XIII
THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MICE
"The United States Secret Service," announced Bill Quinn, "is by longodds the best known branch of the governmental detective bureaus. Theterror which the continental crook feels at the sound of the name'Scotland Yard' finds its echo on this side of the Atlantic whenever acriminal knows that he has run afoul of the U. S. S. S. For Uncle Samnever forgives an injury or forgets a wrong. Sooner or later he's goingto get his man--no matter how long it takes nor how much money it costs.
"But the Secret Service, strictly speaking, is only one branch of theorganization. There are others which work just as quietly and just aseffectively. The Department of Justice, which had charge of theviolation of neutrality laws, banking, and the like; the TreasuryDepartment, which, through the Customs Service and the Bureau ofInternal Revenue, wages constant war on the men and women who think theycan evade the import regulations and the laws against illicitmanufacture of alcohol; the Pension Bureau of the Interior Department,which is called upon to handle hundreds of frauds every year; and thePost Office Department, which guards the millions of dollars intrustedto the mails.
"Each of these has its own province. Each works along its own line inconjunction with the others, and each of them is, in reality, a secretorganization which performs a vastly important service to the nation asa whole. When you speak of the Secret Service, the Treasury Department'sorganization comes immediately to mind--coupled with a panorama ofcounterfeiters, anarchists, revolutionaries, and the like. But the fieldof the Secret Service is really limited when compared to the scope ofthe other organizations.
"Look around this room"--and he made a gesture which included the fourwalls of the library den in which we were seated, a room in which theusual decorations had been replaced by a strange collection of unusualand, in a number of instances, gruesome relics. "Every one of thoseobjects is a memento of some exploit of the men engaged in SecretService," Quinn went on. "That Chinese hatchet up there came very closeto being buried in the skull of a man in San Diego, but its principalmission in life was the solution of the mystery surrounding thesmuggling of thousands of pounds of opium. That water-stained cap wasfished out of the Missouri after its owner had apparently committedsuicide--but the Pension Bureau located him seven years later, with theaid of a fortune teller in Seattle. At the side of the bookcase thereyou will find several of the original poison-pen letters which createdso much consternation in Kansas City a few years ago, letters whichAllison of the Postal Inspection Service finally traced to their sourceafter the local authorities had given up the case as impossible ofsolution.
"The woman whose picture appears on the other wall was known as Mrs.Armitage--and that was about all that they did know about her, save thatshe was connected with one of the foreign organizations and that in somemysterious way she knew everything that was going on in the StateDepartment almost as soon as it was started. And there, under that pieceof silk which figured in one of the boldest smuggling cases that theTreasury Department ever tackled, is the blurred postmark whicheventually led to the discovery of the man who murdered MontgomeryMarshall--a case in which our old friend Sherlock Holmes would havereveled. But it's doubtful if he could have solved it any moreskillfully than did one of the Post Office operatives."
"What's the significance of that white mouse on the mantelpiece?" Iinquired, sensing the fact that Quinn was in one of his story-tellingmoods.
"It hasn't any significance," replied the former government agent, "butit has a story--one which illustrates my point that all the nation'sdetective work isn't handled by the Secret Service, by a long shot. Didyou ever hear of H. Gordon Fowler, alias W. C. Evans?"
"No," I replied, "I don't think I ever did."
"Well, a lot of people have--to their sorrow," laughed Quinn, reachingfor his pipe.
* * * * *
No one appears to know what Fowler's real name is [continued the formeroperative]. He traveled under a whole flock of aliases which ran thegamut of the alphabet from Andrews to Zachary, but, to save mixingthings up, suppose that we assume that his right name was Fowler. Heused it for six months at one time, out in Minneapolis, and got awaywith twenty thousand dollars' worth of stuff.
For some time previous to Fowler's entrance upon the scene variouswholesale houses throughout the country had been made the victims ofwhat appeared to be a ring of bankruptcy experts--men who would securecredit for goods, open a store, and then "fail." Meanwhile themerchandise would have mysteriously vanished and the proprietor would beaway on a "vacation" from which, of course, he would never return.
On the face of it this was a matter to be settled solely by theWholesalers' Credit Association, but the Postal Inspection Service gotinto it through the fact that the mails were palpably being used withintent to defraud and therefore Uncle Sam came to the aid of thebusiness men.
On the day that the matter was reported to Washington the chief of thePostal Inspection Service pushed the button which operated a buzzer inthe outer office and summoned Hal Preston, the chap who later on wasresponsible for the solution of the Marshall murder mystery.
"Hal," said the chief, with a smile, "here's a case I know you'll like.It's right in the line of routine and it ought to mean a lot oftraveling around the country--quick jumps at night and all that sort ofstuff."
Preston grunted, but said nothing. You couldn't expect to draw the bigcases every time, and, besides, there was no telling when somethingmight break even in the most prosaic of assignments.
"Grant, Wilcox & Company, in Boston, report that they've been stungtwice in the same place by a gang of bankruptcy sharks," the chief wenton. "And they're not the only ones who have suffered. Here's a list ofthe concerns and the men that they've sold to. You'll see that it coversthe country from Hoquiam, Washington, to Montclair, New Jersey--so theyappear to have their organization pretty well in hand. Ordinarily wewouldn't figure in this thing at all--but the gang made the mistake ofplacing their orders through the mail and now it's up to us to land 'em.Here's the dope. Hop to it!"
That night, while en route to Mount Clemens, Michigan, where the latestof the frauds had been perpetrated, Preston examined the envelope fullof evidence and came to a number of interesting conclusions. In thefirst place the failures had been staged in a number of differentlocalities--Erie, Pennsylvania, had had one of them under the name of"Cole & Hill"; there had been another in Sioux City, where ImmerlingBrothers had failed; Metcalf and Newman, Illinois, had likewisecontributed their share, as had Minneapolis, Newark, Columbus, WhitePlains, and Newburg, New York; San Diego, California; Hoquiam,Washington, and several other points.
But the point that brought Hal up with a jerk was the dates attached toeach of these affairs. No two of them had occurred within six months ofthe other and several were separated by as much as a year.
"Who said this was a gang?" he muttered. "Looks a lot more like the workof a single man with plenty of nerve and, from the amount of stuff hegot away with, he ought to be pretty nearly in the millionaire class bynow. There's over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods coveredby this report alone and there's no certainty that it is complete. Well,here's hoping--it's always easier to trail one man than a whole bunch of'em."
In Mount Clemens Preston found further evidence which tended to provethat the bankruptcy game was being worked by a single nervy individual,posing under the name of "Henry Gerard."
Gerard, it appeared, had entered the local field about a year before,apparently with plenty of capital, and had opened two prosperous storeson the principal street. In August, about two months before Preston'sarrival, the proprietor of the Gerard stores had left on what wasapparently scheduled for a two weeks' vacation. That was the last thathad been heard of him, in spite of the fact that a number of urgentcreditors had camped upon his trail very solicitously. The stores hadbeen looted, only enough merchandise being left to keep up the fictionof a complete stock, and Gerard had vanished with the proceeds.
/> After making a few guarded inquiries in the neighborhood of the store,Preston sought out the house where Gerard had boarded during his stay inMount Clemens. There he found that the missing merchant, in order toallay suspicion, had paid the rental of his apartment for three monthsin advance, and that the place had not been touched since, save by thelocal authorities who had been working on the case.
"You won't find a thing there," the chief of police informed Hal, inresponse to a request for information. "Gerard's skipped and that's allthere is to it. We've been over the place with a fine-tooth comb andthere ain't a scrap of evidence. We did find some telegrams torn up inhis waste basket, but if you can make anything out of 'em it's more thanI can," and he handed over an envelope filled with scraps of finely tornyellow paper.
"Not the slightest indication of where Gerard went?" inquired Preston ashe tucked the envelope in an inside pocket.
"Not a bit," echoed the chief. "He may be in China now, so far as weknow."
"Was he married?"
"Nobody here knows nothin' about him," the chief persisted. "They do sayas how he was right sweet on a girl named Anna Something-or-other wholived in the same block. But she left town before he did, and she 'ain'tcome back, neither."
"What did you say her name was?"
"Anna Vaughan, I b'lieve she called herself. You might ask Mrs. Morrisabout her. She had a room at her place, only a few doors away fromwhere Gerard stayed."
The apartment of the man who had vanished, Preston found, was furnishedin the manner typical of a thousand other places. Every stick offurniture appeared to have seen better days and no two pieces could besaid to match. Evidently Gerard had been practicing economy in hisdomestic arrangements in order to save all the money possible for aquick getaway. What was more, he had carefully removed everything of apersonal nature, save a row of books which decorated the mantel piece inone of the rooms.
It was toward these that Preston finally turned in desperation. All butone of them were the cheaper grade of fiction, none of which bore anydistinguishing marks, but the exception was a new copy of the latestRailroad Guide. Just as Preston pounced upon this he heard a chucklefrom behind him and, whirling, saw the chief of police just entering thedoor.
"Needn't worry with that, young man," he urged. "I've been all throughit and there ain't nothin' in it. Just thought I'd drop up to see ifyou'd found anything," he added, in explanation of his suddenappearance. "Have you?"
"No," admitted the postal operative. "Can't say that I have. This is thefirst piece of personal property that I've been able to locate and yousay there is nothing in this?"
"Nary a clue," persisted the chief, but Preston, as if loath to drop theonly tangible reminder of Gerard, idly flipped the pages of the Guide,and then stood it on edge on the table, the covers slightly opened.Then, as the chief watched him curiously, he closed the book, opened itagain and repeated the operation.
"What's the idea? Tryin' to make it do tricks?" the chief asked as Halstood the book on edge for the third time.
"Hardly that. Just working on a little theory of my own," was theresponse, as the post-office man made a careful note of the page atwhich the Guide had fallen open--the same one which had presented itselfto view on the two other occasions. "Here, would you like to try it?"and he handed the volume to the chief. But that functionary onlyshrugged his shoulders and replaced the Guide upon the mantelpiece.
"Some more of your highfalutin' detective work, eh?" he muttered. "Soonyou'll be claimin' that books can talk."
"Possibly not out loud," smiled Hal. "But they can be made to tell veryinteresting stories now and then, if you know how to handle 'em. Theredoesn't seem to be much here, Chief, so I think I'll go back to thehotel. Let me know if anything comes up, will you?" And with that heleft.
But before returning to the hotel he stopped at the house where AnnaVaughan had resided and found out from the rather garrulous landladythat Gerard had appeared to be rather smitten with the beautifulstranger.
"She certainly was dressed to kill," said the woman who ran theestablishment. "A big woman and strong as all outdoors. Mr. Gerard camehere three or four nights a week while she was with us and he didn'tseem to mind the mice at all."
"Mind the what?" snapped Preston.
"The mice--the white mice that she used to keep as pets," explained thelandlady. "Had half a dozen or more of them running over her shoulders,but I told her that I couldn't stand for that. She could keep 'em inher room if she wanted to, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Guessit was on their account that she didn't have any other visitors. S'faras I know Mr. Gerard was the only one who called on her."
"When did Miss Vaughan leave?" Hal inquired.
"Mrs. Vaughan," corrected the woman. "She was a widow--though she wasyoung and pretty enough to have been married any time she wanted to be.Guess the men wouldn't stand for them mice, though. She didn't stay verylong--just about six weeks. Left somewheres about the middle of July."
"About two weeks before Gerard did?"
"About that--though I don't just remember the date."
A few more inquiries elicited the fact that Mrs. Vaughan's room had beenrented since her departure, so Preston gave up the idea of lookingthrough it for possible connecting links with the expert in bankruptcy.
Returning to the hotel, the operative settled down to an examination ofthe scraps of torn telegrams which the chief had handed him. Evidentlythey had been significant, he argued, for Gerard had been careful totear them into small bits, and it was long past midnight before he hadsucceeded in piecing the messages together, pasting the scraps on glassin case there had been any notations on the reverse of the blank.
But when he had finished he found that he had only added one morepuzzling aspect to the case.
There were three telegrams, filed within a week and all dated justbefore Gerard had left town.
"Geraldine, Anna, May, and Florence are in Chicago," read the messagefrom Evanston, Illinois.
"George, William, Katherine, Ray, and Stephen still in St. Louis," wasthe wire filed from Detroit.
The third message, from Minneapolis, detailed the fact that "Frank,Vera, Marguerite, Joe, and Walter are ready to leave St. Paul."
None of the telegrams was signed, but, merely as a precaution, Prestonwired Evanston, Detroit, and Minneapolis to find out if there was anyrecord of who had sent them.
"Agent here recalls message," came the answer from Detroit the next day."Filed by woman who refused to give her name. Agent says sender wasquite large, good-looking, and very well dressed."
"Anna Vaughan!" muttered Preston, as he tucked the telegram in hispocket and asked to be shown a copy of the latest Railway Guide.
Referring to a note which he had made on the previous evening, Halturned to pages 251-2, the part of the book which had fallen open threetimes in succession when he had examined it in Gerard's rooms, and notedthat it was the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe time-table, westbound.Evidently the missing merchant had invested in a copy of the Guiderather than run the risk of leaving telltale time-tables around hisapartment, but he had overstepped himself by referring to only oneportion of the book.
"Not the first time that a crook has been just a little too clever,"mused Preston, with a smile. "If it had been an old copy, there wouldn'thave been any evidence--but a new book, opened several times at the sameplace, can be made to tell tales--his honor, the chief of police, to thecontrary."
It was clear, therefore, that Preston had three leads to work on: AnnaVaughan, a large, beautiful woman, well-dressed and with an affectionfor white mice; the clue that Gerard was somewhere in the Southwest andat least the first names of fourteen men and women connected with thegang.
But right there he paused. Was there any gang? The dates of the variousdisappearances tended to prove that there wasn't, but the messagesreceived by Gerard certainly appeared to point to the fact that otherswere connected with the conspiracy to defraud.
Possibly one of the clerks who had been co
nnected with the Gerard storeswould be able to throw a little light upon the situation....
It wasn't until Hal interviewed the woman who had acted as cashier andmanager for the second store that he found the lead he was after. Inresponse to his inquiry as to whether she had ever heard the missingproprietor speak of any of the persons mentioned in the wires, thecashier at first stated definitely that she hadn't, but added, a momentlater:
"Come to think of it, he did. Not as people, but as trunks."
"What's that?" exclaimed the operative. "Trunks?"
"Yes. I remember sometime last spring, when we were figuring on how muchsummer goods we ought to carry, I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gerard,and almost automatically he replied, 'I'll wire for Edna and Grace.'Thinking he meant saleswomen, I reminded him that we had plenty,particularly for the slack season. He colored up a bit, caught hisbreath, and turned the subject by stating that he always referred totrunks of goods in terms of people's first names--girls for the femininestuff and men's for the masculine. But Edna and Grace weren't on yourlist, were they?"
"No," replied Preston. "But that doesn't matter. Besides, didn't the twotrunks of goods arrive?"
"Yes, they came in a couple of weeks later."
"Before Mrs. Vaughan came to town?"
"Oh yes, some time before she arrived."
"I thought so," was Preston's reply, and, thanking the girl, he wanderedback to the hotel--convinced that he had solved at least one of themysteries, the question of what Gerard did with his surplus "bankruptstock." It was evidently packed in trunks and shipped to distant points,to be forwarded by the Vaughan woman upon instructions from Gerardhimself. The wires he had torn up were merely confirmatory messages,sent so that he would have the necessary information before making agetaway.
"Clever scheme, all right," was Hal's mental comment. "Now the nextpoint is to find some town in the Southwest where a new store has beenopened within the past two months."
That night the telegraph office at Mount Clemens did more business thanit had had for the past year. Wires, under the government frank, wentout to every town on the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe and to a number ofadjacent cities. In each case the message was the same:
Wire name of any new clothing store opened within past two months. Also description of proprietor. Urgent.
PRESTON, U. S. P. I. S.
Fourteen chiefs of police replied within the next forty-eight hours, butof these only two--Leavenworth and Fort Worth--contained descriptionswhich tallied with that of Henry Gerard.
So, to facilitate matters, Preston sent another wire:
Has proprietor mentioned in yesterday's wire a wife or woman friend who keeps white mice as pets?
Fort Worth replied facetiously that the owner of the new store there wasmarried, but that his wife had a cat--which might account for theabsence of the mice. Leavenworth, however, came back with:
Yes, Mrs. Noble, wife of owner of Outlet Store, has white mice for pets. Why?
Never mind reason [Preston replied]. Watch Noble and wife until I arrive. Leaving to-day.
Ten minutes after reaching Leavenworth Preston was ensconced in theoffice of the chief of police, outlining the reason for his visit.
"I'm certain that Noble is the man you want," said the chief, when Halhad finished. "He came here some six weeks or more ago and at onceleased a store, which he opened a few days later. The description fitshim to a T, except for the fact that he's evidently dispensed with themustache. The Vaughan woman is posing as his wife and they've rented ahouse on the outskirts of town. What do you want me to do? Nab 'em rightaway?"
"No," directed the operative. "I'd rather attend to that myself, if youdon't object. After trailing them this far, I'd like to go through withit. You might have some men handy, though, in case there's any fuss."
Just as Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Noble were sitting down to dinner there was aring at their front-door bell and Noble went to see who it was.
"I'd like to speak to Mr. H. Gordon Fowler," said Preston, his handresting carelessly in the side pocket of his coat.
"No Mr. Fowler lives here," was the growling reply from the inside.
"Then Mr. W. C. Evans or Mr. Henry Gerard will do!" snapped theoperative, throwing his shoulder against the partly opened door.Noble--or Fowler, as he was afterward known--stepped aside as Halplunged through, and then slammed the door behind him.
"Get him, Anna!" he called, throwing the safety bolt into position.
The next thing that Preston knew, a pair of arms, bare and feminine butstrong as iron, had seized him around the waist and he was in imminentdanger of being bested by a woman. With a heave and a wriggling twist hebroke the hold and turned, just in time to see Fowler snatch a revolverfrom a desk on the opposite side of the room and raise it into position.Without an instant's hesitation he leaped to one side, dropped his handinto his coat pocket, and fired. Evidently the bullet took effect, forthe man across the room dropped his gun, spun clean around and then sankto the floor. As he did so, however, the woman hurled a heavy vasedirectly at Preston's head and the operative sank unconscious.
* * * * *
"Well, go on!" I snapped, when Quinn paused. "You sound like a serialstory--to be continued in our next. What happened then?"
"Nothing--beyond the fact that three policemen broke in some ten secondsafter Hal fired, grabbed Mrs. Vaughan or whatever her name was, and kepther from beating Hal to death, as she certainly would have done inanother minute. Fowler wasn't badly hurt. In fact, both of them stoodtrial the next spring--Fowler drawing six years and Anna Vaughan one.Incidentally, they sent 'em back to Leavenworth to do time and, as agreat concession, allowed the woman to take two of her white mice withher. I managed to get one of the other four, and, when it died, had itstuffed as a memento of a puzzling case well solved.
"It's a hobby of mine--keeping these relics. That hatchet, forexample.... Remind me to tell you about it some time. The mice wereresponsible for finding one man in fifty million--which is something ofa job in itself--but the hatchet figured in an even more excitingaffair...."