When the men tailing him reported in that he was in the Hamburg-American Building, and probably in his office, we cut in on his wire, and posted an officer at our receiver to take down all conversations which passed. The outgoing calls were disappointing. Koenig was no fool--or rather was a highly specialized fool--and was not careless enough to give information of aid and comfort to the enemy through such a gregarious medium as a public telephone wire. We listened for a long while, in vain.... Then came a call which offered possibilities. A man’s voice told Paul Koenig that it thought Paul Koenig was a “bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” and added other more lurid remarks. The conversation was short, but while it lasted indicated that someone was not pleased with Mr. Koenig. Within the next few days the same voice called “P. K.” again and told him several things it had forgotten to mention, all pointing to the fact that the owner of the unknown voice had been misused. We hunted up the number from which the disgruntled calls had been made. It was a public telephone pay-station in a saloon. Crucial events can almost always be traced to some trivial circumstances--the poem “for the want of a nail the battle was lost” is an illustration of what I mean. We are not dealing here with possibilities but with facts, yet I cannot sometimes help speculating on the extent to which German atrocities might have been carried in New York and Canada, if we had not found a bartender with a good memory in that saloon. Yes, he remembered a fellow who had come in there at certain times to telephone. Yes, he came in once in a while. Didn’t know his name, but thought he lived around the corner at such and such a number. At that number we found out the man’s name--the bartender’s description had been accurate. The name was George Fuchs. So to George Fuchs we mailed a letter, typed on the stationery of a wireless telegraph company, suggesting that we had a position for which we believed he was the proper man, and that we would be pleased to have him call at the office of the company, at an appointed hour, to discuss the work and wages. Fuchs did not show up at the appointed hour, which disturbed the plans momentarily, but when he did arrive, he was greeted cordially by an executive of the “company” who proceeded to get acquainted with the applicant. The manner of the wireless person was so disarming, his German was so good, and his certainty that Fuchs was the man for the job so taken for granted that the two adjourned to a nearby restaurant. (Detective Corell had a very good working knowledge of German.) “Who did you say you were working for?” Corell asked, across the crater of Fuchs’s glass of beer. “That bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” Fuchs sputtered. “He is some relative of my mother’s. She was a Prussian, though, _Gott sei dank!_”