After a moment he walked slowly into the station, glancing casually at his watch, and moving just before the gate closed toward the entrance to the track where stood the Twentieth Century Limited, was soon safely on board. The next day he was observed in Chicago, where he announced that he was on his way to Yellowstone National Park—and he disappeared. For several weeks he was lost to the sight of the zealous agents who were hunting him; but one day he was observed sauntering through the lobby of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. In the course of his absence, he is said to have swung down along the Mexican border, where he caught up with Captain Boy-Ed, conferred with a number of secret agents from Mexico, with spies scattered throughout the country, and then hurried up to San Francisco, where he was busy before the agents of the Department of Justice picked him up again.

CONSPIRACIES ON LAND AND SEA

One indictment against the five defendants, phrased in legal terms, is vivid and forcible though barren of details. It accuses the German representatives and their hirelings of plotting to blow up railway tunnels, railroads, railroad trains, and bridges, already mentioned. Over this vast system of transportation, the indictment explains, supplies were being shipped westward for transportation on the ships Talthybius and Hazel Dollar. The defendants, it is stated, hired Smith to help them gain information about the sailings and the cargoes of ships leaving Tacoma bound for Vladivostok; that after Smith went to Tacoma, Crowley sent him money. Crowley and Smith came to New York, where they had conference with Germans who were in touch with von Papen. They next went to Detroit, where they were working out plans for the blowing up of the tunnel when they were arrested. Smith, who was working on the shipping and the tunnel end of the scheme, confessed, while van Koolbergen also has made a statement to the authorities which is of great interest, showing the workings of the defendants.

“On different occasions in his room,” says van Koolbergen, “von Brincken showed me maps and information about Canada, and pointed out to me where he wanted the act to be done. This was to be between Revelstoke and Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and I was to get $3,000 in case of a successful blowing up of a military train, or bridge, or tunnel.

“There are many tunnels and bridges there, and military trains pass every three or four days; he also knew when a cargo of dynamite would pass. He then informed me how I could get hold of dynamite, and explained to me that on the other side of the river on which the Canadian Pacific ran (I believe it was the Fraser River) the Canadian Northern Railway was in course of construction, and they had at intervals powder and dynamite magazines and that it would be very easy to steal some of the dynamite.”

Several ships were blown up on the Pacific; others were disabled under circumstances that suggested conspiracies. There were schemes also to destroy docks on the Pacific coast. In view of these plots, it is striking to observe in von Papen’s cheque counterfoils this entry: “May 11, 1915, German Consulate, Seattle (for Schulenberg), $500.” An explosion in Seattle Harbour occurred on May 30, 1915.

Another excerpt from the counterfoil is dated February 2nd, 1915, recording the payment of $1,300 to the Seattle, Washington, German Consulate marked “C. Angelegenheit,” a very vague word for “affair.” He also paid to A. Kalschmidt, of Detroit, who is accused by the Canadian authorities of plotting to blow up armouries and factories in Canada, $1,000 on March 27, 1915, and $1,976 on July 10, 1915.

While this enterprise was being mapped out in the West, a second project against the Welland Canal was in the making in New York. Paul Koenig, the intermediary between von Papen and reservists and others, had charge, it is alleged, of selecting assistants who would carry dynamite, fuses, and other equipment to the Canadian waterway. Koenig selected as his assistants Richard Emil Leyendecker, retailer of art woods, a naturalized German-American, Fred Metzler, Koenig’s stenographer, George Fuchs, a German, who after a quarrel with Koenig turned State’s evidence; as also did Metzler, and one or two other men. The party went to Buffalo and to Niagara Falls, being trailed all the time by agents under direction by William M. Offley, chief of the Federal investigators of New York.

EXPLOSIONS IN FACTORIES

While these plots in the West were developed in vain and some of the culprits have been convicted, still other enterprises were conceived and set in motion in the East. A great number of explosions and fires have occurred in factories in the eastern part of the country. Though many of them were due to natural causes, yet suspicions seem to show that bombs were manufactured and placed in various plants and that incendiary bombs were hidden in other factories. The men believed to have committed the crime have been traced. They invariably proved to be Germans who, under assumed names, had obtained work in the factory; and then, shortly after the fire or explosion, had disappeared. But Federal agents following them learned that they had hurried back to Germany or skipped away to Mexico or South America. Bombs for their purposes were manufactured in various places in New York and Brooklyn; and in fact the authorities have obtained statements from men who made the bombs, but thus far they have not located the chief man. A German officer skilled in the manufacture of explosives spent a number of months in New York, living on board one of the German merchantmen and conferring frequently with Germans. He disappeared one day and was not heard of until a wireless message announced his arrival in Berlin.