“A man is one thing or the other,” said the other, flushing. “He's either a German or an American. There's nothing in the hyphen.” “You're quite right,” agreed Thorsensel. “The man you were with last night is an American in spite of his name and his antecedents. I happen to know. Somewhere in this city there is a list of the people I define as American-Germans. It is a rather formidable list, let me tell you. They happen to be traitors, damn them.” “Traitors? I thought you said they were loyal.” “You'd see what would happen to them if they ever set foot on German soil,” said Thorsensel, and it was not difficult, even for the stolid Elberon, to see what he meant by loyalty. An hour later the meeting came to an end, and the men went their several ways, unsuspected by the troubled, harassed watch-dogs of the nation. In that hour they had confidently, almost contemptuously, forwarded the consummation of other enterprises even more startling than the blowing up of the Reynolds plant. Remote assassinations were drawn a trifle nearer; plans leading to the bombing of New York by aeroplanes that were to rise up out of the sea from monster submarines; a new and not to be denied smashing of the Welland Canal; well-timed collisions of ships in the lower Hudson, and other basins, with results more stupendous than anything yet conceived; deceptive peace propaganda for the guileless and unwary American proletariat; subtle interference in the Halls of Congress; almost everything, it may be said, except the transfer of valuable mines in Brazil. That trifling detail was left to another day. Within the next hour, a message was on its way through the air to far-off Berlin, giving in singularly accurate figures the military losses sustained by the Allies at a spot in New Jersey recently occupied by the great Reynolds concern. CHAPTER IV |AT the end of ten days the excitement and horror occasioned by the blowing up of the Reynolds plant had succumbed to the great American curse: indifference. Amateur secret service men brazenly proclaiming themselves, went about more actively than ever, showing their badges and looking up clues at the same time, doing more harm than good, for while professional intelligence men were compelled to accept them as liabilities, the grateful aliens quite properly regarded them as assets. The burning of two grain warehouses in Chicago, the wrecking of a train loaded with motor trucks, three dock fires in Brooklyn, and the partially suppressed account of an explosion on board a man-of-war in home waters, provided the public with its daily supply of pessimism. Scores of alien suspects were seized, examined and interned. Others were caught with “the goods,” so to speak, and were flung into prison to await, in most cases, the minimum penalty for maximum intentions. But at no time was the finger of accusing Justice levelled at any one of the men or women who made the wheels go round.