Iiitfbbttxorqwsbb935206284624151817231928815851426151212518148
"Why thirty-five for that double 'i' and twenty-eight for the double 'b's'?" asked Barlow.
"Add twenty-six—the total number of letters in the alphabet—to the letter figure for the letter itself," said Thurber. "That's the one beauty of this code, one of the things which helps to throw you off the scent. Now subtracting the two lines we have:
"1201211420936125520
"We've got it!" he cried an instant later, as he stepped back to look at the figures and read off:
"A t l a n t i c f l e e t
"It was a double code, after all," Thurber stated when he had deciphered the entire message by the same procedure and had reported his discovery to the Secretary of the Navy over the phone. "Practically infallible, too, save for the fact that I, as well as Doctor Albert, happened to be familiar with Jules Verne. That, plus the doctor's inability to rely on his memory and therefore leaving his key words in his brief case, rendered the whole thing pretty easy."
"Yes," thought Gene, "plus my suggestion of the September word, rather than the October one, and plus Paula's quick wit—that's really all there was to it!" But he kept his thoughts to himself, preferring to allow Thurber to reap all the rewards that were coming to him for the solution of the "double code."
"Do you know what the whole message was?" I inquired, as Quinn stopped his narrative.
"You'll find it pasted on the back of that copy ofThe Giant Raft," replied the former operative. "That's why I claim that the book ought to be preserved as a souvenir of an incident that saved millions of dollars and hundreds of lives."
Turning to the back of the Verne book I saw pasted there the following significant lines:
Atlantic Fleet sails (from) Hampton Roads (at) six (o'clock) morning of seventeenth. Eight U-boats will be waiting. Advise necessary parties and be ready (to) seek safety. Success (of) attack inevitable.
Atlantic Fleet sails (from) Hampton Roads (at) six (o'clock) morning of seventeenth. Eight U-boats will be waiting. Advise necessary parties and be ready (to) seek safety. Success (of) attack inevitable.
"That means that if Thurber hadn't been able to decipher that code the greater part of our fleet would have been sunk by an unexpected submarine attack, launchedby a nation with whom we weren't even at war?" I demanded, when I had finished the message.
"Precisely," agreed Quinn. "But if you'll look up the records you'll find that the fleet did not sail on schedule, while Dr. Heinrich Albert and the entire staff from the house on Massachusetts Avenue were deported before many more weeks had passed. There was no sense in raising a fuss about the incident at the time, for von Bernstorff would have denied any knowledge of the message and probably would have charged that the whole thing was a plant, designed to embroil the United States in the war. So it was allowed to rest for the time being and merely jotted down as another score to be wiped off the slate later on.
"But you have to admit that a knowledge of Jules Verne came in very handy—quite as much so, in fact, as did a knowledge of the habits and disposition of white mice in another case."
"Which one was that?"
Quinn merely pointed to the top of his bookcase, where there reposed a stuffed white mouse, apparently asleep.
"That's a memento of the case," replied the former operative. "I'll tell you of it the next time you drop in."
"The United States Secret Service," announced Bill Quinn, "is by long odds the best known branch of the governmental detective bureaus. The terror which the continental crook feels at the sound of the name 'Scotland Yard' finds its echo on this side of the Atlantic whenever a criminal knows that he has run afoul of the U. S. S. S. For Uncle Sam never forgives an injury or forgets a wrong. Sooner or later he's going to get his man—no matter how long it takes nor how much money it costs.
"But the Secret Service, strictly speaking, is only one branch of the organization. There are others which work just as quietly and just as effectively. The Department of Justice, which had charge of the violation of neutrality laws, banking, and the like; the Treasury Department, which, through the Customs Service and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, wages constant war on the men and women who think they can evade the import regulations and the laws against illicit manufacture of alcohol; the Pension Bureau of the Interior Department, which is called upon to handle hundreds of frauds every year; and the Post Office Department, which guards the millions of dollars intrusted to the mails.
"Each of these has its own province. Each works along its own line in conjunction with the others, andeach of them is, in reality, a secret organization which performs a vastly important service to the nation as a whole. When you speak of the Secret Service, the Treasury Department's organization comes immediately to mind—coupled with a panorama of counterfeiters, anarchists, revolutionaries, and the like. But the field of the Secret Service is really limited when compared to the scope of the other organizations.
"Look around this room"—and he made a gesture which included the four walls of the library den in which we were seated, a room in which the usual decorations had been replaced by a strange collection of unusual and, in a number of instances, gruesome relics. "Every one of those objects is a memento of some exploit of the men engaged in Secret Service," Quinn went on. "That Chinese hatchet up there came very close to being buried in the skull of a man in San Diego, but its principal mission in life was the solution of the mystery surrounding the smuggling of thousands of pounds of opium. That water-stained cap was fished out of the Missouri after its owner had apparently committed suicide—but the Pension Bureau located him seven years later, with the aid of a fortune teller in Seattle. At the side of the bookcase there you will find several of the original poison-pen letters which created so much consternation in Kansas City a few years ago, letters which Allison of the Postal Inspection Service finally traced to their source after the local authorities had given up the case as impossible of solution.
"The woman whose picture appears on the other wall was known as Mrs. Armitage—and that was about all that they did know about her, save that she was connected with one of the foreign organizations and that in some mysterious way she knew everything that was goingon in the State Department almost as soon as it was started. And there, under that piece of silk which figured in one of the boldest smuggling cases that the Treasury Department ever tackled, is the blurred postmark which eventually led to the discovery of the man who murdered Montgomery Marshall—a case in which our old friend Sherlock Holmes would have reveled. But it's doubtful if he could have solved it any more skillfully than did one of the Post Office operatives."
"What's the significance of that white mouse on the mantelpiece?" I inquired, sensing the fact that Quinn was in one of his story-telling moods.
"It hasn't any significance," replied the former government agent, "but it has a story—one which illustrates my point that all the nation's detective work isn't handled by the Secret Service, by a long shot. Did you ever hear of H. Gordon Fowler, alias W. C. Evans?"
"No," I replied, "I don't think I ever did."
"Well, a lot of people have—to their sorrow," laughed Quinn, reaching for his pipe.
No one appears to know what Fowler's real name is [continued the former operative]. He traveled under a whole flock of aliases which ran the gamut of the alphabet from Andrews to Zachary, but, to save mixing things up, suppose that we assume that his right name was Fowler. He used it for six months at one time, out in Minneapolis, and got away with twenty thousand dollars' worth of stuff.
For some time previous to Fowler's entrance upon the scene various wholesale houses throughout the country had been made the victims of what appeared to be a ring of bankruptcy experts—men who would secure credit for goods, open a store, and then "fail." Meanwhile themerchandise would have mysteriously vanished and the proprietor would be away on a "vacation" from which, of course, he would never return.
On the face of it this was a matter to be settled solely by the Wholesalers' Credit Association, but the Postal Inspection Service got into it through the fact that the mails were palpably being used with intent to defraud and therefore Uncle Sam came to the aid of the business men.
On the day that the matter was reported to Washington the chief of the Postal Inspection Service pushed the button which operated a buzzer in the outer office and summoned Hal Preston, the chap who later on was responsible for the solution of the Marshall murder mystery.
"Hal," said the chief, with a smile, "here's a case I know you'll like. It's right in the line of routine and it ought to mean a lot of traveling around the country—quick jumps at night and all that sort of stuff."
Preston grunted, but said nothing. You couldn't expect to draw the big cases every time, and, besides, there was no telling when something might break even in the most prosaic of assignments.
"Grant, Wilcox & Company, in Boston, report that they've been stung twice in the same place by a gang of bankruptcy sharks," the chief went on. "And they're not the only ones who have suffered. Here's a list of the concerns and the men that they've sold to. You'll see that it covers the country from Hoquiam, Washington, to Montclair, New Jersey—so they appear to have their organization pretty well in hand. Ordinarily we wouldn't figure in this thing at all—but the gang made the mistake of placing their orders through the mail and now it's up to us to land 'em. Here's the dope. Hop to it!"
That night, while en route to Mount Clemens, Michigan, where the latest of the frauds had been perpetrated,Preston examined the envelope full of evidence and came to a number of interesting conclusions. In the first place the failures had been staged in a number of different localities—Erie, Pennsylvania, had had one of them under the name of "Cole & Hill"; there had been another in Sioux City, where Immerling Brothers had failed; Metcalf and Newman, Illinois, had likewise contributed their share, as had Minneapolis, Newark, Columbus, White Plains, and Newburg, New York; San Diego, California; Hoquiam, Washington, and several other points.
But the point that brought Hal up with a jerk was the dates attached to each of these affairs. No two of them had occurred within six months of the other and several were separated by as much as a year.
"Who said this was a gang?" he muttered. "Looks a lot more like the work of a single man with plenty of nerve and, from the amount of stuff he got away with, he ought to be pretty nearly in the millionaire class by now. There's over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods covered by this report alone and there's no certainty that it is complete. Well, here's hoping—it's always easier to trail one man than a whole bunch of 'em."
In Mount Clemens Preston found further evidence which tended to prove that the bankruptcy game was being worked by a single nervy individual, posing under the name of "Henry Gerard."
Gerard, it appeared, had entered the local field about a year before, apparently with plenty of capital, and had opened two prosperous stores on the principal street. In August, about two months before Preston's arrival, the proprietor of the Gerard stores had left on what was apparently scheduled for a two weeks' vacation. That was the last that had been heard of him, in spite of the fact that a number of urgent creditors had camped uponhis trail very solicitously. The stores had been looted, only enough merchandise being left to keep up the fiction of a complete stock, and Gerard had vanished with the proceeds.
After making a few guarded inquiries in the neighborhood of the store, Preston sought out the house where Gerard had boarded during his stay in Mount Clemens. There he found that the missing merchant, in order to allay suspicion, had paid the rental of his apartment for three months in advance, and that the place had not been touched since, save by the local authorities who had been working on the case.
"You won't find a thing there," the chief of police informed Hal, in response to a request for information. "Gerard's skipped and that's all there is to it. We've been over the place with a fine-tooth comb and there ain't a scrap of evidence. We did find some telegrams torn up in his waste basket, but if you can make anything out of 'em it's more than I can," and he handed over an envelope filled with scraps of finely torn yellow paper.
"Not the slightest indication of where Gerard went?" inquired Preston as he tucked the envelope in an inside pocket.
"Not a bit," echoed the chief. "He may be in China now, so far as we know."
"Was he married?"
"Nobody here knows nothin' about him," the chief persisted. "They do say as how he was right sweet on a girl named Anna Something-or-other who lived in the same block. But she left town before he did, and she 'ain't come back, neither."
"What did you say her name was?"
"Anna Vaughan, I b'lieve she called herself. You might ask Mrs. Morris about her. She had a room ather place, only a few doors away from where Gerard stayed."
The apartment of the man who had vanished, Preston found, was furnished in the manner typical of a thousand other places. Every stick of furniture appeared to have seen better days and no two pieces could be said to match. Evidently Gerard had been practicing economy in his domestic arrangements in order to save all the money possible for a quick getaway. What was more, he had carefully removed everything of a personal nature, save a row of books which decorated the mantel piece in one of the rooms.
It was toward these that Preston finally turned in desperation. All but one of them were the cheaper grade of fiction, none of which bore any distinguishing marks, but the exception was a new copy of the latest Railroad Guide. Just as Preston pounced upon this he heard a chuckle from behind him and, whirling, saw the chief of police just entering the door.
"Needn't worry with that, young man," he urged. "I've been all through it and there ain't nothin' in it. Just thought I'd drop up to see if you'd found anything," he added, in explanation of his sudden appearance. "Have you?"
"No," admitted the postal operative. "Can't say that I have. This is the first piece of personal property that I've been able to locate and you say there is nothing in this?"
"Nary a clue," persisted the chief, but Preston, as if loath to drop the only tangible reminder of Gerard, idly flipped the pages of the Guide, and then stood it on edge on the table, the covers slightly opened. Then, as the chief watched him curiously, he closed the book, opened it again and repeated the operation.
"What's the idea? Tryin' to make it do tricks?" the chief asked as Hal stood the book on edge for the third time.
"Hardly that. Just working on a little theory of my own," was the response, as the post-office man made a careful note of the page at which the Guide had fallen open—the same one which had presented itself to view on the two other occasions. "Here, would you like to try it?" and he handed the volume to the chief. But that functionary only shrugged his shoulders and replaced the Guide upon the mantelpiece.
"Some more of your highfalutin' detective work, eh?" he muttered. "Soon you'll be claimin' that books can talk."
"Possibly not out loud," smiled Hal. "But they can be made to tell very interesting stories now and then, if you know how to handle 'em. There doesn't seem to be much here, Chief, so I think I'll go back to the hotel. Let me know if anything comes up, will you?" And with that he left.
But before returning to the hotel he stopped at the house where Anna Vaughan had resided and found out from the rather garrulous landlady that Gerard had appeared to be rather smitten with the beautiful stranger.
"She certainly was dressed to kill," said the woman who ran the establishment. "A big woman and strong as all outdoors. Mr. Gerard came here three or four nights a week while she was with us and he didn't seem to mind the mice at all."
"Mind the what?" snapped Preston.
"The mice—the white mice that she used to keep as pets," explained the landlady. "Had half a dozen or more of them running over her shoulders, but I told her that I couldn't stand for that. She could keep 'em in herroom if she wanted to, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Guess it was on their account that she didn't have any other visitors. S'far as I know Mr. Gerard was the only one who called on her."
"When did Miss Vaughan leave?" Hal inquired.
"Mrs. Vaughan," corrected the woman. "She was a widow—though she was young and pretty enough to have been married any time she wanted to be. Guess the men wouldn't stand for them mice, though. She didn't stay very long—just about six weeks. Left somewheres about the middle of July."
"About two weeks before Gerard did?"
"About that—though I don't just remember the date."
A few more inquiries elicited the fact that Mrs. Vaughan's room had been rented since her departure, so Preston gave up the idea of looking through it for possible connecting links with the expert in bankruptcy.
Returning to the hotel, the operative settled down to an examination of the scraps of torn telegrams which the chief had handed him. Evidently they had been significant, he argued, for Gerard had been careful to tear them into small bits, and it was long past midnight before he had succeeded in piecing the messages together, pasting the scraps on glass in case there had been any notations on the reverse of the blank.
But when he had finished he found that he had only added one more puzzling aspect to the case.
There were three telegrams, filed within a week and all dated just before Gerard had left town.
"Geraldine, Anna, May, and Florence are in Chicago," read the message from Evanston, Illinois.
"George, William, Katherine, Ray, and Stephen still in St. Louis," was the wire filed from Detroit.
The third message, from Minneapolis, detailed the factthat "Frank, Vera, Marguerite, Joe, and Walter are ready to leave St. Paul."
None of the telegrams was signed, but, merely as a precaution, Preston wired Evanston, Detroit, and Minneapolis to find out if there was any record of who had sent them.
"Agent here recalls message," came the answer from Detroit the next day. "Filed by woman who refused to give her name. Agent says sender was quite large, good-looking, and very well dressed."
"Anna Vaughan!" muttered Preston, as he tucked the telegram in his pocket and asked to be shown a copy of the latest Railway Guide.
Referring to a note which he had made on the previous evening, Hal turned to pages 251-2, the part of the book which had fallen open three times in succession when he had examined it in Gerard's rooms, and noted that it was the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé time-table, westbound. Evidently the missing merchant had invested in a copy of the Guide rather than run the risk of leaving telltale time-tables around his apartment, but he had overstepped himself by referring to only one portion of the book.
"Not the first time that a crook has been just a little too clever," mused Preston, with a smile. "If it had been an old copy, there wouldn't have been any evidence—but a new book, opened several times at the same place, can be made to tell tales—his honor, the chief of police, to the contrary."
It was clear, therefore, that Preston had three leads to work on: Anna Vaughan, a large, beautiful woman, well-dressed and with an affection for white mice; the clue that Gerard was somewhere in the Southwest and at least the first names of fourteen men and women connected with the gang.
But right there he paused. Was there any gang? The dates of the various disappearances tended to prove that there wasn't, but the messages received by Gerard certainly appeared to point to the fact that others were connected with the conspiracy to defraud.
Possibly one of the clerks who had been connected with the Gerard stores would be able to throw a little light upon the situation....
It wasn't until Hal interviewed the woman who had acted as cashier and manager for the second store that he found the lead he was after. In response to his inquiry as to whether she had ever heard the missing proprietor speak of any of the persons mentioned in the wires, the cashier at first stated definitely that she hadn't, but added, a moment later:
"Come to think of it, he did. Not as people, but as trunks."
"What's that?" exclaimed the operative. "Trunks?"
"Yes. I remember sometime last spring, when we were figuring on how much summer goods we ought to carry, I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gerard, and almost automatically he replied, 'I'll wire for Edna and Grace.' Thinking he meant saleswomen, I reminded him that we had plenty, particularly for the slack season. He colored up a bit, caught his breath, and turned the subject by stating that he always referred to trunks of goods in terms of people's first names—girls for the feminine stuff and men's for the masculine. But Edna and Grace weren't on your list, were they?"
"No," replied Preston. "But that doesn't matter. Besides, didn't the two trunks of goods arrive?"
"Yes, they came in a couple of weeks later."
"Before Mrs. Vaughan came to town?"
"Oh yes, some time before she arrived."
"I thought so," was Preston's reply, and, thanking the girl, he wandered back to the hotel—convinced that he had solved at least one of the mysteries, the question of what Gerard did with his surplus "bankrupt stock." It was evidently packed in trunks and shipped to distant points, to be forwarded by the Vaughan woman upon instructions from Gerard himself. The wires he had torn up were merely confirmatory messages, sent so that he would have the necessary information before making a getaway.
"Clever scheme, all right," was Hal's mental comment. "Now the next point is to find some town in the Southwest where a new store has been opened within the past two months."
That night the telegraph office at Mount Clemens did more business than it had had for the past year. Wires, under the government frank, went out to every town on the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé and to a number of adjacent cities. In each case the message was the same:
Wire name of any new clothing store opened within past two months. Also description of proprietor. Urgent.Preston,U. S. P. I. S.
Wire name of any new clothing store opened within past two months. Also description of proprietor. Urgent.
Preston,U. S. P. I. S.
Fourteen chiefs of police replied within the next forty-eight hours, but of these only two—Leavenworth and Fort Worth—contained descriptions which tallied with that of Henry Gerard.
So, to facilitate matters, Preston sent another wire:
Has proprietor mentioned in yesterday's wire a wife or woman friend who keeps white mice as pets?
Has proprietor mentioned in yesterday's wire a wife or woman friend who keeps white mice as pets?
Fort Worth replied facetiously that the owner of the new store there was married, but that his wife had a cat—whichmight account for the absence of the mice. Leavenworth, however, came back with:
Yes, Mrs. Noble, wife of owner of Outlet Store, has white mice for pets. Why?Never mind reason [Preston replied]. Watch Noble and wife until I arrive. Leaving to-day.
Yes, Mrs. Noble, wife of owner of Outlet Store, has white mice for pets. Why?
Never mind reason [Preston replied]. Watch Noble and wife until I arrive. Leaving to-day.
Ten minutes after reaching Leavenworth Preston was ensconced in the office of the chief of police, outlining the reason for his visit.
"I'm certain that Noble is the man you want," said the chief, when Hal had finished. "He came here some six weeks or more ago and at once leased a store, which he opened a few days later. The description fits him to a T, except for the fact that he's evidently dispensed with the mustache. The Vaughan woman is posing as his wife and they've rented a house on the outskirts of town. What do you want me to do? Nab 'em right away?"
"No," directed the operative. "I'd rather attend to that myself, if you don't object. After trailing them this far, I'd like to go through with it. You might have some men handy, though, in case there's any fuss."
Just as Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Noble were sitting down to dinner there was a ring at their front-door bell and Noble went to see who it was.
"I'd like to speak to Mr. H. Gordon Fowler," said Preston, his hand resting carelessly in the side pocket of his coat.
"No Mr. Fowler lives here," was the growling reply from the inside.
"Then Mr. W. C. Evans or Mr. Henry Gerard will do!" snapped the operative, throwing his shoulder against the partly opened door. Noble—or Fowler, as he was afterwardknown—stepped aside as Hal plunged through, and then slammed the door behind him.
"Get him, Anna!" he called, throwing the safety bolt into position.
The next thing that Preston knew, a pair of arms, bare and feminine but strong as iron, had seized him around the waist and he was in imminent danger of being bested by a woman. With a heave and a wriggling twist he broke the hold and turned, just in time to see Fowler snatch a revolver from a desk on the opposite side of the room and raise it into position. Without an instant's hesitation he leaped to one side, dropped his hand into his coat pocket, and fired. Evidently the bullet took effect, for the man across the room dropped his gun, spun clean around and then sank to the floor. As he did so, however, the woman hurled a heavy vase directly at Preston's head and the operative sank unconscious.
"Well, go on!" I snapped, when Quinn paused. "You sound like a serial story—to be continued in our next. What happened then?"
"Nothing—beyond the fact that three policemen broke in some ten seconds after Hal fired, grabbed Mrs. Vaughan or whatever her name was, and kept her from beating Hal to death, as she certainly would have done in another minute. Fowler wasn't badly hurt. In fact, both of them stood trial the next spring—Fowler drawing six years and Anna Vaughan one. Incidentally, they sent 'em back to Leavenworth to do time and, as a great concession, allowed the woman to take two of her white mice with her. I managed to get one of the other four, and, when it died, had it stuffed as a memento of a puzzling case well solved.
"It's a hobby of mine—keeping these relics. Thathatchet, for example.... Remind me to tell you about it some time. The mice were responsible for finding one man in fifty million—which is something of a job in itself—but the hatchet figured in an even more exciting affair...."
"Yes, there's quite a story attached to that," remarked Bill Quinn one evening as the conversation first lagged and then drifted away into silence. We were seated in his den at the time—the "library" which he had ornamented with relics of a score or more of cases in which the various governmental detective services had distinguished themselves—and I came to with a start.
"What?" I exclaimed. "Story in what?"
"In that hatchet—the one on the wall there that you were speculating about. It didn't take a psychological sleuth to follow your eyes and read the look of speculation in them. That's a trick that a 'sparrow cop' could pull!"
"Well, then, suppose you pay the penalty for your wisdom—and spin the yarn," I retorted, none the less glad of the opportunity to hear the facts behind the sinister red stain which appeared on the blade of the Chinese weapon, for I knew that Quinn could give them to me if he wished.
"Frankly, I don't know the full history of the hatchet," came the answer from the other side of the fireplace. "Possibly it goes back to the Ming dynasty—whenever that was—or possibly it was purchased from a mail-order house in Chicago. Chop suey isn't the only Chinese article made in this country, you know. But my interest in it commenced with the night when Ezra Marks—
"However, let's start at the beginning."
Marks [continued the former operative] was, as you probably recall, one of the best men ever connected with the Customs Service. It was he who solved the biggest diamond-smuggling case on record, and he was also responsible for the discovery of the manner in which thirty thousand yards of very valuable silk was being run into the country every year without visiting the custom office. That's a piece of the silk up there, over the picture of Mrs. Armitage....
It wasn't many months before the affair of the Dillingham diamonds that official Washington in general and the offices of the Customs Service in particular grew quite excited over the fact that a lot of opium was finding its way into California. Of course, there's always a fair amount of "hop" on the market, provided you know where to look for it, and the government has about as much chance of keeping it out altogether as it has of breaking up the trade in moonshine whisky. The mountaineer is going to have his "licker" and the Chink is going to have his dope—no matter what you do. But it's up to the Internal Revenue Bureau and the Customs Service to see that neither one arrives in wholesale quantities. And that was just what was happening on the Coast.
In fact, it was coming in so fast that the price was dropping every day and the California authorities fairly burned up the wires 'cross continent with their howls for help.
At that time Marks—Ezra by name and "E. Z." by nickname—was comparatively a new member of the force. He had rendered valuable service in Boston, however, and the chief sent for him and put the whole thing in his hands.
"Get out to San Diego as quickly as you know how," snapped the chief, tossing over a sheaf of yellow telegraph slips. "There's all the information we have, and apparently you won't get much more out there—unless you dig it up for yourself. All they seem to know is that the stuff is coming in by the carload and is being peddled in all the hop joints at a lower price than ever before. It's up to you to get the details. Any help you need will be supplied from the San Francisco office, but my advice is to play a lone hand—you're likely to get further than if you have a gang with you all the time."
"That's my idear, Chief," drawled Ezra, who hailed from Vermont and had all the New Englander's affection for single-handed effort, not because he had the least objection to sharing the glory, but simply because he considered it the most efficient way to work. "I'll get right out there and see how the land lays."
"Needn't bother to report until you discover something worth while," added the chief. "I'll know that you're on the job and the farther you keep away from headquarters the less suspicion you're likely to arouse."
This was the reason that, beyond the fact they knew that an operative named Marks had been sent from Washington to look into the opium matter, the government agents on the Coast were completely in the dark as to the way in which the affair was being handled. In fact, the chief himself was pretty well worried when two months slipped by without a word from Ezra....
But the big, raw-boned Yankee was having troubles of his own. Likewise, he took his instructions very seriously and didn't see the least reason for informing Washington of the very patent fact that he had gotten nowhere and found out nothing.
"They know where they can reach me," he argued tohimself one night, about the time that the chief began to wonder if his man were floating around the bay with a piece of Chinese rope about his neck. "Unless I get a wire they won't hear anything until I have at least a line on this gang."
Then, on going over the evidence which he had collected during the weeks that he had been in San Diego, he found that there was extremely little of it. Discreet questioning had developed the fact, which he already knew, that opium was plentiful all along the Coast, and that, presumably, it was supplied from a point in the south of the state. But all his efforts to locate the source of the drug brought him up against a blank wall.
In order to conduct his investigations with a minimum of suspicion, Marks had elected to enter San Diego in the guise of a derelict—a character which he had played to such perfection that two weeks after he arrived he found himself in court on the charge of vagrancy. Only the fact that the presiding magistrate did not believe in sentencing first offenders saved him from ten days in the workhouse, an opportunity which he was rather sorry to miss because he figured that he might pick up some valuable leads from the opium addicts among his fellow prisoners.
The only new point which he had developed during his stay in the underworld was that some one named Sprague, presumably an American, was the brains of the opium ring and had perfected the entire plan. But who Sprague was or where he might be found were matters which were kept in very watchful secrecy.
"I give it up," muttered the operative, shrugging his arms into a threadbare coat and shambling out of the disreputable rooming house which passed for home. "Work doesn't seem to get me anywhere. Guess I'll haveto trust to luck," and he wandered out for his nightly stroll through the Chinese quarter, hoping against hope that something would happen.
It did—in bunches!
Possibly it was luck, possibly it was fate—which, after all, is only another name for luck—that brought him into an especially unsavory portion of the city shortly after midnight.
He had wandered along for three hours or more, with no objective in view save occasional visits to dives where he was known, when he heard something which caused him to whirl and automatically reach for his hip pocket. It was the cry of a woman, shrill and clear—the cry of a woman in mortal danger!
It had only sounded once, but there was a peculiar muffled quality at the end of the note, suggestive of a hand or a gag having been placed over the woman's mouth. Then—silence, so still as to be almost oppressive.
Puzzled, Marks stood stock still and waited. So far as he could remember that was the first time that he had heard anything of the kind in Chinatown. He knew that there were women there, but they were kept well in the background and, apparently, were content with their lot. The woman who had screamed, however, was in danger of her life. Behind one of those flimsy walls some drama was being enacted in defiance of the law—something was being done which meant danger of the most deadly kind to him who dared to interfere.
For a full minute Marks weighed the importance of his official mission against his sense of humanity. Should he take a chance on losing his prey merely to try to save a woman's life? Should he attempt to find the house from which the scream had come and force the door? Should he....
But the question was solved for him in a manner even more startling than the cry in the night.
While he was still debating the door of a house directly in front of him opened wide and a blinding glare of light spread fanwise into the street. Across this there shot the figure of what Marks at first took to be a man—a figure attired in a long, heavily embroidered jacket and silken trousers. As it neared him, however, the operative sensed that it was a woman, and an instant later he knew that it was the woman whose stifled scream had halted him only a moment before.
Straight toward Marks she came and, close behind her—their faces set in a look of deadly implacable rage—raced two large Chinamen.
Probably realizing that she stood no chance of escape in the open street, the woman darted behind Marks and prepared to dodge her pursuers. As she did so the operative caught her panting appeal: "Save me! For the sake of the God, save me!"
That was all that was necessary. Ezra sensed in an instant the fact that he had become embroiled in what bade fair to be a tragedy and braced himself for action. He knew that he had no chance for holding off both men, particularly as he did not care to precipitate gun play, but there was the hope that he might divert them until the girl escaped.
As the first of the two men leaped toward him, Marks swung straight for his jaw, but his assailant ducked with what was almost professional rapidity and the blow was only a glancing one. Before the operative had time to get set the other man was upon him and, in utter silence save for their labored breathing and dull thuds as blows went home, they fought their way back to the far side of the street. As he retreated, Marks became conscious thatinstead of making her escape, the girl was still behind him. The reason for this became apparent when the larger of the Chinamen suddenly raised his arm and the light from the open doorway glinted on the blade of a murderous short-handled axe—the favorite weapon of Tong warfare. Straight for his head the blade descended, but the girl's arm, thrust out of the darkness behind him, diverted the blow and the hatchet fairly whistled as it passed within an inch of his body.
Realizing that his only hope of safety lay in reaching the opposite side of the sidewalk, where he would be able to fight with his back against the wall, Marks resumed his retreat, his arms moving like flails, his fists crashing home blows that lost much of their power by reason of the heavily padded jackets of his opponents. Finally, after seconds that seemed like hours, one of his blows found the jaw of the man nearest him, and Marks wheeled to set himself for the onrush of the other—the man with the hatchet.
But just at that moment his foot struck the uneven curbing and threw him off his balance. He was conscious of an arc of light as the blade sang through the air; he heard a high, half-muffled cry from the girl beside him; and he remembered trying to throw himself out of the way of the hatchet. Then there was a stinging, smarting pain in the side of his head and in his left shoulder—followed by the blackness of oblivion.
From somewhere, apparently a long distance off, there came a voice which brought back at least a part of the operative's fast failing consciousness, a voice which called a name vaguely familiar to him:
"Sprague! Sprague!"
"Sprague?" muttered Marks, trying to collect himself. "Who—is—Sprague?"
Then, as he put it later, he "went off."
How much time elapsed before he came to he was unable to say, but subsequent developments indicated that it was at least a day and a night. He hadn't the slightest idea what had occurred meanwhile—he only knew that he seemed to drift back to consciousness and a realization that his head was splitting as if it would burst. Mechanically he stretched his legs and tried to rise, only to find that what appeared to be a wooden wall closed him in on all sides, leaving an opening only directly above him.
For an appreciable time he lay still, trying to collect his thoughts. He recalled the fight in the open street, the intervention of the girl, the fall over the curb and then—there was something that he couldn't remember, something vital that had occurred just after he had tried to dodge the hatchet blade.
"Yes," he murmured, as memory returned, "it was some one calling for 'Sprague—Sprague!'"
"Hush!" came a whispered command out of the darkness which surrounded him, and a hand, soft and very evidently feminine, covered his mouth. "You must not mention that name here. It means the death, instant and terrible! They are discussing your fate in there now, but if they had thought that you knew Wah Lee your life would not be worth a yen."
"Wah Lee? Who is he?" Marks replied, his voice pitched in an undertone. "I don't remember any Wah Lee. And who are you?"
"Who I am does not matter," came out of the darkness, "but Wah Lee—he is the master of life and death—the high priest of the Flower of Heaven. Had it not been for him you would have been dead before this."
"But I thought—"
"That he desired your life? So he did—and does. But they have to plan the way in which it is to be taken and the disposition which is to be made of your body. That was what gave me my opportunity for binding up your wound and watching for you to wake."
In spite of himself Marks could not repress a slight shudder. So they were saving him for the sacrifice, eh? They were going to keep him here until their arrangements were complete and then make away with him, were they?
Moving cautiously, so as to avoid attracting attention, the operative slipped his right hand toward his hip pocket, only to find that his automatic was missing. As he settled back with a half moan, he felt something cold slipped into the box beside him, and the girl's voice whispered:
"Your revolver. I secured it when they brought you in here. I thought you might need it later. But be very careful. They must not suspect that you have wakened."
"I will," promised Marks, "but who are you? Why should you take such an interest in me?"
"You tried to save me from something that is worse than death," replied the girl. "You failed, but it was not your fault. Could I do less than to help you?"
"But what was it you feared?"
"Marriage! Marriage to the man I loathe above all others—the man who is responsible for the opium that is drugging my people—the man who is known as Wah Lee, but who is really an American." Here she hesitated for a moment and then hissed:
"Sprague!"
"Sprague?" Marks echoed, sitting bolt upright. But the girl had gone, swallowed up somewhere in the impenetrable darkness which filled the room.
His brain cleared by the realization that he had blunderedinto the heart of the opium-runners' den, it took Ezra only a few seconds to formulate a plan of action. The first thing, of course, was to get away. But how could that be accomplished when he did not even know where he was or anything about the house? The girl had said something about the fact that "they were considering his fate." Who were "they" and where were they?
Obviously, the only way to find this out was to do a little scouting on his own account, so, slowly and carefully, he raised himself clear of the boxlike arrangement in which he had been placed and tried to figure out his surroundings. His hand, groping over the side, came into almost instant contact with the floor and he found it a simple matter to step out into what appeared to be a cleared space in the center of a comparatively large room. Then, curious as to the place where he had been concealed, he felt the box from one end to the other. The sides were about two feet high and slightly sloping, with an angle near the head. In fact, both ends of the affair were narrower than the portion which had been occupied by his shoulders. Piled up at either end of this box were others, of the same shape and size. What could their purpose be? Why the odd shape?
Suddenly the solution of the mystery flashed across the operative's mind—coffins! Coffins which appeared to be piled up on all sides of the storeroom. Was this the warehouse for a Chinese undertaker or was it—
One coffin over which he nearly tripped gave him the answer. It was partly filled with cans, unlabeled and quite heavy—containers which Marks felt certain were packed full of opium and smuggled in some manner inside the coffins.
Just as he arrived at this conclusion Marks' eye wascaught by a tiny streak of light filtering through the wall on the opposite side of the room. Making his way carefully toward this, he found that the crack presented a fairly complete view of an adjoining apartment in which three Chinese, evidently of high degree, were sorting money and entering accounts in large books.
As he looked, a fourth figure entered the room—a man who caused him to catch his breath and flatten himself against the wall, for he recognized the larger of the two Chinamen who had attacked him the night before—or whenever it was. This was the man to whom the girl had alluded as "Wah Lee, High Priest of the Flower of Heaven"—which was merely another way of saying that he had charge of the opium shipments.
As he entered the others rose and remained standing until he had seated himself. Then one of them commenced to speak in rapid, undistinguishable Chinese. Before he had had time to pronounce more than a few words, however, Wah Lee interrupted him with a command couched in English to: "Cut that out! You know I don't understand that gibberish well enough to follow you."
"Beg pardon," replied the other. "I always forget. You are so like one of us that, even in private, I find it hard to remember."
Wah Lee said nothing, but, slipping off his silken jacket, settled back at his ease. A moment later Marks was amazed to see him remove his mandarin's cap, and with it came a wig of coal-black hair!
For the first time the government agent realized what the girl had meant when she intimated that Wah Lee and Sprague were one and the same—an American who was masquerading as Chinese in order to further his smuggling plans!
"Word has just arrived," continued the man who hadfirst spoken, "that the boat will be off Point Banda to-night. That will allow us to pick up the coffins before daybreak and bury them until such time as the American hounds are off their guard."
"Yes," grunted Sprague, "and let's hope that that's soon. We must have fifty thousand dollars' worth of the stuff cached on the other side of the border and orders are coming in faster than we can fill them. I think it would be best to run this cargo right in. We can stage a funeral, if necessary, and avoid suspicion in that way. Wait a minute! I've got a hunch! What about the bum we carried in here last night—the one that tried to help Anita in her getaway?"
"Anita?"
"Yes, my girl. I can't remember that rigmarole you people call her. Anita's her name from now on."
"He is in the next room, unconscious. Two of the men dumped him in one of the empty coffins and let him stay there."
"Good," chuckled Sprague. "We'll just let him remain—run him across the border, and bring his body back in a big hearse. The coffin and the body will be real, but there'll be enough cans of dope packed in and around him and in the carriages of the 'mourners' to make us all rich. It's the chance of a lifetime for a big play, because no one will ever suspect us or even inquire into his identity."
Behind the thin wall which separated him from the next room Marks stiffened and his fingers wound themselves even more tightly around the butt of his automatic. It is not given to many men to hear their death sentence pronounced in a manner as dramatic and cold-blooded as were the words which came from the outer apartment. By listening intently, Ezra learned that the coup wouldbe sprung sometime within the next few hours, the conspirators feeling that it would not be safe to delay, as the opium shipment was due before dawn.
Moving silently and aided somewhat by the fact that his eyes had become a little accustomed to the inky blackness, Marks made his way back to the place where he had awakened. He knew that that was where they would expect to find him and he also knew that this was the one place to avoid. So he located the door and, finding it bolted from the outside, placed himself where he would be at least partly sheltered when the party entered.
After what seemed to be an interminable time he finally heard a sound from the hallway—the soft slip-slip of felt shoes approaching. Then the bolt was withdrawn and the door opened, admitting the four men whom he had seen in the other room, and behind them, carrying a lantern, came the girl.
Nerving himself for a supreme leap, Marks waited until all five visitors were inside the room, and then started to slip through the open doorway. But his movement attracted the attention of the man called Sprague and, with a cry of warning, he wheeled and fired before the operative could gain the safety of the hall. Knowing that his body, outlined against the light from outside, would make an ideal target, Ezra dropped to the floor and swung his automatic into action. As he did so the girl extinguished the lantern with a single swift blow, leaving the room in total blackness, save for the path made by the light in the hallway.
For probably twenty seconds there wasn't a sound. Then Marks caught a glimpse of a moving figure and fired, leaping to one side as he did so in order to avoid the fusillade directed at the flash of his revolver. By a cry from the other side of the room he knew that his shothad gone home, and a moment later he had an opportunity to wing another of his assailants, again drawing a volley of shots. The last shot in his clip was fired with a prayer—but it evidently went home, for only silence, punctuated by moans from the opposite side of the room, ensued.
"That night," concluded Quinn, "a big sailing vessel was met off Point Banda and they found a full month's supply of opium aboard of her. A search of Lower California, near the border, also disclosed a burying ground with many of the graves packed with cans of the drug. The raid, of course, was a violation of Mexican neutrality—but they got away with it."
"The girl?" I cut in. "What became of her?"
"When the police reached the house a few moments after Marks had fired the last shot, they found that Sprague was dead with one of Ezra's bullets through his brain. The three Chinamen were wounded, but not fatally. The girl, however, was huddled in a corner, dead. No one ever discovered whether she stopped one of the bullets from Marks's revolver or whether she was killed by Sprague's men as a penalty for putting out the lantern. Undoubtedly, that saved Ezra's life—which was the reason that he saw that she was given a decent funeral and an adequate memorial erected over her grave.
"He also kept her jacket as a memento of the affair, turning the hatchet over to me for my collection. Under it you will find a copy of the wire he sent the chief."
Curious, I went over and read the yellow slip framed beneath the weapon:
Opium smuggled in coffins. American, at head of ring, dead. Gang broken up. Opium seized. What next?Marks.
Opium smuggled in coffins. American, at head of ring, dead. Gang broken up. Opium seized. What next?
Marks.
"Didn't wait long for another assignment, did he?" I inquired.
"No," was the response. "When you're working for Uncle Sam you come to find that excitement is about the only thing that keeps your nerves quiet. Sometimes, as in Marks's case, it's the thrill of the actual combat. But more often it's the search for a tangible clue—the groping in the dark for something you know exists but which you can't lay your hands on. That was the trouble with the Cheney case...."
One of the first things to strike the eye of the visitor who enters the library-den of William J. Quinn—known to his friends and former associates in the United States Secret Service as "Bill"—is a frame which stands upon the mantel and contains the photographs of three exceptionally pretty women.
Anyone who doesn't know that this room is consecrated to relics of the exploits of the various governmental detective services might be pardoned for supposing that the three pictures in the single frame are photographs of relatives. Only closer inspection will reveal the fact that beneath them appears a transcript from several pages of a certain book of records—the original of which is kept at the New York City Hall.
These pages state that....
But suppose we let Quinn tell the story, just as he told it one cold November night while the wind was whistling outside and the cheery warmth of the fire made things extremely snug within.
Secret Service men [said Quinn] divide all of their cases into two classes—those which call for quick action and plenty of it and those which demand a great deal of thought and only an hour or so of actual physical work. Your typical operative—Allison, who was responsible for solving the poison-pen puzzle, for example, or Hal Preston,who penetrated the mystery surrounding the murder of Montgomery Marshall—is essentially a man of action. He likes to tackle a job and get it over with. It doesn't make any difference if he has to round up a half dozen counterfeiters at the point of a single revolver—as Tommy Callahan once did—or break up a gang of train robbers who have sworn never to be taken alive. As long as he has plenty of thrills and excitement, as long as he is able to get some joy out of life, he doesn't give a hang for the risk. That's his business and he loves it.
But it's the long-drawn-out cases which he has to ponder over and consider from a score of angles that, in the vernacular of vaudeville, capture his Angora. Give him an assignment where he can trail his man for a day or two, get the lay of the land, and then drop on the bunch like a ton o' brick and everything's fine. Give him one of the other kind and—well, he's just about as happy as Guy Randall was when they turned him loose with instructions to get something on Carl Cheney.
Remember during the early days of the war when the papers were full of stories from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee and points west about gatherings of pro-German sympathizers who were determined to aid the Fatherland? Theoretically, we were neutral at that time and these people had all the scope they wanted. They did not confine themselves to talk, however, but laid several plans which were destined to annoy the government and to keep several hundred operatives busy defeating them—for they were aimed directly at our policy of neutrality.
As a campaign fund to assure the success of these operations, the German sympathizers raised not less than sixteen million dollars—a sum which naturally excited the cupidity not only of certain individuals within theirown ranks, but also of persons on the outside—men who were accustomed to live by their wits and who saw in this gigantic collection the opportunity of a lifetime.
When you consider that you can hire a New York gangster to commit murder for a couple of hundred dollars—and the "union scale" has been known to be even lower—it's no wonder that the mere mention of sixteen million dollars caused many a crook of international reputation to figure how he could divert at least a part of this to his own bank account. That's the way, as it afterward turned out, that Carl Cheney looked at it.
Cheney had rubbed elbows with the police on several occasions prior to nineteen fourteen. It was suspected that he had been mixed up in a number of exceptionally clever smuggling schemes and that he had had a finger in one or two operations which came perilously close to blackmail. But no one had ever been able to get anything on him. He was the original Finnigin—"In agin, gone agin." By the time the plan came to a successful conclusion all that remained of "Count Carl's" connection with it was a vague and distinctly nebulous shadow—and you simply can't arrest shadows, no matter how hard you try.
The New York police were the first to tip Washington off to the fact that Cheney, who had dropped his aristocratic alias for the time being, was back in this country and had been seen in the company of a number of prominent members of a certain German-American club which wasn't in any too good repute with the Department of Justice by reason of the efforts of some of its members to destroy the neutral stand of the nation.
Have no indications of what Cheney is doing [the report admitted], but it will be well to trail him. Apparently he hassome connection, officially or unofficially, with Berlin. Advise what action you wish us to take.
Have no indications of what Cheney is doing [the report admitted], but it will be well to trail him. Apparently he hassome connection, officially or unofficially, with Berlin. Advise what action you wish us to take.
Whereupon the chief wired back:
Operative assigned to Cheney case leaves to-night. Meanwhile please watch.
Operative assigned to Cheney case leaves to-night. Meanwhile please watch.
It wasn't until after the wire had been sent that Guy Randall was summoned to the inner sanctum of the Secret Service and informed that he had been elected to trail the elusive suspect and find out what he was up to.
"So far as our records show," stated the chief, "no one has ever been able to catch this Cheney person in the act of departing from the straight and narrow path. However, that's a matter of the past. What we've got to find out is what he is planning now—why he is in New York and why he has attached himself to the pro-German element which has all kinds of wild schemes up its sleeve."
"And I'm the one who's got to handle it?" inquired Guy, with a grimace.
"Precisely," grinned the chief. "Oh, I know it doesn't look like much of a job and I grant you that the thrill element will probably be lacking. But you can't draw a snap every time. All that's asked is that you get something on Cheney—something which will withstand the assaults of the lawyers he will undoubtedly hire the minute we lay hands on him. Therefore you've got to be mighty careful to have the right dope. If you're satisfied that he's doing nothing out of the way, don't hesitate to say so. But I don't expect that your report will clear him, for, from what we already know of the gentleman, he's more likely to be implicated in some plan aimed directly at a violation of neutrality, and it's essentialthat we find out what that is before we take any radical step."
"What do you know about Cheney?" was Randall's next question, followed by an explanation from the chief that the "count" had been suspected in a number of cases and had barely been able to escape in time.
"But," added the head of the Secret Service, "he did escape. And that's what we have to prevent this time. He's a fast worker and a clever one—which means that you've got to keep continually after him. Call in all the help you need, but if you take my advice you'll handle the case alone. You're apt to get a lot further that way."
Agreeing that this was the best method to pursue, Randall caught the midnight train for New York and went at once to police headquarters, where he requested a full description of Cheney's previous activities.
"You're asking for something what ain't," he was informed, ungrammatically, but truthfully. "We've never been able to get a thing on the count, though we're dead certain that he had a finger in several crooked plays. The Latimer letters were never directly traced to him, but it's a cinch that he had something to do with their preparation, just as he had with the blackmailing of old man Branchfield and the smuggling of the van Husen emeralds. You remember that case, don't you? The one where the stones were concealed in a life preserver and they staged a 'man overboard' stunt just as the ship came into the harbor. Nobody ever got the stones or proved that they were actually smuggled—but the count happened to be on the ship at the time, just as he 'happened' to be in Paris when they were sold. We didn't even dare arrest him, which accounts for the fact that his photograph doesn't ornament the Rogues' Gallery."
"Well, what's the idea of trailing him, then?"
"Just to find out what he is doing. What d'ye call those birds that fly around at sea just before a gale breaks—stormy petrels? That's the count! He's a stormy petrel of crookedness. Something goes wrong every time he hits a town—or, rather, just after he leaves, for he's too clever to stick around too long. The question now is, What's this particular storm and when is it goin' to break?"
"Fine job to turn me loose on," grumbled Randall.
"It is that," laughed the captain who was dispensing information. "But you can never tell what you'll run into, me boy. Why I remember once—"
Randall, however, was out of the office before the official had gotten well started on his reminiscences. He figured that he had already had too much of a grouch to listen patiently to some long-winded story dug out of the musty archives of police history and he made his way at once to the hotel where Carl Cheney was registered, flaunting his own name in front of the police whom he must have known were watching him.
Neither the house detective nor the plain-clothes man who had been delegated to trail Cheney could add anything of interest to the little that Randall already knew. The "count," they said, had conducted himself in a most circumspect manner and had not been actually seen in conference with any of the Germans with whom he was supposed to be in league.
"He's too slick for that," added the man from the Central Office. "Whenever he's got a conference on he goes up to the Club and you can't get in there with anything less than a battering ram and raiding squad. There's no chance to plant a dictaphone, and how else are you going to get the information?"
"What does he do at other times?" countered Guy,preferring not to reply to the former question until he had gotten a better line on the case.
"Behaves himself," was the laconic answer. "Takes a drive in the Park in the afternoon, dines here or at one of the other hotels, goes to the theater and usually finishes up with a little supper somewhere among the white lights."
"Any women in sight?"
"Yes—two. A blond from the girl-show that's playin' at the Knickerbocker and a red-head. Don't know who she is—but they're both good lookers. No scandal, though. Everything appears to be on the level—even the women."
"Well," mused the government operative after a moment's silence, "I guess I better get on the job. Probably means a long stretch of dull work, but the sooner I get at it the sooner I'll get over it. Where is Cheney now?"
"Up in his room. Hasn't come down to breakfast yet. Yes. There he is now. Just getting out of the elevator—headed toward the dinin' room," and the plain-clothes man indicated the tall figure of a man about forty, a man dressed in the height of fashion, with spats, a cane, and a morning coat of the most correct cut. "Want me for anything?"
"Not a thing," said Randall, absently. "I'll pick him up now. You might tell the chief to watch out for a hurry call from me—though I'm afraid he won't get it."
As events proved, Randall was dead right. The Central Office heard nothing from him for several months, and even Washington received only stereotyped reports indicative of what Cheney was doing—which wasn't much.
Shortly after the first of the year, Guy sent a wire to the chief, asking to be relieved for a day or two in order that he might be free to come to Washington. Sensing thefact that the operative had some plan which he wished to discuss personally, the chief put another man on Cheney's trail and instructed Randall to report at the Treasury Department on the following morning.
"What's the matter?" inquired the man at the head of the Service as Guy, a little thinner than formerly and showing by the wrinkles about his eyes the strain under which he was working, strolled into the office.
"Nothing's the matter, Chief—and that's where the trouble lies. You know I've never kicked about work, no matter how much of it I've had. But this thing's beginning to get on my nerves. Cheney is planning some coup. I'm dead certain of that. What it's all about, though, I haven't the least idea. The plans are being laid in the German-American Club and there's no chance of getting in there."
"How about bribing one of the employees to leave?"
"Can't be done. I've tried it—half a dozen times. They're all Germans and, as such, in the organization. However, I have a plan. Strictly speaking, it's outside the law, but that's why I wanted to talk things over with you...."
When Randall had finished outlining his plan the chief sat for a moment in thought. Then, "Are you sure you can put it over?" he inquired.
"Of course I can. It's done every other day, anyhow, by the cops themselves. Why shouldn't we take a leaf out of their book?"
"I know. But there's always the possibility of a diplomatic protest."
"Not in this case, Chief. The man's only a waiter and, besides, before the embassy has a chance to hear about it I'll have found out what I want to know. Then, if they want to raise a row, let 'em."
The upshot of the matter was that, about a week later, Franz Heilman, a waiter employed at the German-American Club in New York, was arrested one night and haled into Night Court on a charge of carrying concealed weapons—a serious offense under the Sullivan Act. In vain he protested that he had never carried a pistol in his life. Patrolman Flaherty, who had made the arrest, produced the weapon which he claimed to have found in Heilman's possession and the prisoner was held for trial.