o go to war on their account was to degrade our Government. I explained
to Schnitzel it was not becoming that the United States navy should be
made the cat's-paw of a corrupt corporation. I asked his permission to
repeat to the authorities at Washington certain of the statements he had
made.

Schnitzel was greatly pleased.

"You're welcome to tell 'em anything I've said," he assented. "And," he
added, "most of it's true, too."

I wrote down certain charges he had made, and added what I had always
known of the nitrate fight. It was a terrible arraignment. In the
evening I read my notes to Schnitzel, who, in a corner of the
smoking-room, sat, frowning importantly, checking off each statement,
and where I made an error of a date or a name, severely correcting me.

Several times I asked him, "Are you sure this won't get you into trouble
with your 'people'? You seem to accuse everybody on each side."

Schnitzel's eyes instantly closed with suspicion.

"Don't you worry about me and my people," he returned sulkily. "That's
_my_ secret, and you won't find it out, neither. I may be as crooked as
the rest of them, but I'm not giving away my employer."

I suppose I looked puzzled.

"I mean not a second time," he added hastily. "I know what you're
thinking of, and I got five thousand dollars for it. But now I mean to
stick by the men that pay my wages."

"But you've told me enough about each of the three to put any one of
them in jail."

"Of course, I have," cried Schnitzel triumphantly.

"If I'd let down on any one crowd you'd know I was working for that
crowd, so I've touched 'em all up. Only what I told you about my
crowd--isn't true."

The report we finally drew up was so sensational that I was of a mind
to throw it overboard. It accused members of the Cabinet, of our Senate,
diplomats, business men of national interest, judges of the Valencia
courts, private secretaries, clerks, hired bullies, and filibusters. Men
the trust could not bribe it had blackmailed. Those it could not
corrupt, and they were pitifully few, it crushed with some disgraceful
charge.

Looking over my notes, I said:

"You seem to have made every charge except murder."

"How'd I come to leave that out?" Schnitzel answered flippantly. "What
about Coleman, the foreman at Bahia, and that German contractor,
Ebhardt, and old Smedburg? They talked too much, and they died of
yellow-fever, maybe, and maybe what happened to them was they ate
knoc