CHAPTER XXII
COUNTERFEIT
SO that's that,” said Hoagland.
“But it's not all?” asked Dan Stone.
Hoagland shook his head. There was one scene more.
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but the mills of government are a close second. It was April 3rd in Washington before the affair of the Fillmore certificates came to the personal attention of the secretary of the treasury.
The secretary, who had not before, even in writing, had the case in its entirety presented to him, listened with concentration while first Farley and then Boyle rehearsed their parts in the mystery of the lost-and-found plates and of the subsequent appearance of counterfeit money.
The secretary was of the old school. He looked like a deacon, and, as a matter of fact, in his home town he was one. He was sixty, small and plump, with a genial pink face and effective side whiskers. His first move was to turn to Farley.
“Of course,” said he, “your offer of resignation was very honorable, but of course it was—hum—what I might call too conscientious. Besides, it would attract attention—possibly invite questions. We shan't consider it for a moment. Nevertheless”—he picked up and thoughtfully examined a single pencil astray in the ordered emptiness of his desk—“nevertheless, you must understand that this is a most unfortunate incident—most unfortunate, in view of certain hopes and projects of the administration” He tapped the pencil on his desk's glass top. There was to be a presidential election in November.
The long and lean Farley had been sitting bolt upright in an office chair. He now bent forward, his thin hands spread flat on his high, thin knees.
“There are less than a hundred of the Fillmore certificates in circulation as yet, Mr. Secretary, and we have stopped all printing. Hadn't we better recall the issue at once?”
“Not at all! Not at all!” Mr. Secretary shook his side whiskers vigorously. “Any such course at the present time would subject the government as a whole and this administration in particular to financial annoyance and political ridicule. Er—yes, that; and of course such a process would flatter criminals and encourage crime. To be sure it would.” He turned to Boyle. “Chief,” said he, putting all the force he possessed into his utterance, “these false plates must be found! You have got to ferret out the counterfeiters from their holes. You understand? There is no time to lose. Put every one of your men on the job, if you have to. It is essential that success be accomplished with the utmost speed and—er—lack of publicity.”
Boyle's red mustache contemplatively rose and fell over a tightly bitten, unlighted cigar.
“We can't do quite that, sir,” said he. “We've got a pretty good organization and will win out in the end; but we can't speed up till we've a bit more to go on than we have now. This is an un usual case. These crooks seem to have brains. They've covered up so well, so far, that all we've got to go on to date is that this doesn't seem to be the work of any men figuring in our phony-money records.”
The secretary was about to interrupt, but Boyle indicated that he had not finished.
“Long before counterfeit was even suspected in this affair all possible finger prints on the safe were eradicated, and though we think that there was a removal of the plates from the safe, we have no actual knowledge of it. They were simply, according to two persons, placed on one shelf; after a couple of nights they were missed for five minutes by those same persons; and then, according to two other persons, they were found on another shelf. The only thing we've got to work on is the disappearance of a little paper—possibly mislaid or miscounted—and the appearance of counterfeit money on the market.”
“Well, that's plenty, chief!” said the now thoroughly irritable secretary. “Take it off the market! Meanwhile, the treasury will be obliged to stand the loss.”
“I get you, sir,” said Boyle, “and you can rely on us to do our best.” He drew a paper from his pocket. “The oddest thing,” he said, “is this: Here is the digest of reports from every hank in the country. That counterfeit note accidentally discovered by Dodd just after it was turned into the Marine Exchange Bank on March 1st, is the only one known to be in existence, and the depositor—a thoroughly reputable department-store owner—can't tell where it came from. The banks report a few of the real notes—say, sixty or seventy. I haven't counted them up, but that's all they do report. It looks now as if the counterfeiters were resting, or had somehow or other been scared off. At any rate, not a single counterfeit Fillmore head seems to have been passed since that first one over a month ago.”
“Curious! Curious!” declared the secretary. “Well, Mr. Farley, I believe I'd like to take a look at these two notes and compare them with some of your notes from the presses or with the plates themselves.”
“As I reminded you, sir, we stopped printing a month ago, the moment we discovered counterfeit, and the plates are locked up in the vault. I can send for them.” Farley looked at the secretary for possible contradiction. “But here”—and he produced almost tenderly a wrapped note—“is what is perhaps easier for comparison for the layman. It is the certified standard bill struck off on December 30th.”
“Ah, so much the better!”
The three men, their heads bent close, examined all three notes under a large magnifying glass—first, the standard note, then the note in legitimate circulation, and then the counterfeit.
Boyle gave a sharp cry. He actually removed the cigar from his mouth and shook it between thumb and forefinger in order to emphasize his words.
“I told you the crooks' job was better than yours, Farley,” said he. “Look here, both of you. There's no blur on this scroll work in the upper left-hand corner of your standard note on the reverse side. Nor is that flaw in this thing which you call the false note. It appears only on what you call the good notes, of which, by casual count, I estimated there are between sixty and seventy reported by the banks.”
“Well?” asked the secretary, puzzled.
“Well?” echoed Farley, with dawning suspicion.
“Can't you see?” the chief shouted. “Can't you see that Dodd's discovery was the biggest sort of accident? Why, what he reported as bad is actually good, and there's nothing now in circulation but counterfeit!”
“That's the way the chief put the case to me,” said Hoagland, concluding his rapid chronicle to Stone, “the way he put it to me when I'd come in to report on the trailing of the paper to New York and our blue-nosed friend Goldthwaite's Hawk” He winked solemnly to his superfluous physician. “So I took a sea trip, and you saved my life, and, remembering how one good turn deserves another, I handed you over to these merry gunmen.”
“Oh, well,” said Dan, “you thought you had to get in here, and that was one way. It seemed a bit strenuous to me, that's all. But the question now is: What are we going to do here, shut up like this?”
“We shut up?” The man on the bed chuckled. “Those guards outside are your guards; it was entirely on your account that Peña said he'd lock the door. He considers me a friend! Of course, he'd have got you anyhow—and trust him to say so!—but the fact remains that I did turn you over to him.”
“You think you can help her?” asked eager Dan.
“Her? Oh, the little lady? Perhaps. Perhaps I can get a chance to help you, too, if nothing happens in the meanwhile to give me away here. Then, once I've got this Ramon fellow copped”
“But how can you get him?”
Hoagland continued: “And speaking of not being given away, it won't do to go flourishing that card about. Suppose you just hand it back to me.”
Throughout the narrative, Dan had been thoughtlessly holding Hoagland's leathern credential case. Now, to return it, he extended it to its owner.
“Look out!” whispered Hoagland.
For the card did not reach that owner. Preparing for some such surprise as was at this instant carried out, the crafty Peña had lied. The door of the room was not locked.
It swung open, and, with an amazing lightness, Don Ramon hounded in. He flicked the credentials from Dan's unwarned fingers.
“Thanks—thanks, Señor Medico! A cigarette?” His loud, derisive laughter rang to the ceiling. Then he opened the case. The briefest look sufficed him. “Ha! Not cigarettes, after all.”
He shot a glance at Dan, whose lips were tight—at Hoagland; but Hoagland, at this intrusion, had sunk back upon the pillows, and there, as the ill-starred Tucker had once done before him, was simulating unconsciousness. The huge planter drew back a pace.
“So this is your little game, is it?” he purred at Dan. “Fernando was right, then. He is always right. You are a secret-service agent of the United States come to spy upon my poor house, Señor so-called Medico!”
He spread his fat hands wide and moved back the fraction of a step farther.