The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “I assured myself thus that he was incapable of correctly counting money under the distraction and excitement such as was about him the morning of the ‘run’; and I felt it probable that the missing money was never put into the bag, and must either have been lost in the bank or taken by some one else. As I set myself, then, to puzzling out the mystery of the scraps which I took from Gordon, I soon saw that the writing ‘42$=80’ and ‘35=8?$,’ which seemed perfectly senseless equations, might not be equations at all, but secret writing instead, made up of six symbols each, the number of letters in your combination. Besides the numbers, the other three symbols were common ones in commercial correspondence. Then, the attack on old Gordon’s typewriter desk. You told me he had been a stenographer; and—it flashed to me.

  “He had not dared to write the combination in plain letters; so he had hit on a very simple, but also very ingenious, cipher. He wrote the word, not in letters, but in the figures and symbols which accompanied each letter on the keyboard of his old typewriting machine. The cipher explained why the other man was after the old combination in the waste-basket, hoping to get enough words together so he could figure them out, as he had been doing on the scraps of paper which Gordon found. Till then Gordon might have been in doubt as to the meaning of the annoyances; but, finding those scraps, after the breaking open of his old desk, left him in no doubt, as he warned you.”

  “I see! I see!” Howell nodded, intently.

  “The symbols made no word upon the typewriters here in your office. Before I could be sure, I had to see the cashier’s old machine, which Gordon—beginning to fear his secret was discovered—had taken home. When I saw that machine, ‘43$=80,’ by the mere change of the shift key, gave me ‘reship,’ and ‘35=8?$’ gave me ‘ethics,’ two words of six letters, as I had expected; but, to my surprise, I found that young Gordon, as well as the fellow still in the bank, was concerning himself strangely with his father’s cipher, and I had him here this morning when I made my test to find out, first, who it was here in the bank that was after the combination; and, second, who, if anyone, had taken the missing bills on September 29th.

  “Modern psychology gave me an easy method of detecting these two persons. Before coming here this morning I made up a list of words which must necessarily connect themselves with their crimes in the minds of the man who had plotted against the safe and the one who had taken the bills. ‘Reship’ and ‘ethics’ were the combination words of the safe for the last two weeks. ‘Remington’ suggested ‘typewriter’; ‘shift key,’ ‘combination,’ ‘secret writing,’ and ‘waste-basket’ all were words which would directly connect themselves with the attempt upon the safe. ‘Ten thousand,’ ‘five hundred,’ ‘September 29th’ referred to the stealing of the bills. ‘Arrest,’ with its association of ‘theft,’ would trouble both men.

  “You must have seen, I think, that the little speech I made before giving the test was not merely what it pretended to be. That speech was an excuse for me to couple together and lay particular emphasis upon the natural associations of certain words. So I coupled and emphasized the natural association of ‘safe’ with ‘combination,’ ‘scraps’ with ‘waste-basket,’ ‘dollars’ with ‘ten thousand,’ and so on. In no case did I attempt by my speech to supplant in anyone’s mind his normal association with any one of these words. Obviously, to all your clerks the associations I suggested must be the most common, the most impressive; and I took care thus to make them, finally, the most recent. Then I could be sure that if any one of them refused those normal associations upon any considerable number of the words, that person must have ‘suspicious’ connection with the crime as the reason for changing his associations. I did not care even whether he suspected the purpose of my test. To refuse to write it would be a confession of his guilt. And I was confident that if he did write it he could not refrain from changing enough of these associations to betray himself.

  “Now, the first thing which struck me with Ford’s paper was that he had obviously erased his first words for ‘reship’ and ‘ethics’ and substituted others. Everyone else treated them easily, not knowing them to be the combination words. Ford, however, wrote something which didn’t satisfy him as being ‘innocent’ enough, and wrote again. There were no ‘normal ‘associations for these words, and I had suggested none. But note the next.

  “Typewriter was the common, the most insistent and recent association for ‘Remington’ for all—except Ford. It was for him, too, but any typewriter had gained a guilty association in his mind. He was afraid to put it down, so wrote ‘rifles.’ ‘Shift key,’ the next word, of course intensified his connection with the crime; so he refused to write naturally, as the others did, either ‘typewriter’ or ‘dollar mark,’ and wrote ‘trigger’ to give an unsuspicious appearance. ‘Secret writing’ recalled at once the ‘symbols’ which I had suggested to him, and which, of course, were in his mind anyway; but he wrote ‘cable code’—not in itself entirely unnatural for one in a bank. The next word, ‘combination,’ to everyone in a bank, at all times—particularly if just emphasized—suggests its association, ‘safe’; and every single one of the others, who had no guilty connection to conceal, so associated it. Ford went out of his way to write ‘monopoly.’ And his next association of ‘rifle,’ again, with ‘waste-basket’ is perhaps the most interesting of all. As he had been searching the waste-basket for ‘scraps’ he thought it suspicious to put down that entirely natural association; but scraps recalled to him those scraps bearing ‘typewriter ‘symbols, and, avoiding the word typewriter, he substituted for it his innocent association, ‘rifle.’

  “The next words on my list were those put in to betray the man who had taken the money—Shaffer. ‘Ten thousand,’ the amount he had taken, suggested dollars to him, of course; but he was afraid to write dollars. He wanted to appear entirely unconnected with any ‘ten thousand dollars’; so he wrote ‘doors.’ At ‘five hundred’ Shaffer, with twenty stolen five-hundred dollar bills in his possession, referred to appear to be thinking of five hundred ‘windows.’ ‘September 29th,’ the day of the theft, was burned into Shaffer’s brain, so, avoiding it, he wrote ‘last year.’ ‘Promissory note’ in the replies of most of your clerks brought out the natural connection of ‘sixty days ‘suggested in my speech, but Shaffer—since it was just sixty days since he stole—avoided it, precisely as both he and Ford, fearing arrest as thieves, avoided—and were the only ones who avoided—the line of least resistance in my last word. And the evidence was complete against them!”

  Howell was staring at the lists, amazed. “I see! I see!” he cried, in awe. “There is only one thing.” He raised his head. “It is clear here, of course, now that you have explained it, how you knew Shaffer was the one who took the money; but, was it a guess that he found it in the waste-basket?”

  “No; rather a chance that I was able to determine it,” Trant replied. “All his associations for the early words, except one, are as natural and easy as anyone else’s, for these were the words put in to detect Ford. But for some reason, ‘waste-basket ‘troubled Shaffer, too. Supposing the money was lost by old Gordon in putting it into the bag, it seemed more than probable that Shaffer’s disturbance over this word came from the fact that Gordon had tossed the missing bills into the waste-basket.”

  There was a knock on the door. The special police officer of the bank entered with Shaffer, who laid a package on the desk.

  “This is correct, Shaffer,” Howell acknowledged as he ran quickly through the bills. He stepped to the door. “Send Mr. Gordon here,” he commanded.

  “You were in time to save Gordon and Ford, Trant,” the banker continued. “I shall merely dismiss Ford. Shaffer is a thief and must be punished. Old Gordon—”

  He stopped and turned quickly as the old cashier entered without knocking.

  “Gordon,” said the acting-president, pointing to the packet of money on the desk, “I have sent for you to return to you thi
s money—the ten thousand dollars which you gave to the bank—and to tell you that your son was not a thief, though this gentleman has just saved us, I am afraid, from making him one. In saving the boy, Gordon, he had to discover and reveal to me that you have worn yourself out in our service. But, I shall see that you can retire when father returns, with a proper pension.”

  The old cashier stared at his young employer dully for a moment; his dim eyes dropped, uncomprehending, to the packet of money on the desk. Then he came forward slowly, with bowed head, and took it.

  V

  THE MAN HIGHER UP

  The first real blizzard of the winter had burst upon New York from the Atlantic. For seventy-two hours—as Rentland, file clerk in the Broadway offices of the American Commodities Company, saw from the record he was making for President Welter—no ship of any of the dozen expected from foreign ports had been able to make the Company’s docks in Brooklyn, or, indeed, had been reported at Sandy Hook. And for the last five days, during which the weather bureau’s storm signals had stayed steadily set, no steamer of the six which had finished unloading at the docks the week before had dared to try for the open sea except one, the Elizabethan Age, which had cleared the Narrows on Monday night.

  On land the storm was scarcely less disastrous to the business of the great importing company. Since Tuesday morning Rentland’s reports of the car and train-load consignments which had left the warehouses daily had been a monotonous page of trains stalled. But until that Friday morning, Welter—the big, bull-necked, thick-lipped master of men and money—had borne all the accumulated trouble of the week with serenity, almost with contempt. Only when the file clerk added to his report the minor item that the 3,000-ton steamer, Elizabethan Age, which had cleared on Monday night, had been driven into Boston, something suddenly seemed to “break” in the inner office. Rentland heard the president’s secretary telephone to Brooklyn for Rowan, the dock superintendent; he heard Welter’s heavy steps going to and fro in the private office, his hoarse voice raised angrily; and soon afterwards Rowan blustered in. Rentland could no longer overhear the voices. He went back to his own private office and called the station master at the Grand Central Station on the telephone.

  “The seven o’clock train from Chicago?” the clerk asked in a guarded voice. “It came in at 10.30, as expected? Oh, at 10.10! Thank you.” He hung up the receiver and opened the door to pass a word with Rowan as he came out of the president’s office.

  “They’ve wired that the Elizabethan Age couldn’t get beyond Boston, Rowan,” he cried curiously.

  “The———hooker!” The dock superintendent had gone strangely white; for the imperceptible fraction of an instant his eyes dimmed with fear, as he stared into the wondering face of the clerk, but he recovered himself quickly, spat offensively, and slammed the door as he went out. Rentland stood with clenching hands for a moment; then he glanced at the clock and hurried to the entrance of the outer office. The elevator was just bringing up from the street a red-haired, blue-gray-eyed young man of medium height, who, noting with a quick, intelligent glance the arrangement of the offices, advanced directly toward President Welter’s door. The chief clerk stepped forward quickly.

  “You are Mr. Trant?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Rentland. This way, please.” He led the psychologist to the little room behind the files, where he had telephoned the moment before.

  “Your wire to me in Chicago, which brought me here,” said Trant, turning from the inscription “File Clerk “on the door to the dogged, decisive features and wiry form of his client, “gave me to understand that you wished to have me investigate the disappearance, or death, of two of your dock scalecheckers. I suppose you were acting for President Welter—of whom I have heard—in sending for me?”

  “No,” said Rentland, as he waved Trant to a seat. “President Welter is certainly not troubling himself to that extent over an investigation.”

  “Then the company, or some other officer?” Trant questioned, with increasing curiosity.

  “No; nor the company, nor any other officer in it, Mr. Trant.” Rentland smiled. “Nor even am I, as file clerk of the American Commodities Company, overtroubling myself about those checkers,” he leaned nearer to Trant, confidentially, “but as a special agent for the United States Treasury Department I am extremely interested in the death of one of these men, and in the disappearance of the other. And for that I called you to help me.”

  “As a secret agent for the Government?” Trant repeated, with rapidly rising interest.

  “Yes; a spy, if you wish to call me, but as truly in the ranks of the enemies to my country as any Nathan Hale, who has a statue in this city. To-day the enemies are the big, corrupting, thieving corporations like this company; and appreciating that, I am not ashamed to be a spy in their ranks, commissioned by the Government to catch and condemn President Welter, and any other officers involved with him, for systematically stealing from the Government for the past ten years, and for probable connivance in the murder of at least one of those two checkers so that the company might continue to steal.”

  “To steal? How?”

  “Customs frauds, thefts, smuggling—anything you wish to call it. Exactly what or how, I can’t tell; for that is part of what I sent for you to find out. For a number of years the Customs Department has suspected, upon circumstantial evidence, that the enormous profits of this company upon the thousand and one things which it is importing and distributing must come in part from goods they have got through without paying the proper duty. So at my own suggestion I entered the employ of the company a year ago to get track of the method. But after a year here I was almost ready to give up the investigation in despair, when Ed Landers, the company’s checker on the docks in scale house No. 3, was killed—accidentally, the coroner’s jury said. To me it looked suspiciously like murder. Within two weeks Morse, who was appointed as checker in his place, suddenly disappeared. The company’s officials showed no concern as to the fate of these two men; and my suspicions that something crooked might be going on at scale house No. 3 were strengthened; and I sent for you to help me to get at the bottom of things.”

  “Is it not best then to begin by giving me as fully as possible the details of the employment of Morse and Landers, and also of their disappearance?” the young psychologist suggested.

  “I have told you these things here, Trant, rather than take you to some safer place,” the secret agent replied, “because I have been waiting for some one who can tell you what you need to know better than I can. Edith Rowan, the stepdaughter of the dock superintendent, knew Landers well, for he boarded at Rowan’s house. She was—or is, if he still lives—engaged to Morse. It is an unusual thing for Rowan himself to come here to see President Welter, as he did just before you came; but every morning since Morse disappeared his daughter has come to see Welter personally. She is already waiting in the outer office.” Opening the door, he indicated to Trant a light-haired, overdressed, nervous girl twisting about uneasily on the seat outside the president’s private office.

  “Welter thinks it policy, for some reason, to see her a moment every morning. But she always comes out almost at once—crying.”

  “This is interesting,” Trant commented, as he watched the girl go into the president’s office. After only a moment she came out, crying. Rentland had already left his room, so it seemed by chance that he and Trant met and supported her to the elevator, and over the slippery pavement to the neat electric coupe which was standing at the curb.

  “It’s hers,” said Rentland, as Trant hesitated before helping the girl into it. “It’s one of the things I wanted you to see. Broadway is very slippery, Miss Rowan. You will let me see you home again this morning? This gentleman is Mr. Trant, a private detective. I want him to come along with us.”

  The girl acquiesced, and Trant crowded into the little automobile. Rentland turned the coupe skillf
ully out into the swept path of the street, ran swiftly down Fifth Avenue to Fourteenth Street, and stopped three streets to the east before a house in the middle of the block. The house was as narrow and cramped and as cheaply constructed as its neighbors on both sides. It had lace curtains conspicuous in every window, and impressive statuettes, vases, and gaudy bits of bric-a-brac in the front rooms.

  “He told me again that Will must still be off drunk; and Will never takes a drink,” she spoke to them for the first time, as they entered the little sitting room.

  “‘He’ is Welter,” Rentland explained to Trant. “‘Will’ is Morse, the missing man. Now, Miss Rowan, I have brought Mr. Trant with me because I have asked him to help me find Morse for you, as I promised; and I want you to tell him everything you can about how Landers was killed and how Morse disappeared.”

  “And remember,” Trant interposed, “that I know very little about the American Commodities Company.”

  “Why, Mr. Trant,” the girl gathered herself together, “you cannot help knowing something about the company! It imports almost everything—tobacco, sugar, coffee, wines, olives, and preserved fruits, oils, and all sorts of table delicacies, from all over the world, even from Borneo, Mr. Trant, and from Madagascar and New Zealand. It has big warehouses at the docks with millions of dollars’ worth of goods stored in them. My stepfather has been with the company for years, and has charge of all that goes on at the docks.”

  “Including the weighing?”

  “Yes; everything on which there is a duty when it is taken off the boats has to be weighed, and to do this there are big scales, and for each one a scale house. When a scale is being used there are two men in the scale house. One of these is the Government weigher, who sets the scale to a balance and notes down the weight in a book. The other man, who is an employee of the company, writes the weight also in a book of his own; and he is called the company’s checker. But though there are half a dozen scales, almost everything, when it is possible, is unloaded in front of scale No. 3, for that is the best berth for ships.”