What have you been doing, Bernstorff? Keeping a steam-yacht on me and
charging it up as spies?'
"'Listen, Boss,' Bernstorff says. 'If you would know what an awful
strong organization spies has got in the United States, instead you
would be talking to me this way you would be thanking your lucky stars
that I didn't let 'em run the wage scale up on me no higher than they
did. Why, before I left Washington a deputation from Local Number One
Amalgamated Spies of North America comes to see me and--'
"'What the devil you are talking nonsense?' the Kaiser shouts. '_Moost_
you got to employ union spies? Couldn't you find thousands and thousands
of non-union spies to work for you?'
"'That only goes to show what you know about America,' Bernstorff says.
'There's a whole lot of people in America which would stand for blowing
up factories, sinking passenger-steamers, shooting up hospitals, and
dropping bombs on kindergartens, y'understand, but when it comes to
people employing scab labor, they draw the line. And then again, Boss,
spies is very highly thought of in America. Respectable people, like
lawyers and doctors, gets arrested every day over there, and even once
in a while a minister, y'understand, but a spy--_never_!'
"At this point when it looks like plain sailing for Bernstorff, the
Kaiser picks out that fifty-thousand-dollar item, and right there
Bernstorff makes his big mistake, for as soon as he starts that
Congressmen story the old man begins to figure that if Congressmen are
so cheap and spies so dear, y'understand, the only thing to do is to
call up the _Polizeiprasidium_ and tell 'em to send around a
plain-clothes man right away to number Twenty-six A Schloss Platz, ring
Hohenzollern's bell."
"Then you really think that Bernstorff and Von Papen and all them crooks
didn't spend the money over here that they claimed they spent," Morris
said.
"They probably spent it, all right," Abe replied, "but whether or not
they spent it for what they claimed they spent it _for_, Mawruss, _that_
I don't know, because if them fellers didn't stop at arson, dynamiting,
and murder, why should they hesitate at petty larceny?"
"But what them boys did in the way of blowing up munitions plants and
sinking passenger-steamers was because they loved the Kaiser so much,
and instead of arresting Bernstorff for the money he spent, Abe, I bet
yer the Kaiser made him a thirty-second degree passed assistant
_Geheimrat_ or something," Morris declared.
"Well, there's no accounting for tastes, Mawruss," Abe said, "and if
these here Germans is willing to slaughter, rob, and burn because they
are in love with a feller which to me has a personality as attractive as
the framed insides of the entrance to a safe deposit vault,
y'understand, all I can say is that I don't give them no more credit for
it than I would to a bookkeeper who committed forgery because he was in
love with the third lady from the end in the second row of the original
Bowery Burlesquers."
"The wonder to me is that the Kaiser don't see it that way, too," Morris
commented.
"That's because when it comes right down _to_ it, Mawruss, the third
lady from the end ain't no more stuck on herself than the Kaiser is on
_him_self," Abe said. "Them third ladies from the end figure that the
poor suckers always _did_ like 'em, and that therefore they are always
_going_ to like 'em, so they go ahead and treat their admirers like
dawgs and take everything they give 'em, y'understand, and the end of it
is that either a third lady becomes so careless that from a perfect
thirty-six she comes to be an imperfect fifty-four and has to work for a
living, or else she gets pinched for receiving the property which them
poor buffaloed admirers of hers handed over to her, and that'll be the
end of the Kaiser, too."
"And how soon do you think _that_ will happen?" Morris asked.
"That depends on how soon the Kaiser's admirers gets through with him,"
Abe said.
"Maybe the Kaiser will quit first," Morris concluded, "because you take
them third ladies from the end, Abe, and sooner or later they grow
terrible tired of this here--now--fast life."
V