Part 16

After a thorough examination of the credentials of the supposed German--who had explained his accent by the statement that he had been brought to the United States when very young and had been raised in Wisconsin--the steward informed him that there was a temporary vacancy in the Club staff which he could fill until Heilman returned.

"The duties," the steward added, "are very light and the pay, while not large, will enable you to lay by a little something toward your return trip to Germany."

Knowing that his time was limited, Randall determined to let nothing stand in the way of his hearing all that went on in the room where Cheney and his associates held their conferences. It was the work of only a few moments to bore holes in the door which connected this room with an unused coat closet--plugging up the holes with corks stained to simulate the wood itself--and the instant the conference was on the new waiter disappeared.

An hour later he slipped out of the side entrance to the Club and the steward is probably wondering to this day what became of him. Had he been able to listen in on the private wire which connected the New York office of the Secret Service with headquarters at Washington, he would have had the key to the mystery.

"Chief," reported Randall, "I've got the whole thing. There's a plot on foot to raise one hundred and fifty thousand German reservists--men already in this country--mobilizing them in four divisions, with six sections. The first two divisions are to assemble at Silvercreek, Michigan--the first one seizing the Welland Canal and the second capturing Wind Mill Point, Ontario. The third is to meet at Wilson, N. Y., and will march on Port Hope. The fourth will go from Watertown, N. Y., to Kingston, Ontario, while the fifth will assemble somewhere near Detroit and proceed toward Windsor. The sixth will stage an attack on Ottawa, operating from Cornwall.

"They've got their plans all laid for the coup, and Cheney reported to-day that he intends to purchase some eighty-five boats to carry the invading force into the Dominion. The only thing that's delaying the game is the question of provisions for the army. Cheney's holding out for another advance--from what I gathered he's already received a lot--and claims that he will be powerless unless he gets it. I didn't stay to listen to the argument, for I figured that I'd better leave while the leaving was good."

The reply that came back from Washington was rather startling to the operative, who expected only commendation and the statement that his task was completed.

"What evidence have you that this invasion is planned?"

"None besides what I heard through holes which I bored in one of the doors of the German-American Club this morning."

"That won't stand in court! We don't dare to arrest this man Cheney on that. You've got to get something on him."

"Plant it?"

"No! Get it straight. And we can't wait for this expedition to start, either. That would be taking too much of a chance. It's up to you to do a little speedy work in the research line. Dig back into the count's past and find something on which we can hold him, for he's very evidently the brains of the organization, in spite of the fact that he probably is working only for what he can get of that fund that the Germans have raised. I understand that it's sixteen million dollars and that's enough to tempt better men than Cheney. Now go to it, and remember--you've got to work fast!"

Disappointed, chagrined by the air of finality with which the receiver at the Washington end of the line was hung up, Randall wandered out of the New York office with a scowl on his face and deep lines of thought between his eyes. If he hadn't been raised in the school which holds that a man's only irretrievable mistake is to quit under fire, he'd have thrown up his job right there and let some one else tackle the work of landing the count. But he had to admit that the chief was right and, besides, there was every reason to suppose that grave issues hung in the balance. The invasion of Canada meant the overthrow of American neutrality, the failure of the plans which the President and the State Department had so carefully laid.

Cheney was the crux of the whole situation. Once held on a charge that could be proved in court, the plot would fall through for want of a capable leader--for the operative had learned enough during his hour in the cloak-room to know that "the count" was the mainspring of the whole movement, despite the fact that he undoubtedly expected to reap a rich financial harvest for himself.

Selecting a seat on the top of a Fifth Avenue bus, Randall resigned himself to a consideration of the problem.

"The whole thing," he figured, "simmers down to Cheney himself. In its ramifications, of course, it's a question of peace or war--but in reality it's a matter of landing a crook by legitimate means. I can't plant a gun on him, like they did on Heilman, and there's mighty little chance of connecting him with the Branchfield case or the van Husen emeralds at this late date. His conduct around town has certainly been blameless enough. Not even any women to speak of. Wait a minute, though! There were two. The blond from the Knickerbocker and that red-haired dame. He's still chasing around with the blond--but what's become of Miss Red-head?"

This train of thought had possibilities. If the girl had been cast aside, it was probable that she would have no objection to telling what she knew--particularly as the color of her hair hinted at the possession of what the owner would call "temperament," while the rest of the world forgets to add the last syllable.

It didn't take long to locate the owner of the fiery tresses. A quick round-up of the head waiters at the cafés which Cheney frequented, a taxi trip to Washington Square and another to the section above Columbus Circle, and Randall found that the red-haired beauty was known as Olga Brainerd, an artist's model, whose face had appeared upon the cover of practically every popular publication in the country. She had been out of town for the past two months, he learned, but had just returned and had taken an apartment in a section of the city which indicated the possession of considerable capital.

"Miss Brainerd," said Randall, when he was face to face with the Titian beauty in the drawing-room of her suite, "I came with a message from your friend, Carl Cheney."

Here he paused and watched her expression very closely. As he had hoped, the girl was unable to master her feelings. Rage and hate wrote themselves large across her face and her voice fairly snapped as she started to reply. Randall, however, interrupted her with a smile and the statement:

"That's enough! I'm going to lay my cards face up on the table. I am a Secret Service operative seeking information about Cheney. Here is my badge, merely to prove that I'm telling the truth. We have reason to believe that 'the Count,' as he is called, is mixed up with a pro-German plot which, if successful, would imperil the peace of the country. Can you tell us anything about him?"

"Can I?" echoed the girl. "The beast! He promised to marry me, more than two months ago, and then got infatuated with some blond chit of a chorus girl. Just because I lost my head and showed him a letter I had received--a letter warning me against him--he flew into a rage and threatened.... Well, never mind what he did say. The upshot of the affair was that he sent me out of town and gave me enough money to last me some time. But he'll pay for his insults!"

"Have you the letter you received?" asked Randall, casually--as if it meant little to him whether the girl produced it or not.

"Yes. I kept it. Wait a moment and I'll get it for you." A few seconds later she was back with a note, written in a feminine hand--a note which read:

If you are wise you will ask the man who calls himself Carl Cheney what he knows of Paul Weiss, of George Winters, and Oscar Stanley. You might also inquire what has become of Florence and Rose.

(Signed) AMELIA.

Randall looked up with a puzzled expression. "What's all this about?" he inquired. "Sounds like Greek to me."

"To me, too," agreed the girl. "But it was enough to make Carl purple with rage and, what's more, to separate him from several thousand dollars."

"Weiss, Winters, and Stanley," mused Guy. "Those might easily be Cheney's former aliases. Florence, Rose, and Amelia? I wonder.... Come on, girl, we're going to take a ride down to City Hall! I've got a hunch!"

Late that afternoon when Carl Cheney arrived at his hotel he was surprised to find a young man awaiting him in his apartment--a man who appeared to be perfectly at ease and who slipped over and locked the door once the count was safely within the room.

"What does this mean?" demanded Cheney. "By what right--"

"It means," snapped Randall, "that the game's up!" Then, raising his voice, he called, "Mrs. Weiss!" and a tall woman parted the curtains at the other end of the room; "Mrs. Winters!" and another woman entered; "Mrs. Stanley!" and a third came in. With his fingers still caressing the butt of the automatic which nestled in his coat pocket, Randall continued:

"Cheney--or whatever your real name is--there won't be any invasion of Canada. We know all about your plans--in fact, the arsenal on West Houston Street is in possession of the police at this moment. It was a good idea and undoubtedly you would have cleaned up on it--were it not for the fact that I am under the far from painful necessity of arresting you on a charge of bigamy--or would you call it 'trigamy'? The records at City Hall gave you away, after one of these ladies had been kind enough to provide us with a clue to the three aliases under which you conducted your matrimonial operations.

"Come on, Count. The Germans may need you worse than we do--but we happen to have you!"

XVI

AFTER SEVEN YEARS

Bill Quinn was disgusted. Some one, evidently afflicted with an ingrowing sense of humor, had sent him the prospectus of a "school" which professed to be able to teach budding aspirants the art of becoming a successful detective for the sum of twenty-five dollars, and Quinn couldn't appreciate the humor.

"_How to Become a Detective--in Ten Lessons_," he snorted. "It only takes one for the man who's got the right stuff in him, and the man that hasn't better stay out of the game altogether."

"Well," I retorted, anxious to stir up any kind of an argument that might lead to one of Quinn's tales about the exploits of Uncle Sam's sleuths, "just what does it take to make a detective?"

It was a moment or two before Quinn replied. Then: "There are only three qualities necessary," he replied. "Common sense, the power of observation, and perseverance. Given these three, with possibly a dash of luck thrown in for good measure, and you'll have a crime expert who could stand the heroes of fiction on their heads.

"Take Larry Simmons, for example. No one would ever have accused him of having the qualifications of a detective--any more than they would have suspected him of being one. But Larry drew a good-sized salary from the Bureau of Pensions because he possessed the three qualities I mentioned. He had the common sense of a physician, the observation of a trained newspaper reporter, and the perseverance of a bulldog. Once he sunk his teeth in a problem he never let loose--which was the reason that very few people ever put anything over on the Pension Bureau as long as Larry was on the job.

"That cap up there," and Quinn pointed to a stained and dilapidated bit of headgear which hung upon the wall of his den, "is a memento of one of Simmons's cases. The man who bought it would tell you that I'm dead right when I say that Larry was persevering. That's putting it mildly."

* * * * *

Quite a while back [continued Quinn, picking up the thread of his story] there was a man out in Saint Joseph, Missouri, named Dave Holden. No one appeared to know where he came from and, as he conducted himself quietly and didn't mix in with his neighbors' affairs, no one cared very much.

Holden hadn't been in town more than a couple of weeks when one of the older inhabitants happened to inquire if he were any kin to "Old Dave Holden," who had died only a year or two before.

"No," said Holden, "I don't believe I am. My folks all came from Ohio and I understand that this Holden was a Missourian."

"That's right," agreed the other, "and a queer character, too. Guess he was pretty nigh the only man that fought on the Union side in the Civil War that didn't stick th' government for a pension. Had it comin' to him, too, 'cause he was a captain when th' war ended. But he always said he didn't consider that Uncle Sam owed him anything for doin' his duty. Spite of th' protests of his friends, Dave wouldn't ever sign a pension blank, either."

A few more questions, carefully directed, gave Holden the history of his namesake, and that night he lay awake trying to figure out whether the plan which had popped into his head was safe. It promised some easy money, but there was the element of risk to be considered.

"After all," he concluded, "I won't be doing anything that isn't strictly within the law. My name is David Holden--just as the old man's was. The worst that they can do is to turn down the application. I won't be committing forgery or anything of the kind. And maybe it'll slip through--which would mean a pile of money, because they'll kick in with all that accumulated during the past fifty years."

So it was that, in the course of time, an application was filed at the Bureau of Pensions in Washington for a pension due "David Holden" of Saint Joseph, Missouri, who had fought in the Civil War with the rank of captain. But, when the application had been sent over to the War Department so that it might be compared with the records on file there, it came back with the red-inked notation that "Capt. David Holden had died two years before"--giving the precise date of his demise as evidence.

The moment that the document reached the desk of the Supervisor of Pensions he pressed one of the little pearl buttons in front of him and asked that Larry Simmons be sent in. When Larry arrived the chief handed him the application without a word.

"Right! I'll look into this," said Larry, folding the paper and slipping it into the pocket of his coat.

"Look into it?" echoed the supervisor. "You'll do more than that! You'll locate this man Holden--or whatever his right name is--and see that he gets all that's coming to him. There've been too many of these cases lately. Apparently people think that all they have to do is to file an application for a pension and then go off and spend the money. Catch the first train for Saint Joe and wire me when you've landed your man. The district attorney will attend to the rest of the matter."

The location of David Holden, as Simmons found, was not the simplest of jobs. The pension applicant, being comparatively a newcomer, was not well known in town, and Simmons finally had to fall back upon the expedient of watching the post-office box which Holden had given as his address, framing a dummy letter so that the suspect might not think that he was being watched.

Holden, however, had rented the box for the sole purpose of receiving mail from the Pension Bureau. He had given the number to no one else and the fact that the box contained what appeared to be an advertisement from a clothing store made him stop and wonder. By that time, however, Simmons had him well in sight and followed him to the boarding-house on the outskirts of the town where he was staying.

That evening, while he was still wondering at the enterprise of a store that could obtain a post-office box number from a government bureau at Washington, the solution of the mystery came to him in a decidedly unexpected manner. The house in which Holden was staying was old-fashioned, one of the kind that are heated, theoretically at least, by "registers," open gratings in the wall. Holden's room was directly over the parlor on the first floor and the shaft which carried the hot air made an excellent sound-transmitter.

It so happened that Simmons, after having made a number of inquiries around town about the original Dave Holden, called at the boarding house that night to discover what the landlady knew about the other man of the same name, who was seated in the room above.

Suddenly, like a voice from nowhere, came the statement in a high-pitched feminine voice: "I really don't know anything about him at all. Mr. Holden came here about six weeks ago and asked me to take him in to board. He seemed to be a very nice, quiet gentleman, who was willing to pay his rent in advance. So I let him have one of the best rooms in the house."

At the mention of his name Holden listened intently. Who was inquiring about him, and why?

There was only a confused mumble--apparently a man's reply, pitched in a low tone--and then the voice of the landlady again came clearly through the register:

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't do anything like that. Mr. Holden is...."

But that was all that the pension applicant waited for. Moving with the rapidity of a frightened animal, he secured one or two articles of value from his dresser, crammed a hat into his pocket, slipped on a raincoat, and vaulted out of the window, alighting on the sloping roof of a shed just below. Before he had quitted the room, however, he had caught the words "arrest on a charge of attempting to obtain money under false pretenses."

Some two minutes later there was a knock on his door and a voice demanded admittance. There was no reply. Again the demand, followed by a rattling of the doorknob and a tentative shake of the door. In all, it was probably less than five minutes after Larry Simmons had entered the parlor before he had burst in the door of Holden's room. But the bird had flown and the open window pointed to the direction of his flight.

Unfortunately for the operative the night was dark and the fugitive was decidedly more familiar with the surrounding country than Larry was. By the time he had secured the assistance of the police half an hour had elapsed, and there weren't even any telltale footprints to show in which direction the missing man had gone.

"See that men are placed so as to guard the railroad station," Simmons directed, "and pass the word up and down the line that a medium-sized man, about thirty-five years of age, with black hair and a rather ruddy complexion--a man wanted by the government on a charge of false pretenses--is trying to make his escape. If anyone reports him, let me know at once."

That, under the circumstances, was really all that Larry could do. It ought to be an easy matter to locate the fugitive, he figured, and it would only be a question of a few days before he was safely in jail.

Bright and early the next morning the operative was awakened by a bell-boy who informed him that the chief of police would like to see him.

"Show him in," said Larry, fully expecting to see the chief enter with a handcuffed prisoner. But the head of the police force came in alone, carrying a bundle, which he gravely presented to Simmons.

"What's this?" inquired the pension agent.

"All that's left of your friend Holden," was the reply. "One of my men reported late last night that he had heard a splash in the river as though some one had jumped off the wharf, but he couldn't find out anything more. To tell the truth, he didn't look very hard--because we had our hands full with a robbery of Green's clothing store. Some one broke in there and--"

"Yes--but what about Holden?" Simmons interrupted.

"Guess you'll have to drag the river for him," answered the chief. "We found his coat and vest and raincoat on the dock this mornin', and on top of them was this note, addressed to you."

The note, as Larry found an instant later, read:

I'd rather die in the river than go to jail. Tell your boss that he can pay two pensions now--one for each of the Dave Holdens.

The signature, almost illegible, was that of "David Holden (Number two)."

"No doubt that your man heard the splash when Holden went overboard last night?" inquired the operative.

"Not the least in the world. He told me about it, but I didn't connect it with the man you were after, and, besides, I was too busy right then to give it much thought."

"Any chance of recovering the body?"

"Mighty little at this time of the year. The current's good and strong an' the chances are that he won't turn up this side of the Mississippi, if then. It was only by accident that we found his cap. It had lodged under the dock and we fished it out less 'n half an hour ago--" and the chief pointed to a water-soaked piece of cloth which Simmons recognized as the one which Holden had been wearing the evening before.

"Well, I don't suppose there's anything more that we can do," admitted Larry. "I'd like to have the river dragged as much as possible, though I agree with you that the chances for recovering the body are very slim. Will you look after that?"

"Sure I will, and anything else you want done." The chief was nothing if not obliging--a fact which Simmons incorporated in his official report, which he filed a few days later, a report which stated that "David Holden, wanted on a charge of attempting to obtain money under false pretenses, had committed suicide by drowning rather than submit to arrest."

The body has not been recovered [the report admitted], but this is not to be considered unusual at this time of the year when the current is very strong. The note left by the fugitive is attached.

Back from Washington came the wire:

Better luck next time. Anyhow, Holden won't bother us again.

If this were a moving picture [Quinn continued, after a pause], there would be a subtitle here announcing the fact that seven years are supposed to elapse. There also probably would be a highly decorated explanatory title informing the audience that "Uncle Sam Never Forgets Nor Forgives"--a fact that is so perfectly true that it's a marvel that people persist in trying to beat the government. Then the scene of the film would shift to Seattle, Washington.

They would have to cut back a little to make it clear that Larry Simmons had, in the meantime, left the Pension Bureau and entered the employment of the Post-office Department, being desirous of a little more excitement and a few more thrills than his former job afforded. But he was still working for Uncle Sam, and his memory--like that of his employer--was long and tenacious.

One of the minor cases which had been bothering the department for some time past was that of a ring of fortune-tellers who, securing information in devious ways, would pretend that it had come to them from the spirit world and use it for purposes which closely approximated blackmail. Simmons, being in San Francisco at the time, was ordered to proceed to Seattle and look into the matter.

Posing as a gentleman of leisure with plenty of money and but little care as to the way in which he spent it, it wasn't long before he was steered into what appeared to be the very center of the ring--the residence of a Madame Ahara, who professed to be able to read the stars, commune with spirits, and otherwise obtain information of an occult type. There Larry went through all the usual stages--palmistry, spiritualism, and clairvoyance--and chuckled when he found, after his third visit, that his pocket had been picked of a letter purporting to contain the facts about an escapade in which he had been mixed up a few years ago. The letter, of course, was a plant placed there for the sole purpose of providing a lead for madame and her associates to follow. And they weren't long in taking the tip.