“After hearing this story in Washington,” Ashton continues, “I learned that this man was in desperate need of assistance and I offered to help him in any way that I could.... Senator Broussard was trying to secure a position for him with General Goethals,... also at this time he had plans on file with the Secretary of the Navy, of an invention to destroy mines in harbors, and was hoping that he might secure a position with the Navy Department. I had been offered a position with George Creel, and I also introduced Duquesne to him, and I then got in touch with Major Kendall Barnelli. I advised him to listen to Duquesne and to give him a position. I also advised Barnelli that I was investigating Duquesne’s story.” Damon Ashton then brought Pythias Duquesne back to New York and put him up in the apartment in which the Bomb Squad men had first been called to investigate the theft of papers. Duquesne begged his friend not to make him known under his own name, as the insurance case for the warehouse fire was still pending. So Duquesne continued to masquerade as “Fredericks.” His health was poor, and he did not go to work at once. At times Ashton’s charity seemed to irk Duquesne, and he even went to the telephone and called up an agency to discuss a lecture tour. The lecture agents told him that only war lectures were making money. There was a real inspiration, and after working for several days to assemble a uniform of the West Australia Light Horse, correct in every detail, he dressed up in it and called at the lecture bureau as Captain Claude Staughton. His Australian experience as chaperone to the camels stood him in good stead, and he went about town mixing with British Army officers without arousing suspicion. He even got on famously with the late Sir George Reed, prime minister of Australia, whom he met one night at the Hotel Astor.