The huge apartment had been serviced by many maids, and other women employees had had access to it. Also the Sickles family had maids of their own, among them an old German woman who had been with the family for fifteen years and had helped raise the children.
Ray wasted no time on the men who had had access to the apartment. When Keeler had set up his polygraph, Ray called in the women to go through the psychic ordeal one by one.
The old German woman was among the first he brought up, though Sickles was sure it was a waste of time, since, as he insisted, not only had the elderly Fraulein been a devoted servant for years, but she had been frequently questioned by the police.
She was a bit defiant at first. When she was asked if she knew what had become of the paintings she answered stoutly:
“Nein!”
But the lie detector said “Yes!”
She was told that she had answered falsely. She broke forth at once in a fury and rather boasted than confesed that she had taken the pictures. She was proud of the irretrievable vandalism. She told how, dining World War II, the family had often spoken with anger and horror of the atrocious deeds of the German troops. The old woman’s love for her Vaterland overcame her ancient loyalty to the family. Furthermore the Sickles family had fought in the Revolutionary War and in the Civil War; and now she saw the head of the house in a Captain’s uniform, making ready to fight her dear Hitler. She lost all control of her ^atred. She only waited her chance with a witchlike malignity to destroy the dearest things the family possessed.
She had gone to the beloved paintings and snipped and stabbed at the canvases till the pictures came free of the frames. Then she had wrapped up the priceless canvases, taken them to the summer home on Long Island, put them in the incinerator and secretly watched them burn—gloating over them with all the fanatic joy of a true follower of Der Fuehrer.
Ray had solved the mystery in three hours. But the solution left the almost mystic grief one feels when a seemingly immortal masterpiece is forever annihilated. Added was the impossibility, as well as the futility, of meting out a punishment worthy of the awful crime.
It was Ray’s womanly intuition—that is, his intuition of womanliness—that had answered that riddle almost instantly. Another case where instinct whispered to him, “Cherchez la femme!” did not concern paintings, but it can be hung on here as a sort of jewelled pendant.
A prominent executive of an airplane company and his wife lived in a New York apartment hotel. One day they learned that some thief had robbed them of nearly all their jewelry. The loss was great in money costs, and greater in sentimental values; for their collection had been building from many years of travel about the world. Many heirlooms were included.
For over a year, police and detectives used all their arts in vain to find the thief or the jewels. One day the executive, who was a warm friend of Ray’s, met him in a club and mentioned the loss and the vain hunt. He sighed:
“I wish I’d called you in.”
“Was nothing ever recovered?” Ray asked.
“Not a thing. At least not by the police or the detectives. But the thief did send back my wife’s wedding ring. It had an inscription on it and I suppose it touched even his hard heart.”
“His?” said Ray. “You mean hers? A man thief wouldn’t be touched by anything sentimental about a wedding ring. But a woman! Did the police or the insurance investigators look for a woman especially?”
“Not at all. They were sure it was a man’s work.”
“Let me talk to your wife,” said Ray.
He called on her and questioned her closely till she suddenly recalled that about the time of the robbery she had been ill and attended by a nurse. Such a nice woman! Nobody could suspect her!
But Ray set his office force to work and they soon found that, during the past year the nurse had been living in a luxury she had not been accustomed to. Also she was wearing a good deal of jewelry. And she was not the type of woman that men throw diamonds at.
Under pressure she surrendered such of the jewels as she had not already pawned. And, since heirlooms and sentimental gems are hard to hock, the family got back most of its losses.
While we are on the subject of those three close relatives, women and jewelry and sentimentality, we might attach here the account of a most unusual technique employed by-Ray in the recovery of an emerald bracelet valued at $50,-000.
A wealthy couple came to Ray and confessed that they had been innocent enough to play cards for high stakes with a charming couple of strangers on a trans-Atlantic steamer. In spite of all the warnings that have been lavished on this folly, and all the “Beware!” placards put up on the steamer walls, they had played.
As usual the ingenuous millionaires had begun to lose, after the usual preliminary winnings that are used for bait.
In the course of the exciting evening, the husband had lost $5,000, which he paid off with a check; the wife had lost $21,000, which was more than she had in her bank account. So she persuaded the other woman to accept her $50,000 emerald bracelet as security for the debt of honor till she could get ashore and dig up the cash. The sweet lady consented and gave her address as a big hotel.
Once ashore, the repentant wife acquired the $21,000 in cash and called at the hotel. The charming couple was unknown there.
In dismay she called in Schindler and gave so detailed a description that Ray’s people, by checking the steamship records, cab stands and nightclubs, finally located the couple and tailed them to an apartment house.
Arresting them for stealing the bracelet would have been as fruitless as the publicity would have been embarrassing to the woman for whom the bracelet had a sentimental as well as a financial importance. But Ray’s office kept the pair under observation till they discovered that the wife, or at least the woman, had left her husband, or at least her man; and taken an apartment of her own.
She began to appear everywhere with a new man of evident wealth. One night two of Ray’s operatives took the table next to hers and began to talk in boisterous tones about a woman who, according to one of them, was “the cleverest woman crook on land or sea.” He proved it by telling how easy and cleverly she and her boy friend had finagled an emerald bracelet worth fifty grand. The woman was manifestly uneasy but she sat it out.
The next day the gambleress and the same man lunched together expensively at another restaurant. Two entirely different operatives from Ray’s staff happened to take the next table. One of them just chanced to tell in long distance tones about the amazing skill of “the cleverest woman crook on land or sea,” and how she “got an emerald bracelet worth fifty grand for nothing net.”
The woman finished her lunch in a hurry and left the place with her squire. While he waited for his hat, two operatives in riding breeches were discussing “the cleverest woman crook on land or sea.” They marvelled aloud at her easy way of picking up an emerald bracelet worth so much.
This thing went on till the pretty swindler felt unable to find any place in town where she and her latest prospect could eat without having the air filled with the praises of the cleverest woman crook and her stolen emeralds.
The climax came in the Ritz-Carlton restaurant. Even there the next table was occupied by three Schindlers at once, Father John and his two boys, Ray and Walter. Even they were talking of a certain woman and certain emeralds.
By now she was desperate enough to tell her escort that those men over there were maligning her. Gallantly he went to the table and demanded satisfaction. The venerable exclergyman, John F. Schindler, protested that they were merely discussing one whom they considered the cleverest woman crook on land or sea. He asked how could that refer to the lady over there?
The escort apologized and went back to the table to explain to the frantic creature that it was all a mistake.
“They are merely discussing the cleverest woman crook on land or sea, and how she picked up a very grand emerald bracelet.”
If you have ever had a popula
r tune run through your head till it threatened to drive you mad, you will not wonder at the desperation of that unfortunate woman. That night the woman cowering in her apartment was called to the telephone by Ray Schindler. In his most irresistibly dulcet voice he murmured:
“Had enough?”
She screamed: “Yes! What will it cost me to have you call off your wolves?”
“A certain emerald bracelet that cost you nothing,” said Ray.
She shucked it off as if it had been a green snake, and had it in his hands as fast as she could get it to him. And as soon as he could get it to the woman who had lost it at cards, the homesick emeralds were once more coiled about her wrist.
There are ways and ways of regaining stolen property. A successful detective must know them all.
17.
HE BUILDS A RAILROAD
If you wanted to catch a crooked architect Ray Schindler would build a cathedral for you if necessary. It would be a good cathedral, too; and would serve its purpose of saving souls.
Didn’t he build a railroad?—a small one, but still a real railroad—to catch some crooks who were stealing millions? And didn’t that bit of railroad pay his clients a handsome profit? The answer is Yes.
One day an eminent railroad lawyer sent for Ray and asked him:
“Do you know anything about rock ballast?”
“Not just now,” said Ray. “But by tomorrow—”
“All right. Bone up on ballast.”
He went on to explain that among his clients was a famous firm which had best be disguised here as the Rollins Syndicate. It owned a controlling interest in a railroad that had better be camouflaged here as the Monongahela and Pacific. The road carried vast quantities of coal from the mines to the customers, and, like any other growing railroad, it used vast quantities of rock ballast to keep its tracks solid and steady. It transported the ballast from the rock-quarries to wherever it was needed. One of the divisions demanded rock ballast in such enormous quantities that an accountant with a nose for figures thought he smelled something binning. It smelled like stockholders’ money burning.
This man did some snooping and some computing and, as he added it up, though a foundation of rock ballast eight inches thick was considered enough even for the heaviest traffic, this particular division was buying enough of it to make a foundation nearly twice as deep. Those rocks were costly by the ton and they had to be loaded and hauled hundreds of miles.
The accountant passed his findings along on up, and the Rollins people felt that they were being bled of their legitimate profits, and bled white. But this was a difficult thing to prove. They called in their lawyer. He called in Ray Schindler. So Ray learned all about ballast and enough about railroad building to build a young railroad.
The first thing that had to be learned was the actual number of carloads of ballast shipped from the quarries. For every car a card was filled out by the foreman of the shovel gang that filled the car with rock. These cards were kept in one of the company offices. How could a stranger get at them without exciting suspicion?
An ingenious story was cooked up for this purpose. One of Ray’s detectives from New York passed himself off as a detective from Texas. His disguises were a drawl and a dialect. He said he had been sent up Noath among the dam-yankees to look foh a suttain cullud pussun who was wanted foh murda, and he reckoned the nigra mout have picked up a job as a gang-fo’man loadin’ railroad caws at one of the rock quawwries.
The “Texan” carried with him a printed “Wanted” circular showing the side face and full face portraits of an ominous looking negro, with a description of his appearance and his crime, also a sample of his handwriting and his signature.
The detective said he would be mighty much obliged if the railroad people would let him go over all the loading cards as he thought that he might trace his man that way. It might have seemed more natural for him to go about among all the loading gangs and study their features; but he was given access to the files.
Every day he went to the offices and took his midday meal with him in a huge lunchbox. Nobody noted that every afternoon at closing time he carried away with him as many selected loading cards as his lunchbox would hold. He brought them back the next morning under his sandwiches and hardboiled eggs.
Nobody noted that at secret places an accountant worked all night on those cards and other records, copying from them such figures as proved the immense excess of loadings over the reasonable amount. In this way incriminating records were made at the seat of the thievery.
At the same time the high officials who ordered the buying and hauling of so much broken rock were under separate espionage. The detective covering them did not pretend to be a cowboy constable. He posed as a capitalist of limitless means.
The hotel men of Atlantic City had engaged the Burns bureau to rope in the Atlantic City supervisors who were paying public money for excessive and unused ballast for the highways. It has already been told now the hotel men had advanced $100,000 in cash for bribe-money and had not only received nearly all of it back but had put a stop to the nefarious practice.
The Rollins people put into Ray’s hands a far larger sum to play with and not only ended the robbery but gained a handsome profit. Ray used this same clever roper for the railroad president, the chief engineer and several other high officials who were pocketing what ought to have been dividends for the stockholders.
This delicate task was entrusted to Edward Reed, who was an alumnus of Columbia University, and well trained in law. He looked like the million dollars he pretended to have. In the city where the president of the railroad lived, Reed took expensive rooms at the best hotel, and eased himself into the golf club through his unlimited hospitality to the monied aristocracy.
The Monongahela and Pacific people were about to build a railroad spur sixteen miles long to link up certain desirable territory with the main trunk and, incidentally, to furnish a new excuse for spending big money from which they would skim off the cream. They had advertised for bids, and counted on a deal with a crooked contractor who was secretly in business with them. His daughter was the wife of one of the railroad barons.
The Rollins company was able to furnish Ray with the exact amount of the lowest dummy bid; and, since it was oversize, it was possible to submit a lower bid that would still do the work and show a fair profit for the contractor.
But who was to put in such a bid and carry out the contract? The answer was Edward Reed.
He was not a contractor, of course, but it was not hard to find one and take him into an improvised firm. This man had to be an efficient builder and an honest one, just as the engineer who made the plans for the Atlantic City Board Walk had to be a real engineer and an honest one. In both cases it was thought best that the man selected should have no reason to suspect that he was being used for a secret purpose.
There was in a neighboring town a contractor of undoubted ability whose opportunities thus far had been limited to modest tasks. One day he was visited by the impressively gorgeous Edward Reed, who asked him if he cared to enlarge his business. This man may be called Tom Swinnerton and his answer was, in effect, Would a duck swim if he had a chance? All a duck needs is water; all that Swinnerton needed was capital.
Reed was the capitalist of his dreams. He proved it by depositing in a local bank $25,000 as a nest egg for the new firm of Swinnerton and Reed. The new firm put in a bid far below the amount proposed by the contractor in cahoots with the executives.
This caused them much dismay until the genial Edward Reed managed to make it evident to them that he was willing to grease the rails even more generously than their old crony. Incidentally, through these conversations and Reed’s reports, Ray was enabled to secure proof positive of the dirty work that had been previously done by the expansive contractor. Ray learned that one of the devices was this: the railroad purchased ballast at the quarry, sold it to the contractor at cost price and then hauled it three hundred miles without expense to the cont
ractor, but at the expense of the innocent and ignorant stockholders. The saving on the price of material and haulage was large enough to divide up into neat amounts for all concerned.
How the crooked contractor felt about being edged out of his easy profits by the upstart firm of Swinnerton and Reed is unknown and unimportant. The railroad men let him do his own worrying as they basked in the generosity of dear old Eddie Reed, and the efficiency of Tom Swinnerton, who was a wizard at laying tracks swiftly and well.
In the meanwhile, the investigation of car-loadings at the quarries was still being carried on by the indefatigable Texan, who showed a typically Southern laziness about overtaking that fugitive murderer.
At the other quarry, the loading cards were being ransacked by another operative, Charles Severance. He used a different approach. Instead of pretending to be a sleuth in search of a killer, he played the lady-killer. He squandered his charms on a girl who worked in the files of the quarry, and he managed to get hold of her office-key long enough to make an impression of it, and have a duplicate made.
With this he entered the office every night and, while two other operatives stood guard and helped him out, he went through the loading cards and filled a large burlap bag with them every night. This he and his two associates lugged to a distant building where a staff of expert accountants worked over them all night. Then Severance took them back to the office and restored them to their places before daybreak. In the course of ransacking the files, Severance was also digging up many incriminating documents, and these were being photostated before they were put back.
What the girl he had paid court to thought of Charlie Severance as an absentee suitor is not recorded; but perhaps it ought to be said at this point that all these acts of burglary and deception were entirely legitimate since they were authorized and paid for by the representatives of a majority of the stockholders, who had every right to make sure of the integrity and efficiency of their high-salaried employees. The president of the railroad was merely the highest-paid, but no less a trusted servant of the true owners of the property and the business.
The Complete Detective Page 25
