Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/99

 mechanic, who are evidently waiting there, in the throng, to cross in the next boat.

He observes the half-drunken man, the cove in the white choker, and Jake, with a cigar in his mouth, (see illustration on page 8) but they are not together. He is anxious to get rid of his $3,000 bogus, and to finger the $540 good money that Jake is to pay him "on the sly." He advances—"Jake Buck" tips him the wink, a preconcerted signal between Jake and his Chief passes, and the next moment the big dealer is stoutly grasped by the sleek parson and his aids, who clap the iron ruffles upon his wrists, and he is a fast prisoner, in the hands of the U. S. Secret Service Detectives—very much to his surprise! The counterfeit $3,000 are found secreted in his breast coat pocket in a neatly closed parcel, and thus the Chief has the famous "Bill Gurney," one of the heaviest coney men in America "dead to rights;" and the prime source through which have come the cunningly engraved $20 notes then lately "shoved" on the market is discovered, beyond peradventure.

Bill Gurney is a wily old dog, however. The police had had their eyes on him for years, and he has several times been pulled—but escaped. He had managed like Pete McCartney and Fred. Biebusch to elude conviction or imprisonment in one why or another, and for a long time to keep the authorities at fault regarding his secret infamous work. But the U. S. Detectives finally got upon his track, and this notorious villain was at last driven to cover, and on this occasion was fairly "nabbed in the hock!"

The ex-prison bird, who had been carefully watched, meanwhile, was also secured that night; and thus two shrewd counterfeiters—the greater and the less were safely lodged in limbo, by means of the cleverly contrived but effective ruse of Col. Whitley and his operatives.