Out of the stories these men told upon examination emerged not only the hideous perfection of the bomb itself, but the direct hand that the German Government and its agents in this country had in the scheme of putting it to its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared Fay’s admission that he had left Germany with money and a passport supplied by a man in the German Secret Service. Later, on the witness stand, when Fay had had time enough carefully to think out the most plausible story, he attempted to get away from this admission by claiming to have deserted from the German Army. He said that he had been financed in his exit from the German Empire by a group of business men who had put up a lot of money to back an automobile invention of his, which he had worked on before the war began. These men, so he claimed, were afraid they would lose all their money if he should happen to be killed before the invention was perfected. This tale, ingenious though it was, was too fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connection with all the things found in Fay’s possession when he was arrested. Beyond all doubt his scheme to destroy ships was studied and approved by his military superiors in Germany before he left, and that scheme alone was his errand to this country. Far less ingenious but 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 participation 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 at all that the device was calculated to do murder upon hundreds of helpless men, nor at all that 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: