Part 12

"That's true," Allison admitted, "but it's been my experience that problems which appear the most puzzling are, after all, the simplest of explanation. You remember the Philadelphia mint robbery--the one that Drummond solved in less than six hours? This may prove to be just as easy."

There Allison was wrong, dead wrong--as he had to admit some ten days later, when, worn with the strain of sitting for hours at a time with his eyes glued to the ventilator which masked the opening to the lookout, he finally came to the conclusion that something would have to be done to speed things up. It was true that no new robberies had occurred in the meantime, but neither had any of the old ones been punished. The lost one hundred thousand dollars was still lost; though the department, with the aid of the Treasury officials, had seen that the banks were reimbursed.

"The decoy letter," thought Allison, "is probably the oldest dodge in the world. But, who knows, it may work again in this case--provided we stage-manage it sufficiently carefully."

With the assistance of the cashier of one of the local banks Elmer arranged to have a dummy package of money forwarded by mail from New York. It was supposed to contain thirty-five thousand dollars in cash, and all the formalities were complied with precisely as if thirty-five thousand-dollar bills were really inside the envelope, instead of as many 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, his eyes strained to catch the slightest suspicious movement below. Hour after hour passed uneventfully until, almost immediately below him, he saw a man drop something on the floor. Two envelopes had slipped from his hands and he stooped to pick them up--that was all.

But what carried a thrill to the operative in the lookout was the fact that 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 postal clerk had, in some manner, disposed of the envelope supposed to contain thirty-five thousand dollars and he was going about his work in precisely the same way as before.

"Wait a minute," Allison argued to himself. "There's something missing besides the envelope! What is it?"

A moment later he had the clue to the whole affair--the jaws of the clerk, which Allison had previously and subconsciously noted were always hard at work on a wad of gum, now were at rest for the first time since the operative had entered the lookout! The chewing gum and the dummy packet 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 envelope containing thirty-five thousand dollars had just disappeared from the registry room."

"What?" demanded the postmaster. "How do you know? I haven't received any report of it."

"No, and you probably wouldn't for some time," Elmer retorted. "But it happens that I saw it disappear."

"Then you know where it is?"

"I can lay my hands on it--and probably the rest of the missing money--inside of one minute. Let's pay a visit to the registry room."

Before entering the section, however, Allison took the precaution of posting men at both of the doors.

"After I'm inside," he directed, "don't allow anyone to leave on any pretext whatever. And stand ready for trouble in case it develops. Come on, Mr. Rogers."

Once in the room devoted to the handling of registered mail, Allison made directly for the desk under the lookout. The occupant regarded their approach with interest but, apparently, without a trace of anxiety.

"I'd like to have that letter supposed to contain thirty-five thousand dollars which you dropped on the floor a few moments ago," Elmer remarked 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 and moving his hand significantly toward his coat pocket. "Will you produce it--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 and there 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 your evidence will probably be needed in court. I'll show you as simple and clever a scheme as I've ever run across."

With that Allison dropped to the floor, wormed his way under the table-desk, tugged at something for a moment and then rose, holding five large envelopes in his hands!

"There's your lost one hundred thousand dollars," he explained, "and a dummy packet of thirty-five thousand dollars to boot. Thought you could get away with it indefinitely, eh?" he inquired of the handcuffed clerk. "If you'd stopped with the one hundred thousand dollars, as you'd probably intended to do, you might have. But that extra letter turned the trick. Too bad it contained only blank paper"--and he ripped the envelope open to prove his assertion.

"But--but--I don't understand," faltered Rogers. "How did this man work it 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'd slip an envelope which he knew contained a large sum of money out of the pile as it passed him--he hadn't signed for them, so he wasn't taking any special risk--drop it on the floor, stoop over, and, if he wasn't being watched, attach it to the _bottom_ of his desk with a wad of chewing gum. You boasted that you went over the room with a fine-tooth comb, 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 blow over--because the letters could remain in their hiding places for months, if necessary--and then start on a lifelong vacation with his spoils as capital. But he made the error of overcapitalization and I very much fear that he'll put in at least ten years at Leavenworth or Morgantown. But I'd like to bet he never chews another piece of gum!"

* * * * *

"That," continued Quinn, as he tossed another pink wrapper into the wastebasket, "I consider the simplest and cleverest scheme to beat the government that I ever heard of--better even than Cochrane's plan in connection with the robbery of the Philadelphia mint, because it didn't necessitate any outside preparation at all. The right job, a piece of gum, and there you are. But you may be sure that whenever an important letter disappears nowadays, one of the first places searched by the Postal Inspection operatives is the lower side of the desks and tables. You can't get away with a trick twice in the same place."

XII

"THE DOUBLE CODE"

It was one night in early fall that Bill Quinn and I were browsing around the library in the house that he had called "home" ever since a counterfeiter's bullet incapacitated him from further active work in the Secret Service. Prior to that time he had lived, as he put it, "wherever he hung his hat," but now there was a comfortable little house with a den where Quinn kept the more unusual, and often gruesome, relics which brought back memories of the past.

There, hanging on the wall with a dark-brown stain still adorning the razorlike edge, was a Chinese hatchet which had doubtless figured in some tong war on the Coast. Below was an ordinary twenty-five-cent piece, attached to the wall paper with chewing gum--"just as it once aided in robbing the Treasury of nearly a million dollars," Quinn assured me. In another part of the room was a frame containing what appeared to be a bit torn from the wrapping of a package, with the canceled stamp and a half-obliterated postmark as the only clues to the murder of the man who had received it, and, beside the bookcases, which contained a wide range of detective literature, hung a larger frame in which were the finger prints of more than a score of criminals, men bearing names practically unknown to the public, but whose exploits were bywords in the various governmental detective services.

It was while glancing over the contents of the bookcase that I noted one volume which appeared strangely out of place in this collection of the fictional romances of crime.

"What's this doing here?" I inquired, taking down a volume of _The Giant Raft_, by Jules Verne. "Verne didn't write detective stories, did he?"

"No," replied Quinn, "and it's really out of place in the bookcase. If possible, I'd like to have it framed and put on the wall with the rest of the relics--for it's really more important than any of them, from the standpoint of value to the nation. That quarter on the wall over there--the one which figured in the Sugar Fraud case--cost the government in the neighborhood of a million dollars, but this book probably saved a score of millions and hundreds of lives as well. If it hadn't been for the fact that Thurber of the Navy Department knew his Jules Vernes even better than he did his Bible, it's quite possible that--

"Well, there's no use telling the end of the story before the beginning. Make yourself comfortable and I'll see if I can recall the details of the case."

* * * * *

Remember Dr. Heinrich Albert? [Quinn inquired, after we had both stretched out in front of the open fire]. Theoretically, the Herr Doktor was attached to the German embassy in Washington merely in an advisory and financial capacity. He and Haniel von Heimhausen--the same counselor that the present German government wanted to send over here as ambassador after the signing of the peace treaty--were charged with the solution of many of the legal difficulties which arose in connection with the business of the big red brick dwelling on Massachusetts Avenue. But while von Heimhausen was occupied with the legal end of the game, Doctor Albert attended to many of the underground details which went unsuspected for many years.

It was he, for example, who managed the bidding for the wireless station in the Philippines--the plan which permitted the German government to dictate the location of the station and to see to it that the towers were so placed where they would be most useful to Berlin. He undoubtedly worked with von Papen and Boy-Ed during the early years of the war--years in which this precious trio, either with or without the knowledge of Count von Bernstorff, sought by every means to cripple American shipping, violate American neutrality, and make a laughingstock of American diplomatic methods. What's more, they got away with it for months, not because the Secret Service and the Department of Justice weren't hot on their trail, but because the Germans were too cagy to be caught and you can't arrest a diplomat just on suspicion.

During the months which followed the first of August, nineteen fourteen, practically every one of the government's detective services was called upon in some way to pry into the affairs of the embassy staff. But the brunt of the work naturally devolved upon the two organizations directly concerned with preventing flagrant breaches of neutrality--the Secret Service and the Department of Justice.

Every time that Doctor Albert, or any other official of the German government, left Washington he was trailed by anywhere from one to five men. Every move he made was noted and reported to headquarters, with the result that the State Department had a very good idea of the names of the men who were being used to forward Germany's ends, even though it knew comparatively little about what was actually planned. The attachés were entirely too clever to carry on compromising conversations in the open, and their appointments were made in such a manner as effectually to prevent the planting of a dictaphone or any other device by which they might be overheard.

The directions to the men who were responsible for the working of the two Services were:

Every attaché of the German embassy is to be guarded with extreme care, day and night. Reports are to be made through the usual channels and, in the event that something unusual is observed, Divisional Headquarters is to be notified instantly, the information being transmitted to Washington before any final action is taken.

This last clause, of course, was inserted to prevent some hot-headed operative from going off half-cocked and thus spoiling the State Department's plans. As long as Albert and his associates were merely "guarded" they couldn't enter any formal complaint. But, given half a chance, they would have gotten on their official dignity and demanded that the espionage cease.

From the State Department's point of view it was an excellent rule, but Gene Barlow and the other Service men assigned to follow Albert couldn't see it in that light.

"What's the idea, anyhow?" Gene growled one night as his pet taxicab dashed down Massachusetts Avenue in the wake of the big touring car that was carrying the German attaché to the Union Station. "Here we have to be on the job at all hours, just to watch this Dutchman and see what he does. And," with a note of contempt, "he never does anything worth reporting. Sees half a dozen people, lunches at the German-American Club, drops in at two or three offices downtown, and then back here again. If they'd only let us waylay him and get hold of that black bag that he always carts around there'd be nothing to it. Some day I'm going to do that little thing, just to see what happens."

But Barlow took it out in threats. Secret Service men find pleasure in stating what they are going to do "some day"--but the quality of implicit obedience has been drilled into them too thoroughly for them to forget it, which is possibly the reason why they take such a sheer and genuine delight in going ahead when the restrictions are finally lifted.

It was in New York, more than two years after the war had commenced, that Barlow got his first opportunity to "see what would happen." In the meantime, he had been assigned to half a dozen other cases, but always returned to the shadowing of Doctor Albert because he was the one man who had been eminently successful in that work. The German had an almost uncanny habit of throwing his pursuers off the trail whenever he wanted to and in spite of the efforts of the cleverest men in the Service had disappeared from time to time. The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the delicacy of the diplomatic situation which ensued made it imperative that the "man with the saber scar," as Doctor Albert was known, be kept constantly under surveillance.

"Stick to him, Gene, and don't bother about reporting until you are certain that he will stay put long enough for you to phone," were the instructions that Barlow received. "The doctor must be watched every moment that he's away from the Embassy and it's up to you to do it."

"Anything else beside watching him?" inquired the operative, hopefully.

"No," smiled the chief, "there isn't to be any rough stuff. We're on the verge of an explosion as it is, and anyone who pulls the hair trigger will not only find himself out of a job, but will have the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that he's responsible for wrecking some very carefully laid plans. Where Albert goes, who he talks with and, if possible, a few details of what they discuss, is all that's wanted."

"Wouldn't like to have a piece of the Kaiser's mustache or anything of that kind, would you, Chief?" Barlow retorted. "I could get that for you a whole lot easier than I could find out what the man with the saber scar talks about. He's the original George B. Careful. Never was known to take a chance. Wouldn't bet a nickel against a hundred dollars that the sun would come up to-morrow and always sees to it that his conferences are held behind bolted doors. They even pull down the shades so that no lip reader with a pair of field glasses can get a tip as to what they're talking about."

"That's the reason you were picked for this case," was the chief's reply. "Any strong-arm man could whale Albert over the head and throw him in the river. That wouldn't help any. What we need is information concerning what his plans are, and it takes a clever man to get that."

"All bull and a yard wide!" laughed Gene, but the compliment pleased him, nevertheless. "I'll watch him, but let me know when the lid comes off and I can use other methods."

The chief promised that he would--and it was not more than three weeks later that he had an opportunity to make good.

"Barlow," he directed, speaking over the long-distance phone to the operative in New York, "the Department of Justice has just reported that Doctor Albert is in receipt of a document of some kind--probably a letter of instruction from Berlin--which it is vital that we have at once. Our information is that the message is written on a slip of oiled paper carried inside a dummy lead pencil. It's possible that the doctor has destroyed it, but it isn't probable. Can you get it?"

"How far am I allowed to go?" inquired Gene, hoping for permission to stage a kidnaping of the German attaché, but fully expecting these instructions which followed--orders that he was to do nothing that would cause an open breach, nothing for which Doctor Albert could demand reparation or even an apology.

"In other words," Barlow said to himself, as he hung up the phone, "I'm to accomplish the impossible, blindfolded and with my hands tied. Wonder whether Paula would have a hunch--"

Paula was Barlow's sweetheart, a pretty little brunette who earned a very good salary as private secretary to one of the leading lights of Wall Street--which accounted for the fact that the operative had learned to rely upon her quick flashes of intuitive judgment for help in a number of situations which had required tact as well as action. They were to be married whenever Gene's professional activities subsided sufficiently to allow him to remain home at least one night a month, but, meanwhile, Paula maintained that she would as soon be the wife of an African explorer--"Because at least I would know that he wouldn't be back for six months, while I haven't any idea whether you'll be out of town two days or two years."

After they had talked the Albert matter over from all angles, Paula inquired, "Where would your friend with the saber scar be likely to carry the paper?"

"Either in his pocket or in the black bag that he invariably has with him."

"Hum!" she mused, "if it's in his pocket I don't see that there is anything you can do, short of knocking him down and taking it away from him, and that's barred by the rules of the game. But if it is in the mysterious black bag.... Is the doctor in town now?"

"Yes, he's at the Astor, probably for two or three days. I left Dwyer and French on guard there while I, presumably, snatched a little sleep. But I'd rather have your advice than any amount of rest."

"Thanks," was the girl's only comment, for her mind was busy with the problem. "There's apparently no time to lose, so I'll inform the office the first thing in the morning that I won't be down, meet you in front of the Astor, and we'll see what happens. Just let me stick with you, inconspicuously, and I think that I can guarantee at least an opportunity to lift the bag without giving the German a chance to raise a row."

Thus it was that, early the next day, Gene Barlow was joined by a distinctly personable young woman who, after a moment's conversation, strolled up and down Broadway in front of the hotel.

Some twenty minutes later a man whose face had been disfigured by a saber slash received at Heidelberg came down the steps and asked for a taxi. But Barlow, acting under directions from Paula, had seen that there were no taxis to be had. A flash of his badge and some coin of the realm had fixed that. So Dr. Heinrich Albert, of the German embassy, was forced to take a plebeian surface car--as Paula had intended that he should. The Secret Service operative and his pretty companion boarded the same car a block farther down, two other government agents having held it sufficiently long at Forty-fourth Street to permit of this move.

Worming their way through the crowd when their prey changed to the Sixth Avenue Elevated, Gene and Paula soon reached points of vantage on either side of the German, who carried his black bag tightly grasped in his right hand, and the trio kept this formation until they reached Fiftieth Street, when the girl apparently started to make her way toward the door. Something caused her to stumble, however, and she pitched forward right into the arms of the German, who by that time had secured a seat and had placed his bag beside him, still guarding it with a protecting arm.

Before the foreigner had time to gather his wits, he found himself with a pretty girl literally in his lap--a girl who was manifestly a lady and who blushed to the tips of her ears as she apologized for her awkwardness. Even if the German had been a woman-hater there would have been nothing for him to do but to assist her to her feet, and that, necessarily, required the use of both hands. As it happened, Doctor Albert was distinctly susceptible to feminine charms, and there was something about this girl's smile which was friendly, though embarrassed.

So he spent longer than was strictly essential in helping her to the door--she appeared to have turned her ankle--and then returned to his seat only to find that his portfolio was missing!

Recriminations and threats were useless. A score of people had left the car and, as the guard heartlessly refused to stop the train before the next station, there was naturally not a trace of the girl or the man who had accompanied her. By that time, in fact, Barlow and Paula had slipped into the shelter of a neighboring hotel lobby and were busy inspecting the contents of Doctor Albert's precious brief case.

"Even if there's nothing in it," laughed the girl, "we've had the satisfaction of scaring him to death."

Gene said nothing, but pawed through the papers in frantic haste.

"A slip of oiled paper," he muttered. "By the Lord Harry! here it is!" and he produced a pencil which his trained fingers told him was lighter than it should be. With a wrench he broke off the metal tip that held the eraser, and from within the wooden spindle removed a tightly wrapped roll of very thin, almost transparent paper, covered with unintelligible lettering.

"What's on it?" demanded Paula.

"I'll never tell you," was Barlow's reply. "It would take a better man than I am to decipher this," and he read off:

"I i i t f b b t t x o...."

"Code?" interrupted the girl.

"Sure it is--and apparently a peach." The next moment he had slipped the paper carefully into an inside pocket, crammed the rest of the papers back into the brief case, and was disappearing into a phone booth.

"Better get down to work, dear," he called over his shoulder. "I'm going to report to the office here and then take this stuff down to Washington!" And that was the last that Paula saw of him for a week.

Six hours later Barlow entered the chief's office in the Treasury Department and reported that he had secured the code message.

"So New York phoned," was the only comment from the man who directed the destinies of the Secret Service. "Take it right up to the Navy Department and turn it over to Thurber, the librarian. He'll be able to read it, if anybody can."