The tracing of counterfeit bills back to the persons responsible
for their issue is a curious and exciting employment. The
experts assigned by the Government to this work are among the
most skilful members of the Secret Service.
A bank clerk in Cleveland had detected a counterfeit
twenty-dollar bill in the deposit of a small retail grocer. An
expert was sent for and undertook the case.
He found that the grocer had received the bill from a
shoe-dealer, who had it from a dentist, who had it from somebody
else, and so on, until the Secret Service man finally traced
the bad note to an invalid woman who had used it to pay her
physician. When questioned, this woman said that the money had
been sent her by her brother, who lived in New Orleans.
The sleuth looked up the brother’s antecedents, and soon became
convinced that he was the man wanted. The brother, however, soon
proved to the satisfaction of the Secret Service man that his
suspicions were unfounded. Indeed, it appeared that the money
had been received by the New Orleans man in part payment of rent
of a house he owned in Pittsburg. While the sleuth was a bit
discouraged, he couldn’t give over the case when he had gone so
far, so he took the next train for Pittsburg.
The tenant of the house in Pittsburg proved to be a traveling
oculist, who spent most of his time in the Middle West. The
Secret Service man had the good luck, however, to catch him just
as he had returned from a trip; and the man at once recognized
the bad bill as one that had been given him by a patient in
Cleveland, the very point whence the sleuth had started.
The patient was a boss carpenter. The Secret Service man got
his address from the oculist and went right after the new clue.
At this point he had a premonition that something was going to
happen, and he wasn’t disappointed.
The carpenter, an honest old fellow, said that he had received
the bill from a certain Parker. The said Parker was the small
grocer in whose bank deposit the counterfeit had turned up. The
expert flew to the grocer’s as quickly as a cab would take him,
and found it closed. He had left town.
Afterward it was shown beyond question that the grocer was the
agent of an organized band of counterfeiters. His shop was a
mere blind. That the bill which he gave the carpenter should get
back into his own funds after traveling all over the continent
was one of those miracles of chance for which there is no
explanation.--_Harper’s Weekly._
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