By some fortune I was not hit, and after a moment looked down at the man beside me. "Hallo, Pablo!" I said, "why aren't you smoking too? ' I offered my case to him, but took good care to stretch out my arm quite level. To get at the contents he had to rise to his feet.
Habit won. He did not even hesitate, and I held my cigarette, Mexican fashion, for him to take a light. Once committed in that fashion, he was too proud to show the white feather, and he and I smoked our cigarettes out while the bullets flew. It was the longest cigarette, I think, I ever smoked, but it turned the trick. We held on to that trench till darkness put an end to the fire.
After the capture of Zacatecas I went to the staff of General Raul Madero, with the rank of Major. The invitation had been extended several times before. Now that Trinidad was dead, there was nothing to hold me back, and I very gladly joined the official family of the brother of the murdered President. Since my first association with him, before Ojinaga, he had impressed me as the ablest man I had seen south of the Rio Grande.
The closer and more constant contact entailed by my becoming a member of his staff confirmed that feeling. Raul Madero has clarity of intelligence, an encyclopaedic grasp of Mexican affairs, social, religious, political and financial, and a winning personality that masks abundant energy and determination.
I was associated with him for only six weeks. On June 28, 1914, you remember, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. Throughout over three weeks of July the Austrian Government was formulating its demands on Serbia which culminated in the ultimatum of July 23. Long before that I had formed my opinion as to which way the wind was to blow. And I had a sufficiently conceited notion of my usefulness as a trained and experienced agent to believe that when the general European disturbance should break out my days as a soldier of fortune in Mexico would be ended.
Towards the end of July a stranger brought me credentials proving him a messenger from Consul Kueck in El Paso.
"The Consul," he told me, "wishes to ask you one question, and the answer is a Yes or a No. This is the question: In case your Government wished your services again, could she expect to receive them?"
"In case of war Yes," I answered.
It was not very long before I received a telegram from Kueck,
"Come," was all it said.
CHAPTER VII
ENTER CAPTAIN VON PAPEN
War; I re-enter the German service and am appointed aide to Captain von Papen; The German conception of neutrality and how to make use of it; The plot against the Welland Canal.
THE meaning of Kueck's telegram was plain. War had come at last, the war that we had expected and prepared for during so many years. My country was at war and I must leave whatever I was doing and return to its service. I went to Raul Madero with the telegram.
"It has come," I said. "War! I shall have to go."
We had spoken together too often, during the past few weeks, of niy duty in the event of hostilities for any long discussion to be necessary now. I asked for and received all that I believed to be necessary a leave of absence for six months with the privilege of extension. The next day, August 3, 1914, I said good-bye to my troops and to my commander and hastened north to El Paso.
At the Hotel El Paso del Norte I met my former enemies, Kueck and his stout secretary. We had dinner together, and he gave me letters containing instructions to proceed to New York and to place myself at the disposal of Captain Franz von Papen, the German Military Attache at Washington.
"When will Captain von Papen be in New York?" I asked.
"I have just received a communication from Papen," replied Kueck, adding with a gratified smile, "I am keeping him informed of conditions along the border. He will be in New York two weeks from to-day."
There was no necessity for haste, then, and I remained in El Paso for five days longer, keeping my eyes and ears open and learning, among other things, more "facts "about Mexico than I could have acquired in Mexico itself in a lifetime. "There are lies, damned lies and El Pasograms," someone has said. I collected enough of the last-named to cheer me on my way to Washington and to make me marvel that Rome had ever been called the father of lies. No wonder newspaper correspondents like to report Mexican news from El Paso.
Washington was technically on vacation at the time, but there was an unwonted air of excitement about the city far greater than formerly existed when Congress was in full session. At the German Embassy I found only a few clerks; but letters from Newport, to which the Ambassador and his staff had gone for the summer, informed me that Captain von Papen would meet me in New York in a fortnight. And then I learned for the first time that it was impossible for me to reach Germany, but that I was to be assigned to work in the United States.
I knew what that meant, of course, and I was not wholly unprepared for it. Secret agents could be very useful in a neutral country, and I knew, from my acquaintance with German methods in Europe that plans would already have been made for conserving German interests in the United States. What those plans were I did not know; but my only immediate concern was to remove any possible suspicion from myself by doing something which on the surface would seem to be absolutely idiotic.
I became violently and noisily pro-German. On the train I entered into arguments (as a matter of fact I could not have escaped them if I tried) in which I stoutly defended the invasion of Belgium and prophesied an early victory for Germany. And when I arrived in New York I registered at the Holland House, where my actions would be more conspicuous than at one of the larger hotels, and proceeded to make myself as noticeable as possible by spending a great deal more money than I could afford and talking.
In a day or two the reporters were on my trail and I became their obliging prey. What I told them I do not now remember in its entirety, but newspaper clippings of the day assure me that I made many wild and bombastic statements, promising that Paris would be captured in a very few weeks in a word uttering the most flagrant nonsense. The reporters decided that I was a fool and deftly conveyed that impression to their readers. And in a very brief time I had the satisfaction of learning that I was everywhere regarded as a person of considerably more loquacity than intelligence.
That was the very reputation I had attempted to get. I wanted to be known and widely as a braggart, a spendthrift, a rattlebrain, for the very excellent reason that in no other way could I so easily divert suspicion from myself later. I was a German, and consequently under the surveillance of enemy secret agents, with whom --oh, believe me!--the United States was filled.