Page:The web (1919).djvu/340

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  • ports to England. He found also that this person was associated

with Professor M——, who claimed to be looking up oil conditions in this country and studying anthropology on the side.

As this operative also was interested in anthropology, he and Professor M—— got on very well, although the San Franciscan was not very much impressed by the learned man's fundamental knowledge in a scientific way. There was nothing, however, to show that the professor was engaged in any enemy activities. But the San Franciscan operative gathered the notion that the visiting passport-seeker might possibly be engaged in spreading German propaganda among the many negroes about the city of Washington. He finally discovered in his possession a lot of pictures of a very undesirable sort, intended for German distribution among negro troops in France, with the intention of creating dissatisfaction among such troops. These pictures carried the legend, "See what is happening to your wives and families while you are in France." Copies of these pictures were obtained. The operative made the further discovery that Professor M—— was in the employ of this pseudo-mining-engineer, who now stood revealed as an active German propagandist. It was also learned where this latter Kultur-spreader got his pictures.

Arrangements were made with one of the professor's photographic subjects so that the operatives might listen in on certain flashlight performances by night. To cut all that unprintable sort of thing short, it may be said that the operatives, while seated on the porch, heard and saw all they liked of the German color-blindness.

The learned professor, however, having his suspicions aroused by the fact that the door kept opening and would not stay shut as it ought to have done, came to the door, poked his head out and saw the operatives sitting on the porch. One operative sat there with a camera in his lap and a flash gun in his right hand, intending to make pictures of the picture maker himself, so that evidence of the reprehensible nature of his own pictures might be discovered. The professor, however, sprang back into the room and presently came out armed with a gun and a bayonet. The operatives at once fell off the back of the porch. Lunging at the first