The circumstances of this little smuggling incident, though known to
several persons in the Far East, have hitherto been hidden, so to
speak, under a bushel. In bringing them to the light it should be
stated that--for obvious reasons--fictitious names have been given to
the individuals chiefly concerned, but the facts are just as stated.
Far and away the most distinguished passenger on the big German liner
was the homeward bound Japanese Ambassador. He did not look the part,
however. He was a squat, unobtrusive little man whose trousers fitted
him badly, and whose carriage, when he was hampered by European
clothes, suggested an insignificance that was only partially belied by
the intelligence of his homely countenance. His appearance reflected no
radiant blaze of glory, yet he was returning to his native land crowned
with some of the finest diplomatic achievements of the century.
This statement is due to his Excellency, but it practically dismisses
him from the story, which mainly concerns his trunk--his trunk No. 23,
to be precise, for the Ambassador’s trunks were all numbered. There
must have been half a hundred of them at least; all the same typical
German steel trunks, but distinguished from other less important trunks
of the same make insomuch that each one was adorned with two broad
painted bands of scarlet, which showed out bravely and effectually
prevented their being mixed up with any ordinary baggage. Apart
from all other considerations, the wisdom of the Ambassador in thus
distinctively marking his own trunks lay in the fact that the process
insured their instant recognition by the Japanese Customs officials, by
whom they were immune from examination.
This last fact was the one which counted for most with Fritz Vogel,
steward and trombonist of the liner, as he daily contemplated the
mountain of luggage and calculated how many Manila cigars one of those
great red-striped trunks would hold.
[Illustration: “HE DAILY CONTEMPLATED THE MOUNTAIN OF LUGGAGE AND
CALCULATED HOW MANY MANILA CIGARS ONE OF THOSE GREAT RED-STRIPED TRUNKS
WOULD HOLD.”]
Carefully packed, he figured it, one might crowd ten thousand cigars
into each trunk. Ten thousand cigars, at eighty Mexican dollars a
thousand, meant eighty pounds. Duty at one hundred and fifty per
cent. _ad valorem_ on eighty pounds would mean a hundred and twenty
pounds, or, as Fritz Vogel calculated, two thousand four hundred
marks. Therefore, as the meditative trombonist further worked out
the possibilities, his Excellency could, by simply loading up a few
dozen more trunks with cigars at Hong-Kong and getting them passed
free through the Customs at Yokohama--or at Nagasaki or Kobe for that
matter--make more in a week than he could hope to earn in a month of
Sundays by sticking to the thorny paths of diplomacy.
Born west of the Suez, the fertile idea germinated in Vogel’s brain
all through the dreary wastes of the Canal, and sprouted up green and
vigorous, despite the withering blasts that pursued the liner down the
Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. At Singapore it had
become an obsession. When steaming through the Narrows into the latter
port, however, on the way to the German mail wharf, Vogel observed
a red-funnelled Jardine liner at the Messageries wharf, with the
blue-peter flying.
An hour later the _Laisang_ left for China, carrying a hastily-written
letter from Fritz Vogel to his friend Max Krebs at Hong-Kong. It
contained a fair statement of the salient facts in the case, and a
crude but lucid sketch of one of the pieces of baggage, together with a
description of the scarlet bands and full measurements. It also stated
what has not been set forth above--that each of his Excellency’s trunks
was numbered in large white figures at each end and on the top, and it
suggested that in the case of any person desiring to have access to
those trunks whilst they were still on board the liner, Nos. 23, 24,
27, 32, etc., were the easiest to reach.
Mr. Krebs was a “runner” for a native compradoring firm. He went out
to the ships to “drum up” business for his employers, who supplied
anything and everything that a ship could require, from cigarettes to
engine-oil. In the old days before the Russian War Mr. Vogel had done
a good deal of trade with Mr. Krebs on the short run between Yokohama
and Hong-Kong. But the stringent Customs regulations that had ensued
upon the increased tariffs imposed after the war had practically
killed the business, save so far as concerned a paltry bit of trading
with passengers in faked curios, and the occasional disposal of a few
imitation gems to homeward-bound tourists when the vessel was west of
Colombo.
Opportunities like the return of an Ambassador to Japan did not occur
once in a blue moon.
The liner tarried a day and a half over cargo at Singapore, and the
_Laisang_ got into Hong-Kong nearly twenty-four hours ahead of her. Mr.
Vogel learned the fact the moment the German liner arrived at the big
China port, and his heart was filled with sickening apprehension. He
had been dreaming of trunks full of cigars--German steel trunks with
red bands, and numbered with big white characters--ever since he left
Singapore. He had marked off the state-room wherein, until the proper
psychological moment, the extra trunks--if any--could be stored safely.
He had mentally arranged every other detail in his projected bid for
fortune, and had even marked down those of his comrades who should be
selected as his accomplices. He had counted over, time and time again,
the round thousand marks that would be his personal profit out of every
trunk full of cigars he could pass through the Yokohama Customs as
the baggage of the returning Ambassador. He did all this while still
faithfully, if mechanically, discharging his onerous duties as steward
and master of the trombone.
[Illustration: “A NOTE WAS HANDED TO HIM BY A CHINESE MESSENGER.”]
It was not until a few hours after the arrival of the steamer in
Hong-Kong--hours that felt like ages--that Vogel heard from Krebs. A
note was handed to him by a Chinese messenger boy, and Vogel opened it
with feverish impatience. Mr. Krebs wrote with that laconic brevity
of diction which indicates the resourceful mind. “Will send you one
trunk.--O. K.,” it read.
Mr. Vogel pondered for a moment whether “O. K.” meant Oscar Krebs or
“All correct” (American fashion); then he heaved a great sigh of relief
as he realized that it was all the same.
That evening Mr. Krebs came on board unostentatiously, and a big
trunk wrapped in rough sacking came with him, and was temporarily
stowed away by Mr. Vogel in one of the state-rooms which held some of
the Ambassador’s spare boxes. Thence it was subsequently carried to
another cabin, where there were some spare things of Mr. Vogel’s. Had
a hypercritical observer subsequently studied all the trunks in the
Ambassador’s collection he might have noticed that one of them appeared
to be the least trifle newer than the rest, but it would have taken
a Sherlock Holmes to detect the circumstance off-hand. The trunk in
question was numbered “23.”
In due time the liner arrived at Yokohama, but the mails that had
been forwarded overland from Nagasaki reached there a day before her.
Thus it came about that when the Ambassador’s baggage was franked
through the Custom House and sent up to the Imperial Hotel at Tokio,
two friends of Messrs. Krebs and Vogel were installed as guests at the
last-named establishment. Thus also it came about that, thanks to ten
yen well spent on a porter, the Ambassador’s trunk, No. 23, was whisked
away to the nether cellars of the hotel the moment it arrived there,
and--as the Ambassador himself did at an earlier stage--it virtually
passes out of this story. That is to say, what must have been the ghost
of the Ambassador’s trunk vanishes from mortal view; but not so the
real article. When the diplomat’s baggage was supposed to be all in,
and a count was taken, trunk No. 23 was found to be missing.
The row that ensued was something awful. Telegraphs and telephones were
called into requisition, and imperative, not to say drastic, orders
were dispatched to the Customs authorities at Yokohama, to the railway
authorities at Shimbashi, and to all other authorities everywhere,
commanding them to instantly produce his Excellency’s missing trunk.
[Illustration: “THEY HAD PASSED IT AND FORWARDED IT, AND GOT A RECEIPT
FOR IT.”]
The Customs authorities declared they had not got the trunk; they had
passed it and forwarded it, and got a receipt for it. There could be no
doubt, from their point of view, that the Ambassador had taken delivery
of his trunk No. 23. The railway authorities were equally agreed on
the same point. The baggage was all in special carriages; not a pin
could have been lost between Yokohama and the Shimbashi station at the
capital, whence it had been handed over to his Excellency’s servants
for removal to the hotel. The police authorities were equally certain
that there had been no hanky-panky business of any kind. It would have
been impossible for one of the Ambassador’s trunks to go astray or be
stolen, either in the streets of the seaport or in the capital itself.
The steamship authorities had a receipt for every article. They knew
the Ambassador’s trunks, and especial care had been taken of them
throughout the voyage. Nevertheless, they would again investigate.
Then, Banzai! there came a telegram from the chief purser of the
liner:--
“_Ambassador’s trunk No. 23 found on board. Must have been left behind
inadvertently. Forwarding to Tokio at once._”
The little Custom House inspectors looked at the newly-found trunk in
utter stupefaction.
“Truly,” said they, “we passed this identical trunk not three hours
ago.”
“_Hayako!_” (Hurry, there!) shouted the head inspector, as they dallied
over the mystery. “His Excellency waits!”
[Illustration: “THE LITTLE CUSTOM HOUSE INSPECTORS LOOKED AT THE
NEWLY-FOUND TRUNK IN UTTER STUPEFACTION.”]
The trunk was expressed up to the Imperial Hotel by special train.
Ten minutes later the Director of His Imperial Majesty’s Customs
at Yokohama ordered a Commission of Inquiry into the matter of the
registering as received and delivered of one Ambassador’s trunk, No.
23, when the same had never either been received from the liner or
delivered to the railway or to any other authorities by His Imperial
Majesty’s Customs. The matter was also taken in hand by the Imperial
Railway and by the Tokio and Kanagawa police authorities.
Though a couple of years have passed since these investigations were
inaugurated, no definite finding in the matter has yet been officially
published. In certain quarters, however, there is a consensus of
opinion that such a trunk did really pass through the Yokohama Customs,
but that it was a phantom one.
Mr. Vogel took away two thousand two hundred yen (two hundred and
twenty pounds) from Yokohama that trip. At Hong-Kong, nine days later,
he settled up with Mr. Krebs.
The cigars and trunk had cost nine hundred dollars, while the expenses
and “commissions” in Japan amounted to a trifle less than three hundred
dollars. There was a balance of a thousand dollars to divide, and they
duly divided it.