Money--to be obtained by selling the magneto of the tractor I had brought along with me--was the first thing for me to see to after getting well clear of the country in which I was likely to be searched for, and it was in going after this that I was nearest to “coming a cropper.” I made the mistake--in my haste to get rid of the burden of the heavy thing--of offering it to the first electrical supply shop I came to. The proprietor wanted the thing very badly, but while he seemed to accept readily enough my story that I was a returned German-American working in munition factories, he said that the law required him to call up the police and ask if anything of the kind had been reported as stolen. I was not in the least afraid that the magneto would be reported at a point so distant from the one I had taken it from, but I did know that I couldn’t “stand up” for two minutes in any kind of interview with the police. So I told old Fritz to go ahead and telephone, and as soon as his back was turned grabbed up the magneto and slipped out to the street as quietly as possible. Whether the police made any effort to trace me or not I never knew. There was no evidence of it, anyhow. I headed into the first side street, and from that into another, and then kept going until I came to a dirty little secondhand shop with a Jew name over the door. Luckily the old Sheeny had had some dealing in junk and hardware, and knew at once the value of the goods I had to offer. As a matter of fact, indeed, the magneto was a “Bosch,” made in Germany in the first place, and imported to the U.S. by the makers of the tractor from which I had taken it. I was a good deal winded from quick walking--I hadn’t a lot of strength at that time anyhow--and the shrewd old Hebrew must have felt sure that I had stolen the thing within the hour. He said no word about ’phoning the police, however, but merely looked at me slyly out of the corner of one eye and offered me fifty marks for an instrument that was worth four or five hundred in ordinary times, and probably half again as much more through war demands. I could probably have got more out of him, but I was in no temper for bargaining, and the quick way in which I snapped up his offer must have confirmed any suspicions the old fox may have had concerning the way I came by the “goods.” The joint was probably little more than a “fence”--a thieves’ clearing-house--anyhow, and I was dead lucky to stumble on to it as I did.