The Poisoned Pen Part 33

Down the bay we puffed and buffeted for about forty minutes before we arrived at the little speck of an island that is Quarantine. Long before we were there we sighted the great La Montaigne near the group of buildings on the island, where she had been waiting since early morning for the tide and the customs officials. The tug steamed alongside, and quickly up the high ladders swarmed the boarding officer and the deputy collectors. We followed Herndon straight to the main saloon, where the collectors began to receive the declarations which had been made out on blanks furnished to the pa.s.sengers on the voyage over. They had had several days to write them out--the less excuse for omissions.

Glancing at each hastily the collector detached from it the slip with the number at the bottom and handed the number back, to be presented at the inspector's desk at the pier, where customs inspectors were a.s.signed in turn.

"Number 140 is the one we want to watch," I heard Herndon whisper to Kennedy. "That tall dark fellow over there."

I followed his direction cautiously and saw a sparely built, striking looking man who had just filed his declaration and was chatting vivaciously with a lady who was just about to file hers. She was a clinging looking little thing with that sort of doll-like innocence that deceives n.o.body.

"No, you don't have to swear to it," he said. "You used to do that, but now you simply sign your name--and take a chance," he added, smiling and showing a row of perfect teeth.

"Number 156," Herndon noted as the collector detached the stub and handed it to her. "That was Mademoiselle Gabrielle."

The couple pa.s.sed out to the deck, still chatting gaily.

"In the old days, before they got to be so beastly particular," I heard him say, "I always used to get the courtesy of the port, an official expedite. But that is over now."

The s.h.i.+p was now under way, her flags snapping in the brisk coolish breeze that told of approaching autumn. We had pa.s.sed up the lower bay and the Narrows, and the pa.s.sengers were crowded forward to catch the first glimpse of the skysc.r.a.pers of New York.

On up the bay we ploughed, throwing the spray proudly as we went Herndon employed the time in keeping a sharp watch on the tall, thin man. Incidentally he sought out the wireless operator and from him learned that a code wireless message had been received for Pierre, apparently from his partner, Lang.

"There is no mention of anything dutiable in this declaration by 140 which corresponds with any of the goods mentioned in the first cable from Paris," a collector remarked un.o.btrusively to Herndon, "nor in 156 corresponding to the second cable."

"I didn't suppose there would be," was his laconic reply. "That's our job--to find the stuff."

At last La Montaigne was warped into the dock. The piles of first-cla.s.s baggage on the s.h.i.+p were raucously deposited on the wharf and slowly the pa.s.sengers filed down the plank to meet the line of white-capped uniformed inspectors and plain-clothes appraisers. The comedy and tragedy of the customs inspection had begun.

We were among the first to land. Herndon took up a position from which he could see without being seen. In the semi-light of the little windows in the enclosed sides of the pier, under the steel girders of the arched roof like a vast hall, there was a panorama of a huge ma.s.s of open luggage.

At last Number 140 came down, alone, to the roped-off dock. He walked nonchalantly over to the little deputy surveyor's desk, and an inspector was quickly a.s.signed to him. It was all done neatly in the regular course of business apparently. He did not know that in the orderly rush the sharpest of Herndon's men had been picked out, much as a trick card player will force a card on his victim.

Already the customs inspection was well along. One inspector had been a.s.signed to about each five pa.s.sengers, and big piles of finery were being remorselessly tumbled out in shapeless heaps and exposed to the gaze of that part of the public which was not too much concerned over the same thing as to its own goods and chattels. Reticules and purses were being inspected. Every trunk was presumed to have a false bottom, and things wrapped up in paper were viewed suspiciously and unrolled.

Clothes were being shaken and pawed. There did not seem to be much opportunity for concealment.

Herndon now had donned the regulation straw hat of the appraiser, and accompanied by us, posing as visitors, was sauntering about. At last we came within earshot of the spot where the inspector was going through the effects of 140.

Out of the corner of my eyes I could see that a dispute was in progress over some trifling matter. The man was cool and calm. "Call the appraiser," he said at last, with the air of a man standing on his rights. "I object to this frisking of pa.s.sengers. Uncle Sam is little better than a pickpocket. Besides, I can't wait here all day. My partner is waiting for me uptown."

Herndon immediately took notice. But it was quite evidently, after all, only an altercation for the benefit of those who were watching. I am sure he knew he was being watched, but as the dispute proceeded he a.s.sumed the look of a man keenly amused. The matter, involving only a few dollars, was finally adjusted by his yielding gracefully and with an air of resignation. Still Herndon did not go and I am sure it annoyed him.

Suddenly he turned and faced Herndon. I could not help thinking, in spite of all that he must be so expert, that, if he really were a smuggler, he had all the poise and skill at evasion that would ent.i.tle him to be called a cast master of the art.

"You see that woman over there?" he whispered. "She says she is just coming home after studying music in Paris."

We looked. It was the guileless ingenue, Mademoiselle Gabrielle.

"She has dutiable goods, all right. I saw her declaration. She is trying to bring in as personal effects of a foreign resident gowns which, I believe, she intends to wear on the stage. She's an actress."

There was nothing for Herndon to do but to act on the tip. The man had got rid of us temporarily, but we knew the inspector would be, if anything, more vigilant. I think he took even longer than usual.

Mademoiselle Gabrielle and her maid pouted and fussed over the renewed examination which Herndon ordered. According to the inspector everything was new and expensive; according to her, old, shabby, and cheap. She denied everything, raged and threatened. But when, instead of ordering the stamp "Pa.s.sed" to be placed on her half dozen trunks and bags which contained in reality only a few dutiable articles, Herndon threatened to order them to the appraiser's stores and herself to go to the Law Division if she did not admit the points in dispute, there was a real scene.

"Generally, madame," he remonstrated, though I could see he was baffled at finding nothing of the goods he had really expected to find, "generally even for a first offence the goods are confiscated and the court or district attorney is content to let the person off with a fine. If this happens again we'll be more severe. So you had better pay the duty on these few little matters, without that."

If he had been expecting to "throw a scare" into her, it did not succeed. "Well, I suppose if I must, I must," she said, and the only result of the diversion was that she paid a few dollars more than had been expected and went off in a high state of mind.

Herndon had disappeared for a moment, after a whisper from Kennedy, to instruct two of his men to shadow Mademoiselle Gabrielle and, later, Pierre. He soon rejoined us and we casually returned to the vicinity of our tall friend, Number 140, for whom I felt even less respect than ever after his apparently ungallant action toward the lady he had been talking with. He seemed to notice my att.i.tude and he remarked defensively for my benefit, "Only a patriotic act."

His inspector by this time had finished a most minute examination.

There was nothing that could be discovered, not a false book with a secret spring that might disclose instead of reading matter a heap of almost priceless jewels, not a suspicious bulging of any garment or of the lining of a trunk or grip. Some of the goods might have been on his person, but not much, and certainly there was no excuse for ordering a personal examination, for he could not have hidden a tenth part of what we knew he had, even under the proverbial porous plaster. He was impeccable. Accordingly there was nothing for the inspector to do but to declare a polite armistice.

"So you didn't find 'Mona Lisa' in a false bottom, and my trunks were not lined with smuggled cigars after all," he rasped savagely as the stamp "Pa.s.sed" was at last affixed and he paid in cash at the little window with its sign, "Pay Duty Here: U. S. Custom House," some hundred dollars instead of the thousands Herndon had been hoping to collect, if not to seize.

All through the inspection, an extra close scrutiny had been kept on the other pa.s.sengers as well, to prevent any of them from being in league with the smugglers, though there was no direct or indirect evidence to show that any of the others were.

We were about to leave the wharf, also, when Craig's attention was called to a stack of trunks still remaining.

"Whose are those?" he asked as he lifted one. It felt suspiciously light.

"Some of them belong to a Mr. Pierre and the rest to a Miss Gabrielle,"

answered an inspector. "Bonded for Troy and waiting to be transferred by the express company."

Here, perhaps, at last was an explanation, and Craig took advantage of it. Could it be that the real seat of trouble was not here but at some other place, that some exchange was to be made en route or perhaps an attempt at bribery?

Herndon, too, was willing to run a risk. He ordered the trunks opened immediately. But to our disappointment they were almost empty. There was scarcely a thing of value in them. Most of the contents consisted of clothes that had plainly been made in America and were being brought back here. It was another false scent. We had been played with and baffled at every turn. Perhaps this had been the method originally agreed on. At any rate it had been changed.

"Could they have left the goods in Paris, after all?" I queried.

"With the fall and winter trade just coming on?" Kennedy replied, with an air of finality that set at rest any doubts about his opinion on that score. "I thought perhaps we had a case of--what do you call it, Herndon, when they leave trunks that are to be secretly removed by dishonest expressmen from the wharf at night?"

"'Sleepers.' Oh, we've broken that up, too. No expressman would dare try it now. I must confess this thing is beyond me, Craig."

Kennedy made no answer. Evidently there was nothing to do but to await developments and see what Herndon's men reported. We had been beaten at every turn in the game. Herndon seemed to feel that there was a bitter sting in the defeat, particularly because the smuggler or smugglers had actually been in our grasp so long to do with as we pleased, and had so cleverly slipped out again, leaving us holding the bag.

Kennedy was especially thoughtful as he told over the facts of the case in his mind. "Of course," he remarked, "Mademoiselle Gabrielle wasn't an actress. But we can't deny that she had very little that would justify Herndon in holding her, unless he simply wants a newspaper row."

"But I thought Pierre was quite intimate with her at first," I ventured. "That was a dirty trick of his."

Craig laughed. "You mean an old one. That was simply a blind, to divert attention from himself. I suspect they talked that over between themselves for days before."

It was plainly more perplexing than ever. What had happened? Had Pierre been a prestidigitator and had he merely said presto! when our backs were turned and whisked the goods invisibly into the country? I could find no explanation for the little drama on the pier. If Herndon's men had any genius in detecting smuggling, their professional opponent certainly had greater genius in perpetrating it.

We did not see Herndon again until after a hasty luncheon. He was in his office and inclined to take a pessimistic view of the whole affair.

He brightened up when a telephone message came in from one of his shadows. The men trailing Pierre and Mademoiselle Gabrielle had crossed trails and run together at a little French restaurant on the lower West Side, where Pierre, Lang, and Mademoiselle Gabrielle had met and were dining in a most friendly spirit. Kennedy was right. She had been merely a cog in the machinery of the plot.

The man reported that even when a newsboy had been sent in by him with the afternoon papers displaying in big headlines the mystery of the death of Mademoiselle Violette, they had paid no attention. It seemed evident that whatever the fate of the modiste, Mademoiselle Gabrielle had quite replaced her in the affections of Pierre. There was nothing for us to do but to separate and await developments.

It was late in the afternoon when Craig and I received a hurried message from Herndon. One of his men had just called him up over long distance from Riverledge. The party had left the restaurant hurriedly, and though they had taken the only taxicab in sight he had been able to follow them in time to find out that they were going up to Riverledge.

They were now preparing to go out for a sail in one of Lang's motor-boats and he would be unable, of course, to follow them further.