Espionage, German -- United States -- Fiction; Germans -- United States -- Fiction; Spy stories
"Heinric von Lertz will not wait until the day set for the destruction
of the Bethlehem steel works to attempt it," she said. "The news from
San Francisco will cause him to attempt the climax of the plot planned
by Von Papen before it is discovered. Even now he may be starting on
it."
She then gave him the address of the artisan in Harlem who was
inserting explosives in the hollow lumps of coal for use at Bethlehem.
Grant tarried hardly longer than was required to express his thanks
after receiving this information and hurried away.
But he and his men arrived too late. Evidence aplenty was found to
prove that Madam Stephan's description of the work that was being done
had been true. But the three men who had occupied it were gone.
"They left but a moment since, sir," volunteered a woman who lived on
the same floor. "A sleek light mustached young man called, and they
left with some satchels in a taxicab."
So Heinric von Lertz had taken the course which Madam Stephan expected
of him. Grant did some quick thinking. Hastily running over timetables
which he carried in his pocket he found that a train was leaving
shortly for Bethlehem and taking a long chance he ordered his men back
into the machine that had taken them to disregard speed regulations and
quickly arrived at the station.
With but a few minutes to spare they burst into the large train room.
Suddenly Grant raised his arm and pointed. Heinric von Lertz was at one
of the track gates talking earnestly, to three men.
"Stewart, Cavanaugh, come with me, we must keep out of sight of Von
Lertz," cautioned Grant. "You other men are not known to him. Keep the
men to whom he is talking, in sight. We will meet you on the train."
Grant, and his two most trusted men, found their way to the train
through the employee's gate, opened to them by their Secret Service
badges. On the train he found the three German conspirators well
covered by his men. Von Lertz had not boarded the train, according to
a report of one of the operatives.
It was after night-fall when the train landed them in Bethlehem. The
sky was lurid with the glare from the big gun works, incessantly
turning out large calibre artillery, by means of three shifts
of workmen who kept the wheels turning night and day. The three
conspirators slunk off into the shadows leading toward the settlement
of the foreign laborers in the big plant, closely followed by Grant and
his men.
In one of the poorest sections of the city the men mounted an outer
stairway leading to the top floor of a two-storied building. After
some delay they were admitted. Ten minutes later the figure of a woman
came down the stairway, stepping cautiously and carrying gingerly some
objects in her apron. Hastily assigning two men to keep her in sight,
he organized the remainder of his force for a raid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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