On Secret Service Part 21

Quinn paused for a moment to repack his pipe and I took advantage of the interruption to ask what happened at the Wimbledon dinner the following night.

"Not a thing in the world," replied Quinn. "Everything went off like clockwork--everything but the bomb. As the Podunk _Gazette_ would say, 'A very pleasant time was had by all.' But you may be sure that they were careful to examine the cake and the other dishes before they were sampled by the guests. Michel, Felix, and the cook were treated to a good dose of the third degree at headquarters, but without results. They wouldn't even admit that they knew any such person as 'Number Eight-fifty-nine' or von Ewald. Two of them got off with light sentences for a.s.sault and battery. The pastry cook, however, went to the pen when they found a quant.i.ty of high explosives in his room."

"And Miss Lang?"

"If you care to look up the marriage licenses for October, nineteen sixteen, you'll find that one was issued in the names of David Carroll and Virginia Lang. She's the wife of a captain now, for Dave left the Service the following year and went to France to finish his fight with the Hun. I saw him not long ago and the only thing that's worrying him is where he is going to find his quota of excitement, for he says that there is nothing left in the Service but chasing counterfeiters and guarding the resident, and he can't stand the idea of staying in the army and drawing his pay for wearing a uniform."

XI

"LOST--$100,000!"

"I stopped on my way here to-night and laid in a supply of something that I don't often use--chewing gum," said Bill Quinn, formerly of the Secret Service, as he settled back comfortably to enjoy an evening's chat. "There are some professional reformers who maintain that the great American habit of silently working the jaws over a wad of chewing gum is harmful in the extreme, but if you'll look into the matter you'll find that agitators of that type want you to cut out all habits except those which they are addicted to.

"Personally, I'm not a habitual wors.h.i.+per at the shrine of the great G.o.d Goom, but there's no use denying the fact that it does soothe one's nerves occasionally. Incidentally, it has other uses--as Elmer Allison discovered not very long ago."

"Yes?" I inquired, sensing the fact that Quinn had a story up his sleeve and was only awaiting the opportunity to spring it. "Didn't you mention a post-office case in which a wad of gum played a prominent role?"

"That's the one," said the former government operative, easing his wounded leg into a less cramped position. "Here, have a couple of sticks just to get the proper atmosphere and I'll see if I can recall the details."

For some reason that's hard to define [Quinn went on, after he had peeled two of the dun-colored sticks and commenced work on them] crooks in general and amateur crooks in particular seem to regard the United States mails as particularly easy prey. Possibly they figure that, as millions of dollars are handled by the Post-office Department every year, a little here and there won't be missed. But if they knew the high percentage of mail robberies that are solved they wouldn't be so keen to tackle the game.

Lifting valuables, once they have pa.s.sed into the hands of Uncle Sam's postman, is a comparatively easy crime to commit. There are dozens of ways of doing it--methods which range all the way from fis.h.i.+ng letters out of a post-box with a piece of string and a hairpin, to holding up the mail car in a deserted portion of a railroad track. But getting away with it is, as our Yiddish friends say, something else again.

The annals of the Postal Inspection Service are filled with incidents which indicate that the High Cost of Living is down around zero compared to the High Cost of Crime, when said crime is aimed at the mails. There are scores of men in Atlanta, Leavenworth, and other Federal prisons whose advice would be to try murder, forgery, or arson rather than attempt to earn a dishonest living by stealing valuable letters.

The majority of persons realize that it pays to register their money and insure their packages because, once this precaution has been attended to, the government exercises special care in the handling of these and makes it extremely difficult for crooks to get anywhere near them. If a registered letter disappears there is a clean-cut trail of signed receipts to follow and somebody has to bear the burden of the loss. But even with these precautions, the Registered Section is looted every now and then.

One of the biggest cases of this kind on record was that which occurred in Columbus when letters with an aggregate value of one hundred thousand dollars just vanished into thin air. Of course, they didn't all disappear at one time, but that made it all the more mysterious--because the thefts were spread out over a period of some five or six weeks and they went on, just as regularly as clockwork, in spite of the precautions to the contrary.

The first of the losses, as I recall it, was a s.h.i.+pment of ten thousand dollars in large bills sent by a Chicago bank to a financial concern in Columbus. When working on that single case, of course, the officials of the department were more or less in the dark as to the precise place that the disappearance had taken place, in spite of the fact that there were the usual signed slips indicating that the package had been received at the Columbus Post Office. But clerks who are in a hurry sometimes sign receipts without being any too careful to check up the letters or packages to which they refer--a highly reprehensible practice, but one which is the outgrowth of the shortage of help. It was quite within the bounds of possibility, for example, for the package to have been abstracted from the Chicago office without the loss being discovered until Columbus checked up on the mail which was due there.

But a week or ten days later came the second of the mysterious disappearances--another envelope containing bills of large denomination, this time en route from Pittsburgh to Columbus. When a third loss occurred the following fortnight, the headquarters of the Postal Inspection Service in Was.h.i.+ngton became distinctly excited and every man who could be spared was turned loose in an effort to solve the problem.

Orders were given to shadow all the employees who had access to the registered mail with a view to discovering whether they had made any change in their personal habits, whether they had displayed an unusual amount of money within the past month, or whether their family had shown signs of exceptional prosperity.

It was while the chief was waiting for these reports that Elmer Allison blew into Was.h.i.+ngton unexpectedly and strolled into the room in the big gray-stone tower of what was then the Post-office Department Building, with the news that he had solved the "poison-pen case" in Kansas City and was ready to tackle something else.

The chief, to put it mildly, was surprised and inquired why in the name of the seven hinges of Hades Allison hadn't made his report directly to the office by mail.

"That was a pretty important case, Chief," Elmer replied, "and I didn't want to take any chances of the findings being lost in the registered mail." Then, grinning, he continued, "Understand you've been having a bit of trouble out in Columbus?"

"Who told you about that?" growled the chief.

"Oh, you can't keep things like that under your hat even if you do succeed in keeping them out of the papers," retorted Allison. "A little bird tipped me off to it three weeks ago and--"

"And you determined to leap back here as soon as you could so that you would be a.s.signed to the case, eh?"

"You guessed it, Chief. I wanted a try at the Columbus affair and I was afraid I wouldn't get it unless I put the matter personally up to you.

How 'bout it?"

"As it happens, you lost about two days of valuable time in coming here, instead of wiring for further instructions from Kansas City," the chief told him. "I had intended taking you off that anonymous letter case by noon to-morrow, whether you'd finished it or not, for this is a far more important detail. Somebody's gotten away with fifty thousand dollars so far, and there's no--"

"Pardon me, sir, but here's a wire which has just arrived from Rogers, in Columbus. Thought you'd like to see it at once," and the chief's secretary laid a yellow slip face upward on his desk. Allison, who was watching closely, saw a demonstration of the reason why official Was.h.i.+ngton maintained that the chief of the Postal Inspection Service had the best "poker face" in the capital. Not a muscle in his countenance changed as he read the telegram and then glanced up at Allison, continuing his sentence precisely where he had been interrupted:

"Reason to suppose that the thief is going to stop there. This wire from Rogers, the postmaster at Columbus, announces the loss of a fourth package of bills. Fifty thousand this time. That's the biggest yet and it brings the total deficit up to one hundred thousand dollars. Rogers says that the banks are demanding instant action and threatening to take the case to headquarters, which means that it'll spread all over the papers. Congress will start an investigation, some of us will lose our official heads, and, in the mix-up, the man who's responsible for the losses will probably make a clean getaway."

Then, with a glance at the clock which faced his desk, "There's a train for Columbus in twenty minutes, Allison. Can you make it?"

"It's less than ten minutes to the station," replied the operative.

"That gives me plenty of leeway."

"Well, move and move fast," snapped the chief. "I'll wire Columbus that you've been given complete charge of the case; but try to keep it away from the papers as long as you can. The department has come in for enough criticism lately without complicating the issue from the outside. Good luck." And Allison was out of the door almost before he had finished speaking.

Allison reached Columbus that night, but purposely delayed reporting for work until the following morning. In the first place there was no telling how long the case would run and he felt that it was the part of wisdom to get all the rest he could in order to start fresh. The "poison-pen" puzzle hadn't been exactly easy to solve, and his visit to Was.h.i.+ngton, though brief, had been sufficiently long for him to absorb some of the nervous excitement which permeated the department. Then, too, he figured that Postmaster Rogers would be worn out by another day of worry and that both of them would be the better for a night's undisturbed sleep.

Nine o'clock the next morning, however, saw him seated in one of the comfortable chairs which adorned the postmaster's private office.

Rogers, who did not put in an appearance until ten, showed plainly the results of the strain under which he was laboring, for he was a political appointee who had been in office only a comparatively short time, a man whose temperament resented the attacks launched by the opposition and who felt that publication of the facts connected with the lost one hundred thousand dollars would spell ruin, both to his own hopes and those of the local organization.

Allison found that the chief had wired an announcement of his coming the day before and that Rogers was almost pitifully relieved to know that the case was in the hands of the man who had solved nearly a score of the problems which had arisen in the Service during the past few years.

"How much do you know about the case?" inquired the postmaster.

"Only what I learned indirectly and from what the chief told me," was Allison's reply. "I understand that approximately one hundred thousand dollars is missing from this post office" (here Rogers instinctively winced as he thought of the criticism which this announcement would cause if it were made outside the office), "but I haven't any of the details."

"Neither have we, unfortunately," was the answer. "If we had had a few more we might have been able to prevent the last theft. You know about that, of course."

"The fifty thousand dollars? Yes. The chief told me that you had wired."

"Well, that incident is typical of the other three. Banks in various parts of the country have been sending rather large sums of money through the mails to their correspondents here. There's nothing unusual in that at this time of the year. But within the past five or six weeks there have been four packages--or, rather, large envelopes--of money which have failed to be accounted for. They ranged all the way from ten thousand dollars, the first loss, to the fifty thousand dollars which disappeared within the past few days. I purposely delayed wiring Was.h.i.+ngton until we could make a thorough search of the whole place, going over the registry room with a fine-tooth comb--"

"Thus warning every man in it that he was under suspicion," muttered Allison.

"What was that?" Rogers inquired.

"Nothing--nothing at all. Just talking to myself. Far from a good habit, but don't mind it. I've got some queer ones. You didn't find anything, of course?"

"In the building? No, not a thing. But I thought it best to make a thorough clean-up here before I bothered Was.h.i.+ngton with a report."

"What about the men who've been working on the case up to this time?"

"Not one of them has been able to turn up anything that could be dignified by the term clue, as I believe you detectives call it."

"Yes, that's the right word," agreed the operative. "At least all members of the Detective-Story-Writers' Union employ it frequently enough to make it fit the case. What lines have Boyd and the other men here been following?"