Mrs. Duquesne was already in New York, having a hard time collecting her claim against the German-owned Mannheim Insurance Company for the “sympathy verdict” for damage to the films. He stored the new films he claims to have purchased in the Fulton and Flatbush Warehouse, 437 Carlton Avenue, Brooklyn--stored them as “statuary,” and used to visit the warehouse frequently. On one occasion he arrived after hours, and tried unsuccessfully to bribe the watchman to admit him. He moved to a small hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and about two weeks after the storage of the cases of “statuary” in the Brooklyn warehouse, the warehouse mysteriously caught fire. By a queer coincidence the “films”--Duquesne has never proved that he did buy them--which of course were destroyed in this fire too, had been insured by their purchaser, “Mr. Frederick Fredericks,” for $33,000 by the Stuyvesant Insurance Company, and he set out to collect the $33,000 for the total loss of his property. If both claims proved successful, he and his wife would have gathered in some $113,000. But they found it one thing to be insured and another thing entirely to get the money. Times were not treating Duquesne well. Along in July, 1917, when the United States was in the throes of buckling down to the business of war, and Washington was sweltering under its increased load of war-time population and business, Ashton, Duquesne’s old friend, happened to have business in the capital. He dropped in to call on Robert F. Broussard, of New Iberia, Louisiana, who in 1915 had been elected senator from this state ... the same Broussard who had been the author of the hippopotamus bill. Ashton asked the United States Senator from Louisiana if he had heard from Captain Duquesne. Ashton continues: “his secretary overheard the conversation (his secretary is a charming young lady) and I took her out to dinner, and about five days later she wrote me and said, ‘You may be interested to know that Captain Duquesne is in Washington, but does not want it known.’ I immediately became interested and concluded that if Captain Duquesne was in Washington and did not want it known, especially to me, I ... would investigate. So I went to Washington ...” and learned something of Duquesne’s whereabouts and circumstances.