Whether or not General Huerta was to "return to Mexico some day" depended upon the temper of the United States. He knew that when he authorized the statement. He did not know--or else he was incredibly bold--that the Government was in possession of the whole story, and that orders had been issued from the highest source in the country not to let him return. One day in the late summer he slipped away, ostensibly to visit the San Francisco Exposition. Government agents shadowed him and let him make his own pace. He took the southern route, and traveled so quietly that his flight was not publicly marked until he had passed through Kansas City. As he approached the border he became as eager as a boy at the prospect of his 'return from Elba'; then, as he was almost in sight of the soil from which he had been exiled, he was arrested on a technical charge and jailed. In August Rintelen fled the country. The _Providence Journal_ had just published an irritating charge that Boy-Ed was carrying on negotiations with Mexico; the German Embassy denied the charge, although Boy-Ed with his knowledge of Mexico had assisted ably in the plot; and the excitement of official interest in Huerta's recent connections made von Rintelen nervous. When he was captured at Falmouth by the British, his man-Friday, Andrew V. Meloy, confessed that he had inadvertently tipped over the plot when he had innocently telephoned a Carranzista to find out, for safety sake, whether the Carranza party suspected Huerta. It was this Carranzista who made a few inquiries of his own, and succeeded in planting the spy in the Holland House meeting. The aged general, although he was transferred to a more comfortable prison, took his confinement bitterly. His dream had been bright indeed, and it had been bluntly interrupted. As the autumn came on his health showed signs of failing, and his career of dissipation began to total the final reckoning. The illness became grave, and after two surgical attempts to save his life, he died in January, 1916, heartbroken. Von Eckhart, the minister to Mexico City, was to Mexico what Bernstorff was to the United States and he employed faithfully the familiar tactics of his superior: revolution, editorial propaganda, filibustering and double dealing. In the fall of 1916 the fine German hand could be seen prompting a note sent by Mexico to the United States urging an embargo on the shipment on munitions and foodstuffs to the warring nations (Mexico had neither foodstuffs nor munitions to supply). And in December, 1916, Eckhart was robbed of the achievement of a conspiracy of fantastic proportions.