Part 17 (2/2)
”He is building and must have lumber--he'll fall for some cheap stuff and the river is full of logs--and it's perfectly feasible to saw them----”
”Maybe so, Hiram--provided he doesn't keep on knowing what we have for breakfast. I will learn more in a day or two--go ahead as fast as you can about getting ready, but again I ask you to have an interrogation point in front of you all the time.”
”Ben”--he began, walking about the room nervously, as though he felt his soul in danger--righteously angered, but as one who showed real bigness--”I am convinced that they have power enough, so that when they get ready they can for a time make me the goat. I was in sole charge of that wharf when the big thefts were pulled off; what would be easier than to link me up with some poor teamster and send the two of us to slaughter, and even by arrest plant an imputation that could be cited against me all my life? I could take this Becker and tear his purple tallow person into bits with my bare hands and throw the pieces into his own rendering tanks with pleasure!” he shouted, and he looked as though he could do it.
”Yes, Hiram, that possibility is present, but perhaps you magnify it.”
Then believing his efficiency would be augmented by a little less fear, I told him, for the first time, that the provision market was flooded with spurious goods bearing a genuine government stamp as having been inspected and pa.s.sed, and that on this night I was going with a Federal party in a move against Becker for that.
”What are you going to do?” he asked quickly.
”Locate him as soon as he leaves his New Orleans office, then a safe expert, employed by the government in alien-enemy work, will open his safe for evidence, and possibly will find the stolen seals, stamps, and ink of the Department of Animal Industry.”
”I have figured the case in just that way and supposed you had, and that is why we must get inside his plant. Opening his safe may help--finding the seals don't prove the larceny--suppose they should secrete those seals about the wharf, or worse still, put them inside, or under my desk, in the wharf office, what chance would I have to escape the implication?” he asked, still walking about the room looking at the floor.
”A dog having the bone will not prove he stole the ham,” I suggested.
”But that won't save the dog's ribs when he's found with it,” he retorted, relaxing.
”It is true, Hiram, their organization must begin in Kansas City--and is pretty well oiled--but perhaps not as efficient as you imagine; crooks always forget something with a certainty that suggests fatality.”
”Let us hope so. But these notes--what makes you think they are from a woman?” He stopped and looked squarely at me. ”I don't like it,” he finished with a snap of his jaws.
”My reason just now is scarcely more than an impression, hardly more than 'because,'” I replied.
CHAPTER XXI
THAT night at dinner I asked Hiram how much he knew about gasoline engines, and he looked up at me sharply.
”Not very much; very little, in fact. The Gold-Beater gave me a car once--a pretty good one--and I was learning about motors fairly fast when something happened. I knew motors needed water, oil and gasoline, and that when I did certain things it went, and sometimes it moved pretty fast. That was the trouble--I met a bigger car and we both went over in a man's front yard. I lost two wheels and other things--I never saw it again. The Gold-Beater and the insurance company settled somehow.
”Do you know,” he continued after a pause, ”I don't blame the Gold-Beater much--two thousand was my share for putting an innocent pedestrian in the park on the bad side--I wonder he didn't get the marble heart sooner.” As he said this his lips curled with self-criticism.
”How soon will you have the motor ready to start? I am going to be very busy to-morrow. Can you and the captain manage to start it alone?”
”To-morrow at noon we will have everything ready for a try-out and if I don't feel safe we will not attempt to start without you. Don't want to take any chances; there's too much at stake,” he insisted with rare judgment.
”Everything is fair in love and war,” is the libertine's comfort in the case of a love contest--and in war it depends on the kind of an enemy we have. In this war any means of obtaining evidence against our enemy was justified. That was my firm belief. That night Becker & Co.'s office was entered as planned and his safe opened. While there was plenty of evidence that he was trading illicitly and with the enemy, I was disappointed in finding no evidence of his thieving propensity, except a letter he had received that day from the captain of a Swedish s.h.i.+p, _Sparticide_, then in port, who in poor English explained that he had ”received the sample and thought it would do, though the price was altogether too high. If he would pack in half barrels and deliver as suggested, he would take the lot for cash, delivered alongside.”
This letter was carefully copied and replaced.
When I reached home just before daylight, Hiram, Jr., was fast asleep, but when I awakened later in the day he had gone.
I spent the greater part of the morning getting the five bales of waste paper that had been unloaded from Becker's boat on the steams.h.i.+p docks, into a private fireproof room in the storage warehouse where we had our barrel of ”steel filings” stored, and secured an affidavit from the steams.h.i.+p company that they were received from Becker & Co.
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