germany to the family he had not seen since childhood but with which he had always had a formal relation, with the understanding that he was to spend at least two years in studying German banking and commercial methods.
The two years had lengthened to six, for Otto had been well received by his relatives. An opening had been found for him in Berlin where he had been given the opportunities his father sought for him. He had been cultivated by serious and older people, and always his relatives had lost no opportunity of impressing upon him the honors that were done him, of telling him that he was being taken in even as they were not. Otto had been flattered, though not so deeply as his relatives felt that he should have been. He had not taken the attentions and opportunities with an especial seriousness. There was a considerable percentage of inner conviction that they were his due, that there must be qualities in him that the attentive had detected which were not in others. Being an American meant something in Germany, he saw; also he soon discovered that there were two classes of his compatriots that Berlin cultivated—the millionaires and the professors. It is doubtful if Otto realized how very cunning this was on the part of Berlin. She had chosen the two classes of the United States most susceptible to flattery, and best placed to serve her purpose. And, how our millionaires and our professors had played her game!