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The Reward
by
“You see these war bonds are scattered all over the country. They are held by everybody. It’s not what it used to be, a banker’s business that we could round up. Nobody could round up the holders of these bonds.
“A big crook like Mulehaus could slip a hundred million of them into the country and never raise a ripple.”
He paused and drew his fingers across his bony protruding chin.
“I’ll say this for Mulehaus: He’s the hardest man to identify in the whole kingdom of crooks. Scotland Yard, the Service de la Surete, everybody, says that. I don’t mean dime-novel disguises – false whiskers and a limp. I mean the ability to be the character he pretends – the thing that used to make Joe Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle – and not an actor made up to look like him. That’s the reason nobody could keep track of Mulehaus, especially in South American cities. He was a French banker in the Egypt business and a Swiss banker in the Argentine.”
He turned back from the digression:
“And it was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We didn’t have a clew. We thought, naturally, that they’d make for Mexico or some South American country to start their printing press. And we had the ports and border netted up. Nothing could have gone out across the border or, through any port. All the customs officers were, working with us, and every agent of the Department of Justice.”
He looked at me steadily across the table.
“You see the Government had to get those plates back before the crook started to print, or else take up every bond of that issue over the whole country. It was a hell of a thing!
“Of course we had gone right after the record of all the big crooks to see whose line this sort of job was. And the thing narrowed down to Mulehaus or old Vronsky. We soon found out it wasn’t Vronsky. He was in Joliet. It was Mulehaus. But we couldn’t find him.
“We didn’t even know that Mulehaus was in America. He’s a big crook with a genius for selecting men. He might be directing the job from Rio or a Mexican port. But we were sure it was a Mulehaus’ job. He sold the French securities in Egypt in ’90; and he’s the man who put the bogus Argentine bonds on our market – you’ll find the case in the 115th Federal Reporter.
“Well,” he went on, “I was sitting out there in the rolling chair, looking at the sun on the sea and thinking about the thing, when I noticed this hobo that I’ve been talking about. He was my chair attendant, but I hadn’t looked at him before. He had moved round from behind me and was now leaning against the galvanized pipe railing.
“He was a big human creature, a little stooped, unshaved and dirty; his mouth was slack and loose, and he had a big mobile nose that seemed to move about like a piece of soft rubber. He had hardly any clothing; a cap that must have been fished out of an ash barrel, no shirt whatever, merely an old ragged coat buttoned round him, a pair of canvas breeches and carpet slippers tied on to his feet with burlap, and wrapped round his ankles to conceal the fact that he wore no socks.
“As I looked at him he darted out, picked up the stump of a cigarette that some one had thrown down, and came back to the railing to smoke it, his loose mouth and his big soft nose moving like kneaded putty.
“Altogether this tramp was the worst human derelict I ever saw. And it occurred to me that this was the one place in the whole of America where any sort of a creature could get a kind of employment and no questions asked.
“Anything that could move and push a chair could get fifteen cents an hour from McDuyal. Wise man, poor man, beggar man, thief, it was all one to McDuyal. And the creatures could sleep in the shed behind the rolling chairs.