pile where he had got it. After that, he strolled out to the street again, satisfied that the guard around the Leviathan might have been a trifle more airtight.
As a matter of fact, while the sailing dates of the Leviathan were jealously guarded, bets were made by the Germans on her sailing time out and back. Word came to an A. P. L. man that the Leviathan was going to sail at 12:15 the next day. As this came from German sources, it seemed a useful thing to have the Government alter the sailing hour. The operative in this case strolled around in the vicinity of the Leviathan's pier and talked with sailors, who freely told him the sailing hour. Then, in order to mystify the Government officers, the operative called up a certain Department and said over the 'phone that he was an Intelligence official of the Imperial German Navy, and wanted to know if it was true that the Leviathan was to sail at 12:15 the next day. This caused some excitement. The operative then told whom he was, explaining that he had got that knowledge himself the previous evening. As a result, the sailing hour was changed several hours, and the Leviathan got off safely.
Again, there were a great many rumors regarding the numbers of troops carried by this big transport. We did not want Germany to know how many men we really were shipping, and we rather thought that no one ever could know. An A. P. L. operative was able to make a very close guess under rather singular circumstances. Since he could have done so, perhaps a German spy might have done as much had he an equally sharp wit.
This instance really started in a practical joke. The jokers suggested to a certain young husband, who had to sit up late several nights with a crying baby, that he might pass the time counting the cars of troop trains which passed in front of his house. In all seriousness, the young man did do this, checking each car by the bumps it made on the railroad frogs. He really counted in this way with very fair accuracy the number of cars carrying troops for the Leviathan's sailing. As everyone knew about how many troops were in each car, this operative figured that there would be about 12,000 troops. This was reported to the Government, but was never checked out, so that
