Kitabı oku: «On Secret Service», sayfa 2
II
THE MINT MYSTERY
"Mr Drummond! Wire for Mr. Drummond! Mr. Drummond, please!"
It was the monotonous, oft-repeated call of a Western Union boy – according to my friend Bill Quinn, formerly of the United States Secret Service – that really was responsible for solving the mystery which surrounded the disappearance of $130,000 in gold from the Philadelphia Mint.
"The boy himself didn't have a thing to do with the gold or the finding of it," admitted Quinn, "but his persistence was responsible for locating Drummond, of the Secret Service, just as he was about to start on a well-earned vacation in the Maine woods. Uncle Sam's sleuths don't get any too much time off, you know, and a month or so in a part of the world where they don't know anything about international intrigues and don't care about counterfeiting is a blessing not to be despised.
"That's the reason the boy had to be persistent when he was paging Drummond.
"The operative had a hunch that it was a summons to another case and he was dog tired. But the boy kept singing out the name through the train and finally landed his man, thus being indirectly responsible for the solution of a mystery that might have remained unsolved for weeks – and incidentally saved the government nearly every cent of the one hundred and thirty thousand dollars."
When Drummond opened the telegram [continued Quinn] he found that it was a summons to Philadelphia, signed by Hamlin, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
"Preston needs you at once. Extremely important," read the wire – and, as Drummond was fully aware that Preston was Director of the United States Mint, it didn't take much deduction to figure that something had gone wrong in the big building on Spring Garden Street where a large part of the country's money is coined.
But even the lure of the chase – something you read a lot about in detective stories, but find too seldom in the real hard work of tracing criminals – did not offset Drummond's disappointment in having to defer his vacation. Grumbling, he gathered his bags and cut across New York to the Pennsylvania Station, where he was fortunate enough to be able to make a train on the point of leaving for Philadelphia. At the Mint he found Director Preston and Superintendent Bosbyshell awaiting him.
"Mr. Hamlin wired that he had instructed you to come up at once," said the director. "But we had hardly hoped that you could make it so soon."
"Wire reached me on board a train that would have pulled out of Grand Central Station in another three minutes," growled Drummond. "I was on my way to Maine to forget all about work for a month. But," and his face broke into a smile, "since they did find me, what's the trouble?"
"Trouble enough," replied the director. "Some hundred and thirty thousand dollars in gold is missing from the Mint!"
"What!" Even Drummond was shaken out of his professional calm, not to mention his grouch. Robbery of the United States Treasury or one of the government Mints was a favorite dream with criminals, but – save for the memorable occasion when a gang was found trying to tunnel under Fifteenth Street in Washington – there had been no time when the scheme was more than visionary.
"Are you certain? Isn't there any chance for a mistake?"
The questions were perfunctory, rather than hopeful.
"Unfortunately, not the least," continued Preston. "Somebody has made away with a hundred and thirty thousand dollars worth of the government's money. Seven hundred pounds of gold is missing and there isn't a trace to show how or where it went. The vault doors haven't been tampered with. The combination of the grille inside the vault is intact. Everything, apparently, is as it should be – but fifty bars of gold are missing."
"And each bar," mused Drummond, "weighs – "
"Fourteen pounds," cut in the superintendent.
Drummond looked at him in surprise.
"I beg your pardon," said Preston. "This is Mr. Bosbyshell, superintendent of the Mint. This thing has gotten on my nerves so that I didn't have the common decency to introduce you. Mr. Bosbyshell was with me when we discovered that the gold was missing."
"When was that?"
"Yesterday afternoon," replied the director. "Every now and then – at irregular intervals – we weigh all the gold in the Mint, to make sure that everything is as it should be. Nothing wrong was discovered until we reached Vault Six, but there fifty bars were missing. There wasn't any chance of error. The records showed precisely how much should have been there and the scales showed how much there was, to the fraction of an ounce.
"But even if we had only counted the bars, instead of weighing each one separately, the theft would have been instantly discovered, for the vault contained exactly fifty bars less than it should have. It was then that I wired Washington and asked for assistance from the Secret Service."
"Thus spoiling my vacation," muttered Drummond. "How many men know the combination to the vault door?"
"Only two," replied the superintendent. "Cochrane, who is the official weigher, and myself. Cochrane is above suspicion. He's been here for the past thirty years and there hasn't been a single complaint against him in all that time."
Drummond looked as if he would like to ask Preston if the same could be said for the superintendent, but he contented himself with listening as Bosbyshell continued:
"But even if Cochrane or I – yes, I'm just as much to be suspected as he – could have managed to open the vault door unseen, we could not have gotten inside the iron grille which guards the gold in the interior of the vault. That is always kept locked, with a combination known to two other men only. There's too much gold in each one of these vaults to take any chance with, which is the reason for this double protection. Two men – Cochrane and I – handle the combination to the vault door and open it whenever necessary. Two others – Jamison and Strubel – are the only ones that know how to open the grille door. One of them has to be present whenever the bars are put in or taken away, for the men who can get inside the vault cannot enter the grille, and the men who can manipulate the grille door can't get into the vault."
"It certainly sounds like a burglar-proof combination," commented Drummond. "Is there any possibility for conspiracy between" – and he hesitated for the fraction of a second – "between Cochrane and either of the men who can open the grille door?"
"Apparently not the least in the world," replied Preston. "So far as we know they are all as honest as the day – "
"But the fact remains," Drummond interrupted, "that the gold is missing."
"Exactly – but the grille door was sealed with the official governmental stamp when we entered the vault yesterday. That stamp is applied only in the presence of both men who know the combination. So the conspiracy, if there be any, must have included Cochrane, Strubel, and Jamison – instead of being a two-man job."
"How much gold did you say was missing?" inquired the Treasury operative, taking another tack.
"Seven hundred pounds – fifty bars of fourteen pounds each," answered Bosbyshell. "That's another problem that defies explanation. How could one man carry away all that gold without being seen? He'd need a dray to cart it off, and we're very careful about what goes out of the Mint. There's a guard at the front door all the time, and no one is allowed to leave with a package of any kind until it has been examined and passed."
A grunt was Drummond's only comment – and those who knew the Secret Service man best would have interpreted the sound to mean studious digestion of facts, rather than admission of even temporary defeat.
It was one of the government detective's pet theories that every crime, no matter how puzzling, could be solved by application of common-sense principles and the rules of logic. "The criminal with brains," he was fond of saying, "will deliberately try to throw you off the scent. Then you've got to take your time and separate the wheat from the chaff – the false leads from the true. But the man who commits a crime on the spur of the moment – or who flatters himself that he hasn't left a single clue behind – is the one who's easy to catch. The cleverest crook in the world can't enter a room without leaving his visiting card in some way or other. It's up to you to find that card and read the name on it. And common sense is the best reading glass."
Requesting that his mission be kept secret, Drummond said that he would like to examine Vault No. Six.
"Let Cochrane open the vault for me and then have Jamison and Strubel open the grille," he directed.
"Unless Mr. Bosbyshell opened the vault door," Preston reminded him, "there's no one but Cochrane who could do it. It won't be necessary, however, to have either of the others open the grille – the door was taken from its hinges this morning in order the better to examine the place and it hasn't yet been replaced."
"All right," agreed Drummond. "Let's have Cochrane work the outer combination, then. I'll have a look at the other two later."
Accompanied by the director and the superintendent, Drummond made his way to the basement where they were joined by the official weigher, a man well over fifty, who was introduced by Preston to "Mr. Drummond, a visitor who is desirous of seeing the vaults."
"I understand that you are the only man who can open them," said the detective. "Suppose we look into this one," as he stopped, as if by accident, before Vault No. 6.
Cochrane, without a word, bent forward and commenced to twirl the combination. A few spins to the right, a few to the left, back to the right, to the left once more – and he pulled at the heavy door expectantly. But it failed to budge.
Again he bent over the combination, spinning it rapidly. Still the door refused to open.
"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to help me with this, Superintendent," Cochrane said, finally. "It doesn't seem to work, somehow."
But, under Bosbyshell's manipulation, the door swung back almost instantly.
"Nothing wrong with the combination," commented Preston.
Drummond smiled. "Has the combination been changed recently?" he asked.
"Not for the past month," Bosbyshell replied. "We usually switch all of them six times a year, just as a general precaution – but this has been the same for the past few weeks. Ever since the fifteenth of last month, to be precise."
Inside the vault Drummond found that, as Preston had stated, the door to the grille had been taken from its hinges, to facilitate the work of the men who had weighed the gold, and had not been replaced.
"Where are the gold bars?" asked the detective. "The place looks like it had been well looted."
"They were all taken out this morning, to be carefully weighed," was Preston's reply.
"I'd like to see some of them stacked up there along the side of the grille, if it isn't too much trouble."
"Surely," said Bosbyshell. "I'll have the men bring them in at once."
As soon as the superintendent had left the room, Drummond requested that the door of the grille be placed in its usual position, and Cochrane set it up level with the floor, leaning against the supports at the side.
"Is that the way it always stays?" inquired the Secret Service man.
"No, sir, but it's pretty heavy to handle, and I thought you just wanted to get a general idea of things."
"I'd like to see it in place, if you don't mind. Here, I'll help you with it – but we better slip our coats off, for it looks like a man's-sized job," and he removed his coat as he spoke.
After Cochrane had followed his example, the two of them hung the heavy door from its hinges and stepped back to get the effect. But Drummond's eyes were fixed, not upon the entrance to the grille, but on the middle of Cochrane's back, and, when the opportunity offered an instant later, he shifted his gaze to the waist of the elder man's trousers. Something that he saw there caused the shadow of a smile to flit across his face.
"Thanks," he said. "That will do nicely," and he made a quick gesture to Preston that he would like to have Cochrane leave the vault.
"Very much obliged, Mr. Cochrane," said the director. "We won't bother you any more. You might ask those men to hurry in with the bars, if you will."
And the weigher, pausing only to secure his coat, left the vault.
"Why all the stage setting?" inquired Preston. "You don't suspect…"
"I don't suspect a thing," Drummond smiled, searching for his own coat, "beyond the fact that the solution to the mystery is so simple as to be almost absurd. By the way, have you noticed those scratches on the bars of the grille, about four feet from the floor?"
"No, I hadn't," admitted the director. "But what of them? These vaults aren't new, you know, and I dare say you'd find similar marks on the grille bars in any of the others."
"I hope not," Drummond replied, grimly, "for that would almost certainly mean a shortage of gold in other sections of the Mint. Incidentally, has all the rest of the gold been weighed?"
"Every ounce of it."
"Nothing missing?"
"Outside of the seven hundred pounds from this vault, not a particle."
"Good – then I'll be willing to lay a small wager that you can't find the duplicates of these scratches anywhere else in the Mint." And Drummond smiled at the director's perplexity.
When the men arrived with a truck loaded with gold bars, they stacked them – at the superintendent's direction – along the side of the grille nearest the vault entrance.
"Is that the way they are usually arranged?" inquired Drummond.
"Yes – the grille bars are of tempered steel and the openings between them are too small to permit anyone to put his hand through. Therefore, as we are somewhat pressed for space, we stack them up right along the outer wall of the grille and then work back. It saves time and labor in bringing them in."
"Is this the way the door of the grille ordinarily hangs?"
Bosbyshell inspected it a moment before he replied.
"Yes," he said. "It appears to be all right. It was purposely made to swing clear of the floor and the ceiling so that it might not become jammed. The combination and the use of the seal prevents its being opened by anyone who has no business in the grille."
"And the seal was intact when you came in yesterday afternoon?"
"It was."
"Thanks," said Drummond; "that was all I wanted to know," and he made his way upstairs with a smile which seemed to say that his vacation in the Maine woods had not been indefinitely postponed.
Once back in the director's office, the government operative asked permission to use the telephone, and, calling the Philadelphia office of the Secret Service, requested that three agents be assigned to meet him down town as soon as possible.
"Have you a record of the home address of the people employed in the Mint?" Drummond inquired of the director, as he hung up the receiver.
"Surely," said Preston, producing a typewritten list from the drawer of his desk.
"I'll borrow this for a while, if I may. I'll probably be back with it before three o'clock – and bring some news with me, too," and the operative was out of the room before Preston could frame a single question.
As a matter of fact, the clock in the director's office pointed to two-thirty when Drummond returned, accompanied by the three men who had been assigned to assist him.
"Have you discovered anything?" Preston demanded.
"Let's have Cochrane up here first," Drummond smiled. "I can't be positive until I've talked to him. You might have the superintendent in, too. He'll be interested in developments, I think."
Bosbyshell was the first to arrive, and, at Drummond's request, took up a position on the far side of the room. As soon as he had entered, two of the other Secret Service men ranged themselves on the other side of the doorway and, the moment Cochrane came in, closed the door behind him.
"Cochrane," said Drummond, "what did you do with the seven hundred pounds of gold that you took from Vault No. Six during the past few weeks?"
"What – what – " stammered the weigher.
"There's no use bluffing," continued the detective. "We've got the goods on you. The only thing missing is the gold itself, and the sooner you turn it over the more lenient the government will be with you. I know how you got the bars out of the grille – a piece of bent wire was sufficient to dislodge them from the top of the pile nearest the grille bars and it was easy to slip them under the door. No wonder the seal was never tampered with. It wasn't necessary for you to go inside the grille at all.
"But, more than that, I know how you carried the bars, one at a time, out of the Mint. It took these three men less than an hour this afternoon to find the tailor who fixed the false pocket in the front of your trousers – the next time you try a job of this kind you better attend to all these details yourself – and it needed only one look at your suspenders this morning to see that they were a good deal wider and heavier than necessary. That long coat you are in the habit of wearing is just the thing to cover up any suspicious bulge in your garments and the guard at the door, knowing you, would never think of telling you to stop unless you carried a package or something else contrary to orders.
"The people in your neighborhood say that they've seen queer bluish lights in the basement of your house on Woodland Avenue. So I suspect you've been melting that gold up and hiding it somewhere, ready for a quick getaway.
"Yes, Cochrane, we've got the goods on you and if you want to save half of a twenty-year sentence – which at your age means life – come across with the information. Where is the gold?"
"In the old sewer pipe," faltered the weigher, who appeared to have aged ten years while Drummond was speaking. "In the old sewer pipe that leads from my basement."
"Good!" exclaimed Drummond. "I think Mr. Preston will use his influence with the court to see that your sentence isn't any heavier than necessary. It's worth that much to guard the Mint against future losses of the same kind, isn't it, Mr. Director?"
"It surely is," replied Preston. "But how in the name of Heaven did you get the answer so quickly?"
Drummond delayed his answer until Cochrane, accompanied by the three Secret Service men, had left the room. Then —
"Nothing but common sense," he said. "You remember those scratches I called your attention to – the ones on the side of the grille bars? They were a clear indication of the way in which the gold had been taken from the grille – knocked down from the top of the pile with a piece of wire and pulled under the door of the grille. That eliminated Jamison and Strubel immediately. They needn't have gone to that trouble, even if it had been possible for them to get into the vault in the first place.
"But I had my suspicions of Cochrane when he was unable to open the vault door. That pointed to nervousness, and nervousness indicated a guilty conscience. I made the hanging of the grille door an excuse to get him to shed his coat – though I did want to see whether the door came all the way down to the floor – and I noted that his suspenders were very broad and his trousers abnormally wide around the waist. He didn't want to take any chances with that extra fourteen pounds of gold, you know. It would never do to drop it in the street.
"The rest is merely corroborative. I found that bluish lights had been observed in the basement of Cochrane's house, and one of my men located the tailor who had enlarged his trousers. That's really all there was to it."
With that Drummond started to the door, only to be stopped by Director Preston's inquiry as to where he was going.
"On my vacation, which you interrupted this morning," replied the Secret Service man.
"It's a good thing I did," Preston called after him. "If Cochrane had really gotten away with that gold we might never have caught him."
"Which," as Bill Quinn said, when he finished his narrative, "is the reason I claim that the telegraph boy who persisted in paging Drummond is the one who was really responsible for the saving of some hundred and thirty thousand dollars that belonged to Uncle Sam."
"But, surely," I said, "that case was an exception. In rapidity of action, I mean. Don't governmental investigations usually take a long time?"
"Frequently," admitted Quinn, "they drag on and on for months – sometimes years. But it's seldom that Uncle Sam fails to land his man – even though the trail leads into the realms of royalty, as in the Ypiranga case. That happened before the World War opened, but it gave the State Department a mighty good line on what to expect from Germany."
