Germans -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Germany
It is just as well to get better acquainted with Oppegaard because
he was a vital link in Fay’s undoing. His real name was Paul Siebs
and for the purpose of this story he might as well be known by
that name. Siebs had also been in this country in earlier days
and during his residence in Chicago, from 1910 to 1913, he had
gotten acquainted with young Brietung. He, too, had gone back to
Germany before the war, but soon after it began he had come back
to the United States under his false name, ostensibly as an agent
of an electrical concern in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the purpose
of buying copper. He frankly admitted later that this copper was
intended for re-export to Germany to be used in the manufacture of
munitions of war. He did not have much success in his enterprise
and he was finally forced to make a living from hand to mouth by
small business transactions of almost any kind. He could not afford
a separate office, so he rented desk room in the office of the
Whitehall Trading Company, a small subsidiary of the Raymond-Hadley
Corporation. His desk was in the same room with the manager of the
company, Carl L. Wettig.
When Brietung asked Siebs to buy him some chlorate of potash Siebs
was delighted at the opportunity to make some money and immediately
undertook the commission. He had been instructed to get a small
amount, perhaps 200 pounds. He needed money so badly, however, that
he was very glad to find that the smallest kegs of the chlorate
of potash were 112 pounds each, and he ordered three kegs. He paid
for them with money supplied by Brietung and took a delivery slip.
Ultimately this delivery slip was presented by Scholz who appeared
one day with a truck and driver and took the chemical away.
Fay and Scholz made some experiments with the chlorate of potash
and Fay decided it was not strong enough to serve his purpose. He
then determined to try dynamite. Again he wished to avoid suspicion
and this time, after consultation with Kienzle, he recalled
Bronkhorst down at the Lush Sanatorium in New Jersey. Bronkhorst,
in his work as superintendent of the grounds at the sanatorium, was
occasionally engaged in laying water mains in the rocky soil there,
and for this purpose kept dynamite on hand. Fay got a quantity of
dynamite from him. Later, however, he decided that he wanted a
still more powerful explosive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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