XIII
THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MICE
"The United States Secret Service," announced Bill Quinn, "is by long odds the best known branch of the governmental detective bureaus. The terror which the continental crook feels at the sound of the name 'Scotland Yard' finds its echo on this side of the Atlantic whenever a criminal knows that he has run afoul of the U. S. S. S. For Uncle Sam never forgives an injury or forgets a wrong. Sooner or later he's going to 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 the organization. There are others which work just as quietly and just as effectively. The Department of Justice, which had charge of the violation of neutrality laws, banking, and the like; the Treasury Department, which, through the Customs Service and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, wages constant war on the men and women who think they can evade the import regulations and the laws against illicit manufacture of alcohol; the Pension Bureau of the Interior Department, which is called upon to handle hundreds of frauds every year; and the Post Office Department, which guards the millions of dollars intrusted to the mails.
"Each of these has its own province. Each works along its own line in conjunction with the others, and each of them is, in reality, a secret organization which performs a vastly important service to the nation as a whole. When you speak of the Secret Service, the Treasury Department's organization comes immediately to mind – coupled with a panorama of counterfeiters, anarchists, revolutionaries, and the like. But the field of the Secret Service is really limited when compared to the scope of the other organizations.
"Look around this room" – and he made a gesture which included the four walls of the library den in which we were seated, a room in which the usual decorations had been replaced by a strange collection of unusual and, in a number of instances, gruesome relics. "Every one of those objects is a memento of some exploit of the men engaged in Secret Service," Quinn went on. "That Chinese hatchet up there came very close to being buried in the skull of a man in San Diego, but its principal mission in life was the solution of the mystery surrounding the smuggling of thousands of pounds of opium. That water-stained cap was fished out of the Missouri after its owner had apparently committed suicide – but the Pension Bureau located him seven years later, with the aid of a fortune teller in Seattle. At the side of the bookcase there you will find several of the original poison-pen letters which created so much consternation in Kansas City a few years ago, letters which Allison of the Postal Inspection Service finally traced to their source after the local authorities had given up the case as impossible of solution.
"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 that she was connected with one of the foreign organizations and that in some mysterious way she knew everything that was going on in the State Department almost as soon as it was started. And there, under that piece of silk which figured in one of the boldest smuggling cases that the Treasury Department ever tackled, is the blurred postmark which eventually led to the discovery of the man who murdered Montgomery Marshall – a case in which our old friend Sherlock Holmes would have reveled. But it's doubtful if he could have solved it any more skillfully than did one of the Post Office operatives."
"What's the significance of that white mouse on the mantelpiece?" I inquired, sensing the fact that Quinn was in one of his story-telling moods.
"It hasn't any significance," replied the former government agent, "but it has a story – one which illustrates my point that all the nation's detective work isn't handled by the Secret Service, by a long shot. Did you 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, reaching for his pipe.
No one appears to know what Fowler's real name is [continued the former operative]. He traveled under a whole flock of aliases which ran the gamut of the alphabet from Andrews to Zachary, but, to save mixing things up, suppose that we assume that his right name was Fowler. He used it for six months at one time, out in Minneapolis, and got away with twenty thousand dollars' worth of stuff.
For some time previous to Fowler's entrance upon the scene various wholesale houses throughout the country had been made the victims of what appeared to be a ring of bankruptcy experts – men who would secure credit for goods, open a store, and then "fail." Meanwhile the merchandise would have mysteriously vanished and the proprietor would be away 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 the Wholesalers' Credit Association, but the Postal Inspection Service got into it through the fact that the mails were palpably being used with intent to defraud and therefore Uncle Sam came to the aid of the business men.
On the day that the matter was reported to Washington the chief of the Postal Inspection Service pushed the button which operated a buzzer in the outer office and summoned Hal Preston, the chap who later on was responsible 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 of traveling around the country – quick jumps at night and all that sort of stuff."
Preston grunted, but said nothing. You couldn't expect to draw the big cases every time, and, besides, there was no telling when something might break even in the most prosaic of assignments.
"Grant, Wilcox & Company, in Boston, report that they've been stung twice in the same place by a gang of bankruptcy sharks," the chief went on. "And they're not the only ones who have suffered. Here's a list of the concerns and the men that they've sold to. You'll see that it covers the country from Hoquiam, Washington, to Montclair, New Jersey – so they appear to have their organization pretty well in hand. Ordinarily we wouldn't figure in this thing at all – but the gang made the mistake of placing 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 latest of the frauds had been perpetrated, Preston examined the envelope full of evidence and came to a number of interesting conclusions. In the first place the failures had been staged in a number of different localities – Erie, Pennsylvania, had had one of them under the name of "Cole & Hill"; there had been another in Sioux City, where Immerling Brothers had failed; Metcalf and Newman, Illinois, had likewise contributed their share, as had Minneapolis, Newark, Columbus, White Plains, 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 to each of these affairs. No two of them had occurred within six months of the 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 work of a single man with plenty of nerve and, from the amount of stuff he got away with, he ought to be pretty nearly in the millionaire class by now. There's over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods covered by 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 prove that 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 stores on the principal street. In August, about two months before Preston's arrival, the proprietor of the Gerard stores had left on what was apparently scheduled for a two weeks' vacation. That was the last that had been heard of him, in spite of the fact that a number of urgent creditors had camped upon his trail very solicitously. The stores had been looted, only enough merchandise being left to keep up the fiction of 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 in Mount Clemens. There he found that the missing merchant, in order to allay suspicion, had paid the rental of his apartment for three months in advance, and that the place had not been touched since, save by the local authorities who had been working on the case.
"You won't find a thing there," the chief of police informed Hal, in response to a request for information. "Gerard's skipped and that's all there is to it. We've been over the place with a fine-tooth comb and there ain't a scrap of evidence. We did find some telegrams torn up in his waste basket, but if you can make anything out of 'em it's more than I can," and he handed over an envelope filled with scraps of finely torn yellow paper.
"Not the slightest indication of where Gerard went?" inquired Preston as he tucked the envelope in an inside pocket.
"Not a bit," echoed the chief. "He may be in China now, so far as we know."
"Was he married?"
"Nobody here knows nothin' about him," the chief persisted. "They do say as how he was right sweet on a girl named Anna Something-or-other who lived in the same block. But she left town before he did, and she 'ain't come back, neither."
"What did you say her name was?"
"Anna Vaughan, I b'lieve she called herself. You might ask Mrs. Morris about her. She had a room at her place, only a few doors away from where Gerard stayed."
The apartment of the man who had vanished, Preston found, was furnished in the manner typical of a thousand other places. Every stick of furniture appeared to have seen better days and no two pieces could be said to match. Evidently Gerard had been practicing economy in his domestic arrangements in order to save all the money possible for a quick getaway. What was more, he had carefully removed everything of a personal nature, save a row of books which decorated the mantel piece in one of the rooms.
It was toward these that Preston finally turned in desperation. All but one of them were the cheaper grade of fiction, none of which bore any distinguishing marks, but the exception was a new copy of the latest Railroad Guide. Just as Preston pounced upon this he heard a chuckle from behind him and, whirling, saw the chief of police just entering the door.
"Needn't worry with that, young man," he urged. "I've been all through it and there ain't nothin' in it. Just thought I'd drop up to see if you'd found anything," he added, in explanation of his sudden appearance. "Have you?"
"No," admitted the postal operative. "Can't say that I have. This is the first piece of personal property that I've been able to locate and you say there is nothing in this?"
"Nary a clue," persisted the chief, but Preston, as if loath to drop the only 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 it again and repeated the operation.
"What's the idea? Tryin' to make it do tricks?" the chief asked as Hal stood the book on edge for the third time.
"Hardly that. Just working on a little theory of my own," was the response, as the post-office man made a careful note of the page at which the Guide had fallen open – the same one which had presented itself to view on the two other occasions. "Here, would you like to try it?" and he handed the volume to the chief. But that functionary only shrugged his shoulders and replaced the Guide upon the mantelpiece.
"Some more of your highfalutin' detective work, eh?" he muttered. "Soon you'll be claimin' that books can talk."
"Possibly not out loud," smiled Hal. "But they can be made to tell very interesting stories now and then, if you know how to handle 'em. There doesn't seem to be much here, Chief, so I think I'll go back to the hotel. Let me know if anything comes up, will you?" And with that he left.
But before returning to the hotel he stopped at the house where Anna Vaughan had resided and found out from the rather garrulous landlady that Gerard had appeared to be rather smitten with the beautiful stranger.
"She certainly was dressed to kill," said the woman who ran the establishment. "A big woman and strong as all outdoors. Mr. Gerard came here three or four nights a week while she was with us and he didn't seem to mind the mice at all."
"Mind the what?" snapped Preston.
"The mice – the white mice that she used to keep as pets," explained the landlady. "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 in her room if she wanted to, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Guess it was on their account that she didn't have any other visitors. S'far as 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 was young 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 very long – 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 been rented since her departure, so Preston gave up the idea of looking through it for possible connecting links with the expert in bankruptcy.
Returning to the hotel, the operative settled down to an examination of the scraps of torn telegrams which the chief had handed him. Evidently they had been significant, he argued, for Gerard had been careful to tear them into small bits, and it was long past midnight before he had succeeded in piecing the messages together, pasting the scraps on glass in 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 more puzzling aspect to the case.
There were three telegrams, filed within a week and all dated just before Gerard had left town.
"Geraldine, Anna, May, and Florence are in Chicago," read the message from Evanston, Illinois.
"George, William, Katherine, Ray, and Stephen still in St. Louis," was the 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, Preston wired Evanston, Detroit, and Minneapolis to find out if there was any record 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 was quite large, good-looking, and very well dressed."
"Anna Vaughan!" muttered Preston, as he tucked the telegram in his pocket and asked to be shown a copy of the latest Railway Guide.
Referring to a note which he had made on the previous evening, Hal turned to pages 251-2, the part of the book which had fallen open three times in succession when he had examined it in Gerard's rooms, and noted that it was the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé time-table, westbound. Evidently the missing merchant had invested in a copy of the Guide rather than run the risk of leaving telltale time-tables around his apartment, but he had overstepped himself by referring to only one portion 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't have been any evidence – but a new book, opened several times at the same place, can be made to tell tales – his honor, the chief of police, to the contrary."
It was clear, therefore, that Preston had three leads to work on: Anna Vaughan, a large, beautiful woman, well-dressed and with an affection for white mice; the clue that Gerard was somewhere in the Southwest and at least the first names of fourteen men and women connected with the gang.
But right there he paused. Was there any gang? The dates of the various disappearances tended to prove that there wasn't, but the messages received by Gerard certainly appeared to point to the fact that others were connected with the conspiracy to defraud.
Possibly one of the clerks who had been connected with the Gerard stores would be able to throw a little light upon the situation…
It wasn't until Hal interviewed the woman who had acted as cashier and manager for the second store that he found the lead he was after. In response to his inquiry as to whether she had ever heard the missing proprietor speak of any of the persons mentioned in the wires, the cashier at first stated definitely that she hadn't, but added, a moment later:
"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 much summer 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 his breath, and turned the subject by stating that he always referred to trunks of goods in terms of people's first names – girls for the feminine stuff and men's for the masculine. But Edna and Grace weren't on your list, were they?"
"No," replied Preston. "But that doesn't matter. Besides, didn't the two trunks 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 wandered back to the hotel – convinced that he had solved at least one of the mysteries, the question of what Gerard did with his surplus "bankrupt stock." It was evidently packed in trunks and shipped to distant points, to be forwarded by the Vaughan woman upon instructions from Gerard himself. The wires he had torn up were merely confirmatory messages, sent so that he would have the necessary information before making a getaway.
"Clever scheme, all right," was Hal's mental comment. "Now the next point is to find some town in the Southwest where a new store has been opened within the past two months."
That night the telegraph office at Mount Clemens did more business than it had had for the past year. Wires, under the government frank, went out to every town on the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé and to a number of adjacent 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, but of these only two – Leavenworth and Fort Worth – contained descriptions which 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 was married, but that his wife had a cat – which might account for the absence 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 the office 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 Hal had finished. "He came here some six weeks or more ago and at once leased a store, which he opened a few days later. The description fits him to a T, except for the fact that he's evidently dispensed with the mustache. The Vaughan woman is posing as his wife and they've rented a house on the outskirts of town. What do you want me to do? Nab 'em right away?"
"No," directed the operative. "I'd rather attend to that myself, if you don't object. After trailing them this far, I'd like to go through with it. 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 a ring 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 hand resting 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 the operative, throwing his shoulder against the partly opened door. Noble – or Fowler, as he was afterward known – stepped aside as Hal plunged 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 but strong as iron, had seized him around the waist and he was in imminent danger of being bested by a woman. With a heave and a wriggling twist he broke the hold and turned, just in time to see Fowler snatch a revolver from 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 hand into his coat pocket, and fired. Evidently the bullet took effect, for the man across the room dropped his gun, spun clean around and then sank to the floor. As he did so, however, the woman hurled a heavy vase directly at Preston's head and the operative sank unconscious.
"Well, go on!" I snapped, when Quinn paused. "You sound like a serial story – to be continued in our next. What happened then?"
"Nothing – beyond the fact that three policemen broke in some ten seconds after Hal fired, grabbed Mrs. Vaughan or whatever her name was, and kept her from beating Hal to death, as she certainly would have done in another minute. Fowler wasn't badly hurt. In fact, both of them stood trial the next spring – Fowler drawing six years and Anna Vaughan one. Incidentally, they sent 'em back to Leavenworth to do time and, as a great concession, allowed the woman to take two of her white mice with her. I managed to get one of the other four, and, when it died, had it stuffed as a memento of a puzzling case well solved.
"It's a hobby of mine – keeping these relics. That hatchet, for example… Remind me to tell you about it some time. The mice were responsible for finding one man in fifty million – which is something of a job in itself – but the hatchet figured in an even more exciting affair…"