“Now, things like that don’t start out of the air, and I set out to find out where it came from. I got a clever fellow here that I have had before when trouble was brewing in the wire mill, to sort of sound out things, you know. Well, he had not been here long before he came to me and said, ‘Mr. Cowder, Uncle Sam has told me to get off this job, wanted me to tell you that you need not worry, that they were looking after it.’ They must have been confounded smart, these Secret Service people, for I’ve never yet been able to find out who they were, except one, nor what they did. But this is what happened.
“Along the first of March, a fine looking chap came into my office one day, and asked to see me alone. As I shut the door, he showed me his badge—Secret Service. ‘Mr. Cowder,’ he said, ‘I want to notify you that about a half a dozen men in your munition plant, one of whom you have trusted greatly—Mr. Max Dalberg—will disappear from this town, day after to-morrow; or, if not, the next day. I would like to tell you the facts, but I am under orders to divulge nothing, even to you. I think you and your plant will be safer if you know nothing of it. We would like to have you make no comments, but carry on your work as if nothing had happened. That’s what the Government asks of you.’
“Well, Ingraham, you know how I felt about Max. I would have trusted him as soon as any man in this town, much further than I would Otto Littman. As a matter of fact, it has been Otto that I suspected all the time, as you know. But Otto is here. Moreover, the same young man that warned me about Max came back a week later and said to me that he thought that it would be an act of justice and humanity to support Otto Littman in the town, not to let suspicion drive him away. I cannot make head or tail of it, Ingraham. Only this I know, that Max did disappear, along with half a dozen of the best workmen we had; that Otto is still here. Moreover, the rumors, the criticisms that filled the air, have stopped. That fellow told me they would. He told me that it was out of my own factory that these things had been coming. The town somehow got wind that something had been going on, that the suspicion and criticisms which ran through the streets were spread by German agents, and to-day a criticism which is perfectly well founded has no chance at all. You cannot even joke about the conduct of the war without running the danger of arrest. Why, the funniest thing happened here the other day to John Commons. You know Katie Flaherty, of course—takes care of you, doesn’t she? Well, Katie overhead John Commons criticizing a report that the Government was going to forbid the use of starch in collars, make us all wear soft collars. ‘Ha, ha,’ Commons said, ‘I suppose they want the starch to stiffen up the backbone of the soldiers.’ Katie was so incensed that she promptly went to the Chief of Police and reported Commons. He was waited on, and it took some real explanation and expostulation on his part to keep out of jail. It tickled the town to death, and John has not been nearly so voluble since.
“Yes, there’s a great change come over our spirit, and I would give a good deal to know just what was done, what became of Max, what he was planning, and how they got him.”
What became of Max, what he had planned, how they got him, was known to only one person in Sabinsport. Offhand you would have said that that was the last person to keep a secret, for it was Katie Flaherty.
Since Mikey’s death, the real occupation of Katie Flaherty’s life had been hate of the race that she now considered her personal enemy. Dick had sometimes chided her for this bitterness. “God forgive us all, Mr. Dick,” she would say, “I have been saying we ought to love everybody. Take the Jews, now. See how they have gone into the war, how loyal they are to the United States. I tell the boys we ought not to lay it up against them any longer that they are Jews. But a German, Mr. Dick, that’s different. He won’t salute the flag. And look at the things they do—sinking the ships like they did. Think of all our grand, lovely young men drowned in the sea—the dirty Germans—sticking a ship in the ribs in the night. I can’t stand it to think of ’em dead. I’m that foolish about the boys, I can’t see one in the streets I don’t cry, old fool I am. I won’t never go to another parade, Mr. Dick. You’d been that ashamed of me if you’d seen me at camp when they came marching up the field, the thousands of ’em, the grandest boys you ever seen. I couldn’t see for cryin’ and it wasn’t still cryin’ I did. I did it out loud—but nobody laughed, only a strange man patted me on the back and a woman went white and said, ‘Stop it!’ fierce like, ‘Stop it!’ so I came home. I’ll never go to another parade.
“And to think the Germans have the heart to kill ’em—boys like ours. I’m fer drivin’ ’em out of the country. They’re all spies. There’s the butcher over on the South Side, Johann he calls himself. Think of that Johann in the United States—a regular old German, talkin’ about the ‘faterland’—can’t say it in English.”
“Come, now,” Dick said to her once. “Johann has been in this country for forty years.”
“What’s that, Mr. Dick? They’re all the same; you can’t make Americans out of ’em.”
She developed a suspicion of strangers that was almost a mania, and was forever watching for evidence of intrigue. One morning she came in to serve Dick’s coffee, with a big envelope in her hand. She was handling it gingerly as if it was something that might explode. With great solemnity she opened it. “Look here, Mr. Dick. It’s a spy I found. I’m sure of it.” Out of her envelope, she pulled a big red valentine, and dramatically turned the back to him. On it was written in bold black letters the words, “Don’t buy a Liberty Bond. The Kaiser says so.”