An employee of the local political police tipped off Edward Thomas, the vice consul in Chita, that Marguerite had been taken to a station outside of Chita, but he did not know what had happened to her.
While Thomas tried to investigate, her father-in-law, Joseph Ames was seeking answers of his own. The State Department had alerted him of Marguerite’s arrest, and he hurried to Washington to meet Assistant Secretary of State Alvey Adee and Dewitt Poole, head of the State Department’s Russian section. Ames asked directly whether Marguerite had been spying for the U.S. government when she was caught. Poole told him he “could assure him definitely she had no connection whatever with the State Department” and that he would be “exceedingly surprised, in view of what has happened in the past, if she had any official American connection whatever.”
Ames wanted to know what plans the American government had to rescue her. Poole calmly told him that Marguerite knew the risks of traveling to the unstable Far Eastern Republic and that her capture had created “a very complicated situation.” Poole said he could ask officials with the American Relief Administration to press for her release once Marguerite reached Moscow.
In the meantime, all they could do was wait
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 