IX
A MATCH FOR THE GOVERNMENT
"I wonder how long it will take," mused Bill Quinn, as he tossed aside a copy of his favorite fictional monthly, "to remove the ethical restrictions which the war placed upon novels and short stories? Did you ever notice the changing style in villains, for example? A decade or so ago it was all the rage to have a Japanese do the dirty work – for then we were taking the 'yellow peril' rather seriously and it was reflected in our reading matter. The tall, well-dressed Russian, with a sinister glitter in his black eyes, next stepped upon the scene, to be followed by the villain whose swarthy complexion gave a hint of his Latin ancestry.
"For the past few years, of course, every real villain has had to have at least a touch of Teutonic blood to account for the various treacheries which he tackles. I don't recall a single novel – or a short story, either – that has had an English or French villain who is foiled in the last few pages. I suppose you'd call it the entente cordiale of the novelists, a sort of concerted attempt by the writing clan to do their bit against the Hun. And mighty good propaganda it was, too…
"But, unfortunately, the detective of real life can't always tell by determining a man's nationality whether he's going to turn out to be a crook or a hero. When you come right down to it, every country has about the same proportion of each and it's only by the closest observation that one can arrive at a definite and fact-supported conclusion.
"Details – trifles unnoticed in themselves – play a far larger part in the final dénouement than any preconceived ideas or fanciful theories. There was the case of Ezra Marks and the Dillingham diamonds, for example…"
Ezra [continued the former Secret Service operative, when he had eased his game leg into a position where it no longer gave him active trouble] was all that the name implied. Born in Vermont, of a highly puritanical family, he had been named for his paternal grandfather and probably also for some character from the Old Testament. I'm not awfully strong on that Biblical stuff myself.
It wasn't long after he grew up, however, that life on the farm began to pall. He found a copy of the life of Alan Pinkerton somewhere and read it through until he knew it from cover to cover. As was only natural in a boy of his age, he determined to become a great detective, and drifted down to Boston with that object in view. But, once in the city, he found that "detecting" was a little more difficult than he had imagined, and finally agreed to compromise by accepting a very minor position in the Police Department. Luckily, his beat lay along the water front and he got tangled up in two or three smuggling cases which he managed to unravel in fine shape, and, in this way, attracted the attention of the Customs Branch of the Treasury Department, which is always on the lookout for new timber. It's a hard life, you know, and one which doesn't constitute a good risk for an insurance company. So there are always gaps to be filled – and Ezra plugged up one of them very nicely.
As might have been expected, the New Englander was hardly ever addressed by his full name. "E. Z." was the title they coined for him, and "E. Z." he was from that time on – at least to everyone in the Service. The people on the other side of the fence, however, the men and women who look upon the United States government as a joke and its laws as hurdles over which they can jump whenever they wish – found that this Mark was far from an easy one. He it was who handled the Wang Foo opium case in San Diego in nineteen eleven. He nailed the gun runners at El Paso when half a dozen other men had fallen down on the assignment, and there were at least three Canadian cases which bore the imprint of his latent genius on the finished reports.
His particular kind of genius was distinctly out of the ordinary, too. He wasn't flashy and he was far from a hard worker. He just stuck around and watched everything worth watching until he located the tip he wanted. Then he went to it – and the case was finished!
The chap who stated that "genius is the capacity for infinite attention to details" had Ezra sized up to a T. And it was one of these details – probably the most trifling one of all – that led to his most startling success.
Back in the spring of nineteen twelve the European agents of the Treasury Department reported to Washington that a collection of uncut diamonds, most of them rather large, had been sold to the German representative of a firm in Rotterdam. From certain tips which they picked up, however, the men abroad were of the opinion that the stones were destined for the United States and advised that all German boats be carefully watched, because the Dillingham diamonds – as the collection was known – had been last heard of en route to Hamburg and it was to be expected that they would clear from there.
The cablegram didn't cause any wild excitement in the Treasury Department. European agents have a habit of trying to stir up trouble in order to make it appear that they are earning their money and then they claim that the people over here are not always alert enough to follow their tips. It's the old game of passing the buck. You have to expect it in any business.
But, as events turned out, the men on the other side were dead right.
Almost before Washington had time officially to digest the cable and to mail out the stereotyped warnings based upon it, a report filtered in from Wheeling, West Virginia, that one of the newly made coal millionaires in that section had invested in some uncut diamonds as large as the end of your thumb. The report came in merely as a routine statement, but it set the customs authorities to thinking.
Uncut stones, you know, are hard to locate, either when they are being brought in or after they actually arrive. Their color is dull and slatelike and there is little to distinguish them from other and far less valuable pebbles. Of course, there might not be the slightest connection in the world between the Wheeling diamonds and those of the Dillingham collection – but then, on the other hand, there might…
Hence, it behooved the customs people to put on a little more speed and to watch the incoming steamers just as carefully as they knew how.
Some weeks passed and the department had sunk back into a state of comfortable ease – broken only occasionally by a minor case or two – when a wire arrived one morning stating that two uncut diamonds had appeared in New York under conditions which appeared distinctly suspicious. The owner had offered them at a price 'way under the market figure, and then, rather than reply to one or two questions relative to the history of the stones, had disappeared. There was no record of the theft of any diamonds answering to the description of those seen in Maiden Lane, and the police force inquired if Washington thought they could have been smuggled.
"Of course they could," snorted the chief. "But there's nothing to prove it. Until we get our hands upon them and a detailed description of the Dillingham stones, it's impossible to tell."
So he cabled abroad for an accurate list of the diamonds which had been sold a couple of months earlier, with special instructions to include any identifying marks, as it was essential to spot the stones before a case could be built up in court.
The following Tuesday a long dispatch from Rotterdam reached the department, stating, among other things, that one of the Dillingham diamonds could be distinguished by a heart-shaped flaw located just below the surface. That same afternoon came another wire from New York to the effect that two rough stones, answering to the description of the ones alluded to in a previous message, had turned up in the jewelry district after passing through half a dozen underground channels.
"Has one of the diamonds a heart-shaped flaw in it?" the chief inquired by wire.
"It has," came back the response. "How did you know it?"
"I didn't," muttered the head of the Customs Service, "but I took a chance. The odds were twenty to one against me, but I've seen these long shots win before. Now," ringing for Mahoney, his assistant, "we'll see what can be done to keep the rest of that collection from drifting in – if it hasn't already arrived."
"Where's Marks located now?" the chief inquired when Mahoney entered.
"Somewhere in the vicinity of Buffalo, I believe. He's working on that Chesbro case, the one in connection with – "
"I know," cut in the chief. "But that's pin money compared with this matter of the Dillingham diamonds. Thousands of dollars are at stake here, against hundreds there. Besides, if this thing ever leaks out to the papers we'll never hear the last of it. The New York office isn't in any too strong as it is. Wire Marks to drop the trail of those silk hounds and beat it to New York as fast as he can. He'll find real work awaiting him there – something that ought to prove a test of the reputation he's built up on the other three borders. Hurry it up!"
"E. Z." found the message awaiting him when he returned to his hotel that night, and without the slightest symptom of a grouch grabbed the next train for New York. As he told me later, he didn't mind in the least dropping the silk matter, because he had put in the better part of a month on it and didn't seem any closer than when he started.
It took Ezra less than five minutes to get all the dope the New York office had on the case – and it took him nearly six months to solve it.
"The two diamonds in Wheeling and the two that turned up here are the only ones we know about," said the man in charge of the New York office. "The original Dillingham collection contained twenty-one rough stones – but whether the other seventeen have already been brought in or whether the people who are handling them have shipped them elsewhere is wholly problematical. The chief learned about the heart-shaped flaw from our man at Rotterdam, so that identifies one of the stones. But at the same time it doesn't help us in the least – for we can't handle the case from this end."
"Same rules as on the Coast, eh?" inquired Marks.
"Precisely. You've got to tackle the other end of the game. No rummaging around here, trying to pick up the trail that ends with the stone in Maiden Lane. As you know, this bunch is pretty well organized, wheels within wheels and fences on fences. You get something on one of them and the rest of the crowd will perjure themselves black in the face to get him off, with the result that your case will be laughed out of court and the man you're really after – the chap who's running the stones under your nose – is a thousand miles away with a grin on his face. You've got to land him first and the others later, if the chief wants them. The chances are, though, that he'll be well satisfied to have the goods on the crook that's doing the main part of the work."
"Well," drawled Marks, "I trust he gets his satisfaction. Got any ideas on the matter?"
"Nary an idea. The stones were sold abroad and presumably they were headed for Hamburg – which would appear to point to a German boat. Four of them, supposedly – one of them, certainly – turned up here without passing through the office or paying the customary duty. Now go to it!"
When Marks got back to his hotel and started to think the problem over, he had to admit that there wasn't very much to "go to." It was the thinnest case he had ever tackled – a perfect circle of a problem, without the slightest sign of a beginning, save the one which was barred.
Anxious as he was to make good, he had to concede that the department's policy of working from the other end of the case was the right course to follow. He had heard of too many arrests that fell flat, too many weary weeks of work that went for nothing – because the evidence was insufficient – not to realize the justice of the regulations that appeared to hamper him.
"No," he thought, as he half dreamed over a pipe-load of tobacco, "the case seems to be impregnable. But there must be some way to jimmy into it if you try long enough."
His first move was the fairly obvious one of searching the newspaper files to discover just what ships had docked during the ten days previous to the appearance of the stones in Wheeling. But this led nowhere, because that week had been a very busy one in maritime circles. The Celtic, the Mauretania, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, the Kronprinzessin Cecelie, the Deutschland and a host of other smaller vessels had landed within that time.
Just as a check upon his observations, he examined the records for the week preceding the first appearance of the diamonds in New York. Here again he ran into a snag, but one which enabled him to eliminate at least half of the vessels he had considered before. However, there still remained a sufficient number to make it impossible to watch all of them or even to fix upon two or three which appeared more suspicious than the others.
The information from abroad pointed to the fact that a German boat was carrying the diamonds, but, Marks figured, there was nothing in the world to prevent the stones from being taken into England or France or Italy and reshipped from there. They had turned up in the United States, so why couldn't they have been slipped through the customs of other countries just as easily?
The one point about the whole matter that appeared significant to him was that two stones had been reported in each case – a pair in Wheeling and another pair in New York. This evidence would be translated either to mean that the smugglers preferred to offer the diamonds in small lots, so as not to center suspicion too sharply in their movements, or that the space which they used to conceal the stones was extremely limited.
Marks inclined to the latter theory, because two stones, rather than one, had been offered in each instance. If the whole lot had been run in, he argued, the men responsible would market them singly, rather than in pairs. This would not detract in the slightest from the value of the stones, as it isn't easy to match rough diamonds and thus increase their market value.
Having settled this matter to his own satisfaction and being convinced that, as not more than two stones were being run in at one time, it would take at least eight more trips to import the entire shipment, "E. Z." settled down to a part of the government detective's work which is the hardest and the most necessary in his life – that which can best be characterized by the phrase "watchful waiting."
For weeks at a time he haunted the docks and wharves along the New York water front. His tall, angular figure became a familiar sight at every landing place and his eyes roamed restlessly over the crowds that came down the gangplank. In a number of instances he personally directed the searching of bags and baggage which appeared to be suspicious. Save for locating a few bolts of valuable lace and an oil painting concealed in the handle of a walking stick which was patently hollow, he failed to turn up a thing.
The only ray of hope that he could glimpse was the fact that, since he had been assigned to the case, four more stones had been reported – again in pairs. This proved that his former reasoning had been correct and also that the smugglers evidently intended to bring in all of the twenty-one stones, two at a time. But when he came to catalog the hiding places which might be used to conceal two articles of the size of the stones already spotted, he was stumped. The list included a walking stick, the heels of a pair of women's shoes, two dummy pieces of candy concealed in a box of real confections, a box of talcum, a bag of marbles, the handle of an umbrella, or any one of a number of other trinkets which travelers carry as a matter of course or bring home as curios or gifts.
Finally, after two solid months of unproductive work, he boarded the midnight train for Washington and strolled into the chief's office the following morning, to lay his cards on the table.
"Frankly," he admitted, "I haven't accomplished a thing. I'm as far from breaking into the circle as I was at the beginning, and, so far as I can see, there isn't any hope of doing it for some time to come."
"Well," inquired the chief, "do you want to be relieved of the case or do you want me to drop the matter entirely – to confess that the Customs Service has been licked by a single clever smuggler?"
"Not at all!" and Marks's tone indicated that such a thought had never entered his head. "I want the Service to stick with the case and I want to continue to handle it. But I do want a definite assurance of time."
"How much time?"
"That I can't say. The only lead I've located – and that isn't sufficient to be dignified by the term 'clue' – will take weeks and probably months to run to earth. I don't see another earthly trail to follow, but I would like to have time to see whether this one leads anywhere."
"All right," agreed the chief, fully realizing what "E. Z." was up against and not being hurried by any pressure from the outside – for the case had been carefully kept out of the newspapers – "this is September. Suppose we say the first of the year? How does that suit you?"
"Fair enough, if that's the best you can do."
"I'm afraid it is," was the comment from across the desk, "because that's all the case is worth to us. Your time is valuable and we can't afford to spend a year on any case – unless it's something as big as the sugar frauds. Stick with it until New Year's, and if nothing new develops before then we'll have to admit we're licked and turn you loose on something else."
"Thanks, Chief," said Marks, getting up from his chair. "You can depend upon my doing everything possible in the next three months to locate the leak and I surely appreciate your kindness in not delivering an ultimatum that you want the smuggler or my job. But then I guess you know that I couldn't work any harder than I'm going to, anyhow."
"Possibly," agreed the head of the Service, "and then, again, it may be because I have confidence that you'll turn the trick within the year. Want any help from this end?"
"No, thanks. This looks like a one-man game and it ought not to take more than one man to finish it. A whole bunch of people always clutter up the place and get you tangled in their pet theories and personal ideas. What I would like, though, is to be kept in close touch with any further developments concerning stones that appear later on – where they are located – their exact weight and diameter, and any other facts that might indicate a possible hiding place."
"You'll get that, all right," promised the chief. "And I trust that you'll develop a red-hot trail of your own before January first."
With that Marks shook hands and started back to New York, fairly well pleased with the results of his trip, but totally disgusted with the lack of progress which he had made since leaving Buffalo.
Early in October a message from Washington informed him that a couple of uncut diamonds had turned up in Cincinnati, stones which answered to the description of a pair in the Dillingham collection.
Around the 10th of November another pair was heard from in Boston, and anyone who was familiar with Marks and his methods would have noted a tightening of the muscles around his mouth and a narrowing of his eyes which always indicated that he was nearing the solution of a difficulty.
After receiving the November message he stopped haunting the wharves and commenced to frequent the steamship offices of the Hamburg-American, North German Lloyd and Llanarch lines. The latter, as you probably know, is operated by Welsh and British capital and runs a few small boats carrying passengers who would ordinarily travel second class, together with a considerable amount of freight.
When the first day of December dawned, Marks drew a deep-red circle around the name of the month on his calendar and emitted a prayerful oath, to the effect he'd "be good and eternally damned if that month didn't contain an unexpected Christmas present for a certain person." He made no pretense of knowing who the person was – but he did feel that he was considerably closer to his prey than he had been five months before.
Fate, as some one has already remarked, only deals a man a certain number of poor hands before his luck changes. Sometimes it gets worse, but, on the average, it improves. In Ezra Marks's case Fate took the form of a storm at sea, one of those winter hurricanes that sweep across the Atlantic and play havoc with shipping.
Ezra was patiently waiting for one of three boats. Which one, he didn't know – but by the process of elimination he had figured to a mathematical certainty that one of them ought to carry two uncut diamonds which were destined never to visit the customs office. Little by little, through the months that had passed, he had weeded out the ships which failed to make port at the time the diamonds arrived – calculating the time by the dates on which the stones appeared elsewhere – and there were only three ships left. One of them was a North German Lloyder, the second belonged to the Hamburg-American fleet, and the third possessed an unpronounceable Welsh name and flew the pennant of the Llanarch line.
As it happened, the two German ships ran into the teeth of the gale and were delayed three days in their trip, while the Welsh boat missed the storm entirely and docked on time.
Two days later came a message from Washington to the effect that two diamonds, uncut, had been offered for sale in Philadelphia.
"Have to have one more month," replied Marks. "Imperative! Can practically guarantee success by fifteenth of January" – for that was the date on which the Welsh ship was due to return.
"Extension granted," came the word from Washington. "Rely on you to make good. Can't follow case any longer than a month under any circumstances."
Marks grinned when he got that message. The trap was set, and, unless something unforeseen occurred, "E. Z." felt that the man and the method would both be in the open before long.
When the Welsh ship was reported off quarantine in January, Marks bundled himself into a big fur coat and went down the bay in one of the government boats, leaving instructions that, the moment the ship docked, she was to be searched from stem to stern.
"Don't overlook as much as a pill box or a rat hole," he warned his assistants, and more than a score of men saw to it that his instructions were carried out to the letter.
Beyond exhibiting his credentials, Marks made no effort to explain why the ship was under suspicion. He watched the deck closely to prevent the crew from throwing packages overboard, and as soon as they reached dock he requested all officers to join him in one of the big rooms belonging to the Customs Service. There he explained his reasons for believing that some one on board was guilty of defrauding the government out of duty on a number of uncut diamonds.
"What's more," he concluded, at the end of an address which was purposely lengthy in order to give his men time to search the ship, "I am willing to stake my position against the fact that two more diamonds are on board the ship at this moment!"
Luckily, no one took him up – for he was wrong.
The captain, pompous and self-assertive, preferred to rise and rant against the "infernal injustice of this high-handed method."
Marks settled back to listen in silence and his fingers strayed to the side pocket of his coat where his pet pipe reposed. His mind strayed to the thought of how his men were getting along on the ship, and he absent-mindedly packed the pipe and struck a match to light it.
It was then that his eye fell upon the man seated beside him – Halley, the British first mate of the steamer. He had seen him sitting there before, but had paid little attention to him. Now he became aware of the fact that the mate was smoking a huge, deep-bowled meerschaum pipe. At least, it had been in his mouth ever since he entered, ready to be smoked, but unlighted.
Almost without thinking about it, Marks leaned forward and presented the lighted match, holding it above the mate's pipe.
"Light?" he inquired, in a matter-of-fact tone.
To his amazement, the other started back as if he had been struck, and then, recovering himself, muttered: "No, thanks. I'm not smoking."
"Not smoking?" was the thought that flashed through Marks's head, "then why – "
But the solution of the matter flashed upon him almost instantly. Before the mate had time to move, Marks's hand snapped forward and seized the pipe. With the same movement he turned it upside down and rapped the bowl upon the table. Out fell a fair amount of tobacco, followed by two slate-colored pebbles which rolled across the table under the very eyes of the captain!
"I guess that's all the evidence we need!" Marks declared, with a laugh of relief. "You needn't worry about informing your consul and entering a protest, Captain Williams. I'll take charge of your mate and these stones and you can clear when you wish."