I chose to see the camp first, and had the forethought to fill one of the pockets of my overcoat with Mexican gold pieces, very welcome to my whilom enemies. Poor fellows, they were, most of them, in the tattered clothing they had worn when captured. Their faces were wan and meagre and they were glad enough to accept, along with my greeting, the bits of gold I contrived to slip into their hands. In the center of the camp we came upon a tent more imposing than its mates, though by no means palatial. “This,” said my cicerone, “is the quarters of Gen. Mercado, the ranking officer here. Do you wish to pay him your respects?” As I have said, Salvador Mercado is squat and thick in build, with a bull neck. Some day, I fear, he is going to die of apoplexy, if he does not fall, more gloriously, in action. He shows certain apoplectic symptoms. For instance, as we stepped inside his tent and he saw who one of his visitors was, his neck swelled till it threatened to burst his collar. “My General,” I assured him warmly, “it is indeed a pleasure and an honor to see you again. I trust the climate up here agrees with you?” I did not offer him a gold piece when he said good-bye. [Illustration: Photograph of a clipping from the El Paso Herald of December 22, 1913. No motive has ever been discovered for the crime, other than the theory advanced by Captain von der Goltz.] From the detention camp I went to Koglmeier’s shop in South Santa Fe Street. Both front and rear doors were standing open, and through the back of one I could see Koglmeier’s horse, a beast I had often ridden, switching its tail in the yard, which was its stable. I went into the store. “Koglmeier!” I called. “Oh, Koglmeier!” From the side of the shop stepped out a man on whom I had never set eyes before. “Koglmeier ain’t here.” “But he must be here,” I insisted. “I can see his horse out there in the yard.” “Yes,” said the man, “the horse is here, but Koglmeier ain’t. Nor he won’t be. It just happens that Koglmeier’s dead.” “When did he die?” “The 20th of last December,” said the man. “But he didn’t die. He got murdered.” On the night of that 20th of December, Koglmeier, the quietest, most inoffensive man in El Paso, had been murdered in his shop. It looked, said my informant, “like his head had been beat in with a hatchet, or something.” Robbery apparently had not been the motive, for his possessions were untouched. If he had made an outcry it had not attracted attention, perhaps because a carousel was going full blast in the vacant lot beside his place of business. The authorities were utterly at sea, and still are. The United States Department of Justice agents told me they could find no motive for the murder. I knew the motive. Koglmeier had kept “my documents” for me; therefore Imperial Germany had willed he die.