One insurance company that engaged Ray was paying hundreds of death-claims a day, and the number of pleasantly surprised people was not small. When a certain beneficiary suddenly found himself far richer than he had ever dreamed of being, it hurt him to turn over half of the inheritance to the funny little man who had foreseen the gift and signed him up. This beneficiary made inquiries; whereupon the insurance company made further inquiries. Then they turned to Ray Schindler to look into the puzzling matter.
By the time Ray got through with the case the lawyer found himself disbarred and many future beneficiaries received all that had been bequeathed to them.
In one of Ray’s cases he used the motion picture to advantage. It concerned one of those almost innumerable instances in which an accident insurance company has to pay a stipulated fee during a time of disability. This form of insurance is so popular, and properly so, that the big companies carry policies totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. The disability clause has cost them so much money through fraudulent abuse that extra premiums are now required—and also extra vigilance.
One business man in Brooklyn took out so big a policy that, when his heart grew weak, he drew $1,200 a month. He spent all his public life in a wheel chair. But when he announced that his monthly checks were to be sent henceforth to Florida the company asked Ray Schindler to look into his case.
Ray’s operatives saw the man wheeled to his automobile and wheeled from that to the train. In Miami more Schindler seraphs saw him wheeled from the train to a beach hotel. For two days their man was toted from his room to the veranda, where he spent hours.
Then came a miracle. On the beach, the cripple rose up and walked! He threw off his invalid robes and squirmed into a bathing suit! He promenaded up and down the healing sands on his gay bare feet. He ran and dived into the surf.
Ray’s motion picture camera recorded this miracle for those who would never believe human testimony. The camera portrayed him chasing a bathing girl down the beach as if he had found that long-lost fountain of youth which Ponce de Léon reported in Florida.
The print was sent to New York and Ray gave a showing of it in a dark projection room to just one spectator. He was the lawyer of the Brooklyn man. When the lawyer saw it he wrote to his client: “Come on home and go back to work.” The cruel corporation not only stopped payment of the $40 a day pension, but insisted on the repayment of all the back-pensions.
There was another man who had similar ideas of earning a living. He had the foresight to take out disability insurance with three different companies for a total of $2,000 a month. Then he proceeded to acquire a painless disability so acute that, though he owned several dress-shops in New York, he could visit none of them. He had to sit at home and transact his business by telephone.
But he tired of solitude and could not even wait till his first two thousand was due. Three weeks after his collapse he was rolling the rhumba in the Stork Club.
At the Stork, as at many other nightclubs, pretty girls go about taking flash light pictures of couples and others at their tables. So this gentleman was not at all disturbed in his rhumba-routine by the occasional flare of a flashlight. He was horribly disturbed, however, when he learned later that one of Ray Schindler’s operatives had flashed a camera on him several times and perpetuated the capers of the dress-shop man. The sight of the photographs cured his disability. He gave up his bedroom office and returned to his regular routes from shop to shop.
A somewhat humbler victim of Ray’s Argus-eyed bureau lived in the Bronx, where he drew disability insurance as a “house-bound” patient. He was barely able at night to limp out to his front porch in the evening for a last breath of fresh air before returning to his wearisome bed.
This performance was for the benefit of any suspicious neighbors and more especially for any spies that might be lurking about in the pay of the insurance company.
But one morning a lingering operative caught a glimpse of the cruelly crippled wretch bounding over his back fence, and making his way to the subway. He skipped down the steps, boarded a train, left it in the heart of Manhattan, skipped up the steps and pranced to a doughnut factory on Sixth Avenue. He was so agile and deft that his machine did its business in the front window. He presented a perfect target for a motion picture machine that one of Ray’s men operated from inside a truck, which paused unnoticed for a few minutes in front of that show window.
The resulting film saved the man from having to limp out to his porch every night and gasp for a little air. It saved him from making his exit by the back fence of mornings.
Another man whom Ray turned up was drawing complete disability pay for a complete nervous collapse. It did not prevent him from digging graves in a Brooklyn cemetery.
Then there were the men whose doctors injected a little digitalis and gave them a pulse-flutter that deceived even insurance doctors into a diagnosis of heart disease. There are the—oh, there are thousands of tricks that conscienceless malingerers have played and are playing to defraud insurance companies out of millions of dollars a year.
Not all these thieves on the installment plan are men. Women do their share of the swindling; and in case of trial by jury, their chances of acquittal are even better than those of the men.
Perhaps here is one of the reasons for the general feeling that homely women are more virtuous than pretty women. A homely woman knows that she is about the only kind of woman that a jury might convict of something—unless, of course, she can somehow steal enough money to hire an expert criminal lawyer. Without crooked lawyers, the demand for good detectives to outwit them would be cut in half.
Here is a case, one of the innumerable and often undiscovered cases, where the criminal lawyer was more criminal than the criminal he “defended.”
A great five-and-ten-cent chain was sued for $100,000 damages by a woman who said that she had bought at one of their shops some cheap celluloid combs. She had kept them in her hair while she was drying it under an electric lamp. Suddenly the combs exploded and set her hair on fire. Before the blaze could be extinguished she was in a sorry state, and any jury would have been happy to make her rich for life as a stinging rebuke to malicious millionaires.
The company immediately withdrew from sale all of its inflammable combs; but, before making ready to pay the hundred thousand to the woman, along with the heavy court costs, the officials told their woes to Ray Schindler.
He threw the usual human network about the woman and the neighborhood, just to see what he might drag up. All the neighbors confirmed the poor woman’s story, except one woman who did not like her. A woman operative found her, and casually talked with her about this and that till she picked up a good deal of the backbiting chatter that makes up neighborhood news. There were whispers that made an important difference in the hairless lady’s claim.
The operative learned, and confirmed the fact, that the explosive combs had not been bought at any of the stores of the huge corporation, but at a small shop on a side-street.
While his wife was suffering in the hospital, the enraged husband had called in a lawyer to sue that petty shopkeeper. The lawyer was energetic and ambitious and showed a most commendable desire to do the best he could for his clients. In any case, he said to the husband unrecorded words of this general tenor:
“If you sue that little hole-in-the-wall feller for damages, you win the suit, maybe—especially with me in there orating about what a beauty your wife had and ain’t got, and how woman’s crowning glory is her hair, and now she’s lost her crown—and stuff like that.
“Well, so you win the suit, and the jury votes you for damages all that feller’s got. What has he got? Debts! You’ll have to pay the costs of the suit yourself prob’ly—not to mention paying me the lease possible fee I could charge you.
“But for your sake and your wife’s sake—not to mention for my sake—if we could just shift that case to one of the big chain-stores, why, it could make us all rich. Rememmer that song: ‘I found
a million-dollar baby in a five-and-ten-cent store.’ Well, we might not make maybe a million, but say, a hunnert grand. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
And so an ardently criminal criminal lawyer seduced a most unfortunate woman and her devoted husband and a pair of tender-hearted neighbors into a little perjury. He was ready also to seduce a jury of twelve good men and women and true into serving as accessories after the crime by overlooking evidence and fairplay and fining a corporation a fortune for what it had not done.
It always gives a jury a touch of the mania of grandeur to issue a verdict for a huge amount, especially when it comes from a corporation, which has no rights anyway.
But this wicked corporation called in a wicked private detective, and one of his wicked operatives proved that the unfortunate woman had been doubly unfortunate in not buying her combs of a wicked chain-store. So the suit was withdrawn. The clever lawyer got no fee at all, and the small shopkeeper was not even sued.
In a certain expensive Connecticut hotel, there dwelt a lovely white-haired lady and her even lovelier daughter. For more than half a year they were well-paying, well-liked guests with a host of friends.
Suddenly, one Sunday night, the crowded dining room was horrified by a shriek of terror and pain. That exquisite girl leaped to her feet in terror. The napkin at her lacerated lip was red with blood. She held up a sliver of glass that she had snatched from her tongue. But she gasped that she had swallowed a bigger, sharper piece in the dessert she had just been eating.
She was helped to her room, and all the other guests wondered uneasily if there had been glass in their own food. The management was aghast, and the kitchen was a scene of turmoil. The least profitable form of advertisement a restaurant can get is to acquire a reputation for mixing glass in its menu.
A doctor was hastily summoned and did all that art and science can do about a jagged dagger of glass in the alimentary canal. The girl tried to be brave, but her helpless gasps indicated that the glass was leaving its scars as it slipped. Since the average alimentary tract is about thirty-four feet long, the glass had a long, long way to go to Tipperary. And nothing could be more difficult than making repairs on that highway.
For weeks the girl agonized. By that time she and her mother had sued the hotel for a staggering sum. The hotel referred the matter to the insurance company that had, for a modest premium, guaranteed it against any possible damage to its customers.
The lawyer for the insurance company found that he knew surprisingly little about the dear old lady and the dear young daughter who had spent their money so generously for so long, and now suddenly made such a generous demand for ruinous damages.
So he called in Ray Schindler. How incessantly I keep using those words!
Ray’s first task was to find just who the women were and where they came from—and why? Nobody has less curiosity about anybody than a hotel keeper has about paying-guests who pay. It is enough that they register from some place and their checks show no resilience. All that the proprietor knew of this couple was that they had written themselves down on the register as coming from Palm Beach. But when Ray made inquiries in that city, the name meant nothing there. So Ray sent an operative to the hotel as a guest and she managed to get acquainted with the mother and daughter, who still remained in the hotel, still paying their bills.
Ray’s operative grew friendly enough to play cards with the mother and daughter, and take long walks with them. But, though she talked and talked about her own travels, they never spoke of theirs. Weeks passed and all the operative had elicited was a casual reference to Seattle, and another to Denver.
By this time Ray had had many pictures taken of the two women. He sent copies to Seattle and to Denver. Their names were equally unknown in either place. But their attractive faces were instantly recognized in both those cities by the managements of two luxurious hotels. In both those hotels, that beautiful girl had petrified a crowded dining room with a shriek of pain and terror, had pressed a bloody napkin to a bleeding lip, had held up a splinter of glass and announced that she had swallowed another.
A suit for whopping damages had followed: in both cases the hotel had lost the suit.
The third hotel was not eager for the wide publicity of winning the suit and all that Ray had to do was to call on the mother and daughter, mention the Seattle and Denver hotels and the two lawsuits and watch them drop the new suit, pack up and depart for points unknown.
They have never been heard of again, but if, some night in a crowded dining room you should see a beautiful girl with a bleeding mouth leap to her feet, scream she has been glassed, and hold up a sliver as a proof of it, it would probably be safe to say:
“If you need a doctor, call in Ray Schindler.”
Sympathy is a noble thing to feel, but a bit of suspicion is a good thing to take along with you wherever you go.
10.
EVEN HIS INITIALS WERE ROB
“The gamest of all big game is Man.” So Ray was told by Frank Buck, his friend, and his former rival as one who “brings ’em back alive.”
Ray has never killed any of the bad men he has been pursuing. He doesn’t seem to be able even to dislike the criminals who give him so much time and trouble, legwork and brainfag. The nearest I know of his coming to hating a man was his statement that Robert Owen Bain caused him “more vexation of spirit than any other man he ever trailed.” One reason for this was that, after detectives had been looking for the fellow for more than four years, he came willingly and cheerfully into Ray’s office and spent a whole afternoon with him, then strolled out into a blizzardy New York night and kept Ray’s shivering and snow-caked operatives suffering for hours before he slipped easily away into the invisible.
This story concerns the period when Ray was managing the New York office of the William J. Burns bureau, which handled the enormous business of the American Bankers Association. From time to time Ray looked over the files of “Men Wanted” to keep his memory fresh. Among the oldest of them was the dossier of a man named Robert Owen Bain. He had embezzled $10,000 from a midwestern bank, of which he was a trusted employee.
According to the files, Bain had come of a good family and had worked for three years in the bank before he excited suspicion. He suddenly turned up missing one afternoon, and so did $10,000.
Most banks have large or small deposits whose owners do not draw on them for a long period; so they are set aside as “inactive.” Such an account was that of $40,000 credited to an elderly woman who had left it stagnant for many years. At his lunch hour one day, Bain wrote out a check for $10,000 of this woman’s money, forged her signature and made it payable to an imaginary “Ralph O. Bosworth.” This check he carried to another bank in the same city. There he introduced himself as “Bosworth” and said that he had gone into the contracting business, and would carry quite a large payroll.
Bankers do not insult people whose letter of introduction is a $10,000 check for deposit with promises of large business to come. This bank accepted “Bosworth” with cordiality and put the check into the hopper for clearance. When the check reached his own bank, Bain was right there to clear it himself. Then he destroyed it, after charging it off against the old woman’s account.
The next lunch hour found him again at the other bank, where he explained that his payroll had to be made up, and he supposed it would be all right if he left $50 in his account to hold it. Bankers do not love such rapid transit money, but they must pay on demand and the $10,000 check had been cleared. So Bosworth wrote himself a check for $9,950 and departed with promises to make another large deposit very soon.
That bank and that city never saw him again. When he did not reappear at his own bank, the anxiety for his safety soon changed to anxiety for the bank’s safety. His dealings were hastily gone over and it was found that the inactive account of the old lady had suddenly grown active. The case was promptly turned over to the American Bankers Association, which turned it over promptly to the Burns Agency, wh
ich sent copies of all it could find out to its branch offices, along with as good a description as could be pieced together of Bain. He was a young man 5 feet 8 inches tall. He wore glasses but no mustache. He had a slight stammer, and weighed 130 pounds.
Two years passed with no trace of Mr. Bain-Bosworth. Then one day Ray received a routine warning to look out for a certain Ralph O. Boswell, who had been an assistant cashier of a steel company in Chicago.
One day he had gone to the bank with a company check for $18,000 to make up the payrolls. He had no bodyguard, but he brought back the money without an incident. So, a week later, he was sent to the bank with another check for $18,000. He got the money, but the steel company never saw him again.
This, too, fell into the hands of the American Bankers Association. Along with the growls of the big steel company went the agonized shrieks of two women. Mr. “Boswell,” before moving in on the steel company, had won success as a floorwalker in a large Chicago department store. There his lordly manner and genial charm had won the heart of a pretty bookkeeper. She had married him and taken him to live with her mother, whose husband had recently died, leaving an estate consisting of an insurance policy for $10,000 to be divided equally between mother and daughter. As a nice gesture, the bride put her $5,000 in her new husband’s bank account. As another nice gesture her mother lent him $1,500 to tide him over a business deal.
When Boswell skipped with the steel company’s $18,000, he took along his wife’s $5,000, his mother-in-law’s $1,500, and the proceeds of a forged check for $5,000 more. He also took along some of the steel company’s blank checks.
It was learned long afterward that, in both cases, he had gone to Canada and settled in an obscure place near Quebec, where he spent most of his time in the wild woods, passing himself off as a gentleman of wealth, a lover of fishing, hunting, and forestry.
The Complete Detective Page 17