"That's the piece, all right," Bill remarked, as the strains of the violin drifted off into the night. "Funny how a few notes of musiclike that could nail a criminal while at the same time it was saving the lives of nobody knows how many other people--"
Remember Paul Weimar [continued Quinn, picking up the thread of his story]. He was the most dangerous of the entire gang that helped von Bernstorff, von Papen, and the rest of that crew plot against the United States at a time when we were supposed to be entirely neutral.[74]
An Austrian by birth, Weimar was as thoroughly a Hun at heart as anyone who ever served the Hohenzollerns and, in spite of his
size, he was as slippery as they make 'em. Back in the past somewhere he had been a detective in the service of the Atlas Line, but
for some years before the war was superintendent of the police attached to the Hamburg-American boats. That, of course, gave him
the inside track in every bit of deviltry he wanted to be mixed up in, for he had made it his business to cultivate the acquaintance of
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wharf rats, dive keepers, and all the rest of the scum of the Seven Seas that haunts the docks.
Standing well over six feet, Weimar had a pair of fists that came in mighty handy in a scuffle, and a tongue that could curl itself around all the blasphemies of a dozen languages. There wasn't a water front where they didn't hate him--neither was there a water front where they didn't fear him.
Of course, when the war broke in August, 1914, the Hamburg-American line didn't have any further official use for Weimar. Their ships were tied up in neutral or home ports and Herr Paul was out of a job--for at least ten minutes. But he was entirely too valuable a man for the German organization to overlook for longer than that, and von Papen, in Washington, immediately added him to his organization--with blanket instructions to go the limit on any dirty work he cared to undertake. Later, he worked for von Bernstorff; Doctor Dumba, the Austrian ambassador; and Doctor von Nuber, the Austrian consul in New York--but von Papen had first claim upon his services and did not hesitate to press them, as proven by certain entries in the checkbook of the military attache during the spring and summer of 1915.
Of course, it didn't take the Secret Service and the men[75] from the Department of Justice very long to get on to the fact that Wei-mar was altogether too close to the German embassy for the safety and comfort of the United States government. But what were they to do about it? We weren't at war then and you couldn't arrest a man merely because he happened to know von Papen and the rest of his precious companions. You had to have something on him--something that would stand up in court--and Paul Weimar was too almighty clever to let that happen.
When you remember that it took precisely one year to land this Austrian--one year of constant watching and unceasing espionage--
you will see how well he conducted himself.
And the government's sleuths weren't the only ones who were after him, either.
Captain Kenney, of the New York Police Force, lent mighty efficient aid and actually invented a new system of trailing in order to find out just what he was up to.
In the old days, you told a man to go out and follow a suspect and that was all there was to it. The "shadow" would trail along half a block or so in the rear, keeping his man always in view, and bring home a full account of what he had done all day. But you couldn't do that with Weimar--he was too foxy. From what some of the boys have told me, I think he took a positive delight in throwing them off the scent, whether he had anything up his sleeve or not.
One day, for example, you could have seen his big bulk swinging nonchalantly up Broadway, as if he didn't have a care in the world. A hundred feet or more behind him was Bob Dugan, one of Kenney's men. When Weimar disappeared into the Subway station at Times Square, Dugan was right behind him, and when the Austrian boarded the local for Grand Central Station, Dugan was[76] on the same train--on the same car, in fact. But when they reached the station, things began to happen. Weimar left the local and commenced to stroll up and down the platform, waiting until a local train and an express arrived at the same time. That was his opportunity. He made a step or two forward, as if to board the express, and Dugan--not wishing to make himself too conspicuous--slipped on board just as the doors were closing, only to see Weimar push back and jam his way on the local!
Variations of that stunt occurred time after time. Even the detailing of two men to follow him failed in its purpose, for the Austrian would enter a big office building, leap into an express elevator just as it was about to ascend, slip the operator a dollar to stop at one of the lower floors, and be lost for the day or until some one picked him up by accident.
So Cap Kenney called in four of his best men and told them that it was essential that Weimar be watched.
"Two of you," he directed, "stick with him all the time. Suppose you locate him the first thing in the morning at his house on Twenty-fourth Street, for example. You, Cottrell, station yourself two blocks up the street. Gary, you go the same distance down. Then, no matter which way he starts he'll have one of you in front of him and one behind. The man in front will have to use his wits to guess which way he intends to go and to beat him to it. If he boards a car, the man in front can pick him up with the certainty that the other will cover the trail in the rear. In that way you ought to be able to find out where he is going and, possibly, what he is doing there."
The scheme, thanks to the quick thinking of the men assigned to the job, worked splendidly for months--at least it worked in so far as keeping a watch on Weimar was[77] concerned. But that was all. In the summer of 1915 the government knew precisely where Weimar had been for the past six months, with whom he had talked, and so on--but the kernel of the nut was missing. There wasn't the least clue to what he had talked about and what deviltry he had planned!
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Without that information, all the dope the government had was about as useful as a movie to a blind man.
Washington was so certain that Weimar had the key to a number of very important developments--among them the first attempt to
blow up the Welland Canal--that the chief of the Secret Service made a special trip to New York to talk to Kenney.
"Isn't it possible," he suggested, "to plant your men close enough to Weimar to find out, for example, what he talks about over the phone?"
Kenney smiled, grimly.
"Chief," he said, "that's been done. We've tapped every phone that Weimar's likely to use in the neighborhood of his house and every
time he talks from a public station one of our men cuts in from near-by--by an arrangement with Central--and gets every word. But that bird is too wary to be caught with chaff of that kind. He's evidently worked out a verbal code of some kind that changes every day. He tells the man at the other end, for example, to be at the drug store on the corner of Seventy-third and Broadway at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon and wait for a phone call in the name of Williams. Our man is always at the place at the appointed hour, but no call ever arrives. 'Seventy-third and Broadway' very evidently means some other address, but it's useless to try and guess which one. You'd have to have a man at every pay station in town to follow that lead."[78]
"How about overhearing his directions to the men he meets in the open?"
"Not a chance in the world. His rendezvous are always public places--the Pennsylvania or Grand Central Station, a movie theater, a hotel lobby, or the like. There he can put his back against the wall and make sure that no one is listening in. He's on to all the tricks of the trade and
