Chapter IV: Von Rintelen--The Destroyer

Months of apparent calm followed the plot against the fleet--a calm, however, which existed only on the surface, for beneath the veneer of friendliness for America, Ambassador Von Bernstorff and his aides, Capt. Franz von Papen, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed and Dr. Heinrich Albert still were scheming and working for the downfall of America in their insatiable desires to defeat the Allies. More, they had received aid from abroad, in the person of an intimate friend of the Crown Prince of Germany, Franz von Rintelen, sent to America for the ostensible purpose of promoting friendliness between Germany and America, but in reality with a bank account of more than fifty million dollars, to spend on any form of death and destruction that he might see fit--as long as it harmed the Allies. And whether the harming of the Allies also brought its attendant injury to America, made little difference to Franz von Rintelen or his cohorts. The United States had been described by Dr. Heinrich Albert as "the American front," and so they regarded it--as a battlefield upon which to make their advances and counterthrusts against the Allies, regardless of the consequences to the land for which they professed such friendliness and such regard.

So it was, that in the spending of that fifty million dollars, Franz von Rintelen had built himself up practically a separate organization with which he preyed upon shipping, industry and manufacture. River pirates who swarmed the Hudson to scuttle lighters, to start fires in cargoes, to cut hawsers and mangle the steering apparatus of tugs that they might crash into each other and sink with their cargoes; so called "Peace Councils," which strove for the spreading of propaganda on any kind of peace at any price--as long as it was favorable to Germany; alleged "Embargo Conferences," the sole object of which was to spread a feeling throughout America that it was wrong for the United States to manufacture arms and ammunition which could be sold to the Allies--all these things lay within the province of Franz von Rintelen, to handle as he chose, with only an occasional conference with Ambassador Von Bernstorff at which he told of his progress, and laid forth his expense accounts for the official signature of the head of Imperial Germany's spy system in America. And so quietly had his organization been built up, so thoroughly had Franz von Rintelen concealed himself behind a cloak of supernumeraries and "straw bosses" that even the cleverest of the members of the Secret Service had failed as yet to gain a clue to his real activities. But there were suspicions--and among those who held them was Dixie Mason.

"No Mamette," she was saying as she stood by the window of her apartment, watching the sunset and talking to her negro maid, "I have no positive evidence against Franz von Rintelen. I doubt if I ever will. I only know that there is something about him which makes me believe that he is at the head of the river pirates and commerce destroyers who have sprung up around the harbor recently. But I can't be sure."

"How about Mista Von Lertz?" Mamette spoke the name with a tinge of hatred. For Mamette, black though she was, could see only three colors, the red, the white and the blue. Dixie smiled at her tone.

"I've tried--and tried hard. But Von Lertz seems afraid to tell me much about him. The best clues I've gotten have been through Agnes Taylor, who is working on the switchboard at Von Lertz's apartment. She has reported several conversations between Rintelen and Von Lertz, but they have been generally meaningless. I--"

The tingling of the telephone had interrupted. Dixie answered, to hear the voice of Agnes Taylor, the operative who had been placed at the switchboard of Von Lertz's apartment house.

"Miss Mason?"

"Yes."

"Do you know--" the voice was low, guarded--"anyone named Walter Schleindel?"

"No--why?"

"He works in some bank. Reports to Paul Koenig of the Hamburg American line who pays him for information. From what I can gather he steals information from manifests and bills of lading coming into the bank for payment."

Dixie Mason smiled.

"So that's the way they know just when to rob freight cars in the yards and when to sink lighters, is it? I'll telephone the Chief. How did you learn?"

"Some man just called Von Lertz. Told him that Schleindel had reported 3,000 head of horses just received at the Allied barns at Jersey and to go at once to the shack at Crow Crossing--"

"I know where it is." Dixie Mason's eyes had narrowed. "Just above the old rock crusher on the Vernon road. What was Von Lertz to do there?"

"I couldn't catch all of it--I heard something about the 'tools' and to 'use the new methods.' I couldn't recognize the voice."

"It wasn't Paul Koenig?"

"No, nor Bernstorff, Von Papen or Boy-Ed."

"Then it must have been Rintelen."

"I couldn't be sure--he changes his voice so often."

Dixie smiled again. Then she turned from the telephone.

"Mamette," she called. "Get me out a plain dress of some kind--something that I can 'rough it' in."

"Yes, Missy--but Laws, yo' ain't goin' to stick your head into danger, is yo,' Missy?"

"I'm going to find out what's happening at Crow Crossing," said Dixie with quiet determination. "Hurry, please, Mamette."

And while she made her preparations, Harrison Grant stood in the dusk, talking to the watchman of a stevedoring plant on the Jersey side of the Harbor.

"I'm from Chief Flynn's office," he was saying, "I received an order to--"

"I know all about it," the watchman answered. "The foreman left instructions for me. We're crating automobile ambulances for shipment to France. I want to show you something that we found today."

He led the way into the stevedoring shop, there to point out the axle of a great chassis--and to swear quietly as he looked at it.

"German spies done it!" he announced. "Nobody else would have been so dirty and low. These are ambulances, y'know--ambulances for use on the battlefields. And you know what'd happen if that ever got on a shell-torn field."

He pointed to the axle of the car. There, where the putty had been removed by the workmen who had discovered it, was a great, jagged hole in the steel of the axle, a hole burnt by an acetylene torch, converting the axle into a weak, shallow shell, doomed to break with the first holting strain. Grant frowned as he looked at it.

"So that's the game, eh?" he said. "That's why so many ambulances have been breaking down in France! That's why--"

He turned sharply, the watchman with him. Far at one side of the opposite dock they had seen the shadow of a man as it slunk along, hiding behind the boxes and bales as he made his way from light to darkness. Grant sped forward, the watchman beside him. A moment more and the shadow leaped forth, to seek escape in the maze of shipping on the docks.

But impossible. Headed off by closed doors, he veered, dodged, swerved in his course and leaped past the guard of an interned liner, seeking to spring from it to the next in his effort to escape.

An effort that failed. Blocked again, he veered once more, crashed his way through the door of the ship's wireless room, then whirled, a chair lifted high over his head. But the blow: did not descend. The tactics of the football field had come into play for Grant--and with a quick motion he had blocked the blow of the spy, disarmed him and forced him against the wall. Fifteen minutes later, he was listening to the confession, forced in jerky sentences from the spy's lips:

"A guy gave me $100. to set fire to the docks," he was saying. "That's all I know. He was some fellow who worked around the waterfront here. I'd gotten a lot o' money offen him and I wanted more. I belonged to his magneto and axle gang."

"His what?" Harrison Grant bent forward.

"His magneto gang. We'd steal the magnetos offen automobiles that was goin' to France. He'd give us five dollars for every one we stole--then let us have 'em to sell."

"Another little system of harming ambulances, eh?" said Grant slowly. "What about the axles?"

"We burned 'em with an acetylene torch--so they'd break down when they hit the battlefields--"

"So they'd break down, when they were filled with wounded!" The words came from Grant's lips in scathing denunciation. "And you confess to it--you mongrel!" His hands clenched--it was all he could do to keep them from the throat of the craven being before him. "Now you tell your story and tell it quick!"

Ten minutes later Harrison Grant turned to the guard of the interned ship, meanwhile eyeing the detectors, the batteries and sending apparatus of the wireless in the room.

"This wireless in working order?" he asked sharply.

"Yes."

Harrison Grant stepped toward it quickly. A moment more and he was sending forth the code-call of the Criminology Club. For the spy, while not able to tell the names of the directorate of those who engineered the heinous business of disabling ambulances, at least had given information that was more than valuable--the fact that a "burning party" had been scheduled for that night--and naming the location and the freight yards.

Again and again Harrison Grant sent out the call--at last to receive an answer. Then his message snapped over the airlanes to the city beyond:

"Criminology Club:

"Meet me Stevens Point quick. Come armed.

"Harrison Grant."

And while Harrison Grant waited, Dixie Mason, her automobile hidden in the shadow of the old rock crusher, crept to the side of the little shack at Crow's Crossing. The sound of voices came from within, low, indistinct. Again and again Dixie strove to hear what was being said--but only failure greeted her. Then--

A pine knot, half hinging in its receptacle, caught her glance. Stealthily she wormed it loose, to peer within. Men were there, men who were pouring gasoline into small fuzeed, metal containers, men who were making their preparations for hurried flight, and receiving orders as they did so. Already two of them were at the doorway.

"Take the shortcut to the Allied stockyards," one of them was saying. "We'll burn the barns--you look after the other part of the yards. Now hurry!"

They were gone, while Dixie cowered in the shadows. Stealthily she watched them cross the patch of snow and ice before the cabin, then disappear, unable to move for fear of detection, her brain seething with plans and hopes. But they were faint! The spies had taken the "short cut"--one that Dixie did not know.

The telephone? There was none. The police? There was no way to reach them. Only one thing remained for Dixie Mason to do--to scramble as fast as possible to her machine and to race across country to the Allied horsebarns. But would she be able to reach there in time?

The battle of wits and courage was on! Over at Steven's Point, Harrison Grant had leaped to the running board of a motor car as it had rounded a corner and shouted to the chauffeur:

"Faster, old man! They're destroying Red Cross supplies in the railroad yards!"

Then as the machine spurted forward, the president of the Criminology Club leaned toward his men.

"See that your revolvers are in working order. Spies are burning the axles of ambulances. We have every right to shoot to kill!"

The men nodded. Cavanaugh opened a new box of cartridges. The machine sped on through the semi-darkness toward the railroad yards. As for Dixie Mason--

Veering into the stockyards district of New Jersey, she raised in her machine and waved madly to a crowd of horse wranglers, just coming forth from a pool hall.

"Quick!" she called, "there's danger at the horsebarns!"

Then, driving harder than ever, she sped forward, in a last vain attempt to reach the barns before the spies could light their bombs.

Before her loomed the shadows of the barns, with their thousands of animals within. And scrambling up a telephone pole toward a window showed the form of a German fire-fiend.

Harder than ever pressed the foot of Dixie Mason against the accelerator of her car, while her soul raged within her. Not content with sinking the ships that carried innocent horses and cattle to France, not content with filling their oats with steel barbs, painted yellow and designed to be eaten by the unfortunate animals, not content with poisoning the water of these beasts who were a part of the war only through the will of others, Imperial Germany now was resorting to worse measures to gain its "victories," the horror and agonizing torture of fire! Dixie's lips pressed firm. Then, her anger drowning all thought of danger, she skidded her machine until it almost overturned as she veered from the stockyards alley into the areaway of the horsebarns, made her way through the great doorways, then sent her automobile thundering up the runway to the second floor--there to leap forth and run toward the form that had just entered the haymows. But too late!

Already the tool of Imperial Germany had touched a match to the gasoline filled container. Already the fuse was spluttering, while with a great, sweeping motion, the spy threw the bomb far into the loose hay and hurled his gigantic form toward the struggling Dixie. A moment more and he had felled her, then scrambled into her machine, reversing it and sending it at perilous speed down the runway and out through the opposite doors, bowling over two of the rustlers as they strove to make their way through the already heavy clouds of smoke, and tearing on toward freedom. And in the loft of the mammoth barn, Dixie Mason lay unconscious, the fire gaining greater and greater headway all about her, where the gasoline discharge had fired the conflagration everywhere!

Imperial Germany had succeeded in a part of its scheme at least. But in another--

Out in the railroad yards came the crackle of a revolver shot as Harrison Grant and his men surprised two men in the interior of a box car, hard at their task of burning the axles of an auto with an acetylene torch. A spy fell maimed, while from seemingly everywhere, other spies broke from the cars and sought safety.

But safety that was far away. For the members of the Criminology Club had spread themselves in the lanes between the great masses of box cars, to leap forth as the spies ran aimlessly about in their search for shelter, to seize them, to shackle them. Atop a box car where he had climbed after the first onslaught, Harrison Grant moved swiftly here and there, shouting his orders to the operatives below. In ten places at once, the battle was mounting to the proportions of a life and death struggle--with the members of the Criminology Club in the ascendancy. But at the horsebarns--

Up in the loft, Dixie Mason stirred to consciousness as the flames ate closer. Down below, where the maddened animals were screaming and stamping in their fright, came the sounds of shouts, of curses and yells as the horse wranglers, summoned from every part of the yards, struggled to release the flame-frightened animals. Through a chink in the frame wall of the building, Dixie could see another red glare, starting in the distance--then the forms of thousands of beasts as they sped forth to safety, freed by the men who had rushed to their assistance the minute the alarm had been given by Dixie. Everywhere was the milling rush to save--save--save, while men risked their lives that the lives of horses and cattle might be spared, while men took risks and men braved death--and while Dixie Mason struggled impotently to fight her way through the ring of fire that seemed to have closed all about her.

The smoke ate its stinging way into her cringing lungs, choking her, gagging her. She sought to scream--but the screams were lost in the wild conglomeration of noises from below, the shrieks of fear maddened horses, the surging work of rescue. Here, there, back again she struggled, only to face everywhere a wall of fire that inch by inch was eating toward her--a lining, writhing, all consuming circle of death!

The flames had eaten their way through portions of the roof now and were spreading the flare of their flames against the sky. Over in the railroad yards, Harrison Grant, receiving the reports of his men as they checked up the list of captured spies, glanced into the distance, started, then whirled to the members of the Criminology Club.

"Shackle those men together!" he ordered sharply. "Leave them in charge of Sisson--he can handle them. Then everyone come with me--there's a fire at the stockyards!"

Quickly the orders were obeyed. Quickly the men swept forward under the leadership of Harrison Grant to aid the hundreds of horse wranglers and cattlemen in their maddened efforts to release the flame threatened animals. And as they did so, Dixie Mason was making her last desperate effort at escape.

Death in the flames or death in a leap--Dixie Mason chose the chance of the latter. She had fought her way forward, beating out the flames that caught her dress, smothering her free hand against her nostrils to shut out the paralyzing effect of smoke and gasoline vapors, seeking from the sounds from below to ascertain an area into which she might leap with some opportunity for safety.

At last it came. A lull in the milling rush from below. Dixie fought her way to a railing, swung under it, hung there for one, long, trembling instant, then, just as a whirling rush of horses cleared the way beneath her, she dropped.

The fall stunned her for a second. Then the roaring sound of plunging animals brought her to her senses, just in time to enable her to scramble out of the way of a flame crazed group of horses as they surged past her, then reeling, to seek through the smoke the freedom of the open air.

Someway, somehow, she managed to waver to the outer doors of the big barn, there to gasp at the cold, life-giving atmosphere that surged into her lungs--then to run forward whitefaced at the sight before her.

Everywhere was fire--fire which raged about the sheds, fire which licked its way along the railings of the cattlepans, which ate at the chutes and connections, fire which seethed and spit and crackled. From far in the distance came the clanging of bells and the hissing of steam--the hastily called fire apparatus of twenty stations, fighting against the flames--but fighting a losing fight. Dixie's hands clenched.

"The cowards!" she exclaimed, "the fiends!"

"Look out there, Miss!" It was the friendly shout of a horse wrangler as he pushed her aside. Down the alleyway sounded a thundering roar as twenty shouting men drove before them a great mass of wild-eyed, galloping horses. The wrangler shouted happily as they passed him.

"That's the end of 'em," he said heartily, "we were luckier'n we thought."

"The end of them?" Dixie Mason turned hopefully. "Then you managed to save----"

"Most of 'em Miss. We got some help from an unexpected quarter. Bunch of Secret Service men who were over in the yards chased over here and took the load off our minds o' loosenin' the cattle in the south end. That let us put all our work on the dangerous part of the yards."

"Secret Service men?" Dixie Mason started. "Do you know any of them----"

"Nobody. A fellow gave his name as Grant, but----"

"Harrison Grant?"

"Think so."

Dixie Mason turned sharply. Harrison Grant must not see her there--it would mean the necessity for explanations--explanations which might not be easily forthcoming. From far away came shouts--the shouts of men approaching through one of the alleys which as yet had been untouched by the flames. Dixie hardly heard. All that she knew was that she must leave the vicinity of the fire as soon as possible--content in the knowledge that her work had not gone for naught after all. Most--if not all--of the horses and cattle had been saved. Imperial Germany had destroyed American property in the shape of barns and pens--but it had at least failed to destroy the lives of the innocent beings against which it had plotted.

Almost, aimlessly she turned to the railroad yards to escape the roaming droves of horses and cattle that were swirling everywhere. On she went, crossing track after track, as she sought the streets and the open. The light of the fire flared higher--and with it a slight exclamation came into Dixie's throat at the sight of a man before her.

Hurriedly she swerved, leaped between two closing box cars of a flying switch, and then, as the man pursued, jumped across the track upon which was approaching a rapidly traveling train, hurrying on to where her deserted automobile showed its dull form, where it had been abandoned by the fire fiend. Once she looked back--to discern the fact that the man still watched her beneath the long train. Then she hurried on again.

Back in her apartment, she reported to her Chief, to give the name of Walter Schleindel and her suspicions against Franz von Rintelen. An hour more went by and the telephone rang to bring the news of Schleindel's arrest, and his confession, of how he had used the bank as a clearing house for German Sodom, stealing the information of the manifests and bills of lading of Allied shipments which came in there for collection by the consignors, then in turn, selling this information to Paul Koenig of the Hamburg American line. Dixie smiled happily.

"How about Rintelen?" she asked. A slight ejaculation of disgust came over the wire.

"My men failed to find him. Someone must have notified him of the arrest of the auto burners in the railroad yards. At any rate he has left his hotel, without giving an address."

All of which was correct. For Franz von Rintelen was at that moment telephoning to Bernstorff, and announcing to him that in future, his name would be E.V. Gates and that his 'business' would be that of a 'purchasing agent,'--but that Imperial Germany's work of destruction would still continue.

And meanwhile also, at the Criminology Club, Harrison Grant, tired from his labors of the night, hesitated at the doorway to call an operative.

"Bailey," he said, "I want you to take a skirmish around and see what you can learn about a girl named Dixie Mason."

"Who is she?"

Harrison Grant smiled grimly.

"I'd give a good deal to know. Apparently she's an ex-actress. At least, that's what her friends tell me. Time was too, they say, when she was very communicative and friendly. Now she tells no one of her plans or of her activities. And strangely enough, my path has crossed hers twice in places where only the agents of Imperial Germany could consistently be. She was at the fire tonight."

"At the fire?" Bailey stared. "Are you sure?"

"I have a good pair of eyes." said Harrison Grant, "I saw her there--not fifty feet away. I chased her--but a train cut me off."

Bailey raised a hand to his hat.

"I'll see what I can find out," he said quietly and left the building. But Grant continued to stand there, staring at the floor--wondering--wondering what this woman whom circumstance again and again gave the accusation of being a German spy, could have played in this latest evidence of Imperial Germany's ghoulish cruelty!