As a campaign fund to assure the success of these operations, the German sympathizers raised not less than sixteen million dollars—a sum which naturally excited the cupidity not only of certain individuals within their own ranks, but also of persons on the outside—men who were accustomed to live by their wits and who saw in this gigantic collection the opportunity of a lifetime.
When you consider that you can hire a New York gangster to commit murder for a couple of hundred dollars—and the "union scale" has been known to be even lower—it's no wonder that the mere mention of sixteen million dollars caused many a crook of international reputation to figure how he could divert at least a part of this to his own bank account. That's the way, as it afterward turned out, that Carl Cheney looked at it.
Cheney had rubbed elbows with the police on several occasions prior to nineteen fourteen. It was suspected that he had been mixed up in a number of exceptionally clever smuggling schemes and that he had had a finger in one or two operations which came perilously close to blackmail. But no one had ever been able to get anything on him. He was the original Finnigin—"In agin, gone agin." By the time the plan came to a successful conclusion all that remained of "Count Carl's" connection with it was a vague and distinctly nebulous shadow—and you simply can't arrest shadows, no matter how hard you try.
The New York police were the first to tip Washington off to the fact that Cheney, who had dropped his aristocratic alias for the time being, was back in this country and had been seen in the company of a number of prominent members of a certain German-American club which wasn't in any too good repute with the Department of Justice by reason of the efforts of some of its members to destroy the neutral stand of the nation.
Have no indications of what Cheney is doing [the report admitted], but it will be well to trail him. Apparently he has some connection, officially or unofficially, with Berlin. Advise what action you wish us to take.
Whereupon the chief wired back:
Operative assigned to Cheney case leaves to-night. Meanwhile please watch.
It wasn't until after the wire had been sent that Guy Randall was summoned to the inner sanctum of the Secret Service and informed that he had been elected to trail the elusive suspect and find out what he was up to.
"So far as our records show," stated the chief, "no one has ever been able to catch this Cheney person in the act of departing from the straight and narrow path. However, that's a matter of the past. What we've got to find out is what he is planning now—why he is in New York and why he has attached himself to the pro-German element which has all kinds of wild schemes up its sleeve."
"And I'm the one who's got to handle it?" inquired Guy, with a grimace.