VON RINTELEN--THE DESTROYER
Months of apparent calm followed the plot against the fleet--a calm,
however, which existed only on the surface, for beneath the veneer of
friendliness for America, Ambassador Von Bernstorff and his aides,
Capt. Franz von Papen, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed and Dr. Heinrich Albert
still were scheming and working for the downfall of America in their
insatiable desires to defeat the Allies. More, they had received aid
from abroad, in the person of an intimate friend of the Crown Prince of
Germany, Franz von Rintelen, sent to America for the ostensible purpose
of promoting friendliness between Germany and America, but in reality
with a bank account of more than fifty million dollars, to spend on
any form of death and destruction that he might see fit--as long as it
harmed the Allies. And whether the harming of the Allies also brought
its attendant injury to America, made little difference to Franz von
Rintelen or his cohorts. The United States had been described by Dr.
Heinrich Albert as "the American front," and so they regarded it--as
a battlefield upon which to make their advances and counterthrusts
against the Allies, regardless of the consequences to the land for
which they professed such friendliness and such regard.
So it was, that in the spending of that fifty million dollars, Franz
von Rintelen had built himself up practically a separate organization
with which he preyed upon shipping, industry and manufacture. River
pirates who swarmed the Hudson to scuttle lighters, to start fires in
cargoes, to cut hawsers and mangle the steering apparatus of tugs that
they might crash into each other and sink with their cargoes; so called
"Peace Councils," which strove for the spreading of propaganda on any
kind of peace at any price--as long as it was favorable to Germany;
alleged "Embargo Conferences," the sole object of which was to spread a
feeling throughout America that it was wrong for the United States to
manufacture arms and ammunition which could be sold to the Allies--all
these things lay within the province of Franz von Rintelen, to handle
as he chose, with only an occasional conference with Ambassador Von
Bernstorff at which he told of his progress, and laid forth his
expense accounts for the official signature of the head of Imperial
Germany's spy system in America. And so quietly had his organization
been built up, so thoroughly had Franz von Rintelen concealed himself
behind a cloak of supernumeraries and "straw bosses" that even the
cleverest of the members of the Secret Service had failed as yet to
gain a clue to his real activities. But there were suspicions--and
among those who held them was Dixie Mason.
"No Mamette," she was saying as she stood by the window of her
apartment, watching the sunset and talking to her negro maid, "I
have no positive evidence against Franz von Rintelen. I doubt if I
ever will. I only know that there is something about him which makes
me believe that he is at the head of the river pirates and commerce
destroyers who have sprung up around the harbor recently. But I can't
be sure."
"How about Mista Von Lertz?" Mamette spoke the name with a tinge of
hatred. For Mamette, black though she was, could see only three colors,
the red, the white and the blue. Dixie smiled at her tone.
"I've tried--and tried hard. But Von Lertz seems afraid to tell me much
about him. The best clues I've gotten have been through Agnes Taylor,
who is working on the switchboard at Von Lertz's apartment. She has
reported several conversations between Rintelen and Von Lertz, but they
have been generally meaningless. I--"
The tingling of the telephone had interrupted. Dixie answered, to hear
the voice of Agnes Taylor, the operative who had been placed at the
switchboard of Von Lertz's apartment house.
"Miss Mason?"
"Yes."
"Do you know--" the voice was low, guarded--"anyone named Walter
Schleindel?"
"No--why?"
"He works in some bank. Reports to Paul Koenig of the Hamburg American
line who pays him for information. From what I can gather he steals
information from manifests and bills of lading coming into the bank for
payment."
Dixie Mason smiled.
"So that's the way they know just when to rob freight cars in the yards
and when to sink lighters, is it? I'll telephone the Chief. How did you
learn?"
"Some man just called Von Lertz. Told him that Schleindel had reported
3,000 head of horses just received at the Allied barns at Jersey and to
go at once to the shack at Crow Crossing--"
"I know where it is." Dixie Mason's eyes had narrowed. "Just above the
old rock crusher on the Vernon road. What was Von Lertz to do there?"
"I couldn't catch all of it--I heard something about the 'tools' and to
'use the new methods.' I couldn't recognize the voice."
"It wasn't Paul Koenig?"
"No, nor Bernstorff, Von Papen or Boy-Ed."
"Then it must have been Rintelen."
"I couldn't be sure--he changes his voice so often."
Dixie smiled again. Then she turned from the telephone.
"Mamette," she called. "Get me out a plain dress of some
kind--something that I can 'rough it' in."
"Yes, Missy--but Laws, yo' ain't goin' to stick your head into danger,
is yo,' Missy?"
"I'm going to find out what's happening at Crow Crossing," said Dixie
with quiet determination. "Hurry, please, Mamette."
And while she made her preparations, Harrison Grant stood in the dusk,
talking to the watchman of a stevedoring plant on the Jersey side of
the Harbor.
"I'm from Chief Flynn's office," he was saying, "I received an order
to--"
"I know all about it," the watchman answered. "The foreman left
instructions for me. We're crating automobile ambulances for shipment
to France. I want to show you something that we found today."
He led the way into the stevedoring shop, there to point out the axle
of a great chassis--and to swear quietly as he looked at it.
"German spies done it!" he announced. "Nobody else would have been so
dirty and low. These are ambulances, y'know--ambulances for use on
the battlefields. And you know what'd happen if that ever got on a
shell-torn field."
He pointed to the axle of the car. There, where the putty had been
removed by the workmen who had discovered it, was a great, jagged
hole in the steel of the axle, a hole burnt by an acetylene torch,
converting the axle into a weak, shallow shell, doomed to break with
the first holting strain. Grant frowned as he looked at it.
"So that's the game, eh?" he said. "That's why so many ambulances have
been breaking down in France! That's why--"
He turned sharply, the watchman with him. Far at one side of the
opposite dock they had seen the shadow of a man as it slunk along,
hiding behind the boxes and bales as he made his way from light to
darkness. Grant sped forward, the watchman beside him. A moment more
and the shadow leaped forth, to seek escape in the maze of shipping on
the docks.
But impossible. Headed off by closed doors, he veered, dodged, swerved
in his course and leaped past the guard of an interned liner, seeking
to spring from it to the next in his effort to escape.
An effort that failed. Blocked again, he veered once more, crashed his
way through the door of the ship's wireless room, then whirled, a chair
lifted high over his head. But the blow: did not descend. The tactics
of the football field had come into play for Grant--and with a quick
motion he had blocked the blow of the spy, disarmed him and forced
him against the wall. Fifteen minutes later, he was listening to the
confession, forced in jerky sentences from the spy's lips:
"A guy gave me $100. to set fire to the docks," he was saying. "That's
all I know. He was some fellow who worked around the waterfront here.
I'd gotten a lot o' money offen him and I wanted more. I belonged to
his magneto and axle gang."
"His what?" Harrison Grant bent forward.
"His magneto gang. We'd steal the magnetos offen automobiles that
was goin' to France. He'd give us five dollars for every one we
stole--then let us have 'em to sell."
"Another little system of harming ambulances, eh?" said Grant slowly.
"What about the axles?"
"We burned 'em with an acetylene torch--so they'd break down when they
hit the battlefields--"
"So they'd break down, when they were filled with wounded!" The words
came from Grant's lips in scathing denunciation. "And you confess to
it--you mongrel!" His hands clenched--it was all he could do to keep
them from the throat of the craven being before him. "Now you tell your
story and tell it quick!"
Ten minutes later Harrison Grant turned to the guard of the interned
ship, meanwhile eyeing the detectors, the batteries and sending
apparatus of the wireless in the room.
"This wireless in working order?" he asked sharply.
"Yes."
Harrison Grant stepped toward it quickly. A moment more and he was
sending forth the code-call of the Criminology Club. For the spy, while
not able to tell the names of the directorate of those who engineered
the heinous business of disabling ambulances, at least had given
information that was more than valuable--the fact that a "burning
party" had been scheduled for that night--and naming the location and
the freight yards.
Again and again Harrison Grant sent out the call--at last to receive an
answer. Then his message snapped over the airlanes to the city beyond:
"Criminology Club:
"Meet me Stevens Point quick. Come armed.
"Harrison Grant."
And while Harrison Grant waited, Dixie Mason, her automobile hidden in
the shadow of the old rock crusher, crept to the side of the little
shack at Crow's Crossing. The sound of voices came from within, low,
indistinct. Again and again Dixie strove to hear what was being
said--but only failure greeted her. Then--
A pine knot, half hinging in its receptacle, caught her glance.
Stealthily she wormed it loose, to peer within. Men were there, men who
were pouring gasoline into small fuzeed, metal containers, men who were
making their preparations for hurried flight, and receiving orders as
they did so. Already two of them were at the doorway.
"Take the shortcut to the Allied stockyards," one of them was saying.
"We'll burn the barns--you look after the other part of the yards. Now
hurry!"
They were gone, while Dixie cowered in the shadows. Stealthily she
watched them cross the patch of snow and ice before the cabin, then
disappear, unable to move for fear of detection, her brain seething
with plans and hopes. But they were faint! The spies had taken the
"short cut"--one that Dixie did not know.
The telephone? There was none. The police? There was no way to reach
them. Only one thing remained for Dixie Mason to do--to scramble as
fast as possible to her machine and to race across country to the
Allied horsebarns. But would she be able to reach there in time?
The battle of wits and courage was on! Over at Steven's Point, Harrison
Grant had leaped to the running board of a motor car as it had rounded
a corner and shouted to the chauffeur:
"Faster, old man! They're destroying Red Cross supplies in the railroad
yards!"
Then as the machine spurted forward, the president of the Criminology
Club leaned toward his men.
"See that your revolvers are in working order. Spies are burning the
axles of ambulances. We have every right to shoot to kill!"
The men nodded. Cavanaugh opened a new box of cartridges. The machine
sped on through the semi-darkness toward the railroad yards. As for
Dixie Mason--
Veering into the stockyards district of New Jersey, she raised in her
machine and waved madly to a crowd of horse wranglers, just coming
forth from a pool hall.
"Quick!" she called, "there's danger at the horsebarns!"
Then, driving harder than ever, she sped forward, in a last vain
attempt to reach the barns before the spies could light their bombs.
Before her loomed the shadows of the barns, with their thousands of
animals within. And scrambling up a telephone pole toward a window
showed the form of a German fire-fiend.
Harder than ever pressed the foot of Dixie Mason against the
accelerator of her car, while her soul raged within her. Not content
with sinking the ships that carried innocent horses and cattle to
France, not content with filling their oats with steel barbs, painted
yellow and designed to be eaten by the unfortunate animals, not
content with poisoning the water of these beasts who were a part of
the war only through the will of others, Imperial Germany now was
resorting to worse measures to gain its "victories," the horror and
agonizing torture of fire! Dixie's lips pressed firm. Then, her anger
drowning all thought of danger, she skidded her machine until it almost
overturned as she veered from the stockyards alley into the areaway of
the horsebarns, made her way through the great doorways, then sent her
automobile thundering up the runway to the second floor--there to leap
forth and run toward the form that had just entered the haymows. But
too late!
Already the tool of Imperial Germany had touched a match to the
gasoline filled container. Already the fuse was spluttering, while
with a great, sweeping motion, the spy threw the bomb far into the
loose hay and hurled his gigantic form toward the struggling Dixie. A
moment more and he had felled her, then scrambled into her machine,
reversing it and sending it at perilous speed down the runway and out
through the opposite doors, bowling over two of the rustlers as they
strove to make their way through the already heavy clouds of smoke, and
tearing on toward freedom. And in the loft of the mammoth barn, Dixie
Mason lay unconscious, the fire gaining greater and greater headway all
about her, where the gasoline discharge had fired the conflagration
everywhere!
Imperial Germany had succeeded in a part of its scheme at least. But in
another--
Out in the railroad yards came the crackle of a revolver shot as
Harrison Grant and his men surprised two men in the interior of a
box car, hard at their task of burning the axles of an auto with an
acetylene torch. A spy fell maimed, while from seemingly everywhere,
other spies broke from the cars and sought safety.
But safety that was far away. For the members of the Criminology Club
had spread themselves in the lanes between the great masses of box
cars, to leap forth as the spies ran aimlessly about in their search
for shelter, to seize them, to shackle them. Atop a box car where he
had climbed after the first onslaught, Harrison Grant moved swiftly
here and there, shouting his orders to the operatives below. In ten
places at once, the battle was mounting to the proportions of a life
and death struggle--with the members of the Criminology Club in the
ascendancy. But at the horsebarns--
Up in the loft, Dixie Mason stirred to consciousness as the flames
ate closer. Down below, where the maddened animals were screaming and
stamping in their fright, came the sounds of shouts, of curses and
yells as the horse wranglers, summoned from every part of the yards,
struggled to release the flame-frightened animals. Through a chink
in the frame wall of the building, Dixie could see another red glare,
starting in the distance--then the forms of thousands of beasts as
they sped forth to safety, freed by the men who had rushed to their
assistance the minute the alarm had been given by Dixie. Everywhere was
the milling rush to save--save--save, while men risked their lives that
the lives of horses and cattle might be spared, while men took risks
and men braved death--and while Dixie Mason struggled impotently to
fight her way through the ring of fire that seemed to have closed all
about her.
The smoke ate its stinging way into her cringing lungs, choking her,
gagging her. She sought to scream--but the screams were lost in the
wild conglomeration of noises from below, the shrieks of fear maddened
horses, the surging work of rescue. Here, there, back again she
struggled, only to face everywhere a wall of fire that inch by inch was
eating toward her--a lining, writhing, all consuming circle of death!
The flames had eaten their way through portions of the roof now and
were spreading the flare of their flames against the sky. Over in the
railroad yards, Harrison Grant, receiving the reports of his men as
they checked up the list of captured spies, glanced into the distance,
started, then whirled to the members of the Criminology Club.
"Shackle those men together!" he ordered sharply. "Leave them in charge
of Sisson--he can handle them. Then everyone come with me--there's a
fire at the stockyards!"
Quickly the orders were obeyed. Quickly the men swept forward under the
leadership of Harrison Grant to aid the hundreds of horse wranglers and
cattlemen in their maddened efforts to release the flame threatened
animals. And as they did so, Dixie Mason was making her last desperate
effort at escape.
Death in the flames or death in a leap--Dixie Mason chose the chance of
the latter. She had fought her way forward, beating out the flames that
caught her dress, smothering her free hand against her nostrils to shut
out the paralyzing effect of smoke and gasoline vapors, seeking from
the sounds from below to ascertain an area into which she might leap
with some opportunity for safety.
At last it came. A lull in the milling rush from below. Dixie fought
her way to a railing, swung under it, hung there for one, long,
trembling instant, then, just as a whirling rush of horses cleared the
way beneath her, she dropped.
The fall stunned her for a second. Then the roaring sound of plunging
animals brought her to her senses, just in time to enable her to
scramble out of the way of a flame crazed group of horses as they
surged past her, then reeling, to seek through the smoke the freedom of
the open air.
Someway, somehow, she managed to waver to the outer doors of the big
barn, there to gasp at the cold, life-giving atmosphere that surged
into her lungs--then to run forward whitefaced at the sight before her.
Everywhere was fire--fire which raged about the sheds, fire which
licked its way along the railings of the cattlepans, which ate at the
chutes and connections, fire which seethed and spit and crackled. From
far in the distance came the clanging of bells and the hissing of
steam--the hastily called fire apparatus of twenty stations, fighting
against the flames--but fighting a losing fight. Dixie's hands clenched.
"The cowards!" she exclaimed, "the fiends!"
"Look out there, Miss!" It was the friendly shout of a horse wrangler
as he pushed her aside. Down the alleyway sounded a thundering roar
as twenty shouting men drove before them a great mass of wild-eyed,
galloping horses. The wrangler shouted happily as they passed him.
"That's the end of 'em," he said heartily, "we were luckier'n we
thought."
"The end of them?" Dixie Mason turned hopefully. "Then you managed to
save----"
"Most of 'em Miss. We got some help from an unexpected quarter. Bunch
of Secret Service men who were over in the yards chased over here and
took the load off our minds o' loosenin' the cattle in the south end.
That let us put all our work on the dangerous part of the yards."
"Secret Service men?" Dixie Mason started. "Do you know any of them----"
"Nobody. A fellow gave his name as Grant, but----"
"Harrison Grant?"
"Think so."
Dixie Mason turned sharply. Harrison Grant must not see her there--it
would mean the necessity for explanations--explanations which might not
be easily forthcoming. From far away came shouts--the shouts of men
approaching through one of the alleys which as yet had been untouched
by the flames. Dixie hardly heard. All that she knew was that she must
leave the vicinity of the fire as soon as possible--content in the
knowledge that her work had not gone for naught after all. Most--if
not all--of the horses and cattle had been saved. Imperial Germany had
destroyed American property in the shape of barns and pens--but it had
at least failed to destroy the lives of the innocent beings against
which it had plotted.
Almost, aimlessly she turned to the railroad yards to escape the
roaming droves of horses and cattle that were swirling everywhere. On
she went, crossing track after track, as she sought the streets and
the open. The light of the fire flared higher--and with it a slight
exclamation came into Dixie's throat at the sight of a man before her.
Hurriedly she swerved, leaped between two closing box cars of a
flying switch, and then, as the man pursued, jumped across the track
upon which was approaching a rapidly traveling train, hurrying on to
where her deserted automobile showed its dull form, where it had been
abandoned by the fire fiend. Once she looked back--to discern the fact
that the man still watched her beneath the long train. Then she hurried
on again.
Back in her apartment, she reported to her Chief, to give the name
of Walter Schleindel and her suspicions against Franz von Rintelen.
An hour more went by and the telephone rang to bring the news of
Schleindel's arrest, and his confession, of how he had used the bank
as a clearing house for German Sodom, stealing the information of
the manifests and bills of lading of Allied shipments which came in
there for collection by the consignors, then in turn, selling this
information to Paul Koenig of the Hamburg American line. Dixie smiled
happily.
"How about Rintelen?" she asked. A slight ejaculation of disgust came
over the wire.
"My men failed to find him. Someone must have notified him of the
arrest of the auto burners in the railroad yards. At any rate he has
left his hotel, without giving an address."
All of which was correct. For Franz von Rintelen was at that moment
telephoning to Bernstorff, and announcing to him that in future, his
name would be E.V. Gates and that his 'business' would be that of a
'purchasing agent,'--but that Imperial Germany's work of destruction
would still continue.
And meanwhile also, at the Criminology Club, Harrison Grant, tired from
his labors of the night, hesitated at the doorway to call an operative.
"Bailey," he said, "I want you to take a skirmish around and see what
you can learn about a girl named Dixie Mason."
"Who is she?"
Harrison Grant smiled grimly.
"I'd give a good deal to know. Apparently she's an ex-actress. At
least, that's what her friends tell me. Time was too, they say, when
she was very communicative and friendly. Now she tells no one of her
plans or of her activities. And strangely enough, my path has crossed
hers twice in places where only the agents of Imperial Germany could
consistently be. She was at the fire tonight."
"At the fire?" Bailey stared. "Are you sure?"
"I have a good pair of eyes." said Harrison Grant, "I saw her
there--not fifty feet away. I chased her--but a train cut me off."
Bailey raised a hand to his hat.
"I'll see what I can find out," he said quietly and left the
building. But Grant continued to stand there, staring at the
floor--wondering--wondering what this woman whom circumstance again and
again gave the accusation of being a German spy, could have played in
this latest evidence of Imperial Germany's ghoulish cruelty!