If the suspect has “covered up” more than an honest engineer should, he is systematically shadowed by other League operatives during the remainder of his stay. Walking out or staying in his room, travelling in taxicabs or in street cars, making business calls or social calls, one or more of his two “shadows” would probably keep him in sight and make memoranda regarding every person he met and spoke with and every significant circumstance that took place. Only when in a private house or in his hotel room would he escape observation--and even then a fairly close tab would be kept on what he was doing. A record would be made of every telephone call, every telegram, every letter received, with particular reference to the postmark, dates, and the return cards on the envelopes. His baggage would be inventoried and described, even to its hotel labels, its character, and its probable price and origin. When he finally departed, if the porter bought his tickets for him or whether he purchased them himself at the station, his route, and his first destination--all would be matters of history. One of his “shadows” would even see him safely past the last suburban stop from which he might double back to the city or to a waiting confederate. This seems a mighty pother to make about an apparently innocent traveller. But the League prefers to work overtime and play safe. The narratives of some of the “tailings” would make marvellous reading if they only led up to the proper dramatic climax. Many of them do--but those are not to be talked about yet awhile. And the others are significant only because they are the records of uninteresting tasks as faithfully executed as though the sheltering doorway or hotel lobby chair were a listening post in France. Remember that these tasks were made both complex and difficult by the lack of laws defining espionage, disloyalty, and sedition as punishable crimes. That ancient act of 1798 could be invoked for the internment of dangerous enemy aliens. But an American citizen, native or naturalized, could spit treason and plot trouble unchecked so long as he did not run foul of the civil or the criminal code. That is all changed now; the amended Espionage and Sedition Law, signed by the President in June, 1917, is so broad and has such a fine set of serviceable teeth that no disloyal citizen or unfriendly alien can escape the penalty if his guilt can be proved. For more than a year, however, the League was compelled not only to prove a citizen’s pro-German activities; it had also to find a way to punish them, or at least to discourage them. Every inquiry into such a case, therefore, had to be supplemented by an effort to find evidence of an offense against the civil or criminal statutes. And where this failed, a good old-fashioned “talking to” often had the desired effect.