THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COLLETON.
“I’m glad the fellows took the trouble of building a fire of their own
instead of wanting to lounge around ours all night,” Jimmie observed, as
the boys looked at the leaping flames toward the north end of the slope.
“I should think they’d freeze up there!”
“I hope they do!” cried Carl.
“I wish we had some way of finding out what they are doing here,” Ben
said. “They don’t look like mountain men to me.”
“There are probably a great many such characters in the mountains,” Mr.
Havens explained. “Perhaps they’ll let us alone if we let them alone.”
“Is there any chance of their being here to interfere with our work?”
asked Carl. “It really seems that way to me.”
“I don’t think so,” the millionaire aviator replied.
“What did you learn at Denver?” asked Ben. “Was there any indication in
the messages received from Washington that the mail-order frauds were
turning their attention to the west?”
“Not a word!” replied Mr. Havens. “We have a clear field here, and all
we’ve got to do is to locate this Larry Colleton. I shall probably be
laid up with sore feet for a number of days, but that won’t prevent you
boys flying over the country in the machines looking for camps.”
“Huh!” grinned Jimmie. “They won’t keep Colleton in no camp! They’ll
keep him in some damp old hole in the ground.”
“I presume that’s right, too,” Mr. Havens replied. “But you boys mustn’t
look for camps entirely. Whenever you see people moving about, it’s up
to you to investigate, find out who they are and where they are
stopping. You’ll find that all this will keep you busy.”
“We’re likely to be kept busy if there are a lot of tramps in the
hills!” Ben answered, “for the reason that it may take two or three days
to chase down each party we discover.”
“I haven’t told you much about the case yet,” Mr. Havens continued, “and
I may as well do so now. About six months ago, letters began coming to
the post-office department at Washington complaining that a certain
patent medicine concern which was advertising an alleged remedy, Kuro,
was defrauding its customers by sending about one cent’s worth of
quinine and water in return for two dollars in money.”
“Keen, level-headed business men!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“Larry Colleton, one of the best inspectors in the department, was given
the case. For a long time, after the investigation began, this Kuro
company manufactured a remedy which really worked some of the cures
described in the advertising. This was expensive, however, and at times
the shipments fell back to the one-cent bottle of quinine water.”
“More thrift!” laughed Ben.
“Another fraud-charge was that the Kuro company often failed to make any
shipment whatever in return for money received. Colleton bought hundreds
of bottles of their remedy, but the difficult point was to establish the
fact that the company was not at the time of the investigation
manufacturing the honest medicine. The officers of the company claimed
that they were perfecting their medicine every day, and admitted that
some of the bottles sent out at first were not what they should have
been.”
“Why didn’t he pinch the whole bunch?” demanded Jimmie.
“He did!” answered Mr. Havens. “But time after time they escaped
punishment by being discharged on examination by United States district
court commissioners, or by having their cases flatly turned down by men
employed in the laboratories at Washington.”
Mr. Havens was about to continue when Ben motioned him to look in the
direction of the blaze, still showing on a shelf of the slope to the
north. The fire was burning green.
“What does that mean?” the boy asked.
“It means that they are talking to some person on the other side of the
valley or in the valley,” Mr. Havens answered. “It struck me, when the
fire was first pointed out, that no man in his right mind would be apt
to set up a camp in that exposed position.”
“Just before I called your attention to the fire,” Ben remarked, “it was
showing red. There, you see,” he added, in a moment, “it is turning red
right now! Of course the lights mean something to some one.”
“That busts your theory about the fellows being mountain tramps!”
exclaimed Jimmie. “Such wouldn’t be carrying red and green fire and
rifles with Maxim silencers!”
“They may be mounted policemen after all!” suggested Mr. Havens.
“Not on your whiskers!” exclaimed Carl. “Do you think mounted policemen
wouldn’t know how to skin a bear, or know how to broil a bear steak? You
just bet your life these fellows know more about riding on the elevated
or in the subway than they do about traveling on horseback!”
“Well,” Mr. Havens went on, “one of you boys watch the lights and the
others listen to the story of how the crooks got Colleton. It may be
necessary in the future that you should know exactly how the trick was
turned. After a long investigation, and after bribing several men in the
factory where the alleged remedy was manufactured, Mr. Colleton secured
the exact formula in use during the current week. He also secured a long
list of names of persons to whom the bogus remedy manufactured that week
had been shipped.”
“Then, why didn’t he drop down on the concern?” asked Carl.
“He did!” was the answer. “He arrested the officers of the company and
subpœnaed scores of witnesses. He also secured proof that men in the
employ of the government had been bribed by the Kuro concern to retard
the work of the inspector and to assist in the destruction of any proof
submitted to the commissioner by him.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” asked Jimmie. “If you’d just said that
Colleton was fighting the department at Washington as well as the patent
medicine concern, we would have understood what kind of a case we were
getting into.”
“Well, you know it now!” laughed Mr. Havens. “At last,” he continued,
“Colleton had his case ready for the grand jury, the district
commissioner having placed the respondents under heavy bail to await
such action.”
“And what happened then?” asked Carl.
“He lost his proof and he lost himself,” smiled the aviator. “Colleton
expected a long fight before the grand jury, a fight in the district
court, a fight in the circuit court, a fight in the court of appeals,
and a final fight before the United States Supreme court, for he knew
that the Kuro people had plenty of money and the kind of influence which
counts in an emergency.”
“And then what happened?”
“Colleton knew that he had a legal fight on his hands, but he never
suspected that he had a personal fight. One day he disappeared from his
office in the post-office department at Washington, and his proof
disappeared with him. He has never been seen by his friends since that
day.”
“And now we’ve got to find him!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“That’s what we’ve got to do!” echoed Carl.
“But, I don’t understand how they got him out of his own room, and got
his proof out of the building without attracting attention!” Ben
suggested. “They must have had several operatives at work.”
“They certainly did!” was the reply. “Colleton was sitting in his office
at three:fifteen one Monday afternoon. The safe in which his papers were
kept was locked. The desk in which his memoranda were stored was also
locked. When last seen sitting at his desk, he was making memoranda
concerning a case not at all connected with the Kuro matter. These
papers were not taken.”
“That was bad editing!” Ben laughed. “They should have taken all the
papers in sight in order not to disclose the real object of the robbery.
The rascals slipped a cog there!”
“The first error in the whole case,” Mr. Havens went on. “Only for the
fact that Kuro papers were taken exclusively, it might have been claimed
that the respondents in some of the other criminal cases being handled
by Colleton had committed the outrage.”
“Where did Colleton go when he left his office?” asked Ben.
“That’s exactly what we don’t know.”
“Who saw him leave his office?”
“No one.”
“Well, then, who saw any one enter his office?”
“No one.”
“Well,” laughed Ben, “how could Colleton get out of his office without
being seen? Perhaps he went out unobserved and took the proof with him!
You haven’t said whether the safe and desk were opened.”
“They were opened,” was the reply, “by some one knowing the combination
to the safe, and some one having a key to the desk. All the proof
collected by Colleton disappeared that day.”
“And the patent medicine men finally got up to his price!” grinned
Jimmie. “I guess it’s the old story!”
“That’s what makes it so provoking,” said Mr. Havens, impatiently. “A
good many people in Washington are saying the same thing. It is unjust
to the inspector and very annoying to his friends.”
“And no one went into his office that afternoon?” asked Carl.
“Not that we know of.”
“And no one went near his office door?” asked Jimmie.
“I didn’t say that!” replied Mr. Havens. “His office door opens on a
wide corridor, at that time being used as desk space by an overflow of
clerks. At three:ten that afternoon two men stopped at Colleton’s door,
but did not enter.”
“How do you know they didn’t enter?” Carl broke in.
“No one saw them enter or come out. No one heard the door open or close.
One of the men, a heavily-built, bearded fellow, seemed to be urging the
other to enter Colleton’s room. The man who was being urged was younger,
thinner, and appeared to be greatly excited.”
“Were they the only men seen at that door about that time?” asked Ben.
“So it is said,” was the reply.
“And Colleton was at his desk just before the men were seen at his
door?” asked Jimmie.
“Five minutes before!”
“And the person who entered his room after the two men departed found it
vacant?”
“That’s the idea exactly!”
“Did you say the young thin man was excited?”
“Perhaps excited is not the correct word,” was Mr. Havens’ reply. “He
seemed to be dazed with fear. The clerk sitting near the door received
the idea that the man had nerved himself up to the point of confessing a
crime or a dereliction of duty, and had lost his courage when he reached
the door of the inspector’s room.”
“Did this young man look like Colleton?” asked Ben.
“Not at all. Colleton wore a light moustache only. This man wore a full
beard. Colleton’s eyes are bright, snappy, far-seeing. This man’s eyes
looked dull and lifeless under the glasses he wore. Colleton is
straight, alert, confident. This man dragged his feet as he walked and
his shoulders hunched together.”
“Where did the two men go after they left Colleton’s door?” asked Ben.
“Did no one watch them?”
“No further attention was paid to them.”
“Would any of the clerks in the corridor know the big fellow again?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think they paid enough attention to know
whether his eyes were blue or black or brown.”
“Then they didn’t notice the other fellow very particularly, did they?”
“No, in fact, except for his dazed and dejected manner and his odd dress
they probably wouldn’t have noticed the young man particularly. But why
are you asking these questions,” Mr. Havens answered with a laugh. “Are
you boys going to solve, off-hand, a mystery over which Washington
detectives have been puzzling for many weeks?”
“No,” Ben answered, “but I know when Colleton left his room.”