*^A> / THE PASSPORT . OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGF..R> THE PASSPORT BY A EMILE VOUTE NEW YORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1915 COPYRIGHT 1915 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY PRINTED IN AMERICA To two angels on earth, 'who have been permitted to join with me in the satisfaction over a task successfully accomplished; and to one in Heaven, who would have given so completely of a mother s pride, this work is lovingly dedicated. 2133328 * * * Whosoever, owing allegiance to tliz United States, levies war against them, or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, is guilty of treason * * * THE PASSPORT CHAPTER I RICHARD WARDEN, third, sat at the window of his lofty and comfortable apartment looking across the river at the little lights. There were myriads of them, flickering in the rem- nant of a gale that was blowing, with a few stray raindrops, late comers in an afternoon shower, ticking monotonously against the windows. He was Richard Warden, third, because his father, also Richard, was still living as was his grandfather. He would have been Richard Warden, tenth or elev- enth, but for the fact that the grandfather was the last living of the earlier Richard Wardens. His college mates had used the distinguishing addi- tum as a sobriquet and he secretly enjoyed the his- torical pleasantry, while not at all in sympathy with the character of the cruel and vindictive Duke of Gloucester. Gentle in thought and manner, he was strong in mental and physical development and, although scarcely turned into his twenties, he had studied earn- estly the history of the world and had formed opinions and come to conclusions far in advance of his five and twenty years. 2 THE PASSPORT He had the soul of the dreamer combined with the capabilities of the leader and was, in every way, that composite alloy of the melting pot that goes to make the perfect human metal. For several hours he had been watching the lights across the river. The landscape, hidden in the shad- ows of the early evening, assumed the outlines of a huge battle-ground with the tiny lights taking form as signals with growing regularity and intensity. An electric advertising sign flared up like the torch of a war king. In his mind he saw the struggling hordes, the mov- ing of huge bodies of men in the shadows, the flare of the cannon, with the shrieks of the victory-maddened and the dying mingled in one awful, devilish ensemble. It all seemed so real, so much like that which was hap- pening elsewhere on this earth. As he sat there and mused, the strains of martial music reached him from the broad thoroughfare below. He left his apartment and took the elevator to the street floor. Down the avenue came a brilliant procession, a pa- geant typical of cosmopolitan New York. There were horsemen and paraders on foot, carriages and gayly decorated floats. The chief executive of the city rode proudly in the leading carriage, to the music of an enlivening march. Among the civic bodies in the parade he noticed some five hundred men, shoulders thrown back and marching with a military precision quite unlike the haphazard strides of the other groups on foot. A banner, carried by the leader, informed him that this five hundred constituted a German sharpshooter's club. There were a number of such clubs in New York. THE PASSPORT 3 Both sides of the thoroughfare were packed with peo- ple, acclaiming the officials, the pageantry and the martial music. It was all very enthusing and he stood there, dreaming, imagining how he himself would feel returning as a hero, acclaimed by his fellow men, em- braced by the women in the ecstacy of hysterical en- thusiasm and lauded for having conquered others of his fellow men, conquered them by killing, slaughtering, exterminating them. Then, his mind diverted into less sanguinary chan- nels, he thought how much nobler it would be to return a victorious peacemaker! Fellow men and women would acclaim just as heartily just as hysterically. Yet it had never been done. The returning hero must always be a killer whether of beast or man, it did not matter. But his prowess must needs be measured by his power to exterminate, his passion and his ability to take life, never to pre- serve it. Still occupied with this waking dream, he re-entered the big, grey-stone apartment house, a building em- blematic of peace and industry. Again in his eyry, he once more looked out over the dark river at the twinkling, flickering lights. He surveyed the scene as a giant would survey it as a man surveys a village of bustling, tireless ants. The Great War had much affected Richard Warden, third. He had no bias and was prejudiced only in the overflowing sympathy he felt for those whose homes were being invaded and ravaged. He made a mental comparison between the wide stretch of land and water under his eyes and the great expanse of territory ruined and robbed by the omnipresent Teutons on the other side of the Atlantic, 4 THE PASSPORT How easy it would be for a giant, standing as high as he now stood above the earth, to scatter the ruthless invaders ! Once he had turned away an army of hostile ants who, seemingly, were bent upon violating the peaceful industries of a little village in his garden. The invaders were big, red ants and the smaller, black insects in the village were, apparently, taken by surprise and val- iantly defended their domain. He had scattered the invaders with a twig and had the satisfaction of seeing the village again pursuing its normal activities. Oh, for some Brobdingnaigan to do for the Belgians and the French what he had done for his little friends in the garden! As he thought of it now, those big, red ants, with their fat, well-rounded bodies, brought vividly to his mind the Kaiser's stout, well-fed warriors, with their shining helmets, as he had seen them on the parade grounds at Potsdam and at Metz during a summer's sojourn abroad. A giant, with his head as high above the surrounding country as his own was now, with a giant's twig that would, undoubtedly, seem as monstrous a weapon to the German invaders as his own little twig must have seemed to the big, red ants, would be able to clear the invaded territory in a moment, poke over huge cannon, howitzers and great fortifications, just as he had poked over the earth on the outskirts of the ant village, and transform stricken Belgium and Northern France into a peaceful, if devastated land. The subject of proportion fascinated him. It all seemed to end with Man. In the wars of the insects, of the birds, of the smaller animals, there was always some larger insect, THE PASSPORT 5 bird or animal that could stop the work of extermina- tion between the smaller belligerents and scatter them. The final physical tribunal was Man. But Man, in his own wars, found himself helpless except through the superiority of numbers and of cruel weapons and then only by a terrific sacrifice of blood. The natural law of proportion stopped with Man. There was no giant to do for Man what he, Richard Warden, third, had done for the ants. The result had always been appalling and it never was more so than in this Twentieth Century struggle that had placed an innocent community at the mercy of an unscrupulous, barbarous invader and laid waste a fair and peaceful land. Faint echoes of the martial airs in the street below brought him back to his thoughts of the returning conqueror; the victorious return of the hero who, by reason of having put to death sufficient numbers of his fellow men, had succeeded in liberating his own land or else make it the master of another! It was always killing, killing! It had been thus since the beginning of Time and the hope that the ancient practices were gradually but surely undergoing a change had been ruthlessly shat- tered at the very zenith of an enlightened age! The lights still flickered across the river. On the water other skimmering little flashes took on the shapes of bursting shells. Closing his eyes, he could see the thousands of uni- formed, helmeted human ants on the embankment op- posite, laying waste the land below upon which he was gazing as a giant would. He felt the tremors of the earth as the shells found their mark, saw the crumbling marble piles along the 6 THE PASSPORT beautiful river drive, saw the city all about him in flames, terror upon all faces, men and women and children being buried at every step under mountains of falling stone and twisted steel. Were he as tall as the building at the window of which he stood, six strides would bring him to the other embankment and one sweep of both arms would scatter that hostile army, with the bullets from their puny weapons rattling against him as impotently as hail stones during an autumn storm. The desire to help Belgium's stricken people became an obsession with him. He sat at the window, in deep reflection, until late. Then he tried to interest himself in a book but, instead, picked up the day's late editions and was soon poring over the more or less detailed accounts of what was happening on the battlefields. The dispatches were not, from the viewpoint of one desiring to see the German war lord rebuked for his insolence, reassuring. The Mailed Fist was being driven further and further through the allied lines and the alternating forward and retrograde movements of the opposing forces in Belgium were gradually redu- cing that country to a bleak, charred plain. In North- ern France, too, the ground once covered by beautiful vineyards was being prepared, by Wilhelm The Insa- tiable, for the withering heat of the blast furnaces where Krupps could be made for conquests still to come. All this he saw prophesied in the daily prints and the idea of scattering the fat, red ants of Germania became more and more thoroughly inculcated in his mind. To upset the plans of those who considered them- THE PASSPORT 7 selves invincible did not present itself to the young man as a grotesque proposition. There had been men before him who had made the world do their bidding and the only difference between them and himself lay in the fact that his predecessors had been master by the torch and sword while he desired to be master without recourse to arms or bloodshed. He felt that, in his sub-conscious self, there was hidden a way, if only he could bring it to the surface. Deeply interested in physic phenomena, to which he had devoted much time, Warden knew that, through his subjective mind, there would present itself a solution of the apparently gigantic problem before him. He set himself to the task of concentrating his thoughts upon the subject and it became so absolute a part of his waking as well as his sleeping hours that he soon appeared peculiar and incomprehensible to those with whom he was thrown in contact. "A fortune awaits the man who can find the way to send the interned Germans in America back to Ger- many," said a friend to him one day. "A greater fortune and much greater fame awaits the man who finds the way to make it unnecessary for them to go back to Germany," he replied. And usually he would turn the conversation and resume his far- away look and silent meditation. While he had taken a course in applied chemistry, he had half regretted his self-outlined career after quitting college, much to the disappointment of his father, who had planned for the son a brilliant future in the profession that had dealt so generously with himself. It was with keen pleasure, therefore, that the elder Warden received word from the young colle- gian saying that the latter had decided to actively 8 THE PASSPORT take up his chosen profession and would devote himself to experiments for a time, in the laboratory of his father in the Warden home, beautifully situated in one of the garden spots of New England. The time intervening between the sending of the letter to his father and the giving up of his comfort- able bachelor quarters in New York, he spent largely in the great libraries. Day after day, engrossed in scientific books, he would sit there making copious notes and memoranda, grudgingly snatching a few moments for his meals and totally ignoring his social obliga- tions, notably so in the case of the charming Miss Mary Berwin, which particular social obligation had, in fact, been relegated to positive oblivion from the moment that he had begun, as his friends pleasantly described it, to have "the bug in his brain." He would spend the evenings looking over the river at the nick- ering lights when he was not going over his notes and data and the last thing he did before retiring was to set his mind intently upon THE WAY, so that he might fall asleep with brain predisposed, and possibly bring forth, out of his subconsciousness, a realization of his hopes a logical release of his captive dream. His determination to pursue the profession for which he had studied was, to some extent, due to the fact that the young man was well aware that the continued brooding over his pet ideal might lead to serious conse- quences, if he did not otherwise occupy his mind. In this way he proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that he was well-balanced mentally and intended to re- main so. The friendly jibes of his friends upon the rare occasions that he met them did not disturb him in the least. "If there is a bug in my brain," he would say smil- THE PASSPORT 9 ingly, "it is the liveliest bug that ever was and it is keeping my brain active. It may claim public atten- tion, some day, in a manner you little dream of now !" Finally, the day arrived when he gave up his New York lodgings. The evening before he had gazed for the last time upon the little lights across the river, had seen in his mind's eye the human ants massing on the ridge opposite, the bursting of the shells, the devasta- tion, the coming of the giant and then Peace! CHAPTER II His arrival in the little New England hamlet, nestled at the foot of the picturesque Berkshires, was not re- garded with any degree of lively interest by the vil- lagers. Prone to ascribe eccentricity to anyone en- gaged in any form of study or occupation above their own powers of understanding, the natives classed the younger Warden with his pater, and commented upon his home-coming merely as a case of "another bug come to town." To the elderly Elizabeth, acting as housekeeper in the home of her brother, his coming was a matter of the utmost importance, however. The good soul pic- tured her nephew bringing order out of chaos on the "farm" and she could already see the grounds sur- rounding the old Warden homestead transformed into a beautiful estate under his energetic supervision. The chickens, that now looked as if they were suffering from the mange, the poultry runs that had fallen into decay and the delapidated fences, would now all be attended to and the place made habitable, a state of affairs that had not been in effect since Grandfather Warden became too old to look after the property and young Richard's father had become a sort of passive head of the household. Vases for flowers and urns for autumn leaves had been put in one of the choice rooms of the house which had been set aside for Richard's use by his aunt. A pink bow here and there on the lace curtains, the THE PASSPORT 11 clothes hamper and the whiskbroom, carried out the good lady's idea of a perfectly normal male college graduate's needs, an idea that was further emphasized by a profusion of dainty white covers on table, dresser, book-case and rocking chair as well as by an exquisite white pillow sham interlaced along the edges with a pink ribbon. Aunt Elizabeth gazed with ill-concealed satisfaction on the scene of her activity as she ushered Richard into the room and then hied herself to the lower floor where she busied herself over a formidable list of nec- essary changes and improvements in the property which, she felt sure, would prove to Richard a long-felt want. She received her first shock the next morning at breakfast. An expressman had brought a ponderous box to the house before her nephew came downstairs. It was addressed to the latter and undoubtedly con- tained his library and bachelor-den paraphernalia. When he came down and told his aunt that the box contained chemicals and apparatus for chemical exper- iments she was sorely disappointed, for her brother had told her nothing of Richard's intentions to follow chem- istry as his career. Her second shock came when she went upstairs while her nephew was breakfasting. She found that two of the vases contained a dark, brackish fluid, while the flowers were in the waste-paper basket. The autumn leaves were lying on the window sill and their places in the urns had been given over to various small bags and boxes with uncipherable marks. A cane, with the crook stuck into the loop, adorned the curtain bow and some colored powder had successfully put the stamp 12 THE PASSPORT of ruin on the white coverlet on the center table. After breakfast, Aunt Elizabeth rather hesitatingly suggested a walk through the grounds with her young relative. He assented readily enough, somewhat to her surprise. He did not, however, appear to show the requisite amount of enthusiasm over the proposed improvements. He agreed with his aunt that the fences looked bad and that the chickens resembled animated feather dusters that had seen better days, but he did not commit himself on the proposition that he should be the one to remedy these faults. He inspected the small building used as a chicken shelter with greater attention than any of the other places to which his aunt led him. This caused the worthy woman to believe she had finally succeeded in interesting her nephew, although she could not account for his devoting himself specially to the chicken house since it was in far better condition than any of the other structures on the property. Her perplexity was dissipated that same afternoon when she found her dishevelled chickens enjoying an unwonted outing in the vegetable garden nearby and Nephew Richard busy putting up shelves in the little building which the man-of-all-work, under his direc- tion, had broomed clean and painted an immaculate white within. At the moment that his aunt entered the place, the helper was running an electric light wire into the hennery, making Aunt Elizabeth's query, as to whether it was being improved for the chickens, quite unnecessary. Within a week from the time that he had installed himself in the chicken house, the village began to talk of the queer things that were happening on the Warden "farm." Often, when the entire community was THE PASSPORT 13 wrapped in slumber, some of the village rounders, coming home late from a neighboring dance, had seen mysterious lights in the Warden hennery and on sev- eral occasions flashes of blue flame had sent small par- ties of the more timid women dancers scurrying home along the dark road with a due amount of creepy shivers under their wraps. One morning, while the aunt was disconsolately view- ing the fast gathering ruin over the farm, the good woman was frightened speechless by a terrific explo- sion and, as she turned, there came a crash of glass when the window in the chicken house burst outward accompanied by a great cloud of smoke. About the same time Richard came out of the building, his face and hands blackened, but seemingly unmindful of the disturbance he had caused as he made his way to the Warden dwelling. "It's alright, Aunt Bessie !" he said as he passed the frightened woman, "I think I have found what I have been looking for." "Lands sake, it made noise enough!" commented his aunt. She was too much overcome to say more but helplessly watched her begrimed nephew enter the house and go up to his room. It was a few days after this incident that Walter Nast, a neighbor, came in to tell Richard's father about the peculiar accident that had befallen his herd of prize Jerseys. "When I came to the pasture this morning," said Nast, "everyone of my ninety cows was lying as dead on the field. Those that I examined were warm and they did not appear to be dead but they weren't sleep- ing nat'ral, either, for some were all in a heap as if they had been overcome by sickness. I hurried to get 14 THE PASSPORT Doctor Bell, the veterinary, but he was out and by the time I came back to the village, about four hours later, all the cows seemed to be slowly getting alright again." Aunt Elizabeth listened to this recital of local news with open-mouthed amazement. Richard, who was present during the telling of Nast's troubles, was ap- parently greatly interested, as was his father, the lat- ter suggesting the taking of blood specimen of the cattle for analysis, while Grandfather Warden, in the inevitable rocker, opined that the cattle had probably partaken of some poisonous weeds and that Neighbor Nast had better have the pasture looked over. There was a wistful look in young Warden's face that gradually changed into an expression of exulta- tion. To Nast the ailment of the ninety cows was a mystery. To the elder Warden it suggested a purely bacteriological problem. To Grandfather Warden the solution lay in the pasture weeds. Richard knew that the temporary indisposition of these Berkshire cattle would lead to the saving of thousands, yea, millions of human lives, and at no distant day. At the breakfast table some mornings afterward, he announced that he would go back to New York for a short stay. The decision elicited no comment from his father but it was received with an involuntary sigh of relief by his aunt, for the young man had, in some way, greatly disturbed the spinster's equanimity during the fortnight or so that he had been with them in the Berkshire home. An hour later he was on a train, with two cumber- some valises. Once settled in his seat there was an ex- pression of deep thought mingled with satisfaction on his face as he sat, wrapped in his meditations, entirely unmindful of the beautiful scenery that swept by in a THE PASSPORT 15 long panorama and he sat there, without stirring, until his train rolled into the New York terminal. After arranging for a room at a small hotel in the vicinity of the station, and depositing his luggage there, he bethought himself of Miss Berwin, whom he had not seen in a month, part of which time the young lady had spent in Washington with her parents. Find- ing that Mary was in town, he went to her home in one of the big uptown hotels, determined to settle one other momentous matter besides the one that had brought him to the city. The weather being mild, with a glorious late after- noon sun adding its lustre to the feeling of exhilaration at being out of doors, he climbed to the upper deck of one of the top-heavy motor omnibuses that thread their way as if by magic through the maze of traffic in New York's congested streets and proceeded to enjoy a pipe and the human passing show on his journey uptown. He secured a seat on the one bench remaining va- cant, immediately behind two portly, florid-faced men whom he found were Germans. They conversed mostly in German although sometimes reverting to broken English, the latter with a strong German flavor. Per- fectly conversant with the language, he was able to overhear much of what was being said, especially since, owing to the rumbling of the 'bus, the two men spoke in voices loud enough at times to carry to the seat behind them. After listening to the first few words that were spoken, he realized that the drift of the con- versation was most significant. It gave him a start- ling insight into another phase of the subject in which he was so deeply interested. From what was said he gathered that one of the men 16 THE PASSPORT had been for many years officially connected, as a coun- selor, with the German Embassy at Washington but was, in reality, a German secret service officer with a roving commission in the United States. The other man was named Bachman, or Backman, who lived in one of the suburbs and who, seemingly, was exceedingly well posted on the exact numbers and the condition of Germans and their descendants in New York and its environs. "The time is not yet come," said the counselor. "If this country had taken sides with us against England, we could have had two million men, armed to the teeth, across the border into Canada by now." "Yes," commented the other, "we could have easily sent a couple of hundred thousand men from New York alone. They are all ready, with first class rifles and plenty of ammunition. We have ten thousand rifles stored away with which to arm those I. W. W. ruffians, who are ready to do our bidding for a small price and the privilege of looting. They have been thoroughly canvassed, without their knowing what job they are wanted for but they are keen for it, whatever it is. Of the regulars, we have five hundred of our own people in my district alone at the last election. They are all naturalized voters but solid for our cause to a man. We are drilling right along among four hundred and odd groups that hold private smokers and masquerades once a week. The men are as fine a body of soldiers as His Majesty could wish for in Germany to-day." "Did you get the disbursement through without trouble?" the counselor asked. "We got it in five installments through five different German banking houses here," was the reply. "The distribution among the different houses was done so as THE PASSPORT 17 not to cause any talk. All the clerks in these houses that they were not entirely sure of have been dropped. There came near being a leak at one time, when the first installment came through. A hundred thousand for a shuetzen corps, especially at this time, is liable to cause comment !" "The situation is equally good all through the coun- try," broke in the counselor again. "If these fools in the American papers don't shut up and if those other fools in Washington don't do something very soon, His Majesty may be depended upon to make a move that will bring these crazy Yankees to their senses. Drilling is going on all over the country and all our halls are stocked with full equipment. Thanks to His Majesty's spirit, which pervades all of us, we have a better standing army right here in the United States than any of the European states have over there, ex- cept our own. As for the Yankees, bah ! They have less than a hundred thousand regulars all told and the state militias are a rabble, just a rabble of clerks, com- pared to our seasoned men. Did you know " The jolting of the 'bus over a cobbled cross-street, the noise of its horn and the shouting of an angry cab driver, drowned the rest of the sentence for Warden, the more since the counselor had leaned over toward his companion and had finished the sentence in a more subdued tone. However, he caught the reply from the other man, who was evidently much astounded at the information conveyed. "You don't mean it?" The counselor answered in the affirmative, as the inclination of his head indicated. Warden's eavesdropping had been productive, how- 18 THE PASSPORT ever, even without this final piece of information, which he had missed. He was so intent upon listening to everything the two Germans were saying that he had not noticed, in a seat across the aisle on the 'bus deck, a black-mustached man who was watching him closely. At the moment of the break in the conversa- tion for Warden this man leaned over the coun- selor, with his mouth close to the latter's ear and whispered something to him. The counselor at once repeated what was said to him, to his friend, also in a whisper and then neither could refrain from glancing quickly back of them at Warden. He, in the mean- while, had settled himself back against the railing, something having told him that the black-mustached man's whisper had to do with his eavesdropping. A few moments later the 'bus, now near Grant's Tomb, stopped at the street where Miss Berwin lived and he alighted, with a number of other passengers. As he walked rapidly eastward he did not see that the man with the black mustache was on the other side of the street, watching him. CHAPTER III IN appearance, Mary Berwin was typically an American girl, just as Warden was a typical American boy. There was no suggestion of that foreign touch about her manner of acting or speaking which, as a general rule, immediately brands the alien. Yet he knew her as the daughter of a former Englishman and his wife, naturalized some ten years, but whose tender age at the time of coming to the New World she was then only ten years old had caused Mary to acclimate quickly and grow up into American young womanhood. Tall and fair, the girl had been blessed with more than average beauty and she had a quiet graciousness of manner that quickly won for her a large circle of friends, both in official Washington and unofficial New York, the two places between which William Frederick Berwin spent most of his time. "I had really begun to believe I was not to see you again," pouted Miss Berwin when he was ushered into the apartment. "I have had a perfectly lovely time in Washington but that does not absolve you from having to explain why you did not come up during the fort- night that we were still here." He made the best excuses that he could think of at the moment without actually telling the" girl the reason of his neglecting her. He was burning to tell her of his plans, of his ambitions, but put it off from moment to moment, as a cat puts off the killing of the mouse, although he could, like most young men of his age, 20 THE PASSPORT well imagine himself leading this sweet creature to the altar and from it, and together facing the deliciously thrilling career that he had mapped out for himself. The conversation of the young couple drifted nat- urally enough to the stirring events in Europe, during which he made it plain that his sympathies lay with the opponents of the Germans because of the manner in which the Germans were waging war. "It is too bad," said he, "for most every college graduate has always leaned towards Germany in all things. One unconsciously associates student life with Germany and, for me, the legends of Old Heidelberg, Nuremberg and Frankfort have always held the greatest fascination." Mary became quite enthusiastic as the conversation touched upon Germany. "I was born in Heidelberg," she said, clapping her hands. "You born in Heidelberg!" he said, incredulously. "Why, I I always thought you were English by birth." "No. You see, mamma and papa were on a visit to Germany and I was born there. Brother Charles, too, was born in Germany while mamma and papa were visiting Berlin, and so was little Herman. Herman was born in Berlin a year before we came to America from London." "But your father and mother are English born, are they not?" "Oh yes. I do not know just what part of England, though. Father always had much business in Ger- many and he and mother often made trips there. They speak German almost as well as they do English." She went to a table and took up an album, which she THE PASSPORT 21 brought to where they were sitting. "Here," she con- tinued, smilingly, "I will show you some photographs of the town you so much admire, taken when I was a little baby there !" They amused themselves looking through the pages, commenting laughingly on some of the bearded, foreign faces and on the old-fashioned foreign modes as shown in several of the older family photographs. "This is an old friend of father's." She removed a picture from its place and handed it to him, for better inspection. "Isn't he a splendid-looking old character, with all those lovely decorations pinned on his chest?" she added, laughing merrily. He held the photograph in his hand and looked with interest on the strong, de- termined face. Mary was called out of the room by her mother and he arose and stood at the mantel, still with the picture in his hand. In the photograph he saw reflected the likeness of the strongest and most powerful man in Germany of his day. "If this man was an old friend of his," he said to himself, "then Mr. William Frederick Berwin cer- tainly had an influential friend in Germany." A movement he made scraped the back of the picture against the mantel and tore off a sheet of paper which had been held in place at the four corners by a bit of paste. Then he saw, reflected in the mirror above the mantel shelf, an inscription on the back, an inscription in German. He had no difficulty in translating the writing. With Greetings and Well Wishes to Wilhelm Frederick Buhrwein, His Imperial Majesty's most worthy servant, ever faith- fully devoted to the cause of the Emperor and the Fatherland. 1st. August. '95. VON BOSCHE. 22 THE PASSPORT "Wilhelm Frederick Buhrwein William Frederick Berwin! The coincidence is certainly peculiar," he mused. His further reflections were interrupted by Mary's return and he frankly turned to the charming girl for a solution of the German inscription. "I guess this particular picture was not given to your father." He showed Mary the writing on the back. "This was written to a man named Buhrwein, apparently a German and also quite apparently in the service of the German Emperor." "That is strange," said the girl. "Why, papa always points to that picture with pride because it was given to him by a man so very powerful in Europe. I must ask him about it." Just then Mr. Berwin entered the room. He greeted Warden pleasantly and was about to settle himself in a chair and join in the conversation when Mary turned to him with the detached photograph. "Look, papa!" she cried. "WTio is this Mr. Buhr- wein that this man writes to? His name is almost like yours, isn't it?" William Frederick Berwin's dignified and quiet man- ner vanished as he beheld the photograph, with the Ger- man writing on the back, held up to his view. "Have I not told you never to disturb the album?" he fairly bellowed. "The pictures are not to be re- moved from it. I intend to be obeyed when I say a thing." Then, realizing that he had made a family scene before a stranger, he mumbled half an apology and proceeded to re-insert the photograph in the book. "It is nothing at all," he continued, trying to control himself but watching Warden furtively as he squeezed and pushed the photograph back into its place in the THE PASSPORT 23 album. "It is nothing at all, really. Merely a picture that I got through a friend of mine, who died. The similarity in names brought us together. I do not like to have my papers and pictures disturbed, that's all." And Mr. Berwin attempted a sickly little laugh. Warden felt that the object of his visit to Mary Berwin would not be attained that evening. The girl and the place were there, to be sure, but there had been a disturbing element and undefinable something that had kept the momentous words from being uttered and f the incident of the German photograph completely shattered the tranquility of the occasion. "Mary tells me she was born in Heidelberg, a place I admire very much," he said, finally, to Mr. Berwin, by way of starting a general conversation. "Yes," replied the father, "you see, my wife and I were spending the season in Germany, as we do almost every year and so Mary came to be born on German soil." "And both your sons, too, I understand," persisted Warden. "Yes, that's right, quite right." "But you yourself were born in England, were you not?" Berwin turned in his chair, looking rather sharply at Warden over his eye-glasses, as he answered quickly : "Oh, yes. I'm English. That is, until I became naturalized here, let's see, I guess nearly ten years ago. Now I'm an American a Yankee !" There was an unpleasant smile about Mr. Berwin's lips. While Berwin spoke English almost flawlessly, Mrs. Berwin, a pleasant-faced woman with an effusiveness of manner quite in contrast with that of her husband, and who had joined the others during the final hour of 24 THE PASSPORT Warden's stay in the Berwin apartment, had a decid- edly German accent. This, she explained, was because she had spent so much time in Germany in her younger days and had kept it up through her annual visits to that country. Finally, after a few precious moments alone with Mary, Warden said his adieus and departed. As he got to the street and made his way to the corner, to board an omnibus, the man with the black mustache came forth from the shadow of a building across the street and entered the hotel he had just left. The man took an elevator without the formality of announcing himself and made his wy to the Berwin rooms. Although the hour was then getting late, Mr. Berwin, who opened the door himself, showed no sur- prise at having a caller. He addressed the visitor in German, which tongue also was used by the visitor. "What brings you here at this time?" asked Berwin, as he showed the other into the reception room of the apartment. "The young fellow who has been calling here just now. Who is he?" "Why, young Warden? What are you interested in him for?" "Well, he was overmuch interested in the conversa- tion of Bachman and Von Stamm this evening. So much so that I decided to follow him. We were all on top of a 'bus and I was sitting well back. This young chap was on the seat just back of the others and he was not losing a word of the conversation, let me tell you." "Bachman and Von Stamm should not talk of vital matters in public places," was Berwin's sole comment. Then, after thinking a moment, "As for young War- THE PASSPORT 25 den, he's a friend of Mary's, a young college chap, and you need not worry your head about him." Mary entered the room at this moment and heard Warden's name mentioned. "What is the matter with Richard, father?" she asked, anxiously. Then, noticing the other, she nod- ded a formal greeting, for she had only seen the man once before when he had called on her father. "Nothing at all, my child," said Berwin. "Mr. Smith here thought he knew him when he met him coming out of the hotel." "Mr. Warden is a very nice young man," laughed Mary. "He is going to be famous some day, too, for he has made an invention or something that is going to stop this cruel war. You had better be nice to him for you may have him for a son-in-law some day if he becomes very famous !" "What does the young man think of the war?" asked the father, curiously. "Oh, he is with the English in his sympathies. He does not think much of the Kaiser. So you ought to like him, papa, for you are half English, you know." "Hm. Yes," was Berwin's comment. He and the man he had called Smith exchanged meaning glances as Mary left the room. Berwin gave the other the name of the hotel at which Richard was stopping and the visitor left the apartment. The next morning, after his breakfast, Warden went to the lower part of the city. His first visit was at the Naturalization Bureau in the Federal Building and there he asked to see the record of William Frederick Berwin's naturalization. In the register kept for this purpose he found this entry : 26 THE PASSPORT Date: Nov. 15, 1905. Name: William Frederick Berwin. Born: London, England. Arrived U. S. : March 11, 1905. The other data under the name consisted of the in- formation that Berwin had renounced allegiance to King Edward, that he had three children at the time of taking out his papers Mary, Charles and Herman that his wife was living and that he had never been in trouble with the law. From the Federal Building he strolled to the office of the British Consul where, he felt sure, he would find the record of Mr. Berwin's arrival in America as a British subject and that it would clear up the mystery of the German photograph, which had bothered him quite a little. He desired to satisfy himself that his half-acknowledged theory was absurd. The British Consul's clerk brought down a number of huge registry books and finally turned up, under the date of March 11, 1905, among those who had regis- tered their arrival that day in New York, that of Berwin as follows: William Frederick Berwin; naturalized in Lon- clon, 1893; born in Berlin, Germany, 1870; wife, Augustina; children, Maria, Carl and Herman; occupation, commission broker. "So there," he thought, as he made his way slowly from the Consulate, "is the solution! Undoubtedly Berwin was Buhrwein, most worthy servant of the German Emperor. However, the man probably ended his official work long ago, at any rate when he became THE PASSPORT 27 a British subject. So what's the use of worrying about it?" Then he suddenly saw the back of Von Bosche's pho- tograph in his mind's eye and remembered the date, August 1, 1895 ! Two years after Mary's father ap- parently became a British subject! Von Bosche praised Buhrwein as faithful to the German Fatherland and the Emperor two years after Berwin was supposed to have foresworn his allegiance to his German sovereign. It was unbelievable. He must find out more about it, if only in justice to Mary, who seemingly knew nothing of the name of Buhrwein or her father's German birth. Half an hour after Warden had left the British Consul's office and when he was just stepping into the Lennox Library, a very much excited man with a black mustache jumped from a motor cab in front of the hotel where the Berwins lived. He went upstairs with- out delay and was soon in the Berwin apartment. When Mary's father appeared, the visitor, in his ex- citement, caught Berwin unceremoniously by both lapels of his coat. "I was right in my suspicions of that Warden boy," he whispered, trying to suppress his nervousness. "I've just followed him from the Naturalization Bureau to the British Consulate. In each place he has been look- ing you up. Who is he and what is he after? Do you know?" Berwin appeared discomfited as his excited visitor spoke. Then he went to an album, took out the photo- graph that had caused the scene the night before and held it up for the other to see. Pointing to the inscrip- tion on the back, he said : "My daughter took it from the album last night and the paper covering Von Bosche's writing was torn off. 28 Young Warden read it and, undoubtedly, compared the name I am known by to-day with my name as Von Bosche wrote it. Before that, Mary had told him that the man whose face was on the picture had presented the photograph to me and that I was very proud of it. I suppose he wanted to satisfy himself that I was really born in England, as I told him I was. He found out that I told him the truth for my naturalization record shows my birth to have been in London." "Yes, and he also knows that you were really born in Berlin, as the British Consul's record showed him," snapped the other man. Berwin was thoughtful for a moment. "Well, I do not see that it can make much differ- ence," he said finally. "Unless he decides to end his attention to Mary." "Perhaps not," replied Berwin's visitor, "but if that young fellow has really some plan on foot and if his interest in the conversation of Von Stamm and Bach- man was more than mere curiosity, he can make trou- ble, especially since you did not state the truth in your American papers. You swore you were born in Lon- don, remember." "And what does a naturalization paper amount to ?" laughed Berwin. "If these damned Yankees do not like it, the worst that can happen is that my usefulness here is ended and I will have to try another field to serve our beloved Emperor. Mexico, for instance ! Hah, my friend, I have an idea I could serve the Fath- erland well in Mexico!" "Why in Mexico?" "Because Germany is the only country that can overpower that nation of bandits. We can help them with their grievances, at first, until we have their con- THE PASSPORT 29 fidence. After that, it would be easy to get the Mexi- cans under our absolute control. The French failed and the Yankees failed but the Germans will not fail. Once firmly settled in Mexico we could fight these Americans across their southwestern border from the Atlantic on their eastern shores and from within! It would be a fitting struggle a fight worth while !" CHAPTER IY On several occasions following his last call on Mary, Warden had felt the uncomfortable sensation of hav- ing his footsteps shadowed. He had not noticed any particular individual more than once, but something had occasionally brought to him the "criminal fear" by which the habitual criminal is forever on the qui vive for a pursuer. However, he had dismissed the thought each time as trivial and unimportant. There being no valid reason for his early rising, he generally breakfasted late. His prolonged morning rest was largely due to the fact that he would sit up long after midnight engrossed in the weighing of his problems or in chemical experiments, for which latter purpose he had transformed a private bathroom into a laboratory. This morning he had awakened with a hazy memory of a dream that he had gone through during the night. The recollection of it grew more distinct as he stretched himself into full consciousness and moved himself into a sitting posture in bed, the room flooded with the light of a day well advanced. Yes, now he remembered. A burglar had come upon him as he lay asleep and he had hurled a chair at the intruder upon awakening. The fellow had made off without taking any valuables and there the dream ended or, if continued, it lay buried in his subjective mind. Then he looked at the window. He rubbed his eyes. THE PASSPORT 31 Surely he had not left the room in such a topsy turvy condition before retiring. And he had not left the window open from the bot- tom. He was sure of that. He jumped out of bed and looked about the room. Was it possible that he had walked in his sleep and upset his things this way? As he surveyed the scene his eyes fell upon something on the floor. He picked it up and found it was a dark blue silk 'kerchief torn in half, that did not belong to him. So there had been a burglar, after all! He had not dreamt it ! A few moments later there came a knock at the door and a bellboy brought him his morning paper. He told the boy to send the hotel manager upstairs. When that worthy arrived and learned of his guest's exper- ience he was worried. The rooms on that floor were connected on the out- side by a fire-escape balcony which ran the length of the court. There were four other guests whose rooms were connected by the balcony and none of them had complained of a burglar's visit, the hotel man ex- plained. Three of these were women who had lived at the hotel for a long time. The fourth, who occupied the room adjoining that of Warden, had taken it the afternoon before. This guest, the manager said, was a short man with a dark mustache and he had left the hotel that morning, just after breakfast. He would look into this man's room just by way of precaution. When he returned a few minutes later he had what looked like a little rag in his hand. "Nothing except this bit of cloth," said the manager. "That's plenty and sufficient," answered Warden. 32 THE PASSPORT "I found the other half of that piece of cloth under my window on the floor this morning." After the manager left he went over his effects but could not discover anything missing and concluded the thief had been frightened away before gathering up anything that he could have carried off. A glance over the morning paper brought an excla- mation of pleasure to his lips. "The very thing!" he cried. He hurried with his dressing and then spent an hour in the improvised laboratory. In the early afternoon he presented himself at the idoor of a tall building in Union Square. The build- ing was closed, it being a half holiday, but he found the janitor sitting on a little chair in the hall on the ground floor. "I am anxious to make some bird's-eye photographs of the meeting in the Square this afternoon," he said to the janitor. "Would you let me do this from the roof, or from one of the windows on the top floor?" At the same time he slipped into the janitor's hand a greenback, removing thereby any objections the guardian of the building might otherwise have had. He was taken upstairs in the elevator. While the janitor was showing him into an empty loft on the top floor, a well-dressed man waited at the door down- stairs. The newcomer approached as the janitor re- turned from his trip to the top floor. "Did a man with a camera come here a while ago?" he asked. Upon receiving an answer in the affirmative, he continued: "I'm his assistant so I would like to join him. On the top floor? Alright, thank you. No, I will walk up. I need the exercise." With that the stranger went upstairs and, on the THE PASSPORT 33 top floor, hid quietly in one of the small rooms in the loft from where he could observe Warden at the win- dow facing the Square below. The Sphere, most important and reliable of morning dailies, had this remarkable account of an occurrence that had set the entire city and, in fact, the country, talking, as its leading piece of local news on the front page of its issue the next morning: 4,000 "REDS" AND I. W. W. RUFFIANS STRANGELY STRICKEN IN UNION SQUARE Police and Reporters Also Affected In the Midst of Harangues by Agitators at the Regular Saturday Afternoon Demonstration, Every Person in the Meeting Zone Is Laid Low by a Mysterious Ailment Four thousand or more picturesquely dirty men and women, advertised as the "Army of Unemployed," but consisting for the most part of professional anarchists, anti-law-and-order agitators and followers of the so- called Industrial Workers of the World, gathered in Union Square at two o'clock yesterday afternoon to listen to speeches by their leaders. At two-thirty o'clock every one of them, besides at least two hundred police officers, a dozen reporters and several photogra- phers, were suddenly stricken with an ailment that rendered them unconscious for from four to five hours. What the cause of the strange visitation was has not been discovered, although the police and health depart- ments of the city worked diligently far into the night to find a solution to the mystery. 34 THE PASSPORT Three men were talking from as many points of vantage in the crowd when the weird thing happened. Whatever it was, it came suddenly, so suddenly that the reporters on the edge of the crowd near the park cottage did not remember what had occurred when they came to. From spectators at windows in offices overlooking the Square it was learned that those who first ran to the scene when men and women were seen sinking to their knees were also completely overcome. Only those who reached the stricken ones from five to ten minutes after the visitation were able to render assistance and these later comers did not find any explanation for the strange happening. The speeches were at the height of their blasphemous and vicious attack on organized society, law, order, and government, and the huge crowd had reached the climax of its riotous delight over the fiery words spoken by their loud-lunged orators when two little toy balloons, evidently weighted, fluttered down upon the heads of the mob. In big, white letters on a background of blue there was printed on the balloons "Down with Anarchy." One of the little globes rested for a moment on a second- story window-sill of the building on the north side of the plaza where the meeting was being held, but it fell away just as the janitor's wife ran to the window to secure it. She was the only person who saw the in- scription on the balloon except those who were later stricken down and who was able to tell the police about it. The crowd seemed frenzied when they saw the bal- loons. Hundreds of hands were raised ready to crush them when they should get within reach. At the very moment that the two little balloons were crushed, amid frantic yells, the "thing" happened. THE PASSPORT 35 Rapidly those in the anarchist meeting zone toppled over without a struggle. The janitor's wife declared afterward that all the thousands in the mob were stricken within the space of one minute. The two police inspectors standing on the balcony of the park cottage, where they could look over the heads of the mob, were seen to sink to their knees. On the asphalt, auditors fell in heaps with blue-coated policemen in their midst. Newspaper reporters, with rolls of "copy" paper and pencils clutched in their hands, were lying near the park cottage platform. Two photographers who had been stationed on a pile of lumber fell to the pavement, one of them suffering a fractured arm, and with both their cameras crushed in the fall. A cinematograph operator sank to his knees on a mound of paving blocks upon which his camera remained upon its tripod. A strange spectacle was that of the horse attached to the runabout of Battalion Chief Hay of the Fire De- partment, and his driver, both of whom were overcome in their vehicle. The animal was also stricken and lay in a heap between the shafts. Police reserves from all nearby stations came on the run after Police Headquarters had been notified by citizens and ambulances from all the hospitals were summoned. The scene in the Square at three o'clock was inde- scribable. The avenues on either side of the Square were alive with people and from the southern end of the park an onrushing mob of spectators trampled across the lawns in a mad scramble for a closer view of the calamity. In grim contrast, the plaza at the northern end of the Square was filled with a mass of inanimate bodies. Arms, legs and heads protruded in indescribable con- fusion. 36 THE PASSPORT It was as if a sudden pestilence had stricken every man and woman in that disorderly crowd and felled them all simultaneously. Many little children, lying as dead between their elders, added a pathetic touch to the weird scene. It was manifestly impossible to take four thousand or more unconscious persons to hospitals in the limited number of ambulances available, so a call was sent in for every police patrol wagon within a radius of five miles. When these arrived by the dozen the work of removing the senseless ones progressed with slightly better success. The ambulance doctors and many volunteer physi- cians who were among the spectators failed absolutely to diagnose the ailment of the crowd and all that could be done was to pile the stricken ones into hospital and police conveyances and hurry them to the hospitals. The fact that none in that awful, silent mass moved a muscle, struck an undefinable terror into the hearts of the rescuers. It was a weird and ghastly proceeding and those who first arrived on the scene for the work of rescue were completely staggered by the hugeness of the task. It was not very long before the news had spread over the city and all thoroughfares leading to the Square were choked with a struggling, fighting mob of the curious. By half-past six o'clock less than twelve hundred unconscious persons had been removed to hospitals and the police were in despair at the hopelessness of the prospect of taking at least three thousand more away. The police were arranging for searchlights to aid in the work of removal when darkness should set in, and fresh platoons of reserves were being rushed from out- lying districts of the city to relieve the exhausted men who had worked with feverish energy all the afternoon, THE PASSPORT 37 when, just as suddenly as it had been stricken, the huge mass of humanity that lay packed in the Square began to recover consciousness. Within an hour the disconcerted remnant of the an- archist meeting dwindled slowly away. At the same time word came from the hospitals that the patients there also were recovering and were, seemingly, none the worse for their experience except for a slight dizziness. Absolutely no explanation has been offered for the strange occurrence. The Berwins had been in Washington for several days and returned to New York on the Monday morn- ing following the happening in Union Square. They had, of course, seen the reports of it in the Sunday papers in the Capital. When they arrived at their New York home they found the man whom Berwin had called Smith waiting for them in the hotel reception room. He accompanied the Berwins to their apart- ment and Mary's father immediately showed the man into the study. "Well," said Berwin, "I see you had some happen- ings in New York while we were away?" The other was evidently laboring under great, sup- pressed excitement. He walked up and down the room in rapid strides as Berwin spoke. "There was something about it that I did not like," he said, suddenly. "On Saturday I looked up young Warden and followed him in the afternoon to the build- ing on the north side of Union Square, overlooking the anarchist meeting place. He was carrying a big box that looked like a large camera. I saw him bribe the janitor to let him go upstairs. When the janitor came back I told him I was the photographer's assist- ant. He allowed me up, too, unknown to young War- 38 THE PASSPORT den. I hid in a closet from where I could watch the boy and finally saw him lean out of the window, hold his camera box at arm's length and apparently take a bird's-eye photograph of what was happening below. Then he got back into the room. I could have pushed him out of that window without any trouble and with- out anybody being the wiser, while he was leaning over the sill. Somehow, I'm half sorry I did not do it. Now " here he grasped Berwin by both shoulders and spoke very earnestly, "now, I don't know what that boy was up to. He appeared, of course, to be taking pictures and he may not have had anything to do with what occurred below. But somehow I feel that this infernal young Yankee knew it was going to happen whatever it was!" "What is you theory of what really did happen?" asked Berwin. The other man had resumed his pacing up and down the room. "Do you think I am any wiser than the experts of the Health Office, Police Bureau, Fire Department, the Mayor and all the rest who are trying their best to hand some sort of theory to these sensational New York sheets that are clamoring for reasons? How I hate those New York papers ! Oh, to see them muzzled and their dogs of proprietors either jailed or begging their miserable living from the hands of our glorious compatriots! They howl about Rheims and Louvain! Hah! Wait till these damned Yankees see New York. German architecture will rise out of the ruins of these ugly piles and Neuer Berlin will live as the great won- der city of the Western Hemisphere!" Berwin showed impatience at his visitor's increasing enthusiasm. Collected and unimpulsive to the point of THE PASSPORT 39 being phlegmatic himself, he could not appreciate the other's enthusiasm beyond a certain point. "Well, well, what has all this to do with young War- den taking photographs of the mob in Union Square?" he asked somewhat testily. "Where's the significance of Warden's picture-taking, anyway?" "This much. Young Warden was highly excited af- ter leaning out of the window and exposing his camera box. After doing this he jumped back into the room, closing the window at which he had been working and also carefully closing two other windows that had been left slightly open at the top. Then he attached a sort of half mask over his face which covered his nose and mouth. It had little perforations through which I could see there was gauze packed underneath. Before adjusting the mask he saturated the gauze from the contents of a little bottle. Then he opened the window and looked out again for nearly ten minutes. When he jumped back he took his camera box and, still wearing the mask, made his way down the stairs. Com- ing from behind the elevator, he must have seen the janitor prostrated in the open doorway leading to the street for I stepped over the janitor's body a moment later. Warden must have removed his mask when he came into the street for he stood there, with a mighty strange expression on his face, gazing at that uncon- scious anarchist cattle. He deliberately lied to a po- lice officer who asked him if he had been there when the thing happened for he told the officer that he had just arrived on the scene with his camera." "I still fail to see anything very remarkable about it, Max Schmidt," persisted Berwin. "His taking pic- tures of the mob just as it was stricken down in a mys- terious way may be just a coincidence. There were 40 THE PASSPORT other photographers there, according to the published reports." Max stopped short in his strides and leaned with one hand, spread wide open, on a small table in the center of the room. He eyed Berwin for an instant much like a sharpshooter takes sight before sending the shot home to its mark. "Supposing I tell you," he said, slowly, "that young Warden's camera was no camera at all. That it was an empty box, covered with black leather and with fake camera attachments at one end? A lens through which light could not penetrate into the box for the very good reason that there was no hole in the wood at that end !" Berwin looked very serious as Max spoke. "How do you know that ?" he asked. "Because when I got into the same street-car with* him, Warden opened the lens-end of the box, which worked on hinges. I saw that the end piece of the box was perfectly plain, smooth wood on the inside, like the other five sides of the interior. He put the pack- age containing his mask and several newspapers inside for convenience in carrying and closed the box up again with a simple little hook." Berwin whistled softly. "That does look strange," he said. "Where (did he go?" he asked after a few moment's reflection. "To his hotel." "Did you follow him?" "As far as the door. I could not very well go in the place after my entering his room the other night. I do not know how near the hotel people came to con- nect the burglar with Warden's next door neighbor THE PASSPORT 41 and I cannot afford to be jailed for burglary just now." "What did you find in his room?" asked Berwin. "Plenty of bottles, tubes, acids, books on chemistry. I looked through all his clothes but the only writing I found was a copy of Von Bosche's inscription on the back of the photograph that you have and a memo- randum of your naturalization and consular entries." CHAPTER V PROGRESS in events of international importance over- shadowed local interest in the "Union Square Mys- tery," as the happening came to be spoken of in the American metropolis. Try as hard as he might, Max had discovered nothing further about young Richard Warden and his doings that could be construed in any way bearing upon the mission that he and Berwin had in hand. As for Warden, he had, as we know from Max Schmidt's report to Berwin, gone directly to his hotel from Union Square on that memorable Saturday after- noon. For the first time since he had felt that he was being shadowed he had seen the same man lingering in his vicinity more than once. He felt morally certain that the short, stout man who stood looking up and down the street nervously as he entered the hotel, was the same individual whom he had noticed lingering around with more than passing interest when he had stopped to talk to the police officer after the excite- ment in the Square. He also recollected, now, that there was a man of the same description in the car with him on the way from the Square to the hotel. In his room, after depositing the camera box in his "laboratory," he noted the time and gave himself two hours for complete relaxation of body and mind. Shortly after five o'clock he emerged from the little hostelry. For a few moments he stood at the entrance, casually looking up and down the street but failed to THE PASSPORT 43 catch any glimpse of the man whom he felt sure had followed him. Then he made his way back to the Square again and remained at the scene of the disturb- ance, closely watching events there, until the last of the stricken anarchists had recovered consciousness and departed. With an air of evident satisfaction the young man retraced his footsteps to the hotel and immediately be- gan to pack his belongings. His bottles and testing apparatus he put into a small wooden case that he had secured for the purpose and had one of the hotel boys take it downstairs to the hotel office. His personal things were put into the big valise which he brought downstairs himself. After paying his bill he requested that the wooden case be held for him until he again should call for it and then he went to a little restaurant he was in the habit of patronizing, for his dinner. The place was kept by a German who had, however, long ago and with considerable pride shown young War- den his naturalization papers. On this particular evening, with his arm full of the day's late editions, he found many Teutonic friends of Frank, the manager, in the place. Frank, who had been christened Franz, had changed the spelling of his name with his allegiance. The conversation of the Germans was confined ex- clusively to the war and Warden took a seat near the serving counter so that he might overhear the contem- poraneous analysis of the struggle in Europe, as eluci- dated by those who, while they had purposely sepa- rated themselves from military oppression, were now advocating it as the most wholesome of national virtues. "Ve are keeping all de glibbings from dese lying New York papers," volunteered the erstwhile Franz, "unt 44 THE PASSPORT efery vun goes to Berlin, to der Wilhelmstrasse. You yoost remember I say it. At Berlin dey know vot pa- pers haf insoolted der Kaiser in New York unt tings vill happen. Yoost remember I say it." Franz, from a more or less lengthy acquaintance with the young collegian, had come to regard Warden as being in accord with every opinion generated in his Germanic brain. Warden's complacency in this direc- tion had been superinduced principally by the friendly attention of Franz to the ham and eggs or the omelettes with which Warden was wont to regale himself. In all seriousness the restaurant man and his coterie of expatriates collected every printed criticism of Ger- many, her army, her navy and her Emperor and War- den found, from uncontrovertible evidence, that this data was actually sent to Germany and duly acknowl- edged by the powers in Wilhelmstrasse. "Der Kaiser vill know who ees his frents unt also close vot ees not his frents," pursued Franz. "It ees der same vay all ofer der United Shtates. Der ees not von place anyvere dat der Chermans don't sent efery- ting to Chermany vot ees printed in dees lying Amer- ican papers." "But," suggested Warden good-naturedly, "you're an American now, Frank. Why are you so busy send- ing clippings to the Kaiser?" "Dot's alright," said the restaurateur, heatedly. "Dot's alright. I'm an American alright. I got my papers. But yoost de same ve can't haf lies told about Chermany. Chermany vill win dis var an' den de beo- ples here in der United Shtates vot lied unt insoolted der Kaiser had better look ouidt!" "Frank," he asked, half seriously, "supposing just supposing that Germany was not beaten in this war THE PASSPORT 45 and should declare war on the United States, what would you do? What would your friends do?" The German looked significantly first at Warden and then from man to man in the group of expatriates about him. "Don't ask me !" he fairly shouted. "Don't ask me ! Ve vould know vat to do ! Vouldn't ve, fellows ?" Turning to Richard, "I von't say vot I'd do but der United Shtates vould get de biggest surbrise id efer had if Chermany efer made var on dis country. I hope for der United Shtates id nefer vill happen. Yoost remember I say it!" Warden ate his meal in silence thereafter, looking over the hysterical headlines in the evening sheets and leaving the war discussion to Franz and his cohorts. Somehow the food did not taste good to him that even- ing. He felt a certain relief to be out of the place. He had never felt that way before. After squaring his account he went to the train terminal and an hour later was being lulled to sleep by the rhythmical hum of the wheels and rails. After the exciting events through which he had passed, a few days spent amidst the quiet of the Berk- shires strongly appealed to him. Not having an- nounced his coming, there was no one to greet him as he stepped off the train at the station and, the hour being very early, he enjoyed a refreshing Sunday morn- ing walk through the country. He had hardly entered the house where, in the cheer- ful kitchen, he found his aunt supervising the prepara- tions for the breakfast, when a messenger from the vil- lage telegraph office brought a telegram. It was an open question as to which surprised the worthy Eliza- beth the most the unexpected arrival of her nephew 46 THE PASSPORT or the messenger with the telegram. The combination was almost overwhelming, for a quiet Sabbath morning. The message was for him and proved to be from Mary Berwin. It had been sent from Washington to his New York hotel and from there forwarded to the New England hamlet. "Returning Monday. Must see you immediately unknown to father. Imperative. Mary." He read the message over several times as Aunt Elizabeth divided her attention between her bis- cuits and her nephew. Then he pocketed the bit of yellow paper and turned to the bustling spinster. "Well, Aunt Elizabeth. I'm quite a busy man for a fellow hardly out of college. Thought I would spend a day or two with you and father and here is a tele- gram calling me back to New York in a hurry, before I fairly arrive! But they will have to wait. Nothing shall interfere with my two days at home." The elder Warden, deeply interested in his own studies and experiments, during the long years of which he had achieved a number of signal scientific triumphs, was eager to know whether his son, also, had promise of great things in the future. "I believe I am on the right track, father," the young man told him. "My visit home is for the three-fold purpose of getting some rest, the need of which you will later understand, to get some funds and to leave with you a parcel containing matters of the greatest importance to me. If at any time more than a week shall elapse without you hearing from me, you are to open the parcel, which now is sealed. Otherwise, it is to remain sealed until I come here again." Richard had a modest income of his own but for the plans that he had in mind he felt the need of sufficient funds on hand to carry him through for several months. THE PASSPORT 47 He therefore arranged with his father for an advance on his income and then settled down to two days' thor- ough enjoyment of the country quiet. Some time on Tuesday he would take a comfortable day train back to New York. That would be plenty time for his plans. But a second telegram came from Mary. It ar- rived at noon on Monday and it decided him to leave at once. The second message was not re-assuring. "On your return telephone me, saying you are Kathlyn Strevers' brother and that you want to know where Kathlyn is to meet me. Do Hurry. Danger. Mary." This time the message came from New York, indicat- ing that Mary was home again. He began to wonder whether he had succeeded so soon in getting himself into difficulty. He felt certain that no one had guessed his plans and the only thing that began to grow hazy and indistinct in his mind while, at the same time, it began to assume a sinister importance, was the posi- tion of Mary's father, coupled with the conversation of the two men on the omnibus. He had not connected these two incidents before. Now, with Mary's tele- grams, a sudden analogy presented itself to him. The various comments on the possiblity of war between his own country and Germany, including the talk that he had overheard in Franz's lunch place, did not diminish the intuitive forebodings of catastrophe to come. Two hours after his return to New York, he called Mary on the telephone. In answer to the maid's in- quiry he answered, "Mr. Strevers, brother of Miss Kathlyn, wants to speak to Miss Berwin." He had not the slightest idea what Kathlyn's brother's Chris- tian name was but he was assisted out of his dilemma a moment later by Mr. Berwin. "Hello! Is this you, John?" came the query, which he countered with a half- 48 THE PASSPORT hearted "Yes, this is Jack." It struck him almost im- mediately that John Strevers might be one of those Johns who dislike the familiar equivalent for their Christian name. But Mr. Berwin was not surprised for he pleasantly asked after the welfare of the Strev- ers family. Not even knowing the numerical strength of Kathlyn's kin, he parried as best he could in order to gain time. Finally Mary came to the telephone. After some desultory pleasantries about Kathlyn and "Brother Jack," in which she displayed that feminine talent for dissimulation that every woman has at her immediate command in an emergency, Mary decided that she would meet "Kathlyn" at the Astor for lunch- eon, at one o'clock, the following day. Unlike a great many, if not most women, Mary was prompt in her engagements. He was waiting for her somewhat in advance of the appointed hour in one of the reception rooms commanding a view of the en- trance through which, in all likelihood, she would come. When she appeared the two at once preempted a table in a corner of the palm garden the lowered lights of which seemed unconsciously to offer the proper nook for a serious and clandestine interview. "Dick," began the girl, "something terribly serious is happening. I do not know exactly what it is, but I feel it is something terrible. In the first place, I found out that my name is not really Berwin but Buhrwein." He nodded, to show that he had been almost sure of that. "Then, my father and mother are German born, just like us children. And, worst of all, father is an officer or something in the German government, while he is supposed to be an American. Why, he has voted regularly for many years! Dick, I'm afraid terribly afraid." THE PASSPORT 49 "And how did you come to learn all this?" he asked, gently. "When we came to Washington father had a lot of German people visiting him." The girl leaned forward over the table and impulsively took hold of each of his wrists. "It all comes back to me now. I never really realized it. Dick, ever since we came to America father always had mysterious conferences with Germans who came to call on him at all sorts of odd moments. Well, this time we had many of them visiting us in Washing- ton and in the evening I heard mamma and papa talk- ing very earnestly after we had all retired. Papa seemed angry at mamma and I got out of bed very quietly and listened at the connecting door between their room and mine. Mamma was saying, 'But you certainly cannot do that, Wilhelm !' to which my father replied that he certainly could and would do it, what- ever it was. Then mamma said it was wanton and fiendish and that she was beginning to feel sorry that she was German." "Did you not get the slightest inkling as to what the 'it' was?" "No," replied Mary, "I am sorry to say I did not. I even asked mamma about it the next morning, when we were quite alone. First, I drew her out on the war. I talked about the barbarous things the Germans were doing and I asked her what she really thought of it all. Mamma began to cry. 'It is all so horrible, child,' she said, 'that I cannot hear of it without weeping, both for sorrow and for shame.' Then I told her I had listened the night before and suddenly asked what it was that father had said he would do, although she had called it wanton and fiendish. Dick " very earnestly, "it was as if I had struck my mother a blow. 50 THE PASSPORT She swayed and looked at me, fearfully frightened. Then she moaned and spoke but I could not understand as her words were all broken up by sobs, but I did manage to hear her say, 'Oh, it cannot be. It cannot be, my child. It is too horrible!' More than that it was impossible for me to get out of her." He sat silent, gazing, abstracted, at the beautiful girl whose face was more beautiful because of her in- tense earnestness. She, in turn, sat looking straight at him. In the mind of each formed questions, eager questions, but which remained unframed in words. "What did you mean by saying there was danger, in your telegram ?" finally asked the young man, although it was not what had been in his mind to ask her at that moment. "And why was I to meet you unknown to your father? Has he taken a sudden dislike to me?" "The danger I meant," said Mary, "was partly the hidden danger that I feel is all around us, after what I overheard in Washington, and also danger to you! When we returned to New York yesterday, a man whom my father had introduced to me before as Smith, but whom I later learned was a Max Schmidt, a secret agent of the German Foreign Office, was waiting for us. I overheard some of their conversation I am not miss- ing an opportunity to eavesdrop now and I heard Schmidt tell father that you were doing something in which you should be stopped. At the end of the con- versation Schmidt said, with a gesture that I did not like, that he knew how to stop you. The gesture gave me a feeling of horror, Dick, and and " there were tears in the girl's eyes and a sob in her voice, "and I'm so ashamed, so mortified, so frightened, Dick, be- cause my father seemed to agree with this horrible man Schmidt." THE PASSPORT 51 "Tell me just how this fellow Schmidt looks, Mary," he said, suddenly, straightening up in his chair. "I want to know him if I should meet him." "He is short and rather stout," said the girl. "He has a very heavy, very dark mustache, almost black, and " "Aha !" he interrupted. "I guess I know the fellow. He followed me several times. The last time on Sat- urday." "And what is it that you are doing to cause my father and Schmidt to want to stop you, Dick?" Mary spoke with great earnestness. "Dick," very earnestly, "I have always thought you would do something worth while in the world. I also know your nature, so that I am sure you never could do anything that you would be ashamed of. I can, therefore, ask you, without fear of hurting your feelings, if you want to tell me." He did not answer for several moments, but sat looking directly into the eyes of the lovely girl, as if trying to find an answer there to a query he did not want to give voice to. "I will answer your question by asking another," he finally said. "You have your father and mother and you love them both. I love my father and the memory of my mother, both of which are dear to me. Neither of us would do anything to hurt our own people and I would no more do anything to hurt yours than you would do anything to hurt mine. I say that, Mary, because " he laid his hand gently upon hers, "because I love you dearly. This hardly seems the time, or the place, for a chap to tell a girl he loves her but I I must tell you." A slight pressure of the girl's other hand, as it was raised to cover his, a drooping of the gentle, express- ive eyes and a slight color rising to the cheeks, spoke 52 THE PASSPORT the answer eloquently. For the moment the clatter of dishes, the shuffling of waiters' feet and the hum of sub- dued conversation was completely lost on these two in ;the corner of the palm garden. "I am doing something that your father wants to stop me from doing although neither he nor Schmidt has the slightest idea what it is. What I am doing, Mary, will cause injury to no one not one single person. It will, undoubtedly, save many lives. What- ever it is that your father and Schmidt are engaged in must be in connection with the German government and whatever the German government is engaged in doing means disaster, agony and death. You were born German. Your people are German. I was born Amer- ican as was my father. My mother, bless her sweet memory, was born in Holland, peaceful Holland. What I am doing is in the memory of my beloved mother. She loved justice and she would not have harmed the smallest thing that had life if she could help it. I am doing what my mother would have done were she in my place. Will you take sides with me, for the saving of life, or with the German cause, for the destruction of it?" "Without knowing what it is that you are doing or propose to do, I am with you, with all my heart, be- loved." There was a renewed pressure of her hand as Mary spoke and the man knew that he could trust this woman in every endeavor that he made, in every step that he took to bring about a realization of his wonder- plan for the absolute abolition of brutality of which war, to him, was the very worst form. "It would take too long to explain to you now, in detail, all that I propose to do," he said. "We shall leave that for another time. I can say this, dear, that THE PASSPORT 53 my plan, if successful, as I think it will be, will stop the war very soon after I can reach Europe." "Europe?" asked Mary, with mingled surprise and alarm. "Europe? Must you go there and risk having the vessel you are on sunk by a torpedo ?" "That form of brutality on the part of the Germans is one of the things my plan will stop forever, I hope." "But there are things right here that must be pre- vented," she insisted. "How so?" "Why, I am very sure that what father and the man Schmidt are doing is something dreadful against the United States. There was a Senator a German who called on father and he, father and another German were talking. This German said that whatever they were discussing would be done near Sandy Hook. Father said he was afraid they would be found out. The other man insisted that was not possible and the Senator said the government here was not wide-awake enough to take any action anyway. Just what they had planned to do I could not overhear. It was only when they began to argue that they talked loud enough for me to hear what they said." "In that case," he said, slowly, "I shall defer my trip to Europe until after I have made a trip to Wash- ington." "What a strange thing that was that happened in Union Square last Saturday," said Mary as he was helping her with her wraps. He smiled. "Yes, it was strange, was it not? But the same thing will probably happen again, very soon." "Why, Richard! Why should it happen again soon?" she asked incredulously. "How do you know?" "I will let you know beforehand when it is to hap- 54 THE PASSPORT pen," was the reply. "In the meantime, not a word to a single soul on that subject. When it is to happen again I will take you with me to see the excitement. For the time being I cannot tell you any more. But you have faith in me, my beautiful darling, have you not?" "I have felt terribly unhappy, lonesome and helpless : until to-day," she replied, gently. CHAPTER VI THE broad streets of the National Capital reflected the glory of a beautiful midday sun as he left the rail- road station and walked briskly down Pennsylvania avenue. Everyone he met seemed to feel the influence of the bright weather. The City Splendid, named after the great arbiter of Justice and Freedom, seemed far removed indeed from the sordid atmosphere of death and devastation that covered, as a funeral shroud, the lands across the seas. He felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude that this was his country, his peaceful, jus- tice-radiating National Capital. He had not gone far in the direction of the Capitol grounds, when a hand was laid on his shoulder. "Your name is Warden Richard Warden?" He replied with a "Yes" about the same instant that: he turned at the inquiry. "Why," he said, as he no- ticed the speaker, "we have met before, I believe. Were you not on the Royal Blue to-day from New York?" "The same," said the stranger, a good-looking man of forty or thereabouts. "I did not want to make a scene on the train, so I did not introduce myself." He opened his coat, slightly, displaying a badge. "Secret Service," he said, briefly. "I will have to ask you to go with me. There may not be any trouble for you at all and, if everything is satisfactory, you will not be de- tained." The two walked along slowly. "What is the reason of my being stopped by the Secret Service?" asked Warden. He was puzzled but 56 THE PASSPORT not at all frightened by this unexpected adventure with the secret branch of the government. His composure, born of a sense of innocence of any wrongdoing, seemed to strike the other man as a show of bravado. "That's alright, young fellow. But we cannot take any chances nowadays. Seems you have been acting somewhat mysteriously around New York and certain information was sent in to the old man about you." In using the familiar title of "old man" the operative, like all his colleagues, was paying the Chief of the United States Secret Service the highest possible compliment and the best proof of his devotion. "But who would do that?" "Can't tell you. All I know is that I was told to follow and watch you." "And and how long have you been doing it?" "Since I received my instructions," was the ambig- uous reply. Persons who passed the two through the beautiful grounds of the Capitol never suspected that the younger man, his mind alive with conjecture over this most unexpected incident and with the great plans he had formulated, was in the hands of the dreaded Secret Service and that the older man was practically his captor. "I would like to send a telegram to my hotel asking them to send my valise by the next train," he said, af- ter a pause. "I brought nothing with me, intending to return to New York this evening and my valise con- tains certain papers that would assist materially in clearing up any mystery concerning myself." "That won't be necessary," replied his companion. "Your belongings will be at headquarters by the time we get there." THE PASSPORT 57 "Do you mean " "Yes, we took care of all that. My partner got all your stuff from the hotel two minutes after you left there. He took the same train that we did." "Well, this is interesting," he commented. "You chaps must certainly believe that I am some dangerous criminal." They were opposite the Botanical Gardens at the moment. He stopped short and turned around, facing the government officer. That individual, mis- taking the motive, involuntarily grasped both of the young man's arms. "Excuse the remark," said War- den, looking with a smile from one to the other of his pinioned arnns, "but you are making an ass of yourself, old man." The restraining grip relaxed. "Do you know what I am in Washington for? I am here to see the Secretary of State, or the Secretary of War, or the President of the United States or, even perhaps your very own Secret Service people. Instead of do- ing anything wrong myself I have come to Washington at my own expense in order to warn the government of a plot?" "And what may that plot be?" asked the other. "That will be told to the proper authority," he re- plied. "The sooner you bring me to headquarters, the better." They walked briskly along Pennsylvania Avenue un- til they came to the Treasury Department building, where they went up to the offices of the secret service branch. Warden was ushered into the private room of the chief of the service. As he and his captor awaited the coming of the latter's superior, he was astounded to see another man come into the room carrying his big valise and the black camera box. He felt relieved when he found that this was all that the secret service 68 THE PASSPORT men had secured at his hotel. Evidently the packing case containing his fragile apparatus, his tubes, bot- tles and chemicals, which he had stored in the checking room of the New York hostelry, had been forgotten by the hotel people in this secret service raid. His captor left the room, leaving the other man on guard. A mo- ment later he returned with an important looking in- dividual who, Warden at once decided, was the head of the service, When the Chief came into the room young Warden was quite prepared. The very first question that was asked by that official reassured him. "Young man, we have brought you here on informa- tion that was lodged against you in connection with the occurrence in Union Square recently. You know all about that, of course?" He nodded assent. "What was your connection with that affair?" "I was a spectator." "But you went into a certain loft building with a camera box. Was it for the purpose of taking pic- tures?" "It was," he replied, after a moment's thought. "It was, eh?" thundered Chief Rankin. "Well then, why is that box so made that you cannot take a pic- ture with it?" He pointed to the large black box with the outer appearance of a camera but which, when he opened the end, showed a perfectly plain, smooth in- terior. He looked at the Chief with an amused smile. "Par- don me," he said, "but I did not say anything about taking pictures with that box, did I? That camera has not been completed. Here is the picture I took that afternoon." He removed a wallet from his inside THE PASSPORT 59 coat pocket and extracted therefrom a small photo- graph. "You see, this picture shows plainly that it was taken from a height directly above the crowd at the exact time that the trouble occurred. As I hap- pened to be, in all probability, the only one taking a bird's-eye view of the crowd at the time, you can be reasonably sure that this is the picture I took." "But you were seen holding this large camera box, which hasn't any lens in it, out of the window on the top floor of the building," persisted the Chief. Warden simulated surprise then amusement. "Since that unfinished camera could not take a pic- ture and since I am showing you an actual bird's-eye view of the scene, it would appear that I did not use that box to take pictures, now wouldn't it?" Chief Rankin did not make any reply. He eyed the young man for some time with an incredulous express- ion on his face. Then he went to the valise and took from it a peculiar mask. "What is this?" he asked sharply. "A face mask." "What do you use it for?" "I am a chemist and use it when working with volatile chemicals. It it prevents headaches." "Why did you use it when you were " sneeringly, "talcing pictures out of that window?" "I an; subject to dizziness when at any great height. If you wiii allow me to arrange it on your face you will find in it a refreshing and exhilarating odor as } r ou breathe through it. Nothing harmful, I assure you. This antidote for dizziness is my own discovery. I hope some day to see it used by those following danger- ous callings at great heights, such as ironworkers, steeplejacks, painters, etc. It would not be a bad 60 THE PASSPORT thing for secret service agents to have masks of this sort when on some of their dangerous missions." "One more thing," said the Chief, ignoring the offer to try the mask on himself. "Why did you tell the police officer after you left the building that you had not seen the occurrence in the Square when, as a mat- ter of fact, you did see everything?" Warden looked at his inquisitor for a moment in blank wonder at this apparently accurate recital of his doings that Saturday afternoon. He recovered him- self almost immediately, however, and answered in a tone of absolute assurance. "Because I did not want to get into any newspaper notoriety. There is a reporter on the heels of every police officer in a case of that kind and I did not care to be mixed up in the affair. My father is Professor Warden, well known in the scientific world, and I did not think I had the right to court needless publicity for the family. The Chief paced up and down the room several times without speaking. His two subordinates remained at their posts close to the chair in which Warden was seated. Then Chief Rankin looked at them, several times, as if he was about to ask their opinions but each time he seemed to change his mind. Finally he stepped in front of Warden. "That will be all. You can go," he said slowly. He waved his hands at his two subordinates, who retired to an adjoining room. The Chief seated himself at his big, flat-top desk. "Sorry to have disturbed you, young man." Warden rose from his chair to arrange his belongings while the Chief busied himself with pa- pers on his desk. Suddenly the latter wheeled about in his chair. "What was that you said to my operative, THE PASSPORT 61 that you liad come to Washington on business with the government ?" "Quite right," replied young Warden. "As I am here, I might as well tell you all about it, the more so since it is a matter that will be referred to your depart- ment, anyway." He went back to the chair that he had occupied before but ^vhich now he drew up close to Chief Rankin's desk, with a confident air, and seated himself like a comrade not like a prisoner. "In the first place, Chief," he began, "I will go back to the events of that Saturday afternoon. I want to prove to you that I am a good citizen, that I have done nothing to be ashamed of and that I have nothing to fear from the officials of my own glorious country. Since you have questioned me and have told me I was free to go where I pleased, since you have learned noth- ing from me that could in any way be construed as having been dragged out of me under fear of the law, I am going to tell you all that really happened in Un- ion Square last Saturday afternoon, what the real pur- pose was of my presence there !" Chief Rankin looked dumfounded. "You mean that " "I mean that I was at Union Square for a purpose which was not the taking of photographs although I did, quite incidentally, take a picture. Furthermore, I knew or, rather, I hoped that I knew what would happen in the Square before I got there and which ac- tually did happen. That mask you asked about and the ingredients used in it will prevent dizziness at great heights but that was not he primary incentive to its discovery. I did hold that camera box out of the win- dow although not to take pictures. The picture, taken with this little thing here," he took from his vest 62 THE PASSPORT pocket a tiny photographic apparatus, "was merely an afterthought." The secret service man sat perfectly immovable, seemingly fascinated and eyeing the young man with frank amazement. "I do not intend that what I am going to tell you shall be told to anyone except to you and possibly to one of your most trusted men whom you are to be pre- pared to assign as my companion on a similar expedi- tion as that which took me to the ^anarchist meeting that Saturday afternoon. And now as to the informa- tion that was lodged against me. That was anony- mous, was it not?" "I am not prepared to say," said the Chief, rather huskily. "Be as candid with me as I am with you, please. We are both working to the same end for law and order." "Well yes, it was anonymous," finally said the Chief, somewhat helplessly but, at the same time, very evi- dently impressed with the young man's earnestness. "But what made you think it was ?" "I did not think. I knew it could not be otherwise. The man who sent you that anonymous information was very likely on the train with your operatives and myself. He is very likely standing outside on the street at this moment, watching whether I am allowed to leave or not. Chief, that man and those he represents are the only ones interested in having me put away some- where so that I shall not interfere with their plans." "Do you know him?" asked Chief Rankin. "Never was introduced but I think I would know him if I met him. He goes as Smith, real name Schmidt, and he is a dangerous German spy !" THE PASSPORT 63 "A German spy ! But we are not interested in Ger- man spies over here. We cannot prevent them spying on British, French or Belgian or any other foreign interests, as long as they don't break American laws." "Surely not. But it so happens that this fellow Schmidt and his gang are not spying on either Great Britain, France or Belgium. They are spying on the United States, Chief, and there is a plot on foot I do not know what it is that is to affect this country, our country, and in some terrible manner. That much I have learned and it is that plot that brought me to Washington." The Chief jumped to his feet. "Very well," he said, recovering himself from the state of intense amazement with which he had received the information. "We will go to one of the govern- ment offices where you can tell your story in detail to another man and to me at one sitting." "Before we leave this building," said Warden, "I would suggest that you instruct one of your men to follow us at a good distance to see if a man with a heavy dark mustache, rather short and stout, does not follow you and me. If there is such a one, it will be a very good idea to keep an eye on him for the next few days." "A very good idea." Chief Rankin pressed a button. "Send Leighton here," he said to the man who answered his summons. In Leighton, Warden saw a square-shouldered, erect man of forty or forty-five, good-looking almost to the point of being considered handsome, with a black mus- tache carefully cropped and dressed like a prosperous professional man, in excellent good taste. No one would ever have taken Leighton for a government 64 THE PASSPORT Vidocq. He would have appeared perfectly in place equally well at his desk in a bank president's office as in the office of the American secret police and there was a certain debonnaire attribute to his personality that would lend itself splendidly to either an afternoon tea or an evening society function. Involuntarily he compared Leighton with himself and was conscious of a feeling that he and Leighton would get on well to- gether. Leighton, while receiving his instructions which included orders for him and another operative to follow the chief and Warden with a view to "spot- ting" a possible "shadow" felt unconsciously attracted to young Warden. "I want you to meet Mr. Warden, Bob," said the Chief. "Warden, this is Leighton, my chief operative." Then, as they shook hands, "You two may be thrown in close contact for a time if what this young man tells me proves as big a job as it looks now," he added, look- ing at his subordinate. "You trail us, Bob, with a couple of others. If you spot a shadow, let the two other men keep on his track and not lose him. You follow Warden and me to the office of the Secretary of State and come in after us as I will want you to hear all that is said." Down Pennsylvania Avenue the Chief and Warden walked slowly. As they passed the grounds of the Executive Mansion a short, stout man who, however, had no mustache, fell in two hundred feet behind them. At the same moment Leighton and his partners emerged from the building and headed westward also. One of Leighton's companions hurried forward, passed the short, thick-set individual, crossed the avenue and re-crossed as Leighton came opposite to him on the other side of the thoroughfare. THE PASSPORT 65 "Mustache freshly shaven off," was all the com- ment he made to Leighton. "Very well, Pierce," was the reply. "You and Mos- ser keep on his trail, as the Chief said. That's our man alright." Warden and the Chief entered the building in which were the State Department offices. Leighton, drop- ping his companions, followed them in. A little dis- tance away but in view of the entrance, stood the smooth-shaven stranger and, watching him, Pierce and Mosser took up their posts across the street, evidently expecting a passenger from every street car that passed the corner. CHAPTER VII THE little railroad station of Redfield lay nestled against a clump of dense Jersey woods. Few pas- sengers ever bothered the station agent there and the only discordant notes in the quiet solitude of the place were the shrieking whistles of the trains that dashed by. Two trains daily, each way, hesitated long enough to stop at the little station on the border of the woods. On the other side of the railroad track, far enough from the station not to be observed, yet near enough to see everything that was going on there, a stranger, wearing a leather coat and leggings, sat in the shadow of some bushes. Soon a warning whistle blew and around a bend in the roadbed a big puff of black soot sent skyward told of the approaching arrival of the last train from the city. In the case of Redfield this "last train" did not signify the passing of another day, for the sun was at its highest in the heavens and many more trains would come around the bend but not to stop at Redfield. As the grimy locomotive, a coach and combination "smoker" and baggage car brought up with a grunt and a jerk, a man swung off the coach on the side oppo- site the station while on the station side a girl, attrac- tive in face, figure and dress, stepped down to the plat- form. Hardly had the train begun to move again when a motor car, containing, besides the chauffeur, three men in the tonneau, stopped on the road side of the THE PASSPORT 67 platform. One of the trio jumped lightly from the automobile and crossed the platform to where the girl was standing. "I am happy that you have come, dear," he said, as he reached her side. "You were not followed?" "Not a bit of it, Dick. I was the only passenger for this lonely little place, as far as I have been able to see." "Fine. Now to introduce you to the representatives of the law ! Then we shall be on our way to where there will be plenty of trouble." "And I am to see it happen?" "If it happens, you will see it," hie answered. "And I think it will happen," he added, smilingly. Chief Rankin and Bob Leighton were presented to Mary Berwin and the party was soon flying over the road to Pemberton, some ten miles away. The Chief had not taken Miss Berwin's joining the expedition to Pemberton with very good grace. He was inclined to look upon the inclusion of a woman in an adventure of such importance as ill-advised. Warden, however, had told him that Mary had been promised a personal view of the very next "demonstration" and as this would probably be the last one for some time to come, the Chief had acquiesced grudgingly. Had Mr. Rankin known that Mary's father was one of the coterie that his men were now actively looking up, it is doubtful whether he would have been much at ease on the ride to Pemberton. Another incident that would, undeniably, have con- tributed to the Chief's disquiet occurred immediately after the departure of the motor car from Redfield. The man who had swung from the off side of the train made his way quickly along the track to the edge of 68 THE PASSPORT the woods where the lounging stranger was still sitting in the shadow of the bushes. The newcomer was a short, stout man without any particular distinguishing features. He hailed the lounger before he came up to him and was hailed in return. "Wie gehts?" shouted the lounger. "Wie gewohnlich," shouted the other, with a gesture. The two conversed in German, very earnestly. "So she came here all right, eh, Max?" said the lounger. "Of course she did," replied Schmidt. "Mosser had the right tip. He will be able to keep tab on every move they make. It's a mighty good thing we've got a man in the secret service." "Let's be off, then," suggested the first man. "We can make a short cut and get there as soon as the others. I've got the motor cycle all ready, with an extra coat and leggings for you, which will change your appearance." Shortly after, with Max Schmidt in his new accou- trements, they were speeding along a road which, although on the opposite side of the railroad track from that taken by the automobile, also led to Pem- berton. The silk mill of Petrie and Company in Pemberton was a pretentious structure, facing the County Court House a court house with a surrounding green typi- cal of American county seats. There was a wide space in front of the mill between it and the building where country justice was dispensed with more or less dig- nity and as it formed the geographical center of the town, there never was a lack of human presence in the vicinity of the factory, even outside of its own seven hundred odd workers, THE PASSPORT 69 Petrie and Company employed much alien labor the class which, rightly or wrongly, with cause or with- out, can easily be swayed by a professional discontent. Petrie and Company and Pemberton having a clean slate so far as labor difficulties were concerned, offered a splendid opportunity for those professional malcon- tents known as the Industrial Workers of the World to add new laurels to their record as promoters of disorder and lawlessness. The agitators, therefore, had let it be widely known that Petrie and Company's employes were being worked on starvation wages although each of the seven hundred and odd men and women in the mill lived in a clean, healthy abode and none owed a penny of debt in Pemberton. The agitators promulgated the news that Petrie and Company's employes would make a demonstration on this particular day which would show the cruel bosses that the "weak and downtrod- den" in Pemberton could rise in their might when the necessity presented itself. This, in the face of the fact that the Petrie employes were thoroughly satisfied with their quiet and industrious existence and had seen no necessity to "rise in their might" except to go to luncheon for which mid-day recreation they were allowed a full hour. As most of the employes used their lunch hour for a stroll over the Court House green, the I. W. W. had very thoughtfully selected the latter half of the recess hour for their "benevo- lent" intrusion. Pemberton, as well as Petrie and Company, voiced natural indignation at this threatened vandalism and would gladly have knocked the I. W. W. ambitions into a cocked hat had it been physically able to do so. As the local military defenses consisted solely of two un- 70 THE PASSPORT uniformed constables and a volunteer fire hose com- pany the latter without any high-pressure water system at its disposal all that Pemberton could do was to watch with impotent rage the disembarkation of a hundred and some odd frowsy, unkempt, ill-smell- ing ruffians from the twelve-twenty p.m. train from New York. About the same time that this sinister mob walked through Pemberton's main street, from the railroad station to the center of the town, an automobile was violating the speed regulations of the rural environs on the road from Redfield to Pemberton, via Eagle Rock. And also at about the same time a motor cycle with two men bent over forward so far that they could not have seen anything in their path, was choking off the imprecations of local constables in clouds of dust along the road from Redfield to Pemberton, via the Old Mill. Through the exact, although mysteri- ous working of Fate, the mob, the automobile and the motor cycle all reached the County Court House square at the same psychological moment. While confident enough of the efficacy of his plan, Warden was not so sure that he could carry it to a successful issue without causing the innocent Pember- tonians as much personal discomfiture as those who so richly deserved it. How to bring his own demon- stration to bear upon that of the I. W. W. without affecting the serenity of the entire Pemberton popula- tion was a momentary puzzle to the young man. The local population, however, seemed to be shy of the newcomers and the latter found themselves grouped in a crowd, somewhat isolated, in the middle of the street in front of the Petrie mill. THE PASSPORT 71 Warden sprang from the touring car, which had remained at some distance from the scene. "Remember, now, what I told you," he urged. "The very instant you see me leaning out of the window, all of you adjust your masks quickly. Do not remove them until you see me coming back to you." With that he walked rapidly in the direction of the factory, carrying his black camera box tucked securely under his arm. At the mill entrance there was some hesitancy over his being admitted on his plea that he desired to take photographs of the demonstration in the street from an upper window. When he displayed a secret service badge loaned him by Leighton all objections were speedily overcome. Five minutes later Chief Rankin, Leighton, Mary and the chauffeur saw a window on the top floor of the silk mill being opened. The quartet in the auto- mobile quickly adjusted their masks, to the wonder of several open-mouthed junior Pembertonians, who gazed at them with unfeigned curiosity. Through his field glasses Chief Rankin saw young Warden, who had also adjusted his mask, open the "dummy" front of the "camera," carefully extract from within the box a blue balloon about seven or eight inches in diameter, to which was attached, by means of a bit of string, a small weight. The words DOWN WITH THE I.W.W., painted in white letters, were on the blue surface of the little balloon. Then the Chief saw it thrown to the mob in the street. Yells of derision and anger came from below as the balloon sailed slowly downward and the agitators saw the white lettering. Those over whose heads it came 72 THE PASSPORT grasped at it. One man swung a stick at the globe of blue. It burst under the blow and then Pemberton will never forget the day! By strange good luck the Petrie and Company work- ers were grouped at a goodly distance from the alien mob which had been shouting in front of their factory. This circumstance saved most of them from an un- pleasant if harmless experience and prevented those nearest to the crowd of agitators who were not spared the experience from falling amid the dirty, unwashed beings that littered the place in the middle of the street. The situation completely upset Pemberton. Only one of the town's two constables remained able to attend to the town's police business. The other was lying comfortably on the green as if in untroubled slumber. The residents of the place were entirely unable to grasp the significance of it all. When the crowd of agitators suddenly collapsed, en masse, for no apparent reason, those of the villagers who had been grouped on the green stood looking at the senseless pile of humanity in dumb astonishment. Their amazement was intensified when they saw sev- eral of their own people reel and sink to the ground, and it was to them that the active villagers first gave attention. Finding that their friends were, to all intents and purposes, sleeping gently with no sign of fatal seizure or physical attack about them, the surviv- ing villagers were totally nonplussed. Then several bethought themselves of the telephone and made a dash for the general store close by, where that important, if irritating means of communication, had its place of honor. THE PASSPORT 73 The automobile in which sat or, rather, stood the secret service men, Mary and the chauffeur, was by this time unnoticed since all Pemberton had made its way although remaining at a respectful distance to the spot where the I. W. W. demonstrators lay prostrate in the street. "There comes Dick now," spoke Rankin, turning to his assistant. "He has his mask off so we might as well discard our smelling salts, too, and be ready for a quick get-away." He again levelled his glasses, then dropped them on the seat in the tonneau, at the same time leaping from the car. "Quick, Bob, quick!" he shouted as he started on a dead run towards the Petrie factory. Leighton, thoroughly trained, did not stop to look or to ask, but, throwing aside his linen duster, jumped after his chief, shouting to the chauffeur to remain where he was and look after the girl. Having reached the ground floor, after having seen from the window several of the Pembertonians run, unharmed, to the stricken anarchists, Warden knew it was safe to remove his mask, and he did so. As he reached the street he started to make his way toward where he had left his party, stepping over many of those who had fallen immediately in front of the fac- tory entrance. He had not walked a hundred feet and had just reached a narrow lane leading from the Court House green through the back of the village, when two men jumped out from around the corner of the street and lane. One of them, with a stout stick, struck him viciously on the head. The blow, broken somewhat by the stiff felt hat he was wearing, stunned him and he fell in a heap, his camera case beneath him, 74 THE PASSPORT It was at the moment that the blow was struck that Chief Rankin had dropped his glasses and jumped from the car. The chief, followed closely by Leighton, was upon the assailants just as one of the latter was getting away with the camera box. The Chief drew his revolver and fired at the two fleeing men, causing the one carrying the camera box to drop it. Then both fugitives turned back of a house. When Rankin reached this turn Leighton having remained behind with Warden he saw the two men moving away on a motor cycle about two hundred yards distant. He watched them for an instant as they sped along, almost out of sight, when suddenly something appeared to have gone wrong with their machine and both fugitives dismounted, Rankin seeing them indistinctly huddled in the road. He ran back, passed Leighton and Warden the latter now con- scious but dazed and sprinted to the Court House green, where he signalled to the chauffeur to hurry to him with the automobile. Some of the Pemberton- ians, attracted by the assault and the shooting, showed a desire to interfere with him, but Rankin showed them a gold badge and they quickly subsided. A few moments later the party was taking up the pursuit of the escaping cyclists. Coming into the road where Rankin had last seen them, a speck was made out in the distance which, Rankin and the others felt sure, were the fleeing assailants on their wheel again. "Put on every bit of power you've got," ordered the Chief. Then he attached his badge prominently on the outside of his coat while Leighton, similarly arranging his own, crawled to the running board and clung to the outside of the car, a revolver in his free THE PASSPORT 75 hand, in order to instantly impress any country con- stable who might be tempted to dispute the right of the party to move through New Jersey at more than express train speed. The chase did not lead back over the same road over which Warden and his friends had come to Pem- berton. It lay through miles upon miles of open country, then through several villages, the identity of only one of which could be made out because the car went through them so fast that there was no oppor- tunity to ask any questions. The name of this one place, prominently shown on the front of its post office, indicated that the pursuit led away from instead of back to New York. Had an obstacle appeared in the road, in the shape of a human, a horse, a cow or a vehicle, nothing could have averted a catastrophe. At the rate the pursuing auto raced along, the slightest deviation from its straight course would have wrecked it. Every now and then the men on the motor cycle came into view where the road lay clear ahead for several miles, and it seemed to Rankin and the others that they were steadily gaining on the fugitives. Finally the distance between pursued and pursuers narrowed down to about four hundred yards along a straightaway stretch on a down grade. Rankin tried a shot, more with the idea of possibly frightening the cyclists into stopping and surrender- ing than with the hope of reaching them with a bullet. The only effect was, a moment later, when a puff of smoke was seen, a faint crack, which showed that the pair on the cycle had acknowledged the salute in kind. With less than four hundred yards between them, 76 THE PASSPORT and making ready for the pistol duel that seemed to be inevitably at hand, Rankin and the others in the car suddenly heard the warning gong of a railroad crossing. Then a danger sign was seen at the side of the road. The motor cycle dashed over the crossing, and Rankin was just muttering grimly into the chauf- feur's ears, "We'll take that chance, too !" when a freight train came through a cut in the road and effectually blocked further pursuit. Mechanically each of the five in the automobile counted the cars in that lumbering, slowly-moving pile. Thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen! Rankin thought they would never move by this crossing. Thirty-seven thirty -eight thirty-nine forty forty-one forty-two ! By this time the motor cycle had undoubtedly made good its escape. Forty - three forty - four forty- five forty - six ! The "sound" of the freight seemed to indicate it was nearing its end at that crossing. Forty-seven forty- eight forty-nine fifty fifty-one, the caboose! "Keep your eye on the road for the track of the wheel, Bob," instructed the Chief, as the automobile shot over the rails, the engine having been kept going at full speed while the car stood still waiting for the freight to pass. "We may be able to trace them that way if their track remains as plain as it is now." The race along the road was continued with slightly diminished speed so as to allow Leighton, who had taken a seat alongside the chauffeur, to watch the im- print of the fugitive cycle's tire in the mud. Several miles were travelled in this manner when those in the car became suddenly aware that they were THE PASSPORT 77 approaching salt water. There was the unmistakable smell of brine in the air. The country, too, had changed from rolling, inland pastures and vegetable plots to a scrubby, sandy waste. Leighton, who had not uttered a word as he leaned forward with his face close to the glass shield of the car, suddenly put up his right hand as a sign for the chauffeur to slow down. "Ho!" he ordered finally. The car stopped with a jolt. Leighton leaped from the machine and inspected the roadbed. From the center of the road, where the track of the cycle wheel had last been seen, he walked back some twenty feet, closely examining the ground as he moved along. Chief Rankin and the others turned in their seats to watch him and saw the operative mount the em- bankment at a point about twenty-five feet back of where the car had stopped. After a few minutes spent in examining the ground on the ridge he returned to the automobile. "That motor cycle left the road there," said Leigh- ton, pointing to the spot from where he had started his climb of the embankment. "On the top there is no sign of a wheel, although there is every evidence that the motor cycle was either pushed or carried to the top of the embankment. There are a great many foot- prints up there but no wheel tracks, and I'm inclined to think the machine was carried by the two men so as to avoid leaving a trail." After a moment's deliberation, Chief Rankin stepped down from the car, telling Warden, now quite recov- ered, to remain with Mary and the chauffeur. 78 THE PASSPORT "You've got a gun, Harrison," he said to the driver, receiving an affirmative nod in reply, "and you," ad- dressing Warden, "had better take one of mine, as a precaution." With this the Chief handed him a revol- ver. "I'm not sure, of course, just what we are up against in this thing. Leighton and I will be able to take care of ourselves. It is possible we may meet with a fight. Don't leave this car, since you've got a girl to look after." He spoke as if he had not quite forgiven the young man for bringing a girl into the adventure. "Keep an eye open all around you and take no chances with any strangers. Don't let anybody come near the car." Then, to the chauffeur, "Keep your engine go- ing, for it is possible that Leighton and I may have to make a run for it." With that, the Chief and his assistant climbed the embankment and were soon lost to view over the ridge. The afternoon was well advanced by this time and the sun was getting lower and lower in the western sky. "To think that they should have been able to attack you," Mary said, after they had sat silently for a while, wondering where the trail was leading the two secret service men. "Some of those anarchists must have been watching you, dear, all the time. Very likely the same men that watched you in Union Square. Don't you think so, Dick?" "I am not so sure about that," he replied. "I really don't think any of those anarchists who were in the New York mob know to this day just what hit them. All I do know is that they did not have another meeting the following Saturday. They evidently did not care to take any chances." THE PASSPORT 79 "You don't think Schmidt had anything to 'do with the attack to-day?" "I am not thinking, dear, I don't know. I'm rather inclined to believe the one that sent the anonymous letter to the secret service was the one who had a hand in the affair to-day." "But in that case you must have been followed when you left New York this morning!" "I can swear to it that we were not followed," he de- clared, decidedly. "We travelled over the roads with- out another car in sight. No one knew, from me, that we would be out here to-day. The secret service men certainly did not advertise our plan." "And I have not spoken to a soul on anything but home topics since I received word from you." Mary spoke very earnestly. "Dick, it is a terrible position for a girl to be placed in, to know her father is mixed up in some dishonorable matters and that she cannot justify her father's actions. I have a feeling of utter loneliness except when I think of you. Dick, please don't go to Europe. Don't let me remain here all alone!" She moved closer to him and Warden petted her reassuringly on the shoulder. "I cannot promise not to go to Europe," he an- swered. "That is the principal thing about the plans I have made. What is happening now, as far as your father's and Schmidt's activities are concerned, was quite unexpected. I had intended first making some experiments in this country, in which I did not dream either your father or his friends would be interested. Sometimes I think my discovery of your father's real identity as Buhrwein, instead of Berwin, has something to do with Schmidt's interest in me. His interest in 80 THE PASSPORT me dates from the evening I last visited your home. Why, I believe that it was Schmidt who played burglar in my rooms the night before the Union Square hap- pening." He fumbled about his pockets. "I think I have a souvenir of that night right here with me. I mean to show it to my friend Schmidt some day." He produced the piece of torn silk handkerchief that he had found on the floor of his hotel apartment. When Mary looked upon it she gasped. There was a look of such unutterable anguish on her beautiful face that young Warden was unable, for the moment, to ask her the cause of it. "Why " he began. "It is nothing nothing at all," whispered Mary, in a hardly audible tone. She kept her eyes riveted on the torn 'kerchief and only shifted her gaze to look at the wondering young man next to her with an expres- sion in which terror plainly predominated. "What in the world what has happened now?" He looked at her with mingled surprise and concern. "I seem to run up against a new mystery every moment." "Dick, I'm afraid to oh, it is too much, Dick!" and she burst out crying. "Well, tell me about it, little girl, tell me. It will make you feel better than to keep it to yourself. It's something about this cloth. What is it?" Mary took the torn 'kerchief in her hands and ex- amined it closely. Then she gave it back to young Warden, while she looked the other way, without speaking. "Well, come now," he pleaded, "what about it? 'Fess up. There is nothing in the world that cannot be straightened out except a hunchback." He tried to laugh, so as to bring a smile to Mary's face also, but THE PASSPORT 81 it was a hopeless attempt. He realized it a moment; later when Mary made reply after she had first given way to a fresh outburst of tears, resting her head on his shoulder. "Dick, that that handkerchief belongs to my father ! I gave it to him at Christmas. Don't tell me that a burglar left it in your room ! Oh, don't tell me that!" A bright thought came to the young man. Not that he had the slightest faith in its logic himself, but he hoped to impress the being that he loved best in the world with a suggestion which he, himself, knew to be absurd. "How foolish!" he exclaimed, as if with an inspira- tion. "Could not your father have lost that muffler and could it not have been found by somebody by the man who tried to burglarize my rooms !" If the suggestion did not seem to impress Mary deeply, it impressed her enough to make her smile through her tears. "If you think it was a regular burglar that visited you, then I guess that would be it. Only, you seemed to think the visit was from Schmidt. That is, that it was in connection with other things that have re- cently happened." Nearly an hour had passed since the government officers had left them, and the occupants of the auto- mobile were becoming restless. Even Harrison, who had been on many trips where patience had been the principal desiratum, found the quietude and the ab- sence of any sign from his superiors becoming op- pressive. A chilling breeze added to their discomfort and for a time Mary and young Warden sat without saying a word, the girl content to be near the man she felt was the only protector she had, and he think- 82 THE PASSPORT ing of a mother, now gone, and what she would have thought could she have known of the maelstrom of vital incidents into which her son had plunged himself. Their individual reveries were cut short by the ap- pearance of a man approaching along the ridge about one hundred yards down the road ahead of them. Warden disengaged himself and involuntarily grasped his automatic, the chauffeur making the same prepara- tions. The stranger came within hailing distance of those in the car and waved his arm in the way of a pleasant greeting. As he came opposite the automobile he stopped, still remaining on the ridge. "Chief Rankin wants you to drive down to the first road on the right and turn in that road till you meet him," he said, with the accent of a foreigner. What nationality he was Warden could not feel certain. For the fraction of an instant Warden and the chauffeur exchanged glances. Each of them for an instant had misgivings which, however, disappeared. Then Harrison, grunting an almost inaudible "all right," slowly let in the clutch and grudgingly sent the car ahead. As Warden looked back, for no particular reason whatever, to see where the stranger was going, he found that the man had disappeared. In the brief moment that he had stood before them, the man had impressed him as being either a young German or a Scandinavian. There was nothing distinctive about his dress, although he did not look at all like a field laborer, as might have been expected in this section. The relief of moving, with some definite destination in view, made those in the car forget about the man. The turn the latter had indicated was about a quarter THE PASSPORT 83 of a mile away, and when it was reached, Harrison guided the heavy machine slowly up a slight grade over what could only by courtesy be called a road. The chauffeur had some doubts about the directions, but it was the only break in the highway in sight, so up the sandy grade he went. A steep bank, as if the road had been recently dug through the main embankment, flanked both sides. The car had almost reached the top of the grade and Har- rison was just putting on the final speed to help him over the top when four men, two from either side of the grade, slid down the banks and leaped on the run- ning boards, before those in the car were aware of it. One man grasped Mary's hands and another those of Warden, before the latter could use the Chief's revolver, which his assailant at once appropriated. The other two men flanked Harrison, each pressing a revolver against the chauffeur's sides and ordering him to go ahead until they should tell him to stop. CHAPTER VIII THOSE in the car saw a barren waste before them as they reached the top of the short climb from the road. The monotony of it was relieved only by a small building, without so much as a fence or outbuildings to give it a habitable appearance. It seemed entirely isolated from any other human habitation and its own appearance was such that one would hardly have be- lieved that it was occupied or that human hands had anything to do with placing it on that desolate stretch of sand. Harrison, under the impressive guidance of the two revolvers, ran the car along the sandy patch towards the house, stopping about two hundred yards from the building, when ordered to do so by his armed guards. Warden then noticed for the first time that the fellow who was guarding Mary was the young stranger who had come to them on the highway with the alleged message from Rankin. Of two men who came from the house, as one of Har- rison's captors sounded the horn of the car, one held a handkerchief over his face and did not advance fur- ther than a few feet from the doorway. He jerked at the arm of the other man who had come out of the building with him, evidently gave the latter some in- structions as appeared from the gestures he made then re-entered the house. His companion came forward to the car, but went to it in a roundabout way, coming up behind it. He spoke in German to one of Harrison's guards, with the THE PASSPORT 85 result that the chauffeur was helped down from the driver's seat, had his arms bound behind his back and was led a little distance away from the automobile, where his ankles were also tied. Young Warden was next treated to a similar indig- nity, and left standing near Harrison, arms and ankles secured. The fellow who had come from the house then turned and approached the motor car. "Sorry to cause you any annoyance, Miss, but it is necessary," he said, addressing Mary. "We will not tie you up if you will not make any trouble for your- self, but " "Mr. Smith !" There was a world of reproach in the tone as Mary turned and faced the man whom she had met openly as "Smith" in her father's New York home and whom she knew to be, in reality, Max Schmidt, from the secret conversations that she had overheard there. "So you have turned highway robber!" The girl hoped that, by letting the fellow think she believed him only a highway robber, he might possibly allow her to go back to New York under promise of silence. Then she planned to secure aid for Warden and the secret service men. The ruse failed of its purpose, however. Schmidt was not deceived by the fair girl's seeming surprise. "No, Miss Berwin, that won't do," he said, with a sneer. "You don't think me a highway robber any more than I do myself. You're in bad company, for your own health. And it is going to be a very hard thing to get you out of this mess in safety. Too much depends upon it to allow any one, who has inter- fered with affairs that do not concern him or her, to return to their ordinary manner of living." 86 THE PASSPORT "Where are the other gentlemen of our party?" "The other gentlemen," began Schmidt with a sneer in which intense hatred was all too evident, "the other gentlemen? Oh, they have been taken care of. They are just as comfortable as those two over there," point- ing to Warden and Harrison. The men guarding Warden and the chauffeur were called over to the house by the man with the 'kerchief just then, leaving the two pinioned prisoners standing together by themselves. "May I get out of the car?" asked Mary. "I have become terribly cramped and chilled." "If you keep away from the house yes," returned Schmidt, almost reluctantly. "But stay near the car." "How long are we going to be detained here?" The fellow laughed outright, the first time that a sign of mirth had come over his almost bestial face. "Detained?" He laughed again as if the very sug- gestion of it was ludicrous. "Why, I don't know how long you'll be detained! That isn't for me to say." Mary climbed out of the tonneau. "For who is it to say, then? For for my father?" There was hesitation in the inquiry, as if the girl did not want to ask the question but was forced, by some subjective control, to do it. The effect of it on Schmidt was instantaneous, how- ever. He looked very serious. "I don't know. I don't know," he repeated, hastily. Then he, too, was called to the house. Mary walked leisurely around the car so as to pass Warden and the chauffeur. As she passed the former, the former spoke to her with intense earnestness. "Listen Mary and remember everything I say THE PASSPORT 87 carefully. Under the seat in the tonneau a blue bottle saturate your mask from it better also satur- ate two other masks while you're about it if you have the chance. Then one of the brown vials. Be very careful with it. On your life don't open or drop it until you have your mask on. If you can, get to the house before they come out. Throw the brown vial with all your might against the entrance, but for God's sake be sure you strike something that will break it. Hurry it's our only hope, I'm afraid." Without betraying the agitation under which she was laboring, Mary walked quietly away from where the two men stood. Her impulse was to fly to the car and follow Warden's instructions with feverish haste. She was able to control herself, however, and with every muscle set for accelerated movement she strolled, de- liberately, almost carelessly, in a round-about way, to the machine. She took from the tonneau a wrap which she put about her neck with much ostentation and then ap- peared to look for something else to put around her shoulders. As she bent over the tonneau seat a second time she worked with haste, saturating three masks and placing one of the little brown vials, its stopper carefully pro- tected with wire, in her muff. Two of the masks she let lay on the seat while the third she placed in her muff also. But a few minutes had elapsed since Schmidt had been called to the house. No movement had come from the building, the front door of which remained open. Mary, instead of walking directly to the house, walked in a zig-zag course so that, with each "tack," she approached nearer and nearer to the house. 88 THE PASSPORT In this way she had come to within twenty feet of the entrance when she was compelled to sneeze. Almost on the same instant Schmidt rushed to the door from within, evidently startled by the proximity of someone outside. As the German appeared Mary, with remarkable quick wit, threw the brown vial at the flagstone that served as a threshold for the house. With equal pres- ence of mind the girl adjusted her mask before the bottle reached its mark, where it burst with a crash. Schmidt made one step forward and then fell pros- trate on his face. No one else came from the building. The instant Mary had adjusted her own mask she ran as fast as she could for the car, snatched the two masks from the rear seat and rushed to Warden and Harrison. She wanted to put the masks to their faces, but Warden said it was not necessary. "Not now," he said. "The quantity used is not suffi- cient to reach us here. The house and the area around it only are affected by that little vial. First of all, get the knife out of my pocket and cut these ropes, dear. Cut them at the knots only, for we will need those cords very likely." In a twinkling both were free. They gathered up the ropes and then adjusted their masks. "Now for the house !" said Warden as he and Har- rison led the way to the building in front of which Schmidt was lying, stretched out at full length. A glance towards the rear of the house showed the searchers that the building stood almost on the ridge of a sloping dune that brought up, less than a quarter of a mile away, on the shore of the bay. It was appar- ent to the two men of the little party that they were THE PASSPORT 89 at or very near Sandy Hook, and to the westward of it, for none of the settlements near the main entrance to the harbor were visible from their point of vantage. "Looks to me as if we're at the Horse Shoe, some- where near the Highlands," volunteered Harrison. Warden, less familiar with the topography of the country thereabouts, had no better suggestion to offer. The tying of Schmidt's hands and feet, as a return compliment for the indignity they themselves had suf- fered, was done conscientiously and with no regard for the later comfort of the fellow. Next the two men and Mary entered the mysterious house. There were two rooms on the ground floor, one of them evidently used as a kitchen while the other which also served as the entrance to the building contained only a rough table, a bench, two ordinary wooden chairs and an old, delapidated arm chair from the worn-out upholstery of which there protruded a mixture of straw and excelsior on all sides. There was no sign of life in the front room, but in the kitchen, which also had a table, a bench and several wooden chairs, and the door to which was wide open, Warden and his companions found five men, all of them unconscious. One, whom they recognized as the stranger who had lured them from the highway, had fallen from the bench on which he had been sitting, to the floor. The man next to him had evidently fallen forward on his arms and lay over the table, as if asleep. Three other men lay limp in chairs on the other side of the room from the connecting door. Mary had remained at the door leading from the front room to the kitchen. Her self-possession and presence of mind, so admirably preserved during the critical moments of the preceding half hour, were now 90 THE PASSPORT fast deserting her, womanlike, once she felt that the safety of her companions and herself no longer de- pended upon her. So, while Warden and the chauf- feur were examining the inanimate group in the kitchen, taking from the men their revolvers and knives, Mary stood still or as still as she could, for she was swaying involuntarily holding on with grim determination to the door casing. Warden was lifting the head of the man who was lying across the tablo and was taking a look at the features when he happened to glance behind him. As he saw Mary's weak condition he laid the man's head gently on the table again and quickly went to her. His expression, as he had noted the features of the uncon- scious man, was one of intense perturbation, made no less so when he saw the condition of his sweetheart. "I will have Harrison run the car close to the house," he said, supporting the now trembling girl and leading her gently to the open. He called to the chauffeur and a moment later the car was at the side of the house and to the windward of it. "Sit in the car, well wrapped up, until Harrison and I find the Chief and Leighton. No further use of the mask now. Breathe the cool air." The chauffeur suggested that Warden remain with Mary so as not to leave her entirely unprotected in case of an emergency, a suggestion that found partial favor with the young man except that he insisted that Harrison should remain in the car with the girl since he alone knew how to run the machine. Returning to the house, Warden first thoroughly tied the hands and feet of four of the men in the kitchen. He did not bind the man whom he had found lying over the table. Then, cautiously ascending the creaky stairs that led from the kitchen to the floor above, he peered THE PASSPORT 91 over the edge of the floor into a room the door of which was wide open and on the floor of which he saw lying two men. He at once recognized Rankin and Leighton. Rushing into the room, he quickly untied the cords that held the secret service men and then went to a window, from which he called to Harrison to help him. Between them they carried the limp forms of the Chief and his assistant into the open air, on the other side of the house, where they would not be in sight of Mary. Then Harrison returned to the car while War- den resumed his exploration of the upper floor of the house. Except to find that the two rooms contained four cots and were evidently used at times for sleeping quar- ters, although of the most rudimentary type, the upper floor of the house disclosed absolutely nothing note- worthy. There was then, thought Warden, only to wait for Rankin and Leighton to come to their senses. He went outside again. Rankin would decide what to do with the six prisoners. This arrangement did not seem feasible to him a moment later. It would be almost four hours before those now unconscious would come to. Also, it would be quite dark by that time and then the impossibility of taking all of the six men in the car besides his own party presented itself. Young Warden hit upon another scheme. "I'll take the Chief's badge," he said to Harrison. "You take Leighton's. We'll put the Chief, Leighton and this fellow Schmidt in the rear seat and tie two of the others to the seats in the middle. Miss Berwin will sit in front with you and I'll hold the unconscious ones in their places from the running board. We 92 THE PASSPORT should be able to make Pemberton in less tHan an hour anyway; we will put the three prisoners in jail there and come back here before sunset. By that time the Chief and Leighton will have recovered, for I shall give them something, if there is a pharmacy in Pemberton." The secret service men and three of the prisoners Schmidt among them were put in the machine and, after an hour's fast driving, the party stopped in front of the County Jail at Pemberton. Warden showed his badge and spoke briefly to the jailer, who agreed to lock the three men in separate cells and to keep them incommunicado until the Fed- eral authorities should call for them the following day. The jailer wanted to tell about the day's happenings in Pemberton, but all the young man cared to know was what had happened when the anarchists recovered their senses. "Oh, they were hooted out of town," said the garru- lous keeper. "They were the most sheepish-looking lot you ever saw as they took the train back to New York about half an hour ago. It was a mighty strange hap- pening, take it from me, and I've been in Pemberton a good many years, and and I've never seen nothing stranger happening hereabouts. I was saying to my- self that it was a miracle, a downright miracle. Why, anybody would know what it was !" While the car stopped at the town garage for an additional supply of oil, Warden visited the town phar- macy so called although it was run as a side line by the general storekeeper for some drugs. On the run back to the house on the sands he administered the antidote. This, and the fresh air that they had been breathing, restored both men to consciousness before THE PASSPORT 93 the car reached the cut in the highway leading to the isolated dwelling. At first neither Rankin nor Leighton had the slightest recollection of the events through which they had passed. Both only remembered the departure from Pemberton after the assault on Warden. With the latter's assistance, he refreshing their memories, both men soon recalled their pursuit of the motor cycle and then their leaving the car in the road while they essayed to track the fugitive wheelmen over the sand dunes. Suddenly the chief almost jumped from his seat. "I remember now," he shouted. "By Gad, we must get back there and quick ! How many did you take to the jail?" he asked, excitedly. When told the number, he asked: "How many did you say there's still at the house? Three? Yes, that's it. We saw six of them. Two came up from below. Yes, now I remember." "From below where?" asked Warden. "From the cellar through a trap door. Boy," very earnestly, "we're on the track of something big, very big. That house is a blind. Something underneath that house. You may have rounded up the whole gang and then, again, there may be any number more. I cannot figure it out." "But how underneath, chief?" insisted Warden, breathlessly. Rankin's manner was so unusual that even the chauf- feur, hardened to many uncanny adventures, leaned back his head so as to catch the words that were spoken behind him, without losing sight of the road ahead. "There's a plant a factory something connected with that house underneath. I remember some of the 94 THE PASSPORT talk now. It wasn't counterfeiting, which I thought at first it might be. I remember one of those fellows say- ing it was something only Germans could think up. And it's against the government, whatever it is, for they were all the time using the words 'dam Yankees' while they pow-wowed in the room below the one in which Leighton and I were put. When Bob and I came to the house, feeling pretty sure the motor cycle had been carried there from the road where we left } T ou, we found the door open. We had our guns handy and walked in very carefully. Just as we got inside four men fell on us and had us powerless before we could pull a trigger. Then one of them, whom they called Max and who evidently knew me by sight and name, told one of the gang to go to the automobile and give the driver a message from me, ordering him to drive ahead and giving the directions which you evidently followed. I remember hearing your horn once or twice after that and the next thing I knew I fell asleep, but first we heard part of what they were discussing down- stairs." Warden smiled, notwithstanding the evident serious- ness of the adventure. "You did not think I would put you to sleep so soon, did you, chief?" "No," said Rankin, with a dry little laugh. "I didn't know it then, either. Just fell asleep, that's all." The car here turned into the cut in the road, ran up the grade at full speed and continued to the door of the house. Harrison held out the masks to the others. "Not necessary any more," said Warden. "The fumes have flown away long ago. It's very strong and powerful at first, but it is quickly dispelled, although THE PASSPORT 95' the effects on those who get it on the first application last for about four hours." Mary, who had quite recovered her self-control and her "nerves" by this time, and who now looked upon the day's happenings as a thrilling adventure that she would not have missed for the world, joined the others in the entry of the mysterious building. Warden had almost forgotten something of which he was suddenly reminded just as the party was about to enter the kitchen. "Stay in this front room please," he asked of his sweetheart, caressing her cheeks. "Please don't come with us just now." "But there is nothing horrible about it, now that we are all safe," insisted the girl. "I want to see every- thing. I helped, just as if I was one of you men, this afternoon, and I think you ought to let me remain with you now !" With that, the young woman pushed him into the kitchen after the others. Rankin and Leighton were lifting up the man who had been lying forward over the table. Mary entered the room just as they were setting him bold upright on the bench. As the girl saw the face she gave a piercing shriek and fell in a dead swoon. She would have gone to the floor had not Warden held her. He placed her gently in the old arm chair and applied ammonia, the only restorative he had at hand, to her nostrils. Harrison brought a flask from which some brandy was forced between her lips. Rankin did not take kindly to the occurrence. He was not at all sympathetic. "That's what you get having women around with you on a case," he growled disgustedly. 96 JHE PASSPORT When Mary came out of her fainting spell she sobbed piteously. "My father! My father!" she moaned, her body rocking backward and forward while she covered her face with both her hands. "Her what?" demanded Rankin, looking up from his investigations in the other room. "Yes, her father," said Warden, reflecting in his face the utter misery of the situation that he felt. To spare Mary the additional humiliation of the Chief's angry comments, he went into the kitchen, holding a finger to his lips, warningly. "Did you know this, before she saw him?" again de- manded the Chief, looking at the young man search- ingly. "I did when Harrison and I came in here before, to get you and Leighton out, after she had made it possible for us to save you. That that was the rea- son I did not tie him up." "To let him get away, eh?" "No, chief, not for that just because he was her father. I knew he would not wake up before we came back. We tied up the others as a matter of form. It was not really necessary." "Dick, did you know her father was mixed up in this German plot, whatever it may be?" "I knew." "And then you take the daughter into your confi- 'dence! A fine line of reasoning!" There was some- thing of contempt in the secret service's man's tone. "You forget just one thing, Chief," replied young Warden, testily, "that the United States Secret Ser- vice would probably have gotten busy on this German plot after its consummation instead of before if it THE PASSPORT 97 had not been for what Miss Berwin Cold me and which I transmitted to you!" Having seen the point of the argument and the jus- tice of it, Chief Rankin was not the kind of man to stick stubbornly to his own impressions. "You're right," he said, putting a big, pudgy hand on the younger man's shoulder. "But you did not tell me anything about her father being mixed up in the thing." "I hoped that Berwin might be scared off when he learned that the government was after his crowd." Warden's voice was broken as he looked into the other room, at the pitiful, huddled form in the arm chair. "Poor, poor little girl. It's going to be very hard for her in a little while. Very, very hard." CHAPTER IT was a strange group that sat around the kitchen table in that lonely house. Two oil lamps gave out a sickly light, one from a shelf on one side of the room and the other from its hook suspended over the table. At one end sat Chief Rankin. At the other Berwin or "Boorwine," as the detective insisted on calling him now entirely recovered, with Leighton on one side and young Warden on the other. Near the win- dow sat Mary, slowly rocking her body without moving the chair, in evident great mental distress, while in an opposite corner sat the two other prisoners, handcuffed and tied to their chairs. Harrison stood at the door of the outer room, keeping guard over the automobile. It was a sort of court martial and police "third de- gree" process rolled into one, with Rankin as the in- quisitor, but lacking both persecuting and defending counsel. Berwin sat perfectly erect, almost soldier-like, and decidedly defiant. The man did not even have a kindly glance for his daughter, whom he evidently believed to be responsible for his dilemma, because of her associa- tion with young Warden. That he felt intense hatred for the latter, there was no doubt. Every now and then a furtive glance of the bitterest resentment was directed towards the young man at his elbow. "If you will tell us all that you know of this affair there's every chance that the government will deal lightly with you," spoke Rankin, addressing the pris- THE PASSPORT 99 oner at the other end of the table. "Will you make it easy for the government and for yourself?" Berwin directed his cold, impassive eyes towards the Chief and held them there before he replied. His atti- tude was such that one could well imagine the man standing up, erect, with his heels clicking as he came to attention. "I have absolutely nothing to tell you." He uttered the words very slowly and with distinct emphasis on each syllable. "What is under this house? demanded the inquisitor. Then, before the other could reply, had he wished to do so, "Will you tell us how this trap opens or must we tear down the house to find out?" A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer the prisoner would vouchsafe. Mary had been anxiously looking at her father and now she bent forward, tears in her eyes and a great earnestness in her every movement. "Father please I beg you please tell them what they must know. And you you are an American now, too, besides being my dear father. Please tell every- thing. It is right they should know. I do not want my father to be in trouble. Please tell them." The girl sat very still, her eyes on Berwin, her mouth partly open, waiting eagerly for his words. Slowly Berwin turned his gaze to his daughter. There was no gleam of loving recognition in his eyes as they met hers, however. "Some day," he spoke in almost a monotone, "you will realize what you have done." "But I have done nothing nothing except to love Dick. And Dick is interested in some great plan that will prevent untold misery in the world. I have chosen 100 THE PASSPORT to follow him. I never dreamt to see you Here like this!" There was an agonizing despair in the last words as the girl buried her face in her hands again. Berwin did not answer nor did he show any emotion at his daughter's impassioned appeal. There was, however, a peculiar, comprehending light in his eyes as she spoke of Warden's plans. It seemed as if some- thing had just come to him that he had not, before this, been able to fathom. Chief Rankin was showing signs of impatience and finally brought his hand down upon the table in front of him. "We're not getting any further this way and I pro- pose to get further!" he said. "Now, Miss Berwin, if you are strong enough to go home I'm going to send you to Pemberton in the car. There you can take a train for New York. If you are not strong enough, Mr. Warden can accompany you, but I would rather keep him here with me. I want you to promise me not to say a word to anyone, not even to your mother, about anything that happened to-day. It will be much better for everybody concerned, especially your father." "I I can go alone," said the girl in an almost inau- dible tone. "I shall not say a word to anyone." She got up from her chair, adjusted her wraps and moved towards the door leading to the other room. In passing, she laid her hand gently on her father's shoul- der and stooped to kiss his hair. Berwin did not stir in his seat nor did he seem to take notice of the caress. Warden arose and walked out after Mary. As he passed Berwin he held the piece of the muffler he had torn from his assailant the night of the attack in the hotel. Berwin winced as he looked at the cloth. THE PASSPORT 101 Rankin gave the chauffeur his instructions. Then, while Leighton remained to guard Berwin, Rankin and the chauffeur helped the two manacled prisoners into the tonneau, where they were tied securely. Mary was to sit in front with Harrison. The prisoners were to be left at the jail with the others and Harrison, after dropping Miss Berwin at the railroad station, was to get something to eat and put in a supply of sandwiches for the company in the house on the dunes. He was also ordered to purchase an iron lever bar, such as is used by railroad track-layers. Before entering the machine, Mary turned to Chief Rankin, her hand on his arm. "You will not be harsh with with my father?" she faltered. "He'll have no cause to complain of my treatment, Miss Berwin," replied the secret service man. "I hope for you that everything will turn out alright." After kissing her and pressing her hands in his own for a moment, Warden went back into the house with the Chief and the car disappeared down the grade for the road to Pemberton. Chief Rankin lost no time in getting to work on the mystery that confronted him. After the daughter's departure, he decided that it would be safer to hand- cuff Berwin, so that he and his two assistants might have their hands free to search the lower floor for the entrance to the regions supposed to be beneath. Ber- win was, accordingly, manacled and tied to a chair as the best way to prevent either an escape or an attempt at rescue should others, heretofore not met with, show upon the scene. Sounding the floor with a hammer that was found in the kitchen failed to bring forth any desired results. 102 THE PASSPORT The floor was evidently well-laid, even though the build- ing, from the outside, appeared to be ramshackle. There were two chimneys in the house, entirely out of proportion with its other arrangements and the fact that there was no fireplace at all and only a stove-pipe connected with one of the two pieces of masonry, caused the secret service men some conjecture. There was, apparently, no opening in one of the two chimneys along its upward course and its usefulness could not be guessed at by the men. Lack of tools made it im- possible for Rankin and the others to pry open what looked as if it might be a trap in the kitchen floor but the cracks around which were almost invisible. The two detectives and Warden had resigned them- selves to wait for the return of the car and the proper tool with which to complete their search when, sud- denly, there was a peculiar, rasping noise that seemed to come from nowhere in particular and yet appeared to have been made not far away from where they were seated in the kitchen. Leighton had risen to his feet at the first noise and was looking at his Chief, who also had a puzzled ex- pression on his face, when Berwin was seen to act in a most extraordinary manner. In a sitting posture, with his manacled hands tied to the back of the chair and his feet also bound with a cord to the legs of that piece of furniture, he was making desperate efforts to trip himself over sideways. Not knowing just why, Rankin leaped upon the pris- oner and was in time to prevent the man and chair from toppling to the floor. "You're up to something, eh?" growled Rankin, un- der his breath. THE PASSPORT 103 Berwin gazed involuntarily at a space in the floor near the connecting door. Then he suddenly raised his voice to an unnatural and ludicrous height. "I was not," he screamed. "You cannot ' Ran- kin had clapped a heavy hand over Berwin's mouth. "None of that !" he hissed. "You can't attract at- tention that way, my man." Leighton moved over quietly and a gag was quickly placed over Berwin's mouth. "If we had the car here I'd let you give him some- thing to make him sleep," said the Chief to Richard. "You don't carry it about with you, do you?" Warden shook his head by way of negative reply. There came a repetition of the noise they had heard before. It now sounded very plainly as if chains were being clanged together. "What the devil do they call this? Ghosts?" said Rankin, with a queer little laugh. He had hardly uttered the jest when that portion of the flooring, in the direction of which Berwin had been looking, rose up, like a platform about six feet square, each corner supported by an iron or steel brace, disclosing an elevator on which stood a young man. From the appearance of his face and hands, grimy with oil, and his clothes, he was evidently a machinist. The newcomer's body was but half above the floor level when he saw the others and, undoubtedly scenting trouble, he reversed the clanging chain that controlled the motive power for the lift. Rankin was too quick for him, however. In a flash he had thrown the bench half way through the breach in the hidden elevator opening as a wedge, at the same time covering the man on the platform with his re- 104 THE PASSPORT volver. The top of the elevator, forming the detached piece of kitchen flooring, came down on the bench with a grinding noise. The revolver proved sufficient inducement to the man from below to send his lift upwards again. The fellow stepped off the moving platform into the room, with his hands held above his head. "What have you been doing?" asked Rankin, of the new arrival. There was a bewildered look, which seemed to be di- rected especially at the bound figure of Berwin. "Verstelie nicht," was all that came from the be- grimed one. Rankin had seen the look of doubt in the direction of Berwin and he told Leighton to take Berwin into the other room and guard him there. Then he closed the connecting door and he and Warden, both of them un- derstanding German, proceded to question this latest addition to the mysterious colony, in his native tongue. "Where do you come from?" was the first question launched at the young chap by the Chief, the latter's desire being to learn what part of the building the ma- chinist had recently left behind him. "From Europe Germany I was brought here to do machinist work eight months ago," replied the man. He then volunteered the information that he was work- ing for the Fatherland and that the work required secrecy. He was being well paid, he said, but he was supposed to be content with remaining where he was, without leaving the building under any circumstances, at least not until his employers were ready to send him back to Germany. "And where in Germany did you work?" asked Rankin. THE PASSPORT 105 "In Essen, in the submarine shops," was the calm rejoinder. "How many men are down below?" asked Richard, pointing downward, through the floor. "Twelve, besides myself, now," the machinist replied, after a brief calculation. "Now?" asked Rankin. "How many are there other times, then?" "About a hundred," replied the fellow, laconically. Rankin was completely stunned by the information secured from this young man, who seemed to answer in a perfectly candid manner, and without the slightest re- serve or hesitation, every question that was asked of him. "How is it that you are willing to answer our ques- tions?" Rankin finally managed to say. It was the first time that an inquisition had gone so smoothly in his long career as a detector of crime and he could not possibly understand it. The machinist shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I will get in trouble if I lie," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I have had trouble enough. I have been here eight months and they have not treated me right. I want to go back to Germany. You will send me back to Germany if I tell everything right?" "You keep right on and tell us everything and you'll get back to Germany alright," said Rankin, smiling. "Where does that elevator lead to?" "To the shop." "And what are they doing in the shop now?" asked the chief. "Working on the boat." "What boat?" "U54. The one that put a hole in that big warship two nights ago." 106 THE PASSPORT Rankin and Warden looked at each other. Two nights before, the Oklahoma, newest of dread- noughts, had been reported as having had an explosion on board which killed a dozen of her men. The explo- sion was a mystery and had not been accounted for although it had been stated, unofficially, that the big battleship might have been out of her course and have struck a submerged rock or else that a drifting sub- merged derelict had collided with her. So this was the explanation of the Oklahoma's mishap ! Rankin felt miserably handicapped at not having more witnesses present at this strange recital. Both he and Warden felt that revelations of a most amazing character were at hand, revelations that would have a great directing force in the future action of the Ameri- can government. "You you mean that there is a shop a machine shop for the repair of submarines below?" asked Rankin, incredulously. "Oh, yes. I've worked in the shop for eight months now and sometimes business is very brisk." "How far down is this shop?" It was Warden who took a turn at the questioning. "About thirty metres." "And how big is it?" "About sixty metres long and about nine or ten metres in diameter. It's round." "Why did you come up on the elevator just now?" "To get my orders for the night. It's my night on watch." "How long has that shop been down there?" asked Rankin eagerly. "Oh, a very long time. It .was there long before I THE PASSPORT 107 came there and I've been there eight months. But I want to go back to Germany." The young fellow looked eagerly around for the first time since he had been under examination. He suddenly lost some of his stoicism. "Can I leave here now, go outside?" he al- asked, almost pleadingly. "When we get through with you, yes," replied the Chief. "But we need you for a while yet. What are those two chimneys for?" Rankin pointed to the ma- sonry part of the wall. "One is for the fresh air to come down there," said the machinist, pointing downward. "The other is for the air to get out from down there." "And the elevator? How does that work. What power do you use?" asked Richard. "Electricity," the other replied. "Where do you get the electricity?" insisted Warden. "They make it from the ocean water," was the calm reply. "From the ocean water? What do you mean?" "I don't know but they told me they made it from the water. It's salt, you know." The examination of the young German was still in progress when Harrison returned with the car. While the lever bar was no longer necessary the provisions he brought were welcome. A case of bottles in the corner of the kitchen, containing the amber fluid which Ger- mans may be depended upon to have in handy prox- imity always, solved the question as to how the sand- wiches could be washed down. "I think that you had better attend to Berwin," sug- gested Rankin after Harrison had deposited the sand- wiches and other things on the table in the kitchen, 108 THE PASSPORT and Warden had asked the detective whether Mary's father should be brought in to have some food. "First you might ask him whether he cared to eat a couple of the sandwiches, however." The prisoner in the next room declined the proffered food with a show of contempt. "Fix him up, Dick," repeated the detective. "Then we will be free to eat and talk and he'll be quiet for some hours." Warden, assisted by Harrison, placed Berwin in the automobile. First, he had taken one of the little brown vials from under the tonneau seat. With Berwin seated, the machine was run a hundred yards away from the house, Warden and the chauffeur adjusted their masks and the former broke the bottle on one of the car's hubs. The automobile was then run back to the house and Berwin, again quietly sleeping, was placed on the floor in a corner of the front room. The machinist, whose name was Fecht, joined enthu- siastically in the consumption of the food that had been brought from Pemberton. It seemed to the se- cret service men and Warden that the young man felt relieved rather than disturbed over the new direction his affairs had taken. It was the question of how to overcome the twelve men said to be in the "shop" below that puzzled the detectives most. To wait until the next day seemed in- advisable, for Fecht told them that a much larger gang might come to work again any time if the "business" as he termed it warranted the extra force. "I don't know about the other men," finally said Fecht. "My brother is there and I know that he wants to get out of this work, too. There are three small men who will not be able to do much against you three THE PASSPORT 109 but eight others are pretty big men and may make trouble." Fecht did not know whether there were any weapons in the "shop" besides the large numbers of rifles and revolvers that were stored in cases. He himself had never carried a weapon and neither had his brother but he did not know about the rest of the machinist crew. He and the twelve, he said, were all in the "stranger" class. The large emergency gang that sometimes worked in the "shop" came from the city, wherever that was. The "strangers" all remained vir- tual prisoners in the plant, those not on watch at night sleeping on the upper floor of the house, guarded over by four men who always remained on guard duty in regular reliefs. These four men, said the machinist, were probably the men the detectives had told him had assaulted them in the car and who had later been taken away. It was finally decided to bind Fecht just as they had bound the other prisoners, for his own protection. "If they find you bound and a prisoner," said Ran- kin to the young man, "they will not suspect that you have told us anything. Even though one of us may ask you questions never answer us if there are any of your fellow workmen present. For your own good do not let any of them know that you have said anything to us. If they knew, you would not last long after you are free to go back to Germany. When the time comes we will give you an opportunity to escape so that your record, as far as your countrymen is con- cerned, will be perfectly clear. You understand that, don't you?" Fecht understood and submitted to the operation of binding without a murmur. 110 THE PASSPORT He told Rankin how to use the elevator and gave other directions to the secret service men as to where to go when they should reach the bottom of the shaft. Rankin arranged that he and Warden upon whom the secret service Chief had come to look as a valuable asset and effective addition to his staff were to go below, while Leighton and the chauffeur should remain to guard against eventualities. Warden, of course, provided himself with several of his vials for use in case of emergency. Both he and Rankin were fully armed with automatics, held conveniently in their coat pockets, although young Warden, being a man of peace, hoped fervently that he would not need to use the deadlier of the two weapons that he had about him. They planned to call Fecht's brother as soon as they landed below, as if they were there on business with the plant and desired to speak to one of the workman. The brother, being a sort of foreman, would naturally be the one they would consult with. Rankin and War- den depended upon their ability to speak German to carry them through the first stage of their dangerous mission nearly one hundred feet underground. "You two had better wear your masquerade cos- tumes," said Rankin to his assistant and Harrison. "We may have to use that stuff of Richard's quick down there and then you two might be out of the game before you knew it, if the fumes should come up. Put one on Fecht, too." To the accompaniment of the same rattling of the chain that had first attracted their attention, the Chief and Warden descended in the lift, now dark as pitch during the trip downward, until the car stopped with a little thud at the bottom of the shaft. Rankin felt around until he struck a handle which THE PASSPORT 111 proved to be the hold of the bar that held an iron door. Lifting it, he pushed open the door and the two men stepped into what, under ordinary circumstances, would have been called a typical machine shop. At some distance from them several men were work- ing. The "shop," which was all of the sixty metres in length that Fecht had given it, appeared to be divided in several sections. It was, apparently, a huge tube, the walls and the ceiling meeting in a dome for its full length, with a flooring that was interrupted here and there with big gaps where almost the complete circle of the structure was visible. Both Rankin and Warden braced themselves for the task of getting the better of the workmen in the place without recourse to a battle for life which, of course, it was bound to be should the twelve elect to defy the two strangers. Finally Rankin nerved himself for the first act of aggression. "Fecht!" he called out in a firm and authoritative tone. One of the men immediately detached himself from the others and, wiping his hands on his mechanic's apron, stepped forward. The other workmen near him looked up from their work for an instant, as workmen are wont to do when strangers appear in their shop, but then immediately resumed their work again. "Young man," said the Chief, as the workman came close, and speaking in his most carefully selected Ger- man, "there is trouble upstairs. Step over here a mo- ment," indicating a spot where a piece of machinery would hide them from the view of the others, "your brother is a prisoner. No, nothing will happen to him and nothing will happen to you, if you do not make any outcry. Both of you will be permitted to go back to 112 THE PASSPORT your country in peace, if you behave yourselves. We are government officers and we have pistols pointed at you now, so don't make a false move on your life." The fellow was too surprised to speak and mutely did as he was told, standing back of the machinery, without protest, while Warden searched him under Rankin's expert directions. The Chief himself, the while, cov- ered the man with his revolver. "Now give me the name of another man to call, quickly !" spoke the detective. Fecht gave the desired information, quite perfunctorily. "Wehrbohm !" called out Rankin. The man answering to that name stepped forward. The sight of the revolver and his foreman standing dutifully aside was sufficient reason in Wehrbohm's mind for him to follow suit. Warden again went through the process of searching and then covered both men with his revolver as Rankin, having received a third name, called it out. In this way they got five prisoners, materially re- ducing the odds against them in the underground shop. German-like, the prisoners stood quietly, almost as if they considered it a matter of course, phlegmatically obedient under superior authority. Then Rankin de- manded to know what communication there was with the house and was told, by Fecht, that there was a speaking tube alongside the elevator. Leaving War- den to guard the five men, the Chief whistled through the tube and got Leighton. "I'll send the elevator up," he told his assistant. "Come down with as many bracelets as you have up there. Leave Harrison on guard and better keep your mask handy, although we haven't had to use ours yet." THE PASSPORT 113 Just for luck, Rankin got another name, called it; put and "bagged" a sixth victim. Then Leighton stepped out of the elevator and five of the prisoners were handcuffed with their hands be- hind their backs, placed in the elevator and taken above by Leighton, the latter being instructed to secure the men with cords, of which he took a supply from the shop, and return at once with the "bracelets" again. Fecht was kept below as he could be made useful by the Chief. Upon Leighton's return he found four more sullen- faced Germans lined up as prisoners leaving but two workers still at large. After the four were secured with the cuffs, the remaining two were called and at- tended to without any greater trouble than had marked the capture of the others and what Rankin had looked upon as an extremely hazardous job had been accom- plished without a shot, a blow or the use of Warden's secret "sedative." Foreman Fecht having told the Chief that he was the one who generally looked after the running of the plant, the care of the machinery, ventilating apparatus and the safeguarding of the pumps, Rankin decided to keep him below until he finished his investigations there. The other prisoners were sent above with Leighton and to Warden was assigned the task of accompanying the secret service Chief. The machine shop appeared, quite evidently, to be a model of completeness and mechanical ingenuity. Hav- ing in mind the desolate house on the dunes overhead, Rankin and his young aide could not help but marvel at the thoroughness of the equipment here, far under- neath the sandy waste, and wonder how all this ma- chinery could have been brought to the subterranean THE PASSPORT shop without attracting attention outside. Then, tod, the very construction of this huge tubular affair seemed an utter impossibility without anything ever having been hinted of it in the outside world. There were drill presses, lathes, electrical welding machines and compressed-air hoists of the most intri- cate and delicate patterns. The place was well lighted with electricity the regular Tungsten lamps being used at the various machines besides several clusters suspended from above at regular intervals along the entire length of the shop making the big tube as light as if the men working in it were in the open instead of deep down under the surface of the earth. In the center of the shop there was a space devoted to a series of blocks, very evidently there for the pur- pose of having some heavy machinery rest upon them from time to time. "That," said Rankin, pointing to the blocks, "is for- "The submarines," interrupted the foreman. "When they come in for repair they are put on the blocks." "How do they come in?" questioned Warden, taking up the inquisition, since Rankin seemed unable to ask more than one question without first waiting to give his brain, fairly bewildered at this seemingly impossible achievement, time to frame another. "Through the locks," said Fecht. "They've got four locks, three inside and one at the end. You see these bulkhead doors. They're worked on hinges with heavy rubber gaskets to close them tight. When the boat comes in from the sea it goes through the outer lock into the first compressed-air chamber. First the three inner bulkheads are closed and compressed air is sent into the three chambers. Then the outer lock is THE PASSPORT 115 slowly opened and water replaces the air in that cham- ber. When the boat is inside, the outer lock is closed and the water forced out of the chamber. When all the water is forced out, the second set of bulkheads is slowly opened and the air pressure equalized in the two further chambers. In the chamber between the fresh- air room at the shaft-end of the shop, and the one in which there is the compressed air after the entrance of the boat, there are two rooms through which the work- men pass so as to get accustomed to the different pres- sures. They can't pass into the compressed air cham- ber with the biggest pressure at once. And they can't pass out into the fresh air at once, either. Only those examined by the doctor and passed by him can go in for this work and they only stay an hour or so at a time. The doctor looks everybody over. He is always by the air shaft when there's a boat for repairs." "How many boats have they got, altogether?" ven- tured the Chief. "Four," was the reply. "There's another shop like this down the coast, way south of here, thousand kilo- meters or so." Rankin and young Warden looked at each other in amazement. "Is that are you quite sure that's all they've got?" finally asked the Chief. "That's all I ever heard of," said Fecht. "How did they build this thing?" This from Ran- kin as he craned his neck in all directions, wonder- ment written plainly on his face. "I don't know," replied the foreman. "You can ask Wehrbohm. He's been here the longest of any. I guess he helped build it." Rankin inspected the construction of the tube 116 THE PASSPORT closely. It was evidently an all-steel affair, sectional steel rings, bolted together and forming a perfect tube. There was no moisture to be found, except in the fur- thest compartment now part of the whole since there was no submarine to call for the closing of the bulk- head doors which was damp in spots because of the more or less fequent inlet of water upon the arrival of one of the undersea boats. There was absolutely not an inch of wasted space in the "shop" and not a speck of rubbish could be found in the length and breadth of it. Every part of the intricate machinery was clean and shiny highly polished where there was brass and no evidence anywhere of dripping oil or accumulation of metal dust. The thing was incompre- hensible. Rankin several times believed that he was still under the influence of Warden's mysterious "se- dative," dreaming this wonder dream of mechanical and inventive skill, hidden under the earth, a secret weapon against those who, since they had known how to fight, had always fought in the open. He was eager to know just how long it had taken the Germans to construct this secret steel cave, for he felt although not versed in mechanical construction that no plant as thoroughly built as this one was, and as fully and splendidly equipped, could have been completed ex- cept after many long years of silent, secret work and even then he could not understand how it could have been done at all without an inkling of the truth ever leaking out. Warden, too, after having started out from his col- lege studies on a definite mission, now suddenly found himself thrust into an unheard-of maze of mystery and intrigue, notwithstanding himself. Following one particular course, he had found himself suddenly forced THE PASSPORT 117 into another, although there was a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that his discovery had proved its worth and that this fact alone augured well for what he hoped to accomplish in a much wider field of en- deavor. Their inspection ended, the Chief, accompanied by Warden and the foreman, made ready to ascend to the house overhead. The ventilator fan was doing its work of sucking the fresh air from the open into the shop below and, apparently without any outside agency to keep them going, the electric lights shone forth brightly. With inborn German thrift and discipline, just as if there had been no interruption in the rou- tine of the shop through the coming of the government officers, Fecht said he wished to throw a switch so as to reduce the number of lights, leaving three isolated lamps going in the long tube. "Saving on the electric light bill, eh?" smiled Rankin. "Orders are to leave but three lights burning when going off duty," was the complacent reply of the German. "It's orders, not reasoning, with these fellows, Dick," said the detective to young. Warden, speaking in Eng- lish. "And it's following orders, without reasoning, that is going to be the undoing of the Avhole outfit be- fore these fight-mad Germans are through with their war." Rankin told the foreman that he would keep him covered with his revolver when they reached the house, so that none of the others would think that he had volunteered any information or assistance to the detec- tives. The man seemed to understand this friendly consideration for his well-being and he acknowledged it with a grunt. 118 THE PASSPORT The night was now advancing and all hands were tired. The workers in the shops were due to turn in, under normal conditions, but this could not be since Rankin considered it unsafe to remain at the house any longer without a stronger force of his men in case of the sudden arrival of a large number of the Germans. A little conversation between the Chief and Warden resulted in all of the Germans except the two Fecht brothers and Wehrbohm from whom Rankin hoped to get some additional information being taken outside, some two hundred feet from the house, and there scien- tifically .treated by young Warden. Harrison was, thereupon, sent upon a hurried night ride to the Pem- berton jail with another car-full of inanimate prison- ers, with instructions to get back as quickly as possi- ble for the remainder of the party. While the first batch were being taken to the jail, Rankin, assisted by Warden, questioned Wehrbohm, urging upon the man to tell what he knew and thereby save himself and his fellow workers in the shop from running foul of the government. Wehrbohm, a typical, stolid German, refused at first to even notice the speech of either the detective or young Warden. Finally he made reply that what he had been doing was for the Fatherland and could not, therefore, be discussed by so humble a subject as himself. When it was pointed out to him that he would save himself, his fellow work- ers and thousands of other Germans in America much misery by speaking and allowing the government to take steps to stop the work of the conspirators at once, he relented somewhat and even began to show a small degree of interest. It took long and persistent ques- tioning by both Rankin and Warden to get together an account of the building of the underground shop THE PASSPORT 119 and of its gradual equipment. Warden took copious notes and finally pieced together a more or less com- plete narrative. The work of building the shop was begun seven years before. It was begun and continued from the house where they then stood and it took a long time because it had to be done very slowly. Strangers who hap- pened around were turned away with as little fuss as possible. In hot weather, when boating parties often came around that way, the men in the house maintained a small soda-water stand in front of the building to throw off any suspicion. Wehrbohm came to the place just as the first work of digging a shaft was about to begin. The digging of the shaft was a very slow task, as well as a hard one, because it had to be done under cover of the house. It was particularly hard because the dirt removed had to be distributed over the sands at night and there was no digging or hoisting machin- ery possible at that stage because they could not use steam or other power that would have called attention to the work. The earth was taken out in buckets, all by hand, until the shaft was deep enough to begin the work of installing the elevator. The steel pieces for the lift as well as for the tubular construction came from the city, piece by piece, in covered wagons, owned and driven by those in the conspiracy. The pieces were ordered in different steel plants and delivered to different private addresses in the city. The makers did not know where the pieces were ultimately destined for. They received the drawings, from which the pieces were to be made, through private individuals. Fire had to be guarded against in the general plan of avoid- ing all publicity. Sometimes row boats were used for the smaller material and when the shaft was finished 120 THE PASSPORT there had been stored up in the house a large quantity of steel ready to be bolted in place. The creating of the least suspicion had to be avoided or else there would have been talk about the house in the neighbor- hood. "How was it possible for you to get electric light down there to work with, after you had the shaft dug?" asked Warden, eagerly, at one stage of the questioning. "Everything is possible to the German engineers." A semblance of fanatical national pride controlled the reply. "There was no chance for them to get electric light from the outside for the electric light company's inspectors would have been around on some pretext or other and then everything would have become known. So they got the electricity out of the ocean. As we got more room to work in more men were available. The steel pieces were bolted in place and foot by foot the shop was built. When we got one compartment finished we put in the air compressors, the power for which we obtained from storage cells." "But how did you get the storage cells?" asked War- iden. Rankin, not being of a mechanical or scientific mind, readily gave way to his young aid in the matter of bringing out this technical information. "We got electrical energy from the salt water by the use of carbon and zinc such as form the elements of a salamoniac battery. By having a great number of these carbon and zinc elements, and a motor with specially designed windings, such as we got, we obtained enough energy to run a direct current generator. This generator, in turn, charged our storage batteries and from these storage batteries we secured enough power to run our machinery and secure light. In this way, later, we solved the problem of securing sufficient mo- THE PASSPORT 121 live power for our machine shop without the necessity of using steam or gasoline which would, of course, have attracted attention from the outside. Once through with the first compartment, the building of the next was comparatively easy work. So on with the third and the fourth. It was not so hard to assemble our machinery. That was bought privately at different times by different individuals and was carried here piece by piece. Secrecy had to be observed in getting the pieces into the house but, once in the house, it did not take long to get them into the shop and put them together." "And in all this time no strangers came this way?" asked Rankin. "I did not say so," replied the German. "Many strangers came this way and all were turned away without suspicion. Three of them, about four years ago, found their way into the house, saw too much and were commandeered." "Commandeered? How?" There was surprise in the secret service man's voice. "Compelled to remain and work," was the laconic rejoinder. "Just made prisoners, is that it?" "No, they were Germans and so were compelled to work for their country, that's all. Only, they were forced to do so. They never left the place since they came around that day, four years ago until now. Here's two of them," pointing to two of the inanimate forms on the floor. "The other one went in the car you sent away." "Where were their homes?" asked the detective, in- credulously. "In the city, I think." The German was speaking 122 THE PASSPORT in a matter of fact tone. "Their folks were notified that they were safe but that they could not return home for some time." The elder of the Fecht brothers the foreman told the detectives later that Wehrbohm, like himself and his brother, had had enough of the virtual imprison- ment in the secret German machine shop and was in- clined to regard the coming of the government officers with philosophical resignation. Rankin had hopes, therefore, that the three men, and possibly some of the subordinates among the prisoners, would be able to give valuable secret information regarding the doings of what appeared plainly to be a well-organized conspir- acy against the American government. The automobile having returned, the remaining un- conscious prisoners were placed in the rear of the car with the three Germans, Leighton and Warden, while Rankin took his place by the side of Harrison. The Chief did not care to grant the elder Fecht's request that he be permitted to remain to guard the plant. As there was no way in which Rankin could secure a force of government officers for the place that night, he had to leave it unguarded, trusting to luck that no other conspirators should get there before he could send a suitable squad of watchmen later in the morning. Cas- ual visitors, even if they broke into the house, which was unlikely, would discover nothing since the elevator platform was let down flush with the floor, the detec- tives having learned that a secret spring in the kitchen room would work the lift even though there should be no one in the shop below. The shutters were bolted and the door locked and quietly sealed by Rankin and the party started on its way to the city, by way of Pemberton, there to leave the inanimate prisoners THE PASSPORT 123 with the others already in the jail. Wehrbohm and the Fecht brothers the Chief decided to take to New York with him. On the drive to the city Warden, sitting beside Wehrbohm, secured additional and highly interesting data from the man. Among other things, he learned that the torpedo boats announced their intention of entering the shop for repairs by means of submarine signals. When on the surface they spoke by wireless to the house. "But I saw no wireless equipment there," commented the young man, surprised. "In the attic, close to the roof," replied the German. "The antenna wires there lead down through the chim- ney into the kitchen." "I did not see anything of the sort in the kitchen," expostulated Warden. "You saw a stove pipe there, didn't you?" "Yes." "Well, the wires run through that pipe into the stove, where the receiving apparatus is kept." The stop at Pemberton had been made and the car was rolling over the New Jersey roads in the direction of the metropolis. As the lights of the city came into view from an elevation on which they were at the time, the eyes of the three Germans fairly popped out of their sockets at the sight. One of them, Wehrbohm, had been an exile from civilization for seven years. The other two had arrived in America during the day- time and had been brought directly to the house on the dunes so that the night illumination of a great city was a wonderful revelation to them. The amazement of the three was increased during the crossing of the river on the ferry-boat and their bewilderment knew no 124. THE PASSPORT bounds as the car swung through the canyons formed by the miles of sky-scrapers on the way to one of the uptown hotels where Rankin proposed to put up until they could go to the New York headquarters of the secret service. "All this," remarked Rankin, casually, to Wehr- bohm and his two German co-workers, as he swept his hand around so as to take in all of the surrounding architectural development, "all this your friends are planning to destroy for what?" Wehrbohm shrugged his shoulders as the only means of indicating his ignorance of the reason. "You knew that what was being done in your shop was against this country, didn't you?" persisted the secret service head. "It was not for us to know," replied Wehrbohm. "It was for us to obey orders." At the hotel the party was installed in a suite of rooms, Rankin, Leighton and Warden relieving each other for brief snatches of sleep while one always guarded the three Germans. These, however, hardly needed a guard for they slept like worn-out beings in the first soft bed they had known in a long time. Rankin made arrangements early in the day with the customs authorities for a squad of forty picked men, to be sent to the house over the underground shop. Great care was taken that no man either German born or with German sympathies should be among them and all of them were sworn to the strictest secrecy. The Chief and Leighton were, later in the day, tak- ing the three Germans through an outer office in the New York headquarters of the secret service when something occurred that caused Rankin great concern. It brought home, more forcibly even than the discovery THE PASSPORT 125 of the subterranean machine shop, the knowledge that the conspiracy against the American government was as insidious as it was wide-spread. Rankin had opened the door leading to the private office of the Chief of the local division when Mosser, one of the operatives who had been identified with the visit of Warden to Washington some weeks before, came out of the inner room. Both Wehrbohm and the elder of the Fecht brothers looked up when they saw him as he passed hurriedly by and Rankin noticed the expression of surprise, even alarm, on the face of his operative. "What is he doing here?" asked Wehrbohm, throw- ing a thumb mechanically in the direction taken by Mosser. "That is one of my men." Rankin did not himself know why he answered so anxiously. Wehrbohm cast a glance at the Chief for a moment, almost insolently. "You knew about the shop a long time, then?" He suggested. "Not until yesterday. Why should we have known of it before? What has that man," pointing back to the outer room in the direction taken by Mosser, "to