AFTER leaving the sworn records with Hiram I started for my temporary
offices uptown. I wanted him to have time to thoroughly digest them.
At that time we had not been at war long and the public mind of New
Orleans was in a very excited condition. The big interrogation point was
raised on every person whose acts did not bear instant analysis.
Pacifists and enemy aliens were promptly and vigorously coerced into
outward decency at least. No trifling was permitted.
These continued thefts from the railroad might mean much more than a
risky enterprise for profit. I was given to understand that while time
enough would be allowed, definite results were expected soon.
When I reached my office, my clerk, Miss Bascom, seemed to be expecting
me. Her greeting, though intended to be casual, was so gladsome I
wondered if she was trying to practice on me the same brand of coquetry
she used on the chief clerk--Burrell--or was it to be a wheedling
process? Surely I was justified in expecting something and I awaited the
onset with great interest, convinced that she was playing a rôle. One of
Miss Bascom's duties was to prepare for me each day a record of every
car that arrived on Hiram's wharf or departed therefrom.
The first sheets of outbound records of the day were of cars from Becker
& Co. to Becker & Co., Becker's Landing, Louisiana, and the time of
departure was marked 3:30. I began to wonder if it was purely accidental
that they were on the top; then came an exciting moment when I recalled
that a car of sausages arrived at 2:30. But the insuperable difficulty
of making the transfer, replacing the seals, and the like, reassured me.
I gave Miss Bascom the two slips and requested her to get me a memo of
the contents of those two cars. As she went about the errand I wondered
how such a refined looking young woman could ally herself with that
carcass of rancid tallow whose very clothing emitted an odor which
advertised his business.
Miss Bascom returned in a few moments and laid the two slips before me
without comment, hesitating at the end of my desk, indicating interest
and willingness to be of further assistance. On the bottom of each slip
was delicately penciled "Soap Grease." I knew that plebeian soap grease
was worth more than prime lard had been a short time ago, but why the
precaution of shipping in refrigerator cars?
"Do you happen to know this shipper--Becker & Co.?" I decided to
venture, uncertain whether Miss Bascom knew I had seen them together in
the hall.
Miss Bascom backed to the end of my desk and laid a very pretty elbow on
top, the better to display her figure--palpable acting, so it seemed to
me. Her speech had a Southern accent which lends itself to
dissimulation. "Yes," she replied, "he is an important patron of the
road, and is about the office considerably. Everybody knows him." She
did not meet my eye, but looked at the door leading to the hall
expectantly. At that moment a boy burst into the room wholly
unannounced, laid a telegram addressed to me on my desk, and was gone as
quickly as he came.
"I wonder why they ship that kind of freight in refrigerator cars--the
rate is much higher," I said, shoving the telegram back unopened.
"I think I heard him tell Mr. Burrell one day he could afford to pay
extra in order to receive his freight the same day," she replied with a
naïveté difficult to simulate.
"Miss Bascom, stop the work you are now on and prepare an abstract from
these records of all freight sent by refrigerator cars to Becker & Co.
during the last twelve months," I requested after weighing the chance
that she might be working with Becker and Chief Clerk Burrell and the
disadvantage of their knowing through her that an investigation was
proceeding along those lines.
Miss Bascom seemed unwilling to think the interview ended or perhaps was
disappointed it had yielded so little, but finally removed her elbow,
and, nonplussed, passed her small white hand over her eyes and hair, so
unusually bronze that one might suspect that it was "chemically pure."
As she slowly passed behind me to her desk she half murmured to herself,
"I wish I were a man."
"I suppose you would be wearing a soldier's uniform if you were," said
I, assuming a semi-preoccupied attitude.
"That's on the basis that a uniform makes a dull person look
intelligent," she rejoined, looking seriously out of the window over her
desk.
I was reading my telegram and was too much astonished at its contents to
reply. It was from the chemist in New York to whom I had sent a larger
sample from the partnership barrel Hiram and I had in storage.