Chapter II: Part 2

But now there was no hurry. His man was or was not on the train and the porter told him there would be no stop for two hours. The special agent was still a good deal of a youngster with an appreciation of the dramatic and here was a situation that appealed to him. He wondered if he were riding into the dusk on a wild goose chase, or if he had cornered this fugitive master-crook, with a traveling bag containing half a million dollars of other peoples' money. He pictured the man he was after--the suave, confident, stealthy cashier, who had stolen his hundreds of thousands and had, by the very force of him, compelled his subordinates to hide his shortcomings. He wondered if this man of action was expecting pursuit or if he was riding on in confidence of being able to make his escape. He thought of the satchel that the cashier carried and of his responsibility, as a Government agent, for safeguarding its contents. It was something of an assignment for a youngster.

"And Mother used to say to me," grinned Billy to himself, "when she sent me around the corner for a dozen eggs: 'Do be careful to bring back the change, and for goodness' sake don't drop the bag.' I wish Mother could see me now."

Whereupon William H. Gard of the United States Department of Justice arose and went to the front of the train. From this point he worked steadily back, making sure that he saw every passenger, looking each over with sufficient scrutiny that a disguise would not have escaped him, making sure that the man he sought was in the portion of the train to the rear. It began to look as though he had actually boarded a train which the fugitive had failed to catch.

Dark was just coming on. It was that hour when most of the passengers on a train are to be found in the diner. It happened that this train was running light and now the sleepers were practically deserted but for the nodding porters. Through one after another of these the special agent passed until there remained only the observation car at the end. It was here that he would find his quarry or prove himself outwitted.

When he came into the observation car through the narrow hall that leads to it, a lounging figure by the door drew itself taut. Instinctively it put its hand to a traveling bag that rested on the next chair. Then it remained still.

The special agent came direct down the car and went immediately to the task in hand.

"You are Bayard Alexander," he said, "and my prisoner."

The cashier was, after all, surprised. He was not aware that he was being followed. He sprang forward in his chair but met the glint of a pistol in the hand of the special agent.

"And you? Oh, I see!" said the cashier, recovering himself. "The bookkeeper was not a bookkeeper after all."

"I am an agent of the Department of Justice," said Gard. "You are under arrest."

The tall figure of the cashier had risen from its chair. To the traveling bag he clung instinctively. The situation seemed entirely in the control of the special agent with gun drawn and the retreat cut off. Yet, like a flash, the cashier turned the knob of the door that led out upon the rear platform of the observation car. The gun of the special agent spit forth a flame, but whether he had intended to bring down his man or not he was afterward quite unable to recall.

But with a leap he was after and upon the fugitive. He suspected the intent of the cashier to throw himself from the train, to end all in suicide. He saw the traveling bag getting beyond his reach. It was the last thing that would have appealed to him to stand idly by while such incidents were taking place.

The two men grappled. A new purpose flashed into the mind of the cashier. Here was he given an unexpected opportunity for freedom. Only the special agent stood in his way. If he could but drop this youngster over the rail, suicide would be unnecessary. A new purpose came into his tall, lithe form. It was to be put to the task of fighting for its own preservation.

And such a setting for a fight! The clamor of the train beat into the blood of the contestants like the applause of an arena. The swish of the platform as the express dashed through the darkness at seventy miles an hour made the ordinary strategy of battle uncertain. Beyond the narrow rail that skirted this platform upon which their fight was staged death waited expectant on three sides. There were now no weapons and the contestants went back to the primal in a tooth and fang grapple for existence as might two frenzied bears at bay.

The cashier was the larger man and one who had always kept in condition through gymnasium work. The special agent was lither and younger. The larger man was determined that he would thrust the smaller over the rail and fling him from the train. He fought his way to the edge of the platform, forcing his antagonist farther and farther over it, hammering him down by the sheer superiority of weight and strength.

But all the time the special agent was playing to his own advantage. He was getting low beneath the guard of the cashier. His arms had found an iron lock beneath his antagonist's coat and about his waist. He felt that this hold could not be broken and that a time would come when the strength of the larger man would wane. He could afford to wait.

It was but a swish of the train that gave him the slight advantage he sought in taking the aggressive. It swayed the tall form of his enemy as it towered above him a little backward. This put the spine in a position where it could not immediately resist a strong pressure. Already he had felt a give in the body muscles that meant the first approach of weakness. Like a flash his head was in the tall man's chest, all his strength was in his arms, and he was administering that treatment known in his youth as the "Indian hug." Slowly he overcame his antagonist, bent him back, and they came tumbling among the chairs of the observation platform.

From the fall came a new grip to the advantage of the special agent. As they went down he flung his legs around his antagonist, and was able to get the wrestler's "scissors" about his waist, thus applying pressure where there was already exhaustion and allowing his legs, which were rested, to bear the brunt.

Thus were they locked when the brakeman came to the rear and found them. But the battle was already near its end. For the flash of a moment the cashier rallied and acted. In that moment his hands seized and flung from the train the grip with its precious burden. Then he sank into unconsciousness.

Billy Gard had ridden back to the section of the road where the traveling bag had gone overboard, and had waited for the coming of daylight to search for it. In the gray dawn he walked down the track and met an Irish section man, who had already picked it up.

"I see you have found my satchel," said Gard, accosting him.

"Your satchel it may be," said the Irishman, "but you will have to be after tellin' me what's in it by way of identification."

"Nothing much beside half a million dollars," said the special agent, proffering the key.

The man who had found the traveling bag looked inside and, as far as Billy Gard knows, never spoke again. He was still dumb with amazement when the young man drove away in his automobile.

III

A FIASCO IN FIREARMS

It is here set down for the first time that Special Agent Billy Gard of the United States Department of Justice trod the deck of the good German ship _Esmiranga_ and smoked many Mexican cigarettes on that historic morning in April, 1914, when she approached the port of Vera Cruz, loaded to the gunwales with ammunition for the Huertistas, and precipitated the landing of American marines.

Also it was here first told that it was the hand of Billy Gard that lighted the match that ignited the powder that caused the explosion that kept Yankee fighting men in Mexico for many months and the big American sister republics on the verge of war. For the action of the head of the government of a hundred million of people, the orders extended to the military, the shuttling of battleships and transports, were based upon mysteriously received messages from this young representative of the United States, who through a combination of chance and design found himself strangely placed in the center of a web of circumstance.

It had all started in a New York hotel six months before. It was not entirely out of keeping with what was to follow that a huge and bewhiskered Russian should have staged the prologue of what was later to assume something of the nature of an international farce. But it was such a man, registering himself as G. Egeloff, pronouncing some of his indifferent English with the explosiveness of Russia and some of it with the lilting softness of Latin America, who created a scene in a Manhattan hotel and thus first introduced the whole matter. He had arrived but a moment before, dusty, disheveled, empty handed. The room clerk had suggested that it was the custom of the hotel that guests without baggage should pay in advance. Then had come the explosion accompanied by oaths in four languages.

The man with the whiskers called upon all to witness that this indignity had been placed upon him, G. Egeloff, the representative of rulers of nations, the bearer of credentials, the possessor of enough money in his one vest pocket to buy the hotel in question and turn it into a barracks for his peons.

Whereupon he produced from the vest pocket in question a draft on the Mexican treasury for the neat sum of three million dollars in gold, signed by none other than Victoriano Huerta himself. At which signal the entire hotel staff salaamed profoundly, the man who swore was escorted to the best suite and the house detective telephoned to the special agents of the Department of Justice.

Billy Gard was forthwith sent out to determine the legitimacy of the mission of this strange representative of turbulent Mexico.

In three days he knew that Egeloff was in touch with those representatives of the Huerta régime with whom the Department of Justice was already acquainted and whose activities centered about a certain Mexican boarding house just off Union square. He also knew that the Russian had called up from his hotel room certain manufacturers of munitions whose factories were in Hartford and that representatives of those firms had visited him.

Gard had drawn the conclusion that the Russian was buying ammunition for the Mexican government. Since the United States was denying clearance to ships with such cargoes destined to either faction to the controversy to the south, it was necessary that all the facts be ascertained.

But it developed that the strong current of the plans of the man from Mexico ran through Valentines, that outfitter of revolutionists and dealer in second-hand and out-of-date war material. Valentines based his operations upon the principle that the discarded munitions of progressive nations are plenty good enough for use in Latin-America and that the purchase of all such, no matter how antiquated, offers a good opportunity for profit. Hardly a warlike venture in the tumultuous lands to the south has run its course within recent years without leaning heavily upon Valentines.

Knowing this, Gard was particularly anxious to find out what was transpiring within when, on a murky Saturday night, he followed the Russian and three of his Mexican associates through the narrow lanes of the lower East Side, beneath its clanging elevated, and to the side door of Valentines, within which they disappeared.

He had previously reconnoitered the surroundings. He knew that Valentines had taken great care in guarding the privacy of his establishment. The dark back room in which his conferences were held had but one entrance, which was from the main establishment. The area-way upon which its single window looked faced the wall of a printing house, broken by but three or four small windows, as is so often the case with these blank surfaces. Gard had made note of the fact that one of these windows was opposite and above that in the back room of Valentines. He had gained admission to the printing house and had viewed the adjoining premises from this high window.

A single possibility presented itself. This was that Valentines might leave his curtain up and that Jane Gates might help with the case.

Jane Gates occupied a warm spot in the hearts of the special agents and they were always particular that when they called upon her there was no possibility of unpleasant experiences, and the way seemed clear here. She was a deaf girl, known among them as the Lily Maid, born without the sense of hearing but mistress of the inestimable difficulties of lip reading and the possessor of the nimblest set of fingers in the world, these latter earning her a place as copyist for the service. Her face was of a cameo beauty, with a touch of pathos because of her isolation. She was the warm spot in the heart of the office but, as its very spirit was the untangling of riddles, she had found opportunity to help in a novel way in several difficult cases through her ability at lip reading.

By prearrangement Jane Gates, on this Saturday night, was awaiting at the office not half a dozen blocks away a possible call from Billy Gard. Barrett had a taxi at the front door and the expected summons brought him to the publishing house in five minutes. Beneath a light in the hall Gard told the deaf girl of the situation, for lip reading needs light. Soon they were in the gloom by the little window and the eager eyes of the Lily Maid were looking into the office opposite where the conference on munitions was going forward. Fortunately Valentines did not speak Spanish and an interpreter was necessary. The face of this man was in plain view not thirty feet away.

Soon Jane Gates was repeating in the peculiar, hollow voice of those who do not hear but have learned to form words with the lips:

"Mauser ammunition--old Krupp rapid-fire guns--Seventy five--"

Gard stepped beyond the range of view from the opposite window. He turned a pocket flashlight on his own lips.

"Try to find out how they are to be shipped," he instructed.

"Could supply a total amounting to $750,000 in value," the girl repeated after the interpreter.

"Delivered in thirty days--Brooklyn--how can you get clearance papers?"

"We clear for Odessa," the interpreter's lips said. "The United States must accept our claim of that destination. We know how to evade embargo regulations."

Valentines had been walking nervously about the room. At this moment he approached the window and pulled down the curtain that looked into the courtyard. The work of the lip reader was at an end.

It was a month later when Gard had traced a consignment of ammunition from the factory at Hartford to its place on a Brooklyn pier where it lay ready for shipment. It seemed the last of the American goods that were needed to complete the cargo of the Italian bark, _City of Naples_, that was ready to sail. It appeared that papers had already been taken out, that the manifests acknowledged the presence of great quantities of war munitions, but that the claim was made that the cargo was bought for South Russian dealers and bound for Odessa.

Gard hurriedly ascertained that the United States would not refuse permission for the ship to sail. It was, however, anxious to keep in touch with its movements. Could the special agent find a way to accompany her? Gard would try.

Half an hour later a young Italian strolled down the pier just as the last of the cargo was being taken aboard the _City of Naples_. He was dressed in a well-worn, light-checked, somewhat flashy suit, a scarlet vest, a flowing tie. His dark locks breathed forth odors of the lotions of cheap barber shops. He walked nonchalantly aboard the Italian bark and went below.

The vessel was just breaking loose from her moorings when the stowaway was discovered. There had been great haste in her sailing and she was making for the seas two hours ahead of her appointed time. The stowaway surmised that there was every reason why her officers would fear delay and that, if he could remain below decks until she was under way, the vessel would not be stopped to put him ashore.

It was from this situation that an unequal fight developed in which three sailormen sought to drag an unwilling youngster in a plaid suit from the hold to the deck that he might be put off the ship. But the first of the attacking force proved himself unfamiliar with the strategy of a lead with the left to make an opening for a swing with the right, and so this latter blow caught him on the chin and he went down and out. The second sailor was a squarehead and rushed his antagonist. The stowaway ducked and the force of the Swede increased the severity of a mighty jab with the right in the pit of the stomach, which happened at the time to be unusually full, and the attacker crumbled with an agony in his inwards. The stowaway grappled with the third man and showed an additional knowledge of the science of the rough and tumble. He twisted one of that individual's hands behind him and pushed it up, using the favorite jiu jitsu trick that American policemen have borrowed from the Japanese. In this way he had his man at his mercy.

"Mother of Jesus," came a roar from the doorway in most indifferent Spanish. "Where did you learn it all?"

The stowaway looked up and saw the huge form of the bearded Russian who represented the government of Mexico standing there.

"In the United States," he answered in Spanish. "Ah, they are wonderful, those Americans!"

It should be remembered that Billy Gard, for it was he, had lived abroad when a boy with his father who was in the consular service. He had learned the languages of the Mediterranean almost before he spoke English and was therefore much at home among its people. And because of this he had been able to become an Italian stowaway in half an hour at a second-hand store in Brooklyn.

"But why all this fighting?" asked the Russian.

"I would go back to Italy, bon Italy," said the stowaway. "These pigs of sailormen know not how homesick I am. They would put me ashore. I not go. You see the result."

"Well, you will not be put ashore now," said the Russian. "I happen to be interested in this cargo, and I want no delay. You may come on deck with me."

It happened in this way that Billy Gard went to sea with a large cargo of Mexican ammunition, little believing that it would ever cross to Europe. Since he was aboard and might not be otherwise disposed of, the Italian captain set him to work as a clerk, and got much good service out of him on the ship's books before land was again sighted. It happened in this way, also, that he was given an opportunity to study and cultivate G. Egeloff, but little came of it because of the all-sufficiency of that gentleman within himself.

Gard was greatly surprised when the _City of Naples_ maintained her course straight across the Atlantic. Even more surprised was he when she passed in at Gibraltar, ignored the ports of Spain, sailed past the towns of her nativity in Italy and on to the east. Not until the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus were passed was he convinced that she was bound for the port for which she had cleared. But after six weeks at sea she reached Odessa, on the Black Sea, and there put into port.

But at Odessa the unexpected happened. The authorities, being by temperament suspicious and ever-vigilant of anarchistic plots, refused to let the ship unload her cargo of ammunition. Egeloff stormed and swore and bribed, but all to no avail. The ammunition might not be landed.

Billy Gard managed to get ashore and find his way to the American consulate. From there he was able to make his report to the home office and receive instructions that he was to remain with the ammunition cargo.

The special agent found his task comparatively easy here, and merely had to wait for events to take their normal course. His chief interest was G. Egeloff, who had remained a mystery to him despite a semi-friendship that had slowly grown up between them. He had attempted in vain to lead the Russian into a discussion of his future plans in Mexico, and had grown to suspect that the gentleman had no such plans. At Odessa the big man seemed impatient of delay, and, Gard thought, rather reckless of the disposition of his charge.

The representative of the United States had been contemplating the value of the guns bought at Valentines and the figure of $750,000 which the Lily Maid had caught from the lips of the interpreter. He knew that the purchases at Hartford had not exceeded $100,000. He drew the conclusion that this strange representative of the Indian head of a Latin-American nation would probably give less than value for the $3,000,000 that had been placed in his hands for the purchase of American munitions of war.

The special agent was still attached to the _City of Naples_ as clerk when, after ten days of futile attempts at landing her cargo, she again turned her nose to the sea. She was two days out when he became assured of a fact which he had suspected. The Russian was not aboard. The ship picked her course through the Mediterranean, out again past Gibraltar, but, instead of striking out toward Mexico as Gard had suspected she would, she steered to the north and eventually came to anchor in the port of Hamburg on a windy morning in March.

At Hamburg there was assurance of ability to discharge cargo. No sooner had the ship tied up than its long-restrained personnel of officers and crew availed themselves of the freedom of shore leave. As the afternoon wore on, the vessel was deserted with the exception of the Italian second mate and a few members of the crew. Gard stuck to his desk in the purser's cabin. It was from this point of vantage that he became aware of an altercation on deck. An American voice was saying in English:

"Mr. Egeloff; I want to see Mr. Egeloff."

The second mate protested his inability to speak English, whereupon a second voice repeated the request in Spanish, with no better result. Then of a sudden a great light seemed to break on the second mate.

"Ah! Si, señor. If you will be so good as to step this way."

Whereupon he led the strangers to the cabin, where he knew Gard to be at work, and, remembering that the supposed clerk spoke many languages, he turned the visitors over to him.

"Mr. Egeloff?" asked the American, evidently misinterpreting the action of the mate.

The special agent was taken entirely by surprise. The possibilities of such a situation had never presented themselves to him.

"What if I am?" he asked cautiously.

"I am McKay," said the American.

"You have credentials, I suppose," said Gard.

"Yes," answered that individual. "I am authorized to provide for the reshipment of the cargo."

Whereupon he presented letters from the Mexican government showing him to be its agent in London. His companion he introduced as Mr. Sanchez, Mexican consul at Hamburg, whereupon the three dropped into Spanish and continued the conversation. Gard presented letters he had found in the ship's office and addressed to these gentlemen. He took it that these letters were from the Mexican consul at Odessa. They evidently asked the men to whom they were addressed to do what they could toward expediting the transshipment of the cargo.

"We have all arrangements made," McKay volunteered. "The _Esmiranga_ will take our stuff aboard immediately and is sailing for Vera Cruz in six days."

"I have had the very devil of a time," said the special agent, introducing the rasp of an occasional Russian consonant into his Spanish as he had heard it done for two months by the man whose rôle was being thrust upon him. "I want to run over to Warsaw for a few days. Do you not think, gentlemen, that I have earned this brief vacation?"

Whereupon McKay and Sanchez agreed to attend to all details, making it necessary only that the supposed Egeloff should be in Hamburg on the day of sailing. So was Gard relieved of the difficulty and danger of a sustained masquerade and so was he able again to get in touch with America. As a matter of fact he hurried to Paris. There he found Coleman, whom he had known before, in charge of the Paris branch of his own service.

"Dress me up like a white man," he told Coleman. "Lead me up to something that human beings eat. Take me out where I may try the experiment of attempting to be a gentleman again. I am by no means sure I can do it. Four days from now talk to me about cipher messages, but not until then."

But when Gard returned to Hamburg it was understood that he should use the old confederate cipher for any messages that he might be able to send. This is a simple and always efficient cipher made up of a square of the letters of the alphabet. One begins by writing the twenty-six letters in a row, commencing with A. The second line begins with B, placed directly under the A of the first line, and followed by all the letters in order. The third line begins with C, the fourth with D, and so on until Z is reached. Any amateur may build up his square of letters in this way.

There must be a secret key word which is known to the senders and the receivers. The keyword is written out repeatedly and the message is written beneath it. Instead of using the letters of the message, the letters of the keyword are used. This is the first puzzling translation. The message as it then appears is taken to the square of letters. In writing it as it is ultimately to be sent, its letters are found in the top line of the square and also in the perpendicular line that runs down its side. The lines of letters that radiate from these margins, one horizontally and one perpendicularly, meet at some point within the square. The letter upon which they meet is used in the message. No one in the world without his square of letters and without the keyword can read this message.

So the home government was informed that Special Agent William H. Gard might communicate with its ships by means of the confederate cipher and that the keyword, rather strangely, was "Russian whiskers." The home government transmitted this information to its battleships lying off Mexico and their operators were instructed to pick up any wireless that might come to them out of the Atlantic.

Gard hurried back to Hamburg just in time to sail on the _Esmiranga_. He was not sure but that the big Russian would communicate with the Mexican representatives and approached the situation he had developed with no little misgiving. It appeared that his conclusion that the Russian had made a getaway with much swag was correct. He was warmly received by both McKay and Sanchez and the ship got away with but one difficulty facing the special agent. The Mexican consul was returning to his native land aboard it.

Gard realized that, as the confidential representative of Huerta, he could not with impunity have anything to do with Sanchez, as that volatile Latin would immediately lead him into much talk of Mexican men and conditions. Gard knew almost nothing about Mexico City and could not even sustain a casual conversation on that subject.

It was because of these considerations that the apparently genial disposition of the supposed purchaser of munitions of war proved a disappointment to Señor Sanchez. This Russian was evidently no sailor. He took to his cabin as soon as the _Esmiranga_ took to sea. His sea manners were also far from Latin for he answered with guttural oaths any inquiries that were made as to the condition of his health. He seemed to have gone on a mad debauch and insisted that a constant procession of highballs be sent to his stateroom. He cut Señor Sanchez dead when he met him on the deck. Caramba! A beast of a man was this, to be shunned as the plague!

The captain and the wireless operator were the only individuals with whom this disagreeable shipmate had anything to do. To the captain it was made plain that a delicate situation existed off Mexico. The ships of those pigs of Americans were blockading Vera Cruz. They might blockade but they had no right to stop a German ship bound for that port. But he must talk to his principals in Mexico. There was the wireless of the _Esmiranga_, and there was his secret cipher which no Yankee could read. Might the operator handle his messages?

To be sure. The representative of the Mexican government which was to pay handsomely for the transportation of the cargo aboard the _Esmiranga_ might do entirely as he wished.

So it transpired that Special Agent Billy Gard began talking to the American battleships in southern seas when the _Esmiranga_ was not much more than half-way across the Atlantic. He amused himself writing messages much as a man passes the time of a voyage in playing solitaire. So it happened that the United States Government had all the details of the approach of a shipload of ammunition of American origin destined to Huerta, upon whom the screws were just then being put for insulting the Stars and Stripes. So it was evident that if this ammunition were allowed to land, it might be used against American troops, who were at any moment to be thrown into Mexico.

Yet the United States might not prevent a German ship from entering the harbor at Vera Cruz. The only method of stopping that ammunition was to seize the port and customs house and thereby come into possession of the cargo if it were disembarked.

The wireless of the _Esmiranga_ sputtered out a message which, when interpreted in accordance with the confederate cipher and the keyword of "Russian whiskers," conveyed the information that the vessel was approaching the Mexican coast and that her intention was to steam under the very noses of the American dreadnoughts into port. The facts were reported to Washington, where the alternative of seizing the port was sternly faced. Orders were given to act.

The next day American marines went, some to glory and some to death, past that most tragic spot in all America, the fortress prison of San Juan de Ullao; into those streets frequented by the sacred scavenger buzzard of the Aztecs; beneath the walls of the ancient parochial church beside the Plaza de la Constitución where the first American boy was destined to die at the hands of a sniping priest; into the gate city that had known Cortez and Maximillian, and had loaded the galleons of Spain with more silver and gold than had ever before been amassed anywhere in the history of the world.

But the _Esmiranga_ did not come in to discharge her ammunition that it might fall into the hands of the Americans. Instead, it haunted Mexican waters for a while as a creature of unrest, uncertain where to land. Finally it put into Mobile, where its captain was left at a still greater loss, for the supposed Mexican gun-runner went ashore and was seen no more. Sanchez, the Mexican consul, left by train for his native land. Huerta, in the madness of his career, extended no instructions.

The ultimate disposition of the _Esmiranga's_ cargo completes the record of another of those fiascos in the game of pandering to revolutionists in Latin America. The outcast cargo knocked about the Caribbean for a while like a party dressed up and no place to go. The constitutionalists came into possession of Tampico and sought a way to deal with the captain of the _Esmiranga_, who was still unpaid for transporting his cargo and willing to listen to almost any proposition. But the constitutionalists bought no pigs in pokes and insisted on an examination of the cargo. Probably they had themselves bought of Valentines and knew the nature of his stock in trade. They found a way to open some of the boxes and there discovered such an array of antique armament that even they scorned its use. Valentines and the Russian who came to New York to buy for Huerta had taken no pains to give that warlike gentleman the value of even a portion of his money.

IV

THE SUGAR SAMPLERS

"Mr. Gard," said the chief, "I take it you would like to earn the stipend the Government pays you."

"Your lead sounds ominous," said the young special agent, who had a free and easy way with him even at the Washington headquarters. "If I say yes, you will hand me a large piece of hard work. If I say no, I will be courting discharge. I select the lesser of two evils. I confess to a desire to earn my money."

"It is like this," said the chief. "We suspect that there is a leak in the collection of sugar duties. You know the possibilities. If a ship comes to port with 10,000 tons of sugar from Cuba, it pays duty that depends on the purity of the cargo. If that sugar is graded at 92 per cent. pure it gets in a half cent a pound cheaper than if it is graded 96 per cent. pure. The difference in duty received by the Government on such a cargo might, theoretically, amount to $100,000."

"If I catch three ships," mused Gard half to himself, "I have earned my salary for the rest of my life and won't have to work any more."

"I wouldn't just say that," responded the chief; "but if you saved the Government half a cent a pound on all the sugar imported, you would bring into the coffers a round two million a year. That would be a fair accomplishment for a somewhat amateurish detective."

"Sustained by the flattery of my superior," said Gard. "I am ready to rush into any mad undertaking. What are the orders?"

"You will be assigned to one of the great sugar ports. We do not even know that any fraud is being practised. You are to find out. If there is fraud you are to determine the method of it. The criminals, particularly the big ones, are to be apprehended. The Government would like to know how these frauds may be prevented in future. The work need not be completed to-morrow or next day. You may have any amount of help. But we must know that sugar duties are honestly paid."

It was a week later that William H. Gard sent in his card to Henry Gottrell, president of the Continental Refining Company, one of the greatest importers of raw sugar in the nation. According to this card Gard was a writer of magazine stories. He had explained in asking for an interview that he was assigned to write an article on "sugar ships," which should be a yarn of color and romance in a setting of fact.

When the special agent entered the office of President Gottrell, large and florid and radiating geniality, he found his plan of approach somewhat interfered with by the presence of a third party. Seated at the elbow of the refiner was one of the most striking young women he had ever seen. Corn-colored hair gone mad in its tendency to curl made a perfect frizzle about her face. A flock of freckles, each seemingly in pursuit of its fellow just ahead, were hurdling the bridge of a somewhat pug nose. Blue eyes that danced and a mouth that responded to the racing thought of an active brain gave life to the face. And as she arose the slightest movement of her slim, well-rounded form suggested fast work on a tennis court.

Henry Gottrell presented his daughter.

"She always looked like a Swede," said the big man, "so we call her Thelma."

"And Mr. Gard," she bubbled forth, "I have so wanted to know what a writer did when he goes for an interview. May I stay and see?"

"It will destroy the romantic illusion if you do," said Gard. "Are you willing to pay the price?"

"I can't believe that," she said. "Do let me see how it is done! Don't leave out a single thing."

"The interviewer begins," said the special agent, "by seating himself, as I am doing, in an uncomfortable chair which has been arranged with the idea in mind of preventing him from staying too long. The gentleman being interviewed always reaches into the right-hand drawer of his desk, as your father is doing, and produces a box of very excellent cigars. Then the interviewer explains the idea that is on his mind that requires elucidation. Has the man being interviewed anything on hand, already prepared, that covers the ground. Maybe he has made a speech at a convention, or something of that sort. The idea is to save labor for both. Mr. Gottrell is now looking for the report of his testimony before the committee on tariff revision. He will probably produce three reprints that will contain much matter that I want. I ask if he will provide a conversational escort to conduct me over one of his sugar ships, if I may talk to his captains. He agrees. You see him doing it. The interview is at an end. The foundation has been laid for a romance on 'sugar ships,' the same having a background of fact."

"That is splendid," exclaimed Miss Gottrell, "because it does so easily a thing that looks so hard. It does not spoil an illusion at all. It is wonderfully clever."

It was in this way that Special Agent Gard got an opportunity to go most carefully over the docks, through the warehouses, into the ships of the Continental Refining Company. It was in this way that he was enabled to ask many questions that might have aroused suspicion had he been there in any other guise than that of a writing man. It was in this way that he was able to observe rather carefully every process of the transfer of a cargo of sugar through the customs house at which the Federal Government takes its toll.

All the time the special agent was looking for a clue--was bringing an incisive mind to bear upon the problem of the course the sugar took and the possibility of fraud at each step. He spent days observing the methods of the weighers. He watched every detail of the transfer of cargo from ship to warehouse. He loafed about the sheds where the samples were taken--a process in which he took a vast interest.

Here the samplers, Government employees, ran their little hollow tubes through the mesh of the sacks that contained sugar. The tubes went in empty but came out full of that which was within. This constituted the sample for a given sack. Each sample was made into a little package, carefully labeled, and went to the Government laboratory to be tested. The duty on the sugar coming in was charged according to the degree of purity of these samples.

It was here that Billy Gard picked up his first clue. He noticed a peculiarity about the methods used by the samplers in inserting their tubes into the sacks. They were always run along the side of the sack and never plunged into its very heart. Tobin, the little consumptive, sampled in this peculiar way, as did the hammer-handed Hansen of the every-ready scowl. Yet it would be easier to take the sample out of the middle of the bag. Why did the samplers skim near the edge?

Gard took this question to the Government laboratory, but found no ready answer to it. He procured a typical sack of sugar and from it took two samples--one from the very heart and one from the outside rim. These he had tested in the laboratory. That from the middle of the bag showed a degree of purity 3 per cent. higher than that from the outside. The impurity, the report stated, was in the form of water.

Technical men were set to work to determine through many experiments the difference in the grade of the sugar in different parts of the bag. Finally it was established that raw sugar has a tendency to take up moisture, and that that portion of it which is exposed does so. The sugar near the outside came in contact with the air which contained moisture, while that on the inside did not. The refiners were, of course, aware of this tendency. But the important conclusion from the viewpoint of Billy Gard was that the Government samplers were doing their work in such a way as to favor the importers. Here might be a leak that was very important.

William H. Gard, special writer, that day disappeared from the sugar docks and was never seen again. Simultaneously with his disappearance the saloon of Jean Flavot, not a block and a half distant, acquired a new customer in the person of a roughly dressed young laborer who did not drink as heavily as some of his fellows, but was none the less willing to buy for others. But what was vastly more in his favor in the eyes of Flavot than even liberality was the fact that he spoke French. Mon Dieu, these rough Americans who knew not of the blandishments of absinthe and drank only the whisky! The resort keeper and the newcomer held them in common contempt.

The special agent had selected the resort of Jean Flavot as a basis of operations because it was the place most frequented by the samplers. He wanted, in the first place, to find out if these men had more money to spend than honest men of their salaries should have. The individual who makes illicit money usually spends it lavishly and it should therefore be easy to determine if the samplers were being paid to be crooked. And Gard, after two weeks of convivial association with them, was rather thrown back upon himself when he found that their carousals were always within their means and that money was scarce among them. They were evidently not being bribed.

That he might get on a more intimate basis with these samplers Gard went to work as a laborer on the docks, and there toiled for two months. He came to be most intimately one of them, was given every opportunity for observing their work, was even intrusted with certain valuable confidences when the men were sober and saw his way toward learning more by associating with them when they were in their cups.

His task was but half finished, however, when the maiden with the frizzy hair and the freckles came near upsetting the beans. The daughter of the president of the company had played through her childhood on the docks and about the warehouse and was not yet averse to climbing stacks of sugar sacks or descending into the hold of the ships. So it happened that she often visited the water front, and Gard had at first feared he might be recognized, but this fear wore away as the visits were repeated and no attention was paid to him.

But one busy day he was carting away the sacks of sugar that were being unloaded in packages of twenty or so, slung in ropes and lifted by mighty derricks, when Miss Gottrell strolled down the docks under a pink parasol and in the midst of an array of fluffy, spring ruffles such as make a healthy, wholesome girl outrival in beauty the orchids of the most tropically luxuriant jungle.

The special agent had always liked corn-colored hair and freckles on the nose and worshiped at the shrine of the physically fit. Besides which this girl had enthusiasm and intelligence and inspiration. And it was spring and he was a youngster shut off from his kind and lonesome. He had thought of her a lot of times since that day he had interested her by pretending to be something he was not. Now he rather resented it that she should be there and he a perspiring laborer, not daring to speak to her.

And just at that time something very startling happened. The great crane of the ship drew another load of sugar from the hold and swung it majestically over the dock. In doing so it described a great sweep in reaching the spot where it was to be deposited. In the midst of this sweep a single sack of sugar slipped from beneath the ropes and came hurtling out and down as though it were a projectile from a sling.

The pink parasol was standing unconsciously with its back turned directly in the course of the flying bag. The vision of spring beneath it was gazing away to where a sail was just taking the fresh breeze. Billy Gard and his truck were emerging from the shed for a new load of sugar. And here was a young man quick to act and with a training that enabled him to do so effectively.

Three strides and a leap into the air were all the time allowed. But this was enough to make it possible for him to tackle about the waist the catapulted sugar sack, much as he had often tackled the member of an opposing team who tried to go around his end in the old football days. To be sure, this end play was the fastest he had ever seen and resulted in a good spill, but it was a success. The pink parasol was uninjured.

Thelma Gottrell came to a realization of what had happened about the time Gard was getting himself to his feet. She ran to him spontaneously and would have helped him to rise had he shown the forethought to be a little slower.

"I do hope you are not hurt!" she began. "It was splendid--Oh! What? It is Mr. Gard, isn't it? How in the world--" She stopped in consternation. Billy Gard grinned foolishly.

"Don't give me away," he pleaded with her. "It is a very great secret and it would all be spoiled if you did. A writing man must have color, must know life, you know. Please don't spoil my chance by telling a single soul about it."

"Since you have probably saved my life," said she, "it would not be grateful of me to deny any wish of yours. But I will agree not to tell only on one condition. You must promise to come to me and let me hear all about it when it is over."

"I promise," said Gard.

"And you must let me say that I think you are wonderful to do the things you do, and that I thank you."

She placed her dainty glove in his grimy workingman's hand for a moment and was gone.

* * * * *

It was a wild Saturday night at Jean Flavot's. The occasion of the celebration was the ending of the season on the sugar docks. For seven months in the year the Continental Refining Company was busy with sugar that poured in upon it from Cuba and Porto Rico and Santo Domingo and other lands to the south. Then there was a period of five months when there was no sugar from the outside and refiners turned their attention to the home-grown crop.

Those men who had worked together in the camaraderie of the docks for seven months this season, and perhaps for many a year before, were to-morrow to be dispersed. They would be scattered about at many places and would play their part in the handling of the raw sugar that came from the canefields of Louisiana and the beet lands of Colorado and Michigan. Most probably they would meet again on these same docks five months later. But assuredly there was every reason why they should end the season in one mad carouse.

Billy Gard was present. Through the weeks that had passed he had gradually tightened the net that revealed to the Government the conditions that existed on the sugar docks. But his case might still be strengthened, for he wanted the whole story from a man who participated in the irregularities, and in such a way that it might be introduced into court as evidence. This was the last opportunity and the special agent hoped that the story might be told to-night when the samplers were reckless over their liquor.

Jean Flavot brought whisky and beer when the big-fisted Hansen beat upon the table. Billy Gard stood upon his chair and drank to the time when they would all get together again under the cobwebs that decorated the ceiling of the little Frenchman. He led three lusty cheers for that time, for none was so abandoned on these occasions as the youngster who had saved the president's daughter. And Flavot and Billy interchanged a wink, for they had a secret between them. Both knew that the beverage that the special agent drank with such recklessness was nothing more than cold tea, and the little Frenchman delighted in seeing his favorite lead these American pigs, who knew no decency in drinking, on to complete inebriety.

But Gard had a secret from even Flavot which had to do with a grimy little man who sat at a nearby table and who had of late frequented the place--a seedy, long-haired, sallow man who worked always with pencil over the manuscript of a play he was writing. As a true genius he paid no attention to what went on around him, but always pored over his papers.

But this same man in Washington was a star stenographer at the Department of Justice, a dapper, one-time court reporter, the man who had handled the listening end of many a dictagraph when the ways were being greased between men in high places and the penitentiary at Atlanta.

"And you samplers," Gard was saying, "where can I meet you when another Saturday night comes?"

"Me at the Bayou Fouche mills," said Hansen.

"And the company sends me to Colorado for my lungs," said Tobin, the consumptive.

"And I keep time at the refinery," ventured "Fat" Cunningham.

"So everybody works," said the special agent. "Uncle Sam does not care if he lays good men off half the time, but the Continental people take care of the samplers."

"Good is the reason why they should," said the consumptive Tobin. "Don't we save them enough money in the way we take the samples?"

"How is that?" asked Gard.

"Look here, young fellow," said the gruff Hansen, "it seems to me that you are a good little asker of questions. Why are you so curious? Maybe you are a secret service man, eh?"

"Sure," said Gard. "I am Chief Wilkinson himself."

"Wilkinson, nothing," said Hansen. "His name is Wilkie."

"Wilkie, your eye," argued the special agent. "Don't you suppose I read detective stories? His name is Wilkinson."

But the sampler was sure of his facts and the apparent error of the other man disarmed him.

"Well," he said, "as you're so curious and as I have the tip that you are to be a sampler next season, I might as well put you wise. We are all taken care of by the refiners because we look after their interests on the dock."

The big fellow looked carefully about, but there was nobody near except the frowsy dramatist, who was absorbed in his manuscript. He threw off another big drink of whisky and with it all discretion.

"You see," he said, "a sampler on Government wages would be in a pretty fix if he were let out after seven months and had to stand a chance of loafing for five. So the company passes the word that if the boys do the right thing they will be given work during the off season. I happen to know Gottrell himself and he takes me aside. That was eight years ago.

"'Hansen,' he says to me, 'pass the tip to the boys to sample right,' he says, 'and there will be work for them between seasons.'