Money to Burn/Chapter 21

HE mission of Martin P. Hoagland to Santo Domingo had its origin in the greatest shock ever received by certain officials not unconnected with the currency of the United States of America. As the secret-service operative told it to his pseudo-physician, there in the fortress of Don Ramon Villeta, the history was shorn until its remaining details constituted the barest statement of fact. What, however, had happened was a clash between temperament and system.

Behind the high walls that protect the Government Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, an intricate regimen rules. Laws as stringent as ever those of Draco decree each movement of each employee for each second of his eight-hour day. Among the money printers everybody is inspected; every part of his job is checked up every minute. System commands it and system is supreme

Now, concerning system, two things are axiomatic. First, the better the system, the fewer the permitted exceptions; next, when an exception is forced upon a system, from the outside, then, the better the system, the worse the confusion. With the former of these axioms, John H. Farley, in charge of the bureau, had been long acquainted. He had just passed his fifty-third birthday when the latter bumped into him.

That year, the second of January, fell on a Tuesday and the bureau opened for business at nine a. m. When he had closed up shop at noon on Saturday, December 30th, Farley, lean and long, looked back on the thus concluded year with all the satisfaction of which his cautious nature was capable. This hook-nosed man with the worried air was head of the division that actually produces America's paper money; he was also a stickler for peace and quiet, and he had made good.

No damaged plates, a minimum of reprimands to employees, scarcely any ink troubles, less than ever the usual number of dismissals, 72.5 per cent of first printings approved on initial inspection, and all deliveries on time—a commendable achievement. He could recall but one eruptive half hour, and that had been due only to his handsome, but mature, stenographer:

“I—I don't see why I shouldn't be assistant, instead of their running Mr. Dodd over my head!”

She had grown from an awkward girl into a painstaking woman at the bureau, but she had yet to appreciate the fine ideal of the civil service board.

“I've been here for years,” she sobbed. “I know the place inside out and I'm a lot more capable than Mr. Dodd is, but of course I'm only a woman, and all he has to do is pass an examination!”

A woman. Somehow, except during one condescending dinner at her boarding house, Farley had seldom before so considered her. He wondered why, in spite of her undeniable good looks, she had always seemed as permanent a fixture of this office as its very vaults; it must be because she was so efficient. He debated whether, being a woman, she had suppressed the more painful prong of her grievance; whether her keen glance had seen that sentence relating to her in the annual character report that he submitted to the secret service:

On this morning of January 2d, however, Farley shrugged the doubt away. His desk was open and in order, and, as far as her work was concerned, Miss Greene was her conscientious self again.

Farley touched a couple of his desk bells. From opposite doorways two men appeared. Luther Lemmell, long in the service, was little and fussy. Grantley Dodd was a bare thirty-five, broad and prosperous looking, with a gold chain conspicuously stretched across the curve of his already expansive waistline.

“We're going to begin the New Year by printing the first of the hundred-dollar Fillmore heads.” Farley stroked his jawbone between thumb and forefinger. “The engravers made a time record with their part of the job. The plates reached us”—he consulted an office memorandum—“at eleven twenty on Saturday. Now we're going to beat the engravers. You gentlemen locked the plates in the safe”—again he consulted the memorandum—“at eleven twenty-five. They'll come out right now at—let's see—nine ten. They'll be on the presses in ten minutes—I've notified Gough about the make-ready—and we'll have our first official printing under way at nine thirty sharp. Mr. Lemmell, will you please start the combination?”

It was one of the laws of the great system that only three persons should have knowledge of a safe's combination; one, Farley himself, hold ing the entire key; the others, two trusted employees—in this case Messrs. Lemmell and Dodd—who guarded one half apiece. At unexpected moments, the combination was changed. The two men left the quiet office, and Mr. Farley turned to Cecilia Greene and began the dictation of routine instructions.

He did not get far. Miss Greene was seated on the edge of the desk chair beside him, her pencil poised in air awaiting his sixth sentence, when Dodd and Lemmell rushed back.

“They're gone!”

Farley leaped to his feet. Miss Greene, pencil and notebook still in hand, leaped to hers.

“Gone?” echoed Farley. “You mean the Fillmore plates are not in the safe where you put them?”

Dodd's large hands trembled; Lemmell nodded convulsively. Farley strode to the door.

“Close the building!” Farley ordered his two assistants. “Get the secret service on the phone—Chief Boyle—then come back to the vault. I must make sure.”

Miss Greene followed close at his heels. A glance over his shoulder revealed her interrogative eyes.

“Yes, yes, come along,” said he. In the money factory everything is done more safely in pairs.

The room to which they went was literally a steel room, and in their speed thither they brushed with no nod of recognition past the guard at its door. He was an old government servant, far above suspicion in this place where every one was more or less suspect; but—what was of greater weight—he would be the last man to know the combination of the big safe within. There was now no use in questioning him. Inside, however, the thick door of that safe stood open just as Lemmell and Dodd had left it in their frantic haste to communicate the news.

“Bad, bad!” Farley groaned at this evidence of their carelessness. He and Miss Greene ran directly to the yawning safe.

“They were to put them here—in this main compartment,” said Farley, touching the indicated shelf.

His secretary had been far too long in the bureau not to be jealous of its honor. She peered this way and that with nervous, searching eyes intent upon a clew. The room was as vaultlike as always, a series of steel walls, steel compartments, steel locks. It was not to be believed that anything could have been forcibly tampered with. Miss Greene looked toward the single entrance door; it was of course ajar, but the guard, his back scrupulously to them, leaned beside it, a barricade against intrusion.

Then, suddenly, within the safe itself, something out of the ordinary must have caught the secretary's scrutiny, for, while her chief leaned forward to the ravished shelf, she raised herself quickly to her tiptoes and reached far up over his bent back. From a high pigeonhole she pulled down a heavy package.

“Mr. Farley!” she gasped.

Before he gathered her meaning, Lemmell and Dodd pushed past the guard.

“Chief Boyle is on the phone now, sir,” said Lemmell. “Will you speak to”

He stopped. Both newcomers stared at a small paper-wrapped parcel that lay in Miss Greene's outstretched hands. She stood there, pale and swaying a little from the excitement of it.

“They're the Fillmore plates, all right,” cried the quickly exultant Dodd. “I know the shape”

“And I remember the wrapping paper,” said Lemmell.

Farley had regained a degree of self-control. “You put them in the main compartment, didn't you?”

“Yes, yes!” declared both Dodd and Lemmell vigorously.

Miss Greene raised her perfect eyebrows: “They were on the upper shelf. Oh, they are the Fillmore head, aren't they?”

Farley seized them and tore off the cover. “Of course they are!” He was saved. “And yet”

“And yet,” blurted Dodd, “that isn't where we put them!”

“No, sir,” Lemmell insisted. “We put them in the main compartment—just where you told us to, and just where you were looking.”

“Are you both certain? You might be mistaken. They were on that upper shelf when we found them. Would you both swear you put them in the main compartment?” With his worried frown he scanned the two men's faces.

“I remember perfectly,” said Dodd, unabashed.

“I'd swear to it,” declared Lemmell imperturbably.

Miss Greene looked at Farley as if for a decision, but before he could speak Dodd's hearty voice cut in.

“Well, anyway, they're found! We should worry. The incident's over.”

“Is it?” pondered his superior. “I wonder!”

That was the prelude to Hoagland's narrative as told to Dan at the palacio. This is what followed:

One morning, a little more than a month previous to Dan's desertion from the S. S. Hawk, a man who had never heard of young Stone, walked, as of right, into Mr. Farley's private office.

He was a large man with flat, red hair and a short but bristling red mustache. Importance declared itself even in the details of his well-cared-for clothes, which were all of one shade or another of brown. It spoke in his brown derby, his brown- braided coat, his brown-braided trousers. It shone in the polish of his neat tan shoes and was impressively evident in a tiny brown neckcloth meticulously tied.

“Mr. Boyle,” said Farley, nervously pacing the floor, “you called me an alarmist when I sent for you about those Fillmore plates, and then found them within five minutes. That was on January 2d. It's now only March 1st—and look here.”

Between trembling fingers he held out two one-hundred-dollar hills to the chief of the secret service. The chief looked questioningly for further enlightenment.

“An hour ago,” continued Farley, “our man Dodd went over to the Marine Exchange Bank to see the president about a reissue of bank notes, and he had to wait for him a full twenty minutes while the banker was 'in conference.' These financiers have no more respect for government officers than they have for bucket-shop sharks. Dodd decided to put in the time beside the receiving teller's window; he knows him slightly. While they two were talking, a depositor came in with a roll of bills and checks. Dodd wasn't much interested, but as the man pushed the deposit through the cage, he noticed one of the new hundred-dollar Fillmore certificates. Something out of the ordinary struck Dodd about this one, and after the deposit had been made, he got the teller to give him a look. He brought the note to me. We compared it with one of ours. It's counterfeit, chief.

Boyle, with the two specimens, went to a window. Through a magnifying glass he compared the certificates.

“If this note is bad,” Boyle gruffly declared, “then, with all due respect to the government engravers, the counterfeit's a better job than the genuine article. When did you put them out?

“Three days ago.” Farley wet his dry lips.

“When'd you get the plates from the engraver?”

“At eleven twenty a.m. on Saturday, the thirtieth of December last. They were brought direct to me by the messenger and were looked at by the people in my office, then at once put into the safe before closing time.”

“Who were those people?”

“Mr. Dodd, Mr. Lemmell and Miss Greene, my stenographer; but they are all trusted and absolutely above suspicion.”

“Oh, sure! What I want to know is how the plates were put in the safe. Miss Greene take them there?”

“Not at all. It's not her place to do it. Dodd and Lemmell went with them. Both men insisted they deposited the plates, as I directed, in the front of the main compartment. They then, in each other's presence, closed the safe, of which I had just changed the combination. According to rule, I next separately gave each man his half of the new combination.”

“I see. On December 30th, you say. Then there were two days when the bureau was shut up. Could a copy of the plates in any way have been made here?”

“Impossible!”

“How about the engraver?”

“He made only the one perfect set, as usual, and destroyed all the false starts in the presence of the regular witnesses.”

“Then there's only one answer. The plates must have been removed in some way and copied. Are you really sure of Lemmell and Dodd? Mightn't they have pieced the combination together?”

“They dislike each other. Lemmell has worked for the bureau over twenty years and feels that Dodd is an upstart. Dodd's been in government service since he was fourteen years old—started as a senate page—and, though he's been with us only six months, he's got a splendid record. On his side, he calls Lemmell an old fogy and fussy and says he ought to be replaced by a younger man.”

One by one, the two men and then Cecilia Greene, and even the stolid guard to the vault, were summoned and interrogated. The last answered the veiled questions that were put to him in an open-eyed wonder and frankness that at once slew suspicion. Each of the others satisfactorily accounted for his time between the hour of closing on December 30th and that of resumption of work of January 2d. Lemmell had spent his holiday in bed with a cold that he hoped to cure before the reopening of the bureau. Dodd took his young wife and baby to Atlantic City, catching the first train after noon by running and then having to run from the return express back to his work. Miss Greene went to a matinée on the Saturday afternoon.

“A gentleman from our boarding house took me,” said she dryly, and she looked at Farley; here was her way of telling him that she was unmarried entirely from choice.

From the theater she had gone to her married sister's at Alexandria, where she “tended the children” until Tuesday morning. This sister, it appeared, was then in hospital, and all possible help was needed at home with the babies.

“That will do,” said Boyle, dismissing her. He directed his next words to Farley. “We can tab up on all their statements, but I think they've told us the truth.”

Farley made certain that the door was fastened before he answered. “Chief, there is only one man who knew the whole combination of that safe and could have removed the plates. That man is myself. I think it is my duty to offer my resignation to the secretary of the treasury.”

The bell of the desk telephone interrupted him.

“Hello!” said Farley info it, and then to his visitor: “It's for you, chief.”

In his turn, Boyle put the receiver to one ear and listened for a moment. Presently he said to Farley: “It's headquarters talking—Hoagland, my right-hand man there. He's got something from a company that makes paper for you. The concern's been taking stock of their warehouses; they've just discovered the loss of three large rolls.”

There was a tense moment in which the two men looked in amazement at each other. Then Boyle shook an advising finger in Farley's gray face.

“Stop printing,” said he.