A Supersubtle Knave
“So elusive did he become that it was necessary to evolve a new system of shadowing him in order to keep him in sight without betraying that he was under surveillance. One detective, accordingly, would be stationed several blocks away and would start out ahead of Koenig. The ‘front shadow’ was signaled by his confederates in the rear whenever Koenig turned a corner, so that the man in front might dart down a cross-street and maneuver to keep ahead of him. If Koenig boarded a street car the man ahead would hail the car several blocks beyond, thus avoiding suspicion. In more than one instance detectives in the rear, guessing that he was about to take a car, would board it several blocks before it got abreast of Koenig.
“It was impossible to overhear direct conversation between Koenig and any man to whom he was giving instructions. Some of his workers he never permitted to meet him at all, but when he kept a rendezvous it was in the open, in the parks in broad daylight, or in a moving-picture theater, or in the Pennsylvania Station, or the Grand Central Terminal. There he could make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. If he met an agent in the open for the first time he gave him some such command as this:
“‘Be at Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street at 2:30 to-morrow afternoon beside a public telephone booth there. When the telephone rings answer it.’
“The man would obey. On the minute the telephone would ring and the man would lift the receiver. A strange voice told him to do certain things—either a definite assignment, or instructions to be at a similar place on the following day to receive a message. Or he might be told to meet another man, who would give him money and further orders. The voice at the other end of the wire spoke from a public telephone booth and was thus reasonably sure that the wire he was talking over was not tapped.”
But cunning, like vaulting ambition, sometimes “doth o’erleap itself,” and Koenig’s fall into the clutches of the law was due to that excess of caution that forbade him to trust any of his men or assistants. His rule was to employ no one man more than once in any service that gave him a “hold” on Koenig sufficient to warrant blackmail or threaten exposure. The detectives found this out, by observation. Then they noticed that one George Fuchs, a young relative with whom Koenig had been quite chummy at first, came to be seen less and less in his company. The detectives thereupon set about making the acquaintance of Fuchs and getting into his good grace. It did not take them long to learn that he was resentful of his unappreciative relative, and they gave sympathetic ear to his complaints. The desired result was the betrayal of Koenig to the authorities.