The Chief shook his head, “I don’t know, Moore,” he answered. “Nobody would have dreamed that Napoleon could get away with what he did get away with. And immense wealth means immense power in the world of to-day, as the history of Hugo Stinnes in Germany shows. Without a doubt this Emperor was a little mad—perhaps more than a little. But who can say where genius ends and madness begins? And the man was an organizing genius, an electrical genius, an executive genius in his power over men, had a genius for making money and was an expert chemist. What is more, he had a big vision, such as it was. And that is everything.
“From the rambling versions I have been able to get out of the few of his men who were left alive, he intended to make his power practically absolute in this country by the underground methods I have told you. Then, according to one man, he intended to make himself Emperor of the World. That was the little plan he had up his sleeve!”
We all laughed. But when I glanced at the Chief’s face I was amazed to see that his smile was perfunctory. Evidently he did not take this Russian’s crazy ambition quite as lightly as we did. “He was about the most dangerous customer I’ve run up against in my career, anyway!” he added, a moment later.
“Tell me, Chief,” I asked him, “how did he manage to run a place like that without somebody getting on to it? I’ve been wondering about that. I should think local people would have noticed all the activity involved in running such a ménage. Think of the supplies and the power he used for that big house and that huge staff.”
The Chief laughed. “That puzzled me for a while too. But he was too clever for that. All his supplies were brought in by lighter from New York and unloaded on the beach at night. You saw one party at it. He brought coal that way too. And he had a big dynamo brought from New York in the same way for his electric power. He sent a man to the village for a few small supplies every little while as a blind.”
“How did he get his supplies, then, into the house?”
“By another underground passage, up that little gully you saw his men disappearing into. We stopped that hole the night we made the raid. It was cleverly concealed with growing bushes and brush. But they aren’t yet through exploring the place, and we expect to find many other ‘earths’ before we get through. Acting as an agent for the Bolshevik Government gave him practically unlimited men to work for him, and there was little danger of their talking. These Russians are too good conspirators for that and so are the Chinese he had brought with him. They thought that that house was the headquarters of the future Bolshevik Government in the United States. The Emperor was a wonder at making people believe what he wanted them to believe.”
“Funny there were no windows in the place.”
The Chief smiled. “That was clever, too,” he answered, “He had had an inner shell put in the house, so that the windows showed from the outside but showed no lights. It gave the house a deserted appearance, which was just what he wanted.”
“By the way,” I asked, “what became of that other car that started out with us?”