This was exceedingly interesting and filled with possibilities--a party of three, two men and a woman, an unusually attractive young woman at that, and all were interested in the movement of freight, with this difference, that Becker might be the chief beneficiary, and both men might be rising to the lure of beauty.
I spent most of that night looking up the antecedents of this interesting trio and did not go down to the wharf, but went to bed just before Hiram arose to go to work. Burrell, I found, lived with his wife and two children and was inclined to be sporty; Becker was a rounder, and the girl was just a clerk before she came to me.
I heard Hiram leaving the house and had not been sleeping long before a messenger came from him, requesting me to hurry down to the wharf. I had asked him to send for me the instant the next irregularity was observed.
He was very much excited when I got there, as were also the Government meat inspector and the packing-house representative. The three of them, together as usual, had broken the seals of a Kansas City car of fresh sausages in ten-pound cartons, and about half of it, from the center of the car, was gone. This could be seen at a glance.
The four of us went into Hiram"s little office at the corner of the wharf. He was so furious that he had become stoical, even sullen, which was promptly misunderstood by the Government inspector and the packing-house agent as proof of guilt. In order to protect him and get a full expression from them I took the att.i.tude of favoring their view.
He did not quite understand this and felt it keenly.
Each of them was ready, like dogs held in leash, to spring at his throat. But it might have been a sorry leap: Hiram was magnificent under such fire. Surely the Gold-Beater had given him good blood and a fighting spirit if nothing else.
"Strong," I began, in a somewhat authoritative manner, "have you preserved the railroad"s seal that was on this car?"
"Yes--here it is--I have been saving and marking every one."
Then it developed that the Government inspector and the packing-house agent had been doing the same thing, and all three were handed to me.
After that, at my suggestion, we went out and removed the seals from the unopened door on the other side of the car, which I took charge of after they had been carefully marked. I then suggested they go about their duties and routine as though nothing had happened.
I had decided on a secret, drastic inquisition. The ax must fall now and cut where it would, the details of which shall be avoided, only so far as they concern this son of a man who was given the credit of beating gold--who owned the gold instead of it owning him.
I could still feel Hiram"s flesh quiver under my touch when I tried to a.s.sure him, by a pressure on his arm, as I was leaving.
Notwithstanding the fact that it was four o"clock in the morning, I began the job by summoning by telephone the rotund and hairless Superintendent Kitch.e.l.l from his bed, and reminding him of his promise to help me at any time. Besides, this was his funeral anyhow, that was to be held at ten o"clock that morning in Hiram"s little office on the wharf.
I then demanded the presence of every man who had handled that car--the loaders, the icers, weighmasters, conductors, dispatchers and the yard-men between Kansas City and New Orleans, something over a thousand miles of road. Those who could not be there in so short a time must telegraph a transcript of their records, in affidavit form. The sworn records were finally decided on as the only thing possible in so short a time.
"I will come down to the general office and start the necessary machinery, but the time, less than six hours, is too short--it can"t be done," he said, evidently lashing himself out of the drowse and comprehending the magnitude of the order.
"The iron is hot and now is the time to strike," I warned.
"All right, we will do the best we can. I"ll get the agent and be there anyhow."
"No; that"s just what I don"t want. This investigation must not attract attention. Your presence there would only advertise it. After we are through you can have all the data, and do as you wish," I insisted, having in mind to a.s.sume an att.i.tude that would allow Hiram to work out his own salvation if possible. The only way is to expose a weak or yellow spot, so that he would see it for himself.
Superintendent Kitch.e.l.l again demonstrated that he was not an accident.
Before ten o"clock that morning he had accomplished almost the impossible. The wire that Hiram worked for a while was soon hot with sworn statements from every man who had anything to do with that car, from its loading until it landed on the wharf. It remained for Hiram, the Agent of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and the local packing-house agent to open the car.
I glanced over the ma.s.s of stuff before handing it to Hiram.
The shipping clerk of the packing-house swore that there was put in the car six thousand cartons, each ten pounds net weight, of prime loose sausages. This was verified by the affidavit of a checker, then a second and third checker, before the doors were sealed by agents of the Government, packing-house and railroad agents. The railroad weighmaster"s figures on the track scale verified that. It was loaded and iced in zero weather, so that no delay was necessary for re-icing all the way to New Orleans.
A verified transcript of train sheets of all the train dispatchers of both roads showed that the car came in a solid train of perishable provisions, over the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad to Memphis, without longer pause than to change engines at the end of each division, where it was delivered to the Yazoo and weighed again--which weight tallied with the Kansas City weight--and traveled into New Orleans on pa.s.senger time. All this without incident or delay of any kind, and delivered on the unloading wharf track at 2:30 a. m.
When I took the records to Hiram and told him what they were, I found him going about his work as usual. His att.i.tude was disconcerting. Were his hands clean? One could have taken him for a man who had been caught with the goods. If guilty, I had little chance to shield him.
He carried his head erect, his stride was sure and determined, but he had a glitter that indicated a tumult inside, with an att.i.tude of suspicious aloofness. The erstwhile mirthful smile on his lips was now supplanted by one of sarcastic severity, but a smile that evidently meant much. I would have given the world just then to know what.
However, all he would say was: "Ben, this is a devil of a mess and I am in the center of it."
CHAPTER XIV
AFTER leaving the sworn records with Hiram I started for my temporary offices uptown. I wanted him to have time to thoroughly digest them.
At that time we had not been at war long and the public mind of New Orleans was in a very excited condition. The big interrogation point was raised on every person whose acts did not bear instant a.n.a.lysis.
Pacifists and enemy aliens were promptly and vigorously coerced into outward decency at least. No trifling was permitted.
These continued thefts from the railroad might mean much more than a risky enterprise for profit. I was given to understand that while time enough would be allowed, definite results were expected soon.
When I reached my office, my clerk, Miss Bascom, seemed to be expecting me. Her greeting, though intended to be casual, was so gladsome I wondered if she was trying to practice on me the same brand of coquetry she used on the chief clerk--Burrell--or was it to be a wheedling process? Surely I was justified in expecting something and I awaited the onset with great interest, convinced that she was playing a role. One of Miss Bascom"s duties was to prepare for me each day a record of every car that arrived on Hiram"s wharf or departed therefrom.
The first sheets of outbound records of the day were of cars from Becker & Co. to Becker & Co., Becker"s Landing, Louisiana, and the time of departure was marked 3:30. I began to wonder if it was purely accidental that they were on the top; then came an exciting moment when I recalled that a car of sausages arrived at 2:30. But the insuperable difficulty of making the transfer, replacing the seals, and the like, rea.s.sured me.
I gave Miss Bascom the two slips and requested her to get me a memo of the contents of those two cars. As she went about the errand I wondered how such a refined looking young woman could ally herself with that carca.s.s of rancid tallow whose very clothing emitted an odor which advertised his business.
Miss Bascom returned in a few moments and laid the two slips before me without comment, hesitating at the end of my desk, indicating interest and willingness to be of further a.s.sistance. On the bottom of each slip was delicately penciled "Soap Grease." I knew that plebeian soap grease was worth more than prime lard had been a short time ago, but why the precaution of shipping in refrigerator cars?
"Do you happen to know this shipper--Becker & Co.?" I decided to venture, uncertain whether Miss Bascom knew I had seen them together in the hall.
Miss Bascom backed to the end of my desk and laid a very pretty elbow on top, the better to display her figure--palpable acting, so it seemed to me. Her speech had a Southern accent which lends itself to dissimulation. "Yes," she replied, "he is an important patron of the road, and is about the office considerably. Everybody knows him." She did not meet my eye, but looked at the door leading to the hall expectantly. At that moment a boy burst into the room wholly unannounced, laid a telegram addressed to me on my desk, and was gone as quickly as he came.
"I wonder why they ship that kind of freight in refrigerator cars--the rate is much higher," I said, shoving the telegram back unopened.
"I think I heard him tell Mr. Burrell one day he could afford to pay extra in order to receive his freight the same day," she replied with a navete difficult to simulate.
"Miss Bascom, stop the work you are now on and prepare an abstract from these records of all freight sent by refrigerator cars to Becker & Co.
during the last twelve months," I requested after weighing the chance that she might be working with Becker and Chief Clerk Burrell and the disadvantage of their knowing through her that an investigation was proceeding along those lines.
Miss Bascom seemed unwilling to think the interview ended or perhaps was disappointed it had yielded so little, but finally removed her elbow, and, nonplussed, pa.s.sed her small white hand over her eyes and hair, so unusually bronze that one might suspect that it was "chemically pure."
As she slowly pa.s.sed behind me to her desk she half murmured to herself, "I wish I were a man."
"I suppose you would be wearing a soldier"s uniform if you were," said I, a.s.suming a semi-preoccupied att.i.tude.
"That"s on the basis that a uniform makes a dull person look intelligent," she rejoined, looking seriously out of the window over her desk.
I was reading my telegram and was too much astonished at its contents to reply. It was from the chemist in New York to whom I had sent a larger sample from the partnership barrel Hiram and I had in storage.
CHAPTER XV
THE dispatch was very interesting indeed. I was about to go down and show the telegram to Hiram, the contents of which would astonish him more than it did me, at least cheer him up a bit, but when I reached the street something happened to intensify my interest in Becker & Co. I ran into a man I very much wanted to talk with.