On Secret Service Part 6

"Of course, it is possible that patriotism might have prompted Mary McNilless to locate the clue which prevented an explosion that would have seriously hampered the munitions industry of the United States--but the fact remains that she did it princ.i.p.ally because she was in love with d.i.c.k Walters, and d.i.c.k happened to be in the Secret Service. It was one case where Cupid scored over Mars."

Bill Quinn eased the game leg which he won as the trophy of a counterfeiting raid some years before into a more comfortable position, reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch, and settled himself for another reminiscence of the Service with which he had formerly been actively connected.

"Mary was--and doubtless still is--one of those red-headed, blue-eyed Irish beauties whom nature has peppered with just enough freckles to make them alluring, evidences that the sun itself couldn't help kissing her. But, from all I've been able to gather, the sun was in a cla.s.s by itself. Until d.i.c.k Walters came upon the scene, Miss McNilless held herself strictly aloof from masculine company and much preferred to spend an evening with her books than to take a trip to Coney or any of the other resorts where a girl's kisses pa.s.s as current coin in payment for three or four hours' outing.

"d.i.c.k was just the kind of chap that would have appealed to Mary, or to 'most any other girl, for that matter. Maybe you remember him. He used to be at the White House during Taft's regime, but they shifted most of the force soon after Wilson came in and d.i.c.k was sent out to the Coast on an opium hunt that kept him busy for more than a year. In fact, he came east just in time to be a.s.signed to the von Ewald case--and, incidentally, to fall foul of Mary and Cupid, a pair that you couldn't tie, much less beat."

The von Ewald case [Quinn continued, after pausing a moment to repack his pipe] was one of the many exploits of the Secret Service that never got in the papers. To be strictly truthful, it wasn't as much a triumph for the S. S. as it was for Mary McNilless--and, besides, we weren't at war with Germany at that time, so it had to be kept rather dark.

But Germany was at war with us. You remember the Black Tom explosion in August, nineteen sixteen? Well, if the plans of von Ewald and his a.s.sociates hadn't been frustrated by a little red-headed girl with exceptional powers of observation, there would have been a detonation in Wilmington, Delaware, that would have made the Black Tom affair, with its damage of thirty millions of dollars, sound like the college yell of a deaf-and-dumb inst.i.tute.

As far back as January, nineteen sixteen, the Secret Service knew that there were a number of Germans in New York who desired nothing so much as to hinder the munitions industry of the United States, despite the fact that we were a neutral nation.

From Harry Newton, the leader in the second plot to destroy the Welland Ca.n.a.l, and from Paul Seib, who was implicated in the attempt to destroy shipping at Hoboken, they forced the information that the conspirators received their orders and drew their pay from a man of many aliases, known to his a.s.sociates as "Number eight fifty-nine" and occasionally, to the world at large, as "von Ewald."

This much was known in Washington--but, when you came to a.n.a.lyze the information, it didn't amount to a whole lot. It's one thing to know that some one is plotting murder and arson on a wholesale scale, but discovering the ident.i.ty of that individual is an entirely different proposition, one which called for all the finesse and obstinacy for which the governmental detective services are famous.

Another factor that complicated the situation was that speed was essential. The problem was entirely different from a counterfeiting or smuggling case, where you can be content to let the people on the other side of the table make as many moves as they wish, with the practical certainty that you'll land them sooner or later. "Give them plenty of rope and they'll land in Leavenworth" is a favorite axiom in the Service--but here you had to conserve your rope to the uttermost. Every day that pa.s.sed meant that some new plot was that much nearer completion--that millions of dollars in property and the lives of no-one-knew-how-many people were still in danger.

So the order went forward from the headquarters of the Service, "Get the man known as von Ewald and get him quick!"

Secret Service men, Postal inspectors, and Department of Justice agents were called in from all parts of the country and rushed to New York, until the metropolis looked like the headquarters of a convention of governmental detectives. Grogan, the chap that landed Perry, the master-counterfeiter, was there, as were George MacMasters and Sid Shields, who prevented the revolution in Cuba three or four years ago.

Jimmy Reynolds was borrowed from the Internal Revenue Bureau, and Althouse, who spoke German like a native, was brought up from the border where he had been working on a propaganda case just across the line.

There must have been forty men turned loose on this a.s.signment alone, and, in the course of the search for von Ewald, there were a number of other developments scarcely less important than the main issue. At least two of these--the Trenton taxicab tangle and the affair of the girl at the switchboard--are exploits worthy of separate mention.

But, in spite of the great array of detective talent, no one could get a line on von Ewald.

In April, when d.i.c.k Walters returned from the Coast, the other men in the Service were frankly skeptical as to whether there was a von Ewald at all. They had come to look upon him as a myth, a bugaboo. They couldn't deny that there must be some guiding spirit to the Teutonic plots, but they rather favored the theory that several men, rather than one, were to blame.

Walters' instructions were just like the rest--to go to New York and stick on the job until the German conspirator was apprehended.

"Maybe it's one man, maybe there're half a dozen," the chief admitted, "but we've got to nail 'em. The very fact that they haven't started anything of consequence since the early part of the year would appear to point to renewed activity very shortly. It's up to you and the other men already in New York to prevent the success of any of these plots."

Walters listened patiently to all the dope that had been gathered and then figured, as had every new man, that it was up to him to do a little sleuthing of his own.

The headquarters of the German agents was supposed to be somewhere in Greenwich Village, on one of those half-grown alleys that always threatens to meet itself coming back. But more than a score of government operatives had combed that part of the town without securing a trace of anything tangible. On the average of once a night the phone at headquarters would ring and some one at the other end would send in a hurry call for help up in the Bronx or in Harlem or some other distant part of the city where he thought he had turned up a clue. The men on duty would leap into the machine that always waited at the curb and fracture every speed law ever made--only to find, when they arrived, that it was a false alarm.

Finally, after several weeks of that sort of thing, conditions commenced to get on d.i.c.k's nerves.

"I'm going to tackle this thing on my own," he announced. "Luck is going to play as much of a part in landing von Ewald as anything else--and luck never hunted with more than one man. Good-by! See you fellows later."

But it was a good many weeks--August, to be precise--before the men in the Federal Building had the opportunity of talking to Walters. He would report over the phone, of course, and drop down there every few days--but he'd only stay long enough to find out if there was any real news or any orders from Washington. Then he'd disappear uptown.

"d.i.c.k's sure got a grouch these days," was the comment that went around after Walters had paid one of his flying visits.

"Yeh," grunted Barry, who was on duty that night, "either the von Ewald case's got on his nerves or he's found a girl that can't see him."

Neither supposition missed the mark very far.

Walters was getting sick and tired of the apparently fruitless chase after an elusive German. He had never been known to flinch in the face of danger--often went out of his way to find it, in fact--but this constant search for a man whom n.o.body knew, a man of whom there wasn't the slightest description, was nerve-racking, to say the least.

Then, too, he had met Mary McNilless.

He'd wandered into the Public Library one evening just before closing time, and, like many another man, had fallen victim to Mary's red hair and Mary's Irish eyes. But a brick wall was a soft proposition compared to Mary McNilless. Snubbing good-looking young men who thought that the tailors were missing an excellent model was part of the day's work with the little library girl--though she secretly admitted to herself that this one was a bit above the average.

d.i.c.k didn't get a rise that night, though, or for some days after. Every evening at seven found him at the desk over which Miss McNilless presided, framing some almost intelligent question about books in order to prolong the conversation. Mary would answer politely and--that was all.

But, almost imperceptibly, a bond of friendship sprang up between them.

Maybe it was the fact that d.i.c.k's mother had been Irish, too, or possibly it was because he admitted to himself that this girl was different from the rest, and, admitting it, laid the foundation for a deep-souled respect that couldn't help but show in his manner.

Within the month d.i.c.k was taking her home, and in six weeks they were good pals, b.u.mming around to queer, out-of-the-way restaurants and planning outings which d.i.c.k, in his heart, knew could never materialize--not until von Ewald had been run to cover, at any rate.

Several times Mary tried to find out her companion's profession--diplomatically, of course, but nevertheless she was curious.

Naturally, d.i.c.k couldn't tell her. Said he had "just finished a job on the Coast and was taking a vacation in New York." But Mary had sense enough to know that he wasn't at leisure. Also that he was working on something that kept his mind constantly active--for several times he had excused himself in a hurry and then returned, anywhere from half an hour to an hour later, with a rather crestfallen expression.

After they had reached the "d.i.c.k and Mary" stage she came right out one night and asked him.

"Hon," he told her, "that's one thing that I've got to keep from you for a while. It's nothing that you would be ashamed of, though, but something that will make you mighty proud. At least," he added, "It'll make you proud if I don't fall down on the job almighty hard. Meanwhile, all I can do is to ask you to trust me. Will you?"

The tips of her fingers rested on the back of his hand for just a moment before she said, "You know I will, d.i.c.k"--and neither of them mentioned the subject from that time on.

On the night of the Black Tom explosion, early in August, d.i.c.k didn't show up at the Library at the usual hour, and, while this didn't worry Mary, because it had happened several times before, she began to be annoyed when three nights pa.s.sed the same way. Of course, she had no way of knowing that the Service had received a tip from a stool pigeon on the pay roll of the New York police force that "a bunch of Germans were planning a big explosion of some kind" just a few hours before the earth rocked with the force of the blow-up in Jersey. Every government operative in the city had been informed of the rumor, but few of them had taken it seriously and not one had any reason to expect that the plot would culminate so close to New York. But the echo of the first blast had hardly died away before there were a dozen agents on the spot, weaving a network around the entire district. All they got for their pains, however, was a few suspects who very evidently didn't know a thing.

So it was a very tired and disgusted d.i.c.k who entered the Library four nights later and almost shambled up to Mary's desk.

"I'll be off duty in half an hour," she told him. "From the way you look, you need a little comforting."

"I do that," he admitted. "Don't make me wait any longer than you have to," and he amused himself by glancing over the late seekers after knowledge.

When they had finally seated themselves in a cozy corner of a little restaurant in the upper Forties, d.i.c.k threw caution to the winds and told Mary all about his troubles.

"I haven't the least business to do it," he confessed, "and if the chief found it out I'd be bounced so fast that it would make my head swim.

But, in the first place, I want you to marry me, and I know you wouldn't think of doing that unless you knew something more about me."

There was just the flicker of a smile around Mary's mouth as she said, almost perfunctorily, "No, of course not!" But her intuition told her that this wasn't the time to joke, and, before Walters could go on, she added, "I know you well enough, d.i.c.k, not to worry about that end of it."

So Walters told her everything from the beginning--and it didn't take more than five minutes at that. Outside of the fact that his people lived in Des Moines, that he had been in the Secret Service for eight years, and that he hadn't been able to do a thing toward the apprehension of a certain German spy that the government was extremely anxious to locate, there was pitifully little to tell.

"The whole thing," he concluded, "came to a head the other night--the night I didn't show up. We knew that something was going to break, somewhere, but we couldn't discover where until it was too late to prevent the explosion across the river. Now that they've gotten away with that, they'll probably lay their lines for something even bigger."

"Well, now that I've told you, what d'you think?"

"You mean you'd like to marry me?" Mary asked with a smile.

"I don't know how to put it any plainer," d.i.c.k admitted--and what followed caused the waiter to wheel around and suddenly commence dusting off a table that already was bright enough to see your face in.