On Secret Service

by William Nelson Taft

  IV

  THE CLUE ON SHELF 45

  "Of course, it is possible that patriotism might have prompted MaryMcNilless to locate the clue which prevented an explosion that wouldhave seriously hampered the munitions industry of the United States--butthe fact remains that she did it principally because she was in lovewith Dick Walters, and Dick happened to be in the Secret Service. It wasone case where Cupid scored over Mars."

  Bill Quinn eased the game leg which he won as the trophy of acounterfeiting raid some years before into a more comfortable position,reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch, and settled himself for anotherreminiscence of the Service with which he had formerly been activelyconnected.

  "Mary was--and doubtless still is--one of those red-headed, blue-eyedIrish beauties whom nature has peppered with just enough freckles tomake them alluring, evidences that the sun itself couldn't help kissingher. But, from all I've been able to gather, the sun was in a class byitself. Until Dick Walters came upon the scene, Miss McNilless heldherself strictly aloof from masculine company and much preferred tospend an evening with her books than to take a trip to Coney or any ofthe other resorts where a girl's kisses pass as current coin in paymentfor three or four hours' outing.

  "Dick was just the kind of chap that would have appealed to Mary, or to'most any other girl, for that matter. Maybe you remember him. He usedto be at the White House during Taft's regime, but they shifted most ofthe force soon after Wilson came in and Dick was sent out to the Coaston an opium hunt that kept him busy for more than a year. In fact, hecame east just in time to be assigned to the von Ewald case--and,incidentally, to fall foul of Mary and Cupid, a pair that you couldn'ttie, much less beat."

  * * * * *

  The von Ewald case [Quinn continued, after pausing a moment to repackhis pipe] was one of the many exploits of the Secret Service that nevergot in the papers. To be strictly truthful, it wasn't as much a triumphfor the S. S. as it was for Mary McNilless--and, besides, we weren't atwar with Germany at that time, so it had to be kept rather dark.

  But Germany was at war with us. You remember the Black Tom explosion inAugust, nineteen sixteen? Well, if the plans of von Ewald and hisassociates hadn't been frustrated by a little red-headed girl withexceptional powers of observation, there would have been a detonation inWilmington, Delaware, that would have made the Black Tom affair, withits damage of thirty millions of dollars, sound like the college yell ofa deaf-and-dumb institute.

  As far back as January, nineteen sixteen, the Secret Service knew thatthere were a number of Germans in New York who desired nothing so muchas to hinder the munitions industry of the United States, despite thefact that we were a neutral nation.

  From Harry Newton, the leader in the second plot to destroy the WellandCanal, and from Paul Seib, who was implicated in the attempt to destroyshipping at Hoboken, they forced the information that the conspiratorsreceived their orders and drew their pay from a man of many aliases,known to his associates as "Number eight fifty-nine" and occasionally,to the world at large, as "von Ewald."

  This much was known in Washington--but, when you came to analyze theinformation, it didn't amount to a whole lot. It's one thing to knowthat some one is plotting murder and arson on a wholesale scale, butdiscovering the identity of that individual is an entirely differentproposition, one which called for all the finesse and obstinacy forwhich the governmental detective services are famous.

  Another factor that complicated the situation was that speed wasessential. The problem was entirely different from a counterfeiting orsmuggling case, where you can be content to let the people on the otherside of the table make as many moves as they wish, with the practicalcertainty that you'll land them sooner or later. "Give them plenty ofrope and they'll land in Leavenworth" is a favorite axiom in theService--but here you had to conserve your rope to the uttermost. Everyday that passed meant that some new plot was that much nearercompletion--that millions of dollars in property and the lives ofno-one-knew-how-many people were still in danger.

  So the order went forward from the headquarters of the Service, "Get theman known as von Ewald and get him quick!"

  Secret Service men, Postal inspectors, and Department of Justice agentswere called in from all parts of the country and rushed to New York,until the metropolis looked like the headquarters of a convention ofgovernmental detectives. Grogan, the chap that landed Perry, themaster-counterfeiter, was there, as were George MacMasters and SidShields, who prevented the revolution in Cuba three or four years ago.Jimmy Reynolds was borrowed from the Internal Revenue Bureau, andAlthouse, who spoke German like a native, was brought up from theborder where he had been working on a propaganda case just across theline.

  There must have been forty men turned loose on this assignment alone,and, in the course of the search for von Ewald, there were a number ofother developments scarcely less important than the main issue. At leasttwo of these--the Trenton taxicab tangle and the affair of the girl atthe switchboard--are exploits worthy of separate mention.

  But, in spite of the great array of detective talent, no one could get aline on von Ewald.

  In April, when Dick Walters returned from the Coast, the other men inthe Service were frankly skeptical as to whether there was a von Ewaldat all. They had come to look upon him as a myth, a bugaboo. Theycouldn't deny that there must be some guiding spirit to the Teutonicplots, but they rather favored the theory that several men, rather thanone, were to blame.

  Walters' instructions were just like the rest--to go to New York andstick on the job until the German conspirator was apprehended.

  "Maybe it's one man, maybe there're half a dozen," the chief admitted,"but we've got to nail 'em. The very fact that they haven't startedanything of consequence since the early part of the year would appear topoint to renewed activity very shortly. It's up to you and the other menalready in New York to prevent the success of any of these plots."

  Walters listened patiently to all the dope that had been gathered andthen figured, as had every new man, that it was up to him to do a littlesleuthing of his own.

  The headquarters of the German agents was supposed to be somewhere inGreenwich Village, on one of those half-grown alleys that alwaysthreatens to meet itself coming back. But more than a score ofgovernment operatives had combed that part of the town without securinga trace of anything tangible. On the average of once a night the phoneat headquarters would ring and some one at the other end would send in ahurry call for help up in the Bronx or in Harlem or some other distantpart of the city where he thought he had turned up a clue. The men onduty would leap into the machine that always waited at the curb andfracture every speed law ever made--only to find, when they arrived,that it was a false alarm.

  Finally, after several weeks of that sort of thing, conditions commencedto get on Dick's nerves.

  "I'm going to tackle this thing on my own," he announced. "Luck is goingto play as much of a part in landing von Ewald as anything else--andluck never hunted with more than one man. Good-by! See you fellowslater."

  But it was a good many weeks--August, to be precise--before the men inthe Federal Building had the opportunity of talking to Walters. He wouldreport over the phone, of course, and drop down there every fewdays--but he'd only stay long enough to find out if there was any realnews or any orders from Washington. Then he'd disappear uptown.

  "Dick's sure got a grouch these days," was the comment that went aroundafter Walters had paid one of his flying visits.

  "Yeh," grunted Barry, who was on duty that night, "either the von Ewaldcase's got on his nerves or he's found a girl that can't see him."

  Neither supposition missed the mark very far.

  Walters was getting sick and tired of the apparently fruitless chaseafter an elusive German. He had never been known to flinch in the faceof danger--often went out of his way to find it, in fact--but thisconstant search for a man whom nobody knew, a man of whom there wasn'tthe slightest description, was nerve-racking, to sa
y the least.

  Then, too, he had met Mary McNilless.

  He'd wandered into the Public Library one evening just before closingtime, and, like many another man, had fallen victim to Mary's red hairand Mary's Irish eyes. But a brick wall was a soft proposition comparedto Mary McNilless. Snubbing good-looking young men who thought that thetailors were missing an excellent model was part of the day's work withthe little library girl--though she secretly admitted to herself thatthis one was a bit above the average.

  Dick didn't get a rise that night, though, or for some days after. Everyevening at seven found him at the desk over which Miss McNillesspresided, framing some almost intelligent question about books in orderto prolong the conversation. Mary would answer politely and--that wasall.

  But, almost imperceptibly, a bond of friendship sprang up between them.Maybe it was the fact that Dick's mother had been Irish, too, orpossibly it was because he admitted to himself that this girl wasdifferent from the rest, and, admitting it, laid the foundation for adeep-souled respect that couldn't help but show in his manner.

  Within the month Dick was taking her home, and in six weeks they weregood pals, bumming around to queer, out-of-the-way restaurants andplanning outings which Dick, in his heart, knew could nevermaterialize--not until von Ewald had been run to cover, at any rate.

  Several times Mary tried to find out her companion'sprofession--diplomatically, of course, but nevertheless she was curious.Naturally, Dick couldn't tell her. Said he had "just finished a job onthe Coast and was taking a vacation in New York." But Mary had senseenough to know that he wasn't at leisure. Also that he was working onsomething that kept his mind constantly active--for several times he hadexcused himself in a hurry and then returned, anywhere from half an hourto an hour later, with a rather crestfallen expression.

  After they had reached the "Dick and Mary" stage she came right out onenight and asked him.

  "Hon," he told her, "that's one thing that I've got to keep from you fora while. It's nothing that you would be ashamed of, though, butsomething that will make you mighty proud. At least," he added, "It'llmake you proud if I don't fall down on the job almighty hard. Meanwhile,all I can do is to ask you to trust me. Will you?"

  The tips of her fingers rested on the back of his hand for just a momentbefore she said, "You know I will, Dick"--and neither of them mentionedthe subject from that time on.

  On the night of the Black Tom explosion, early in August, Dick didn'tshow up at the Library at the usual hour, and, while this didn't worryMary, because it had happened several times before, she began to beannoyed when three nights passed the same way. Of course, she had no wayof knowing that the Service had received a tip from a stool pigeon onthe pay roll of the New York police force that "a bunch of Germans wereplanning a big explosion of some kind" just a few hours before the earthrocked with the force of the blow-up in Jersey. Every governmentoperative in the city had been informed of the rumor, but few of themhad taken it seriously and not one had any reason to expect that theplot would culminate so close to New York. But the echo of the firstblast had hardly died away before there were a dozen agents on the spot,weaving a network around the entire district. All they got for theirpains, however, was a few suspects who very evidently didn't know athing.

  So it was a very tired and disgusted Dick who entered the Library fournights later and almost shambled up to Mary's desk.

  "I'll be off duty in half an hour," she told him. "From the way youlook, you need a little comforting."

  "I do that," he admitted. "Don't make me wait any longer than you haveto," and he amused himself by glancing over the late seekers afterknowledge.

  When they had finally seated themselves in a cozy corner of a littlerestaurant in the upper Forties, Dick threw caution to the winds andtold Mary all about his troubles.

  "I haven't the least business to do it," he confessed, "and if the chieffound it out I'd be bounced so fast that it would make my head swim.But, in the first place, I want you to marry me, and I know you wouldn'tthink of doing that unless you knew something more about me."

  There was just the flicker of a smile around Mary's mouth as she said,almost perfunctorily, "No, of course not!" But her intuition told herthat this wasn't the time to joke, and, before Walters could go on, sheadded, "I know you well enough, Dick, not to worry about that end ofit."

  So Walters told her everything from the beginning--and it didn't takemore than five minutes at that. Outside of the fact that his peoplelived in Des Moines, that he had been in the Secret Service for eightyears, and that he hadn't been able to do a thing toward theapprehension of a certain German spy that the government was extremelyanxious to locate, there was pitifully little to tell.

  "The whole thing," he concluded, "came to a head the other night--thenight I didn't show up. We knew that something was going to break,somewhere, but we couldn't discover where until it was too late toprevent the explosion across the river. Now that they've gotten awaywith that, they'll probably lay their lines for something even bigger."

  "Well, now that I've told you, what d'you think?"

  "You mean you'd like to marry me?" Mary asked with a smile.

  "I don't know how to put it any plainer," Dick admitted--and whatfollowed caused the waiter to wheel around and suddenly commence dustingoff a table that already was bright enough to see your face in.

  "There wasn't the slightest clue left after the Black Tom affair?" Maryasked, as she straightened her hat.

  "Not one. We did find two of the bombs that hadn't exploded--devilishlyclever arrangements, with a new combination of chemicals. Something wasevidently wrong with the mixture, though, for they wouldn't go off, evenwhen our experts started to play with them. The man who made themevidently wasn't quite sure of his ground. But there wasn't a thingabout the bombs themselves that would provide any indication of wherethey came from."

  "The man who made them must have had a pretty thorough knowledge ofchemistry," Mary mused.

  "Mighty near perfect," admitted Walters. "At least six exploded on time,and, from what I understand, they were loaded to the muzzle with amixture that no one but an expert would dare handle."

  "And," continued Mary, with just a hint of excitement in her voice, "thebomb-maker would continue to investigate the subject. He would want toget the latest information, the most recent books, the--"

  "What are you driving at?" Walters interrupted.

  "Just this," and Mary leaned across the table so that there was nopossibility of being overheard. "We girls have a good deal of time onour hands, so we get into the habit of making conjectures and formingtheories about the 'regulars'--the people who come into the Libraryoften enough for us to know them by sight.

  "Up to a month ago there was a man who dropped into the reference roomnearly every day to consult books from Shelf Forty-five. Naturally hecame up to my desk, and, as he usually arrived during the slack periods,I had plenty of time to study him. Maybe it was because I had beenreading Lombroso, or possibly it's because I am just naturallyobservant, but I noticed that, in addition to each of his ears beingpractically lobeless, one of them was quite pointed at the top--almostlike a fox's.

  "For a week he didn't show up, and then one day another man came in andasked for a book from Shelf Forty-five. Just as he turned away I had ashock. Apparently he wasn't in the least like the other man in anythingsave height--but neither of his ears had any lobes to speak of and thetop of them was pointed! When he returned the book I looked him overpretty thoroughly and came to the conclusion that, in spite of the factthat his general appearance differed entirely from the other man's, theywere really one and the same!"

  "But what," grumbled Walters, "has that to do with the Black Tomexplosion?"

  "The last time this man came to the Library," said Mary, "was two daysbefore the night you failed to arrive--two days before the explosion.And--Do you know what books are kept on Shelf Forty-five?"

  "No. What?"

  "The latest works on the chemistry of explo
sives!"

  Walters sat up with a jerk that threatened to overthrow the table.

  "Mary," he said, in a whisper, "I've a hunch that you've succeeded whereall the rest of us fell down! The disguises and the constant referenceto books on explosives are certainly worth looking into. What name didthis man give?"

  "Names," she corrected. "I don't recall what they were or the addresses,either. But it would be easy to find them on the cards. We don't havevery many calls for books from Shelf Forty-five."

  "It doesn't matter, though," and Walters slipped back into hisdisconsolate mood. "He wouldn't leave a lead as open as that, ofcourse."

  "No, certainly not," agreed Mary. "But the last time he was there heasked for Professor Stevens's new book. It hadn't come in then, but Itold him we expected it shortly. So, unless you men have scared him off,he'll be back in a day or two--possibly in a new disguise. Why don't yousee the librarian, get a place as attendant in the reference room, andI'll tip you off the instant I spot that pointed ear. That's one thinghe can't hide!"

  The next morning there was a new employee in the reference room. No oneknew where he came from and no one--save the librarian and MaryMcNilless--knew what he was there for, because his principal occupationappeared to be lounging around inconspicuously in the neighborhood ofthe information desk. There he stayed for three days, wondering whetherthis clue, like all the rest, would dissolve into thin air.

  About five o'clock on the afternoon of the third day a man strolled upto Mary's desk and asked if Professor Stevens's book had come in yet. Itwas reposing at that moment on Shelf Forty-five, as Mary well knew, butshe said she'd see, and left the room, carefully arranging her hair atthe back of her neck with her left hand--a signal which she and Dick hadagreed upon the preceding evening.

  Before she returned the new attendant had vanished, but Dick Walters, inhis usual garb, was loitering around the only entrance to the referenceroom, watching the suspect out of the corner of his eye.

  "I'm sorry," Mary reported, "but the Stevens book won't be in untilto-morrow," and she was barely able to keep the anxiety out of her voiceas she spoke.

  Had Dick gotten her signal? Would he be able to trail his man? Could hecapture him without being injured? These and a score of other questionsrushed through her mind as she saw the German leave the room. Onceoutside--well, she'd have to wait for Dick to tell her what happenedthen.

  The man who was interested in the chemistry of explosives apparentlywasn't in the least afraid of being followed, for he took a bus uptown,alighted at Eighty-third Street, and vanished into one of theinnumerable small apartment houses in that section of the city. Walterskept close behind him, and he entered the lobby of the apartment housein time to hear his quarry ascending to the fourth floor. Then hesignaled to the four men who had followed him up the Avenue in agovernment-owned machine--men who had been stationed outside the Libraryin the event of just such an occurrence--and instructed two of them toguard the rear of the house, while the other two remained in front.

  "I'm going to make this haul myself," Walters stated, "but I want youboys to cover up in case anything happens to me. No matter what occurs,don't let him get away. Shoot first and ask questions afterward!" and hehad re-entered the house almost before he finished speaking.

  On the landing at the third floor he paused long enough to give the menat the rear a chance to get located. Then--a quick ring at the bell onthe fourth floor and he waited for action.

  Nothing happened. Another ring--and still no response.

  As he pressed the button for the third time the door swung slowlyinward, affording only a glimpse of a dark, uninviting hall. But, oncehe was inside, the door closed silently and he heard a bolt slipped intoplace. Simultaneously a spot light, arranged over the doorway, flashedon and Dick was almost dazzled by the glare. Out of the darkness camethe guttural inquiry:

  "What do you want?"

  "Not a thing in the world," replied Walters, "except to know if a mannamed Simpson lives here."

  "No," came the voice, "he does not. Get out!"

  "Sure I will if you'll pull back that bolt. What's the idea, anyhow?You're as mysterious as if you were running a bomb factory orsomething--"

  As he spoke he ducked, for if the words had the effect he hoped, theother would realize that he was cornered and attempt to escape.

  A guttural German oath, followed by a rapid movement of the man's handtoward his hip pocket was the reply. In a flash Dick slipped forward,bending low to avoid the expected attack, and seized the German in ahalf nelson that defied movement. Backing out of the circle of light, heheld the helpless man in front of him--as a shelter in case of anattack from other occupants of the apartment--and called for assistance.The crash of glass at the rear told him that reinforcements had madetheir way up the fire escape and had broken in through the window. Amoment later came the sound of feet on the stairs and the other twooperatives were at the door, revolvers drawn and ready for action.

  But there wasn't any further struggle. Von Ewald--or whatever his realname was, for that was never decided--was alone and evidently realizedthat the odds were overwhelming. Meekly, almost placidly, he allowed thehandcuffs to be slipped over his wrists and stood by as the SecretService men searched the apartment. Not a line or record was found toimplicate anyone else--but what they did discover was a box filled withbombs precisely like those picked up on the scene of the Black Tomexplosion, proof sufficient to send the German to the penitentiary forten years--for our laws, unfortunately, do not permit of the deathpenalty for spies unless caught red-handed by the military authorities.

  That he was the man for whom they were searching--the mysterious "No.859"--was apparent from the fact that papers concealed in his deskcontained full details as to the arrangement of the Nemours plant atWilmington, Delaware, with a dozen red dots indicative of the bestplaces to plant bombs. Of his associates and the manner in which hemanaged his organization there wasn't the slightest trace. But the BlackTom explosion, if you recall, was the last big catastrophe of its kindin America--and the capture of von Ewald was the reason that more of theGerman plots didn't succeed.

  The Treasury Department realized this fact when Mary McNilless, on themorning of the day she was to be married to Dick Walters, U. S. S. S.,received a very handsome chest of silver, including a platter engraved,"To Miss Mary McNilless, whose cleverness and keen perception savedproperty valued at millions of dollars."

  No one ever found out who sent it, but it's a safe bet that the ordercame from Washington by way of Wilmington, where the Nemours plant stillstands--thanks to the quickness of Mary's Irish eyes.