Part 9 (1/2)

”You win!” cried Selwin. ”Now about the bandits. Have you got them dead to rights, too?”

”Ask Pauling,” replied Mr. Henderson. ”He's the next witness.”

”Here's my exhibit A,” said Mr. Pauling, as he drew a creased paper from an inside pocket and placed it before the a.s.sembled officials.

”H-m-m, another threat, eh?” remarked the first one who examined it.

”Yes, commanding me to drop investigation of that hold-up gang that the police nabbed on West 16th St. last week. Nothing was said while the police were at it, but as soon as I took hold I received this.”

”And written with the same old machine!” exclaimed Selwin. ”All right, Pauling, I may be from Missouri, but you and Henderson have shown me.

Now let's plan a campaign.”

”If these two notes were sent by the same man, as they appear to have been,” remarked a quiet man who heretofore had said nothing but had been steadily consuming one black cigar after another by the process of chewing them between his strong white teeth, ”then our game is right underfoot, so to speak-right in little old Manhattan probably.”

”Bully for you, Meredith!” cried a small, wiry, nervous man, clapping the other familiarly on the back. ”'The mills of the G.o.ds,' etc., you know. Where did you fish that idea from?”

”From some place you lack-a brain,” retorted Meredith continuing to bite savagely at his cigar. ”But, fooling aside,” he went on, ”it's a cinch he is. Henderson and Pauling get their notes only two days apart and, what's more, Pauling gets his within twenty-four hours after he starts that investigation. No time for word to get any other place and have a bit of typewritten paper get back.”

”Huh! Then, according to you, all this red rubbish is also written right in the old home-town, eh?” snorted the thin man.

”Yep,” replied Meredith. ”Expect that's why we haven't nailed its source yet. Fact is, I believe there isn't any rum being smuggled in. Been stored here and just being distributed now. Bet we've all been walking over the trail star-gazing. So darned sure it was all coming in from outside we never thought of it being right alongside of us.”

”That's a possibility,” admitted Henderson and then, dropping their voices, the half dozen men earnestly discussed plans, offered suggestions, examined mysterious doc.u.ments stored in a hidden and ma.s.sive safe in the wall and pored over maps and diagrams which no one, outside of this inner circle, would ever see.

At the end of two hours, the conference broke up. The papers and doc.u.ments were replaced in their secret vault, the maps and diagrams were locked in a steel box and thrust in another safe and the men chatted on various matters, discussing the latest news, arguing the respective merits of motor cars, expressing opinions as to the next pennant winner, telling jokes and thoroughly enjoying themselves as if they had not a care in the world and were not literally carrying their lives in their hands day and night.

”What's that boy of yours doing in radio now?” asked Meredith, addressing Mr. Pauling when the conversation finally turned towards wireless. ”Henderson was telling me about their 'radio detective' stuff.

Great kid-Tom.”

”Oh, he and Frank Putney are working on a submarine radio scheme. I met a young chap at Na.s.sau with a new-fangled diving suit and he and the boys are trying to work out a radio outfit to use under water. Say, they're succeeding, too.”

”Jove! that's a great scheme!” exclaimed another. ”Under-sea wireless!

Well, I'll be hanged, what won't our kids be up to next!”

”Wish we'd had anything as good to tinker with when we were kids,”

declared Selwin. ”I remember how every one laughed at Marconi when he first started wireless. My boy's crazy over it now. Well, I must be getting on.”

Rising, Selwin slipped from the room, sauntered casually about the corridor, noted the seemingly inattentive janitor brus.h.i.+ng imaginary dust from a window frame, knew that the lynx-eyed guard was on his job, and without a sign of recognition made his way to the elevator and the street. At intervals of half an hour or so the others left, some by the same corridor, others through an outer room, where an office boy seemed dozing in a chair over a lurid, paper-covered novel-but upon whose boyish, freckled cheeks a closely-shaven, heavy beard might have been detected by a near examination-while still others took a roundabout route and descended to the street on the opposite side of the building.

At last, only Mr. Pauling and Henderson were left and the two friends, glad of a chance to have a quiet smoke and to be free from care for a short time, sat chatting and talking over Mr. Pauling's last trip to the West Indies.

”It was positively baffling,” stated Mr. Pauling in reply to a question.

”I knew they were filled to the gunwales with liquor and I knew as well as I wanted to that the cargo was going to the States and yet, when they got here and our men boarded them they were either empty or carried legitimate cargoes or else they never touched our ports and came back empty. It's common talk that the stuff is going to us, but no one has given away how it's done yet. Why, I even had one trailed-shadowed by a disguised cutter-and they kept her within sight for days and then I'll be hanged if she didn't come back without a sign of cargo. Now where did they land it? Only solution is they got cold feet and heaved it overboard.”

”More likely they met some other craft during the night and trans.h.i.+pped,” suggested Mr. Henderson. ”I imagine that's how they get it in. Have some prearranged signal and spot and s.h.i.+p the stuff in at another port while they sail boldly into harbor. Of course we're watching for them and let up on other places and while we're boarding the suspect the other craft gets in on some unfrequented bit of coast and meets a truck or car. It's not hard. We can't guard _all_ the coast with our force and I'm sure that game's played sometimes, if not always.

We've taken a lot of stuff that afterwards proved to be colored water or cane-juice and of course they didn't bring that from Cuba or the Bahamas just for the sake of getting our goats.”

”And then there were the Chinese,” resumed Mr. Pauling. ”Of course there we've another difficulty because, once set ash.o.r.e or near sh.o.r.e, John can look after himself and doesn't need a truck to carry him out of our sight. Just the same I'd give a lot to know the secret of their putting it over on us.”