Rintelen's next venture attracted some unpleasant attention. The United States Government had condemned some 350,000 Krag-Joergensen rifles, which it refused to sell to any of the belligerents. Rintelen cast a fond eye in their direction. President Wilson had told a banker: "You will get those rifles only over my dead body." Rintelen heard, however, that by bribing certain officials he could obtain the guns, so he sent out agents to learn what they would cost, and found a man who said he could buy them for $17,826,000, part of which was to be used for effective bribery. "So close am I to the President," said the intermediary, "that two days after I deposit the money in the bank you can dandle his grandchild on your knee!" But just when the negotiations were growing bright, Rintelen was told that the man who proposed to sell him the rifles was a secret agent from another government. A certain "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was known to have been groping for those rifles, and the newspapers and government officials became suddenly interested in his real identity. A dowdy woman's implication reached a reporter's ears; presently the newspapers burst out in the "discovery" that "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was none other than Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt, a German Red Cross envoy then in the United States. Like the popping of a machine gun, "correct versions of the facts" were published: "Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt denied vigorously that he was 'Dr. Alfred Meyer,'" then "'Dr. Alfred Meyer' was known to have left the United States on the same ship with Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt," then "an American citizen came forward anonymously and said that he had posed as 'Dr. Alfred Meyer' in order to test the good faith of the Government."
This last announcement may have been true. It was made to a New York Sun reporter by a German, Karl Schimmel, who professed his allegiance to the United States, and by the "American citizen" who said he had posed as "Dr. Alfred Meyer." It may have been made to shield Rintelen himself, for the "American citizen" was an employe of a German newspaper in New York, a friend of Rintelen's, a friend of Schimmel's and Schimmel himself was in von Rintelen's pay.
Let a pack of reporters loose on a half dozen tangents and they will probably scratch the truth. A Tribune man heard a whisper of the facts and set out on a hunt for "two Germans, Meyer and Hansen, who have been acting funny." He frightened the personnel right out of the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Captain Steinberg fled to Germany with a trunkful of reports on the necessity of concerted action to stop the shipment of munitions to the Allies, and Rintelen migrated to an office in the Woolworth Building. Some one heard of his activities there and he was evicted, taking final refuge in the Liberty Tower, in the office of Andrew M. Meloy, who had been in Germany to interest the German government in a scheme similar to Rintelen's own. In Meloy's office Rintelen posed as "E. V. Gates"—preserving the shadow of his identity as "Emil V. Gasche." So effective was his disappearance from the public view, that he was reported to have gone abroad as a secretary, and he sat in the tower and chuckled, and sent messages by wireless to Berlin through Sayville, and cablegrams to Berlin through England and Holland, and enjoyed all the sensations of a man attending a triple funeral in his honor. "Meyer," "Hansen" and "Gasche" were all dead, and yet, here was Rintelen!
Although his sojourn in New York covered a period which was the peak of the curve of German atrocities in the United States, Rintelen was a fifth wheel. No man came to America to accomplish more, and no man accomplished less. No German agent had his boldness of project, and no German executive met a more ignominious fate. Whatever he touched with his golden wand turned to dross. He was hoodwinked here and there by his own agents, and frustrated by the vigilance of the Allied and the United States governments. He has been introduced here because of his connection with subsequent events, and yet this picturesque figure played the major part in not one successful venture.
Four months he passed in America, until it became too small for him. In August the capture of Dr. Albert's portfolio and the publication of certain of its contents frightened Rintelen, and he applied for a passport as "Edward V. Gates, an American citizen of Millersville, Pa.," but he did not dare claim it. Though he had bought tickets under the alias, and had had drafts made payable in that name, he did not occupy the "Gates" cabin on the Noordam, but at the last minute engaged passage under the renascent name of "Emil V. Gasche," the harmless Swiss. He eluded the Federal agents, and sailed safely to Falmouth, England, where, after a search of the ship, and an excellent attempt to bluff it through, he finally surrendered to the British authorities as a prisoner-of-war. Meloy and his secretary were captured with him.
Rintelen was returned to the United States in 1916. He was convicted in 1917 and 1918 on successive charges of conspiracy to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust law, to obtain a fraudulent passport, and to destroy merchant ships—which combined to sentence him to a year in the Tombs and nine years in a Federal prison.