bank, Bolton Brown, arrested, though he is out on bail now. We haven't
anything directly against him, but he is suspected of complicity on the
inside, and I may say that the thing is so gigantic that there must
have been some one on the inside concerned with it. Among other things
we have found that Bolton Brown has been leading a rather fast life,
quite unknown to his fellow-officials. We know that he has been
speculating secretly in the wheat corner that went to pieces, but the
most significant thing is that he has been altogether too intimate with
an adventuress, Adele De-Mott, who has had some success as a woman of
high finance in various cities here and in Europe and even in South
America. It looks bad for him from the commonsense standpoint, though
of course I'm not competent to speak of the legal side of the matter.
But, at any rate, we know that the insider must have been some one
pretty close to the head of the By-Products Company or the By-Products
Bank."
"What was the character of the forgeries?" asked Kennedy.
"They seem to have been of two kinds. As far as we are concerned it is
the check forgeries only that interest the Surety Company. For some
time, apparently, checks have been coming into the bank for sums all
the way from a hundred dollars to five thousand. They have been so well
executed that some of them have been certified by the bank, all of them
have been accepted when they came back from other banks, and even the
officers of the company don't seem to be able to pick any flaws in them
except as to the payee and the amounts for which they were drawn. They
have the correct safety tint on the paper and are stamped with rubber
stamps that are almost precisely like those used by the By-Products
Company.
"You know that banking customs often make some kinds of fraud
comparatively easy. For instance no bank will pay out a hundred dollars
or often even a dollar without identification, but they will certify a
check for almost any office boy who comes in with it. The common method
of forgers lately has been to take such a certified forged check,
deposit it in another bank, then gradually withdraw it in a few days
before there is time to discover the forgery. In this case they must
have had the additional advantage that the insider in the company or
bank could give information and tip the forger off if the forgery
happened to be discovered."
"Who is the treasurer of the company?" asked Craig quickly.
"John Carroll--merely a figurehead, I understand. He's in New York now,
working with us, as I shall tell you presently. If there is any one
else besides Brown in it, it might be Michael Dawson, the nominal
assistant but really the active treasurer. There you have another man
whom we suspect, and, strangely enough, can't find. Dawson was the
assistant treasurer of the company, you understand, not of the bank."
"You can't find him? Why?" asked Kennedy, considerably puzzled.
"No, we can't find him. He was married a few days ago, married a pretty
prominent society girl in the city, Miss Sibyl Sanderson. It seems they
kept the itinerary of their honeymoon secret, more as a joke on their
friends than anything else, they said, for Miss Sanderson was a
well-known beauty and the newspapers bothered the couple a good deal
with publicity that was distasteful. At least that was his story. No
one knows where they are or whether they'll ever turn up again.
"You see, this getting married had something to do with the exposure in
the first place. For the major part of the forgeries consists not so
much in the checks, which interest my company, but in fraudulently
issued stock certificates of the By-Products Company. About a million
of the common stock was held as treasury stock--was never issued.
"Some one has issued a large amount of it, all properly signed and
sealed. Whoever it was had a little office in Chicago from which the
stock was sold quietly by a confederate, probably a woman, for women
seem to rope in the suckers best in these get-rich-quick schemes. And,
well, if it was Dawson the honeymoon has given him a splendid chance to
make his get-away, though it also resulted in the exposure of the
forgeries. Carroll had to take up more or less active duty, with the
result that a new man unearthed the--but, say, are you really
interested in this case?"
Williams was leaning forward, looking anxiously at Kennedy and it would
not have taken a clairvoyant to guess what answer he wanted to his
abrupt question.
"Indeed I am," replied Craig, "especially as there seems to be a doubt
about the guilty person on the inside."
"There is doubt enough, all right," rejoined Williams, "at least I
think so, though our detectives in Chicago who have gone over the thing
pretty thoroughly have been sure of fixing something on Bolton Brown,
the cashier. You see the blank stock certificates were kept in the
company's vault in the bank to which, of course, Brown had access. But
then, as Carroll argues, Dawson had access to them, too, which is very
true--more so for Dawson than for Brown, who was in the bank and not in
the company. I'm all at sea. Perhaps if you're interested you'd better
see Carroll. He's here in the city and I'm sure I could get you a good
fee out of the case if you cared to take it up. Shall I see if I can
get him on the wire?"
We had finished luncheon and, as Craig nodded, Williams dived into a
telephone booth outside the dining-room and in a few moments emerged,
perspiring from the closeness. He announced that Carroll requested that
we call on him at an office in Wall Street, a few blocks away, where he
made his headquarters when he was in New York. The whole thing was done
with such despatch that I could not help feeling that Carroll had been
waiting to hear from his friend in the insurance company. The look of
relief on Williams's face when Kennedy said he would go immediately
showed plainly that the insurance man considered the cost of the
luncheon, which had been no slight affair, in the light of a good
investment in the interest of his company, which was "in bad" for the
largest forgery insurance loss since they had begun to write that sort
of business.
As we hurried down to Wall Street, Kennedy took occasion to remark,
"Science seems to have safeguarded banks and other institutions pretty
well against outside robbery. But protection against employees who can
manipulate books and records does not seem to have advanced as rapidly.
Sometimes I think it may have lessened. Greater temptations assail the
cashier or clerk with greater opportunity for speculation, and the
banks, as many authorities will agree, have not made enough use of the
machinery available to put a stop to embezzlement. This case is
evidently one of the results. The careless fellows at the top, like
this man Carroll whom we are going to see, generally put forward as
excuse the statement that the science of banking and of business is so
complex that a rascal with ingenuity enough to falsify the books is
almost impossible of detection. Yet when the cat is out of the bag as
in several recent cases the methods used are often of the baldest and
most transparent sort, fictitious names, dummies, and all sorts of
juggling and kiting of checks. But I hardly think this is going to
prove one of those simple cases."
John Carroll was a haggard and unkempt sort of man. He looked to me as
if the defalcations had preyed on his mind until they had become a
veritable obsession. It was literally true that they were all that he
could talk about, all that he was thinking about. He was paying now a
heavy penalty for having been a dummy and honorary officer.
"This thing has become a matter of life and death with me," he began
eagerly, scarcely waiting for us to introduce ourselves, as he fixed
his unnaturally bright eyes on us anxiously. "I've simply got to find
the man who has so nearly wrecked the By-Products Bank and Company.
Find him or not, I suppose I am a ruined man, myself, but I hope I may
still prove myself honest."
He sighed and his eyes wandered vacantly out of the window as if he
were seeking rest and could not find it.
"I understand that the cashier, Bolton Brown, has been arrested,"
prompted Kennedy.
"Yes, Bolton Brown, arrested," he repeated slowly, "and since he has
been out on bail he, too, seems to have disappeared. Now let me tell
you about what I think of that, Kennedy. I know it looks bad for Brown.
Perhaps he's the man. The Surety Company says so, anyway. But we must
look at this thing calmly."
He was himself quite excited, as he went on, "You understand, I
suppose, just how much Brown must have been reasonably responsible for
passing the checks through the bank? He saw personally about as many of
them as--as I did, which was none until the exposure came. They were
deposited in other banks by people whom we can't identify but who must
have opened accounts for the purpose of finally putting through a few
bad checks. Then they came back to our bank in the regular channels and
were accepted. By various kinds of juggling they were covered up. Why,
some of them looked so good that they were even certified by our bank
before they were deposited in the other banks. Now, as Brown claims, he
never saw checks unless there was something special about them and
there seemed at the time to be nothing wrong about these.
"But in the public mind I know there is prejudice against any bank
official who speculates or leads a fast life, and of course it is
warranted. Still, if Brown should clear himself finally the thing will
come back to Dawson and even if he is guilty, it will make me
the--er--the ultimate goat. The upshot of it all will be that I shall
have to stand the blame, if not the guilt, and the only way I can atone
for my laxity in the past is by activity in catching the real offender
and perhaps by restoring to the company and the bank whatever can yet
be recovered."
"But," asked Kennedy sympathetically, "what makes you think that you
will find your man, whoever he proves to be, in New York?"
"I admit that it is only a very slight clue that I have," he replied
confidentially. "It is just a hint Dawson dropped once to one of the
men with whom he was confidential in the company. This clerk told me
that a long time ago Dawson said he had always wanted to go to South
America and that perhaps on his honeymoon he might get a chance. This
is the way I figured it out. You see, he is clever and some of these
South American countries have no extradition treaties with us by which
we could reach him, once he got there."
"Perhaps he has already arrived in one of them with his wife. What
makes you think he hasn't sailed yet?"
"No, I don't think he has. You see, she wanted to spend a part of the
honeymoon at Atlantic City. I learned that indirectly from her folks,
who profess to know no better than we do where the couple are. That was
an additional reason why I wanted to see if by coming to New York I
might not pick up some trace of them, either here or in Atlantic City."
"And have you?"
"Yes, I think I have." He handed us a letter-gram which he had just
received from Chicago. It read: "Two more checks have come in to-day
from Atlantic City and New York. They seem to be in payment of bills,
as they are for odd amounts. One is from the Lorraine at Atlantic City
and the other from the Hotel Amsterdam of New York. They were dated the
19th and 20th."
"You see," he resumed as we finished reading, "it is now the 23rd, so
that there is a difference of three days. He was here on the 20th. Now
the next ship that he could take after the 20th sails from Brooklyn on
the 25th. If he's clever he won't board that ship except in a disguise,
for he will know that by that time some one must be watching. Now I
want you to help me penetrate that disguise. Of course we can't arrest
the whole shipload of passengers, but if you, with your scientific
knowledge, could pick him out, then we could hold him and have
breathing space to find out whether he is guilty alone or has been
working with Bolton Brown."
Carroll was now pacing the office with excitement as he unfolded his
scheme which meant so much for himself.
"H--m," mused Kennedy. "I suppose Dawson was a man of exemplary habits?
They almost always are. No speculating or fast living with him as with
Brown?"
Carroll paused in his nervous tread. "That's another thing I've
discovered. On the contrary, I think Dawson was a secret drug fiend. I
found that out after he left. In his desk at the By-Products office we
discovered hypodermic needles and a whole outfit--morphine, I think it
was. You know how cunningly a real morphine fiend can cover up his
tracks."
Kennedy was now all attention. As the case unrolled it was assuming one
new and surprising aspect after another.
"The lettergram would indicate that he had been stopping at the
Lorraine in Atlantic City," remarked Kennedy.
"So I would infer, and at the Amsterdam in New York. But you can depend
on it that he has not been going under his own name nor, I believe as
far as I can find out, even under his own face. I think the fellow has
already assumed a disguise, for nowhere can I find any description that
even I could recognise."
"Strange," murmured Kennedy. "I'll have to look into it. And only two
days in which to do it, too. You will pardon me if I excuse myself now?
There are certain aspects of the case that I hope I shall be able to
shed some light on by going at them at once."
"You'll find Dawson clever, clever as he can be," said Carroll, not
anxious to have Kennedy go as long as he would listen to the story
which was bursting from his overwrought mind. "He was able to cover up
the checks by juggling the accounts. But that didn't satisfy him. He
was after something big. So he started in to issue the treasury stock,
forging the signatures of the president and the treasurer, that is, my
signature. Of course that sort of game couldn't last forever. Some one
was going to demand dividends on his stock, or transfer it, or ask to
have it recorded on the books, or something that would give the whole
scheme away. From each person to whom he sold stock I believe he
demanded some kind of promise not to sell it within a certain period,
and in that way we figure that he gave himself plenty of time to
realise several hundred thousand dollars quietly. It may be that some
of the forged checks represented fake interest payments. Anyhow, he's
at the end of his rope now. We've had an exciting chase. I had followed
down several false clues before the real significance of the hint about
South America dawned on me. Now I have gone as far as I dare with it
without calling in outside assistance. I think now We are up with him
at last--with your help."
Kennedy was anxious to go, but he paused long enough to ask another
question. "And the girl?" he broke in. "She must be in the game or her
letters to some of her friends would have betrayed their whereabouts.
What was she like?"
"Miss Sanderson was very popular in a certain rather flashy set in
Chicago. But her folks were bounders. They lived right up to the limit,
just as Dawson did, in my opinion. Oh, you can be sure that if a
proposition like this were put up to her she'd take a chance to get
away with it. She runs no risks. She didn't do it anyhow, and as for
her part, after the fact, why, a woman is always pretty safe--more
sinned against than sinning, and all that. It's a queer sort of
honeymoon, hey?"
"Have you any copies of the forged certificates?" asked Craig.
"Yes, plenty of them. Since the story has been told in print they have
been pouring in. Here are several."
He pulled several finely engraved certificates from his pocket and
Kennedy scrutinised them minutely.
"I may keep these to study at my leisure?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied Carroll, "and if you want any more I can wire to
Chicago for them."
"No, these will be sufficient for the present, thank you," said Craig.
"I shall keep in touch with you and let you know the moment anything
develops."
Our ride uptown to the laboratory was completed in silence which I did
not interrupt, for I could see that Kennedy was thinking out a course
of action. The quick pace at which he crossed the campus to the
Chemistry Building told me that he had decided on something.
In the laboratory Craig hastily wrote a note, opened a drawer of his
desk, and selected one from a bunch of special envelopes which he
seemed to be saving for some purpose. He sealed it with some care, and
gave it to me to post immediately. It was addressed to Dawson at the
Hotel Amsterdam.
On my return I found him deeply engrossed in the examination of the
forged shares of stock. Having talked with him more or less in the past
about handwriting I did not have to be told that he was using a
microscope to discover any erasures and that photography both direct
and by transmitted light might show something.
"I can't see anything wrong with these documents," he remarked at
length. "They show no erasures or alterations. On their face they look
as good as the real article. Even if they are tracings they are
remarkably fine work. It certainly is a fact, however, that they
superimpose. They might all have been made from the same pair of
signatures of the president and treasurer.
"I need hardly to say to you, Walter, that the microscope in its
various forms and with its various attachments is of great assistance
to the document examiner. Even a low magnification frequently reveals a
drawing, hesitating method of production, or patched and reinforced
strokes as well as erasures by chemicals or by abrasion. The
stereoscopic microscope, which is of value in studying abrasions and
alterations since it gives depth, in this case tells me that there has
been nothing of that sort practised. My colour comparison microscope,
which permits the comparison of the ink on two different documents or
two places on one document at the same time, tells me something. This
instrument with new and accurately coloured glasses enables me to
measure the tints of the ink of these signatures with the greatest
accuracy and I can do what was hitherto impossible--determine how long
the writing has been on the paper. I should say it was all very recent,
approximately within the last two months or six weeks, and I believe
that whenever the stock may have been issued it at least was all forged
at the same time.
"There isn't time now to go into the thing more deeply, but if it
becomes necessary I can go back to it with the aid of the camera lucida
and the microscopic enlarger, as well as this specially constructed
document camera with lenses certified by the government. If it comes to
a show-down I suppose I shall have to prove my point with the
micrometer measurements down to the fifty-thousandth part of an inch.
"There is certainly something very curious about these signatures," he
concluded. "I don't know what measurements would show, but they are
really too good. You know a forged signature may be of two kinds--too
bad or too good. These are, I believe, tracings. If they were your
signature and mine, Walter, I shouldn't hesitate to pronounce them
tracings. But there is always some slight room for doubt in these
special cases where a man sits down and is in the habit of writing his
signature over and over again on one stock or bond after another. He
may get so used to it that he does it automatically and his signatures
may come pretty close to superimposing. If I had time, though, I think
I could demonstrate that there are altogether too many points of
similarity for these to be genuine signatures. But we've got to act
quickly in this case or not at all, and I see that if I am to get to
Atlantic City to-night I can't waste much more time here. I wish you
would keep an eye on the Hotel Amsterdam while I am gone, Walter, and
meet me here, to-morrow. I'll wire when I'll be back. Good-bye."
It was well along in the afternoon when Kennedy took a train for the
famous seaside resort, leaving me in New York with a roving commission
to do nothing. All that I was able to learn at the Hotel Amsterdam was
that a man with a Van Dyke beard had stung the office with a bogus
check, although he had seemed to come well recommended. The description
of the woman with him who seemed to be his wife might have fitted
either Mrs. Dawson or Adele DeMott. The only person who had called had
been a man who said he represented the By-Products Company and was the
treasurer. He had questioned the hotel people rather closely about the
whereabouts of the couple who had paid their expenses with the
worthless slip of paper. It was not difficult to infer that this man
was Carroll who had been hot on the trail, especially as he said that
he personally would see the check paid if the hotel people would keep a
sharp watch for the return of the man who had swindled them.
Kennedy wired as he promised and returned by an early train the next
day.
He seemed bursting with news. "I think I'm on the trail," he cried,
throwing his grip into a corner and not waiting for me to ask him what
success he had had. "I went directly to the Lorraine and began frankly
by telling them that I represented the By-Products Company in New York
and was authorised to investigate the bad check which they had
received. They couldn't describe Dawson very well--at least their
description would have fitted almost any one. One thing I think I did
learn and that was that his disguise must include a Van Dyke beard. He
would scarcely have had time to grow one of his own and I believe when
he was last seen in Chicago he was clean-shaven."
"But," I objected, "men with Van Dyke beards are common enough." Then I
related my experience at the Amsterdam.
"The same fellow," ejaculated Kennedy. "The beard seems to have covered
a multitude of sins, for while every one could recall that, no one had
a word to say about his features. However, Walter, there's just one
chance of making his identification sure, and a peculiar coincidence it
is, too. It seems that one night this man and a lady who may have been
the former Miss Sanderson, though the description of her like most
amateur descriptions wasn't very accurate, were dining at the Lorraine.
The Lorraine is getting up a new booklet about its accommodations and a
photographer had been engaged to take a flashlight of the dining-room
for the booklet.
"No sooner had the flash been lighted and the picture taken than a man
with a Van Dyke beard--your friend of the Amsterdam, no doubt,
Walter,--rushed up to the photographer and offered him fifty dollars
for the plate. The photographer thought at first it was some sport who
had reasons for not wishing to appear in print in Atlantic City, as
many have. The man seemed to notice that the photographer was a little
suspicious and he hastened to make some kind of excuse about 'wanting
the home folks to see how swell he and his wife were dining in evening
dress.' It was a rather lame excuse, but the fifty dollars looked good
to the photographer and he agreed to develop the plate and turn it over
with some prints all ready for mailing the next day. The man seemed
satisfied and the photographer took another flashlight, this time with
one of the tables vacant.
"Sure enough, the next day the man with a beard turned up for the
plate. The photographer tells me that he had it all wrapped up ready to
mail, just to call the fellow's bluff. The man was equal to the
occasion, paid the money, wrote an address on the package which the
photographer did not see, and as there was a box for mailing packages
right at the door on the boardwalk there was no excuse for not mailing
it directly. Now if I could get hold of that plate or a print from it I
could identify Dawson in his disguise in a moment. I've started the
post-office trying to trace that package both at Atlantic City and in
Chicago, where I think it must have been mailed. I may hear from them
at any moment--at least, I hope."
The rest of the afternoon we spent in canvassing the drug stores in the
vicinity of the Amsterdam, Kennedy's idea being that if Dawson was a
habitual morphine fiend he must have replenished his supply of the drug
in New York, particularly if he was contemplating a long journey where
it might be difficult to obtain.
After many disappointments we finally succeeded in finding a shop where
a man posing as a doctor had made a rather large purchase. The name he
gave was of course of no importance. What did interest us was that
again we crossed the trail of a man with a Van Dyke beard. He had been
accompanied by a woman whom the druggist described as rather flashily
dressed, though her face was hidden under a huge hat and a veil.
"Looked very attractive," as the druggist put it, "but she might have
been a negress for all I could tell you of her face."