The most frustrated man in New York at 4 P.M. Saturday, July 24, 1915, was a very proper German lawyer named Heinrich Friedrich Albert who stood helplessly in the middle of Sixth Avenue at Fifty-second Street, watching a streetcar glide uptown with his briefcase and the details of the $40,000,000 spy, propaganda, and sabotage ring he operated. Dr. Albert, officially in America as commercial attaché and financial adviser to the Kaiser’s ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, had saved a taxi fare of perhaps $1.25, but it seemed likely that he had just booted the entire structure of the elaborate German secret service network that was flagrantly violating United States neutrality in the European war.
To all appearances Albert was an impassive executive with a penchant for organization and efficiency virtually unmatched in the Kaiser’s service. However, at heart he was a penny pincher and bookkeeper, possessing virtues dear to every middle-class German. It was these virtues that brought the downfall of his splendid house of marked cards. As the German master spy, he had no business riding the Sixth Avenue el, from which his briefcase had been lifted a few minutes before, just to save a few cents.
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