Cake

Last week the green-coated police of Berlin detected and waylaid a package addressed to ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, Doorn, Holland. The package was about the proper bulk and proportions to contain a cartwheel. Was Wilhelm building a rustic cart? Had he found the wheels too much for him?

"Nein!" thundered the green-police. To them the portly wafer teemed with untold cubic centimeters of explosives. Excited, they bore the package gingerly into "a courtyard surrounded by high walls." There they discovered that the senders of the package had given as a return address the name of the respected Prince Bakery in Salsburg and had cunningly concealed their death dealing substance in a juicy cake.

With daring circumspection officials probed the cake, which obstinately refused to explode. Clearly, then, it must be poisoned. Obviously, too, the only assured test of poisoned cake lay in the eating.

A volunteer was found. Surrounded by every known antidote for poison, he wolfed down slice after slice in apparent tranquility.

Then bespangled officials decided that such half measures were of no avail. They turned the cake over to a neighboring War orphanage. When the last orphan had eaten the last crumb without ill effect, the polizei became convinced that no attempt had been made on the life of William Hohenzollern.