Chapter IV: Part 4

Eventually the papers were drawn, setting forth conditions under which all these men entered into a partnership in this smuggling venture. Gard, Ferren, Peterson, Flavot and Bailey had all signed, and Gard had gone to New York to get the signature of Doctor Yen. The district attorney's office in Boston was prepared for the arrests when the papers should finally be signed. When Doctor Yen affixed his signature Gard signaled an associate across the narrow street in Chinatown. He sent the flash to Boston and the trap was sprung.

So were all the inside facts of this most aggravating system of smuggling revealed. With these facts in hand, the Government had little difficulty in breaking up a system that had been causing a lot of trouble for a decade.

So, also, was one of the most complete and successful cases of "roping" that any of the Government agents had ever attempted carried to a successful termination.

VII

A BANK CASE FROM THE OUTSIDE

"It is astonishing," said Gard, the bookkeeper, "how few people know anything about their own business. Take bank accounts, for instance. Many people have money in the bank which lies there inactive. There is not one man in five, having such an account, who can tell the amount of it."

This statement was launched during the evening meal at Mrs. Hudson's very respectable boarding-house in the prosperous little town of New Beaufort, which slumbers in one of the valleys of central New York.

"I must take issue with you there," ventured the elderly rector of the Episcopal church who, being a widower, boarded with Mrs. Hudson. "I, for instance, have managed to save a little money for old age and I can tell the amount of it to a penny."

"And I know just how much I have on deposit," insisted Miss Dolan, the school-teacher.

"And I am quite sure of mine," asserted a buxom widow who had collected life insurance.

"As a test of my contention," said Gard, "I am willing to pledge a box of candy to each of the ladies and cigars to the gentlemen who will set down the exact amounts of their inactive accounts in the First National bank and then prove their figures correct by application to the cashier."

This proposal appealed to those who had been drawn into the incipient controversy. Next day they asked for the figures, and each had won his reward. Gard seemed chagrined that his theory should have thus gone to the winds, but he cheerfully stood treat.

For he had established a fact very important to him. The inactive accounts of the First National bank of New Beaufort were intact.

This was one of the first steps in an investigation of a financial institution which, while seemingly in the best of condition, was suspected of having been looted for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Special agents of the Department of Justice knew that an official of the bank had been trading heavily in Wall Street and that he had lost. Gard, a member of this new detective force of the Federal Government, had been sent to investigate. Representing himself as a bookkeeper he had secured a position with the leading grocer and had come to board with Mrs. Hudson.

He stayed three months. At the end of that time he reported the shortage, fixed the blame upon the man responsible for it, showed the methods used, cited the accounts from which the money had been stolen, told what accounts were still intact. Yet he had never been inside the bank, had seen none of its books, had consulted with nobody familiar with them, had received no confessions. The manner in which he accomplished these seemingly impossible ends illustrates most excellently the methods used by this new detective agency of the Government.

It was a strange conspiracy of circumstances that brought to New Beaufort detectives from three different services on the night, two months later, that Conrad Compton, the enterprising citizen and banker, was giving his big party.

There was McCord, a plain-clothes man from New York. McCord would not have been in New Beaufort but for the ramifications of the New York police department in keeping track of these middle class criminals who live through the trade of burglary--a calling that is sometimes refined to art. And the police department would not have come into possession of a certain tip if "Speck" Thompson had not done his bit up the river and returned to his old haunts so broken that he chose to become a stool pigeon because he was no longer up to second story work.

Speck had found that "Dutch" Shroder had arranged to crack a safe and that the scene of the cracking was New Beaufort. He had tipped the matter off to the police, and hence McCord's presence in a community that was far from metropolitan. He represented the first of the detective services.

The second such service was represented by Ogram Newton, a bank examiner in the service of the treasury department. His district was central New York. For three years he had been taking an occasional look into the books of the various national banks of his district, checking up assets and liabilities, inquiring into the value of the paper held by the banks. Two weeks before Conrad Compton gave his party Newton had been in New Beaufort and had gone thoroughly into the affairs of the bank. Its books were models of efficiency and there was no flaw to be found in any of its securities or loans. Newton had given the institution his O. K. and had passed on to other towns.

But there was a feeling of unrest that haunted the young examiner. It seemed that his subconscious mind was aware of an oversight that had been made by his working faculties. He was not able to sleep well of nights, and in his sleep the various accounts of the New Beaufort bank insisted on visualizing themselves. Finally the recurring accounts eliminated themselves with the exception of one which persisted. The loans and discounts account kept thrusting itself into his consciousness.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly to himself. "The entries in that account, the amounts of money that have been run through it, are out of all proportion to the other business of the institution. Something is wrong with loans and discounts."

So Newton hurried back to New Beaufort and was that night a guest at the party given by Conrad Compton, with whom he had built up a friendship through years of association in the line of his work. He was to take a further look at the loans and discounts on the morrow.

The Department of Justice is the prosecutor in cases of violations of the national banking law. Its work is entirely apart from that of the bank examiners of the treasury department. The New York office of this service, as a matter of daily routine, received the information that David Lorance, assistant cashier of the First National bank of New Beaufort, was regularly placing heavy buying and selling orders with a certain broker in Wall Street.

For this reason, Agent Gard got the assignment to come to New Beaufort, and was thus the representative of the third detective service. His windows at the grocery store looked out upon the side door of the bank opposite. He was bland and inconspicuous, but he was an expert accountant, had taken a degree in the law and worked three nights a week in the gymnasium in New York when he was in town.

The Compton home stood on a hill just back of the town. It was known as Stone Crest and was the most ambitious establishment thereabouts, being always pointed out with pride to visitors. The banker was a widower, but given to entertainment and to charity. The members of the board of aldermen often met at Stone Crest to discuss those matters that had to do with the well-being of the town. Teas were given there whenever its charitable women were inaugurating some new venture. The party to-night was a semipublic affair, for it was in commemoration of a centennial anniversary of that occasion when the first settlers had fought off attacking Indians from their stockade through a day and night.

Conrad Compton was a tall, graceful, nervous man, with a high forehead and a mass of wavy hair. His features were of a perfect regularity and the whole face was so small as to give it somewhat the appearance of that of a woman, an impression that was heightened by its absolute pallor.

Ogram Newton, the bank examiner, watched his host narrowly as he received his guests, as he directed their entertainment by a party of professionals who had been brought up from New York for the occasion, as the ices were served. He thought the banker was a bit paler than usual and his natural nervousness seemed somewhat accentuated. Once during the evening he had drifted into the library which happened to be empty of guests, and had found the host peering out of a window that commanded a view of the town.

"I trust you will pardon my preoccupation," said the banker, turning again to his guests, "I seem to have a way of feeling lonesomest when I have most company."

McCord, the plain-clothes man, had vacillated between his hotel, the railway station, and those streets that gave views of the alleys leading past the back ends of establishments that might contain safes worth raffling. Occasionally his eye fell upon the lights in the house of the banker on the hill, and wandered to the chief financial establishment of the town. Yet all was so serene in this eddy of the world that the hour of solitude that followed eleven o'clock seemed such an age that it drove him to bed.

As the time drew on toward twelve there was no sign of life in the village. The lights in the drug stores, the restaurants, the delicatessens where ice cream is served to the small town lovers, had one by one winked themselves out. The owl car of the trolley line that ran through the village had deposited its last late revelers at eleven-thirty. The swinging arc lights at the street intersections occasionally sputtered fitfully and glared again. A dynamo whirred distantly at the electric light plant.

Gard, the special agent of the Department of Justice, was one of the few men in the town who was awake except those who had been guests of the banker and who had lingered to an hour which was almost unprecedented in New Beaufort. They would have gone home at eleven, but the banker insisted that they remain for further entertainment on the part of his New York musicians. One song called forth another and the quality of the music proved so much more pleasing than that of their customary local talent that they forgot the passing of time. The special agent sat on a hill near the Compton home and smoked a pipe.

It was twelve o'clock before the party finally broke up. Those of the townspeople who had come in their automobiles were being tucked into the tonneaus, and those who had walked up the gray macadam drive were just setting out on foot when the clatter as of a bunch of giant fire crackers called their attention to the village below. From the bank building was seen suddenly to burst a cloud of smoke while, a moment later, a skylight was broken and a tongue of flame leaped forth.

"Fire! Fire!" came the shout from a dozen voices.

Gard had seen more than had the guests of the banker. As he smoked his pipe and watched the village below, the lights in the windows of Stone Crest, and the silent cottage of Lorance, the assistant cashier, he had seen an automobile, with no lamp showing, creep through the quiet back street, purr stealthily into the alley back of the bank and stop behind a small building that shut off his view. Half an hour passed and the darkened machine reappeared from behind the intervening building, turning into the thoroughfare leading to the southeast and disappeared in the distance at an ever increasing rate of speed.

When the exploding cartridges in the cashier's drawer at the bank gave the first warning of the fire, the clamor of the alarm followed and pandemonium broke out in the village. Of the dispersing group on the hill, every one ran for a nearer view of the fire. The musicians, the servants, the master of the house himself, all hurried into the village to make part of the excitement that prevailed. Stone Crest, the lights of its entertainment still glowing, was left deserted.

Gard, the special agent, again acted differently from his fellows by failing to do the thing which others did. He crossed over from the hill on which he had smoked and hastily entered the banker's house. Arriving, he seemed to know exactly what he wanted. He hurried through the rooms of the house, snapping on still more lights until he found that apartment which seemed to be the personal retreat of the owner.

Here he evidently had business. Standing in the middle of the floor he looked about. Thrown carelessly into a window seat he saw two heavy books of the appearance of ledgers. These he secured and placed on a table in the middle of the room without even examining them. Next he began further exploration. When he found the banker's bedroom he seemed satisfied. On the back of a chair was a coat, evidently that which Compton had worn until he dressed for the evening. Gard thrust his hand into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a batch of letters through which he ran rapidly. He selected two or three, thrust them into his pocket, returned for the ledgers, tucked these under his arm and left the house.

On the way to his lodgings he filed a telegram to the department at Washington which read as follows:

Compton, cashier in First National bank case, guilty. Lorance
probably not implicated. Bank burned to-night by accomplices of
Compton. Case complete.

GARD.

The manner in which these conclusions were reached are but typical of the methods of the sleuths of the Department of Justice. Gard had come to New Beaufort with but a suspicion that Lorance, the assistant cashier, was playing the market on the funds of the bank. Lorance was known to be placing orders with a Wall Street broker.

At the boarding house Gard learned that Lorance lived modestly in a cottage with his wife and babies, had not been seen to make any display of money, was of sturdy farmer stock. On the other hand the investigator immediately picked up the facts that the cashier, Compton, maintained an expensive establishment, entertained lavishly, was often absent from town, was nervous, highstrung, in bad health.

All these facts led him to watch the cashier rather than his assistant. They led him, also, to some experimental testing of the condition of the bank's accounts. He knew that a dishonest employee of a bank, in appropriating money, had to charge it to some account to make the books balance. The large, inactive accounts offer a most tempting opportunity of this sort; but these were found to be intact by his ruse of inducing the depositors to call for their balances.

It was to get a better line on the business of the community, and particularly upon the accounts of Compton, that the special agent secured a position of bookkeeper in Joy's grocery store. Here he found, in the first place, that the buying of the Compton home was profligate and evidently wasteful. He found, further, that the bills were always paid without question and by check. Knowing of an old trick that has brought many a cashier to ruin, Gard sought a way to test these personal checks to determine whether or not they actually found their way to the personal account of the cashier.

The cashier of a bank is usually the individual who opens the mail, and many of these have been known to cash personal checks and destroy them when they came in for collection, charging the amount to some account where it might temporarily be hidden. To determine whether or not these personal checks were being juggled by the cashier Gard, as the grocer's bookkeeper, found a pretext to send to the bank for a record of some personal checks of Compton's which he had handled a few days earlier. The call was made while Compton was out to lunch, and the checks could not be found. Through another dealer Gard succeeded in getting a second similar request made with the same results. He concluded that Compton was at least juggling his personal account and charging the amount of his personal checks to some other account, probably loans and discounts.

In various ways the special agent found opportunities, even without seeing the books of the bank, of demonstrating to his satisfaction that the accounts were being juggled. This was particularly true of new deposits. When a cashier is particularly hard pressed he may resort to a manipulation of the accounts of current depositors. The system is the simplest in the world. When a depositor hands in his money, the cashier enters the amount in the pass book of that individual as a receipt. Then, instead of entering the money to the depositor's credit, the cashier puts it into his pocket. Thus there is nothing to show for the transaction but the entry in the pass book, and that may not be presented for a long time. The cashier chooses for spoliation the accounts about which inquiries are least likely to be made. As far as the books of the bank are concerned they are as though the deposit had never been made, and the bank examiner, therefore, has no way of discovering the shortage.

Gard, through the store for which he worked, made several deposits, and, upon one pretext and another, sent to the assistant cashier of the bank for the record of them in the absence of Compton. They did not show on the account of the grocery store and the matter was passed over as a misunderstanding. But a second avenue of misappropriation thus was discovered.

In this way the special agent was able from the outside to get very good leads into the condition of the bank and to determine the manner of its looting when the facts might not have been obtainable by an expert working from the inside.

Gard's case was about completed and the Department was ready to act when the dramatic denouement came. Arson, suicide and flight are the three events most to be expected when the funds of a bank have been misappropriated. The young special agent was watching for any of these at the time of the anniversary party given by the banker. It was in preparation for any of them that he watched so late on that occasion.

On the afternoon which preceded the entertainment Gard was working over his books at the store and at the same time keeping an eye on the bank. An hour after closing time at the bank he saw Compton come out of the side door with two books of the institution under his arm. He could make out that one was loans and discounts. He surmised that they might be records that were to be destroyed--probably the books that showed his guilt.

When from the hillside Gard that night saw the silent car stop back of the bank and the flames subsequently break out, he knew what had happened. These were accomplices of the cashier who had probably looted the bank of any remaining funds and, according to agreement, had set it on fire that the incriminating records of the cashier might be destroyed. The wily cashier, however, had made sure that the books that showed his guilt would not be found, in case the plan was not an entire success. He had removed them himself, but had not as yet destroyed them for he saw no probability of coming under immediate suspicion. Likewise had he neglected to destroy certain correspondence that later connected him with the parties found to have committed the arson.

The books taken from the banker's house were found to be the personal ledger wherein should have been entered deposits, and the loans and discounts ledger in which account Compton had entered the amounts representing all his personal checks. This latter was the account that had dwelt in the mind of Newton, the bank examiner. The letters that Gard had found in the banker's pockets, though unsigned and mysteriously phrased, were later traced to the Dutch Shroder gang. They proved a great aid to McCord, the plain-clothes man, who had slept peacefully through all the clamor incident to the burning of the bank, but who, through them, was able to trace the burglars.

Compton went to pieces when confronted with the proof that his derelictions had been found out. When his townspeople came to know the facts on the following day, they stormed the jail and threatened to lynch him. So determined was their onslaught that the sheriff spirited the prisoner away. In desperation he confessed his crimes and exonerated Lorance, the assistant cashier, who in playing the market had only executed the orders of his superior. Compton lived but six months after his conviction and sentence to ten years in the penitentiary at Atlanta.

VIII

BEHIND CUSTOMS SCREENS

The effrontery of this special agent, you would quite naturally conclude, was ridiculous. You approve of the sort of courage that makes a man willing to tackle almost any big task, but you also recognize the limitations of the individual. David with his slingshot had an obvious chance of success. If he could make a scratch shot and land on the coco of Mr. Goliath he would win. But Special Agent Billy Gard sallied forth nonchalantly against the whole army of Philistines, apparently without even a slingshot.

The Philistines in this case were typified by the customs crowd of the port of New York. That crowd was a ring within the administration of the affairs of that greatest of gateways that had built up a system for diverting a million of dollars a year from the pocket of Uncle Sam and appropriating the money to itself. For twenty-five years the men of this inner circle had steadily strengthened their positions, their hold upon those in authority, their power to shake down importers. There is a great influence to be wielded by a million dollars a year in the hands of willing spenders.

The development of this condition of affairs was based primarily upon the fact that positions in the customs service are dependent upon politics. The men who built up the system of customs graft had secured their appointments because they had political influence. They afterward used that influence and put their easy money back of it. Their power grew. It made it possible for them to dictate appointments more important than their own, even to the collectorship itself. It made it possible for them to bring about the removal of any smaller official who seemed to stand in their way. Men not in the ring learned to wink at many things that they saw. When an emissary of the crooked customs crowd went to an importer, even where he was honest, it came to be known that it was wise to listen to any proposal made. Thus did the machine gather force.

Just one example of the workings of the system. An Italian named Costello was an importer of cheese. He was a successful, enterprising and honest merchant. One day he received a large shipment from Italy, upon which he expected to pay a duty of $10,000. The cargo was unloaded and weighed by the customs representatives. That night an emissary of the ring called upon the Italian merchant. He showed the record of weights for the cheese cargo. According to this record Costello would have had to pay a duty of $5,000. It showed but half the weight in cheese that had actually arrived.

"We save you $5,000," said the spokesman. "We expect you to divide the profit."

"But I believe in dealing honestly with the Government," said Costello. "I have always done so and I have prospered."

"My tip to you," said the go-between, "is to do as the weighers suggest. They could as easily have charged you overweight as underweight. Besides, you will save much money."

The importer, a foreigner, thus advised by representatives of the Government of his adoption, took the tip and thereafter profited through this official corruption and shared the duties thus saved. Costello received most of his goods as part of what were known as "Mediterranean cargoes," cheese, macaroni, olive oil. The Government was afterward found to have been losing an average of $20,000 on each Mediterranean cargo that came to port.

The case is typical. The representatives of the Government practically forced the importers into these deceptions. The customs service and commercial New York became permeated with this sort of fraud.

Henry L. Stimson was appointed United States district attorney in 1909 and determined to clean up these customs frauds. William Loeb, Jr., was collector of the port, and of the same mind. The two men got their heads together and considered ways and means. A big cleanup followed and in bringing it about the work of Detective Billy Gard played a most important part.

This young special agent was told to go out and master the detail of New York customs, a service that was new to him, to come to understand them so well that he could place his finger on the points where things were going wrong, to pick out the men in the service who were corrupt, to get his information in such form that it would be admissible in court as evidence and so strong that it would insure convictions. He was to do all this in the face of the unfriendliness of the service he was to study, despite all the stumbling-blocks that would be put in his way, in opposition to the dominant political machine of the port, in the face of a lack of any special knowledge of the service. Young Gard accepted the assignment with a grin.

"What are you doing on the customs cases?" District Attorney Stimson asked three weeks later.

"Going to the baseball games," said Gard.

"I hadn't noticed any cargoes being unloaded out that way," said Stimson. "How long have you been a fan?"

"Just a week," said the special agent. "Never attended a game before in my life. I sit in the nice, warm sun of the bleachers to the right among the fanatics. I have learned to keep a score card already."

And such were actually the facts. To solve the riddle of the customs frauds Agent Gard was working hard at the task of becoming a baseball fan.

Two weeks he had devoted to the docks. During the first of these weeks he had gone from wharf to wharf and from man to man. He had asked many questions which were but the common places that any individual who wanted to get a smattering of the detail of such a business would have asked. He was received tolerantly by the old heads of the customs crowd. Many agents had been to the docks ahead of him and most of these had been experts. If they began to get dangerous, political influence was used in having them pulled off the job or money was used in having them fail to report any wrongdoing. But this youngster who did not know the simplest things about the customs service--he was hardly worthy of notice.

But during that week Gard had not expected to become a customs expert. His plan for getting results was founded on a different idea. He had been hunting for a man who suited the purpose of his plan, and had found him. This man was an Irishman by the name of O'Toole, who was one of the weighers at a certain dock in Brooklyn. He had in the back of his head all the facts that the special agent lacked. If he could be induced to cooperate, the case might be worked out.

O'Toole was a man of fifty, and had been a weigher for eleven years. Gard had learned many things about him. He had no family, his great enthusiasm was baseball, and his weakness was a certainty of going to the mat with John Barleycorn every third Saturday night. He was a lonesome man, and sour and cynical.

"How long have you been on this investigation?" O'Toole asked Gard before the conversation had gone far.

"Just this week," said the special agent.

"Have you found anything?" asked the weigher.

"Not yet," said the special agent.

"Well, if you want your job to last, don't," said the Irishman.

They discussed the general points in the business of weighing cargoes and the work of the force having it in charge. But the special agent had gathered the idea that O'Toole was not in sympathy with conditions, that he was not a member of the inner circle. Yet an intelligent man serving as weigher for eleven years would know secrets that would be of interest to the Government, and O'Toole was embittered. He should be cultivated.

The days of the following week the special agent spent about the docks dressed as a rough laboring man. The nights he spent in nearby saloons with the acquaintances he had made during the day. The idea in this was to determine what information the laborers were able to pick up and whether they could be used as informers. Many of these were Irishmen, as smart as the best of them, and pretty well aware of what was going on. From the gossip of these men it was also possible to get many a flash on the character of the men higher up. O'Toole they pronounced honest.

"They won't give him a chance to get on the inside," said one, "because they are afraid he might talk when he is drunk."

"He wouldn't take dirty money, anyway," insisted another. "He is an honest man."

The third week the special agent was devoting to the ball park, sitting in the bleachers three seats back of O'Toole. He had determined that the Irishman should tell him the story of the customs frauds from the inside. He knew that, to get on a basis of sufficient good feeling to bring this about, he must approach O'Toole on the most favorable basis possible. Too much care could not be taken in laying the foundation for his final proposal to the weigher. The man's love for baseball first presented itself. The agent determined to become a fellow fan with him. Thus should he come to know him better and under most favorable circumstances.

On two occasions the special agent bowed to the weigher in leaving the bleachers. He had thus got himself identified in that individual's mind as a fellow fan. It was the end of the second week, however, before the conditions developed that made just the opening that Gard wanted. The situation worked itself out on Saturday afternoon. The game had gone three innings when a flurry of rain threatened to bring it to a close. Then there was a downpour. The people in the bleachers scurried for shelter. There seemed little chance for the game being resumed, and most of the bleacherites filed out under their umbrellas.

Some twenty enthusiastic fans held to their seats on the chance that the game would go on. Among these were O'Toole and the special agent. Both were drenched to the skin. Finally the umpire announced that the game was called, and the stragglers turned homeward. As O'Toole started to go he was greeted by Special Agent Gard.

"By jove," said the young man, "I believe you are a more enthusiastic fan than I am."

"They shouldn't have called the game for a few drops of water," complained the saturated weigher. "But let us go some place and get a drink."

Whereupon the two dripping fans found their way to a nearby barroom and talked of club standings and batting averages while they warmed up with copious drafts of red-eyed liquor.

"Boy," said the weigher, after the fourth drink, "have you got a family?"

"No," answered Gard. "I am not married."

"Go get married," urged the older man. "When you begin to get old and have only a solitary room to which to go and no children nor grandchildren to give you an interest in the world, there is nothing to live for. You perform your small duties with a great void in the back of your mind. There is no stage setting that makes the petty play seem worth while. The only relief is an occasional Saturday night when you forget."

The special agent began to realize that the weigher was starting on his tri-weekly fling. It also began to be evident that he was of the order of inebriates who indulge in a debauch of self-pity as an accompaniment to their liquor.

"It always seemed to me," said the special agent, "that a man could become so absorbed in his work that it would fill his whole life. Particularly should this be true when he has a task so important as yours."

"Mother of Mary!" exclaimed the Irishman. "Become absorbed in watching a bunch of thieves always at work? Would you like to spend your declining years in sitting idly by and watching your employer and benefactor robbed?"

"Why do this?" said Gard. "Why not lay the whole thing before the right authority and do a worth-while piece of work in cleaning up the service?"

"Yes, and be broken and thrown into the discard to starve," was the reply. "I have seen too many of them go up against the gang. None of it for O'Toole.

"Just one tip I will give you," said the weigher after hearing the special agent's argument in favor of lending his aid to showing up the frauds. "If you will examine the records of Mediterranean cargoes you will find that, during the past ten years, such cargoes have regularly been about twice as heavy when handled by certain weighers as when handled by others. The men whose records show these cargoes always light are the crooks. Those who show them heavy are honest. The solution is merely a matter of mathematics."

With this semiconfidence the agent contented himself. He continued to go to the baseball games, but met O'Toole only casually. In the meantime the records of weighers were being examined. In a week the figures were complete. They showed these men divided into two groups that were far apart with relation to the weights of cargoes. The group that weighed light was the larger.

A few days later Gard saw O'Toole after a ball game. He told the weigher that District Attorney Stimson wanted to see him that night at the Federal building, that the district attorney was under great obligations to him for the tip to examine weigher's records and wanted to thank him.

"O'Toole," said the district attorney that night, "this is a time when the Government needs the aid of honest men. We know that men who would clean up customs graft have, in the past, come to grief. But this is not now true. I have taken up your case with the Secretary of the Treasury himself. That official asks me to inform you that, in case you aid us in cleaning up this situation, your place will not only be made secure but that you should figure that the service will be remembered in the light of your future interests. We know that your record is clean. We want your help. Are you with us?"

Agent Gard had selected the right man. O'Toole, at first timid in his fear of the ring, became an enthusiast over the task of weeding out the graft. The dominance of local politicians had no terrors for him with Washington at his back. The value of all he had learned in eleven years at the scales was made to supplement the lack of customs experience on the part of the special agent. His acquaintance with the customs force in the port made his information invaluable. So enthusiastic did he become that he missed three ball games in succession and went past four Saturday nights without his customary tussle with the spirits that bring forgetfulness.

O'Toole confirmed much of the list of short-weight employees that had been made up. Of the derelictions of many of these he had personal knowledge. With their methods he was entirely familiar and was able to point the way toward the establishing of guilt so it would be admissible as evidence and would secure convictions.

That an individual weigher may report short weights it is necessary that his associate at the scales, a checker, should share in his deceptions, for the checker is a witness of the record of the scales. In the celebrated short weight cases of the sugar scandals, the checker had a steel spring like a corset stay that he thrust into the mechanism of the scale and retarded it, thus resulting in a showing of short weight. But in the case of the Mediterranean cargoes the fraud was less disguised. The scales were allowed to record the proper weight, but the weigher and the checker, in collusion, divided the figure by two in setting it down. The system was both simple and effective. It worked for twenty-five years.

Gard consulted with O'Toole upon the advisability of using workmen about the docks as informers. The weigher thought this could be done and knew a number of men who might be so used. A laborer, for instance, working about the scales, was able to see the amount that the beam registered at given times. He could easily remember the big numbers, those that represented the thousands of pounds, until he had a chance to set them down. He could thus get a rough record of the weighing of a given half day. This could afterward be compared with the figures of the weigher. A pretty close check could thus be put on the given suspects.

By such methods fairly clear cases were obtained against given weighers and checkers. After much information was gathered certain guilty men would be selected who would be given chances to tell all about their knowledge of the frauds. These men would be given immunity. Thus would a few of the guilty escape punishment; but thus, also, would the Government learn all the details of the frauds that it might be able to provide effectually against them.

Special agents were set to watch every suspect, to learn his manner of life, how he spent his money, whether he could be trapped on the outside. When the Government needed the confession of a given man he would be called upon and talked to in some such manner as this:

"You, as checker, worked with Weigher Smith on a given cargo. The weights shown by the scales Smith divided by two and you passed them. That night a messenger was sent to Costello with a statement of the short weight he had passed. Costello paid half the duty on this short weight. You and the weigher split on the basis of forty, sixty.

"We know of a score of offenses equally glaring on your part. The Government needs you as a witness. Under the circumstances do you not think it would be advisable for you to go with me to the district attorney and make a complete statement of all you know about customs frauds?"

The man that the Government wanted usually came through with all he knew. So were the cases made absolute and so were all the methods of graft revealed. Eleven weighers and checkers were convicted and sent to the penitentiary. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars in duties that had been avoided were assessed against and paid by importers. The Government was lenient with most of these because of its chagrin over the part played by its representatives and because the initiative in the offending had usually been taken by Government agents.

Altogether the cleaning up of the customs scandals in the port of New York was a most complicated task. The work of Special Agent Gard is but a fragment of it, but was vastly important and decidedly typical of the problem in hand and its solution.

IX

WITH THE REVOLUTION MAKERS

The Isla Dolorosa is in the Rio Grande River a few miles below El Paso. It is Mexican territory and is owned by an aged ranchman named Jose Encino. If one should start a camp fire anywhere on the island he would be running a monstrous risk, for so great is the quantity of ammunition that has been smuggled thus far on its way to revolutionary war and buried, that any such fire might cause a huge explosion.

It was in the moonshine of a clear November night in 1911 that a boat drifted down the Rio Grande from the American side, pulled up among the cattails of the north shore of the island and was beached beneath a great cottonwood tree that stood out against the sky as a landmark. Two men stepped ashore and waited in the shadows. Fifteen minutes later two riders splashed into the water from the Mexican side, floundered through the stream that but came to the stirrups, and pointed the noses of their horses for the same huge tree. Nearing it they halted.

"Reyes," said a voice from the darkness.

"Gomez," responded a rider.

The test of this interchange seemed to have been satisfactory for a small, dark man emerged from the shadow of the cottonwood and helped the riders to dismount. One of these later proved to be a woman who was treated with great courtesy by the small man. When the horses were tied the four seated themselves beneath the tree in a spot where the underbrush shut out the world. From the fitful light of an occasional match that served to light the eternal cigarettes of these Mexicans, an observer, if it had been possible for one to have looked on, might have studied four interesting faces.

The bearer of news and evidently the leader of the party was the small, dark man already mentioned. As it afterward developed he was Dr. Rafael Flores of El Paso. Doctor Flores, as the flicker of a match revealed, was a man of some sixty years of age, a thin, wiry individual with refined and almost classic features. He was a practising physician, a citizen of means and repute in the border city. The man who had come with him in the boat was named Comacho. He was short, square built, deeply pock-marked. He was notorious along the border, particularly in Lower California. He was an anarchist and an expert with explosives and was suspected of having been connected with many dire deeds.

The man who came on horseback was huge and heavy and wore always a red flannel shirt. He it was who had led the assault on Juarez when the troops of Francisco Villa had captured that city early in the Madero campaign. He it was who inflicted some of the early atrocities upon prisoners, who plied the torch and who had to be discouraged in his activities by even his bandit associates. "Red Shirt" Pena he had since been called. His specialty was smuggling fire arms over the border. He had sixty loyal followers in the vicinity of El Carmen.

And the woman! Señorita Josefa Calderon was the name by which she was known. She was from the interior, was something of a mystery never entirely understood, but the current belief was that she was a sister of General Orozco. That uncontrolled chief of rebels was even then stationed at Juarez in command of Madero troops and was vacillating between allegiance to the new president and the leading of a revolt against him. Señorita Calderon, veiled, dark-eyed, slim as a cactus, was thought to be his messenger.

"There is news," said Doctor Flores, as soon as the party had settled itself. "General Reyes is in San Antonio. He arrived at New Orleans a week ago, came on to San Antonio where he was given a great demonstration. He has opened revolutionary headquarters there and every mail brings letters and every train brings messengers assuring him of support in overthrowing Madero. He has arranged for money to finance the movement. The friends of Emilio Vasquez Gomez are busily at work along the border. The American financial interests in Mexico are back of us. We are to open headquarters in El Paso and begin the active organization of our forces."

"But the money," said "Red Shirt" Pena. "We can do nothing until we have money with which to buy ammunition."

"The money," assured the doctor, "is to be immediately forthcoming. In that connection I have a mission for the Señorita Calderon. She is to go immediately to San Antonio to report to the chief and to get the money."

"When the money arrives," said Comacho, the anarchist, "all things will be possible. There is dynamite cached at Newman and more at Alamagordo. Ramon Sanchez has other stores of it at Phoenix. We can start action at half a dozen points and wake every dozing peon in Mexico. But provide the money, doctor, and I will guarantee to wake up two nations. There is little question of getting results either through the overthrow of Madero or intervention by the United States."

"Likewise will the arms begin to cross the river as soon as they may be bought," volunteered Pena. "I have many men ready to travel back and forth and each will carry a gun and a box of cartridges each trip."

"And the señorita?" asked Doctor Flores. "Can she go for us to San Antonio?"

"As the señor wishes," said that young woman. "But where shall I report on my return?"

"Back of my residence," said the doctor, "there is a small building opening into the alley. There are no windows. We will meet there."

After a long discussion of the details of the organization of the junta, this first gathering of the arch-conspirators broke up.

It was a week after this meeting in the Rio Grande that Archie Dobbs, special agent of the Department of Justice, assigned particularly to the Mexican border to look after violations of the neutrality laws, began to notice the frequency with which groups of Mexicans were to be seen engaged in earnest conversation in the streets of El Paso. About the Orndorff hotel there were in evidence groups of wealthy appearing grandees, such as own great ranches beyond the border. Idling about the Mexican saloons were many big-hatted vaqueros, such as make up the armies of any revolutionary movement when trouble starts across the line.

Dobbs went to see Juan Ortego. This young son of Chihuahua was one of the dependable men of Madero. Ortego was a member of the personal secret service of the new president and his station at El Paso was regarded as important as an outpost of trouble for the government.

"What is in the air?" asked the American special agent of Ortego.

"Revolution," said the Mexican.

"Whom have they got?"

"Reyes, Gomez, probably Orozco, possibly Villa," said Ortego.

"Have you got an informer among them?" Dobbs asked.

"No, I have failed in that respect," was the answer.

"Who is the one military leader that Madero can trust?" Dobbs wanted to know.

The Mexican secret service man recommended General Herrera at Chihuahua. He also stated that Doctor Flores was the Reyes representative at El Paso.

Archie Dobbs acted at once. The Department of Justice has its special agents who will fit into almost any condition that is likely to arise. Billy Gard, for instance, had been assigned to this work on the Mexican border because of his knowledge of Spanish. As he was growing up his father had served for many years in the consular service and Billy had become as a native of the Latin countries. It had been his pride as a lad to assume every characteristic of the land to which his father was assigned and it was probably this dissembling that led him into the detective game. With a bit of a Mexican touch to his wearing apparel and a covering of alkali dust he now became a typical son of the land of the south.

Such was the appearance presented by Gard when, two days after the talk between the secret service men of two nations, he came into El Paso from the South. He bore credentials from General Herrera which it had been possible for him to get through Madero's secret service man, Juan Ortego. He appeared much worn and dust-covered when he began a search of El Paso for Doctor Flores. Having found that gentleman in consultation with a party of ranch owners at the Orndorff hotel, he presented himself and asked for a word in private with the junta chief.

"I am from General Herrera," said Gard. "I bring to you his greetings and these credentials which will assure you that you may treat with me in confidence. He bids me say that he holds General Reyes in a deferential respect which he gives to no other living Mexican. He awaits an opportunity to cooperate with you."

This news was, to Flores, the best he had heard since he organized the junta. He was a visionary enthusiast such as would accept such a declaration without further confirmation. Assurances had come from many sources of support to Reyes who, in reality, occupied an enviable position in the hearts of the Mexican people. But Herrera, the Madero general, who had been regarded as firmly against them! His coming over was too good to believe. The doctor embraced the young man, according to the Mexican custom, and kissed him first on one cheek and then on the other.

Thus did a special agent of the United States become a member of a Mexican revolutionary junta.

Through Gard the Department of Justice soon had all the particulars of the Reyes revolution as far as they were known to the El Paso junta. It knew that the aged general had been promised support from many sources, that he had been provided with considerable sums of money, that arms had been bought in hundred lots from dealers all along the border, that these were being doled out to individuals who were to cross over the border at a given time and form the nucleus of the revolution. In El Paso some two hundred men had already been thus provided. These men were being maintained at boarding houses about town and were being handed regularly small sums of money. Gard met every day with the members of the junta and talked over the details of these matters.

In the little building which had no windows and which stood back of Doctor Flores' house, Gard also met the individuals who were the firebrands of the revolution. "Red Shirt" Pena was always there and was steadily engaged in smuggling ammunition across the border. The pock-marked anarchist, Comacho, was maturing his spectacular plans. Señorita Josefa Calderon, slim as a cactus, came now and then, with a message from Reyes or Orozco. Often she brought large sums of money. Gard once accompanied her to Juarez and used all his charms in an effort to develop a love affair with her, but in vain. He afterward learned that she was mourning a sweetheart who had died in fighting Madero and was devoting herself to this cause in hope of revenge.

Toward the end of December the plans for the revolution grew near maturity. General Reyes was to slip out of San Antonio and across the Rio Grande where he was to pick up his recruits enlisted on the American side and those on the Mexican side who had promised to join with him. At the psychological moment Pena of the red shirt, and Comacho, the anarchist, were to put on performances so spectacular as to attract the attention of the world.

Comacho had his dynamiting plans well developed. Personally he intended to place a bomb under the international bridge at El Paso. An associate was to perform the same service with relation to the American customs house at Nogales, and the consulate at Laredo was to be blown up.

While Comacho was performing these outrages, "Red Shirt" Pena was to be busied in the fine art of murder. The sheriff of El Paso, Juan Ortego, and Archie Dobbs were the men against whom the capacities of Pena as a killer were to be directed. But failing these he was to run amuck and do whatever damage he could. Any representative of the American army, any Madero official, was to be regarded as a fair mark. The object was to at least create a great sensation to advertise the new revolution, and possibly to bring about intervention. At any rate the border should be awakened.