In the basement of the hotel there was model of something Tesla had invented and when Navy Intelligence or the FBI came to grab his files they took the model also. Tesla was giving it to the hotel as a deposit against his bill.
Tesla told the Navy he could stop ships from invading the country by shutting down their power. the navy said, no thanks. He shopped lot around Europe and no buyers. That is believed to eb the reason Navy intelligence came to NY as soon as Tesla died.
Some believe that the SIS and FBI were really working with him and they planted the wild eye scientist stories in the media at the time as a cover story. After all WW2 was raging and they were looking for inventions or designs that could help the war effort.
It was after his death that Special Agent John Trump was assigned to the case, from what I have gathered, can’t remember where.