"Superintendent refuses information. Found out however that freight has been delayed eleven days on account of accident. Signed V. R."
Armed with this fictitious reply, which Orchard soon sent him, Van Koolbergen called at the consulate, and was paid $300 more in cash. In order to get as much money as possible as soon as possible, the "destroying agent" agreed to cut his price from $3,000 to $1,750, and was promised the money the next day. The next day came, but no money. Van Koolbergen sent a sharp note to the Consul, suggesting blackmail, and the German Empire in San Francisco capitulated; von Brincken met Van Koolbergen at the Palace Hotel and paid him $1,750, (of which he extracted $250 as commission!). He made Koolbergen sign a receipt for $700, as he said a payment of $1,750 would look bad on the books, was much too high—even seven hundred was high, but could be justified if any one higher up complained. "And," concluded the thrifty Van Koolbergen in his affidavit written August 27, "I have some of the greenbacks given me by von Brincken now in my possession."
The San Franciscan participants in the episode were finally brought to justice. Bopp, Baron Eckhardt, von Schack, Lieutenant von Brincken, Crowley, and Mrs. Margaret Cornell, Crowley's secretary, were indicted, tried, and convicted. The men received sentences of two years and fines of $10,000 each; Mrs. Cornell was sentenced to a year and a day. The three members of the consulate, thanks to their other activities, involved themselves in a series of charges for which the maximum punishment was something more than the average man's lifetime in prison. Certain of their adventures will appear in other phases of German activity to be discussed. They may be dismissed here, however, with the statement that the California consulate also planned the destruction of munitions plants at Ætna, Indiana, and at Ishpeming, Michigan.
The State Department released on October 10, 1917, a telegram from the Foreign Office in Berlin, addressed to Count von Bernstorff, which established beyond question the chief's familiarity with these operations, and more especially the continued desire of the Foreign Office to interrupt transcontinental shipping in Canada. It is dated January 2, 1916. Its text follows:
"Secret. General staff desires energetic action in regard to proposed destruction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad at several points, with a view to complete and protracted interruption of traffic. Captain Boehm, who is known on your side, and is shortly returning, has been given instructions. Inform the military attaché and provide the necessary funds.
"Zimmermann."
The factory explosions continued. The Midvale Steel Company suffered incendiary fires; a Providence warehouse containing a consignment of cotton for Russia was burned; there were fires in the shell plant of the Brill Car Company, in the Southwark Machinery Company, and in the shell department of the Diamond Forge and Steel Company. For August the ghastly recitation proceeds somewhat as follows: Bethlehem Steel Company, powder flash, ten killed; League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia, fire on battleship Alabama; Newport News Navy Yard, three fires in three weeks. In September an explosion in the aeroplane factory of the Curtiss plant at Depew, New York, a German suspected; explosions in the shell factory of the National Cable and Conduit Company at Hastings, New York; an explosion of benzol and wax in the plant of Smith and Lenhart, New York, in which two people were seriously injured; an explosion in a fireworks factory at North Bergen, N. J., in which two people were killed; an explosion which cost two lives in the shell factory of the Westinghouse Electric Company at Pittsburgh. Scarcely a week went by during the autumn without an explosion and fire which wiped out from one to a dozen lives, and from one hundred thousand to a million dollars. Munitions plants were blown to atoms in a moment, and hardly before the charred ground had cooled, were being rebuilt, for the guns in France were hungry.
Out of the mass of munitions accidents in the year 1915 stands sharp and clear the Bethlehem Steel fire of November 10—of which all Germany had had warning, and on which the German press was forbidden to comment—when 800 big guns were destroyed. The du Pont and Ætna organizations suffered again and again; a chemical plant had two fires which cost three-quarters of a million dollars; two explosions in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Works at Birmingham, Alabama, did considerable property damage, and assisted Germany further by frightening labor away from work. Suspects were arrested here and there, and always their trails led back to German or Austrian nationality or sympathy.
Their chiefs were elusive. Captain von Papen sauntered out of the Ritz-Carlton into Madison Avenue, New York, one afternoon. He idled down to Forty-second Street, and paused, as if undecided where to promenade. He turned east, walked a block, and turned again down the ramp into the Grand Central Station. Quickening his pace—he had only a minute more—he crossed the great waiting-room, presented a ticket at the train gate, and a moment later was in the Twentieth Century Limited, the last passenger aboard. He was seen next day in Chicago. And for a month thereafter he was completely lost to the authorities, while, as they found out later, he made a grand tour of the country, going first to Yellowstone Park, then down the Pacific Coast to Mexico, where he joined Boy-Ed, and finally returning to New York through San Francisco. He had ample opportunity to confer with his consular deputies, and his destroying agents. In August a train loaded with 7,000 pounds of dynamite from the du Pont works at Pinole, California, was destroyed; in the evidence against von Papen is this letter concerning the price to be paid for the Pinole job:
"Dear S.: Your last letter with clipping today, and note what you have to say. I have taken it up with them and 'B'" (who was Franz Bopp) "is awaiting decision of 'P'" (who was von Papen) "in New York, so cannot advise you yet, and will do so as soon as I get word from you. You might size up the situation in the meantime."
Glancing back over the record of 1915—which was hardly mitigated in the succeeding years of war—one is inclined to marvel at the hardy perennial pose of the deported attaché, who said as he left the United States: