Page:The web (1919).djvu/356

 that in case of her future release she should be kept under surveillance. Thus endeth the first lesson, about Miss M. E. If she had had more money, probably she would have bought more guns. A pleasant day's work for men not on anybody's pay roll.

San Diego had another case which kept the local division going for a time. Among its operatives was a crippled newsboy who once belonged to the Army. This lad had both his legs cut off in a railroad accident as he was changing from one train to another, on his way to a new army post. To make a livelihood, he took up a newsboy's occupation and became a familiar figure on the sidewalks. He had a board to which he fastened a pair of roller skates, and by means of a small block of wood he learned to push himself along the sidewalks at a very good rate of speed. It came to the attention of the division that this newsboy was a very keen observer and it was known he had a knowledge of six languages. He was enrolled and became very useful—indeed he was at the bottom of one of the biggest and most dangerous cases San Diego ever had; which shows that no crippled soldiers ought ever to despair.

The crippled newsboy ate in a certain restaurant, and there by chance he overheard a conversation between some Mexicans. He got a mass of information and turned it into the office, where a report was made to the Navy Department, which later ferreted out a plot that was laid in Mexico. With no more than this passing mention of the A. P. L. operative who, like so many others, gets small glory beyond the reward of his own conscience, some mention may be made of this plot, which really involved the extensive machinations of Germans in Mexico against the United States. It ended in the capture by the United States vessels of the Hun raider Alexander Agassiz.

A young woman owned the Agassiz, but had not been able to make much money out of it, and so sold it to one Fritz B, once a German naval reservist and for a time chief officer on a German ship interned at Santa Rosalia. At another period in his career he had been interned at Angel Island as an alien enemy. At any rate, he made his way to Santa Rosalia, and thence to Matzatlan, where he got in touch with the German Consul. B was sent to Mexico