That winter of 1913, you remember, had been a stormy period in Mexico. Huerta had made his coup d’etat. Francisco Madero had been deposed and murdered. President Taft had again mobilized part of the United States forces on the border, leaving his successor, President Wilson, to deal with a Southern neighbor in the throes of revolution. The Nineteenth Infantry was ordered to Galveston, Texas. And in Galveston the agents of Berlin suddenly put their fingers on me again. It happened in the public library. I was reading a book there one day when a man I knew well came and sat down beside me. We will call him La Vallee—born and bred a Frenchman, but one of Germany’s most trusted agents. “_Wie gehts, von der Goltz?_” was his greeting. I told him he had mistaken me for some one else. He laughed. “What’s the use of bluffing,” he asked, “when each of us knows the other? Just read these instructions I’m carrying.” He laid a paper before me. La Vallee’s instructions were brief and outwardly not threatening. Find von der Goltz, they bade him. Try to make him realize how great a wrong he was guilty of when he deserted his country. But let him understand, too, that his government appreciates his services and believes he acted impulsively. If he will prove his loyalty by returning to his duty his mistake will be blotted out. I read carefully and asked La Vallee how I was expected to prove my loyalty at that particular time. “You know what it is like in Mexico now,” he said. “Our government has heavy interests there. Your services are needed in helping to look out for them.” “But,” I objected, “I am a soldier in the United States Army. You are asking me to be a deserter.” “Germany,” said La Vallee, “has the first claim on every German. If your duty happens to make you seem a deserter, that is all right. Frank Wachendorf must manage to bear the disgrace. Speaking of that,” he added, carelessly enough, but eyeing me severely, “were you not indiscreet there? Suppose some enemy should find out that you made false statements when you enlisted? I believe there is a penalty.” La Vallee knew that he had me in his power. I had to yield, and was told to report to the German Consul at Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. So in March, 1913, Frank Robert Wachendorf, private, became a deserter from the United States Army and a reward of $50 was offered for his arrest. Before I crossed the border I had one very important piece of business to attend to, and I stopped in El Paso long enough to finish it. Mexico, under the conditions that prevailed, was an ideal trap for me. As the lesser of two evils I had decided to risk my body there. But I had no mind to risk also what was to Berlin of far more value than my body—namely, that document which, a year before, had led to my abrupt departure from Germany and her service.