On Secret Service

"Rather long for her to make her way to the office of her husband, find he wasn't there, and come right back, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir – but you must remember I wasn't countin' the minutes, so to speak. Maybe it was only three – maybe it was ten. Anyhow, it was just nine-thirty when she left. I remember looking at the clock when she went out."

From the watchman's house, located well over in the northeastern section of the city, Taylor made his way to Madelaine James's apartment on Connecticut Avenue, discovering that young lady on the point of setting off to keep a luncheon engagement.

"I won't keep you a minute, Madelaine," promised the Secret Service operative. "Just want to ask what you know about Mrs. Mahlon Prentice?"

"Wife of the Third Assistant Secretary of State?"

Taylor nodded.

"She's a Chicago woman, I believe. Came here a couple of years ago when her husband received his appointment. Rather good-looking and very popular. I happened to be at a dinner with her last evening and – "

"You what?"

"I was at a dinner at the Westovers' last night," repeated the James girl, "and Mrs. Prentice was among those present. Looked stunning, too. What's the trouble?"

"What time was the dinner?" Taylor countered.

"Eight o'clock, but of course it didn't start until nearly eight-thirty."

"And what time did Mrs. Prentice leave?"

"A few minutes after I did. She was just going up for her wraps as I came downstairs at eleven o'clock."

"You are certain that she was there all evening – that she didn't slip out for half an hour or so?"

"Of course I'm sure, Mell," the girl replied, a trace of petulance in her voice. "Why all the questions? Do you suspect the wife of the Third Assistant Secretary of State of robbing a bank?"

"Not a bank," Taylor admitted, "but it happens that the safe in her husband's office was opened last night and a highly important slip of paper abstracted. What's more, the watchman on duty in the building is ready to swear that Mrs. Prentice came in shortly before nine-thirty, and went out some five or ten minutes later, stating that her husband had evidently finished his work and left."

"That's impossible! No matter what the watchman says, there are a score of people who dined with Mrs. Prentice last evening and who know that she didn't leave the Westovers' until after eleven. Dinner wasn't over by nine-thirty, and she couldn't have gotten to the State Department and back in less than twenty minutes at the inside. It's ridiculous, that's all!"

"But the watchman!" exclaimed Taylor. "He knows Mrs. Prentice and says he couldn't miss that green-and-fur coat of hers in the dark. Besides, she spoke to him as she was leaving."

Madelaine James was silent for a moment, and a tiny frown appeared between her eyes, evidence of the fact that she was doing some deep thinking.

Then: "Of course she spoke! Anyone who would go to the trouble of copying Mrs. Prentice's distinctive cloak would realize that some additional disguise was necessary. Last night, if you remember, was quite cold. Therefore it would be quite natural that the woman who impersonated Mrs. Prentice should have her collar turned up around her face and probably a drooping hat as well. The collar, in addition to concealing her features, would muffle her voice, while the watchman, not suspecting anything, would take it for granted that the green cloak was worn by the wife of the Under Secretary – particularly when she spoke to him in passing."

"You mean, then, that some one deliberately impersonated Mrs. Prentice and took a chance on getting past the watchman merely because she wore a cloak of the same color?"

"The same color – the same style – practically the same coat," argued Miss James. "What's more, any woman who would have the nerve to try that would probably watch Prentice's office from the outside, wait for the light to go out, and then stage her visit not more than five minutes later, so's to make it appear plausible. How was the safe opened?"

"Stethoscope. Placed the cup on the outside, and then listened to the tumblers as they fell. Simplest thing in the world with an antiquated box like that."

"What's missing?"

By this time Taylor felt that their positions had been reversed. He, who had come to question, was now on the witness stand, while Madelaine James was doing the cross-examining. But he didn't mind. He knew the way the girl's mind worked, quickly and almost infallibly – her knowledge of women in general and Washington society in particular making her an invaluable ally in a case like this.

"A slip of paper some six inches long and two inches wide," he said, with a smile. "The key to the Carruthers Code, probably the most efficient cipher in the world, but now rendered worthless unless the original slip is located before it reaches some foreign power."

"Right!" snapped Miss James. "Get busy on your end of the matter. See what you can find out concerning this mysterious woman in the green cloak. I'll work along other and what you would probably call strictly unethical lines. I've got what a man would term a 'hunch,' but in a woman it is 'intuition' – and therefore far more likely to be right. See you later!" and with that she was off toward her car.

"But what about your luncheon engagement?" Taylor called after her.

"Bother lunch," she laughed back over her shoulder. "If my hunch is right I'll make your chief pay for my meals for the next year!"

The next that Taylor heard from his ally was a telephone call on the following evening, instructing him to dig up his evening clothes and to be present at a certain reception that evening.

"I have reason to believe," said Madelaine's voice, "that the lady of the second green cloak will be present. Anyhow, there'll be several of your friends there – including myself, Mrs. Armitage, and an ambassador who doesn't stand any too well with the Administration. In fact, I have it on good authority that he's on the verge of being recalled. Naturally we don't want him to take a slip of paper, some six inches by two, with him!"

"How do you know he hasn't it already?"

"He doesn't return from New York until six o'clock this evening, and the paper is far too valuable to intrust to the mails or to an underling. Remember, I'm not certain that it is he who is supposed to get the paper eventually, but I do know who impersonated Mrs. Prentice, and I likewise know that the lady in question has not communicated with any foreign official in person. Beyond that we'll have to take a chance on the evening's developments," and the receiver was replaced before Taylor could frame any one of the score of questions he wanted to ask.

Even at the reception that night he was unable to get hold of Madelaine James long enough to find out just what she did know. In fact, it was nearly midnight before he caught the signal that caused him to enter one of the smaller and rather secluded rooms apart from the main hall.

There he found a tableau that was totally unexpected.

In one corner of the room, her back against the wall and her teeth bared in a snarl which distorted her usually attractive features into a mask of hate, stood Mrs. Armitage. Her hands were crossed in front of her in what appeared to be an unnatural attitude until Taylor caught a glimpse of polished steel and realized that the woman had been handcuffed.

"There," announced Madelaine, "in spite of your friend the watchman, stands 'Mrs. Prentice.' You'll find the green cloak in one of the closets at her home, and the stethoscope is probably concealed somewhere around the house. However, that doesn't matter. The main thing is that we have discovered the missing slip of paper. You'll find it on the table over there."

Taylor followed the girl's gesture toward a table at the side of the room. But there, instead of the cipher key that he had expected, he saw only – a gold bracelet!

"What's the idea?" he demanded. "Where's the paper?"

"Snap open the bracelet," directed the girl. "What do you see?"

"It looks like – by gad! it is! – a tightly wrapped spindle of paper!" and a moment later the original of the Carruthers Code reposed safely in the Secret Service agent's vest pocket. As he tossed the empty bracelet back on the table he heard a sound behind him and turned just in time to see the woman in the corner slip to the floor in a dead faint.

"Now that we've got her," inquired Madelaine James, "what'll we do with her?"

"Take off the handcuffs, leave the room, and close the door," directed Taylor. "She'll hardly care to make any fuss when she comes to, and the fact that she is unconscious gives us an excellent opportunity for departing without a scene."

"But what I'd like to know," he asked, as they strolled back toward the main ballroom, "is how you engineered the affair?"

"I told you I had an intuition," came the reply, "and you laughed at me. Yes you did, too! It wasn't apparent on your face, but I could feel that inside yourself you were saying, 'Just another fool idea.' But Mrs. Armitage was preying on my mind. I didn't like the way she had slipped one over on us in connection with the leak on the peace note. Then, too, she seemed to have no visible means of support, but plenty of money.

"I felt certain that she wasn't guilty of blackmail or any of the more sordid kinds of crime, but the fact that she was on terms of familiarity with a number of diplomats, and that she seemed to have a fondness for army and navy officials, led me to believe that she was a sort of super spy, sent over here for a specific purpose. The instant you mentioned the Carruthers Code she sprang to my mind. A bill, slipped into the fingers of her maid, brought the information about the green cloak, and the rest was easy.

"I figured that she'd have the cipher key on her to-night, for it was her first opportunity of passing it along to the man I felt certain she was working for. Sure enough, as she passed him about half an hour ago she tapped her bracelet, apparently absent-mindedly. As soon as he was out of sight I sent one of the maids with a message that some one wanted to see her in one of the smaller rooms. Thinking that it was the ambassador, she came at once. I was planted behind the door, handcuffed her before she knew what I was doing, and then signaled you!

"Quite elementary, my dear Melville, quite elementary!"

"That," added Quinn, "was the last they heard of Mrs. Armitage. Taylor reported the matter at once, but the chief said that as they had the code they better let well enough alone. The following day the woman left Washington, and no one has heard from her since – except for a package that reached Taylor some months later. There was nothing in it except that photograph yonder, and, as Taylor was interested only in his bride, née Madelaine James, he turned it over to me for my collection."

XXIV

FIVE INCHES OF DEATH

"Quinn," I said one evening when the veteran of the United States Secret Service appeared to be in one of his story-spinning moods, "you've told me of cases that have to do with smuggling and spies, robberies and fingerprints and frauds, but you've never mentioned the one crime that is most common in the annals of police courts and detective bureaus."

"Murder?" inquired Quinn, his eyes shifting to the far wall of his library-den.

"Precisely. Haven't government detectives ever been instrumental in solving a murder mystery?"

"Yes, they've been mixed up in quite a few of them. There was the little matter of the Hallowell case – where the crime and the criminal were connected by a shoelace – and the incident of 'The Red Circle.' But murder, as such, does not properly belong in the province of the government detective. Only when it is accompanied by some breach of the federal laws does it come under the jurisdiction of the men from Washington. Like the Montgomery murder mystery, for example."

"Oh yes, the one connected with the postmark that's framed on your wall over there!" I exclaimed. "I'd forgotten about that. Hal Preston handled it, didn't he – the same man responsible for running down 'The Trail of the White Mice'?"

"That's the one," said Quinn, and I was glad to see him settle luxuriously back in his old armchair – for that meant that he was preparing to recall the details of an adventure connected with a member of one of the government detective services.

If it hadn't been for the fact that Preston was in California at the time, working on the case of a company that was using the mails for illegal purposes, it is extremely doubtful if the mystery would ever have been solved [Quinn continued]; certainly not in time to prevent the escape of the criminal.

But Hal's investigations took him well up into the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevadas, and one morning he awoke to find the whole town in which he was stopping ablaze with a discussion of the "Montgomery mystery," as they called it.

It appeared from the details which Preston picked up in the lobby of his hotel that Marshall Montgomery had settled down in that section of the country some three years before, but that he had surrounded himself with an air of aloofness and detachment which had made him none too popular. Men who had called to see him on matters of business had left smarting under the sting of an ill-concealed snub, while it was as much as a book agent's life was worth to try to gain entrance to the house.

"It wasn't that he was stingy or close-fisted," explained one of the men who had known Montgomery. "He bought more Liberty Bonds than anyone else in town – but he bought them through his bank. Mailed the order in, just as he did with his contributions to the Red Cross and the other charitable organizations. Wouldn't see one of the people who went out to his place. In fact, they couldn't get past the six or eight bulldogs that guard the house."

"And yet," said Preston, "I understand that in spite of his precautions he was killed last night?"

"Nobody knows just when he was killed," replied the native, "or how. That's the big question. When his servant, a Filipino whom he brought with him, went to wake him up this morning he found Montgomery's door locked. That in itself was nothing unusual – for every door and window in the place was securely barred before nine o'clock in the evening. But when Tino, the servant, had rapped several times without receiving any reply, he figured something must be wrong. So he got a stepladder, propped it up against the side of the house, and looked in through the window. What he saw caused him to send in a hurry call for the police."

"Well," snapped Preston, "what did he see?"

"Montgomery, stretched out on the floor near the door, stone dead – with a pool of blood that had formed from a wound in his hand!"

"In his hand?" Preston echoed. "Had he bled to death?"

"Apparently not – but that's where the queer angle to the case comes in. The door was locked from the inside – not only locked, but bolted, so there was no possibility of anyone having entered the room. The windows were tightly guarded by a patented burglar-proof device which permitted them to be open about three inches from the bottom, but prevented their being raised from the outside."

"Was there a chimney or any other possible entrance to the room?"

"None at all. Three windows and a door. Montgomery's body was sprawled out on the rug near the doorway – a revolver in his right hand, a bullet hole through the palm of his left. The first supposition, of course, was that he had accidentally shot himself and had bled to death. But there wasn't enough blood for that. Just a few drops on the table and a small pool near the body. They're going to hold an autopsy later in the day and – "

It was at that moment that the Post-office operative became conscious that some one was calling his name, and, turning, he beckoned to the bell-boy who was paging him.

"Mr. Preston? Gentleman over there'd like to speak to you." Then the boy added in a whisper, "Chief o' police."

Excusing himself, Preston crossed the lobby to where a large and official-looking man was standing, well out of hearing distance of the guests who passed.

"Is this Mr. Preston of the Postal Inspection Service?" inquired the head of the local police force, adding, after the government operative had nodded. "I am the chief of police here."

"Glad to meet you, Chief," was Preston's response. "I haven't had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, though of course I know you by sight." (He neglected to add how recently this knowledge had been acquired.) "What can I do for you?"

"Have you heard about the murder of Montgomery Marshall?"

"Only the few details that I picked up in the lobby just now. But a case of that kind is entirely out of my line, you know."

"Ordinarily it would be," agreed the other, "but here's something that I think puts a different complexion on things," and he extended a bloodstained scrap of paper for Preston to examine.

"That was found under the dead man's hand," the chief continued. "As you will note, it originally formed part of the wrapping of a special-delivery parcel which reached Montgomery about eight o'clock last night – just before the house was locked up, in fact. Tino, the Filipino servant, signed for it and took it in, placing it upon the table in the room in which his master was found this morning. The scrap of paper you are holding is just enough to show the postmark 'Sacramento' – but it's quite evident that the package had something to do with the murder."

"Which is the reason that you want me to look into it, eh?"

"That's the idea. I knew that you were in town, and the very fact that this box came through the mails makes it necessary for the Post-office Department to take cognizance of what otherwise would be a job for the police force alone. Am I right?"

"Perfectly," replied Preston. "Provided you have reason to believe that there was some connection between the special-delivery package and the crime itself. What was in the box?"

"Not a thing!"

"What?"

"Not a thing!" repeated the chief. "Perfectly empty – at least when we found it. The lid was lying on the table, the rest of the box on the floor. The major portion of the wrapping paper had been caught under a heavy paper weight and it appears that Montgomery, in falling, caught at the table to save himself and probably ripped away the scrap of paper I have just given you."

"But I thought his body was found near the door?"

"It was, but that isn't far from the table, which is jammed against the wall in front of one of the windows. Come on up to the house with me and we'll go over the whole thing."

Glad of the excuse to look into a crime which appeared to be inexplicable, Preston accompanied the chief to the frame dwelling on the outskirts of town where Montgomery Marshall, hermit, had spent the last three years of his life.

The house was set well back from the road, with but a single gateway in a six-foot wall of solid masonry, around the top of which ran several strands of barbed wire.

"Montgomery erected the wall himself," explained the chief. "Had it put up before he ever moved into the house, and then, in addition, kept a bunch of the fiercest dogs I ever knew."

"All of which goes to prove that he feared an attack," Preston muttered. "In spite of his precautions, however, they got him! The question now is: Who are 'they' and how did they operate?"

The room in which the body had been found only added to the air of mystery which surrounded the entire problem.

In spite of what he had been told Preston had secretly expected to find some kind of an opening through which a man could have entered. But there was none. The windows, as the Postal operative took care to test for himself, were tightly locked, though open a few inches from the bottom. The bolt on the door very evidently had been shattered by the entrance of the police, and the dark-brown stain on the rug near the door showed plainly where the body had been found.

"When we broke in," explained the chief, "Montgomery was stretched out there, facing the door. The doctor said that he had been dead about twelve hours, but that it was impossible for the wound in his hand to have caused his death."

"How about a poisoned bullet, fired through the opening in the window?"

"Not a chance! The only wound on the body was the one through the palm of his hand. The bullet had struck on the outside of the fleshy part near the wrist and had plowed its way through the bone, coming out near the base of the index finger at the back. And it was a bullet from his own revolver! We found it embedded in the top of the table there." And the chief pointed to a deep scar in the mahogany and to the marks made by the knives of the police when they had dug the bullet out.

"But how do you know it wasn't a bullet of the same caliber, fired from outside the window?" persisted Preston.

For answer the chief produced Montgomery's revolver, with five cartridges still in the chambers.

"If you'll note," he said, "each of these cartridges is scored or seamed. That's an old trick – makes the lead expand when it hits and tears an ugly hole, just like a 'dum-dum.' The bullet we dug out of the table was not only a forty-five, as these are, but it had been altered in precisely the same manner. So, unless you are inclined to the coincidence that the murderer used a poisoned bullet of the same size and make and character as those in Montgomery's gun, you've got to discard that theory."

"Does look like pulling the long arm of coincidence out of its socket," Preston agreed. "So I guess we'll have to forget it. Where's the box you were talking about?"

"The lid is on the table, just as we found it. The lower portion of the box is on the floor, where the dead man apparently knocked it when he fell. Except for the removal of the body, nothing in the room has been touched."

Stooping, Preston picked up the box and then proceeded to study it in connection with the lid and the torn piece of wrapping paper upon the table. It was after he had examined the creases in the paper, fitting them carefully around the box itself, that he inquired: "Do you notice anything funny about the package, Chief?"

"Only that there's a hole at one end of it, just about big enough to put a lead pencil through."

"Yes, and that same hole appears in the wrapping paper," announced Preston. "Couple that with the fact that the box was empty when you found it and I think we will have – "

"What?" demanded the chief, as Preston paused.

"The solution to the whole affair," was the reply. "Or, at least, as much of it as refers to the manner in which Montgomery met his death. By the way, what do you know about the dead man?"

"Very little. He came here some three years ago, bought this place, paying cash for it; had the wall built, and then settled down. Never appeared to do any work, but was never short of money. Has a balance of well over fifty thousand dollars in the bank right now. Beyond the fact that he kept entirely to himself and refused to allow anyone but Tino, his servant, to enter the gate, he really had few eccentricities. Some folks say that he was a miser, but there are a dozen families here that wouldn't have had any Christmas dinner last year if it hadn't been for him – while his contribution to the Red Cross equaled that of anyone in town."

"Apart from his wanting to be alone, then, he was pretty close to being human?"

"That's it, exactly – and most of us have some peculiarity. If we didn't have we'd be even more unusual."

"What about Tino, the servant?" queried Preston.

"I don't think there's any lead there," the chief replied. "I hammered away at him for an hour this morning. He doesn't speak English any too well, but I gathered that Montgomery picked him up in the Philippines just before he came over here. The boy was frightened half out of his senses when I told him that his master had been killed. You've got to remember, though, that if Tino had wanted to do it he had a thousand opportunities in the open. Besides, what we've got to find out first is how Montgomery met his death?"

"Does the Filipino know anything about his master's past?" asked Preston, ignoring the chief's last remark.

"He says not. Montgomery was on his way back to the States from Africa or some place – stopped off in the islands – spent a couple of months there – hired Tino and sailed for San Francisco."