Page:The web (1919).djvu/121

 *ica. You cannot call that military genius. You cannot call such a man a soldier. His is simply an instance of perverted intellect. It is not even to be dignified by the term malicious. It is unmoral, base, intellectually obscene, as Thierichens was emotionally obscene.

But Scheele himself, now grown old—for he was a major when he came to America twenty-five years ago—is to-day a pleasant man of genial manner. He used to visit the home of one of his guards—to whom he stuck very close in his walks on the street, the guard having told him he would kill him on his first step toward escape—and there he always was kind to the children. "He was such a nice man," said the guard's wife—"so courtly." He is a very egotistical man, and it requires a certain playing up to his vanity to get him to talk freely. Yet he has talked freely, and has given much valuable information to the United States. The men who accompany him in his city walks would dearly love to drop him out a high window or see him try to escape. They do not love him.

But Scheele loves himself. Asked one time as to some statement he had made, he took offense at suspicion of his veracity. He, twenty-five years a spy in America, a state's-evidence man at last against his original country which he thus betrayed in turn, at this imputation slapped himself on the chest and said: "On my honor as a German officer!" Great God!

In his statements he was not often found tripping. For instance, when he said that 200,000 rifles for German revolutionists were stored in a German club in New York, its searchers did find evidence that rifles had earlier been stored there, but later removed. Scheele was taken from Washington to New York to point out these rifles. He would not go with less than four men as a guard. He is always afraid some German will kill him. Oh, yes, he is still alive. The secret men of the United States know where he is. He can be seen. He will talk. He is an elderly, kindly-looking man now—a man who speaks of his "honor as a German officer!"

The story of Scheele's ferreting out is of itself a strange and absorbing tale, which shows how our own men were