"Yes, and it's very likely to talk loud enough to send you to the pen if you're not careful!" was Whitney's reply. "If you don't want to land there, keep your mouth shut about this. D'you get me?"
"I do, boss, I do."
"And you've told me all the truth—every bit of it?"
"Every little bit."
"All right. Clear out!"
When Murphy left the room, Whitney turned to the manager and, with a wry smile, remarked: "Well, we've discovered where the car came from and how they got it. But that's all. We're really as much in the dark as before."
"No," replied the manager, musingly. "Not quite as much. Possibly you don't know it, but we have a device on every car that leaves this garage to take care of just such cases as this—to prevent drivers from running their machines all over town without pulling down the lever and then holding out the fares on us. Just a minute and I'll show you.
"Joe," he called, "bring me the record tape of Murphy's machine for last night and hold his car till you hear from me."
"This tape," he explained, a few minutes later, "is operated something along the lines of a seismograph or any other instrument for detecting change in direction. An inked needle marks these straight lines and curves all the time the machine is moving, and when it is standing still it oscillates slightly. By glancing at these tapes we can tell when any chauffeur is holding out on us, for it forms a clear record—not only of the distance the machine has traveled, but of the route it followed."
"Doesn't the speedometer give you the distance?" asked Whitney.
"Theoretically, yes. But it's a very simple matter to disconnect a speedometer, while this record is kept in a locked box and not one driver in ten even knows it's there. Now, let's see what Murphy's record tape tells us....
"Yes, here's the trip to the theater around eight-thirty. See the sharp turn from Fifth Avenue into Forty-second Street, the momentary stop in front of the Amsterdam, and the complete sweep as he turned around to get back to Broadway. Then there's the journey up to the Bronx or Harlem or wherever he went, another complete turn and an uninterrupted trip back down on Broadway."
"Then this," cut in Whitney, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice, "is where he stopped to speak to the Germans?"
"Precisely," agreed the other, "and, as you'll note, that stop was evidently longer than either of the other two. They paid their fares, while Murphy's friends had to be relieved of two hundred and fifty dollars."
"From there on is what I'm interested in," announced Whitney. "What does the tape say?"
"It doesn'tsayanything," admitted the manager, with a smile. "But itindicatesa whole lot. In fact, it blazes a blood-red trail that you ought to be able to follow with very little difficulty. See, when the machine started it kept on down Broadway—in fact, there's no sign of a turn for several blocks."
"How many?"
"That we can't tell—now. But we can figure it up very accurately later. The machine then turned to the right and went west for a short distance only—stopped for a few moments—and then went on, evidently toward the ferry, for here's a delay to get on board, here's a wavy line evidently made by the motion of the boat when the hand ought to have been practically at rest, and here's where they picked up the trip to Trenton. Evidently they didn't have to stop until they got there, because we have yards of tape before we reach a stop point, and then the paper is worn completely through by the action ofthe needle in oscillating, indicative of a long period of inaction. The return trip is just as plain."
"But," Whitney objected, "the whole thing hinges on where they went before going to Trenton. Murphy said they didn't have any bags, so they must have gone home or to some rendezvous to collect them. How are we going to find the corner where the machine turned?"
"By taking Murphy's car and driving it very carefully south on Broadway until the tape indicates precisely the distance marked on this one—the place where the turn was made. Then, driving down that street, the second distance shown on the tape will give you approximately the house you're looking for!"
"Good Lord," exclaimed Whitney, "that's applying science to it! Sherlock Holmes wasn't so smart, after all!"
Al and the manager agreed that there was too much traffic on Broadway in the daytime or early evening to attempt the experiment, but shortly after midnight, belated pedestrians might have wondered why a Green-and-White taxicab containing two men proceeded down Broadway at a snail's pace, while every now and then it stopped and one of the men got out to examine something inside.
"I think this is the corner," whispered the garage manager to Whitney, when they reached Eighth Street, "but to be sure, we'll go back and try it over again, driving at a normal pace. It's lucky that this is a new instrument and therefore very accurate."
The second trial produced the same result as the first—the place they sought lay a few blocks west of Broadway, on Eighth.
Before they tried to find out the precise location of the house, Whitney phoned to headquarters and requested loan of a score of men to assist him in the contemplated raid.
"Tell 'em to have their guns handy," he ordered, "becausewe may have to surround the block and search every house."
But the taxi tape rendered that unnecessary. It indicated any one of three adjoining houses on the north side of the street, because, as the manager pointed out, the machine had not turned round again until it struck a north-and-south thoroughfare, hence the houses must be on the north side.
By this time the reserves were on hand and, upon instructions from Whitney, spread out in a fan-shaped formation, completely surrounding the houses, front and rear. At a blast from a police whistle they mounted the steps and, not waiting for the doors to be opened, went through them shoulders first.
It was Whitney, who had elected to assist in the search of the center house, who captured his prey in a third-floor bedroom.
Before the Germans knew what was happening Al was in the room, his flashlight playing over the floor and table in a hasty search for incriminating evidence. It didn't take long to find it, either. In one corner, only partly concealed by a newspaper whose flaring headlines referred to the explosion of the night before, was a collection of bombs which, according to later expert testimony was sufficient to blow a good-sized hole in the city of New York.
That was all they discovered at the time, but a judicious use of the third degree—coupled with promises of leniency—induced one of the prisoners to loosen up the next day and he told the whole story—precisely as the taxi tape and Vera Norton had told it. The only missing ingredient was the power behind the plot—the mysterious "No. 859"—whom Dick Walters later captured because of the clue on Shelf forty-five.
"So you see," commented Quinn as he finished, "the younger Pitt wasn't so far wrong when he cynically remarked that 'there is a Providence that watches over children, imbeciles, and the United States.' In this case the principal clues were a book from the Public Library, the chance observations of a girl who couldn't sleep and a piece of white paper with some red markings on it.
"At that, though, it's not the first time that German agents have gotten into trouble over a scrap of paper."
"What happened to Vera Norton?" I inquired.
"Beyond a little personal glory, not a thing in the world," replied Quinn. "Didn't I tell you that Al was married? You're always looking for romance, even in everyday life. Besides, if he had been a bachelor, Whitney was too busy trying to round up the other loose ends of the Ewald case. 'Number eight fifty-nine' hadn't been captured then, you remember.
"Give me a match—my pipe's gone out. No, I can't smoke it here; it's too late. But speaking of small clues that lead to big things, some day soon I'll tell you the story of how a match—one just like this, for all I know—led to the uncovering of one of the most difficult smuggling cases that the Customs Service ever tried to solve."
"I wonder how long it will take," mused Bill Quinn, as he tossed aside a copy of his favorite fictional monthly, "to remove the ethical restrictions which the war placed upon novels and short stories? Did you ever notice the changing style in villains, for example? A decade or so ago it was all the rage to have a Japanese do the dirty work—for then we were taking the 'yellow peril' rather seriously and it was reflected in our reading matter. The tall, well-dressed Russian, with a sinister glitter in his black eyes, next stepped upon the scene, to be followed by the villain whose swarthy complexion gave a hint of his Latin ancestry.
"For the past few years, of course, every real villain has had to have at least a touch of Teutonic blood to account for the various treacheries which he tackles. I don't recall a single novel—or a short story, either—that has had an English or French villain who is foiled in the last few pages. I suppose you'd call it theentente cordialeof the novelists, a sort of concerted attempt by the writing clan to do their bit against the Hun. And mighty good propaganda it was, too....
"But, unfortunately, the detective of real life can't always tell by determining a man's nationality whether he's going to turn out to be a crook or a hero. When you come right down to it, every country has about the sameproportion of each and it's only by the closest observation that one can arrive at a definite and fact-supported conclusion.
"Details—trifles unnoticed in themselves—play a far larger part in the final dénouement than any preconceived ideas or fanciful theories. There was the case of Ezra Marks and the Dillingham diamonds, for example...."
Ezra [continued the former Secret Service operative, when he had eased his game leg into a position where it no longer gave him active trouble] was all that the name implied. Born in Vermont, of a highly puritanical family, he had been named for his paternal grandfather and probably also for some character from the Old Testament. I'm not awfully strong on that Biblical stuff myself.
It wasn't long after he grew up, however, that life on the farm began to pall. He found a copy of the life of Alan Pinkerton somewhere and read it through until he knew it from cover to cover. As was only natural in a boy of his age, he determined to become a great detective, and drifted down to Boston with that object in view. But, once in the city, he found that "detecting" was a little more difficult than he had imagined, and finally agreed to compromise by accepting a very minor position in the Police Department. Luckily, his beat lay along the water front and he got tangled up in two or three smuggling cases which he managed to unravel in fine shape, and, in this way, attracted the attention of the Customs Branch of the Treasury Department, which is always on the lookout for new timber. It's a hard life, you know, and one which doesn't constitute a good risk for an insurance company. So there are always gaps to be filled—and Ezra plugged up one of them very nicely.
As might have been expected, the New Englander was hardly ever addressed by his full name. "E. Z." was the title they coined for him, and "E. Z." he was from that time on—at least to everyone in the Service. The people on the other side of the fence, however, the men and women who look upon the United States government as a joke and its laws as hurdles over which they can jump whenever they wish—found that this Mark was far from an easy one. He it was who handled the Wang Foo opium case in San Diego in nineteen eleven. He nailed the gun runners at El Paso when half a dozen other men had fallen down on the assignment, and there were at least three Canadian cases which bore the imprint of his latent genius on the finished reports.
His particular kind of genius was distinctly out of the ordinary, too. He wasn't flashy and he was far from a hard worker. He just stuck around and watched everything worth watching until he located the tip he wanted. Then he went to it—and the case was finished!
The chap who stated that "genius is the capacity for infinite attention to details" had Ezra sized up to a T. And it was one of these details—probably the most trifling one of all—that led to his most startling success.
Back in the spring of nineteen twelve the European agents of the Treasury Department reported to Washington that a collection of uncut diamonds, most of them rather large, had been sold to the German representative of a firm in Rotterdam. From certain tips which they picked up, however, the men abroad were of the opinion that the stones were destined for the United States and advised that all German boats be carefully watched, because the Dillingham diamonds—as the collection was known—had been last heard of en route to Hamburg and it was to be expected that they would clear from there.
The cablegram didn't cause any wild excitement in the Treasury Department. European agents have a habit of trying to stir up trouble in order to make it appear that they are earning their money and then they claim that the people over here are not always alert enough to follow their tips. It's the old game of passing the buck. You have to expect it in any business.
But, as events turned out, the men on the other side were dead right.
Almost before Washington had time officially to digest the cable and to mail out the stereotyped warnings based upon it, a report filtered in from Wheeling, West Virginia, that one of the newly made coal millionaires in that section had invested in some uncut diamonds as large as the end of your thumb. The report came in merely as a routine statement, but it set the customs authorities to thinking.
Uncut stones, you know, are hard to locate, either when they are being brought in or after they actually arrive. Their color is dull and slatelike and there is little to distinguish them from other and far less valuable pebbles. Of course, there might not be the slightest connection in the world between the Wheeling diamonds and those of the Dillingham collection—but then, on the other hand, there might....
Hence, it behooved the customs people to put on a little more speed and to watch the incoming steamers just as carefully as they knew how.
Some weeks passed and the department had sunk back into a state of comfortable ease—broken only occasionally by a minor case or two—when a wire arrived one morning stating that two uncut diamonds had appeared in New York under conditions which appeared distinctly suspicious. The owner had offered them at aprice 'way under the market figure, and then, rather than reply to one or two questions relative to the history of the stones, had disappeared. There was no record of the theft of any diamonds answering to the description of those seen in Maiden Lane, and the police force inquired if Washington thought they could have been smuggled.
"Of course they could," snorted the chief. "But there's nothing to prove it. Until we get our hands upon them and a detailed description of the Dillingham stones, it's impossible to tell."
So he cabled abroad for an accurate list of the diamonds which had been sold a couple of months earlier, with special instructions to include any identifying marks, as it was essential to spot the stones before a case could be built up in court.
The following Tuesday a long dispatch from Rotterdam reached the department, stating, among other things, that one of the Dillingham diamonds could be distinguished by a heart-shaped flaw located just below the surface. That same afternoon came another wire from New York to the effect that two rough stones, answering to the description of the ones alluded to in a previous message, had turned up in the jewelry district after passing through half a dozen underground channels.
"Has one of the diamonds a heart-shaped flaw in it?" the chief inquired by wire.
"It has," came back the response. "How did you know it?"
"I didn't," muttered the head of the Customs Service, "but I took a chance. The odds were twenty to one against me, but I've seen these long shots win before. Now," ringing for Mahoney, his assistant, "we'll see what can be done to keep the rest of that collection from drifting in—if it hasn't already arrived."
"Where's Marks located now?" the chief inquired when Mahoney entered.
"Somewhere in the vicinity of Buffalo, I believe. He's working on that Chesbro case, the one in connection with—"
"I know," cut in the chief. "But that's pin money compared with this matter of the Dillingham diamonds. Thousands of dollars are at stake here, against hundreds there. Besides, if this thing ever leaks out to the papers we'll never hear the last of it. The New York office isn't in any too strong as it is. Wire Marks to drop the trail of those silk hounds and beat it to New York as fast as he can. He'll find real work awaiting him there—something that ought to prove a test of the reputation he's built up on the other three borders. Hurry it up!"
"E. Z." found the message awaiting him when he returned to his hotel that night, and without the slightest symptom of a grouch grabbed the next train for New York. As he told me later, he didn't mind in the least dropping the silk matter, because he had put in the better part of a month on it and didn't seem any closer than when he started.
It took Ezra less than five minutes to get all the dope the New York office had on the case—and it took him nearly six months to solve it.
"The two diamonds in Wheeling and the two that turned up here are the only ones we know about," said the man in charge of the New York office. "The original Dillingham collection contained twenty-one rough stones—but whether the other seventeen have already been brought in or whether the people who are handling them have shipped them elsewhere is wholly problematical. The chief learned about the heart-shaped flaw from our man at Rotterdam, so that identifies one of the stones.But at the same time it doesn't help us in the least—for we can't handle the case from this end."
"Same rules as on the Coast, eh?" inquired Marks.
"Precisely. You've got to tackle the other end of the game. No rummaging around here, trying to pick up the trail that ends with the stone in Maiden Lane. As you know, this bunch is pretty well organized, wheels within wheels and fences on fences. You get something on one of them and the rest of the crowd will perjure themselves black in the face to get him off, with the result that your case will be laughed out of court and the man you're really after—the chap who's running the stones under your nose—is a thousand miles away with a grin on his face. You've got to land him first and the others later, if the chief wants them. The chances are, though, that he'll be well satisfied to have the goods on the crook that's doing the main part of the work."
"Well," drawled Marks, "I trust he gets his satisfaction. Got any ideas on the matter?"
"Nary an idea. The stones were sold abroad and presumably they were headed for Hamburg—which would appear to point to a German boat. Four of them, supposedly—one of them, certainly—turned up here without passing through the office or paying the customary duty. Now go to it!"
When Marks got back to his hotel and started to think the problem over, he had to admit that there wasn't very much to "go to." It was the thinnest case he had ever tackled—a perfect circle of a problem, without the slightest sign of a beginning, save the one which was barred.
Anxious as he was to make good, he had to concede that the department's policy of working from the other end of the case was the right course to follow. He had heard of too many arrests that fell flat, too many wearyweeks of work that went for nothing—because the evidence was insufficient—not to realize the justice of the regulations that appeared to hamper him.
"No," he thought, as he half dreamed over a pipe-load of tobacco, "the case seems to be impregnable. But there must be some way to jimmy into it if you try long enough."
His first move was the fairly obvious one of searching the newspaper files to discover just what ships had docked during the ten days previous to the appearance of the stones in Wheeling. But this led nowhere, because that week had been a very busy one in maritime circles. TheCeltic, theMauretania, theKaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, theKronprinzessin Cecelie, theDeutschlandand a host of other smaller vessels had landed within that time.
Just as a check upon his observations, he examined the records for the week preceding the first appearance of the diamonds in New York. Here again he ran into a snag, but one which enabled him to eliminate at least half of the vessels he had considered before. However, there still remained a sufficient number to make it impossible to watch all of them or even to fix upon two or three which appeared more suspicious than the others.
The information from abroad pointed to the fact that a German boat was carrying the diamonds, but, Marks figured, there was nothing in the world to prevent the stones from being taken into England or France or Italy and reshipped from there. They had turned up in the United States, so why couldn't they have been slipped through the customs of other countries just as easily?
The one point about the whole matter that appeared significant to him was that two stones had been reported in each case—a pair in Wheeling and another pair in New York. This evidence would be translated either to meanthat the smugglers preferred to offer the diamonds in small lots, so as not to center suspicion too sharply in their movements, or that the space which they used to conceal the stones was extremely limited.
Marks inclined to the latter theory, because two stones, rather than one, had been offered in each instance. If the whole lot had been run in, he argued, the men responsible would market them singly, rather than in pairs. This would not detract in the slightest from the value of the stones, as it isn't easy to match rough diamonds and thus increase their market value.
Having settled this matter to his own satisfaction and being convinced that, as not more than two stones were being run in at one time, it would take at least eight more trips to import the entire shipment, "E. Z." settled down to a part of the government detective's work which is the hardest and the most necessary in his life—that which can best be characterized by the phrase "watchful waiting."
For weeks at a time he haunted the docks and wharves along the New York water front. His tall, angular figure became a familiar sight at every landing place and his eyes roamed restlessly over the crowds that came down the gangplank. In a number of instances he personally directed the searching of bags and baggage which appeared to be suspicious. Save for locating a few bolts of valuable lace and an oil painting concealed in the handle of a walking stick which was patently hollow, he failed to turn up a thing.
The only ray of hope that he could glimpse was the fact that, since he had been assigned to the case, four more stones had been reported—again in pairs. This proved that his former reasoning had been correct and also that the smugglers evidently intended to bring in all of thetwenty-one stones, two at a time. But when he came to catalog the hiding places which might be used to conceal two articles of the size of the stones already spotted, he was stumped. The list included a walking stick, the heels of a pair of women's shoes, two dummy pieces of candy concealed in a box of real confections, a box of talcum, a bag of marbles, the handle of an umbrella, or any one of a number of other trinkets which travelers carry as a matter of course or bring home as curios or gifts.
Finally, after two solid months of unproductive work, he boarded the midnight train for Washington and strolled into the chief's office the following morning, to lay his cards on the table.
"Frankly," he admitted, "I haven't accomplished a thing. I'm as far from breaking into the circle as I was at the beginning, and, so far as I can see, there isn't any hope of doing it for some time to come."
"Well," inquired the chief, "do you want to be relieved of the case or do you want me to drop the matter entirely—to confess that the Customs Service has been licked by a single clever smuggler?"
"Not at all!" and Marks's tone indicated that such a thought had never entered his head. "I want the Service to stick with the case and I want to continue to handle it. But I do want a definite assurance of time."
"How much time?"
"That I can't say. The only lead I've located—and that isn't sufficient to be dignified by the term 'clue'—will take weeks and probably months to run to earth. I don't see another earthly trail to follow, but I would like to have time to see whether this one leads anywhere."
"All right," agreed the chief, fully realizing what "E. Z." was up against and not being hurried by any pressure from the outside—for the case had been carefullykept out of the newspapers—"this is September. Suppose we say the first of the year? How does that suit you?"
"Fair enough, if that's the best you can do."
"I'm afraid it is," was the comment from across the desk, "because that's all the case is worth to us. Your time is valuable and we can't afford to spend a year on any case—unless it's something as big as the sugar frauds. Stick with it until New Year's, and if nothing new develops before then we'll have to admit we're licked and turn you loose on something else."
"Thanks, Chief," said Marks, getting up from his chair. "You can depend upon my doing everything possible in the next three months to locate the leak and I surely appreciate your kindness in not delivering an ultimatum that you want the smuggler or my job. But then I guess you know that I couldn't work any harder than I'm going to, anyhow."
"Possibly," agreed the head of the Service, "and then, again, it may be because I have confidence that you'll turn the trick within the year. Want any help from this end?"
"No, thanks. This looks like a one-man game and it ought not to take more than one man to finish it. A whole bunch of people always clutter up the place and get you tangled in their pet theories and personal ideas. What I would like, though, is to be kept in close touch with any further developments concerning stones that appear later on—where they are located—their exact weight and diameter, and any other facts that might indicate a possible hiding place."
"You'll get that, all right," promised the chief. "And I trust that you'll develop a red-hot trail of your own before January first."
With that Marks shook hands and started back to New York, fairly well pleased with the results of his trip, but totally disgusted with the lack of progress which he had made since leaving Buffalo.
Early in October a message from Washington informed him that a couple of uncut diamonds had turned up in Cincinnati, stones which answered to the description of a pair in the Dillingham collection.
Around the 10th of November another pair was heard from in Boston, and anyone who was familiar with Marks and his methods would have noted a tightening of the muscles around his mouth and a narrowing of his eyes which always indicated that he was nearing the solution of a difficulty.
After receiving the November message he stopped haunting the wharves and commenced to frequent the steamship offices of the Hamburg-American, North German Lloyd and Llanarch lines. The latter, as you probably know, is operated by Welsh and British capital and runs a few small boats carrying passengers who would ordinarily travel second class, together with a considerable amount of freight.
When the first day of December dawned, Marks drew a deep-red circle around the name of the month on his calendar and emitted a prayerful oath, to the effect he'd "be good and eternally damned if that month didn't contain an unexpected Christmas present for a certain person." He made no pretense of knowing who the person was—but he did feel that he was considerably closer to his prey than he had been five months before.
Fate, as some one has already remarked, only deals a man a certain number of poor hands before his luck changes. Sometimes it gets worse, but, on the average, it improves. In Ezra Marks's case Fate took the form of astorm at sea, one of those winter hurricanes that sweep across the Atlantic and play havoc with shipping.
Ezra was patiently waiting for one of three boats. Which one, he didn't know—but by the process of elimination he had figured to a mathematical certainty that one of them ought to carry two uncut diamonds which were destined never to visit the customs office. Little by little, through the months that had passed, he had weeded out the ships which failed to make port at the time the diamonds arrived—calculating the time by the dates on which the stones appeared elsewhere—and there were only three ships left. One of them was a North German Lloyder, the second belonged to the Hamburg-American fleet, and the third possessed an unpronounceable Welsh name and flew the pennant of the Llanarch line.
As it happened, the two German ships ran into the teeth of the gale and were delayed three days in their trip, while the Welsh boat missed the storm entirely and docked on time.
Two days later came a message from Washington to the effect that two diamonds, uncut, had been offered for sale in Philadelphia.
"Have to have one more month," replied Marks. "Imperative! Can practically guarantee success by fifteenth of January"—for that was the date on which the Welsh ship was due to return.
"Extension granted," came the word from Washington. "Rely on you to make good. Can't follow case any longer than a month under any circumstances."
Marks grinned when he got that message. The trap was set, and, unless something unforeseen occurred, "E. Z." felt that the man and the method would both be in the open before long.
When the Welsh ship was reported off quarantine inJanuary, Marks bundled himself into a big fur coat and went down the bay in one of the government boats, leaving instructions that, the moment the ship docked, she was to be searched from stem to stern.
"Don't overlook as much as a pill box or a rat hole," he warned his assistants, and more than a score of men saw to it that his instructions were carried out to the letter.
Beyond exhibiting his credentials, Marks made no effort to explain why the ship was under suspicion. He watched the deck closely to prevent the crew from throwing packages overboard, and as soon as they reached dock he requested all officers to join him in one of the big rooms belonging to the Customs Service. There he explained his reasons for believing that some one on board was guilty of defrauding the government out of duty on a number of uncut diamonds.
"What's more," he concluded, at the end of an address which was purposely lengthy in order to give his men time to search the ship, "I am willing to stake my position against the fact that two more diamonds are on board the ship at this moment!"
Luckily, no one took him up—for he was wrong.
The captain, pompous and self-assertive, preferred to rise and rant against the "infernal injustice of this high-handed method."
Marks settled back to listen in silence and his fingers strayed to the side pocket of his coat where his pet pipe reposed. His mind strayed to the thought of how his men were getting along on the ship, and he absent-mindedly packed the pipe and struck a match to light it.
It was then that his eye fell upon the man seated beside him—Halley, the British first mate of the steamer. He had seen him sitting there before, but had paid littleattention to him. Now he became aware of the fact that the mate was smoking a huge, deep-bowled meerschaum pipe. At least, it had been in his mouth ever since he entered, ready to be smoked, but unlighted.
Almost without thinking about it, Marks leaned forward and presented the lighted match, holding it above the mate's pipe.
"Light?" he inquired, in a matter-of-fact tone.
To his amazement, the other started back as if he had been struck, and then, recovering himself, muttered: "No, thanks. I'm not smoking."
"Not smoking?" was the thought that flashed through Marks's head, "then why—"
But the solution of the matter flashed upon him almost instantly. Before the mate had time to move, Marks's hand snapped forward and seized the pipe. With the same movement he turned it upside down and rapped the bowl upon the table. Out fell a fair amount of tobacco, followed by two slate-colored pebbles which rolled across the table under the very eyes of the captain!
"I guess that's all the evidence we need!" Marks declared, with a laugh of relief. "You needn't worry about informing your consul and entering a protest, Captain Williams. I'll take charge of your mate and these stones and you can clear when you wish."
"When you come right down to it," mused Bill Quinn, "women came as near to winning the late but unlamented war as did any other single factor.
"The Food Administration placarded their statement that 'Food Will Win the War' broadcast throughout the country, and that was followed by a whole flock of other claimants, particularly after the armistice was signed. But there were really only two elements that played a leading role in the final victory—men and guns. And women backed these to the limit of their powerful ability—saving food, buying bonds, doing extra work, wearing a smile when their hearts were torn, and going 'way out of their usual sphere in hundreds of cases—and making good in practically every one of them.
"So far as we know, the Allied side presented no analogy to Mollie Pitcher or the other heroines of past conflicts, for war has made such forward steps that personal heroism on the part of women is almost impossible. Of course, we had Botchkareva and her 'Regiment of Death,' not to mention Edith Cavell, but the list is not a long one.
"When it is finally completed, however, there are a few names which the public hasn't yet heard which will stand well toward the front. For example, there was Virginia Lang—"
"Was she the girl at the switchboard that you mentioned in connection with the von Ewald case?" I interrupted.
"That's the one," said Quinn, "and, what's more, she played a leading role in that melodrama, a play in which they didn't use property guns or cartridges."
Miss Lang [continued Quinn] was one of the few women I ever heard of that practically solved a Secret Service case "on her own." Of course, in the past, the different governmental detective services have found it to their advantage to go outside the male sex for assistance.
There have been instances where women in the employ of the Treasury Department rendered valuable service in trailing smugglers—the matter of the Deauville diamonds is a case in point—and even the Secret Service hasn't been above using women to assist in running counterfeiters to earth, while the archives of the State Department would reveal more than one interesting record of feminine co-operation in connection with underground diplomacy.
But in all these cases the women were employed to handle the work and they were only doing what they were paid for, while Virginia Lang—
Well, in the first place, she was one of the girls in charge of the switchboard at the Rennoc in New York. You know the place—that big apartment hotel on Riverside Drive where the lobby is only a shade less imposing than the bell-boys and it costs you a month's salary to speak to the superintendent. They never have janitors in a place like that.
Virginia herself—I came to know her fairly well in the winter of nineteen seventeen, after Dave Carroll had gone to the front—was well qualified by nature to be theheroine of any story. Rather above the average in size, she had luckily taken advantage of her physique to round out her strength with a gymnasium course. But in spite of being a big woman, she had the charm and personality which are more often found in those less tall. When you couple this with a head of wonderful hair, a practically perfect figure, eyes into which a man could look and, looking, lose himself, lips which would have caused a lip stick to blush and—Oh, what's the use? Words only caricature a beautiful woman, and, besides, if you haven't gotten the effect already, there's nothing that I could tell you that would help any.
In the spring of nineteen sixteen, when the von Ewald chase was at its height, Miss Lang was employed at the Rennoc switchboard and it speaks well for her character when I can tell you that not one of the bachelor tenants ever tried a second time to put anything over. Virginia's eyes could snap when they wanted to and Virginia's lips could frame a cutting retort as readily as a pleasant phrase.
In a place like the Rennoc, run as an apartment hotel, the guests change quite frequently, and it was some task to keep track of all of them, particularly when there were three girls working in the daytime, though only one was on at night. They took it by turns—each one working one week in four at night and the other three holding down the job from eight to six. So, as it happened, Virginia did not see Dave Carroll until he had been there nearly a month. He blew in from Washington early one evening and straightway absented himself from the hotel until sometime around seven the following morning, following the schedule right through, every night.
Did you ever know Carroll? He and I worked together on the Farron case out in St. Louis, the one where a bookmakerat the races tipped us off to the biggest counterfeiting scheme ever attempted in this country, and after that he took part in a number of other affairs, including the one which prevented the Haitian revolution in nineteen thirteen.
Dave wasn't what you would call good-looking, though he did have a way with women. The first night that he came downstairs—after a good day's sleep—and spotted Virginia Lang on the switchboard, he could have been pardoned for wandering over and trying to engage her in a conversation. But the only rise he got was from her eyebrows. They went up in that "I-am-sure-I-have-never-met-you" manner which is guaranteed to be cold water to the most ardent male, and the only reply she vouchsafed was "What number did you wish?"
"You appear to have mine," Dave laughed, and then asked for Rector 2800, the private branch which connected with the Service headquarters.
When he came out of the booth he was careful to confine himself to "Thank you" and the payment of his toll. But there was something about him that made Virginia Lang feel he was "different"—a word which, with women, may mean anything—or nothing. Then she returned to the reading of her detective story, a type of literature to which she was much addicted.
Carroll, as you have probably surmised, was one of the more than twoscore Government operatives sent to New York to work on the von Ewald case. His was a night shift, with roving orders to wander round the section in the neighborhood of Columbus Circle and stand ready to get anywhere in the upper section of the city in a hurry in case anything broke. But, beyond reporting to headquarters regularly every hour, the assignment was not exactly eventful.
The only thing that was known about von Ewald at that time was that a person using such a name—or alias—was in charge of the German intrigues against American neutrality. Already nearly a score of bomb outrages, attempts to destroy shipping, plots against munition plants, and the like had been laid at his door, but the elusive Hun had yet to be spotted. Indeed, there were many men in the Service who doubted the existence of such a person, and of these Carroll was one.
But he shrugged his shoulders and stoically determined to bear the monotony of strolling along Broadway and up, past the Plaza, to Fifth Avenue and back again every night—a program which was varied only by an occasional séance at Reisenweber's or Pabst's, for that was in the days before the one-half of one per cent represented the apotheosis of liquid refreshment.
It was while he was walking silently along Fifty-ninth Street, on the north side, close to the Park, a few nights after his brush with Virginia Lang, that Carroll caught the first definite information about the case that anyone had obtained.
He hadn't noted the men until he was almost upon them, for the night was dark and the operative's rubber heels made no sound upon the pavement. Possibly he wouldn't have noticed them then if it hadn't been for a phrase or two of whispered German that floated out through the shrubbery.
"He will stay at Conner's" was what reached Carroll's ears. "That will be our chance—a rare opportunity to strike two blows at once, one at our enemy and the other at this smug, self-satisfied nation which is content to make money out of the slaughter of Germany's sons. Once he is in the hotel, the rest will be easy."
"How?" inquired a second voice.
"A bomb, so arranged to explode with the slightest additional pressure, in a—"
"Careful," growled a third man. "Eight fifty-nine would hardly care to have his plans spread all over New York. This cursed shrubbery is so dense that there is no telling who may be near. Come!"
And Carroll, crouched on the outside of the fence which separates the street from the Park, knew that seconds were precious if he was to get any further information. A quick glance down the street showed him that the nearest gate was too far away to permit of entrance in that manner. So, slipping his automatic into the side pocket of his coat he leaped upward and grasped the top of the iron fence. On the other side he could hear the quick scuffle of feet as the Germans, alarmed, began to retreat rapidly.
A quick upward heave, a purchase with his feet, and he was over, his revolver in his hand the instant he lighted on the other side.
"Halt!" he called, more from force of habit than from anything else, for he had no idea that any of the trio would stop.
But evidently one of them did, for from behind the shelter of a near-by bush came the quick spat of a revolver and a tongue of flame shot toward him. The bullet, however, sung harmlessly past and he replied with a fusillade of shots that ripped through the bush and brought a shower of German curses from the other side. Then another of the conspirators opened fire from a point at right angles to the first, and the ruse was successful, for it diverted Carroll's attention long enough to permit the escape of the first man, and the operative was still flat on the ground, edging his way cautiously forward whenthe Park police arrived, the vanguard of a curious crowd attracted by the shots.
"What's the trouble?" demanded the "sparrow cop."
"None at all," replied Dave, as he slipped the still warm revolver into his pocket and brushed some dirt from his sleeve. "Guy tried to hold me up, that's all, and I took a pot shot at him. Cut it! Secret Service!" and he cautiously flashed his badge in the light of the electric torch which the park policeman held.
"Huh!" grunted the guard, as he made his way to the bush from behind which Carroll had been attacked. "You evidently winged him. There's blood on the grass here, but no sign of the bird himself. Want any report to headquarters?" he added, in an undertone.
"Not a word," said Carroll. "I'm working this end of the game and I want to finish it without assistance. It's the only thing that's happened in a month to break the monotony and there's no use declaring anyone else in on it. By the way, do you know of any place in town known as Conner's?"
"Conner's? Never heard of it. Sounds as though it might be a dive in the Bowery. Plenty of queer places down there."
"No, it's hardly likely to be in that section of the city," Dave stated. "Farther uptown, I think. But it's a new one on me."
"On me, too," agreed the guard, "and I thought I knew the town like a book."
When he reported to headquarters a few moments later, Carroll told the chief over the wire of his brush with the trio of Germans, as well as what he had heard. There was more than a quiver of excitement in the voice from the other end of the wire, for this was the first actual proof of the existence of the mysterious "No. 859."
"Still believe von Ewald is a myth?" inquired the Chief.
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," was the answer, "because the bullet that just missed me was pretty material. Evidently some one is planning these bomb outrages and it's up to us to nab him—if only for the sake of the Service."
"Did you catch the name of the man to whom your friends were alluding?" asked the chief.
"No, they just referred to him as 'he.'"
"That might mean any one of a number of people," mused the chief. "Sir Cecil Spring-Rice is in town, you know. Stopping at the Waldorf. Then there's the head of the French Mission at the Vanderbilt with a bunch of people, and Lord Wimbledon, who's spent five million dollars for horses in the West, stopping at the same place you are. You might keep an eye on him and I'll send Kramer and Fleming up to trail the other two."
"Did you ever hear of the place they called Conner's, Chief?"
"No, but that doesn't mean anything. It may be a code word—a prearranged name to camouflage the hotel in the event anyone were listening in."
"Possibly," replied Carroll, just before he hung up, "but somehow I have a hunch that it wasn't. I'll get back on the job and let you know if anything further develops."
His adventure for the night appeared to have ended, for he climbed into bed the following morning without having been disturbed, but lay awake for an hour or more—obsessed with the idea that he really held the clue to the whole affair, but unable to figure out just what it was.
Where was it that they intended to place the bomb? Why would they arrange it so as to explode upon pressure,rather than concussion or by a time fuse? Where was Conner's? Who was the man they were plotting against?
These were some of the questions which raced through his brain, and he awoke in the late afternoon still haunted by the thought that he really ought to know more than he did.
That night at dinner he noted, almost subconsciously, that he was served by a new waiter, a fact that rather annoyed him because he had been particularly pleased at the service rendered by the other man.
"Where's Felix?" he inquired, as the new attendant brought his soup.
"He isn't on to-night, sir," was the reply. "He had an accident and won't be here for a couple of days."
"An accident?"
"Yes, sir," was the laconic answer.
"Anything serious?"
"No, sir. He—he hurt his hand," and the waiter disappeared without another word. Carroll thought nothing more of it at the time, but later, over his coffee and a good cigar, a sudden idea struck him. Could it be that Felix was one of the men whom he had surprised the night before, the one he had fired at and hit? No, that was too much of a coincidence. But then Felix was manifestly of foreign origin, and, while he claimed to be Swiss, there was a distinct Teutonic rasp to his words upon occasion.
Signaling to his waiter, Dave inquired whether he knew where Felix lived. "I'd like to know if there is anything that I can do for him," he gave as his reason for asking.
"I haven't the slightest idea," came the answer, and Carroll was aware that the man was lying, for his demeanorwas sullen rather than subservient and the customary "sir" was noticeable by its absence.
Once in the lobby, Dave noticed that the pretty telephone operator was again at the switchboard, and the idea occurred to him that he might find out Felix's address from the hotel manager or head waiter.
"I understand that my waiter has been hurt in an accident," the operative explained to the goddess of the wires, "and I'd like to find out where he lives. Who would be likely to know?"
"The head waiter ought to be able to tell you," was the reply, accompanied by the flash of what Carroll swore to be the whitest teeth he had ever seen. "Just a moment and I will get him on the wire for you." Then, after a pause, "Booth Number Five, please."
But Carroll got no satisfaction from that source, either. The head waiter maintained that he knew nothing of Felix's whereabouts and hung up the receiver in a manner which was distinctly final, not to say impolite. The very air of mystery that surrounded the missing man was sufficient to incline him to the belief that, after all, there might be something to the idea that Felix was the man he had shot at the night before. In that event, it was practically certain that Lord Wimbledon was the object of the Germans' attention—but that didn't solve the question of where the bomb was to be placed, nor the location of "Conner's."
"Just the same," he muttered, half aloud, "I'm going to stick around here to-night."
"Why that momentous decision?" came a voice almost at his elbow, a voice which startled and charmed him with its inflection.
Looking up, he caught the eyes of the pretty telephone girl, laughing at him.
"Talking to yourself is a bad habit," she warned him with a smile which seemed to hold an apology for her brusqueness of the night before, "particularly in your business."
"My business?" echoed Dave. "What do you know about that?"
"Not a thing in the world—except," and here her voice dropped to a whisper—"except that you are a government detective and that you've discovered something about Lord Wimbledon, probably some plot against His Lordship."
"Where—how—what in the world made you think that?" stammered Carroll, almost gasping for breath.
"Very simple," replied the girl. "Quite elementary, as Sherlock Holmes used to say. You called the headquarters number every night when you came down—the other girls tipped me off to that, for they know that I'm fond of detective stories. Then everybody around here knows that Felix, the waiter that you inquired about, is really German, though he pretends to be Swiss, and that he, the head waiter, and the pastry cook are thick as thieves."
"You'd hardly expect me to say 'Yes,' would you? Particularly as I am supposed to be a government operative."
"Now I know you are," smiled the girl. "Very few people use the word 'operative.' They'd say 'detective' or 'agent.' But don't worry, I won't give you away."
"Please don't," laughed Carroll, half banteringly, half in earnest, for it would never do to have it leak out that a girl had not only discovered his identity, but his mission. Then, as an after-thought, "Do you happen to know of any hotel or place here in town known as 'Conner's'?" he asked.
"Why, of course," was the reply, amazing in its directness. "The manager's name—" But then she halted abruptly, picked up a plug, and said, "What number, please?" into the receiver.
Carroll sensed that there was a reason for her stopping in the middle of her sentence and, looking around, found the pussy-footed head waiter beside him, apparently waiting for a call. Silently damning the custom that made it obligatory for waiters to move without making a sound, Carroll wandered off across the lobby, determined to take a stroll around the block before settling down to his night's vigil. A stop at the information desk, however, rewarded him with the news that Lord Wimbledon was giving a dinner in his apartments the following evening to the British ambassador—that being all the hotel knew officially about his Grace's movements.
"I'll take care to have half a dozen extra men on the job," Carroll assured himself, "for that's undoubtedly the time they would pick if they could get away with it. A single bomb then would do a pretty bit of damage."
The evening brought no further developments, but shortly after midnight he determined to call the Rennoc, in the hope that the pretty telephone girl was still on duty and that she might finish telling him what she knew of Conner's.
"Hotel Rennoc," came a voice which he recognized instantly.
"This is Dave Carroll speaking," said the operative. "Can you tell me now what it was you started to say about Conner's?"
"Not now," came the whispered reply. Then, in a louder voice, "Just a moment, please, and I'll see if he's registered." During the pause which followed Daverealized that the girl must be aware that she was watched by some one. Was it the silent-moving head waiter?
"No, he hasn't arrived yet," was the next phrase that came over the wires, clearly and distinctly, followed by instructions, couched in a much lower tone, "Meet me, Drive entrance, one-five sure," and then a click as the plug was withdrawn.
It was precisely five minutes past one when Carroll paused in front of the Riverside Drive doorway to the Rennoc, considering it the part of discretion to keep on the opposite side of the driveway. A moment later a woman, alone, left the hotel, glanced around quickly, and then crossed to where he was standing.
"Follow me up the street," she directed in an undertone as she passed. "Michel has been watching like a hawk."
Dave knew that Michel was the head waiter, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow slip out of another of the hotel doorways, farther down the Drive, and start toward them. But when he looked around a couple of blocks farther up the drive, there was no one behind them.
"Why all the mystery?" he inquired, as he stepped alongside the girl.
"Something's afoot in the Rennoc," she replied, "and they think I suspect what it is and have told you about it. Michel hasn't taken his eyes off me all evening. I heard him boast one night that he could read lips, so I didn't dare tell you anything when you called up, even though he was across the lobby. Conner's, the place you asked about, is the Rennoc. Spell it backward. Conner is the manager—hence the name of the hotel."
"Then," said Carroll, "that means that they've got a plan under way to bomb Lord Wimbledon and probablythe British ambassador at that dinner to-morrow evening. I overheard one of them say last night that a bomb, arranged to explode at the slightest pressure, would be placed in the—" and then he stopped.
"In the cake!" gasped the girl, as if by intuition. But her next words showed that her deduction had a more solid foundation. "This is to be a birthday dinner, in honor of Lord Percy Somebody who's in Lord Wimbledon's party, as well as in honor of Lord Cecil. The pastry cook, who's almost certainly mixed up in the plot, has plenty of opportunity to put the bomb there, where it would never be suspected. The instant they cut the cake—"
But her voice trailed off in midair as something solid came down on her head with a crash. At the same moment Dave was sent reeling by a blow from a blackjack, a blow which sent him spinning across the curb and into the street. He was dimly aware that two men were leaping toward him and that a third was attacking the telephone girl.
Panting, gasping, fighting for time in which to clear his head of the effects of the first blow, Carroll fought cautiously, but desperately, realizing that his opponents desired to avoid gun-play for fear of attracting the police. A straight left to the jaw caught one of the men coming in and knocked him sprawling, but the second, whom Carroll recognized as Michel, was more wary. He dodged and feinted with the skill of a professional boxer, and then launched an uppercut which went home on the point of Dave's jaw.
It was at that moment that the operative became aware of another participant in the fray—a figure in white with what appeared to be a halo of gold around her head. The thought flashed through his mind that he must bedreaming, but he had sense enough left to leap aside when a feminine voice called "Look out!" and the arc light glinted off the blade of a knife as it passed perilously close to his ribs. Then the figure in white brought something down on Michel's head and, wheeling, seized the wrist of the third man in a grip of iron.
Ten seconds later the entire trio was helpless and Carroll was blowing a police whistle for assistance.
"There was really nothing to it at all," protested the telephone girl, during the ride in the patrol. "They made the mistake of trying to let Felix, with his wounded hand, take care of me. I didn't have two years of gym work and a complete course in jiu jitsu for nothing, and that blackjack came in mighty handy a moment or two later. All Felix succeeded in doing was to knock my hat off, and I shed my coat the instant I had attended to him."
"That's why I thought you were a goddess in white," murmured Dave.
"No goddess at all, just a girl from the switchboard who was glad to have a chance at the brutes. Anyhow, that few minutes beats any book I ever read for action!"
Dave's hand stole out in the darkness as they jolted forward, and when it found what it was seeking, "Girl," he said, "do you realize that I don't even know your name?"
"Lang," said a voice in the dark. "My friends call me Virginia."
"After what you just did for me, I think we ought to be at least good friends," laughed Carroll, and the thrill of the fight which has just passed was as nothing when she answered:
"At least that ... Dave!"
Quinn paused for a moment to repack his pipe and I took advantage of the interruption to ask what happened at the Wimbledon dinner the following night.
"Not a thing in the world," replied Quinn. "Everything went off like clockwork—everything but the bomb. As the PodunkGazettewould say, 'A very pleasant time was had by all.' But you may be sure that they were careful to examine the cake and the other dishes before they were sampled by the guests. Michel, Felix, and the cook were treated to a good dose of the third degree at headquarters, but without results. They wouldn't even admit that they knew any such person as 'Number Eight-fifty-nine' or von Ewald. Two of them got off with light sentences for assault and battery. The pastry cook, however, went to the pen when they found a quantity of high explosives in his room."
"And Miss Lang?"
"If you care to look up the marriage licenses for October, nineteen sixteen, you'll find that one was issued in the names of David Carroll and Virginia Lang. She's the wife of a captain now, for Dave left the Service the following year and went to France to finish his fight with the Hun. I saw him not long ago and the only thing that's worrying him is where he is going to find his quota of excitement, for he says that there is nothing left in the Service but chasing counterfeiters and guarding the resident, and he can't stand the idea of staying in the army and drawing his pay for wearing a uniform."