Many a confidence passed across a table was intercepted by the acute ears of a German spy. Members of the Anglo-French Loan Commission who were staying at the Biltmore in 1914 were served by a German agent in a waiter's uniform. It would have gone well for America and the preparations of supplies for her later Allies if there had been posted in every hotel dining-room the French admonition, "Taisez-vous! Ils s'ecoutent!" CHAPTER X FRANZ VON RINTELEN The leak in the National City Bank--The _Minnehaha_--Von Rintelen's training--His return to America--His aims--His funds--Smuggling oil--The Krag-Joergensen rifles--Von Rintelen's flight and capture. There was a suggestion in the newspapers of dates immediately following Paul Koenig's arrest that the authorities had been lax in allowing the Germans to have later access to the safe in his private office in the Hamburg-American building. As a matter of fact the contents of the safe were well known to the authorities--how, it is not necessary to say. The multitudinous notes and reference data kept by the industrious "P. K." uncovered a plentiful German source of information of munitions. They knew the factories in which war materials were being turned out. They knew the numbers of the freight cars into which the materials were loaded for shipment to the waterfronts. They knew the ships into which those cargoes were consigned. How they knew was revealed by Koenig's secretary, Metzler, after he had been arrested in the second Welland episode. [Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_ Franz von Rintelen] Down in Wall Street, in the foreign department of the National City Bank, there was a young German named Frederick Schleindl. He had been in the United States for several years, and had been employed by various bankers, one of whom recommended him to the National City Bank shortly after the outbreak of war. In the foreign department he had access to cables from the Allies concerning the purchase of munitions. It was customary to pay manufacturers for their completed orders when the bank received a bill of lading showing their shipment by railroad or their delivery at points of departure. Close familiarity with such bills of lading and cablegrams gave Schleindl an up-to-the-minute survey of the production of supplies.