Produced by David Edwards, JoAnn Greenwood, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
[Transcriber's Note: These stories have introductions which end with
thought breaks, sometimes with a closing quotation mark from the
storyteller. When the storyteller continues the story after the thought
break, opening quotation marks are consistently omitted.
Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text.]
[Cover Illustration: On Secret Service,
William Nelson Taft]
ON SECRET SERVICE
[Decoration]
ON SECRET SERVICE
_Detective-Mystery Stories
Based on Real Cases Solved
By Government Agents_
BY
WILLIAM NELSON TAFT
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
* * * * *
ON SECRET SERVICE
Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A FLASH IN THE NIGHT 1
II. THE MINT MYSTERY 15
III. THE YPIRANGA CASE 28
IV. THE CLUE ON SHELF 45 42
V. PHYLLIS DODGE, SMUGGLER EXTRAORDINARY 57
VI. A MATTER OF RECORD 73
VII. THE SECRET STILL 88
VIII. THE TAXICAB TANGLE 103
IX. A MATCH FOR THE GOVERNMENT 118
X. THE GIRL AT THE SWITCHBOARD 133
XI. "LOST--$100,000!" 149
XII. "THE DOUBLE CODE" 164
XIII. THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MICE 180
XIV. WAH LEE AND THE FLOWER OF HEAVEN 195
XV. THE MAN WITH THREE WIVES 210
XVI. AFTER SEVEN YEARS 225
XVII. THE POISON-PEN PUZZLE 239
XVIII. THIRTY THOUSAND YARDS OF SILK 254
XIX. THE CLUE IN THE CLASSIFIED COLUMN 268
XX. IN THE SHADOW OF THE CAPITOL 283
XXI. A MILLION-DOLLAR QUARTER 298
XXII. "THE LOOTING OF THE C. T. C." 313
XXIII. THE CASE OF MRS. ARMITAGE 328
XXIV. FIVE INCHES OF DEATH 343
ON SECRET SERVICE
I
A FLASH IN THE NIGHT
We were sitting in the lobby of the Willard, Bill Quinn and I, watching
the constant stream of politicians, pretty women, and petty office
seekers who drift constantly through the heart of Washington.
Suddenly, under his breath, I heard Quinn mutter, "Hello!" and,
following his eyes, I saw a trim, dapper, almost effeminate-looking chap
of about twenty-five strolling through Peacock Alley as if he didn't
have a care in the world.
"What's the matter?" I inquired. "Somebody who oughtn't to be here?"
"Not at all. He's got a perfect right to be anywhere he pleases, but I
didn't know he was home. Last time I heard of him he was in Seattle,
mixed up with those riots that Ole Hanson handled so well."
"Bolshevist?"
"Hardly," and Quinn smiled. "Don't you know Jimmy Callahan? Well, it's
scarcely the province of a Secret Service man to impress his face upon
everyone ... the secret wouldn't last long. No, Jimmy was working on the
other end of the Seattle affair. Trying to locate the men behind the
move--and I understand he did it fairly well, too. But what else would
you expect from the man who solved that submarine tangle in Norfolk?"
Quinn must have read the look of interest in my face, for he continued,
almost without a pause: "Did you ever hear the inside of that case? One
of the most remarkable in the whole history of the Secret Service, and
that's saying a good deal. I don't suppose it would do any harm to spill
it, so let's move over there in a corner and I'll relate a few details
of a case where the second hand of a watch played a leading role."
* * * * *
The whole thing started back in the spring of 1918 [said Quinn, who held
down a soft berth in the Treasury Department as a reward for a game leg
obtained during a counterfeiting raid on Long Island].
Along about then, if you remember, the Germans let loose a lot of
boasting statements as to what they were going to do to American ships
and American shipping. Transports were going to be sunk, commerce
crippled and all that sort of thing. While not a word of it got into the
papers, there were a bunch of people right here in Washington who took
these threats seriously--for the Hun's most powerful weapon appeared to
be in his submarines, and if a fleet of them once got going off the
coast we'd lose a lot of valuable men and time landing them.
Then came the sinking of the _Carolina_ and those other ships off the
Jersey coast. Altogether it looked like a warm summer.
One afternoon the Chief sent for Callahan, who'd just come back from
taking care of some job down on the border, and told him his troubles.
"Jimmy," said the Chief, "somebody on this side is giving those damn
Huns a whole lot of information that they haven't any business getting.
You know about those boats they've sunk already, of course. They're
only small fry. What they're laying for is a transport, another
_Tuscania_ that they can stab in the dark and make their getaway. The
point that's worrying us is that the U-boats must be getting their
information from some one over here. The sinking of the _Carolina_
proves that. No submarine, operating on general cruising orders, could
possibly have known when that ship was due or what course she was going
to take. Every precaution was taken at San Juan to keep her sailing a
secret, but of course you can't hide every detail of that kind. She got
out. Some one saw her, wired the information up the coast here and the
man we've got to nab tipped the U-boat off.
"Of course we could go at it from Porto Rico, but that would mean
wasting a whole lot more time than we can afford. It's not so much a
question of the other end of the cable as it is who transmitted the
message to the submarine--and how!
"It's your job to find out before they score a real hit."
Callahan, knowing the way things are handled in the little suite on the
west side of the Treasury Building, asked for the file containing the
available information and found it very meager indeed.
Details of the sinking of the _Carolina_ were included, among them the
fact that the _U-37_ had been waiting directly in the path of the
steamer, though the latter was using a course entirely different from
the one the New York and Porto Rico S. S. Company's boats generally
took. The evidence of a number of passengers was that the submarine
didn't appear a bit surprised at the size of her prey, but went about
the whole affair in a businesslike manner. The meat of the report was
contained in the final paragraph, stating that one of the German
officers had boasted that they "would get a lot more ships in the same
way," adding, "Don't worry--we'll be notified when they are going to
sail."
Of course, Callahan reasoned, this might be simply a piece of Teutonic
bravado--but there was more than an even chance that it was the truth,
particularly when taken in conjunction with the sinking of the _Texel_
and the _Pinar del Rio_ and the fact that the _Carolina's_ course was so
accurately known.
But how in the name of Heaven had they gotten their information?
Callahan knew that the four principal ports of embarkation for
troops--Boston, New York, Norfolk, and Charleston--were shrouded in a
mantle of secrecy which it was almost impossible to penetrate. Some
months before, when he had been working on the case which grew out of
the disappearance of the plans of the battleship _Pennsylvania_, he had
had occasion to make a number of guarded inquiries in naval circles in
New York, and he recalled that it had been necessary not only to show
his badge, but to submit to the most searching scrutiny before he was
allowed to see the men he wished to reach. He therefore felt certain
that no outsider could have dug up the specific information in the short
space of time at their disposal.
But, arguing that it had been obtained, the way in which it had been
passed on to the U-boat also presented a puzzle.
Was there a secret submarine base on the coast?
Had some German, more daring than the rest, actually come ashore and
penetrated into the very lines of the Service?
Had he laid a plan whereby he could repeat this operation as often as
necessary?
Or did the answer lie in a concealed wireless, operating upon
information supplied through underground channels?
These were only a few of the questions which raced through Callahan's
mind. The submarine base he dismissed as impracticable. He knew that the
_Thor_, the _Unita_, the _Macedonia_, and nine other vessels had, at the
beginning of the war, cleared from American ports under false papers
with the intention of supplying German warships with oil, coal, and
food. He also knew that, of the million and a half dollars' worth of
supplies, less than one-sixth had ever been transshipped. Therefore,
having failed so signally here, the Germans would hardly try the same
scheme again.
The rumor that German officers had actually come into New York, where
they were supposed to have been seen in a theater, was also rather
far-fetched. So the wireless theory seemed to be the most tenable. But
even a wireless cannot conceal its existence from the other stations
indefinitely. Of course, it was possible that it might be located on
some unfrequented part of the coast--but then how could the operator
obtain the information which he transmitted to the U-boat?
Callahan gave it up in despair--for that night. He was tired and he felt
that eight hours' sleep would do him more good than thrashing around
with a problem for which there appeared to be no solution; a problem
which, after all, he couldn't even be sure existed.
Maybe, he thought, drowsily, as he turned off the light--maybe the
German on the U-boat was only boasting, after all--or, maybe....
The first thing Jimmy did the next morning was to call upon the head of
the recently organized Intelligence Bureau of the War Department--not
the Intelligence Division which has charge of censorship and the
handling of news, but the bureau which bears the same relation to the
army that the Secret Service does to the Treasury Department.
"From what ports are transports sailing within the next couple of
weeks?" he inquired of the officer in charge.
"From Boston, New York, Norfolk, and Charleston," was the reply--merely
confirming Callahan's previous belief. He had hoped that the ground
would be more limited, because he wanted to have the honor of solving
this problem by himself, and it was hardly possible for him to cover the
entire Atlantic Coast.
"Where's the biggest ship sailing from?" was his next question.
"There's one that clears Norfolk at daylight on Monday morning with
twelve thousand men aboard...."
"Norfolk?" interrupted Callahan. "I thought most of the big ones left
from New York or Boston."
"So they do, generally. But these men are from Virginia and North
Carolina. Therefore it's easier to ship them right out of Norfolk--saves
time and congestion of the railroads. As it happens, the ship they're
going on is one of the largest that will clear for ten days or more. All
of the other big ones are on the other side."
"Then," cut in Callahan, "if the Germans wanted to make a ten-strike
they'd lay for that boat?"
"They sure would--and one torpedo well placed would make the _Tuscania_
look like a Sunday-school picnic. But what's the idea? Got a tip that
the Huns are going to try to grab her?"
"No, not a tip," Callahan called back over his shoulder, for he was
already halfway out of the door; "just a hunch--and I'm going to play it
for all it's worth!"
The next morning, safely ensconced at the Monticello under the name of
"Robert P. Oliver, of Williamsport, Pa." Callahan admitted to himself
that he was indeed working on nothing more than a "hunch," and not a
very well-defined one at that. The only point that appeared actually to
back up his theory that the information was coming from Norfolk was the
fact that the U-boat was known to be operating between New York and the
Virginia capes. New York itself was well guarded and the surrounding
country was continually patrolled by operatives of all kinds. It was the
logical point to watch, and therefore it would be much more difficult to
obtain and transmit information there than it would be in the vicinity
of Norfolk, where military and naval operations were not conducted on as
large a scale nor with as great an amount of secrecy.
Norfolk, Callahan found, was rather proud of her new-found glory. For
years she had basked in the social prestige of the Chamberlin, the
annual gathering of the Fleet at Hampton Roads and the military pomp and
ceremony attendant upon the operations of Fortress Monroe. But the war
had brought a new thrill. Norfolk was now one of the principal ports of
embarkation for the men going abroad. Norfolk had finally taken her rank
with New York and Boston--the rank to which her harbor entitled her.
Callahan reached Norfolk on Wednesday morning. The _America_, according
to the information he had received from the War Department, would clear
at daybreak Monday--but at noon on Saturday the Secret Service operative
had very little more knowledge than when he arrived. He had found that
there was a rumor to the effect that two U-boats were waiting off the
Capes for the transport, which, of course, would have the benefit of the
usual convoy.
"But," as one army officer phrased it, "what's the use of a convoy if
they know just where you are? Germany would willingly lose a sub. or two
to get us, and, with the sea that's been running for the past ten days,
there'd be no hope of saving more than half the boys."
Spurred by the rapidity with which time was passing and the fact that he
sensed a thrill of danger--an intuition of impending peril--around the
_America_, Callahan spent the better part of Friday night and all
Saturday morning running down tips that proved to be groundless. A man
with a German name was reported to be working in secret upon some
invention in an isolated house on Willoughby Spit; a woman, concerning
whom little was known, had been seen frequently in the company of two
lieutenants slated to sail on the _America_; a house in Newport News
emitted strange "clacking" sounds at night.
But the alleged German proved to be a photographer of unassailable
loyalty, putting in extra hours trying to develop a new process of color
printing. The woman came from one of the oldest families in Richmond and
had known the two lieutenants for years. The house in Newport News
proved to be the residence of a young man who hoped some day to sell a
photoplay scenario, the irregular clacking noise being made by a
typewriter operated none too steadily.
"That's what happens to most of the 'clues' that people hand you,"
Callahan mused as he sat before his open window on Saturday evening,
with less than thirty-six hours left before the _America_ was scheduled
to leave. "Some fellows have luck with them, but I'll be hanged if I
ever did. Here I'm working in the dark on a case that I'm not even
positive exists. That infernal submarine may be laying off Boston at
this minute, waiting for the ship that leaves there Tuesday. Maybe they
don't get any word from shore at all.... Maybe they just...."
But here he was brought up with a sudden jar that concentrated all his
mental faculties along an entirely different road.
Gazing out over the lights of the city, scarcely aware that he saw them,
his subconscious mind had been following for the past three minutes
something apparently usual, but in reality entirely out of the ordinary.
"By George!" he muttered, "I wonder...."
Then, taking his watch from his pocket, his eyes alternated between a
point several blocks distant--a point over the roofs of the houses--and
the second hand of his timepiece. Less than a minute elapsed before he
reached for a pencil and commenced to jot down dots and dashes on the
back of an envelope. When, a quarter of an hour later, he found that the
dashes had become monotonous--as he expected they would--he reached for
the telephone and asked to be connected with the private wire of the
Navy Department in Washington.
"Let me speak to Mr. Thurber at once," he directed. "Operative Callahan,
S. S., speaking.... Hello! that you, Thurber?... This is Callahan. I'm
in Norfolk and I want to know whether you can read this code. You can
figure it out if anybody can. Ready?... Dash, dash, dash, dot, dash,
dash, dot--" and he continued until he had repeated the entire series of
symbols that he had plucked out of the night.
"Sounds like a variation of the International Morse," came the comment
from the other end of the wire--from Thurber, librarian of the Navy
Department and one of the leading American authorities on code and
ciphers. "May take a little time to figure it out, but it doesn't look
difficult. Where can I reach you?"
"I'm at the Monticello--name of Robert P. Oliver. Put in a call for me
as soon as you see the light on it. I've got something important to do
right now," and he hung up without another word.
A quick grab for his hat, a pat under his arm, to make sure that the
holster holding the automatic was in place, and Callahan was on his way
downstairs.
Once in the street, he quickened his pace and was soon gazing skyward at
the corner of two deserted thoroughfares not many blocks from the
Monticello. A few minutes' consultation with his watch confirmed his
impression that everything was right again and he commenced his search
for the night watchman.
"Who," he inquired of that individual, "has charge of the operation of
that phonograph sign on the roof?"
"Doan know fuh certain, suh, but Ah think it's operated by a man down
the street a piece. He's got charge of a bunch of them sort o' things.
Mighty funny kinder way to earn a livin', Ah calls it--flashing on an'
off all night long...."
"But where's he work from?" interrupted Callahan, fearful that the
negro's garrulousness might delay him unduly.
"Straight down this street three blocks, suh. Then turn one block to yo'
left and yo' cain't miss the place. Electrical Advertisin' Headquarters
they calls it. Thank you, suh," and Callahan was gone almost before the
watchman could grasp the fact that he held a five-dollar bill instead of
a dollar, as he thought.
It didn't take the Secret Service man long to locate the place he
sought, and on the top floor he found a dark, swarthy individual bending
over the complicated apparatus which operated a number of the electric
signs throughout the city. Before the other knew it, Callahan was in the
room--his back to the door and his automatic ready for action.
"Up with your hands!" snapped Callahan. "Higher! That's better. Now tell
me where you got that information you flashed out to sea to-night by
means of that phonograph sign up the street. Quick! I haven't any time
to waste."
"_Si, si, senor_," stammered the man who faced him. "But I understand
not the English very well."
"All right," countered Callahan. "Let's try it in Spanish," and he
repeated his demands in that language.
Volubly the Spaniard--or Mexican, as he later turned out to
be--maintained that he had received no information, nor had he
transmitted any. He claimed his only duty was to watch the "drums" which
operated the signs mechanically.
"No drum in the world could make that sign flash like it did to-night,"
Callahan cut in. "For more than fifteen minutes you sent a variation of
the Morse code seaward. Come on--I'll give you just one minute to tell
me, or I'll bend this gun over your head."
Before the minute had elapsed, the Mexican commenced his confession. He
had been paid a hundred dollars a week, he claimed, to flash a certain
series of signals every Saturday night, precisely at nine o'clock. The
message itself--a series of dots and dashes which he produced from his
pocket as evidence of his truthfulness--had reached him on Saturday
morning for the two preceding weeks. He didn't know what it meant. All
he did was to disconnect the drum which operated the sign and move the
switch himself. Payment for each week's work, he stated, was inclosed
with the next week's message. Where it came from he didn't know, but the
envelope was postmarked Washington.
With his revolver concealed in his coat pocket, but with its muzzle in
the small of the Mexican's back, Callahan marched his captive back to
the hotel and up into his room. As he opened the door the telephone rang
out, and, ordering the other to stand with his face to the wall in a
corner--"and be damn sure not to make a move"--the government agent
answered the call. As he expected, it was Thurber.
"The code's a cinch," came the voice over the wire from Washington. "But
the message is infernally important. It's in German, and evidently you
picked it up about two sentences from the start. The part you gave me
states that the transport _America_, with twelve thousand men aboard,
will leave Norfolk at daylight Monday. The route the ship will take is
distinctly stated, as is the personnel of her convoy. Where'd you get
the message?"
"Flashes in the night," answered Callahan. "I noticed that an electric
sign wasn't behaving regularly--so I jotted down its signals and passed
them on to you. The next important point is whether the message is
complete enough for you to reconstruct the code. Have you got all the
letters?"
"Yes, every one of them."
"Then take down this message, put it into that dot-and-dash code and
send it to me by special messenger on one of the navy torpedo boats
to-night. It's a matter of life and death to thousands of men!" and
Callahan dictated three sentences over the wire. "Got that?" he
inquired. "Good! Get busy and hurry it down. I've got to have it in the
morning."
"Turn around," he directed the Mexican, as he replaced the receiver.
"Were you to send these messages only on Saturday night?"
"_Si, senor._ Save that I was told that there might be occasions when I
had to do the same thing on Sunday night, too."
"At nine o'clock?"
"_Si, senor._"
Callahan smiled. Things were breaking better than he had dared hope. It
meant that the U-boat would be watching for the signal the following
night. Then, with proper emphasis of the automatic, he gave the Mexican
his orders. He was to return to his office with Callahan and go about
his business as usual, with the certainty that if he tried any
foolishness the revolver could act more quickly than he. Accompanied by
the government agent, he was to come back to the Monticello and spend
the night in Callahan's room, remaining there until the next evening
when he would--promptly at nine o'clock and under the direction of an
expert in telegraphy--send the message which Callahan would hand him.
That's practically all there is to the story.
* * * * *
"All?" I echoed, when Quinn paused. "What do you mean, 'all'? What was
the message Callahan sent? What happened to the Mexican? Who sent the
letter and the money from Washington?"
"Nothing much happened to the Mexican," replied my informant, with a
smile. "They found that he was telling the truth, so they just sent him
over the border with instructions not to show himself north of the Rio
Grande. As for the letter--that took the Post Office, the Department of
Justice, and the Secret Service the better part of three months to
trace. But they finally located the sender, two weeks after she (yes, it
was a woman, and a darned pretty one at that) had made her getaway. I
understand they got her in England and sentenced her to penal servitude
for some twenty years or more. In spite of the war, the Anglo-Saxon race
hasn't completely overcome its prejudice against the death penalty for
women."
"But the message Callahan sent?" I persisted.
"That was short and to the point. As I recall it, it ran something like
this: 'Urgent--Route of _America_ changed. She clears at daylight, but
takes a course exactly ten miles south of one previously stated. Be
there."
"The U-boat was there, all right. But so were four hydroplanes and half
a dozen destroyers, all carrying the Stars and Stripes!"
II
THE MINT MYSTERY
"Mr Drummond! Wire for Mr. Drummond! Mr. Drummond, please!"
It was the monotonous, oft-repeated call of a Western Union
boy--according to my friend Bill Quinn, formerly of the United States
Secret Service--that really was responsible for solving the mystery
which surrounded the disappearance of $130,000 in gold from the
Philadelphia Mint.
"The boy himself didn't have a thing to do with the gold or the finding
of it," admitted Quinn, "but his persistence was responsible for
locating Drummond, of the Secret Service, just as he was about to start
on a well-earned vacation in the Maine woods. Uncle Sam's sleuths don't
get any too much time off, you know, and a month or so in a part of the
world where they don't know anything about international intrigues and
don't care about counterfeiting is a blessing not to be despised.
"That's the reason the boy had to be persistent when he was paging
Drummond.
"The operative had a hunch that it was a summons to another case and he
was dog tired. But the boy kept singing out the name through the train
and finally landed his man, thus being indirectly responsible for the
solution of a mystery that might have remained unsolved for weeks--and
incidentally saved the government nearly every cent of the one hundred
and thirty thousand dollars."
* * * * *
When Drummond opened the telegram [continued Quinn] he found that it was
a summons to Philadelphia, signed by Hamlin, Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury.
"Preston needs you at once. Extremely important," read the wire--and, as
Drummond was fully aware that Preston was Director of the United States
Mint, it didn't take much deduction to figure that something had gone
wrong in the big building on Spring Garden Street where a large part of
the country's money is coined.
But even the lure of the chase--something you read a lot about in
detective stories, but find too seldom in the real hard work of tracing
criminals--did not offset Drummond's disappointment in having to defer
his vacation. Grumbling, he gathered his bags and cut across New York to
the Pennsylvania Station, where he was fortunate enough to be able to
make a train on the point of leaving for Philadelphia. At the Mint he
found Director Preston and Superintendent Bosbyshell awaiting him.
"Mr. Hamlin wired that he had instructed you to come up at once," said
the director. "But we had hardly hoped that you could make it so soon."
"Wire reached me on board a train that would have pulled out of Grand
Central Station in another three minutes," growled Drummond. "I was on
my way to Maine to forget all about work for a month. But," and his face
broke into a smile, "since they did find me, what's the trouble?"
"Trouble enough," replied the director. "Some hundred and thirty
thousand dollars in gold is missing from the Mint!"
"What!" Even Drummond was shaken out of his professional calm, not to
mention his grouch. Robbery of the United States Treasury or one of the
government Mints was a favorite dream with criminals, but--save for the
memorable occasion when a gang was found trying to tunnel under
Fifteenth Street in Washington--there had been no time when the scheme
was more than visionary.
"Are you certain? Isn't there any chance for a mistake?"
The questions were perfunctory, rather than hopeful.
"Unfortunately, not the least," continued Preston. "Somebody has made
away with a hundred and thirty thousand dollars worth of the
government's money. Seven hundred pounds of gold is missing and there
isn't a trace to show how or where it went. The vault doors haven't been
tampered with. The combination of the grille inside the vault is intact.
Everything, apparently, is as it should be--but fifty bars of gold are
missing."
"And each bar," mused Drummond, "weighs--"
"Fourteen pounds," cut in the superintendent.
Drummond looked at him in surprise.
"I beg your pardon," said Preston. "This is Mr. Bosbyshell,
superintendent of the Mint. This thing has gotten on my nerves so that I
didn't have the common decency to introduce you. Mr. Bosbyshell was with
me when we discovered that the gold was missing."
"When was that?"
"Yesterday afternoon," replied the director. "Every now and then--at
irregular intervals--we weigh all the gold in the Mint, to make sure
that everything is as it should be. Nothing wrong was discovered until
we reached Vault Six, but there fifty bars were missing. There wasn't
any chance of error. The records showed precisely how much should have
been there and the scales showed how much there was, to the fraction of
an ounce.
"But even if we had only counted the bars, instead of weighing each one
separately, the theft would have been instantly discovered, for the
vault contained exactly fifty bars less than it should have. It was then
that I wired Washington and asked for assistance from the Secret
Service."
"Thus spoiling my vacation," muttered Drummond. "How many men know the
combination to the vault door?"
"Only two," replied the superintendent. "Cochrane, who is the official
weigher, and myself. Cochrane is above suspicion. He's been here for the
past thirty years and there hasn't been a single complaint against him
in all that time."
Drummond looked as if he would like to ask Preston if the same could be
said for the superintendent, but he contented himself with listening as
Bosbyshell continued:
"But even if Cochrane or I--yes, I'm just as much to be suspected as
he--could have managed to open the vault door unseen, we could not have
gotten inside the iron grille which guards the gold in the interior of
the vault. That is always kept locked, with a combination known to two
other men only. There's too much gold in each one of these vaults to
take any chance with, which is the reason for this double protection.
Two men--Cochrane and I--handle the combination to the vault door and
open it whenever necessary. Two others--Jamison and Strubel--are the
only ones that know how to open the grille door. One of them has to be
present whenever the bars are put in or taken away, for the men who can
get inside the vault cannot enter the grille, and the men who can
manipulate the grille door can't get into the vault."
"It certainly sounds like a burglar-proof combination," commented
Drummond. "Is there any possibility for conspiracy between"--and he
hesitated for the fraction of a second--"between Cochrane and either of
the men who can open the grille door?"
"Apparently not the least in the world," replied Preston. "So far as we
know they are all as honest as the day--"
"But the fact remains," Drummond interrupted, "that the gold is
missing."
"Exactly--but the grille door was sealed with the official governmental
stamp when we entered the vault yesterday. That stamp is applied only in
the presence of both men who know the combination. So the conspiracy, if
there be any, must have included Cochrane, Strubel, and Jamison--instead
of being a two-man job."
"How much gold did you say was missing?" inquired the Treasury
operative, taking another tack.
"Seven hundred pounds--fifty bars of fourteen pounds each," answered
Bosbyshell. "That's another problem that defies explanation. How could
one man carry away all that gold without being seen? He'd need a dray to
cart it off, and we're very careful about what goes out of the Mint.
There's a guard at the front door all the time, and no one is allowed to
leave with a package of any kind until it has been examined and passed."
A grunt was Drummond's only comment--and those who knew the Secret
Service man best would have interpreted the sound to mean studious
digestion of facts, rather than admission of even temporary defeat.
It was one of the government detective's pet theories that every crime,
no matter how puzzling, could be solved by application of common-sense
principles and the rules of logic. "The criminal with brains," he was
fond of saying, "will deliberately try to throw you off the scent. Then
you've got to take your time and separate the wheat from the chaff--the
false leads from the true. But the man who commits a crime on the spur
of the moment--or who flatters himself that he hasn't left a single clue
behind--is the one who's easy to catch. The cleverest crook in the world
can't enter a room without leaving his visiting card in some way or
other. It's up to you to find that card and read the name on it. And
common sense is the best reading glass."
Requesting that his mission be kept secret, Drummond said that he would
like to examine Vault No. Six.
"Let Cochrane open the vault for me and then have Jamison and Strubel
open the grille," he directed.
"Unless Mr. Bosbyshell opened the vault door," Preston reminded him,
"there's no one but Cochrane who could do it. It won't be necessary,
however, to have either of the others open the grille--the door was
taken from its hinges this morning in order the better to examine the
place and it hasn't yet been replaced."
"All right," agreed Drummond. "Let's have Cochrane work the outer
combination, then. I'll have a look at the other two later."
Accompanied by the director and the superintendent, Drummond made his
way to the basement where they were joined by the official weigher, a
man well over fifty, who was introduced by Preston to "Mr. Drummond, a
visitor who is desirous of seeing the vaults."
"I understand that you are the only man who can open them," said the
detective. "Suppose we look into this one," as he stopped, as if by
accident, before Vault No. 6.
Cochrane, without a word, bent forward and commenced to twirl the
combination. A few spins to the right, a few to the left, back to the
right, to the left once more--and he pulled at the heavy door
expectantly. But it failed to budge.
Again he bent over the combination, spinning it rapidly. Still the door
refused to open.
"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to help me with this, Superintendent,"
Cochrane said, finally. "It doesn't seem to work, somehow."
But, under Bosbyshell's manipulation, the door swung back almost
instantly.
"Nothing wrong with the combination," commented Preston.
Drummond smiled. "Has the combination been changed recently?" he asked.
"Not for the past month," Bosbyshell replied. "We usually switch all of
them six times a year, just as a general precaution--but this has been
the same for the past few weeks. Ever since the fifteenth of last month,
to be precise."
Inside the vault Drummond found that, as Preston had stated, the door to
the grille had been taken from its hinges, to facilitate the work of the
men who had weighed the gold, and had not been replaced.
"Where are the gold bars?" asked the detective. "The place looks like it
had been well looted."
"They were all taken out this morning, to be carefully weighed," was
Preston's reply.
"I'd like to see some of them stacked up there along the side of the
grille, if it isn't too much trouble."
"Surely," said Bosbyshell. "I'll have the men bring them in at once."
As soon as the superintendent had left the room, Drummond requested that
the door of the grille be placed in its usual position, and Cochrane set
it up level with the floor, leaning against the supports at the side.
"Is that the way it always stays?" inquired the Secret Service man.
"No, sir, but it's pretty heavy to handle, and I thought you just wanted
to get a general idea of things."
"I'd like to see it in place, if you don't mind. Here, I'll help you
with it--but we better slip our coats off, for it looks like a
man's-sized job," and he removed his coat as he spoke.
After Cochrane had followed his example, the two of them hung the heavy
door from its hinges and stepped back to get the effect. But Drummond's
eyes were fixed, not upon the entrance to the grille, but on the middle
of Cochrane's back, and, when the opportunity offered an instant later,
he shifted his gaze to the waist of the elder man's trousers. Something
that he saw there caused the shadow of a smile to flit across his face.
"Thanks," he said. "That will do nicely," and he made a quick gesture to
Preston that he would like to have Cochrane leave the vault.
"Very much obliged, Mr. Cochrane," said the director. "We won't bother
you any more. You might ask those men to hurry in with the bars, if you
will."
And the weigher, pausing only to secure his coat, left the vault.
"Why all the stage setting?" inquired Preston. "You don't suspect...."
"I don't suspect a thing," Drummond smiled, searching for his own coat,
"beyond the fact that the solution to the mystery is so simple as to be
almost absurd. By the way, have you noticed those scratches on the bars
of the grille, about four feet from the floor?"
"No, I hadn't," admitted the director. "But what of them? These vaults
aren't new, you know, and I dare say you'd find similar marks on the
grille bars in any of the others."
"I hope not," Drummond replied, grimly, "for that would almost
certainly mean a shortage of gold in other sections of the Mint.
Incidentally, has all the rest of the gold been weighed?"
"Every ounce of it."
"Nothing missing?"
"Outside of the seven hundred pounds from this vault, not a particle."
"Good--then I'll be willing to lay a small wager that you can't find the
duplicates of these scratches anywhere else in the Mint." And Drummond
smiled at the director's perplexity.
When the men arrived with a truck loaded with gold bars, they stacked
them--at the superintendent's direction--along the side of the grille
nearest the vault entrance.
"Is that the way they are usually arranged?" inquired Drummond.
"Yes--the grille bars are of tempered steel and the openings between
them are too small to permit anyone to put his hand through. Therefore,
as we are somewhat pressed for space, we stack them up right along the
outer wall of the grille and then work back. It saves time and labor in
bringing them in."
"Is this the way the door of the grille ordinarily hangs?"
Bosbyshell inspected it a moment before he replied.
"Yes," he said. "It appears to be all right. It was purposely made to
swing clear of the floor and the ceiling so that it might not become
jammed. The combination and the use of the seal prevents its being
opened by anyone who has no business in the grille."
"And the seal was intact when you came in yesterday afternoon?"
"It was."
"Thanks," said Drummond; "that was all I wanted to know," and he made
his way upstairs with a smile which seemed to say that his vacation in
the Maine woods had not been indefinitely postponed.
Once back in the director's office, the government operative asked
permission to use the telephone, and, calling the Philadelphia office of
the Secret Service, requested that three agents be assigned to meet him
down town as soon as possible.
"Have you a record of the home address of the people employed in the
Mint?" Drummond inquired of the director, as he hung up the receiver.
"Surely," said Preston, producing a typewritten list from the drawer of
his desk.
"I'll borrow this for a while, if I may. I'll probably be back with it
before three o'clock--and bring some news with me, too," and the
operative was out of the room before Preston could frame a single
question.
As a matter of fact, the clock in the director's office pointed to
two-thirty when Drummond returned, accompanied by the three men who had
been assigned to assist him.
"Have you discovered anything?" Preston demanded.
"Let's have Cochrane up here first," Drummond smiled. "I can't be
positive until I've talked to him. You might have the superintendent in,
too. He'll be interested in developments, I think."
Bosbyshell was the first to arrive, and, at Drummond's request, took up
a position on the far side of the room. As soon as he had entered, two
of the other Secret Service men ranged themselves on the other side of
the doorway and, the moment Cochrane came in, closed the door behind
him.
"Cochrane," said Drummond, "what did you do with the seven hundred
pounds of gold that you took from Vault No. Six during the past few
weeks?"
"What--what--" stammered the weigher.
"There's no use bluffing," continued the detective. "We've got the goods
on you. The only thing missing is the gold itself, and the sooner you
turn it over the more lenient the government will be with you. I know
how you got the bars out of the grille--a piece of bent wire was
sufficient to dislodge them from the top of the pile nearest the grille
bars and it was easy to slip them under the door. No wonder the seal was
never tampered with. It wasn't necessary for you to go inside the grille
at all.
"But, more than that, I know how you carried the bars, one at a time,
out of the Mint. It took these three men less than an hour this
afternoon to find the tailor who fixed the false pocket in the front of
your trousers--the next time you try a job of this kind you better
attend to all these details yourself--and it needed only one look at
your suspenders this morning to see that they were a good deal wider and
heavier than necessary. That long coat you are in the habit of wearing
is just the thing to cover up any suspicious bulge in your garments and
the guard at the door, knowing you, would never think of telling you to
stop unless you carried a package or something else contrary to orders.
"The people in your neighborhood say that they've seen queer bluish
lights in the basement of your house on Woodland Avenue. So I suspect
you've been melting that gold up and hiding it somewhere, ready for a
quick getaway.
"Yes, Cochrane, we've got the goods on you and if you want to save half
of a twenty-year sentence--which at your age means life--come across
with the information. Where is the gold?"
"In the old sewer pipe," faltered the weigher, who appeared to have aged
ten years while Drummond was speaking. "In the old sewer pipe that
leads from my basement."
"Good!" exclaimed Drummond. "I think Mr. Preston will use his influence
with the court to see that your sentence isn't any heavier than
necessary. It's worth that much to guard the Mint against future losses
of the same kind, isn't it, Mr. Director?"
"It surely is," replied Preston. "But how in the name of Heaven did you
get the answer so quickly?"
Drummond delayed his answer until Cochrane, accompanied by the three
Secret Service men, had left the room. Then--
"Nothing but common sense," he said. "You remember those scratches I
called your attention to--the ones on the side of the grille bars? They
were a clear indication of the way in which the gold had been taken from
the grille--knocked down from the top of the pile with a piece of wire
and pulled under the door of the grille. That eliminated Jamison and
Strubel immediately. They needn't have gone to that trouble, even if it
had been possible for them to get into the vault in the first place.
"But I had my suspicions of Cochrane when he was unable to open the
vault door. That pointed to nervousness, and nervousness indicated a
guilty conscience. I made the hanging of the grille door an excuse to
get him to shed his coat--though I did want to see whether the door came
all the way down to the floor--and I noted that his suspenders were very
broad and his trousers abnormally wide around the waist. He didn't want
to take any chances with that extra fourteen pounds of gold, you know.
It would never do to drop it in the street.
"The rest is merely corroborative. I found that bluish lights had been
observed in the basement of Cochrane's house, and one of my men located
the tailor who had enlarged his trousers. That's really all there was
to it."
With that Drummond started to the door, only to be stopped by Director
Preston's inquiry as to where he was going.
"On my vacation, which you interrupted this morning," replied the Secret
Service man.
"It's a good thing I did," Preston called after him. "If Cochrane had
really gotten away with that gold we might never have caught him."
* * * * *
"Which," as Bill Quinn said, when he finished his narrative, "is the
reason I claim that the telegraph boy who persisted in paging Drummond
is the one who was really responsible for the saving of some hundred and
thirty thousand dollars that belonged to Uncle Sam."
"But, surely," I said, "that case was an exception. In rapidity of
action, I mean. Don't governmental investigations usually take a long
time?"
"Frequently," admitted Quinn, "they drag on and on for months--sometimes
years. But it's seldom that Uncle Sam fails to land his man--even though
the trail leads into the realms of royalty, as in the Ypiranga case.
That happened before the World War opened, but it gave the State
Department a mighty good line on what to expect from Germany."
III
THE YPIRANGA CASE
"Mexico," said Bill Quinn, who now holds a soft berth in the Treasury
Department by virtue of an injury received in the line of duty--during a
raid on counterfeiters a few years ago, to be precise--"is back on the
first page of the papers again after being crowded off for some four
years because of the World War. Funny coincidence, that, when you
remember that it was this same Mexico that gave us our first indication
of the way we might expect Germany to behave."
"Huh?" I said, a bit startled. "What do you mean? The first spark of the
war was kindled in Serbia, not Mexico. Outside of the rumblings of the
Algeciras case and one or two other minor affairs, there wasn't the
slightest indication of the conflict to come."
"No?" and Quinn's eyebrows went up in interrogation. "How about the
Ypiranga case?"
"The which?"
"The Ypiranga case--the one where Jack Stewart stumbled across a clue in
a Mexico City cafe which led all the way to Berlin and back to
Washington and threatened to precipitate a row before the Kaiser was
quite ready for it?"
"No," I admitted, "that's a page of underground history that I haven't
read--and I must confess that I don't know Stewart, either."
"Probably not," said the former Secret Service man. "He wasn't
connected with any of the branches of the government that get into print
very often. As a matter of fact, the very existence of the organization
to which he belonged isn't given any too much publicity. Everyone knows
of the Secret Service and the men who make the investigations for the
Department of Justice and the Post-office Department--but the Department
of State, for obvious reasons, conducts its inquiries in a rather more
diplomatic manner. Its agents have to pose as commercial investigators,
or something else equally as prosaic. Their salaries are, as a general
thing, paid out of the President's private allowance or out of the fund
given to the department 'for use as it may see fit.' Less than half a
dozen people know the actual status of the organization or the names of
its members at any one time, and its exploits are recorded only in the
archives of the State Department."
"But who," I persisted, as Quinn stopped, "was Jack Stewart and what was
the nature of the affair upon which he stumbled in Mexico City?"
* * * * *
Stewart [replied Quinn] was just a quiet, ordinary sort of chap, the
kind that you'd expect to find behind a desk in the State Department,
sorting out consular reports and handling routine stuff. Nothing
exceptional about him at all--which was probably one reason for his
being selected for work as a secret agent of the Department. It doesn't
do, you know, to pick men who are conspicuous, either in their dress or
manner. Too easy to spot and remember them. The chap who's swallowed up
in the crowd is the one who can get by with a whole lot of quiet work
without being suspected.
When they sent Jack down to Mexico they didn't have the slightest idea
he'd uncover anything as big as he did. The country south of the Rio
Grande, if you recall, had been none too quiet for some time prior to
1914. Taft had had his troubles with it ever since the end of the Diaz
regime, and when Wilson came in the "Mexican question" was a legacy that
caused the men in the State Department to spend a good many sleepless
nights.
All sorts of rumors, most of them wild and bloody, floated up through
official and unofficial channels. The one fact that seemed to be certain
was that Mexico was none too friendly to the United States, and that
some other nation was behind this feeling, keeping it constantly stirred
up and overlooking no opportunity to add fuel to the flame. Three or
four other members of the State Department's secret organization had
been wandering around picking up leads for some months past and, upon
the return of one of these to Washington, Stewart was sent to replace
him.