XI
"LOST--$100,000!"
"I stopped on my way here to-night and laid in a supply of somethingthat I don't often use--chewing gum," said Bill Quinn, formerly of theSecret Service, as he settled back comfortably to enjoy an evening'schat. "There are some professional reformers who maintain that the greatAmerican habit of silently working the jaws over a wad of chewing gum isharmful in the extreme, but if you'll look into the matter you'll findthat agitators of that type want you to cut out all habits except thosewhich they are addicted to.
"Personally, I'm not a habitual worshiper at the shrine of the great godGoom, but there's no use denying the fact that it does soothe one'snerves occasionally. Incidentally, it has other uses--as Elmer Allisondiscovered not very long ago."
"Yes?" I inquired, sensing the fact that Quinn had a story up his sleeveand was only awaiting the opportunity to spring it. "Didn't you mentiona post-office case in which a wad of gum played a prominent role?"
"That's the one," said the former government operative, easing hiswounded leg into a less cramped position. "Here, have a couple of sticksjust to get the proper atmosphere and I'll see if I can recall thedetails."
* * * * *
For some reason that's hard to define [Quinn went on, after he hadpeeled two of the dun-colored sticks and commenced work on them] crooksin general and amateur crooks in particular seem to regard the UnitedStates mails as particularly easy prey. Possibly they figure that, asmillions of dollars are handled by the Post-office Department everyyear, a little here and there won't be missed. But if they knew the highpercentage of mail robberies that are solved they wouldn't be so keen totackle the game.
Lifting valuables, once they have passed into the hands of Uncle Sam'spostman, is a comparatively easy crime to commit. There are dozens ofways of doing it--methods which range all the way from fishing lettersout of a post-box with a piece of string and a hairpin, to holding upthe mail car in a deserted portion of a railroad track. But getting awaywith it is, as our Yiddish friends say, something else again.
The annals of the Postal Inspection Service are filled with incidentswhich indicate that the High Cost of Living is down around zero comparedto the High Cost of Crime, when said crime is aimed at the mails. Thereare scores of men in Atlanta, Leavenworth, and other Federal prisonswhose advice would be to try murder, forgery, or arson rather thanattempt to earn a dishonest living by stealing valuable letters.
The majority of persons realize that it pays to register their money andinsure their packages because, once this precaution has been attendedto, the government exercises special care in the handling of these andmakes it extremely difficult for crooks to get anywhere near them. If aregistered letter disappears there is a clean-cut trail of signedreceipts to follow and somebody has to bear the burden of the loss. Buteven with these precautions, the Registered Section is looted every nowand then.
One of the biggest cases of this kind on record was that which occurredin Columbus when letters with an aggregate value of one hundred thousanddollars just vanished into thin air. Of course, they didn't alldisappear at one time, but that made it all the more mysterious--becausethe thefts were spread out over a period of some five or six weeks andthey went on, just as regularly as clockwork, in spite of theprecautions to the contrary.
The first of the losses, as I recall it, was a shipment of ten thousanddollars in large bills sent by a Chicago bank to a financial concern inColumbus. When working on that single case, of course, the officials ofthe department were more or less in the dark as to the precise placethat the disappearance had taken place, in spite of the fact that therewere the usual signed slips indicating that the package had beenreceived at the Columbus Post Office. But clerks who are in a hurrysometimes sign receipts without being any too careful to check up theletters or packages to which they refer--a highly reprehensiblepractice, but one which is the outgrowth of the shortage of help. It wasquite within the bounds of possibility, for example, for the package tohave been abstracted from the Chicago office without the loss beingdiscovered until Columbus checked up on the mail which was due there.
But a week or ten days later came the second of the mysteriousdisappearances--another envelope containing bills of large denomination,this time en route from Pittsburgh to Columbus. When a third lossoccurred the following fortnight, the headquarters of the PostalInspection Service in Washington became distinctly excited and every manwho 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 theregistered mail with a view to discovering whether they had made anychange in their personal habits, whether they had displayed an unusualamount of money within the past month, or whether their family had shownsigns of exceptional prosperity.
It was while the chief was waiting for these reports that Elmer Allisonblew into Washington unexpectedly and strolled into the room in the biggray-stone tower of what was then the Post-office Department Building,with the news that he had solved the "poison-pen case" in Kansas Cityand was ready to tackle something else.
The chief, to put it mildly, was surprised and inquired why in the nameof the seven hinges of Hades Allison hadn't made his report directly tothe office by mail.
"That was a pretty important case, Chief," Elmer replied, "and I didn'twant to take any chances of the findings being lost in the registeredmail." Then, grinning, he continued, "Understand you've been having abit 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 dosucceed in keeping them out of the papers," retorted Allison. "A littlebird tipped me off to it three weeks ago and--"
"And you determined to leap back here as soon as you could so that youwould be assigned to the case, eh?"
"You guessed it, Chief. I wanted a try at the Columbus affair and I wasafraid 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 chieftold him. "I had intended taking you off that anonymous letter case bynoon to-morrow, whether you'd finished it or not, for this is a far moreimportant detail. Somebody's gotten away with fifty thousand dollars sofar, 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'ssecretary laid a yellow slip face upward on his desk. Allison, who waswatching closely, saw a demonstration of the reason why officialWashington maintained that the chief of the Postal Inspection Servicehad the best "poker face" in the capital. Not a muscle in hiscountenance changed as he read the telegram and then glanced up atAllison, continuing his sentence precisely where he had beeninterrupted:
"Reason to suppose that the thief is going to stop there. This wire fromRogers, the postmaster at Columbus, announces the loss of a fourthpackage of bills. Fifty thousand this time. That's the biggest yet andit brings the total deficit up to one hundred thousand dollars. Rogerssays that the banks are demanding instant action and threatening to takethe case to headquarters, which means that it'll spread all over thepapers. Congress will start an investigation, some of us will lose ourofficial heads, and, in the mix-up, the man who's responsible for thelosses will probably make a clean getaway."
Then, with a glance at the clock which faced his desk, "There's a trainfor 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 thatyou've been given complete charge of the case; but try to keep it awayfrom the papers as long as you can. The department has come in forenough criticism lately without complicating the issue from theoutside. Good luck." And Allison was out of the door almost before hehad finished speaking.
Allison reached C
olumbus that night, but purposely delayed reporting forwork until the following morning. In the first place there was notelling how long the case would run and he felt that it was the part ofwisdom 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 toWashington, though brief, had been sufficiently long for him to absorbsome of the nervous excitement which permeated the department. Then,too, he figured that Postmaster Rogers would be worn out by another dayof worry and that both of them would be the better for a night'sundisturbed sleep.
Nine o'clock the next morning, however, saw him seated in one of thecomfortable chairs which adorned the postmaster's private office.Rogers, who did not put in an appearance until ten, showed plainly theresults of the strain under which he was laboring, for he was apolitical appointee who had been in office only a comparatively shorttime, a man whose temperament resented the attacks launched by theopposition and who felt that publication of the facts connected with thelost one hundred thousand dollars would spell ruin, both to his ownhopes and those of the local organization.
Allison found that the chief had wired an announcement of his coming theday before and that Rogers was almost pitifully relieved to know thatthe case was in the hands of the man who had solved nearly a score ofthe 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," wasAllison's reply. "I understand that approximately one hundred thousanddollars is missing from this post office" (here Rogers instinctivelywinced as he thought of the criticism which this announcement wouldcause if it were made outside the office), "but I haven't any of thedetails."
"Neither have we, unfortunately," was the answer. "If we had had a fewmore we might have been able to prevent the last theft. You know aboutthat, 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 variousparts of the country have been sending rather large sums of moneythrough the mails to their correspondents here. There's nothing unusualin that at this time of the year. But within the past five or six weeksthere have been four packages--or, rather, large envelopes--of moneywhich have failed to be accounted for. They ranged all the way from tenthousand dollars, the first loss, to the fifty thousand dollars whichdisappeared within the past few days. I purposely delayed wiringWashington 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," mutteredAllison.
"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 athorough clean-up here before I bothered Washington 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 bedignified by the term clue, as I believe you detectives call it."
"Yes, that's the right word," agreed the operative. "At least allmembers of the Detective-Story-Writers' Union employ it frequentlyenough to make it fit the case. What lines have Boyd and the other menhere been following?"
"At my suggestion they made a careful examination into the private livesof all employees of the post-office, including myself," Rogers answered,a bit pompously. "I did not intend to evade the slightest responsibilityin the matter, so I turned over my bankbook, the key to my safe-depositvault and even allowed them to search my house from cellar to garret."
"Was this procedure followed with respect to all the other employees inthe building?"
"No, only one or two of the highest--personal friends of mine whom Icould trust to keep silent. I didn't care to swear out search warrantsfor the residences of all the people who work here, and that's what itwould have meant if they had raised any objection. In their cases theinvestigation was confined to inquiries concerning their expenditures inthe neighborhood, unexpected prosperity, and the like."
"With what result?"
"None at all. From all appearances there isn't a soul in this buildingwho has had ten cents more during the past six weeks than he possessedin any like period for two years back."
"Did Boyd or any of the other department operatives ask to see the plansof the post office?" inquired Allison, taking another tack.
"The what?"
"The plans of the post-office--the blue print prepared at the time thatthe building was erected."
"No. Why should they?"
"I thought they might have been interested in it, that's all," wasAllison's answer, but anyone who knew him would have noted that his tonewas just a trifle too nonchalant to be entirely truthful.
"By the way," added the operative, "might I see it?"
"The blue print?"
"Yes. You will probably find it in the safe. If you'll have some onelook it up, I'll be back in half an hour to examine it," said Allison."Meanwhile, I'll talk to Boyd and the other men already on the groundand see if I can dig anything out of what they've discovered."
But Boyd and his associates were just as relieved as Rogers had been tofind that the case had been placed in Allison's hands. Four weeks andmore of steady work had left them precisely where they hadcommenced--"several miles back of that point," as one of them admitted,"for three more stunts have been pulled off right under our eyes." Thepersonal as well as the official record of every man and woman in theColumbus post office had been gone over with a microscope, without theslightest result. If the germ of dishonesty was present, it wascertainly well hidden.
"We'll try another and more powerful lens," Allison stated, as he turnedback to the postmaster's private office. "By the way, Boyd, have you orany of your men been in the Service more than four years?"
"No, I don't think any of us has. What has that got to do with it?"
"Not a thing in the world, as far as your ability is concerned, butthere is one point that every one of you overlooked--because you neverheard of it. I'm going to try it out myself now and I'll let you knowwhat develops."
With that Allison turned and sauntered back into Rogers's office.
There, spread upon the desk, was the missing blue print, creased anddusty from disuse.
"First time you ever saw this, eh?" Allison inquired of the postmaster.
"The first time I even knew it was there," admitted that official."How'd you know where to find it?"
"I didn't--but there's an ironclad rule of the department that plans ofthis nature are to be kept under lock and key for just such emergenciesas this. But I guess your predecessor was too busy to worry you withdetails."
Rogers grunted. It was an open secret that the postmaster who hadpreceded him had not been any too friendly to his successor.
Allison did not pursue the subject but spread the plan upon anunoccupied table so that he could examine it with care.
"If you'll be good enough to lock that door, Postmaster," he directed,"I'll show you something else about your building that you didn't know.But I don't want anybody else coming in while we're discussing it."
Puzzled, but feeling that the government detective ought to be allowedto handle things in his own way, Rogers turned the key in the lock andcame over to the table where Allison stood.
"Do you see that little square marked with a white star and the letter'L'?" asked Elmer.
"Yes, what is it?"
"What is this large room next to it?" countered the operative.
"That's the--why, that's the registry room!"
"Precisely. And concealed in the wall in a spot known only to personsfamiliar with this blue print, is a tiny closet, or 'lookout.' That'swhat the 'L' means and that's the reason that there's a strict ruleabout guardi
ng plans of this nature very carefully."
"You mean to say that a place has been provided for supervision of theregistry division--a room from which the clerks can be watched withouttheir knowledge?"
"Exactly--and such a precaution has been taken in practically every postoffice of any size in the country. Only the older men in the Serviceknow about it, which is the reason that neither Boyd nor any of his menasked to see this set of plans. The next step is to find the key to thelookout and start in on a very monotonous spell of watchful waiting. Youhave the bunch of master keys, of course?"
"Yes, they're in the safe where the plans were kept. Just a moment andI'll get them."
When Rogers produced the collection of keys, Allison ran hurriedly overthem and selected one which bore, on the handle, a small six-pointedstar corresponding to the mark on the blue print.
"Want to go up with me and investigate the secret chamber?" he inquired.
"I certainly do," agreed Rogers. "But there's one point where this roomwon't help us in the slightest. How did the thief get the mailcontaining the money out of the building? You know the system thatmaintains in the registry room? It's practically impossible for a sheetof paper to be taken out of there, particularly when we are on guard, aswe are now."
"That's true," Allison admitted, "but it's been my experience thatproblems which appear the most puzzling are, after all, the simplest ofexplanation. You remember the Philadelphia mint robbery--the one thatDrummond solved in less than six hours? This may prove to be just aseasy."
There Allison was wrong, dead wrong--as he had to admit some ten dayslater, when, worn with the strain of sitting for hours at a time withhis eyes glued to the ventilator which masked the opening to thelookout, he finally came to the conclusion that something would have tobe done to speed things up. It was true that no new robberies hadoccurred in the meantime, but neither had any of the old ones beenpunished. The lost one hundred thousand dollars was still lost; thoughthe department, with the aid of the Treasury officials, had seen thatthe banks were reimbursed.
"The decoy letter," thought Allison, "is probably the oldest dodge inthe world. But, who knows, it may work again in this case--provided westage-manage it sufficiently carefully."
With the assistance of the cashier of one of the local banks Elmerarranged to have a dummy package of money forwarded by mail from NewYork. It was supposed to contain thirty-five thousand dollars in cash,and all the formalities were complied with precisely as if thirty-fivethousand-dollar bills were really inside the envelope, instead of asmany sheets of blank paper carefully arranged.
On the morning of the day the envelope was due to reach Columbus,Allison took up his position close to the grille in the lookout, hiseyes strained to catch the slightest suspicious movement below. Hourafter hour passed uneventfully until, almost immediately below him, hesaw a man drop something on the floor. Two envelopes had slipped fromhis hands and he stooped to pick them up--that was all.
But what carried a thrill to the operative in the lookout was the factthat one of the envelopes was the dummy sent from New York and that,when the man straightened up, he had only _one_ of the two in his hands.The dummy had disappeared!
Allison rubbed his eyes and looked again. No, he was right. The postalclerk had, in some manner, disposed of the envelope supposed to containthirty-five thousand dollars and he was going about his work inprecisely the same way as before.
"Wait a minute," Allison argued to himself. "There's something missingbesides the envelope! What is it?"
A moment later he had the clue to the whole affair--the jaws of theclerk, which Allison had previously and subconsciously noted were alwayshard at work on a wad of gum, now were at rest for the first time sincethe operative had entered the lookout! The chewing gum and the dummypacket had disappeared at the same time!
It didn't take Elmer more than thirty seconds to reach Rogers's office,and he entered with the startling announcement that "an envelopecontaining thirty-five thousand dollars had just disappeared from theregistry room."
"What?" demanded the postmaster. "How do you know? I haven't receivedany report of it."
"No, and you probably wouldn't for some time," Elmer retorted. "But ithappens that I saw it disappear."
"Then you know where it is?"
"I can lay my hands on it--and probably the rest of the missingmoney--inside of one minute. Let's pay a visit to the registry room."
Before entering the section, however, Allison took the precaution ofposting men at both of the doors.
"After I'm inside," he directed, "don't allow anyone to leave on anypretext whatever. And stand ready for trouble in case it develops. Comeon, Mr. Rogers."
Once in the room devoted to the handling of registered mail, Allisonmade directly for the desk under the lookout. The occupant regardedtheir approach with interest but, apparently, without a trace ofanxiety.
"I'd like to have that letter supposed to contain thirty-five thousanddollars which you dropped on the floor a few moments ago," Elmerremarked in a quiet, almost conversational tone.
Except for a sudden start, the clerk appeared the picture of innocence.
"What letter?" he parried.
"You know what one!" snapped Allison, dropping his suave manner andmoving his hand significantly toward his coat pocket. "Will you produceit--or shall I?"
"I--I don't know what you are talking about," stammered the clerk.
"No? Well, I'll show you!" and the operative's hands flashed forward andthere was a slight click as a pair of handcuffs snapped into place."Now, Mr. Rogers, you'll be good enough to watch me carefully, as yourevidence will probably be needed in court. I'll show you as simple andclever a scheme as I've ever run across."
With that Allison dropped to the floor, wormed his way under thetable-desk, tugged at something for a moment and then rose, holding fivelarge envelopes in his hands!
"There's your lost one hundred thousand dollars," he explained, "and adummy packet of thirty-five thousand dollars to boot. Thought you couldget away with it indefinitely, eh?" he inquired of the handcuffed clerk."If you'd stopped with the one hundred thousand dollars, as you'dprobably intended to do, you might have. But that extra letter turnedthe trick. Too bad it contained only blank paper"--and he ripped theenvelope open to prove his assertion.
"But--but--I don't understand," faltered Rogers. "How did this man workit right under our eyes?"
"He didn't," declared Allison. "He tried to work it right under mine,but he couldn't get away with it. The plan was simplicity itself. He'dslip an envelope which he knew contained a large sum of money out of thepile as it passed him--he hadn't signed for them, so he wasn't takingany special risk--drop it on the floor, stoop over, and, if he wasn'tbeing watched, attach it to the _bottom_ of his desk with a wad ofchewing gum. You boasted that you went over the room with a fine-toothcomb, but who would think of looking on the under side of this table.The idea, of course, was that he'd wait for the storm to blowover--because the letters could remain in their hiding places formonths, if necessary--and then start on a lifelong vacation with hisspoils as capital. But he made the error of overcapitalization and Ivery much fear that he'll put in at least ten years at Leavenworth orMorgantown. But I'd like to bet he never chews another piece of gum!"
* * * * *
"That," continued Quinn, as he tossed another pink wrapper into thewastebasket, "I consider the simplest and cleverest scheme to beat thegovernment that I ever heard of--better even than Cochrane's plan inconnection with the robbery of the Philadelphia mint, because it didn'tnecessitate any outside preparation at all. The right job, a piece ofgum, and there you are. But you may be sure that whenever an importantletter disappears nowadays, one of the first places searched by thePostal Inspection operatives is the lower side of the desks and tables.You can't get away with a trick twice in the same place."