for esthetic purposes but to make counterfeiting harder. Each issue was
printed from steel plates, specially engraved and most particularly
guarded. The paper also was specially made by secret process. Now, many
years ago, occasionally a real artist and a patient and conscientious
workman turned counterfeiter and cut a steel plate as good as the
government’s, and then, if he had a fair paper to print on and good
ink, he gave the secret service a lot of trouble.
“Janvier, some of whose fine work was still in circulation when I
started with the bank, was by all odds the best of these,” Wally told
me. “The secret service had got him about a year earlier; but his
souvenirs were still coming in. His paper betrayed him; he couldn’t
make that; he had to use the best he could get and imitate the silk
shred lines with colored ink; but his plates were almost perfect--even
to the scroll work of the borders, which the government makes by
special lathes; his seals and numbers were perfect, even under the
microscope; and his portraiture wonderful. He served ten years and then
got out and put another series of gold notes in circulation, almost a
thousand twenties in spite of being watched, before they got him again
for ten more years, at the end of which he engraved the famous ‘living
Cleveland’ plate from which the big counterfeit issue of 1912 was
printed.
“He was watched, of course; so he couldn’t do the printing; he had to
give the plate to others who got better paper but not good enough; and
the government got them all. That trial was famous, Stephen; you must
have read about it.”
I shook my head regretfully; I was interested in football in those
days. So Wally told me:
“The government could not connect Janvier with the printing of the
money but accused him of making the plates. Janvier offered no defence;
he knew the secret service had him, but his attorneys put up the claim
that the plates hadn’t been counterfeited at all; they claimed that the
printers used government plates which had been stolen!”
“Wait now!” I asked Wally, an old headline with a picture trickling
through my memory along with Brickley’s drop-kick scores. “I did read
that. Janvier--if that was his name--jumped up in the witness stand at
that and stopped the lawyer; he said he didn’t mind going back to jail
but he’d be damned if he’d see his own work classed with government
plates. When he engraved a portrait of a president, he made him look as
if he had once lived instead of----” my memory gave way just then so
Wally finished for me:
“Instead of like a death mask with the eyes pried open. That was
Janvier; so they sent him back to the Federal prison where they kept
him till two years ago, when he went blind; they operated on him but
couldn’t help him; and, considering him harmless, released him. But he
must have got back his sight; anybody can see that. Why? For nine years
what have we had in the way of counterfeiting? Clumsy, photo-engravers’
jobs. Some ordinary, dull dub takes a camera and photographs a
government bill, makes a half-tone and smears it with green ink and
runs off a batch of bills so coarse and blurred, compared to engraving
from a cut-steel plate, that a child can spot it. That’s the modern
way; easy enough, but they’re lucky to get a thousand dollars into
circulation before the secret service has them behind bars. But here
comes back a regular ‘old master,’ I say; looks like he’s a quarter
million passed already; and he’s Janvier, if he did lose his sight two
years ago. Cantrell doesn’t think so; he thinks it’s a new hand.”
“Who’s Cantrell?” I asked.
“He’s a secret service expert working here on this particular job.”
It was about ten minutes after this, while I was still there, looking
and listening, that a girl, who proved to be Wally’s private secretary,
broke the monotony of the clerks bringing in bad twenties and fifties.
“Hello, Miss Lane,” said Wally. “What have you?”
“Doctor Lathrom, sir,” reported Miss Lane, glancing at a card in her
hand.
“Lathrom, the big eye surgeon, Steve,” whispered Wally to me. “I’ve had
Miss Lane calling on the eye people since yesterday noon. Go on, Miss
Lane.”
“He operated in August of last year on a short, stocky man, French or
Austrian, of about sixty-five, he thought, who gave the name of Gans
and who was almost totally blind from double cataract which had been
previously operated upon unsuccessfully. Doctor Lathrom restored his
sight. I showed the doctor the picture of Janvier among six other
pictures. He picked out Janvier’s.”
Wally struck his hands together. “I told Cantrell so. I told him it was
another Janvier job; and that Janvier was in Chicago, too. He always
cut his plates in Chicago. He couldn’t work in the east.”
“Does the doctor happen to remember anybody who might have been with
this Gans?” I asked Miss Lane.
“Yes, sir. Not only Gans impressed the doctor, but his daughter, also.
Since Gans was blind when Doctor Lathrom first saw him, she brought him
to the doctor and made all the original arrangements. She was about
twenty--he thinks; he remembers her for unusually attractive, of the
active type. Dark hair; pert nose, he particularly recalled.”
Wally wasn’t paying any attention to this; he already had what he
wanted and he was chatting on about the superior artistic inspiration
of Chicago over Manhattan, even in counterfeiting.
“I told Cantrell it was a Chicago job on the plates, anyway; New York
is a photo-engravers’ town; an artist like Janvier couldn’t cut a
plate like that within five hundred miles of Broadway. He’d smear it,
if he tried to. Maybe they printed in the east; or made the paper,
there; probably did.”
He was waiting for the switchboard operator to get a connection with
the secret service so he could scream his news at them.
If he had learned what he wanted, I had, too. It was perfectly plain to
me, of course, that my partner Cleopatra--Doris Wellington, with maid,
from Denver--was this daughter of Janvier, engraver of government notes
without the government’s coöperation. Her bit in the business was--to
employ the convenient phrase of the Flamingo Feather--to blow out the
bad dough, to shove “the queer.”
You may gather that this realization did not come exactly as a shock to
me; in fact, I felt rather a relief. Participation in that affair at
the Flamingo Feather might imply so many customs worse than the mere
personal issue of money that I drifted back to the Blackstone with
cheer. What I’d found about her family certainly might have been a lot
worse; yes, a whole lot. She’d stuck with her father, evidently. I
liked that.
“Miss Wellington,” they called her at the hotel; that meant if Magellan
or any other young man were about, he was keeping his distance. Miss
Wellington proved to be in; she sent her maid down from her room to
fetch her mail. The maid, who was as French-looking and demure as
anybody’s, went back and forth from the elevator with eyes down. She
mailed a letter, which I didn’t see, and obtained an envelope which
bore the address of “The Antlers,” Colorado Springs.
A guest hailed her. “Felice” he called her in Londonish tone. Obviously
he was an Englishman; you might put him down as a polo player off his
pony and in morning attire. He had on one of those pearl-gray velours
from “Scott’s,” hatters to H. M. the King, Piccadilly and Old Bond
Street. A genuine, that was; no counterfeit. I knew a bit about hats.
His cutaway and shoes were from Piccadilly, too--from tailor and booter
to H. M. the King, also, or at least to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.
His manners were from the Mall. Apparently he was just arrived to meet
Miss Wellington, having heard she’d dropped in from “The Springs.” But
I knew him; he had been the mariner at the ball who’d impressed me as
being too light to class as Columbus. He was Magellan.
After he’d sent Felice up with the news he was here, he dallied
before the elevators till Doris came down. She’d just left a mirror,
evidently; smartness and style couldn’t commence to suggest her. She
was a stunner.
“George” she called him; and he called her “Doris”; and he led her into
the main dining room for luncheon, taking a table at a window directly
over the Avenue. I sat down alone a few tables away. It was nearly
twelve; and they went at luncheon lightly,--cold lobster, mainly. I
took the same and, to that extent, mingled. I didn’t like George; not
at all. I liked him even less than Magellan. He had a proprietorish way
with him which was more irritating now that he was sober and out of
costume.
She didn’t exactly play up to him; she was polite, registering interest
in what he said, watching the parade of motor cars and pedestrians
below their window. Have I said it was a clear, chilly, pleasant winter
day?
They never even so much as glanced idly toward the door through which
Cantrell and his government men might come. They seemed to think
nothing of that at all, and if either of them gave me a thought,
neither showed it. I heard Doris, in her clear, quick, amused voice,
telling to George how she had discovered a counterfeit twenty in her
change at Caldon’s.
They finished and George paid the check. I finished and followed them
into the lobby in time to see Felice meeting Miss Wellington with a
receipted bill for their accommodations. Appeared also handbags and
a couple of small semi-trunks, semi suit cases of the “week-end box”
variety. Porters piled the luggage in front of a taxi.
It became evident that George, having joined the party, was going right
along. He got into the taxi after Doris and Felice. “Century” he said
to the driver.
The taxis are thick about the Blackstone just before train-time for
the Century to New York. I got a man without the least difficulty.
“Century, sir?” he said.
“If that car goes there,” I told him. “If it doesn’t, follow it.”
XIII
AND LEARN THE SOOTHING EFFECTS OF FOND DU LAC TWINS.
It went direct to the LaSalle Street station; and Doris and George and
Felice were standing in the carriage court watching porters pick up
their luggage, when I drove in.
They glanced at me; that was all. At least it was all I saw, and they
went up to the train shed. I snatched a ticket and a coupon for an
“upper” from the Pullman window and went through the cars. Doris and
Felice had a compartment together about the middle of the train. George
wasn’t with them; he seemed to possess a section in a car near mine. He
possessed also a large, piggy, Trafalgar-Square-looking portmanteau,
yellow in color. I didn’t know where he picked it up. I hadn’t seen it
at the Blackstone; probably he’d had it sent direct to the train.
I had lost a lot of my prejudice against George since I saw him parked
in a separate car from Doris. He looked at me, realized he had seen
me several times recently and half nodded. I nodded and went on. When
I glanced back, he was drifting rearward to the observation car where
he sat down and picked up an afternoon paper. With as much casualness
as I could manage, I dropped into a chair nearly opposite. The average
Chicago to New York twenty-hour-train travel filled the other chairs
with their varying degrees of self-consciousness and importance.
There were the usual clothing merchants vociferous over discounts
and braiding; there were a couple of advertising men lying--unless
they were Sarazen and Johnny Black in disguise--about how they did
the second nine at Skokie; there was a pleasant, middle-aged married
couple, happy to all appearances; there was a mother with a son under
her thumb; then there were half a dozen assorted males varying from
the emphatic, self-made-man type to mild, chinless youths who might be
either chorus men or bond salesmen. They always look alike to me.
And they always irritate me so that I did not notice that another man
was beyond them until I observed that George was watching that far end
of the car. He wasn’t doing it conspicuously; he was so subtle about
it that if I had not been paying particular attention to him, I’d never
have guessed anybody here was worrying him. But some one was--one of
those bulldog-jaw, assertive sort of chaps that make you think right
away of the reform candidate, and who gives you, at the same glance,
the reason that reform administrations fail. Not a tactful face at all
but highly determined. He was about thirty-five and was young for his
type, I thought, until I considered that his type has to be younger
sometime. Anyway, there he was, solid and belligerent, and with a copy
of the _Iron Age_ before his face.
I had to look at him eight or ten times before I became absolutely sure
that he wasn’t reading it but, in turn, was watching George when George
was looking the other way.
So a man hunt--other than my own (if you called my operations a
hunt)--was on aboard this train; and the stalking was in process before
me.
It was a woman hunt, too; for of course Doris and Felice, forward,
must be a part of the quarry; and as I reckoned their chances, I
thought that never a bulldog-jawed hound had run a quarry into a more
hopeless hollow log than the one into which this man of the _Iron
Age_ had run my friends of the Flamingo Feather when he followed them
on to the Century. He had them where and when he wanted them; they
simply couldn’t get away. Of course, I didn’t know whether or not he
was alone, in the sense whether he had other operatives with him; that
made no difference; he had the clothing merchants and the golfers;
the married pair, and mother and son; the assorted six with the bond
salesmen,--if you cared to count them; he had a hundred with him
whenever he wanted them. George and Doris, with Felice, had their wits
and themselves; and, since there could be no possible doubt of the
outcome of the stalking I was seeing, I couldn’t help wanting them to
give “Iron Age” a run before he got them.
There’s something about authority--especially when it’s so satisfied
and certain and when it has all the odds on its side--which does that
to one. Doris Wellington was not in my sight now; but when I thought of
her as she was at the dance and as I had seen her walking down Michigan
Avenue, I simply couldn’t find any impulse to help old “Iron Age” over
there snap his handcuffs upon her and put that active, eager, pert
little thing behind jail bars to be locked up until she was ten years
older.
Now if “Iron Age” could specialize on George, I could control my
emotions perfectly. I’d become somewhat more indulgent toward George,
I’ve told you; yet I was not wild over him, at all. However, if “Iron
Age” got George, by the same process he’d probably have Doris and maid
too. So I was feeling almost friendly with George when I noticed he was
standing up. He seemed absolutely casual about where he wanted to go.
He wandered down nearer “Iron Age” first, yawned and turned a few pages
of a _Harper’s_ on the desk there; that seemed to make him sleepier and
he strolled forward out of the car.
I arose and drifted after him. Through two Pullmans he walked ahead
of me wholly unaware, so far as I could guess, that I was behind him;
then, in the vestibule of the third car--with doors closed before and
behind us--he half-turned his head.
“Old dear, check him,” he said to me. “Here; this door’s jammed.”
He opened the door before him as he spoke, he sidled through and, as he
shut it, he dropped something which engaged the bottom of the door.
His words certainly were true, then; that door was jammed. I couldn’t
open it.
“Iron Age” could not budge it, when he replaced me at the knob. He must
have been half a car behind me but I hadn’t even suspected it till he
joined me. Together we were the better part of three minutes at the
door before we could enter the next car. George was then far forward.
I stopped in the washroom of that Pullman; for I wanted a minute or so
alone to think over things since George had spoken to me. He had hailed
me, you see, as a sort of comrade; he’d counted on me being with him.
Now I realized that after Doris had seen me at Caldon’s and then they
both had seen me at the Blackstone and here on the train, they must
have attached some significance to me. And it was becoming plain to me
that they made it a friendly significance; at least, they did not put
me down among their pursuers. Probably Doris recognized me, not in the
sense that she knew me for Steve Fanneal, but in the far more decoying
sense that she realized I had been her partner at the Flamingo Feather
and that, therefore, she could count on me when she needed help in
this emergency.
I couldn’t decide how “Iron Age” had marked me down. He went forward
through a couple of cars but evidently lost George in some washroom or
compartment and he decided to give up George for the present--there was
no danger in that; we were skimming along about sixty-five miles the
hour. Anyway, “Iron Age” paid me the compliment of returning to me in
the Pullman smoking room and he plumped himself down, emphatically, and
went about the job of clearing up any doubts of me.
“Now who are you?” he opened, with charming directness, a heavy hint of
federal prison at Leavenworth lurking in his tone.
I gave him my business card without making any fuss and he looked me
over and reached, with a now-I’ve-got-you gesture, for a copy of the
_Chicago Tribune_ which somebody had left on the leather seat.
He turned to the produce market page and questioned me temptingly:
“What do you do in the firm, Mr. Fanneal?”
“Oh, I buy a little,” I admitted. “Overlook sales some.”
“You buy butter, eggs and cheeses, for instance?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. Now what was centralized Chicago yesterday?” he sprung at me.
“What score?” I said; and he was sure I was stalling.
“Ninety-three,” he mentioned.
“Not quoted,” I told him.
“Ninety-two, then!” he dared me.
“That was blob, too. But ninety was forty-seven and a half; eighty-nine
opened at forty-five and lifted a half. Ninety-three in New York was
fifty-five and was a half higher in Philadelphia. Butter to Chicago
retailers, best (ninety-two to ninety-four) tubs, fifty-three, prints
one and a half more, cartons yet a half higher. Good tubs----”
He held up a hand. I’d looked up butter, he, figured; so he skipped
down the column. “Eggs?” he asked me.
“Extras, first or miscellaneous?” I asked him. “Checks or dirties?
Forty-eight to forty-nine, and down to twenty-five.”
I shook him; but that bulldog jaw was not for nothing. He still held
on. “Cheese!” he dared me.
“Flats?” I came back at him. “Twins? Daisies? Double Daisies?
Longhorns or square prints? And Chicago? Or Fond du Lac? New York
or Philadelphia? Flats at Fond du Lac opened twenty-six and three
quarters; twins----”
Never had I uttered anything more soothing; he had nothing whatever to
say. And I’ll say this for him, he may have been stubborn and hard to
convince, but once won over, he came all the way.
“Now exactly who are you?” I inquired, as he dropped the paper.
“Private or government operative?”
He refrained from laying back his coat impressively to display a
shining star. Apparently they do that only on the stage, or in the
“sets” out in Los Angeles. Also he lacked the scintillating line of
language I’d been led to expect by the Actors’ Equity. Somehow, since
actually playing about with Jerry’s friends, I’ve lost my feeling for
the crook drama.
“You may consider me government, if you prefer; and you may call me
Dibley,” “Iron Age” confided indulgently and with complete trust.
Hereafter, when any one questions me, I’ll remember the stupifying
effect of cheese quotations. I never saw anything lull a mind so. The
trouble was--or perhaps it was an advantage--“Iron Age” now considered
me not only harmless but probably childish.
“Have you any idea who that fellow was who wedged the door in front of
you?” he asked.
“Did he wedge the door?” I asked, innocently. I wasn’t growing any
keener about “Iron Age” Dibley, but I saw no harm in gratifying him.
“Didn’t you realize that? Well, he’s Stanley Sydenham--St. James
Stanley, he’s sometimes called--the title tapper.”
“What?” I really didn’t know that.
“Land swindler. He’s out of Colorado State penitentiary last April
after serving five years in the long house on his last irrigated-land
transaction. Has he talked to you?”
“A few words,” I said truthfully.
“Probably he’ll talk to you again,” Dibley suggested, in a tone which
hinted that he believed that George, having made a start with the
simplest person on the train, would probably continue imposing on a
good thing. “Also meet, if you can, Miss Doris Wellington and her maid
in compartment E of car No. 424. Then don’t let any of them see you
and me talking together.”
“All right,” I agreed willingly. “But what particularly do you suspect?”
“Exclude nothing,” Dibley said and got up, the soothing effect of the
double daisies and Fond du Lac twins still strong upon him.
I wandered forward to my seat when I discovered that, in my absence,
I had acquired hand baggage; and I had sense enough not to question
anybody about it or show surprise; I just accepted it; for there it
was,--a neat, new, creditable-looking suit case under the forward seat
in the position usually assigned to the baggage of the passenger of an
upper berth; and it was, beyond any mistake of recognition, the neatest
and newest of the suit cases which, at the Blackstone, had been the
property of Doris Wellington.
I bent down, after loafing in the seat for a while, and I tried the
locks in a careless sort of way, as though making sure I’d fastened my
luggage. The bag was locked; and I shoved it farther under the seat and
soon went forward.
I was willing to wager that “Iron Age” had no hint of that transfer of
luggage to me; and this was no time to tell him about it. Besides, I
already was under government orders which I ought to be obeying. So I
stepped forward to car No. 424 and to the door labelled E and I tapped
upon it.
Felice opened it, like the alert little maid she was. As I confronted
her, I tried again to place her in the Flamingo Feather; but I
couldn’t. She’d been one of the lighting plants, maybe.
Then I saw Cleopatra of the Flamingo Feather, Doris Wellington of
Caldon’s and the Blackstone and Michigan Boulevard, the daughter of
Janvier, engraver of plates and herself shover of the queer. She was
alone with her maid in the compartment.
“Can I come in?” I said, as she gazed up at me from her seat.
“Why, certainly; come right in,” she said immediately, for all the
world as though she was doing nothing there but waiting for me.
XIV
I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS.
She nodded to Felice who admitted me and went out. Felice closed the
door and, as I remained standing, Doris invited me to sit down.
“You remember me?” I asked her.
“Erasmus?” she said. “The thriller of Holbein? Certainly.”
I dropped upon the seat opposite her and, as I gazed at her, she gazed
at me and continued, “Also we were both at Caldon’s, as well as at the
Blackstone, weren’t we, Mr. Fanneal?”
“You not only remember me but you know me, then.”
“Certainly. Don’t you know me? Or what were you doing at the bank?”
“How’d you know I went to the bank?”
She smiled pleasantly--pleasantly as the Dickens. “Don’t you also know
me?” she repeated.
“You’re Janvier’s daughter!” I blurted.
“Excellent!” she approved me and I felt like a boy in school.
She had been leaning slightly forward, not exactly tense, not at ease,
either. Poised was the word for it; she’d been poised ever since I
entered. Now she sat back more comfortably, being no longer in suspense
about how much I knew.
“George was your friend Magellan?” I asked.
“That’s what you named him.”
“Felice also was present at the Feather?”
“She was the one who led you into the shed.”
“I’m indebted,” I acknowledged; and conversation languished.
For a second more I stared at her, as gay and piquant a little thing as
ever a twenty-hour-train boasted; then, decidedly stumped as to my next
step, I stared a while out the window.
Pleasant, Indiana winter scenery was skipping past us. There was clean,
light snow on the fields through which stuck brown cornstalks, in those
great, even patterns which so intriguingly alter as you dash past.
There were frozen brooks with ice-encased willows bent over them; there
were lots of agreeable looking farmhouses and farm people Fording to
and from little crossroads towns which looked idyllic, rather, whatever
the facts may be.
“Has Sinclair Lewis spoiled this sort of landscape for you?” Doris
asked me suddenly, as though reading my mind.
“I’m damned if he has for me!” I said sincerely.