Let a pack of reporters loose on a half dozen tangents and they will probably scratch the truth. A _Tribune_ man heard a whisper of the facts and set out on a hunt for "two Germans, Meyer and Hansen, who have been acting funny." He frightened the personnel right out of the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Captain Steinberg fled to Germany with a trunkful of reports on the necessity of concerted action to stop the shipment of munitions to the Allies, and Rintelen migrated to an office in the Woolworth Building. Some one heard of his activities there and he was evicted, taking final refuge in the Liberty Tower, in the office of Andrew M. Meloy, who had been in Germany to interest the German government in a scheme similar to Rintelen's own. In Meloy's office Rintelen posed as "E. V. Gates"--preserving the shadow of his identity as "Emil V. Gasche." So effective was his disappearance from the public view, that he was reported to have gone abroad as a secretary, and he sat in the tower and chuckled, and sent messages by wireless to Berlin through Sayville, and cablegrams to Berlin through England and Holland, and enjoyed all the sensations of a man attending a triple funeral in his honor. "Meyer," "Hansen" and "Gasche" were all dead, and yet, here was Rintelen! Although his sojourn in New York covered a period which was the peak of the curve of German atrocities in the United States, Rintelen was a fifth wheel. No man came to America to accomplish more, and no man accomplished less. No German agent had his boldness of project, and no German executive met a more ignominious fate. Whatever he touched with his golden wand turned to dross. He was hoodwinked here and there by his own agents, and frustrated by the vigilance of the Allied and the United States governments. He has been introduced here because of his connection with subsequent events, and yet this picturesque figure played the major part in not one successful venture. Four months he passed in America, until it became too small for him. In August the capture of Dr. Albert's portfolio and the publication of certain of its contents frightened Rintelen, and he applied for a passport as "Edward V. Gates, an American citizen of Millersville, Pa.," but he did not dare claim it. Though he had bought tickets under the alias, and had had drafts made payable in that name, he did not occupy the "Gates" cabin on the _Noordam_, but at the last minute engaged passage under the renascent name of "Emil V. Gasche," the harmless Swiss. He eluded the Federal agents, and sailed safely to Falmouth, England, where, after a search of the ship, and an excellent attempt to bluff it through, he finally surrendered to the British authorities as a prisoner-of-war. Meloy and his secretary were captured with him.