On Secret Service

by William Nelson Taft

  VIII

  THE TAXICAB TANGLE

  We'd been sitting on the front porch--Bill Quinn and I--discussingthings in general for about half an hour when the subject oftransportation cropped up and, as a collateral idea, my mind jumped totaxicabs, for the reason that the former Secret Service operative hadpromised to give me the details of a case which he referred to as "TheTrenton Taxicab Tangle."

  "Yes," he replied, reminiscently, when I reminded him of thealliterative title and inquired to what it might refer, "that was one ofthe branch cases which grew out of the von Ewald chase--you rememberMary McNilless and the clue of Shelf Forty-five? Well, Dick Walters, theman who landed von Ewald, wasn't the only government detective workingon that case in New York--not by some forty-five or fifty--and Marywasn't the only pretty woman mixed up in it, either. There was that girlat the Rennoc switchboard....

  "That's another story, though. What you want is the taxicab clue."

  * * * * *

  If you remember the incidents which led up to the von Ewald affair[continued Quinn, as he settled comfortably back in his chair] you willrecall that the German was the slipperiest of slippery customers. WhenWalters stumbled on his trail, through the quick wit of Mary McNilless,there wasn't the slightest indication that there was such a man. He wasa myth, a bugaboo--elusive as the buzz of a mosquito around your ear.

  During the months they scoured New York in search for him, a number ofother cases developed. Some of these led to very interestingconclusions, but the majority, as usual, flivvered into thin air.

  The men at headquarters, the very cream of the government services,gathered from all parts of the country, were naturally unable toseparate the wheat from the chaff in advance. Night after night theywent out on wild-goose chases and sometimes they spent weeks infollowing a promising lead--to find only blue sky and peaceful sceneryat the end of it.

  Alan Whitney, who had put in two or three years rounding upcounterfeiters for the Service, and who had been transferred to thePostal Inspection Service at the time of those registered mail robberiesin the Middle West--only to be detailed to Secret Service work inconnection with the von Ewald case--was one of the bitterest opponentsof this forced inaction.

  "I don't mind trouble," Whitney would growl, "but I do hate this eternalstrain of racing around every time the bell goes off and then findingthat some bonehead pulled the alarm for the sheer joy of seeing theengines come down the street. There ought to be a law againstirresponsible people sending in groundless 'tips'--just as there's a lawagainst scandal or libel or any other information that's not founded onfact."

  But, just the same, Al would dig into every new clue with as muchinterest and energy as the rest of the boys--for there's always thethrill of thinking that the tip you're working on may be the right oneafter all.

  Whitney was in the office one morning when the phone rang and the chiefanswered it.

  "Yes," he heard the chief say, "this is the right place--but if yourinformation is really important I would suggest that you come down andgive it in person. Telephones are not the most reliable instruments inthe world."

  A pause followed and the chief's voice again:

  "Well, of course we are always very glad to receive information thattends to throw any light on those matters, but I must confess that yourssounds a little vague and far-fetched. Maybe the people in the taximerely wanted to find a quiet place to talk.... They got out and wereaway for nearly two hours? Hum! Thanks very much. I'll send one of ourmen over to talk to you about it, if you don't mind. What's theaddress?"

  A moment or two later, after the chief had replaced the receiver, hecalled out to Whitney and with a smile that he could barely conceal toldhim to catch the next train to Trenton, where, at a certain address, hewould find a Miss Vera Norton, who possessed--or thought shepossessed--information which would be of value to the government inrunning down the people responsible for recent bomb outrages andmunition-plant explosions.

  "What's the idea, Chief?" inquired Al.

  "This young lady--at least her voice sounded young over the phone--saysthat she got home late from a party last night. She couldn't sleepbecause she was all jazzed up from dancing or something, so she sat nearher window, which looks out upon a vacant lot on the corner. Along abouttwo o'clock a taxicab came putt-putting up the street, stopped at thecorner, and two men carrying black bags hopped out. The taxicab remainedthere until nearly four o'clock--three-forty-eight, Miss Norton's watchsaid--and then the two men came back, without the bags, jumped in, androlled off. That's all she knows, or, at least, all she told.

  "When she picked up the paper round eleven o'clock this mornin' thefirst thing that caught her eye was the attempt to blow up the powderplant 'bout two miles from the Norton home. One paragraph of the storystated that fragments of a black bag had been picked up near the sceneof the explosion, which only wrecked one of the outhouses, and the younglady leaped to the conclusion that her two night-owls were mixed up inthe affair. So she called up to tip us off and get her name in history.Better run over and talk to her. There might be something to theinformation, after all."

  "Yes, there _might_," muttered Whitney, "but it's getting so nowadaysthat if you walk down the street with a purple tie on, when some onethinks you ought to be wearing a green one, they want you arrested as aspy. Confound these amateurs, anyhow! I'm a married man, Chief. Whydon't you send Giles or one of the bachelors on this?"

  "For just that reason," was the reply. "Giles or one of the others wouldprobably be impressed by the Norton's girl's blond hair--it must beblond from the way she talked--and spend entirely too much time runningthe whole thing to earth. Go on over and get back as soon as you can. Wecan't afford to overlook anything these days--neither can we afford towaste too much time on harvesting crops of goat feathers. Beat it!"

  And Whitney, still protesting, made his way to the tube and was luckyenough to catch a Trenton train just about to pull out of the station.

  Miss Vera Norton, he found, was a blond--and an extremely pretty one, atthat. Moreover, she appeared to have more sense than the chief had givenher credit for. After Whitney had talked to her for a few minutes headmitted to himself that it was just as well that Giles hadn't tackledthe case--he might never have come back to New York, and Trenton isn't abig enough place for a Secret Service man to hide in safety, even whenlured by a pair of extremely attractive gray-blue eyes.

  Apart from her physical charms, however, Whitney was forced to theconclusion that what she had seen was too sketchy to form anything thatcould be termed a real clue.

  "No," she stated, in reply to a question as to whether she couldidentify the men in the taxi, "it was too dark and too far off for me todo that. The arc light on the corner, however, gave me the impressionthat they were of medium height and rather thick set. Both of them weredressed in dark suits of some kind and each carried a black leather bag.That's what made me think that maybe they were mixed up in thatexplosion last night."

  "What kind of bags were they?"

  "Gladstones, I believe you call them. Those bags that are flat on thebottom and then slant upward and lock at the top."

  "How long was the taxi there?"

  "I don't know just when it did arrive, for I didn't look at my watchthen, but it left at twelve minutes to four. I was getting mightysleepy, but I determined to see how long it would stay in one place, forit costs money to hire a car by the hour--even one of thoseGreen-and-White taxis."

  "Oh, it was a Green-and-White, eh?"

  "Yes, and I got the number, too," Miss Norton's voice fairly thrilledwith the enthusiasm of her detective ability. "After the men had gottenout of the car I remembered that my opera glasses were on the bureau andI used them to get a look at the machine. I couldn't see anything of thechauffeur beyond the fact that he was hunched down on the front seat,apparently asleep, and the men came back in such a hurry that I didn'thave time to get a good look at them through the glasses."

  "But the number,
" Whitney reminded her.

  "I've got it right here," was the reply, as the young lady dug down intoher handbag and drew out a card. "N. Y. four, three, three, five, six,eight," she read. "I got that when the taxi turned around and headedback--to New York, I suppose. But what on earth would two men want totake a taxi from New York all the way to Trenton for? Why didn't theycome on the train?"

  "That, Miss Norton," explained Whitney, "is the point of your story thatmakes the whole thing look rather suspicious. I will confess that whenthe chief told me what you had said over the phone I didn't place muchfaith in it. There might have been a thousand good reasons for menallowing a local taxi to wait at the corner, but the very fact of itsbearing a New York number makes it a distinctly interesting incident."

  "Then you think that it may be a clue, after all?"

  "It's a clue, all right," replied the operative, "but what it's a clueto I can't say until we dig farther into the matter. It is probable thatthese two men had a date for a poker party or some kind of celebration,missed the train in New York, and took a taxi over rather than be leftout of the party. But at the same time it's distinctly within the realmsof possibility that the men you saw were implicated in last night'sexplosion. It'll take some time to get at the truth of the matter and,meanwhile, might I ask you to keep this information to yourself?"

  "Indeed I shall!" was the reply. "I won't tell a soul, honestly."

  After that promise, Al left the Norton house and made his way acrosstown to where the munitions factory reared its hastily constructed headagainst the sky. Row after row of flimsy buildings, roofed with tarpaper and giving no outward evidence of their sinister mission inlife--save for the high barbed-wire fence that inclosed them--formed theentire plant, for there shells were not made, but loaded, and themajority of the operations were by hand.

  When halted at the gate, Whitney found that even his badge was of no usein securing entrance. Evidently made cautious by the events of thepreceding night, the guard refused to admit anyone, and even hesitatedabout taking Al's card to the superintendent. The initials "U. S. S. S."finally secured him admittance and such information as was available.

  This, however, consisted only of the fact that some one had cut thebarbed wire at an unguarded point and had placed a charge of explosiveclose to one of the large buildings. The one selected was usedprincipally as a storehouse. Otherwise, as the superintendent indicatedby an expressive wave of his hand, "it would have been good night to thewhole place."

  "Evidently they didn't use a very heavy charge," he continued, "relyingupon the subsequent explosions from the shells inside to do the damage.If they'd hit upon any other building there'd be nothing but a hole inthe ground now. As it is, the damage won't run over a few thousanddollars."

  "Were the papers right in reporting that you picked some fragments of ablack bag not far from the scene of the explosion?" Whitney asked.

  "Yes, here they are," and the superintendent produced three pieces ofleather from a drawer in his desk. "Two pieces of the top and what isevidently a piece of the side."

  Whitney laid them on the desk and examined them carefully for a fewmoments. Then:

  "Notice anything funny about these?" he inquired.

  "No. What's the matter?"

  "Not a thing in the world, except that the bag must have had a verypeculiar lock."

  "What's that?"

  "Here--I'll show you," and Whitney tried to put the two pieces of metalwhich formed the lock together. But, inasmuch as both of them wereslotted, they wouldn't join.

  "Damnation!" exclaimed the superintendent. "What do you make of that?"

  "That there were two bags instead of one," stated Whitney, calmly."Coupled with a little information which I ran into before I came overhere, it begins to look as if we might land the men responsible for thisjob before they're many hours older."

  Ten minutes later he was on his way back to New York, not to report atheadquarters, but to conduct a few investigations at the headquarters ofthe Green-and-White Taxicab Company.

  "Can you tell me," he inquired of the manager in charge, "just whereyour taxi bearing the license number four, three, three, five, six,eight was last night?"

  "I can't," said the manager, "but we'll get the chauffeur up here andfind out in short order.

  "Hello!" he called over an office phone. "Who has charge of our cabbearing license number four, three, three, five, six, eight?... Murphy?Is he in?... Send him up--I'd like to talk to him."

  A few moments later a beetle-jawed and none too cleanly specimen of thegenus taxi driver swaggered in and didn't even bother to remove his capbefore sitting down.

  "Murphy," said the Green-and-White manager, "where was your cab lastnight?"

  "Well, let's see," commenced the chauffeur. "I took a couple to theAmsterdam The-ayter in time for th' show an' then picked up a fare onBroadway an' took him in the Hunnerd-an'-forties some place. Then Icruised around till the after-theater crowd began to come up an'--an' Igot one more fare for Yonkers. Another long trip later on made it apretty good night."

  "Murphy," cut in Whitney, edging forward into the conversation, "whereand at just what hour of the night did those two Germans offer you ahundred dollars for the use of your car all evening?"

  "They didn't offer me no hunnerd dollars," growled the chauffeur, "theygave me...." Then he checked himself suddenly and added, in anundertone, "I don't know nothin' 'bout no Goimans."

  "The hell you don't!" snarled Whitney, edging toward the door. "Back upagainst that desk and keep your hands on top of it, or I'll pump holesclean through you!"

  His right hand was in his coat pocket, the fingers closed around whatwas very palpably the butt of an automatic. Murphy could see the outlineof the weapon and obeyed instructions, while Whitney slammed the doorwith his left hand.

  "Now look here," he snapped, taking a step nearer to the taxi driver, "Iwant the truth and I want it quick! Also, it's none of your business whyI want it! But you better come clean if you know what's good for you.Out with it! Where did you meet 'em and where did you drive 'em?"

  Realizing that escape was cut off and thoroughly cowed by the display offorce, Murphy told the whole story--or as much of it as he knew.

  "I was drivin' down Broadway round Twenty-eig't Street last night, 'boutten o'clock," he confessed. "I'd taken that couple to the the-ayter,just as I told you, an' that man up to Harlem. Then one of these t'reeguys hailed me...."

  "Three?" interrupted Whitney.

  "That's what I said--t'ree! They said they wanted to borrow my machineuntil six o'clock in th' mornin' an' would give me two hunnerd dollarsfor it. I told 'em there was nothin' doin' an' they offered metwo-fifty, swearin' that they'd have it back at th' same corner at sixo'clock sharp. Two hunnerd an' fifty bones being a whole lot more than Icould make in a night, I gambled with 'em an' let 'em have th' machine,makin' sure that I got the coin foist. They drove off, two of 'eminside, an' I put in th' rest of th' night shootin' pool. When I got toth' corner of Twenty-eig't at six o'clock this mornin', there wasn't anysign of 'em--but th' car was there, still hot from the hard ride theygive her. That's all I know--'shelp me Gawd!"

  "Did the men have any bags with them?"

  "Bags? No, not one."

  "What did they look like?"

  "The one that talked with me was 'bout my heig't an' dressed in a darksuit. He an' th' others had their hats pulled down over their eyes, so'sI couldn't see their faces."

  "Did he talk with a German accent?"

  "He sure did. I couldn't hardly make out what he was sayin'. But hismoney talked plain enough."

  "Yes, and it's very likely to talk loud enough to send you to the pen ifyou're not careful!" was Whitney's reply. "If you don't want to landthere, keep your mouth shut about this. D'you get me?"

  "I do, boss, I do."

  "And you've told me all the truth--every bit of it?"

  "Every little bit."

  "All right. Clear out!"

  When Murphy left the room, W
hitney turned to the manager and, with a wrysmile, remarked: "Well, we've discovered where the car came from and howthey got it. But that's all. We're really as much in the dark asbefore."

  "No," replied the manager, musingly. "Not quite as much. Possibly youdon't know it, but we have a device on every car that leaves this garageto take care of just such cases as this--to prevent drivers from runningtheir machines all over town without pulling down the lever and thenholding out the fares on us. Just a minute and I'll show you.

  "Joe," he called, "bring me the record tape of Murphy's machine for lastnight and hold his car till you hear from me."

  "This tape," he explained, a few minutes later, "is operated somethingalong the lines of a seismograph or any other instrument for detectingchange in direction. An inked needle marks these straight lines andcurves all the time the machine is moving, and when it is standing stillit oscillates slightly. By glancing at these tapes we can tell when anychauffeur is holding out on us, for it forms a clear record--not only ofthe distance the machine has traveled, but of the route it followed."

  "Doesn't the speedometer give you the distance?" asked Whitney.

  "Theoretically, yes. But it's a very simple matter to disconnect aspeedometer, while this record is kept in a locked box and not onedriver in ten even knows it's there. Now, let's see what Murphy's recordtape tells us....

  "Yes, here's the trip to the theater around eight-thirty. See the sharpturn from Fifth Avenue into Forty-second Street, the momentary stop infront of the Amsterdam, and the complete sweep as he turned around toget back to Broadway. Then there's the journey up to the Bronx or Harlemor wherever he went, another complete turn and an uninterrupted tripback down on Broadway."

  "Then this," cut in Whitney, unable to keep the excitement out of hisvoice, "is where he stopped to speak to the Germans?"

  "Precisely," agreed the other, "and, as you'll note, that stop wasevidently longer than either of the other two. They paid their fares,while Murphy's friends had to be relieved of two hundred and fiftydollars."

  "From there on is what I'm interested in," announced Whitney. "What doesthe tape say?"

  "It doesn't _say_ anything," admitted the manager, with a smile. "But it_indicates_ a whole lot. In fact, it blazes a blood-red trail that youought to be able to follow with very little difficulty. See, when themachine started it kept on down Broadway--in fact, there's no sign of aturn for several blocks."

  "How many?"

  "That we can't tell--now. But we can figure it up very accurately later.The machine then turned to the right and went west for a short distanceonly--stopped for a few moments--and then went on, evidently toward theferry, for here's a delay to get on board, here's a wavy line evidentlymade by the motion of the boat when the hand ought to have beenpractically at rest, and here's where they picked up the trip toTrenton. Evidently they didn't have to stop until they got there,because we have yards of tape before we reach a stop point, and then thepaper is worn completely through by the action of the needle inoscillating, indicative of a long period of inaction. The return trip isjust as plain."

  "But," Whitney objected, "the whole thing hinges on where they wentbefore going to Trenton. Murphy said they didn't have any bags, so theymust have gone home or to some rendezvous to collect them. How are wegoing to find the corner where the machine turned?"

  "By taking Murphy's car and driving it very carefully south on Broadwayuntil the tape indicates precisely the distance marked on this one--theplace where the turn was made. Then, driving down that street, thesecond distance shown on the tape will give you approximately the houseyou're looking for!"

  "Good Lord," exclaimed Whitney, "that's applying science to it! SherlockHolmes wasn't so smart, after all!"

  Al and the manager agreed that there was too much traffic on Broadway inthe daytime or early evening to attempt the experiment, but shortlyafter midnight, belated pedestrians might have wondered why aGreen-and-White taxicab containing two men proceeded down Broadway at asnail's pace, while every now and then it stopped and one of the men gotout to examine something inside.

  "I think this is the corner," whispered the garage manager to Whitney,when they reached Eighth Street, "but to be sure, we'll go back and tryit over again, driving at a normal pace. It's lucky that this is a newinstrument and therefore very accurate."

  The second trial produced the same result as the first--the place theysought lay a few blocks west of Broadway, on Eighth.

  Before they tried to find out the precise location of the house, Whitneyphoned to headquarters and requested loan of a score of men to assisthim in the contemplated raid.

  "Tell 'em to have their guns handy," he ordered, "because we may haveto surround the block and search every house."

  But the taxi tape rendered that unnecessary. It indicated any one ofthree adjoining houses on the north side of the street, because, as themanager pointed out, the machine had not turned round again until itstruck a north-and-south thoroughfare, hence the houses must be on thenorth side.

  By this time the reserves were on hand and, upon instructions fromWhitney, spread out in a fan-shaped formation, completely surroundingthe houses, front and rear. At a blast from a police whistle theymounted the steps and, not waiting for the doors to be opened, wentthrough them shoulders first.

  It was Whitney, who had elected to assist in the search of the centerhouse, who captured his prey in a third-floor bedroom.

  Before the Germans knew what was happening Al was in the room, hisflashlight playing over the floor and table in a hasty search forincriminating evidence. It didn't take long to find it, either. In onecorner, only partly concealed by a newspaper whose flaring headlinesreferred to the explosion of the night before, was a collection of bombswhich, according to later expert testimony was sufficient to blow agood-sized hole in the city of New York.

  That was all they discovered at the time, but a judicious use of thethird degree--coupled with promises of leniency--induced one of theprisoners to loosen up the next day and he told the wholestory--precisely as the taxi tape and Vera Norton had told it. The onlymissing ingredient was the power behind the plot--the mysterious "No.859"--whom Dick Walters later captured because of the clue on Shelfforty-five.

  * * * * *

  "So you see," commented Quinn as he finished, "the younger Pitt wasn'tso far wrong when he cynically remarked that 'there is a Providence thatwatches over children, imbeciles, and the United States.' In this casethe principal clues were a book from the Public Library, the chanceobservations of a girl who couldn't sleep and a piece of white paperwith some red markings on it.

  "At that, though, it's not the first time that German agents have gotteninto trouble over a scrap of paper."

  "What happened to Vera Norton?" I inquired.

  "Beyond a little personal glory, not a thing in the world," repliedQuinn. "Didn't I tell you that Al was married? You're always looking forromance, even in everyday life. Besides, if he had been a bachelor,Whitney was too busy trying to round up the other loose ends of theEwald case. 'Number eight fifty-nine' hadn't been captured then, youremember.

  "Give me a match--my pipe's gone out. No, I can't smoke it here; it'stoo late. But speaking of small clues that lead to big things, some daysoon I'll tell you the story of how a match--one just like this, for allI know--led to the uncovering of one of the most difficult smugglingcases that the Customs Service ever tried to solve."