His work in Silesia was so ably performed and so many arrests and imprisonments followed as the result of his services, that the Berlin authorities decided to employ their sleuth in the capital, where already the Socialists were becoming an important enough body. Armed with letters of introduction from his committees in Silesia, Stieber arrived in Berlin and forthwith became a member of the principal revolutionary clubs in the metropolis. The spy himself describes his presentation to King Frederick William: "My duties required me as a Socialist leader to head a procession of revolutionaries through the capital. At a point in the progress of our bands, the King appeared on the scene, and naturally felt but little at his ease, seeing that the Socialists were the avowed enemies of all existing forms of government and their representatives. Noting his trepidation, I approached his majesty near enough to say: 'Sire, have no fear. I am of your majesty's side and have taken every precaution for your safety. In the meanwhile I must proceed with my rôle of leading these poor deluded people.'" Notwithstanding that Stieber from this day became an object of suspicion to men of the Socialist clubs who had known him in Silesia, the influence of the King protected him and eventually took him into the monarch's service with the title of "police-counsellor," a position which allowed him virtually to act on his own initiative and independently of the minister of police. Stieber's real business in his new post was to keep a close watch upon the ministerial or official police, and that he did so with particular satisfaction to the Prussian monarch, the latter one day admitted to the official chief of police who was complaining of the officious activities and energies of the police-counsellor, and suggested his removal on the ground that since the man was a traitor to those with whom he professed to adhere, he must necessarily be suspect in any cause in which he engaged. The King replied:
"Stieber is more devoted to his King than to any cause and I reward him well. He used to come to me from time to time and tell me what the Socialists were doing, what their plans and intentions were and how on one occasion they had debated the question of seizing the royal family and establishing a Commune."