On Secret Service Part 19

Miss Lang [continued Quinn] was one of the few women I ever heard of that practically solved a Secret Service case "on her own." Of course, in the past, the different governmental detective services have found it to their advantage to go outside the male s.e.x for a.s.sistance.

There have been instances where women in the employ of the Treasury Department rendered valuable service in trailing smugglers--the matter of the Deauville diamonds is a case in point--and even the Secret Service hasn't been above using women to a.s.sist in running counterfeiters to earth, while the archives of the State Department would reveal more than one interesting record of feminine co-operation in connection with underground diplomacy.

But in all these cases the women were employed to handle the work and they were only doing what they were paid for, while Virginia Lang--

Well, in the first place, she was one of the girls in charge of the switchboard at the Rennoc in New York. You know the place--that big apartment hotel on Riverside Drive where the lobby is only a shade less imposing than the bell-boys and it costs you a month's salary to speak to the superintendent. They never have janitors in a place like that.

Virginia herself--I came to know her fairly well in the winter of nineteen seventeen, after Dave Carroll had gone to the front--was well qualified by nature to be the heroine of any story. Rather above the average in size, she had luckily taken advantage of her physique to round out her strength with a gymnasium course. But in spite of being a big woman, she had the charm and personality which are more often found in those less tall. When you couple this with a head of wonderful hair, a practically perfect figure, eyes into which a man could look and, looking, lose himself, lips which would have caused a lip stick to blush and--Oh, what's the use? Words only caricature a beautiful woman, and, besides, if you haven't gotten the effect already, there's nothing that I could tell you that would help any.

In the spring of nineteen sixteen, when the von Ewald chase was at its height, Miss Lang was employed at the Rennoc switchboard and it speaks well for her character when I can tell you that not one of the bachelor tenants ever tried a second time to put anything over. Virginia's eyes could snap when they wanted to and Virginia's lips could frame a cutting retort as readily as a pleasant phrase.

In a place like the Rennoc, run as an apartment hotel, the guests change quite frequently, and it was some task to keep track of all of them, particularly when there were three girls working in the daytime, though only one was on at night. They took it by turns--each one working one week in four at night and the other three holding down the job from eight to six. So, as it happened, Virginia did not see Dave Carroll until he had been there nearly a month. He blew in from Was.h.i.+ngton early one evening and straightway absented himself from the hotel until sometime around seven the following morning, following the schedule right through, every night.

Did you ever know Carroll? He and I worked together on the Farron case out in St. Louis, the one where a bookmaker at the races tipped us off to the biggest counterfeiting scheme ever attempted in this country, and after that he took part in a number of other affairs, including the one which prevented the Haitian revolution in nineteen thirteen.

Dave wasn't what you would call good-looking, though he did have a way with women. The first night that he came downstairs--after a good day's sleep--and spotted Virginia Lang on the switchboard, he could have been pardoned for wandering over and trying to engage her in a conversation.

But the only rise he got was from her eyebrows. They went up in that "I-am-sure-I-have-never-met-you" manner which is guaranteed to be cold water to the most ardent male, and the only reply she vouchsafed was "What number did you wish?"

"You appear to have mine," Dave laughed, and then asked for Rector 2800, the private branch which connected with the Service headquarters.

When he came out of the booth he was careful to confine himself to "Thank you" and the payment of his toll. But there was something about him that made Virginia Lang feel he was "different"--a word which, with women, may mean anything--or nothing. Then she returned to the reading of her detective story, a type of literature to which she was much addicted.

Carroll, as you have probably surmised, was one of the more than twoscore Government operatives sent to New York to work on the von Ewald case. His was a night s.h.i.+ft, with roving orders to wander round the section in the neighborhood of Columbus Circle and stand ready to get anywhere in the upper section of the city in a hurry in case anything broke. But, beyond reporting to headquarters regularly every hour, the a.s.signment was not exactly eventful.

The only thing that was known about von Ewald at that time was that a person using such a name--or alias--was in charge of the German intrigues against American neutrality. Already nearly a score of bomb outrages, attempts to destroy s.h.i.+pping, plots against munition plants, and the like had been laid at his door, but the elusive Hun had yet to be spotted. Indeed, there were many men in the Service who doubted the existence of such a person, and of these Carroll was one.

But he shrugged his shoulders and stoically determined to bear the monotony of strolling along Broadway and up, past the Plaza, to Fifth Avenue and back again every night--a program which was varied only by an occasional seance at Reisenweber's or Pabst's, for that was in the days before the one-half of one per cent represented the apotheosis of liquid refreshment.

It was while he was walking silently along Fifty-ninth Street, on the north side, close to the Park, a few nights after his brush with Virginia Lang, that Carroll caught the first definite information about the case that anyone had obtained.

He hadn't noted the men until he was almost upon them, for the night was dark and the operative's rubber heels made no sound upon the pavement.

Possibly he wouldn't have noticed them then if it hadn't been for a phrase or two of whispered German that floated out through the shrubbery.

"He will stay at Conner's" was what reached Carroll's ears. "That will be our chance--a rare opportunity to strike two blows at once, one at our enemy and the other at this smug, self-satisfied nation which is content to make money out of the slaughter of Germany's sons. Once he is in the hotel, the rest will be easy."

"How?" inquired a second voice.

"A bomb, so arranged to explode with the slightest additional pressure, in a--"

"Careful," growled a third man. "Eight fifty-nine would hardly care to have his plans spread all over New York. This cursed shrubbery is so dense that there is no telling who may be near. Come!"

And Carroll, crouched on the outside of the fence which separates the street from the Park, knew that seconds were precious if he was to get any further information. A quick glance down the street showed him that the nearest gate was too far away to permit of entrance in that manner.

So, slipping his automatic into the side pocket of his coat he leaped upward and grasped the top of the iron fence. On the other side he could hear the quick scuffle of feet as the Germans, alarmed, began to retreat rapidly.

A quick upward heave, a purchase with his feet, and he was over, his revolver in his hand the instant he lighted on the other side.

"Halt!" he called, more from force of habit than from anything else, for he had no idea that any of the trio would stop.

But evidently one of them did, for from behind the shelter of a near-by bush came the quick spat of a revolver and a tongue of flame shot toward him. The bullet, however, sung harmlessly past and he replied with a fusillade of shots that ripped through the bush and brought a shower of German curses from the other side. Then another of the conspirators opened fire from a point at right angles to the first, and the ruse was successful, for it diverted Carroll's attention long enough to permit the escape of the first man, and the operative was still flat on the ground, edging his way cautiously forward when the Park police arrived, the vanguard of a curious crowd attracted by the shots.

"What's the trouble?" demanded the "sparrow cop."

"None at all," replied Dave, as he slipped the still warm revolver into his pocket and brushed some dirt from his sleeve. "Guy tried to hold me up, that's all, and I took a pot shot at him. Cut it! Secret Service!"

and he cautiously flashed his badge in the light of the electric torch which the park policeman held.

"Huh!" grunted the guard, as he made his way to the bush from behind which Carroll had been attacked. "You evidently winged him. There's blood on the gra.s.s here, but no sign of the bird himself. Want any report to headquarters?" he added, in an undertone.

"Not a word," said Carroll. "I'm working this end of the game and I want to finish it without a.s.sistance. It's the only thing that's happened in a month to break the monotony and there's no use declaring anyone else in on it. By the way, do you know of any place in town known as Conner's?"

"Conner's? Never heard of it. Sounds as though it might be a dive in the Bowery. Plenty of queer places down there."

"No, it's hardly likely to be in that section of the city," Dave stated.

"Farther uptown, I think. But it's a new one on me."

"On me, too," agreed the guard, "and I thought I knew the town like a book."

When he reported to headquarters a few moments later, Carroll told the chief over the wire of his brush with the trio of Germans, as well as what he had heard. There was more than a quiver of excitement in the voice from the other end of the wire, for this was the first actual proof of the existence of the mysterious "No. 859."

"Still believe von Ewald is a myth?" inquired the Chief.

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," was the answer, "because the bullet that just missed me was pretty material. Evidently some one is planning these bomb outrages and it's up to us to nab him--if only for the sake of the Service."

"Did you catch the name of the man to whom your friends were alluding?"

asked the chief.

"No, they just referred to him as 'he.'"

"That might mean any one of a number of people," mused the chief. "Sir Cecil Spring-Rice is in town, you know. Stopping at the Waldorf. Then there's the head of the French Mission at the Vanderbilt with a bunch of people, and Lord Wimbledon, who's spent five million dollars for horses in the West, stopping at the same place you are. You might keep an eye on him and I'll send Kramer and Fleming up to trail the other two."

"Did you ever hear of the place they called Conner's, Chief?"

"No, but that doesn't mean anything. It may be a code word--a prearranged name to camouflage the hotel in the event anyone were listening in."

"Possibly," replied Carroll, just before he hung up, "but somehow I have a hunch that it wasn't. I'll get back on the job and let you know if anything further develops."

His adventure for the night appeared to have ended, for he climbed into bed the following morning without having been disturbed, but lay awake for an hour or more--obsessed with the idea that he really held the clue to the whole affair, but unable to figure out just what it was.

Where was it that they intended to place the bomb? Why would they arrange it so as to explode upon pressure, rather than concussion or by a time fuse? Where was Conner's? Who was the man they were plotting against?

These were some of the questions which raced through his brain, and he awoke in the late afternoon still haunted by the thought that he really ought to know more than he did.

That night at dinner he noted, almost subconsciously, that he was served by a new waiter, a fact that rather annoyed him because he had been particularly pleased at the service rendered by the other man.

"Where's Felix?" he inquired, as the new attendant brought his soup.

"He isn't on to-night, sir," was the reply. "He had an accident and won't be here for a couple of days."