“What?”
“I got to talking with Mr. Woodring today about the purple cow. He knows now that the difference has been spotted. He became awfully subdued and distant after I said that. He may think the alarm is out by now. If he’s going to leave town, tonight would be just about the best time for it. Well, what can we do? Is there any way to stop him?”
“Whoa, Ted, wait a minute, cool off,” Nelson cautioned him. “We still don’t know for sure that these stamps are counterfeit. You say the colors are different. O.K., so far. But still that doesn’t necessarily make them counterfeit. You were speaking about United States currency a little while ago, and we know how carefully that’s printed and safeguarded. But stamps aren’t currency, and I don’t think they’re printed that carefully. I feel pretty sure a much less expensive process is used. It could be that the Blue Harvest company did issue some stamps which were a little different. Maybe something happened to go a little bit wrong with the ink in their print shop. Maybe they deliberately decided to change the color of their stamps for some reason or other. That still doesn’t make the stamps counterfeit.”
“Then how could we tell?”
“I suppose the only way to tell for sure would be to have a representative of the Blue Harvest company look at these stamps and decide whether they’re good or not.”
“What representative? Mr. Woodring is the only representative they’ve got out here.”
“Well, it would have to be somebody besides Mr. Woodring, of course. Maybe the company could fly out a representative tomorrow, if Mr. Dobson asked them quietly.”
Ted groaned. “Now you’ve got me all mixed up. Now that I think back over everything, I feel almost positive these stamps are phonies. But I can see, too, that nobody except someone from the Blue Harvest company can prove it, and meanwhile we have to go easy. If we create suspicion over these stamps, then we’ll be causing all the damage ourselves that we suspect Mr. Woodring of trying to cause. I suppose I’ll have to tell Mr. Dobson about it, but while all this is going on Mr. Woodring will have flown the coop. Wait a minute—I think I’m going to call him at the hotel.”
“Why?” Nelson demanded.
“Just to see if he’s still there. If he is, maybe we can stop him from leaving. I’ll make up some excuse for calling him. Maybe tell him Mr. Dobson wants to see him about some more publicity for the plan. If he answers, I’ll have to call Mr. Dobson about it fast.”
Ted jumped up and hurried inside and put through his call. The desk was unable to put him through to Mr. Woodring’s room.
“I’m sorry, Ted,” the clerk told him, “but Mr. Woodring told me that he would be in Peninsula this evening, and I should take his calls for him. Any message?”
“No, I guess not. It can wait till morning.”
Back on the front porch, Ted reported to Nelson.
“Then he did beat it,” Nelson commented.
“No, maybe not. I remember now, he really did have an appointment in Peninsula for this evening. So I guess I won’t know for sure until tomorrow whether he’s really gone. That’s what gripes me. Here, while I’m doing nothing, he’s likely to make a clean getaway.”
“Well, what’s the difference?” asked Nelson.
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose he does get away, what harm is it going to do? He hasn’t had a chance to put very many of these counterfeits into circulation. Oh, maybe the Blue Harvest company will lose a few thousand dollars, but I guess they can afford it. Anyway, a new company always expects to take some losses before they get established. The real harm is the damage Mr. Woodring’s been able to do to the stamp plan, and he’s done all that already. He won’t be able to do anything more between now and morning.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Ted slowly. “And of course it’s possible that we’re barking up the wrong tree. The stamps could be genuine. We won’t know for sure, until we see whether Mr. Woodring shows up tomorrow morning or not.”
“Sure, Ted, just assume that everything’s all right, and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow always comes soon enough, anyway.”
And while Ted tried to follow this advice, thinking back over Mr. Woodring’s strange preoccupation that afternoon, he knew with an ache in his heart that he wasn’t going to show up the next morning.
CHAPTER 11
THE LOCKED DOOR
Fifteen minutes before opening time Ted was cooling his heels, pacing up and down in front of the office, hoping but not really expecting that Mr. Woodring would show up. Opening time came and went, and still the door of the office was firmly locked. He determined to wait half an hour longer, just to give Mr. Woodring the benefit of the doubt. When this half-hour, too, had passed, he knew what he had to do.
He went across to the drugstore and telephoned the hotel. He asked for Mr. Woodring’s room, but after the phone had rung eight or ten times with no response, the desk clerk came on.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no answer. Can I take a message?”
“This is Ted Wilford, and I’ve been working for Mr. Woodring. It’s very important that I reach him. Can you send up a messenger to see if he’s there?”
“All right, Ted, I’ll try it.”
Ted hung on a few minutes longer before the clerk came on again. “Mr. Woodring isn’t here. It looks as though he’s left, bag and baggage.”
“Didn’t he check out?”
“No, he’s still listed on the register. He hasn’t turned in his key.”
“Did he pay for his room?”
“Yes, he was paid up for the rest of this week. I suppose we’ll have to keep the room available for him, just in case he does come back, but if a guest intends to return he doesn’t usually take every single item with him. Well, if he doesn’t come back, all we’re out is a key, but we don’t like to do business that way.”
Ted thanked him and hung up. There could no longer be the slightest doubt that Mr. Woodring had taken flight—taken it because of what Ted had said yesterday about the purple cow. This left Ted with no alternative but to report the matter to Mr. Dobson, who was, after all, his real employer.
At the Town Crier office Ted told Mr. Dobson exactly what had happened. Miss Monroe and Nancy were there, too, and they also listened to his story. The editor’s face was very sober as Ted concluded.
“I suppose it was my fault,” Ted decided. “If I had really thought there was anything wrong about those stamps, I should have told you about it, instead of Mr. Woodring. This gave him a chance to get away. But up until last night I thought this whole purple-cow business could be explained somehow.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Ted,” the editor admonished him. “It was my fault entirely. We had plenty of opportunity to realize something was wrong. You told me Mr. Woodring had been lying about the 3 per cent. I found he had never worked at Beacon, Jones and Western, as he claimed. Nancy mentioned something to me yesterday about purple cows, but Monday’s our deadline morning, and I didn’t pay much attention. I can see now that I’ve been frightfully careless. I still believe the company is honest—I checked into them pretty thoroughly—but I didn’t think to check more closely into their salesman, or to believe what I found when I did. I was so anxious to come up with some plan that would revive our slipping business that I jumped in too fast. There’s no one to blame except myself.”
“And Mr. Woodring,” Ted added.
“Well, I suppose we’d better figure out something. I imagine the best thing to do would be to notify the Blue Harvest company and see what they want to do about it. That might be better than alarming Mr. Kirtland and the others before we know exactly where we stand. I’ll put the call through right now.”
Within a couple of minutes he was speaking with an officer of Blue Harvest by long distance. Just what the officer promised wasn’t clear to the other listeners until after the editor hung up. He explained
to them:
“They’ll have a man out here by four o’clock this afternoon. They’re as much surprised and upset about it as we are. Something like this could wreck their whole operation. Ted, can you be here this afternoon? You might be able to tell them more about this matter than I can.”
“Yes, I’ll be here,” he promised.
There was no reason why Ted couldn’t have hung around the office if he wanted to. This had been his custom in the old days—just getting his nose full of printer’s ink and helping out with any little tasks that might come up. But Carl Allison came in just then. He had a few words with Mr. Dobson, then, finding he couldn’t ignore Ted’s presence any longer, said a brief “Hello, Ted,” and turned away to his typewriter. It was about this time that Ted decided the office was getting too crowded, and drifted on toward home.
He passed the Blue Harvest office just as a matter of curiosity, and found the door still locked. As he stood there for a few moments, the telephone began to ring inside. He felt it was his duty to answer, but there was no way for him to manage it short of breaking in, and presently the ringing stopped. He walked on toward home, surprising his mother by his early appearance and his tale of what had taken place.
The day dragged on. Ted put through a call to Nelson to tell him what had happened, though he asked him to keep it quiet at least until the end of the day. Nelson was hardly surprised by this development, but all he could do was offer some unhelpful sympathy. They soon hung up, and Ted returned to his moping.
He was back at the Town Crier office before four o’clock. The man from Blue Harvest arrived at about the expected time and introduced himself as Mr. Bentley. He was gray-haired and bespectacled, and had very thin lips which he kept tightly clenched, betraying his tension.
“You have no idea where Mr. Woodring is now?” This was his first question to Ted, and Ted replied in the negative.
“He was supposed to have an appointment in Peninsula last night. I don’t know whether he kept it or not.”
“I’ll check on that as soon as I can. He didn’t drop any hint of where he might have gone?”
Ted shook his head.
“No, I don’t suppose he would. We’ve done a little more checking on Mr. Woodring since your call this morning, Mr. Dobson. We find that, far from working for Beacon, Jones and Western ten years ago, he was in prison at the time. Convicted for embezzlement, I might add. I don’t say we wouldn’t have employed him had we known, because many a man who has gone wrong once is deserving of another chance, but at least we would have watched him more closely.”
In prison! Somehow the idea had never occurred to Ted. But now he remembered Mr. Woodring saying that he used to do a great deal of reading when he had more time. He must have meant while he was in prison. What had seemed a simple, careless statement had had a deeper significance, if Ted had only been able to spot it.
“Mr. Woodring made some representation that your stamps were redeemable at 3 per cent,” Mr. Dobson advised him. “Is this a company policy, by any chance?”
“Certainly not,” Mr. Bentley snapped. “We sell our stamps at 2 per cent, and we redeem them at 2 per cent—and give excellent value for the money, I must say. But it is 2 per cent, and we’ve never authorized our salesmen to say anything else. Instead, we ask them not to stress the percentage at all, but rather to concentrate on the high quality of our luxury products. I wish we could give 3 per cent for 2 per cent, but I don’t know how to do it and still stay in business.”
“It seems to me,” Mr. Dobson pursued, “that the whole crux of the matter is whether or not these so-called purple-cow stamps are genuine or not. I imagine that you may not have seen them as yet, Mr. Bentley. Would you care to take a look at them and express an opinion?”
He handed the visitor a sheet of stamps. Upon looking at them, Mr. Bentley seemed startled, and then he studied them very closely for a few minutes. It appeared that he wasn’t so much looking at the stamps as trying to make up his mind about something. At last his decision was made, and he looked up.
“These stamps are perfectly genuine,” he announced. “It is true they are slightly more purplish than most of our stamps, but that can easily be explained by a slight difference in the mixing of the ink in our printing office.”
“Now just a moment, Mr. Bentley,” the editor interposed. “The entire situation indicates that these stamps are counterfeits. Now if—”
“I said they are genuine,” the other interrupted, “and as long as my company accepts them as genuine, then they are genuine.”
“You’re making this very difficult,” said Mr. Dobson, somewhat annoyed. “If you say these stamps are genuine, then I don’t see that you have any fault to find at all with Mr. Woodring. Without pressing charges, you can’t expect to enlist the help of the police.”
“He may have run off with some company money,” said Mr. Bentley stiffly, “or at least he hasn’t rendered us an accounting, as we rightfully expected from him. I feel sure the police will be prepared to help us on that basis.”
“Did he really get away with very much money?” asked Ted, as the men paused and almost glared at each other.
“I don’t have any figures as yet, of course. We work our salesmen on a bonus plan. Our general policy is to give them a bonus for opening a new account. This amounts to the value of the stamps which the business would normally use in a month—based upon average of the previous year’s sales. Of course, Mr. Woodring may have unloaded more than a month’s supply of stamps on some of the businesses and pocketed the money. Our loss will come when we are required to redeem the stamps which will eventually be turned in.”
“Then if Mr. Woodring ran off with the receipts which the companies gave to him, it would be mostly his own money anyway, wouldn’t it?”
“Possibly, although he owed us an accounting of it, at least. I can see that we shall have to change company policy in that respect and not permit the salesmen to handle these receipts directly and in their own names. In the future, checks will be sent directly to the company. But I’m not so much concerned with the direct monetary loss Mr. Woodring has caused us as the damage he may have done to the entire stamp plan.”
“How large was Mr. Woodring’s territory?” asked Ted. “He seemed to be traveling over quite a large area.”
“He held the territory from here to the state line. We have another man in Johnston City, across the state border. Both offices were opened at the same time, and our salesmen came out together.”
“Now about these purple stamps, what does your company intend to do about them?” Mr. Dobson questioned.
“Those that have found their way into the hands of customers we shall redeem, of course, when they are turned in. For those stamps which the stores are holding I shall have them replaced with genuine—that is to say, stamps about which there can’t be any question.”
“Then you are admitting that these purple stamps are counterfeits?”
“I’m admitting nothing of the sort! I’m simply saying that the public may not have full confidence in them, and therefore it would be better to replace them. The mistake should have been caught in our own printing office, but unfortunately must have slipped by.”
“Can you be sure from your brief examination of these stamps, Mr. Bentley, that these stamps are actually genuine?”
“I’m quite sure that they are. They could have come from nowhere except Mr. Woodring, and he could have gotten them from nowhere except our own office.”
“Isn’t it possible he could have counterfeited them?”
“I doubt it. In the first place, I can’t see why he should, since it is the kind of fraud which couldn’t pay him very much and at which he would very soon be caught. But real or phony makes no difference. My company will redeem them, and so that makes them real. Now I have a question for you, Mr. Dobson. I realize you are a newspaperman, and I know someth
ing of your reputation. Just what do you intend to do about this story?”
“What do you propose that I do about it?” the editor countered.
“I can’t see any reason why it should ever go beyond these four walls. I’m sure we are all discreet persons here. Besides, I can’t see that there is any story at all, as long as my company redeems the stamps.”
The editor slowly shook his head. “I’ve never yet covered up a news story because it was profitable for me to do so, and I don’t propose to begin this late in the game. But even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could. The rumors are around already. A police report on Mr. Woodring will spread the rumors further—”
“I’m not sure that there need be a police report on Mr. Woodring, after all. If he’s made his getaway, I’m almost inclined to say good riddance.”
“But the thing that will give the whole thing away is that you are going to put the blue Blue Harvest stamps back into circulation. So far only Ted and Nancy have noticed the difference. But as soon as the other stamps begin circulating, other people will spot it, too, and will have questions to ask.”
Mr. Bentley pursed his lips but said nothing, and Mr. Dobson went on:
“I think the best thing you can do, Mr. Bentley, is to prepare a statement for publication. I shall, of course, be glad to print your statement in my story on the subject.”
“Then I can give you my statement right now. ‘Due to an unfortunate error at our printing office, a few of our stamps are of a slightly more purple shade than some of the others. This, however, should not be a matter of concern. All the stamps are perfectly genuine, and my company shall be very happy to redeem them for premiums as listed in our fine catalogue.’”
“All right, Mr. Bentley,” said Mr. Dobson, a little skeptically, “if that’s your story, I hope that you are able to make it stick. And as long as you insist they’re genuine, it would be pretty difficult for anyone else to prove they’re not. I only hope Mr. Woodring doesn’t have you in so deep that you’ll find further difficulties coming up.”
The Counterfeit Mystery Page 9