I needed nothing more in Baltimore, so far as my present plans were concerned, but at Consul Luederitz’s suggestion, I decided to furnish myself with a passport, made out in my _nom de guerre_ of Bridgman Taylor. Luederitz was of the opinion that it might be useful at some future time as a means of proving that I was an American citizen, and accordingly we had one of the clerks make out an application, which was duly forwarded to Washington; and on August 31st the State Department furnished the non-existent Mr. Bridgman H. Taylor with a very comforting, although as it turned out, a decidedly dangerous document. One other thing I needed at the moment—a pistol, for my own was out of order. This Mr. Luederitz provided me with, from the effects of an Austrian who had committed suicide in Baltimore, not long before, and whose property, in the absence of an Austrian Consulate in the city, had been turned over to the German Consul. The days immediately following my return to New York were filled with preparations for our coup. I engaged three additional men to act as my lieutenants, acquainted them with the main objects of our plan and agreed to pay them daily while in New York, and to add a bonus when our enterprise should succeed. These men had all been well recommended to me, and I knew I could trust them thoroughly. One, Fritzen, who was later captured in Los Angeles, had been a purser on a Russian ship. A second, Busse, was a commercial agent who had lived for many years in England; the third bore the Italian name of Covani. Meantime I saw von Papen frequently, and had on one occasion received from him a check for two hundred dollars, which I needed for the sailors who were coming from Baltimore. That check, which is reproduced in this book, was to prove a singularly disastrous piece of paper, for in order to avoid connecting my name with that of von Papen, it was made out to Bridgman Taylor. I cashed it through a friend, Frederick Stallforth, whose brother, Alberto Stallforth, had been the German Consul at Parral when I was there. He, incidentally, was later implicated in the Rintelen trial and was detained for a time on Ellis Island, from which he was subsequently released. Mr. Stallforth lifted his eyebrows when he saw the name on the check. I smiled. “I am Bridgman Taylor,” I told him. He laughed, but said nothing, merely getting the check cashed for me at the German Club on Central Park South, of which he was a member. In a few days everything was ready. My men had arrived from Baltimore, my plans were definitely made—I needed but one thing: the explosives. These, von Papen told me, I could obtain through Captain Hans Tauscher, the American agent of the Krupps, which means, in effect, the German Government.