Far less ingenious and equally damning was his attempt to explain away
his relations with von Papen. The sinister figure of the military
attaché of the German Embassy at Washington leers from the background
of all the German plots; and this case was no exception. It was known
that Fay had had dealings with von Papen in New York, and on the
witness stand he felt called upon to explain them in a way that would
clear the diplomatic service of implication in his evil doings. He
declared that he had taken his invention to von Papen and that von
Papen had resolutely refused to have anything to do with it. This would
have been well enough if Fay’s explanation had stopped here.
But Fay’s evil genius prompted him to make his explanation more
convincing by an elaboration of the story, so he gave von Papen’s
reasons for refusal. These were not because the Fay device was
calculated to do murder upon hundreds of helpless men, nor because to
have any part in the business was to play the unneutral villain under
the cloak of diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the first interview,
seeing only a rough sketch and hearing only Fay’s description of
preliminary experiments, von Papen’s sole objection was:
“Well, you might obtain an explosion once, and the next ten apparatuses
might fail.”
To continue Fay’s explanation:
“He casually asked me what the cost of it would be and I told him in my
estimation the cost would not be more than $20 apiece. [$20 apiece for
the destruction of thirty lives and a million-dollar ship and cargo!]
As a matter of fact in Germany I will be able to get these things made
for half that price. ‘If it is not more than that,’ von Papen said,
‘you might go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything whatever.’”
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly._