"No Mamette," she was saying as she stood by the window of her apartment, watching the sunset and talking to her negro maid, "I have no positive evidence against Franz von Rintelen. I doubt if I ever will. I only know that there is something about him which makes me believe that he is at the head of the river pirates and commerce destroyers who have sprung up around the harbor recently. But I can't be sure." "How about Mista Von Lertz?" Mamette spoke the name with a tinge of hatred. For Mamette, black though she was, could see only three colors, the red, the white and the blue. Dixie smiled at her tone. "I've tried--and tried hard. But Von Lertz seems afraid to tell me much about him. The best clues I've gotten have been through Agnes Taylor, who is working on the switchboard at Von Lertz's apartment. She has reported several conversations between Rintelen and Von Lertz, but they have been generally meaningless. I--" The tingling of the telephone had interrupted. Dixie answered, to hear the voice of Agnes Taylor, the operative who had been placed at the switchboard of Von Lertz's apartment house. "Miss Mason?" "Yes." "Do you know--" the voice was low, guarded--"anyone named Walter Schleindel?" "No--why?" "He works in some bank. Reports to Paul Koenig of the Hamburg American line who pays him for information. From what I can gather he steals information from manifests and bills of lading coming into the bank for payment." Dixie Mason smiled. "So that's the way they know just when to rob freight cars in the yards and when to sink lighters, is it? I'll telephone the Chief. How did you learn?" "Some man just called Von Lertz. Told him that Schleindel had reported 3,000 head of horses just received at the Allied barns at Jersey and to go at once to the shack at Crow Crossing--" "I know where it is." Dixie Mason's eyes had narrowed. "Just above the old rock crusher on the Vernon road. What was Von Lertz to do there?" "I couldn't catch all of it--I heard something about the 'tools' and to 'use the new methods.' I couldn't recognize the voice." "It wasn't Paul Koenig?" "No, nor Bernstorff, Von Papen or Boy-Ed." "Then it must have been Rintelen." "I couldn't be sure--he changes his voice so often." Dixie smiled again. Then she turned from the telephone. "Mamette," she called. "Get me out a plain dress of some kind--something that I can 'rough it' in." "Yes, Missy--but Laws, yo' ain't goin' to stick your head into danger, is yo,' Missy?" "I'm going to find out what's happening at Crow Crossing," said Dixie with quiet determination. "Hurry, please, Mamette." And while she made her preparations, Harrison Grant stood in the dusk, talking to the watchman of a stevedoring plant on the Jersey side of the Harbor. "I'm from Chief Flynn's office," he was saying, "I received an order to--"