Rumor has credited Franz von Rintelen with relationship to the house of Hohenzollern. Backstairs gossip called him the Kaiser's own son--a stigma which he hardly deserved, as his face bore no resemblance to the architecture of the Hohenzollern countenance. It was one of strong aquiline curves; with a coat of swarthy grease paint he would have made an acceptable Indian, except for his tight, thin lips. The muscles of his jaws were forever playing under the skin--he had a tense, nervous habit of gritting his teeth. From under his pale eyebrows came a sharp look; it contrasted strangely with the hollow, burnt-out ferocity and fright which peered out of the tired eyes of his fellow prisoners when he was finally tried. He had a wiry strength and easy carriage. If he had not been a spy, von Rintelen would have made an excellent athlete. Like Boy-Ed he had a thorough gymnasium training. He specialized in finance and economics, entered the navy, and became captain-lieutenant. At the end of his period of service he went to London and obtained employment in a banking house. He then went to New York, where he was admitted to Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., and found time during his first stay in America to serve as Germany's naval representative at the ceremonies commemorating John Paul Jones. The German Embassy gave him entrée wherever he turned. He was a member of the New York Yacht Club, was received at Newport and in Fifth Avenue as a polished and agreeable person who spoke English, French and Spanish as fluently as his native tongue, and he acquired a broad firsthand knowledge of American financial principles and methods. He left New York long before the war, saying he was going to open Mexican and South American branches of a German bank. When he returned to Berlin in 1909, he was well qualified to sit in council with Tirpitz and the navy group and advise them on the development of the German Secret Service in America. American acquaintances who visited Berlin he received with marked hospitality, and some he even introduced to his august friend, the Crown Prince. In January, 1915, von Rintelen, then a director of the Deutsche Bank, and the National Bank für Deutschland, and a man of corresponding wealth, was commissioned to go to America, to buy cotton, rubber and copper, and to prevent the Allies from receiving munitions. So he went to America. And from his arrival in New York until his departure from that port, he threw sand in the smooth-running machinery of the organized German spy system.