"Oh yes, some time before she arrived."
"I thought so," was Preston"s reply, and, thanking the girl, he wandered back to the hotel--convinced that he had solved at least one of the mysteries, the question of what Gerard did with his surplus "bankrupt stock." It was evidently packed in trunks and shipped to distant points, to be forwarded by the Vaughan woman upon instructions from Gerard himself. The wires he had torn up were merely confirmatory messages, sent so that he would have the necessary information before making a getaway.
"Clever scheme, all right," was Hal"s mental comment. "Now the next point is to find some town in the Southwest where a new store has been opened within the past two months."
That night the telegraph office at Mount Clemens did more business than it had had for the past year. Wires, under the government frank, went out to every town on the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe and to a number of adjacent cities. In each case the message was the same:
Wire name of any new clothing store opened within past two months. Also description of proprietor. Urgent.
PRESTON, U. S. P. I. S.
Fourteen chiefs of police replied within the next forty-eight hours, but of these only two--Leavenworth and Fort Worth--contained descriptions which tallied with that of Henry Gerard.
So, to facilitate matters, Preston sent another wire:
Has proprietor mentioned in yesterday"s wire a wife or woman friend who keeps white mice as pets?
Fort Worth replied facetiously that the owner of the new store there was married, but that his wife had a cat--which might account for the absence of the mice. Leavenworth, however, came back with:
Yes, Mrs. n.o.ble, wife of owner of Outlet Store, has white mice for pets. Why?
Never mind reason [Preston replied]. Watch n.o.ble and wife until I arrive. Leaving to-day.
Ten minutes after reaching Leavenworth Preston was ensconced in the office of the chief of police, outlining the reason for his visit.
"I"m certain that n.o.ble is the man you want," said the chief, when Hal had finished. "He came here some six weeks or more ago and at once leased a store, which he opened a few days later. The description fits him to a T, except for the fact that he"s evidently dispensed with the mustache. The Vaughan woman is posing as his wife and they"ve rented a house on the outskirts of town. What do you want me to do? Nab "em right away?"
"No," directed the operative. "I"d rather attend to that myself, if you don"t object. After trailing them this far, I"d like to go through with it. You might have some men handy, though, in case there"s any fuss."
Just as Mr. and Mrs. C. K. n.o.ble were sitting down to dinner there was a ring at their front-door bell and n.o.ble went to see who it was.
"I"d like to speak to Mr. H. Gordon Fowler," said Preston, his hand resting carelessly in the side pocket of his coat.
"No Mr. Fowler lives here," was the growling reply from the inside.
"Then Mr. W. C. Evans or Mr. Henry Gerard will do!" snapped the operative, throwing his shoulder against the partly opened door.
n.o.ble--or Fowler, as he was afterward known--stepped aside as Hal plunged through, and then slammed the door behind him.
"Get him, Anna!" he called, throwing the safety bolt into position.
The next thing that Preston knew, a pair of arms, bare and feminine but strong as iron, had seized him around the waist and he was in imminent danger of being bested by a woman. With a heave and a wriggling twist he broke the hold and turned, just in time to see Fowler s.n.a.t.c.h a revolver from a desk on the opposite side of the room and raise it into position.
Without an instant"s hesitation he leaped to one side, dropped his hand into his coat pocket, and fired. Evidently the bullet took effect, for the man across the room dropped his gun, spun clean around and then sank to the floor. As he did so, however, the woman hurled a heavy vase directly at Preston"s head and the operative sank unconscious.
"Well, go on!" I snapped, when Quinn paused. "You sound like a serial story--to be continued in our next. What happened then?"
"Nothing--beyond the fact that three policemen broke in some ten seconds after Hal fired, grabbed Mrs. Vaughan or whatever her name was, and kept her from beating Hal to death, as she certainly would have done in another minute. Fowler wasn"t badly hurt. In fact, both of them stood trial the next spring--Fowler drawing six years and Anna Vaughan one.
Incidentally, they sent "em back to Leavenworth to do time and, as a great concession, allowed the woman to take two of her white mice with her. I managed to get one of the other four, and, when it died, had it stuffed as a memento of a puzzling case well solved.
"It"s a hobby of mine--keeping these relics. That hatchet, for example.... Remind me to tell you about it some time. The mice were responsible for finding one man in fifty million--which is something of a job in itself--but the hatchet figured in an even more exciting affair...."
XIV
WAH LEE AND THE FLOWER OF HEAVEN
"Yes, there"s quite a story attached to that," remarked Bill Quinn one evening as the conversation first lagged and then drifted away into silence. We were seated in his den at the time--the "library" which he had ornamented with relics of a score or more of cases in which the various governmental detective services had distinguished themselves--and I came to with a start.
"What?" I exclaimed. "Story in what?"
"In that hatchet--the one on the wall there that you were speculating about. It didn"t take a psychological sleuth to follow your eyes and read the look of speculation in them. That"s a trick that a "sparrow cop" could pull!"
"Well, then, suppose you pay the penalty for your wisdom--and spin the yarn," I retorted, none the less glad of the opportunity to hear the facts behind the sinister red stain which appeared on the blade of the Chinese weapon, for I knew that Quinn could give them to me if he wished.
"Frankly, I don"t know the full history of the hatchet," came the answer from the other side of the fireplace. "Possibly it goes back to the Ming dynasty--whenever that was--or possibly it was purchased from a mail-order house in Chicago. Chop suey isn"t the only Chinese article made in this country, you know. But my interest in it commenced with the night when Ezra Marks--
"However, let"s start at the beginning."
Marks [continued the former operative] was, as you probably recall, one of the best men ever connected with the Customs Service. It was he who solved the biggest diamond-smuggling case on record, and he was also responsible for the discovery of the manner in which thirty thousand yards of very valuable silk was being run into the country every year without visiting the custom office. That"s a piece of the silk up there, over the picture of Mrs. Armitage....
It wasn"t many months before the affair of the Dillingham diamonds that official Washington in general and the offices of the Customs Service in particular grew quite excited over the fact that a lot of opium was finding its way into California. Of course, there"s always a fair amount of "hop" on the market, provided you know where to look for it, and the government has about as much chance of keeping it out altogether as it has of breaking up the trade in moonshine whisky. The mountaineer is going to have his "licker" and the c.h.i.n.k is going to have his dope--no matter what you do. But it"s up to the Internal Revenue Bureau and the Customs Service to see that neither one arrives in wholesale quant.i.ties.
And that was just what was happening on the Coast.
In fact, it was coming in so fast that the price was dropping every day and the California authorities fairly burned up the wires "cross continent with their howls for help.
At that time Marks--Ezra by name and "E. Z." by nickname--was comparatively a new member of the force. He had rendered valuable service in Boston, however, and the chief sent for him and put the whole thing in his hands.
"Get out to San Diego as quickly as you know how," snapped the chief, tossing over a sheaf of yellow telegraph slips. "There"s all the information we have, and apparently you won"t get much more out there--unless you dig it up for yourself. All they seem to know is that the stuff is coming in by the carload and is being peddled in all the hop joints at a lower price than ever before. It"s up to you to get the details. Any help you need will be supplied from the San Francisco office, but my advice is to play a lone hand--you"re likely to get further than if you have a gang with you all the time."
"That"s my idear, Chief," drawled Ezra, who hailed from Vermont and had all the New Englander"s affection for single-handed effort, not because he had the least objection to sharing the glory, but simply because he considered it the most efficient way to work. "I"ll get right out there and see how the land lays."
"Needn"t bother to report until you discover something worth while,"
added the chief. "I"ll know that you"re on the job and the farther you keep away from headquarters the less suspicion you"re likely to arouse."
This was the reason that, beyond the fact they knew that an operative named Marks had been sent from Washington to look into the opium matter, the government agents on the Coast were completely in the dark as to the way in which the affair was being handled. In fact, the chief himself was pretty well worried when two months slipped by without a word from Ezra....
But the big, raw-boned Yankee was having troubles of his own. Likewise, he took his instructions very seriously and didn"t see the least reason for informing Washington of the very patent fact that he had gotten nowhere and found out nothing.
"They know where they can reach me," he argued to himself one night, about the time that the chief began to wonder if his man were floating around the bay with a piece of Chinese rope about his neck. "Unless I get a wire they won"t hear anything until I have at least a line on this gang."
Then, on going over the evidence which he had collected during the weeks that he had been in San Diego, he found that there was extremely little of it. Discreet questioning had developed the fact, which he already knew, that opium was plentiful all along the Coast, and that, presumably, it was supplied from a point in the south of the state. But all his efforts to locate the source of the drug brought him up against a blank wall.