Part 11

The government's expert accountant immediately established the manner in which the funds of the bank had been taken. As bookkeeper, Tollman did not have access to the cash or securities, and was therefore not considered as being in a position of trust. He was not even bonded. But beneath his eye there constantly passed those large accounts of the bank which represented its wealth.

It was about six months after Tollman came of age that irregular charges began to appear against the inactive accounts. At first they were modest and infrequent. Steadily they strengthened and grew in size. Eventually it was shown that charges averaging $5,000 a day were being regularly placed against these accounts. There were weeks during which the bookkeeper had succeeded in abstracting such amounts every day.

The bank accountants were soon able to demonstrate the method of these abstractions. The bookkeeper would give a check against his own account to some individual in Boston and that individual would deposit it for collection. It would be sent through the clearing house and eventually reach the bank in Bainbridge. The bookkeeper was always early at the bank when any such checks were expected from the clearing house. He opened the letters transmitting them, turning the statement of the total amount represented over to the cashier, that a check might be sent by him to the clearing house. It was the province of the bookkeeper to enter the individual checks against the accounts represented. When he reached his own personal check, he charged it to some one of the inactive accounts instead of his own and destroyed it. So had he taken $400,000.

But the immediate task in hand fell to Billy Gard. It was the apprehension of the fugitive and the recovery, if possible, of all or part of the money taken. It was in the course of the performance of this duty that the ramifications of this case which give it a place among the most unique and complete crimes of the age were developed.

While accountants were revealing methods used inside the bank in getting hold of the money, Gard was busy outside. Tollman, having disappeared, was to be traced. The first step was to establish his habits, to find his associates. To the experienced special agent the groundwork of a case of this sort unfolds almost of itself. There were the people who knew him best in Bainbridge, for instance. They told Gard that the youngster had broken away, of late, from the friends of his youth. He was believed to have gone to Boston for his pleasures. He had a big red automobile which, it was supposed, he had bought with the money of his inheritance and in which he drove away practically every night. Through the whole of the last year of his peculations, Tollman, the twelve-dollar-a-week clerk, drove regularly to his work at the bank in this car.

In Boston Gard picked up the clues. Tollman was well known at certain hotels and cafés. At one hotel which was rendezvous for sporting people he regularly called upon a very dashing young woman who was registered as Laura Gatewood. It was at this same hotel that he became acquainted with an accomplished individual known as John R. Mansfield, who was well known about McDougal's Tap, in Columbia Avenue, and whose livelihood was secured through alleged games of chance. Miss Gatewood also introduced Tollman to a Mrs. Siddons, an especial friend of Mansfield, who maintained a cozy little apartment in a respectable part of Boston, and who had, in a dress suit case, a portable faro outfit which could be set up in her rooms upon occasion. There was also Edward T. Walls, a large and dominant man, who had, of late, found poker playing on transatlantic liners a rather precarious calling. But, finally, Miss Gatewood arranged meetings between Tollman and "Big Bill" Kelliner, who lived in Winthrop, not far away, was in the wholesale liquor business, in politics, and, as afterward developed, was a dominating spirit in the "faro gang."

With the development of the friendship with Kelliner began the trips to New York. These two would meet two or three times a week at the Back Bay station and together take the train for New York. So frequent were these trips that the members of the train crews came to be well acquainted with the men, and to know something of their movements. They gave clues to the hotels in New York at which these travelers stayed, and this led to their identification by hotel clerks and other facts as to their associates. Eventually all this led to a certain house in West Twenty-eighth Street and a consultation with the New York police as to its character.

It developed that in this house there was always running, on evenings when Kelliner and Tollman came to New York, a faro game. Here Kelliner gambled and at first won and induced Tollman to try his luck. The youngster was allowed to win prodigiously. Again he would lose, but not enough to frighten him away. So was the craze for gambling developed in the bookkeeper. But eventually he lost what was left of his inheritance.

Up to this time he was honest. But at the suggestion of Kelliner he stole from the bank to make good his losses. He lost again, and was in the mill. There was no chance of escape but through stealing more of the bank's funds and gambling in the hope of eventually winning out. The bookkeeper had entirely lost his head. He became consumed with the recklessness of desperation.

In the meantime the Gatewood woman had moved to New York. Also Tollman had become deeply enamored with her. So fond was he of her company, as a matter of fact, that he would often turn over to Kelliner and Mansfield and other of their friends the money with which to gamble, while he visited with Miss Gatewood. The members of the gang would go to some gilded restaurant and dine sumptuously and return to Tollman and report that luck had been against them, and that they had lost all their money. On such occasions the profits of the evening were almost clear to the gang. On such occasions, so the members of the train crew back to Boston reported, "Big Bill" Kelliner would sob out his apparent grief, because of his losses, on the shoulder of Tollman. The latter was thus placed in the rôle of comforter. Kelliner would swear never to gamble again and make his protestations so earnestly that Tollman would become the aggressor and urge his associate on and paint pictures of luck ahead. So adroitly did Kelliner play this game that Tollman had been heard to threaten to break with him because he was a piker.

For two years this arrangement continued. Kelliner, Mansfield, Walls, the Gatewood woman, and other accomplices, maintained themselves as decoys that induced the young bookkeeper to draw ever more checks against his personal account and always extract these and charge them where they were least likely to be missed. Despite his long carouses at night Tollman never failed to be at the bank in time to open the mail and extract the checks that would have betrayed him. Despite the loss of sleep he was never so dull that he neglected any detail of his bookkeeping that would have caused his accounts to fail to balance or to show any irregularities that would have caused the bank examiner to grow suspicious. Unsuspectingly the stern old bank of Bainbridge stood with unruffled front until it became but a financial skeleton, its last spark of vitality wasted away.

But this young bookkeeper of the gambling mania! What became of him? Those other aiders and abetters to his crime! What action was taken in their case?

Special Agent Billy Gard eventually had in hand a complete understanding of the individuals and the methods that were associated with this case. He had reached the necessity of making arrests.

Kelliner was taken into custody. He indignantly protested that he was innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. Mansfield, Walls and Tollman had disappeared. The capture of the latter was of first importance.

The special agent turned first to that primary command of the old-school detective when a crime is committed: "Find the woman." The results obtained indicate that there may be much in the theory. In the case of Tollman the connection with the Gatewood woman was soon established. She was not about her old haunts in New York. No trails were immediately found. It was developed that she had originally lived in Kansas City. When any individual has got into trouble there is always a strong probability that he will return to his old home, another detective theory to which Billy Gard subscribed. It is particularly true with reference to such serious crimes as murder, but it is to a material extent true in all cases that necessitate flight.

Upon this theory Gard went to Kansas City to look for the woman in the Tollman case. It required some weeks to find her. When she was located it was found that Tollman was not with her. He had been there until the night before. They had quarreled and he had gone away. The cause of their quarrel was the fact that Tollman had no money. She had cast him off as a dead husk. She did not know his whereabouts.

In practically every case of otherwise well executed crime there develops some element of unexpected folly--the criminal does some one thing that seems, from what would be supposed to be his standpoint, inexcusably stupid. Gard was therefore not surprised when it developed that Tollman had not so much as a thousand dollars out of all he had taken from the bank. He had made no provision for the time which he must have known would inevitably come when he should be detected. This, however, was not the crowning folly from a criminal standpoint. Despite the dash and cunning and the determination he had evinced in his lootings, he lost his nerve when his woman threw him out. He purchased, with the proceeds of pawned jewelry, a ticket to Bainbridge, Mass., went there, and gave himself up to the police. His nerve was broken.

The theory of "find the woman" was applied in the case of the third of the offenders, John R. Mansfield, the Boston gambler. The apartment of Mrs. Siddons where the faro game was, upon occasion, set up, and the woman herself, who was suspected of being particularly intimate with Mansfield, were watched. The watch was not effective, however, for the woman disappeared with no one seeing her.

The janitor at the apartment house reported that in going she had taken a particularly heavy trunk. Special Agent Stephens undertook to follow that trunk. He canvassed half the expressmen of Boston before he found the man who had taken the trunk away. This man stated that he had taken it to the Back Bay station at a certain time, and that it had been weighed and found to be in excess of the baggage a passenger might carry free of charge. This singled it out from the mass of trunks. The expressman remembered that it weighed 225 pounds, and that the baggageman had marked it for 60 cents excess. According to the rate book this would have been the excess charge for that weight to New York. The trunk was thus located with sufficient definiteness that its number was procured.

In New York it was found that the excess trunk had been sent on to North Philadelphia with the charge C. O. D. Here the record showed that the trunk had been called for by a Mrs. Price, living at an address on Broad Street, and the agent remembered that she had been accompanied by a man. At this address a Mr. and Mrs. Price were found to be living. Special Agent Stephens watched the Broad Street house until Price came out. He was none other than Mansfield. He was placed under arrest.

With confidence in the old detective theory of the woman, the special agents applied it again in the case of Walls, the one-time gambler on transatlantic liners. This was not done, however, until several suspected individuals in different cities had been shown not to be the man wanted, and many other schemes for the apprehension of the gambler had failed. For Walls was married to a very attractive and respectable woman, who supported herself by keeping a boarding house after his flight. It could not be discovered that she was in communication with her husband. Finally, there was developed another woman with whom Walls was known to have been friendly, and who had a part in the activities of the faro gang. This woman's correspondence was watched, and it was soon discovered that she was sending letters to and receiving letters from a man in Detroit, Michigan. Tracings of the man's handwriting were made as the letters came through the post office, and when compared with that of Walls, the resemblance was convincing.

The writer of these letters gave his address as a lock box. A special agent went to Detroit, but the box had been given up. Two months later more letters came to the same woman from Grand Junction, Colorado, and also from a lock box. The postmaster was able to describe the man holding the box and the description suited Walls. But he moved again before a detective got there to identify and arrest him. There was a chase of six months on such clues, always through the same woman, but Walls was still at large.

Eventually there appeared among death notices in New York the name of Edward T. Walls. Subsequently Mrs. Walls went from her boarding house in Boston and took charge of the body. Suspecting that this might be a trick to throw them off their guard, the special agents took every precaution to identify the body. Eventually they were convinced that the man they had pursued so diligently was dead. The case was closed.

The three principals in this case, Tollman, Kelliner and Mansfield, were given 15, 18 and 10 years respectively. After their conviction both Tollman and Kelliner talked freely to Billy Gard of the whole case and threw some interesting sidelights upon it. Kelliner told particularly of the inception of the plans of the faro gang. He said it came into being at Atlantic City where he and Mansfield and Walls happened to be spending a week-end. Kelliner at that time already had a line on Tollman, and other possible victims were deemed ready for the plucking.

With these prospective victims in mind the faro gang was organized. Money had to be raised for the fitting up of the establishment in Twenty-eighth Street, which was only used when victims were in tow. This alone cost $2,000. Then there was the necessary expense money of the members of the gang while they were developing their victims. There must be cash in the bank to be won when those victims made their first appearance. Altogether it was a business that had to be capitalized for something like $20,000 before it could begin operations. But, as it afterwards turned out, it was a profitable investment if viewed from the standpoint of Tollman alone; and there were other victims.

XII

PUTTING UP THE MASTER BLUFF

Did you ever go among strangers and pretend to be a more important personage than you really are? Yes? So have I. There are many of us who habitually take a taxicab when we go into a strange city on a modest piece of business. Yet at home we would walk six blocks to save a nickel in car fare. I would not acknowledge to the hotel clerk, nor would you, that an inside room, price one dollar, is what, in my heart, I would like to ask for when I say that three-fifty will be about right. And we tip the waiter, you and I, although we know that he makes twice the money we do, and we let the haberdasher's clerk sell us a shirt for three dollars when we should pay one, and the barber bulldozes us into taking a shampoo when there is a perfectly good bar of soap at home and not working.

For, to ourselves, upon occasion, we like to be the dream people, to see ourselves as the great and dominant of the land, to step out of the everyday commonplace of our existence. We pay the price of our temporary emancipation. We may feel a bit foolish when the bellboy is gone and we are alone with the pitcher of ice water, but in our hearts it is worth the money.

Admitting this tendency to dissemble, how large a front of false pretense could you put up, how important a personage do you think you could make of yourself, if you should find all the gates open and were invited to do your durndest? And if you should, in a moment of abandon, summon courage to introduce yourself as the King of Spain or Anthony Comstock or Lillian Russell, and if you did this in a gathering that you knew to be made up of selected master minds, how well do you think you would be able to sustain the part?

This is the story of a modest employee of the Government, drawing $2,500 a year, who walked into a convention of millionaire manufacturers and with no basis in fact for his claim, virtually spoke to these dominant and successful princes of industry as follows:

"Gentlemen, you are mere children playing at the factory business. I am the master here. Please be nice to me and tell me all your secrets or I will cut off your supply of raw material."

It was such an assignment as this that one morning came over to New York in the mail from Washington and fell to the lot of Special Agent Billy Gard. The instructions said:

"The Northern Pulp and Paper Manufacturers' Association will hold its convention at the Waldorf on the 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd. It is suspected of being a conspiracy in restraint of trade. Its deliberations are in secret and the membership is unknown. Ascertain all action of the convention and procure a list of the members of the association."

This action on the part of the Government was occasioned by complaints from publishers of newspapers throughout the country which seemed to indicate that there was an understanding among manufacturers as to prices that should be charged for white paper. If there was such an agreement that prevented competition, it was probably reached through some association of which all were members. There was the Northern Pulp and Paper Manufacturers' Association. Its deliberations and its membership were secret. This fact put it under suspicion. Was it fixing prices?

To answer this question, Special Agent Billy Gard went on his vain-glorious debauch of assuming an importance that was not his due. He unleashed that tendency that is within us all and let it run riot to the limit. But back of the dissembling there was an object to be accomplished.

"You are President Van Dorn of the association, I believe?" said Gard as he presented himself to that individual on the morning the convention was to be opened. "My name is William H. Gard. I am most anxious to attend your meetings."

"Are you a member?" asked the president, an incisive and businesslike man of affairs whose factories produced 40 per cent. of the white paper used by the daily press of the nation.

"No," acknowledged Gard, "I do not belong to the association, but I nevertheless believe that the membership would be glad to have me present."

"If you are a manufacturer you may become a member and attend," said President Van Dorn.

"I am not a manufacturer," smiled the special agent. "I am the man back of the manufacturer. I come to you to-day, but in the near future you will all come to me. It is in the interest of the manufacturers that I want to attend."

"I do not understand," said the president.

"You of course know of the Canadian Northwest Timber Company," said the special agent. (As a matter of fact there was no company of exactly that name.) "I am the representative of that company. You may also know that we have been accumulating lands covered with spruce timber for twenty years. Our holdings now amount to areas equal to the whole of the States of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. It is not necessary that I should call your attention to the exhaustion of the spruce of New England, nor of other areas in the United States that have, in the past, been your source of supply for pulp from which to make your paper. The timber supply heretofore available for this purpose is approaching exhaustion. When it is gone you will all turn to the forests that are next most accessible. We have those forests. I therefore say to you that all of you will come to me within the next decade. I am coming to you in advance."

As the young man who claimed to be from the Canadian Northwest talked, the brusk manner of the president of the paper manufacturers gradually relaxed. He stroked his luxuriant, close-cropped whiskers in each direction from the distinct part down his chin and listened with undivided attention. The Canadian timber lands were at that time the matter of greatest interest in the pulp and paper world. These lands had been something of a mystery, for their owners were evidently sitting tight and biding their time.

"I had depended on my subject to interest you," said Gard. "I came all the way from Canada to get acquainted with the men who are going to consume my product. I would like to attend your convention and address it."

Gard's preparation for this approach and bid for a seat on the floor of the convention, had been most thorough. Upon receipt of his orders he had found himself with a week in which to make ready. His first step had been to get in touch with the publisher of a great New York daily who had reported to the Department his belief that there was a white paper trust. That publisher spent hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for paper. He had therefore carefully studied the paper situation. He had all the facts as to the supply of pulp timber. He knew just the crisis that the paper manufacturers faced. These facts he imparted to Gard and the special agent saw, through them, his opportunity to reach the confidence of the manufacturers and get all the facts with relation to their organization.

The convention was yet a week off. Gard had time to accumulate a sunburn and he went fishing down the bay three afternoons in succession, wore no hat and rolled up his sleeves. He was a young man of a lobster red for a day or two but of a deep bronze at the end of the week. With a touch or two of the woods such as a stout pair of shoes and a hunting knife which he found occasion to produce, just the right impression was created.

"There is nobody that the convention would rather hear talk," President Van Dorn was saying. "There is nobody who has a subject of more interest. But admission to the convention is provided for in the constitution and by-laws. Only members may be admitted. Our work is strictly confidential."

"However, nothing is impossible," insisted Gard. "A constitution can be amended."

"The manner in which it can be amended is also provided for in the by-laws. It cannot be done in four days."

The special agent saw himself bound to fail to get himself admitted to the convention. There was the advantage, however, of having been denied a courtesy to which he had a strong claim and this left the way open to the asking of other important favors.

"Even though you cannot attend the meetings," Van Dorn suggested, "I want to see that you meet all our leading people and in this way you may accomplish practically as much. I would be glad if you would dine with me to-night."

"I shall be very glad to do so," said the special agent. "In the meantime you can probably provide me with a list of your members. In that way I can at least communicate with them all."

"That list is quite confidential," said the president. "I have no copy of it myself."

"But your permanent headquarters in Fourth Avenue will have it," suggested Gard. "Can you give me a note to the secretary?"

To this the president assented somewhat hesitatingly. The note he wrote was also a bit indefinite. It was not instructions to give a copy of the list. It might be so interpreted if the secretary were inclined to be friendly.

So Gard went for his list with some inward trepidation, although the man who pretended to hold the fate of the paper manufacturers of a nation in his hand could afford to show no outward manifestation of it.