that she got home late from a party last night. She couldn't sleep
because she was all jazzed up from dancing or something, so she sat near
her window, which looks out upon a vacant lot on the corner. Along about
two o'clock a taxicab came putt-putting up the street, stopped at the
corner, and two men carrying black bags hopped out. The taxicab remained
there until nearly four o'clock--three-forty-eight, Miss Norton's watch
said--and then the two men came back, without the bags, jumped in, and
rolled off. That's all she knows, or, at least, all she told.
"When she picked up the paper round eleven o'clock this mornin' the
first thing that caught her eye was the attempt to blow up the powder
plant 'bout two miles from the Norton home. One paragraph of the story
stated that fragments of a black bag had been picked up near the scene
of the explosion, which only wrecked one of the outhouses, and the young
lady leaped to the conclusion that her two night-owls were mixed up in
the affair. So she called up to tip us off and get her name in history.
Better run over and talk to her. There might be something to the
information, after all."
"Yes, there _might_," muttered Whitney, "but it's getting so nowadays
that if you walk down the street with a purple tie on, when some one
thinks you ought to be wearing a green one, they want you arrested as a
spy. Confound these amateurs, anyhow! I'm a married man, Chief. Why
don't you send Giles or one of the bachelors on this?"
"For just that reason," was the reply. "Giles or one of the others would
probably be impressed by the Norton's girl's blond hair--it must be
blond from the way she talked--and spend entirely too much time running
the whole thing to earth. Go on over and get back as soon as you can. We
can't afford to overlook anything these days--neither can we afford to
waste too much time on harvesting crops of goat feathers. Beat it!"
And Whitney, still protesting, made his way to the tube and was lucky
enough to catch a Trenton train just about to pull out of the station.
Miss Vera Norton, he found, was a blond--and an extremely pretty one, at
that. Moreover, she appeared to have more sense than the chief had given
her credit for. After Whitney had talked to her for a few minutes he
admitted to himself that it was just as well that Giles hadn't tackled
the case--he might never have come back to New York, and Trenton isn't a
big enough place for a Secret Service man to hide in safety, even when
lured by a pair of extremely attractive gray-blue eyes.
Apart from her physical charms, however, Whitney was forced to the
conclusion that what she had seen was too sketchy to form anything that
could be termed a real clue.
"No," she stated, in reply to a question as to whether she could
identify the men in the taxi, "it was too dark and too far off for me to
do that. The arc light on the corner, however, gave me the impression
that they were of medium height and rather thick set. Both of them were
dressed in dark suits of some kind and each carried a black leather bag.
That's what made me think that maybe they were mixed up in that
explosion last night."
"What kind of bags were they?"
"Gladstones, I believe you call them. Those bags that are flat on the
bottom and then slant upward and lock at the top."
"How long was the taxi there?"
"I don't know just when it did arrive, for I didn't look at my watch
then, but it left at twelve minutes to four. I was getting mighty
sleepy, but I determined to see how long it would stay in one place, for
it costs money to hire a car by the hour--even one of those
Green-and-White taxis."
"Oh, it was a Green-and-White, eh?"
"Yes, and I got the number, too," Miss Norton's voice fairly thrilled
with the enthusiasm of her detective ability. "After the men had gotten
out of the car I remembered that my opera glasses were on the bureau and
I used them to get a look at the machine. I couldn't see anything of the
chauffeur beyond the fact that he was hunched down on the front seat,
apparently asleep, and the men came back in such a hurry that I didn't
have time to get a good look at them through the glasses."
"But the number," Whitney reminded her.
"I've got it right here," was the reply, as the young lady dug down into
her handbag and drew out a card. "N. Y. four, three, three, five, six,
eight," she read. "I got that when the taxi turned around and headed
back--to New York, I suppose. But what on earth would two men want to
take a taxi from New York all the way to Trenton for? Why didn't they
come on the train?"
"That, Miss Norton," explained Whitney, "is the point of your story that
makes the whole thing look rather suspicious. I will confess that when
the chief told me what you had said over the phone I didn't place much
faith in it. There might have been a thousand good reasons for men
allowing a local taxi to wait at the corner, but the very fact of its
bearing a New York number makes it a distinctly interesting incident."
"Then you think that it may be a clue, after all?"
"It's a clue, all right," replied the operative, "but what it's a clue
to I can't say until we dig farther into the matter. It is probable that
these two men had a date for a poker party or some kind of celebration,
missed the train in New York, and took a taxi over rather than be left
out of the party. But at the same time it's distinctly within the realms
of possibility that the men you saw were implicated in last night's
explosion. It'll take some time to get at the truth of the matter and,
meanwhile, might I ask you to keep this information to yourself?"
"Indeed I shall!" was the reply. "I won't tell a soul, honestly."
After that promise, Al left the Norton house and made his way across
town to where the munitions factory reared its hastily constructed head
against the sky. Row after row of flimsy buildings, roofed with tar
paper and giving no outward evidence of their sinister mission in
life--save for the high barbed-wire fence that inclosed them--formed the
entire plant, for there shells were not made, but loaded, and the
majority of the operations were by hand.
When halted at the gate, Whitney found that even his badge was of no use
in securing entrance. Evidently made cautious by the events of the
preceding night, the guard refused to admit anyone, and even hesitated
about taking Al's card to the superintendent. The initials "U. S. S. S."
finally secured him admittance and such information as was available.
This, however, consisted only of the fact that some one had cut the
barbed wire at an unguarded point and had placed a charge of explosive
close to one of the large buildings. The one selected was used
principally as a storehouse. Otherwise, as the superintendent indicated
by an expressive wave of his hand, "it would have been good night to the
whole place."
"Evidently they didn't use a very heavy charge," he continued, "relying
upon the subsequent explosions from the shells inside to do the damage.
If they'd hit upon any other building there'd be nothing but a hole in
the ground now. As it is, the damage won't run over a few thousand
dollars."
"Were the papers right in reporting that you picked some fragments of a
black bag not far from the scene of the explosion?" Whitney asked.
"Yes, here they are," and the superintendent produced three pieces of
leather from a drawer in his desk. "Two pieces of the top and what is
evidently a piece of the side."
Whitney laid them on the desk and examined them carefully for a few
moments. Then:
"Notice anything funny about these?" he inquired.
"No. What's the matter?"
"Not a thing in the world, except that the bag must have had a very
peculiar lock."
"What's that?"
"Here--I'll show you," and Whitney tried to put the two pieces of metal
which formed the lock together. But, inasmuch as both of them were
slotted, they wouldn't join.
"Damnation!" exclaimed the superintendent. "What do you make of that?"
"That there were two bags instead of one," stated Whitney, calmly.
"Coupled with a little information which I ran into before I came over
here, it begins to look as if we might land the men responsible for this
job before they're many hours older."
Ten minutes later he was on his way back to New York, not to report at
headquarters, but to conduct a few investigations at the headquarters of
the Green-and-White Taxicab Company.
"Can you tell me," he inquired of the manager in charge, "just where
your taxi bearing the license number four, three, three, five, six,
eight was last night?"
"I can't," said the manager, "but we'll get the chauffeur up here and
find out in short order.
"Hello!" he called over an office phone. "Who has charge of our cab
bearing license number four, three, three, five, six, eight?... Murphy?
Is he in?... Send him up--I'd like to talk to him."
A few moments later a beetle-jawed and none too cleanly specimen of the
genus taxi driver swaggered in and didn't even bother to remove his cap
before sitting down.
"Murphy," said the Green-and-White manager, "where was your cab last
night?"
"Well, let's see," commenced the chauffeur. "I took a couple to the
Amsterdam The-ayter in time for th' show an' then picked up a fare on
Broadway an' took him in the Hunnerd-an'-forties some place. Then I
cruised around till the after-theater crowd began to come up an'--an' I
got one more fare for Yonkers. Another long trip later on made it a
pretty good night."
"Murphy," cut in Whitney, edging forward into the conversation, "where
and at just what hour of the night did those two Germans offer you a
hundred dollars for the use of your car all evening?"
"They didn't offer me no hunnerd dollars," growled the chauffeur, "they
gave me...." Then he checked himself suddenly and added, in an
undertone, "I don't know nothin' 'bout no Goimans."
"The hell you don't!" snarled Whitney, edging toward the door. "Back up
against that desk and keep your hands on top of it, or I'll pump holes
clean through you!"
His right hand was in his coat pocket, the fingers closed around what
was very palpably the butt of an automatic. Murphy could see the outline
of the weapon and obeyed instructions, while Whitney slammed the door
with his left hand.
"Now look here," he snapped, taking a step nearer to the taxi driver, "I
want the truth and I want it quick! Also, it's none of your business why
I want it! But you better come clean if you know what's good for you.
Out with it! Where did you meet 'em and where did you drive 'em?"
Realizing that escape was cut off and thoroughly cowed by the display of
force, Murphy told the whole story--or as much of it as he knew.
"I was drivin' down Broadway round Twenty-eig't Street last night, 'bout
ten o'clock," he confessed. "I'd taken that couple to the the-ayter,
just as I told you, an' that man up to Harlem. Then one of these t'ree
guys hailed me...."
"Three?" interrupted Whitney.
"That's what I said--t'ree! They said they wanted to borrow my machine
until six o'clock in th' mornin' an' would give me two hunnerd dollars
for it. I told 'em there was nothin' doin' an' they offered me
two-fifty, swearin' that they'd have it back at th' same corner at six
o'clock sharp. Two hunnerd an' fifty bones being a whole lot more than I
could make in a night, I gambled with 'em an' let 'em have th' machine,
makin' sure that I got the coin foist. They drove off, two of 'em
inside, an' I put in th' rest of th' night shootin' pool. When I got to
th' corner of Twenty-eig't at six o'clock this mornin', there wasn't any
sign of 'em--but th' car was there, still hot from the hard ride they
give her. That's all I know--'shelp me Gawd!"
"Did the men have any bags with them?"
"Bags? No, not one."
"What did they look like?"
"The one that talked with me was 'bout my heig't an' dressed in a dark
suit. He an' th' others had their hats pulled down over their eyes, so's
I couldn't see their faces."
"Did he talk with a German accent?"
"He sure did. I couldn't hardly make out what he was sayin'. But his
money talked plain enough."
"Yes, and it's very likely to talk loud enough to send you to the pen if
you're not careful!" was Whitney's reply. "If you don't want to land
there, keep your mouth shut about this. D'you get me?"
"I do, boss, I do."
"And you've told me all the truth--every bit of it?"
"Every little bit."
"All right. Clear out!"
When Murphy left the room, Whitney turned to the manager and, with a wry
smile, remarked: "Well, we've discovered where the car came from and how
they got it. But that's all. We're really as much in the dark as
before."
"No," replied the manager, musingly. "Not quite as much. Possibly you
don't know it, but we have a device on every car that leaves this garage
to take care of just such cases as this--to prevent drivers from running
their machines all over town without pulling down the lever and then
holding out the fares on us. Just a minute and I'll show you.
"Joe," he called, "bring me the record tape of Murphy's machine for last
night and hold his car till you hear from me."
"This tape," he explained, a few minutes later, "is operated something
along the lines of a seismograph or any other instrument for detecting
change in direction. An inked needle marks these straight lines and
curves all the time the machine is moving, and when it is standing still
it oscillates slightly. By glancing at these tapes we can tell when any
chauffeur is holding out on us, for it forms a clear record--not only of
the distance the machine has traveled, but of the route it followed."
"Doesn't the speedometer give you the distance?" asked Whitney.
"Theoretically, yes. But it's a very simple matter to disconnect a
speedometer, while this record is kept in a locked box and not one
driver in ten even knows it's there. Now, let's see what Murphy's record
tape tells us....
"Yes, here's the trip to the theater around eight-thirty. See the sharp
turn from Fifth Avenue into Forty-second Street, the momentary stop in
front of the Amsterdam, and the complete sweep as he turned around to
get back to Broadway. Then there's the journey up to the Bronx or Harlem
or wherever he went, another complete turn and an uninterrupted trip
back down on Broadway."
"Then this," cut in Whitney, unable to keep the excitement out of his
voice, "is where he stopped to speak to the Germans?"
"Precisely," agreed the other, "and, as you'll note, that stop was
evidently longer than either of the other two. They paid their fares,
while Murphy's friends had to be relieved of two hundred and fifty
dollars."
"From there on is what I'm interested in," announced Whitney. "What does
the tape say?"
"It doesn't _say_ anything," admitted the manager, with a smile. "But it
_indicates_ a whole lot. In fact, it blazes a blood-red trail that you
ought to be able to follow with very little difficulty. See, when the
machine started it kept on down Broadway--in fact, there's no sign of a
turn for several blocks."
"How many?"
"That we can't tell--now. But we can figure it up very accurately later.
The machine then turned to the right and went west for a short distance
only--stopped for a few moments--and then went on, evidently toward the
ferry, for here's a delay to get on board, here's a wavy line evidently
made by the motion of the boat when the hand ought to have been
practically at rest, and here's where they picked up the trip to
Trenton. Evidently they didn't have to stop until they got there,
because we have yards of tape before we reach a stop point, and then the
paper is worn completely through by the action of the needle in
oscillating, indicative of a long period of inaction. The return trip is
just as plain."
"But," Whitney objected, "the whole thing hinges on where they went
before going to Trenton. Murphy said they didn't have any bags, so they
must have gone home or to some rendezvous to collect them. How are we
going to find the corner where the machine turned?"
"By taking Murphy's car and driving it very carefully south on Broadway
until the tape indicates precisely the distance marked on this one--the
place where the turn was made. Then, driving down that street, the
second distance shown on the tape will give you approximately the house
you're looking for!"
"Good Lord," exclaimed Whitney, "that's applying science to it! Sherlock
Holmes wasn't so smart, after all!"
Al and the manager agreed that there was too much traffic on Broadway in
the daytime or early evening to attempt the experiment, but shortly
after midnight, belated pedestrians might have wondered why a
Green-and-White taxicab containing two men proceeded down Broadway at a
snail's pace, while every now and then it stopped and one of the men got
out to examine something inside.
"I think this is the corner," whispered the garage manager to Whitney,
when they reached Eighth Street, "but to be sure, we'll go back and try
it over again, driving at a normal pace. It's lucky that this is a new
instrument and therefore very accurate."
The second trial produced the same result as the first--the place they
sought lay a few blocks west of Broadway, on Eighth.
Before they tried to find out the precise location of the house, Whitney
phoned to headquarters and requested loan of a score of men to assist
him in the contemplated raid.
"Tell 'em to have their guns handy," he ordered, "because we may have
to surround the block and search every house."
But the taxi tape rendered that unnecessary. It indicated any one of
three adjoining houses on the north side of the street, because, as the
manager pointed out, the machine had not turned round again until it
struck a north-and-south thoroughfare, hence the houses must be on the
north side.
By this time the reserves were on hand and, upon instructions from
Whitney, spread out in a fan-shaped formation, completely surrounding
the houses, front and rear. At a blast from a police whistle they
mounted the steps and, not waiting for the doors to be opened, went
through them shoulders first.
It was Whitney, who had elected to assist in the search of the center
house, who captured his prey in a third-floor bedroom.
Before the Germans knew what was happening Al was in the room, his
flashlight playing over the floor and table in a hasty search for
incriminating evidence. It didn't take long to find it, either. In one
corner, only partly concealed by a newspaper whose flaring headlines
referred to the explosion of the night before, was a collection of bombs
which, according to later expert testimony was sufficient to blow a
good-sized hole in the city of New York.
That was all they discovered at the time, but a judicious use of the
third degree--coupled with promises of leniency--induced one of the
prisoners to loosen up the next day and he told the whole
story--precisely as the taxi tape and Vera Norton had told it. The only
missing ingredient was the power behind the plot--the mysterious "No.
859"--whom Dick Walters later captured because of the clue on Shelf
forty-five.
* * * * *
"So you see," commented Quinn as he finished, "the younger Pitt wasn't
so far wrong when he cynically remarked that 'there is a Providence that
watches over children, imbeciles, and the United States.' In this case
the principal clues were a book from the Public Library, the chance
observations of a girl who couldn't sleep and a piece of white paper
with some red markings on it.
"At that, though, it's not the first time that German agents have gotten
into trouble over a scrap of paper."
"What happened to Vera Norton?" I inquired.
"Beyond a little personal glory, not a thing in the world," replied
Quinn. "Didn't I tell you that Al was married? You're always looking for
romance, even in everyday life. Besides, if he had been a bachelor,
Whitney was too busy trying to round up the other loose ends of the
Ewald case. 'Number eight fifty-nine' hadn't been captured then, you
remember.
"Give me a match--my pipe's gone out. No, I can't smoke it here; it's
too late. But speaking of small clues that lead to big things, some day
soon I'll tell you the story of how a match--one just like this, for all
I know--led to the uncovering of one of the most difficult smuggling
cases that the Customs Service ever tried to solve."
IX
A MATCH FOR THE GOVERNMENT
"I wonder how long it will take," mused Bill Quinn, as he tossed aside a
copy of his favorite fictional monthly, "to remove the ethical
restrictions which the war placed upon novels and short stories? Did you
ever notice the changing style in villains, for example? A decade or so
ago it was all the rage to have a Japanese do the dirty work--for then
we were taking the 'yellow peril' rather seriously and it was reflected
in our reading matter. The tall, well-dressed Russian, with a sinister
glitter in his black eyes, next stepped upon the scene, to be followed
by the villain whose swarthy complexion gave a hint of his Latin
ancestry.
"For the past few years, of course, every real villain has had to have
at least a touch of Teutonic blood to account for the various
treacheries which he tackles. I don't recall a single novel--or a short
story, either--that has had an English or French villain who is foiled
in the last few pages. I suppose you'd call it the _entente cordiale_ of
the novelists, a sort of concerted attempt by the writing clan to do
their bit against the Hun. And mighty good propaganda it was, too....
"But, unfortunately, the detective of real life can't always tell by
determining a man's nationality whether he's going to turn out to be a
crook or a hero. When you come right down to it, every country has about
the same proportion of each and it's only by the closest observation
that one can arrive at a definite and fact-supported conclusion.
"Details--trifles unnoticed in themselves--play a far larger part in the
final denouement than any preconceived ideas or fanciful theories. There
was the case of Ezra Marks and the Dillingham diamonds, for example...."
* * * * *
Ezra [continued the former Secret Service operative, when he had eased
his game leg into a position where it no longer gave him active trouble]
was all that the name implied. Born in Vermont, of a highly puritanical
family, he had been named for his paternal grandfather and probably also
for some character from the Old Testament. I'm not awfully strong on
that Biblical stuff myself.
It wasn't long after he grew up, however, that life on the farm began to
pall. He found a copy of the life of Alan Pinkerton somewhere and read
it through until he knew it from cover to cover. As was only natural in
a boy of his age, he determined to become a great detective, and drifted
down to Boston with that object in view. But, once in the city, he found
that "detecting" was a little more difficult than he had imagined, and
finally agreed to compromise by accepting a very minor position in the
Police Department. Luckily, his beat lay along the water front and he
got tangled up in two or three smuggling cases which he managed to
unravel in fine shape, and, in this way, attracted the attention of the
Customs Branch of the Treasury Department, which is always on the
lookout for new timber. It's a hard life, you know, and one which
doesn't constitute a good risk for an insurance company. So there are
always gaps to be filled--and Ezra plugged up one of them very nicely.
As might have been expected, the New Englander was hardly ever addressed
by his full name. "E. Z." was the title they coined for him, and "E. Z."
he was from that time on--at least to everyone in the Service. The
people on the other side of the fence, however, the men and women who
look upon the United States government as a joke and its laws as hurdles
over which they can jump whenever they wish--found that this Mark was
far from an easy one. He it was who handled the Wang Foo opium case in
San Diego in nineteen eleven. He nailed the gun runners at El Paso when
half a dozen other men had fallen down on the assignment, and there were
at least three Canadian cases which bore the imprint of his latent
genius on the finished reports.
His particular kind of genius was distinctly out of the ordinary, too.
He wasn't flashy and he was far from a hard worker. He just stuck around
and watched everything worth watching until he located the tip he
wanted. Then he went to it--and the case was finished!
The chap who stated that "genius is the capacity for infinite attention
to details" had Ezra sized up to a T. And it was one of these
details--probably the most trifling one of all--that led to his most
startling success.