railroad will come."
Dan's voice rasped with tension. "We'll get out the coal. Are you going
to see that the road is built?"
Unconsciously the traveller held up his right hand. "I am!"
Dan searched his face sharply. Smith nodded. "I'm making my bet on the
people--friend!"
It was a new Dan who lifted his bronzed face to a white world. His voice
was low and very gentle. "To bring a road here," he swung his
whip-handle from Donovan's light around to Carson's square, sweeping in
all that lay behind, "out here to them--" The pioneer faced the wide
desert that reached into a misty space ablaze with stars, "would be
like--playing God!"
The whip thudded softly into the socket and Dan rolled up on the
driver's seat. Two men climbed in behind him. The long lash swung out
over the leaders as Dan headed the old mail-sled across the drifted
right-of-way of the Great Missouri and Eastern.
FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
By MELVILLE DAVISSON POST
From _Saturday Evening Post_
I was before one of those difficult positions unavoidable to a man of
letters. My visitor must have some answer. He had come back for the
manuscript of his memoir and for my opinion. It was the twilight of an
early Washington winter. The lights in the great library, softened with
delicate shades, had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost
a thing of beauty in its vague outline; even the squat ridiculous bronze
horse had a certain dignity in the blue shadow.
If one had been speculating on the man, from his physical aspect one
would have taken Walker for an engineer of some sort, rather than the
head of the United States Secret Service. His lean face and his angular
manner gave that impression. Even now, motionless in the big chair
beyond the table, he seemed--how shall I say it?--mechanical.
And that was the very defect in his memoir. He had cut the great cases
into a dry recital. There was no longer in them any pressure of a human
impulse. The glow of inspired detail had been dissected out. Everything
startling and wonderful had been devitalized.
The memoir was a report.
The bulky typewritten manuscript lay on the table beside the electric
lamp, and I stood about uncertain how to tell him.
"Walker," I said, "did nothing wonderful ever happen to you in the
adventure of these cases?"
"What precisely do you mean?" he replied.
The practical nature of the man tempted me to extravagance.
"Well," I said, "for example, were you never kissed in a lonely street
by a mysterious woman and the flash of your dark lantern reveal a face
of startling beauty?"
"No," he said, as though he were answering a sensible question, "that
never happened to me."
"Then," I continued, "perhaps you have found a prince of the church,
pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put together the
indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you with such uncanny
acumen that you stood aghast at his perspicacity?"
"No," he said; and then his face lighted. "But I'll tell you what I did
find. I found a drunken hobo at Atlantic City who was the best detective
I ever saw."
I sat down and tapped the manuscript with my fingers.
"It's not here," I said. "Why did you leave it out?"
He took a big gold watch out of his pocket and turned it about in his
hand. The case was covered with an inscription.
"Well," he said, "the boys in the department think a good deal of me. I
shouldn't like them to know how a dirty tramp faked me at Atlantic City.
I don't mind telling you, but I couldn't print it in a memoir."
He went directly ahead with the story and I was careful not to interrupt
him:
"I was sitting in a rolling chair out there on the Boardwalk before the
Traymore. I was nearly all in, and I had taken a run to Atlantic for a
day or two of the sea air. The fact is the whole department was down and
out. You may remember what we were up against; it finally got into the
newspapers.
"The government plates of the Third Liberty Bond issue had disappeared.
We knew how they had gotten out and we thought we knew the man at the
head of the thing. It was a Mulehaus job, as we figured it.
"It was too big a thing for a little crook. With the government plates
they could print Liberty Bonds just as the Treasury would. And they
could sow the world with them."
He paused and moved his gold-rimmed spectacles a little closer in on his
nose.
"You see these war bonds are scattered all over the country. They are
held by everybody. It's not what it used to be, a banker's business
that we could round up. Nobody could round up the holders of these
bonds.
"A big crook like Mulehaus could slip a hundred million of them into the
country and never raise a ripple."
He paused and drew his fingers across his bony protruding chin.
"I'll say this for Mulehaus: He's the hardest man to identify in the
whole kingdom of crooks. Scotland Yard, the Service de la Sûreté,
everybody, says that. I don't mean dime-novel disguises--false whiskers
and a limp. I mean the ability to be the character he pretends--the
thing that used to make Joe Jefferson Rip Van Winkle--and not an actor
made up to look like it. That's the reason nobody could keep track of
Mulehaus, especially in South American cities. He was a French banker in
the Egypt business and a Swiss banker in the Argentine."
He turned back from the digression:
"And it was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We didn't
have a clue. We thought, naturally, that they'd make for Mexico or some
South American country to start their printing press. And we had the
ports and the border netted up. Nothing could have gone out across the
border or through any port. All the customs officers were working with
us, and every agent of the Department of Justice."
He looked at me steadily across the table.
"You see the government had to get those plates back before the crook
started to print, or else take up every bond of that issue over the
whole country. It was a hell of a thing!
"Of course we had gone right after the record of all the big crooks to
see whose line this sort of job was. And the thing narrowed down to
Mulehaus or old Vronsky. We soon found out it wasn't Vronsky. He was in
Joliet. It was Mulehaus. But we couldn't find him.
"We didn't even know that Mulehaus was in America. He's a big crook with
a genius for selecting men. He might be directing the job from Rio or a
Mexican port. But we were sure it was a Mulehaus job. He sold the
French securities in Egypt in '90; and he's the man who put the bogus
Argentine bonds on our market--you'll find the case in the 115th Federal
Reporter.
"Well," he went on, "I was sitting out there in the rolling chair,
looking at the sun on the sea and thinking about the thing, when I
noticed this hobo that I've been talking about. He was my chair
attendant, but I hadn't looked at him before. He had moved round from
behind me and was now leaning against the galvanized-pipe railing.
"He was a big human creature, a little stooped, unshaved and dirty; his
mouth was slack and loose, and he had a big mobile nose that seemed to
move about like a piece of soft rubber. He had hardly any clothing; a
cap that must have been fished out of an ash barrel, no shirt whatever,
merely an old ragged coat buttoned round him, a pair of canvas breeches
and carpet slippers tied on to his feet with burlap, and wrapped round
his ankles to conceal the fact that he wore no socks.
"As I looked at him he darted out, picked up the stump of a cigarette
that someone had thrown down, and came back to the railing to smoke it,
his loose mouth and his big soft nose moving like kneaded putty.
"Altogether this tramp was the worst human derelict I ever saw. And it
occurred to me that this was the one place in the whole of America where
any sort of a creature could get a kind of employment and no questions
asked.
"Anything that could move and push a chair could get fifteen cents an
hour from McDuyal. Wise man, poor man, beggar man, thief, it as all one
to McDuyal. And the creatures could sleep in the shed behind the rolling
chairs.
"I suppose an impulse to offer the man a garment of some sort moved me
to address him. 'You're nearly naked,' I said.
"He crossed one leg over the other with the toe of the carpet slipper
touching the walk, in the manner a burlesque actor, took the cigarette
out of his mouth with a little flourish, and replied to me: 'Sure,
Governor, I ain't dolled up like John Drew.'
"There was a sort of cocky unconcern about the creature that gave his
miserable state a kind of beggarly distinction. He was in among the very
dregs of life, and he was not depressed about it.
"'But if I had a sawbuck,' he continued, 'I could bulge your eye....
Couldn't point the way to one?'
"He arrested my answer with the little flourish of his fingers holding
the stump of the cigarette.
"'Not work, Governor,' and he made a little duck of his head, 'and not
murder.... Go as far as you please between 'em.'
"The fantastic manner of the derelict was infectious.
"'O.K.,' I said. 'Go out and find me a man who is a deserter from the
German Army, was a tanner in Bâle and began life as a sailor, and I'll
double your money--I'll give you a twenty-dollar bill.'
"The creature whistled softly in two short staccato notes.
"'Some little order,' he said. And taking a toothpick out of his pocket
he stuck it into the stump of the cigarette which had become too short
to hold between his fingers.
"At this moment a boy from the postoffice came to me with the daily
report from Washington, and I got out of the chair, tipped the creature,
and went into the hotel, stopping to pay McDuyal as I passed.
"There was nothing new from the department except that our organization
over the country was in close touch. We had offered five thousand
dollars reward for the recovery of the plates, and the Postoffice
Department was now posting the notice all over America in every office.
The Secretary thought we had better let the public in on it and not keep
it an underground offer to the service.
"I had forgotten the hobo, when about five o'clock he passed me a little
below the Steel Pier. He was in a big stride and he had something
clutched in his hand.
"He called to me as he hurried along: 'I got him, Governor.... See you
later!'
"'See me now,' I said. 'What's the hurry?'
"He flashed his hand open, holding a silver dollar with his thumb
against the palm.
"'Can't stop now, I'm going to get drunk. See you later.'
"I smiled at the disingenuous creature. He was saving me for the dry hour.
He could point out Mulehaus in any passing chair, and I would give some
coin to be rid of his pretension."
Walker paused. Then he went on:
"I was right. The hobo was waiting for me when I came out of the hotel
the following morning.
"'Howdy, Governor,' he said; 'I located your man.'
"I was interested to see how he would frame up his case.
"'How did you find him?' I said.
"He grinned, moving his lip and his loose nose.
"'Some luck, Governor, and some sleuthin'. It was like this: I thought
you was stringin' me. But I said to myself I'll keep out an eye; maybe
it's on the level--any damn thing can happen.'
"He put up his hand as though to hook his thumb into the armhole of his
vest, remembered that he had only a coat buttoned round him and dropped
it.
"'And believe me or not, Governor, it's the God's truth. About four
o'clock up toward the Inlet I passed a big, well-dressed, banker-looking
gent walking stiff from the hip and throwing out his leg. "Come eleven!"
I said to myself. "It's the goose-step!" I had an empty roller, and I
took a turn over to him.
"'"Chair, Admiral?" I said.
"'He looked at me sort of queer.
"'"What makes you think I'm an admiral, my man?" he answers.
"'"Well," I says, lounging over on one foot reflective like, "nobody
could be a-viewin' the sea with that lovin', ownership look unless he'd
bossed her a bit.... If I'm right, Admiral, you takes the chair."
"'He laughed, but he got in. "I'm not an admiral," he said, "but it is
true that I've followed the sea."'
"The hobo paused, and put up his first and second fingers spread like a
V.
"'Two points, Governor--the gent had been a sailor and a soldier; now
how about the tanner business?'
"He scratched his head, moving the ridiculous cap.
"'That sort of puzzled me, and I pussyfooted along toward the Inlet
thinkin' about it. If a man was a tanner, and especially a foreign,
hand-workin' tanner, what would his markin's be?
"'I tried to remember everybody that I'd ever seen handlin' a hide, and
all at once I recollected that the first thing a dago shoemaker done
when he picked up a piece of leather was to smooth it out with his
thumbs. An' I said to myself, now that'll be what a tanner does, only he
does it more ... he's always doing it. Then I asks myself what would be
the markin's?'
"The hobo paused, his mouth open, his head twisted to one side. Then he
jerked up as under a released spring.
"'And right away, Governor, I got the answer to it--flat thumbs!'
"The hobo stepped back with an air of victory and flashed his hand up.
"'And he had 'em! I asked him what time it was so I could keep the hour
straight for McDuyal, I told him, but the real reason was so I could see
his hands.'"
Walker crossed one leg over the other.
"It was clever," he said, "and I hesitated to shatter it. But the
question had to come.
"'Where is your man?' I said.
"The hobo executed a little deprecatory step, with his fingers picking
at his coat pockets.
"'That's the trouble, Governor,' he answered; 'I intended to sleuth him
for you, but he give me a dollar and I got drunk ... you saw me. That
man had got out at McDuyal's place not five minutes before. I was
flashin' to the booze can when you tried to stop me.... Nothin' doin'
when I get the price.'"
Walker paused.
"It was a good fairy story and worth something. I offered him half a
dollar. Then I got a surprise.
"The creature looked eagerly at the coin in my fingers, and he moved
toward it. He was crazy for the liquor it would buy. But he set his
teeth and pulled up.
"'No, Governor,' he said, 'I'm in it for the sawbuck. Where'll I find
you about noon?'
"I promised to be on the Boardwalk before Heinz's Pier at two o clock
and he turned to shuffle away. I called an inquiry after him.... You see
there were two things in his story: How did he get a dollar tip, and how
did he happen to make his imaginary man banker-looking? Mulehaus had
been banker-looking in both the Egypt and the Argentine affairs. I left
the latter point suspended, as we say. But I asked about the dollar. He
came back at once.
"'I forgot about that, Governor,' he said. 'It was like this: The
admiral kept looking out at the sea where an old freighter was going
South. You know, the fruit line to New York. One of them goes by every
day or two. And I kept pushing him along. Finally we got up to the
Inlet, and I was about to turn when he stopped me. You know the neck of
ground out beyond where the street cars loop; there's an old board fence
by the road, then sand to the sea, and about halfway between the fence
and the water there's a shed with some junk in it. You've seen it. They
made the old America out there and the shed was a tool house.
"'When I stopped the admiral says: "Cut across to the hole in that old
board fence and see if an automobile has been there, and I'll give you a
dollar." An' I done it, an' I got it.'
"Then he shuffled off.
"'Be on the spot, Governor, an' I'll lead him to you.'"
Walker leaned over, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and
linked his fingers together.
"That gave me a new flash on the creature. He was a slicker article than
I imagined. I was not to get off with a tip. He was taking some pains to
touch me for a greenback. I thought I saw his line. It would not account
for his hitting the description of Mulehaus in the make-up of his straw
man, but it would furnish the data for the dollar story. I had drawn the
latter a little before he was ready. It belonged in what he planned to
give me at two o'clock. But I thought I saw what the creature was about.
And I was right."
Walker put out his hand and moved the pages of his memoir on the table.
Then he went on:
"I was smoking a cigar on a bench at the entrance to Heinz's Pier when
the hobo shuffled up. He came down one of the streets from Pacific
Avenue, and the direction confirmed me in my theory. It also confirmed
me in the opinion that I was all kinds of a fool to let this dirty hobo
get a further chance at me.
"I was not in a very good humour. Everything I had set going after
Mulehaus was marking time. The only report was progress in linking
things up; not only along the Canadian and Mexican borders and the
custom houses, but we had also done a further unusual thing, we had an
agent on every ship going out of America to follow through to the
foreign port and look out for anything picked up on the way.
"It was a plan I had set at immediately the robbery was discovered. It
would cut out the trick of reshipping at sea from some fishing craft or
small boat. The reports were encouraging enough in that respect. We had
the whole country as tight as a drum. But it was slender comfort when
the Treasury was raising the devil for the plates and we hadn't a clue
to them."
Walker stopped a moment. Then he went on:
"I felt like kicking the hobo when he got to me, he was so obviously the
extreme of all worthless creatures, with that apologetic, confidential
manner which seems to be an abominable attendant on human degeneracy.
One may put up with it for a little while, but it presently becomes
intolerable.
"'Governor,' he began, when he shuffled up, 'you won't get mad if I say
a little somethin'?'
"'Go on and say it,' I said.
"The expression on his dirty unshaved face became, if possible, more
foolish.
"'Well, then, Governor, askin' your pardon, you ain't Mr. Henry P.
Johnson, from Erie; you're the Chief of the United States Secret
Service, from Washington.'"
Walker moved in his chair.
"That made me ugly," he went on, "the assurance of the creature and my
unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to
me on the day before by the postoffice messenger to be seen. In my
relaxation I had forgotten the eye of the chair attendant. I took the
cigar out of my teeth and looked at him.
"'And I'll say a little something myself!' I could hardly keep my foot
clear of him. 'When you got sober this morning and remembered who I was,
you took a turn up round the postoffice to make sure of it, and while
you were in there you saw the notice of the reward for the stolen bond
plates. That gave you the notion with which you pieced out your fairy
story about how you got the dollar tip. Having discovered my identity
through a piece of damned carelessness on my part and having seen the
postal notice of the reward, you undertook to enlarge your little game.
That's the reason you wouldn't take fifty cents. It was your notion in
the beginning to make a touch for a tip. And it would have worked. But
now you can't get a damned cent out of me.' Then I threw a little brush
into him: 'I'd have stood a touch for your finding the fake tanner,
because there isn't any such person.'
"I intended to put the hobo out of business," Walker went on, "but the
effect of my words on him were even more startling than I anticipated.
His jaw dropped and he looked at me in astonishment.
"'No such person!' he repeated. 'Why, Governor, before God, I found a
man like that, an' he was a banker--one of the big ones, sure as there's
a hell!'"
Walker put out his hands in a puzzled gesture.
"There it was again, the description of Mulehaus! And it puzzled me up.
Every motion of this hobo's mind in every direction about this affair
was perfectly clear to me. I saw his intention in every turn of it and
just where he got the material for the details of his story. But this
absolutely distinguishing description of Mulehaus was beyond me.
Everybody, of course, knew that we were looking for the lost plates, for
there was the reward offered by the Treasury; but no human soul outside
of the trusted agents of the department knew that we were looking for
Mulehaus."
Walker did not move, but he stopped in his recital for a moment.
"The tramp shuffled up a step closer to the bench where I sat The
anxiety in his big slack face was sincere beyond question.
"'I can't find the banker man, Governor; he's skipped the coop. But I
believe I can find what he's hid.'
"'Well' I said, 'go on and find it.'
"The hobo jerked out his limp hands in a sort of hopeless gesture.
"'Now, Governor,' he whimpered, 'what good would it do me to find them
plates?'
"'You'd get five thousand dollars,' I said.
"'I'd git kicked into the discard by the first cop that got to me,' he
answered, 'that's what I'd git.'
"The creature's dirty, unshaved jowls began to shake, and his voice
became wholly a whimper.
"'I've got a line on this thing, Governor, sure as there's a hell. That
banker man was viewin' the layout. I've thought it all over, an' this is
the way it would be. They're afraid of the border an' they're afraid of
the custom houses, so they runs the loot down here in an automobile,
hides it up about the Inlet, and plans to go out with it to one of them
fruit steamers passing on the way to Tampico. They'd have them plates
bundled up in a sailor's chest most like.
"'Now, Governor, you'd say why ain't they already done it; an' I'd
answer, the main guy--this banker man--didn't know the automobile had
got here until he sent me to look, and there ain't been no ship along
since then.... I've been special careful to find that out.' And then the
creature began to whine. 'Have a heart, Governor, come along with me.
Gimme a show!'
"It was not the creature's plea that moved me, nor his pretended
deductions; I'm a bit old to be soft. It was the 'banker man' sticking
like a bur in the hobo's talk. I wanted to keep him in right until I
understood where he got it. No doubt that seems a slight reason for
going out to the Inlet with the creature; but you must remember that
slight things are often big signboards in our business."
He continued, his voice precise and even: "We went directly from the
end of the Boardwalk to the old shed; it was open, an unfastened door on
a pair of leather hinges. The shed is small, about twenty feet by
eleven, with a hard dirt floor packed down by the workmen who had used
it, a combination of clay and sand like the Jersey roads put in to make
a floor. All round it, from the sea to the board fence was soft sand.
There were some pieces of old junk lying about in the shed; but nothing
of value or it would have been nailed up.
"The hobo led right off with his deductions. There was the track of a
man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from the board fence to
the shed and returning, and no other track anywhere about.
"'Now, Governor,' he began, when he had taken a look at the tracks, 'the
man that made them tracks carried something into this shed, and he left
it here, and it was something heavy.'
"I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me, made
the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.
"'How do you know that?' I said.
"'Well, Governor,' he answered, 'take a look at them two line of tracks.
In the one comin' to the shed the man was walkin' with his feet apart
and in the one goin' back he was walkin' with his feet in front of one
another; that's because he was carryin' somethin' heavy when he come an'
nothin' when he left.'
"It was an observation on footprints," he went on, "that had never
occurred to me. The hobo saw my awakened interest, and he added:
"'Did you never notice a man carryin a heavy load? He kind of totters,
walkin' with his feet apart to keep his balance. That makes his foot
tracks side by side like, instead of one before the other as he makes
them when he's goin' light.'"
Walker interrupted his narrative with a comment: "It's the truth I've
verified it a thousand times since that hobo put me onto it. A line
running through the center of the heel prints of a man carrying a heavy
burden will be a zigzag, while one through the heel prints of the same
man without the burden will be almost straight.
"The tramp went right on with his deductions:
"'If it come in and didn't go out, it's here.'
"And he began to go over the inside of the shed. He searched it like a
man searching a box for a jewel. He moved the pieces of old castings and
he literally fingered the shed from end to end. He would have found a
bird's egg.
"Finally he stopped and stood with hand spread out over his mouth. And I
selected this critical moment to touch the powder off under his game.