One day in October, 1915, a good-looking young fellow wandered into the office of the United States Attorney at Detroit and inquired if the office was making any investigations into dynamite cases. His inquiry was odd enough of itself, but coupled with his personal appearance and his entirely unexpected arrival on the scene, it was doubly mysterious. Lewis J. Smith, as his name turned out to be, looked like a handsome, big, farmer’s boy who had come to town and made a little money. He was well dressed in what he considered the style, and in conversation developed a winning smile and a very engaging and convincing personality. There was the fresh wholesomeness of country breeding about him that comported strangely with his guarded and mysterious talk of dynamite. The United States Attorney thought he must be a “little off,” but referred him to the local agent of the Department of Justice.

To this agent Smith told at first an incoherent story. But the agent was tactful and sympathetic and by asking a question now and then and even more by refraining from asking questions at embarrassing moments, he drew out from Smith most of the details of one of the most dangerous German plots, incidentally exposing the organization of the German spy system west of the Mississippi River.

The story revealed by Smith and by the corroborative testimony in the subsequent investigation was this: Consul-General Bopp discovered that the California Powder Mills at Pinole, across the bay from San Francisco, was manufacturing powder for the use of the Russians on the Eastern Front in Europe, and that this powder was being shipped from Tacoma and Seattle to Vladivostok. One particularly large shipment was under way and he wanted to stop it. He employed C. C. Crowley, who had been for many years head detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad but lately discharged for grafting, to undertake this job along with several others. Crowley lived in the Hotel Gartland in San Francisco, and bought his cigars at a little German stand across the street. Through this German, who was also patronized by Smith, Crowley learned that Smith had been employed recently in the California Powder Mills but was out of a job. Crowley introduced himself to Smith and first gave him the task of going back to the mill and finding out exactly how the powder for Russia was being routed. He gave Smith several hundred dollars, and the next day Smith’s former fellow employees were astonished to see him ride up to the works in an automobile, completely outfitted in new clothes and flourishing a roll of bills big enough to make them gasp. Smith soon found how the powder was packed and marked and also that it was being loaded on a big scow and would be towed by sea to Tacoma for loading there on ships for Vladivostok.

A few days later Crowley told Smith to go to Tacoma and register at the Donnelly Hotel, and that he would join him there, going by another train. There they would manufacture bombs of a type which Smith had devised, and Smith was to place these bombs on the ships that would carry the powder to Russia.

Smith took his wife to Tacoma. They registered at the Donnelly Hotel, but as they soon discovered they would have to spend some time in the city, they took an apartment. Smith and Crowley were constantly meeting and between them surveyed all the shipping in the harbour and found out when the boats would sail and what they were carrying. The barge load of powder from California was towed into the harbour while they were there, and anchored in midstream to await the lightering of its cargo to the trans-Pacific ships. These ships proved to be the Kifuku Maru and the Shinsei Maru (Japanese), the Hazel Dollar, an American boat flying the British flag, and the Talthybius, a British ship. Smith undertook to place bombs on all of them.

What Smith actually did was to visit small stores in Tacoma and near Seattle and buy regular commercial 40 per cent. dynamite in sticks, telling the storekeepers that he was clearing a farm and wanted the dynamite for use in blowing up stumps. He loaded a lot of it into an old suitcase and left Crowley one afternoon, telling him he was going to place this on one of the ships that night. Instead, he went out into the woods with it, cached it under a log, the position of which he fixed in memory by a big stump and a tree that had a big rock in its fork, then walked on down to the railroad track, carrying his suitcase, and later threw the suitcase away down an embankment. He reported to Crowley that he had not been able to get anything on the Kifuku Maru, which was the first to sail, but that he had “fixed” the Hazel Dollar, the Shinsei Maru, and the Talthybius.

Crowley, in the meantime, had been keeping in touch with the Germans in San Francisco. It had been arranged that all dealings with them were to be through Von Brincken. Crowley, on his part, kept in touch with his secretary, Mrs. Cornell, she communicating in person, or by telephone, with Von Brincken, and Von Brincken reporting to Bopp and getting further orders.

A great deal of the story from this point on is A Tale Told in Telegrams. The first of these telegrams, which figured in the subsequent trial, was dated Tacoma, May 13, 1915. It was addressed to Crowley who had not yet joined Smith. The message was:

This message was, of course, from Smith and was in the crude code that had been agreed upon. “Fine weather” meant that everything was O. K. “Kaifuku” gave the name of the ship on which the powder would probably be carried. “Box 244” was the post-office address through which Smith could be reached, and “five days” was the probable sailing date of the Kifuku.

It so happened, however, that a few hours after Smith had sent this telegram Crowley arrived in Tacoma. Crowley was always full of fear that he would be detected, and he was afraid of the message that Smith had sent. He, therefore, immediately telegraphed to Mrs. Cornell to go to the Gartland Hotel in San Francisco and get this telegram, and telegraphed also to the hotel to give it to her when she called.

Between one and two o’clock in the morning of Sunday, May 30th (Decoration Day), everybody in Tacoma and Seattle was jarred from his slumbers by a terrific explosion in the harbour. The scow load of powder had disappeared in one grand flash, crash, and cloud of smoke, carrying with it the night watchman who had been living on it. One hundred thousand dollars’ worth of plate glass in Tacoma and Seattle was destroyed and news of the explosion was telegraphed to the papers all over the country. Crowley had got the main part of his job done in one quick stroke.

Here was good news for the Germans. Crowley could not wait for the mails to carry it, so the next day he sent the following telegram to Mrs. Cornell:

This cryptic message meant:

“Work has been good and all fixed,” that he and Smith had had good luck in their plots against the ships and that bombs had been placed on all of them. “No connection with the big Circus it was an accident to the Elephant,” the “big Circus” was the four ships for Vladivostok and the “Elephant” was the scow—in other words, the explosion had not interfered with their work against the ships.

Before Crowley got his message off, however, Mrs. Crowley had sent one to him. The Germans were in a panic. Von Brincken had telephoned her that Bopp had word that Smith had been arrested and had given the game away, so she telegraphed:

To this Crowley replied:

“That telegram” meant his message about the circus. To this Mrs. Cornell replied:

Crowley, she knew, was leaving immediately for San Francisco.

There were some grounds for the Germans apprehension. Smith was arrested and charged with having caused the explosion on the scow. But after a little manoeuvring he managed to get free of the charge and, with money wired to him at Tacoma by Crowley, went back to San Francisco where Crowley paid him first $300 and then $600 in currency.

The Germans, however, had been pretty well frightened and they thought it was about time to get both Smith and Crowley away. Smith and his wife were hustled off to Sacramento where they lived at a hotel for a little while and then Mrs. Smith was sent on ahead to New York, while Crowley and Smith arranged to meet in Chicago to carry out a new plan that the Germans had devised.

This plot was to use Detroit as headquarters for operations in Canada and there to blow up the stockyards at St. Thomas, Ontario, and trains carrying horses for shipment to Europe. Crowley and Smith got together in Chicago and visited the stockyards to spot the shipments of horses toward the Atlantic seaboard. They learned that a good many of these shipments were being routed through Canada by way of Detroit. In the meantime, however, the Germans in San Francisco were getting restless. They had expected almost every day that the ships for Vladivostok would be reported blown up or missing. They had heard neither, and they were beginning to suspect that they had been deceived. They had been deceived, but so had Crowley—and this explains the tenor of his replies in the Second Tale Told in Telegrams. The first intimation of trouble he received was a telegram from Mrs. Cornell on June 21st, to which she signed her middle initial:

Meantime, Crowley had gone on to Detroit and this message was wired to him at the Hotel Statler there. His reply is missing, but he evidently expressed astonishment at the message, giving some instructions for his office and asking for more particulars. To this message Mrs. Cornell replied:

The second sentence of the message meant that the first boat, the Shinsei Maru, had arrived safely at Vladivostok, despite Crowley’s previous assurances that it had been “fixed.” This was what the Germans could not understand, and what had aroused their suspicions that Crowley had been deceiving them, and that he had possibly even been in somebody else’s pay to “double cross” them. Their suspicions were redoubled, as seems natural enough in the light of Mrs. Cornell’s message of June 29th to Crowley:

In other words, the other two boats, the Hazel Dollar and the Talthybius, had safely made Vladivostok.

Meanwhile, Crowley had been having other troubles with Smith. One day he called for him at the Briggs Hotel in Chicago and found that he had disappeared. He learned that he had gone on to New York, leaving as his forwarding address simply “Station L, General Delivery, New York.” Smith had two causes for anxiety. In the first place, he had not heard from his wife and did not know whether she had arrived safely. Consequently, on June 18th he had telegraphed to a friend in New York:

and received a reply the same day giving the address. He left Chicago at once and telegraphed her from Buffalo the following evening:

On Sunday afternoon Crowley telegraphed him from Chicago:

Smith did not reply until four days later, after he had learned that Crowley had gone on from Chicago to Detroit. He then telegraphed him:

To Crowley the second sentence was plain enough, but the first one was unintelligible, so he wired Smith:

Smith did not dare to explain by telegraph what the matter was, but he had become convinced that detectives were on his trail and that he had been followed all the way from Tacoma to Chicago. He had suddenly decided to give them the slip and temporarily to break his connection with Crowley until Crowley should be at a safer place for him to get in touch with him again. Also he wanted to “work” Crowley for some more money, consequently his reply on June 25th was:

The latter part of this message was another lie because he was with his wife at the time, but it served to excuse his absence and baited the hook for more money. Crowley promptly bit and replied:

Corroborating this message was a service message of the Western Union operator to their New York Office at 24 Walker Street:

This telegram authorized the payment of $50.

At the same time Crowley undertook to satisfy his German employers and to divert their minds from their previous disappointment by promising them some results on the new venture. He telegraphed Mrs. Cornell on June 25th:

The “him” was Von Brincken and the “S” was, of course, Smith. The promised “action” was action in the plot to dynamite the cattle trains at St. Thomas, Ontario. The next day Smith was on his way to Detroit, sending a message on the train to his wife to let her know he was all right:

Smith met Crowley in Detroit the following day and Crowley immediately telegraphed Mrs. Cornell further reassuring news for his German friends:

This message meant that Smith had arrived and would dynamite the stockyards in a day or two, that there was nothing exciting to report, and everything was going well. The “action” referred to was the blowing up of the cattle trains and the St. Clair Tunnel at Port Huron. The “clippings” were newspaper reports of the explosion on the scow at Tacoma which he wanted Mrs. Cornell to give to “him” that is to Von Brincken. “Let him know of S” meant: “Tell Von Brincken that Smith is here.” “Let me know if any word from Hazel and friend,” meant that Crowley had not given up hope that there was a mistake about the ships having made Vladivostok in safety and that he expected still to hear that Hazel (that is the Hazel Dollar) and “friend” (Talthybius) had been destroyed.

The promised “action” was now, so Crowley thought, about to be produced. He was going to take Smith into Canada and cause some explosions. Consequently he telegraphed Mrs. Cornell on June 29th:

This announced the approaching trip for action.

Crowley’s scheme for “action” was this: Smith was to carry a suitcase full of dynamite and buy a ticket to St. Thomas, Ontario. Crowley was to carry a suitcase very similar in appearance, containing his travelling things, and was to buy a through ticket to Buffalo which would take him over the same route through Canada that Smith was to travel. This plan was actually worked out with one exception. Smith had a perfectly good imagination and a perfectly developed yellow streak in his courage. He still wanted the $300 monthly he was making and was determined to continue getting it, but he had no relish at all for the pictures conjured in his mind of what would happen to him if he were discovered in Canada with a suitcase full of dynamite. He showed the dynamite packed in the case to Crowley. Then he went out into the suburbs of Detroit, got rid of the dynamite and, from a night watchman on a brick building in course of construction, bought a half-dozen bricks with which he filled the suitcase. This Irishman was afterward discovered and readily recalled both Smith and the circumstances, as he had been both puzzled and amused at the idea of anybody buying bricks when he could easily have stolen them.

As they had arranged, Smith boarded the Michigan Central train at Detroit late Sunday afternoon on July the 4th, and took a seat in the day coach. Crowley, who did not walk with him but followed close behind, took the seat behind Smith. Each, of course, stowed his suitcase at his feet. In a few minutes Smith walked to the front end of the car for a drink of water, whereupon Crowley stepped out on the platform at the rear. Smith came back and took Crowley’s seat. Crowley returned and took Smith’s seat. Shortly after, the customs inspector came through the train with the conductor. His presence was the reason for this exchange of seats. As Crowley had a through ticket to Buffalo and would not leave the train, the customs inspector did not open his suitcase but simply pasted on it the through ticket label by which it would be identified by the other customs inspector who would board the train at Niagara Falls, when the train was about to reËnter the United States at Buffalo. Hence the suitcase containing the supposed dynamite was not opened, and this was Crowley’s plan. Crowley’s own suitcase, now in the seat with Smith, was, of course, opened and examined. But it contained nothing but Crowley’s personal belongings. An hour or so later the stratagem was repeated and Smith and Crowley resumed their original seats and got possession of their original baggage. Smith dropped off the train at St. Thomas at about eleven o’clock that night and Crowley went on through to Buffalo.

Smith’s nerve was no better this time than it had been before. In St. Thomas he emptied the bricks out of his suitcase, bought some travelling things to replace them, and took the train on to New York. In the meantime, Crowley had been having his troubles with the anxious and irritated Germans in San Francisco. There was an interchange of messages based on his need for money and on a break in the chain of communication between him and Bopp. Von Brincken had been made very unhappy by Bopp, as the latter was in a furious rage over the failure of the earlier plot at Tacoma, and had accused Von Brincken of everything from embezzlement to treachery and had made his life so miserable that he was glad of an excuse to get out of San Francisco. The immediate occasion he made for his leaving was an opportunity he had to go to Tia Juana, Mexico, just across the border from California. As both Crowley and his representative Mrs. Cornell had been positively forbidden to communicate with Bopp, Crowley was at the moment considerably embarrassed by his inability to get in touch with headquarters. This explains the meaning of Mrs. Cornell’s message of July 2d, addressed to Crowley at Detroit:

She did manage to reach Von Brincken just before he left for Mexico late the same day, again telegraphing Crowley:

Crowley replied the next morning:

His reply, however, was too late. Von Brincken had gone to Mexico, hence Mrs. Cornell telegraphed:

To this message Crowley replied:

The following day was the Sunday on which Crowley and Smith left Detroit together. Smith dropped off at St. Thomas and Crowley proceeded to Buffalo. The following evening Crowley again telegraphed Mrs. Cornell from Buffalo:

Her reply was:

Mrs. Cornell had been unable to reach Von Brincken for the very good reason that he was out of town. Her quotation of his remark that he “expected to take another position within a month” referred to Von Brincken’s untenable position in the Consulate in San Francisco, and to his manoeuvres to get himself transferred to the New York end of the German spy system with his friend Von Papen, with whom he had become quite chummy on a recent visit of Von Papen’s to the Pacific Coast.

Two days later, however, Von Brincken had come back to San Francisco and Mrs. Cornell had a talk with him. Following this talk she telegraphed to Crowley, who was now in New York, stopping at the Wallick Hotel:

In this message Mrs. Cornell dropped into the code they had agreed to use before Crowley left San Francisco. “Manager” was Bopp, the head German in San Francisco. “Bradford” was Von Brincken. The “lawsuit” was the plot. The “lawyer” was Smith. “Bradford’s friend in New York” was Von Papen.

In her promised night letter Mrs. Cornell said:

The latter part of this message urges Crowley to recommend Von Brincken very strongly to Von Papen when he sees him in New York so that Von Papen will be sure to transfer Von Brincken to the eastern territory so he can get away from Bopp. The next day Crowley telegraphed Mrs. Cornell from New York:

The appointment, of course, was with Von Papen, but Crowley was not very happy about it as he seemed to have been failing right along to get anywhere, and he had now been so much criticized from San Francisco that he became fearful that Bopp would shut down on his money. Mrs. Cornell now gave up hope of getting action. On July 10th she telegraphed him:

Crowley in desperation telegraphed for money from his personal bank account and got back a telegraphic order from Mrs. Cornell for $125. He divided with Smith and then bought a ticket for San Francisco so that he could deal direct with Bopp. Following Von Brincken’s suggestion he told Smith when he left to go and see Von Papen, and get the rest of his money from him. Smith went to the German Club, on Central Park South, and sent up a message to Von Papen to which he got the curt reply that Von Papen did not want to see anybody from San Francisco. He had not yet been informed by Von Brincken that Smith was a man he could use.

Smith was now very angry, and casting all discretion to the winds, telegraphed openly and directly to the German Consulate in San Francisco, addressing the message to Von Shack on the theory that having exhausted all approaches to Bopp and Von Brincken he would go after the one man who still might be reached:

Three days later Smith telegraphed to Crowley who, he knew, would now be in San Francisco:

A few days later, telegraphing from an office on the Exposition Grounds, in San Francisco, Crowley sent a message to Smith in New York:

Crowley had now managed to restore some degree of confidence in his work and Smith’s, and had adopted his favourite method of diverting attention from past failures by setting forth a glowing prospectus of a new scheme. For a third time the Germans “bit.” In his eagerness Crowley thereupon sent a rush message to Smith:

Smith promptly replied:

He arrived in San Francisco six days later, telephoned to Crowley at the Gartland Hotel, and Crowley in turn telephoned to Bopp that Smith was on hand. That evening Crowley and Smith got together in Crowley’s room and made out a statement of Smith’s expenses. This statement was a work of art. At Crowley’s suggestion Smith carefully “padded” the account so that they both made a handsome profit on that besides their salaries. They met Bopp in the Palace Hotel the following morning and he there paid the amount of the expense account, $845, in bills.

Bopp and Crowley told Smith that they would probably have more work for him to do and for him to go back East. He left San Francisco on July 28th, telegraphing when he started to his wife at Cedarhurst, L. I.:

She replied that she would meet him as directed. Smith went on to Detroit and stopped first at the Normandie Hotel and then moved out to a boarding house.

In a couple of weeks Crowley had got further orders from Bopp and wrote a letter to Smith in Detroit, saying that Bopp would give $500 apiece for blowing up the powder works outside Gary, Ind., and Ishpeming, Mich., besides paying his salary of $300 a month and expenses. Before Smith had time to get the letter he got another telegram from Crowley:

What had happened was: Bopp had decided that Smith could get better results by working in California where he was more familiar with the powder plants and where he would be more closely under his direction and not under Von Papen’s direction. After a discussion with Crowley, Bopp had agreed to a plan to have Smith return to California and get a job again in the California Powder Mills at Pinole, now owned by the Hercules Powder Company, and cause an explosion there. Following this agreement Crowley telegraphed Smith on August 30th:

Crowley had used the name of Garrett several times and often received mail under this name at his hotel in San Francisco. The meat of this message was: “if you can, get good title to the one here” and “the one north.” The “place here” was the California Powder Mills, and “the one north” was a powder mill of the Ætna Explosive Company outside Tacoma with which Smith was familiar as a result of his trip there at the time of the explosion on the scow.

On September 7th Crowley telegraphed Smith:

Smith waited a week for a decision and then wired Von Shack again:

The satisfactory answer did not come. The Germans in San Francisco had spent all they were willing to spend without getting any result. Smith got a job in an automobile factory in Detroit, and his wife returned to her vocation as a masseuse in a Turkish bath. Pretty soon they both began to “see things”—Mrs. Smith in particular. First she thought she saw Crowley following her in disguise on the street one night. Smith began to suspect also that they were being trailed by detectives in the employ of the Germans, and finally he feared both bodily harm and violence, and the possibility of the American Government having gotten wind of some of his activities and dogging his steps to arrest him. He finally decided that the safe thing to do was to turn State’s evidence, and hence he wandered into the office of the United States Attorney and started various trains of investigation that ultimately sent Bopp, Crowley, Von Brincken, and Von Shack to two years in prison, and Mrs. Cornell to one year. Smith and his wife were given immunity for turning State’s evidence.