On Secret Service. Taft William Nelson
heard for blocks. After which he disappeared hurriedly in the direction of the nearest drug store.
A hasty search through the phone book gave him the number he wanted – the offices of the Black Star line.
"Is Mr. MacPherson, the purser of the Atlantic, there?" he inquired. Then: "Hello! Mr. MacPherson? This is Gregory, Customs Division. You remember me, don't you? Worked on the Maitland diamond case with you two years ago… Wonder if you could tell me something I want to know – is Mrs. Mortimer C. Dodge booked to go back with you to-morrow?.. She is? What's the number of her stateroom? And – er – what was the number of the room she had coming over?.. I thank you."
If the motorists whom Gregory had startled on the Drive had seen him emerge from the phone booth they would have marveled at the look of keen satisfaction and relief that was spread over his face. The cat that swallowed the canary was tired of life, compared with Joe at that moment.
Next morning the Customs operatives were rather surprised to see Gregory stroll down to the Atlantic dock about ten o'clock.
"Thought you were somewhere uptown on the chief's pet case," said one of them.
"So I was," answered Joe. "But that's practically cleaned up."
With that he went aboard, and no one saw him until just before the "All-ashore" call. Then he took up his place beside the gangplank, with three other men placed near by in case of accident.
"Follow my lead," he directed. "I'll speak to the girl. Two of you stick here to make certain that she doesn't get away, and you, Bill, beat it on board then and tell the captain that the boat's not to clear until we give the word. We won't delay him more than ten minutes at the outside."
When Alyce came down the gangplank a few minutes later, in the midst of people who had been saying good-by to friends and relatives, she spotted Joe waiting for her, and started to move hurriedly away. Gregory caught up with her before she had gone a dozen feet.
"Good morning, Alyce," he said. "Thought I'd come down to meet you. What've you got in the bag there?" indicating her maid's handbag.
"Not – not a thing," said the girl, flushing. Just then the matron joined the party, as previously arranged, and Joe's tone took on its official hardness.
"Hurry up and search her! We don't want to keep the boat any longer than we have to."
Less than a minute later the matron thrust her head out of the door long enough to report: "We found 'em – the pearls. She had 'em in the front of her dress."
Gregory was up the gangplank in a single bound. A moment later he was knocking at the door of Mrs. Dodge's stateroom. The instant the knob turned he was inside, informing Phyllis that she was under arrest on a charge of bringing jewels into the United States without the formality of paying duty. Of course, the lady protested – but the Atlantic sailed, less than ten minutes behind schedule time, without her.
Promptly at twelve the phone on the desk of the chief of the Customs Division in Washington buzzed noisily.
"Gregory speaking," came through the receiver. "My time's up – and I've got the party you want. Claims to be from Cleveland and sails under the name of Mrs. Mortimer C. Dodge – first name Phyllis. She's confessed and promises to turn state's evidence if we'll go light with her."
"That," added Quinn, "was the finish of Mrs. Dodge, so far as the government was concerned. In order to land the whole crew – the people who were handling the stuff on this side as well as the ones who were mixed up in the scheme abroad – they let her go scot-free, with the proviso that she's to be rushed to Atlanta if she ever pokes her nose into the United States again. The last I heard of her she was in Monaco, tangled up in a blackmail case there.
"Gregory told me all about it sometime later. Said that the first hunch had come to him when he studied the passengers' lists in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Went there to be alone and concentrate. He found that of all the people listed, only three – two men and a Mrs. Dodge – had made the trip frequently in the past six months. The frequency of Mrs. Dodge's travel evidently made it impracticable for her to use different aliases. Some one would be sure to spot her.
"But it wasn't until that night on Riverside Drive that the significance of the data struck him. Each time she took the same boat on which she had come over! Did she have the same stateroom? The phone call to MacPherson established the fact that she did – this time at least. The rest was almost as obvious as the original plan. The jewels were brought aboard, passed on to Phyllis, and she tucked them away somewhere in her stateroom. Her bags and her person could, of course, be searched with perfect safety. Then, what was more natural than that her maid should accompany her on board when she was leaving? Nobody ever pays any attention to people who board the boat at this end, so Alyce was able to walk off with the stuff under the very eyes of the customs authorities – and they found later that she had the nerve to place it in the hands of the government for the next twenty-four hours. She sent it by registered mail to Pittsburgh and it was passed along through an underground "fence" channel until a prospective purchaser appeared.
"Perfectly obvious and perfectly simple – that's why the plan succeeded until Gregory began to make love to Alyce and got the idea that Mrs. Dodge was going right back to Europe hammered into his head. It had occurred to him before, but he hadn't placed much value on it…
"O-o-o-o!" yawned Quinn. "I'm getting dry. Trot out some grape juice and put on that Kreisler record – 'Drigo's Serenade.' I love to hear it. Makes me think of the time when they landed that scoundrel Weimar."
VI
A MATTER OF RECORD
"What was that you mentioned last week – something about the record of Kreisler's 'Drigo's Serenade' reminding you of the capture of some one?" I asked Bill Quinn one summer evening as he painfully hoisted his game leg upon the porch railing.
"Sure it does," replied Quinn. "Never fails. Put it on again so I can get the necessary atmosphere, as you writers call it, and possibly I'll spill the yarn – provided you guarantee to keep the ginger ale flowing freely. That and olive oil are about the only throat lubricants left us."
So I slipped on the record, rustled a couple of bottles from the ice box, and settled back comfortably, for when Quinn once started on one of his reminiscences of government detective work he didn't like to be interrupted.
"That's the piece, all right," Bill remarked, as the strains of the violin drifted off into the night. "Funny how a few notes of music like that could nail a criminal while at the same time it was saving the lives of nobody knows how many other people – "
Remember Paul Weimar [continued Quinn, picking up the thread of his story]. He was the most dangerous of the entire gang that helped von Bernstorff, von Papen, and the rest of that crew plot against the United States at a time when we were supposed to be entirely neutral.
An Austrian by birth, Weimar was as thoroughly a Hun at heart as anyone who ever served the Hohenzollerns and, in spite of his size, he was as slippery as they make 'em. Back in the past somewhere he had been a detective in the service of the Atlas Line, but for some years before the war was superintendent of the police attached to the Hamburg-American boats. That, of course, gave him the inside track in every bit of deviltry he wanted to be mixed up in, for he had made it his business to cultivate the acquaintance of wharf rats, dive keepers, and all the rest of the scum of the Seven Seas that haunts the docks.
Standing well over six feet, Weimar had a pair of fists that came in mighty handy in a scuffle, and a tongue that could curl itself around all the blasphemies of a dozen languages. There wasn't a water front where they didn't hate him – neither was there a water front where they didn't fear him.
Of course, when the war broke in August, 1914, the Hamburg-American line didn't have any further official use for Weimar. Their ships were tied up in neutral or home ports and Herr Paul was out of a job – for at least ten minutes. But he was entirely too valuable a man for the German organization to overlook for longer than that, and von Papen, in Washington, immediately added him to his organization – with blanket instructions to go the limit on any dirty work he cared to undertake. Later, he worked for von Bernstorff; Doctor Dumba,