O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 24

"Then he shuffled off.

"'Be on the spot, Governor, an' I'll lead him to you.'"

Walker leaned over, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and linked his fingers together.

"That gave me a new flash on the creature. He was a slicker article than I imagined. I was not to get off with a tip. He was taking some pains to touch me for a greenback. I thought I saw his line. It would not account for his. .h.i.tting the description of Mulehaus in the make-up of his straw man, but it would furnish the data for the dollar story. I had drawn the latter a little before he was ready. It belonged in what he planned to give me at two o'clock. But I thought I saw what the creature was about.

And I was right."

Walker put out his hand and moved the pages of his memoir on the table.

Then he went on:

"I was smoking a cigar on a bench at the entrance to Heinz's Pier when the hobo shuffled up. He came down one of the streets from Pacific Avenue, and the direction confirmed me in my theory. It also confirmed me in the opinion that I was all kinds of a fool to let this dirty hobo get a further chance at me.

"I was not in a very good humour. Everything I had set going after Mulehaus was marking time. The only report was progress in linking things up; not only along the Canadian and Mexican borders and the custom houses, but we had also done a further unusual thing, we had an agent on every s.h.i.+p going out of America to follow through to the foreign port and look out for anything picked up on the way.

"It was a plan I had set at immediately the robbery was discovered. It would cut out the trick of res.h.i.+pping at sea from some fis.h.i.+ng craft or small boat. The reports were encouraging enough in that respect. We had the whole country as tight as a drum. But it was slender comfort when the Treasury was raising the devil for the plates and we hadn't a clue to them."

Walker stopped a moment. Then he went on:

"I felt like kicking the hobo when he got to me, he was so obviously the extreme of all worthless creatures, with that apologetic, confidential manner which seems to be an abominable attendant on human degeneracy.

One may put up with it for a little while, but it presently becomes intolerable.

"'Governor,' he began, when he shuffled up, 'you won't get mad if I say a little somethin'?'

"'Go on and say it,' I said.

"The expression on his dirty unshaved face became, if possible, more foolish.

"'Well, then, Governor, askin' your pardon, you ain't Mr. Henry P.

Johnson, from Erie; you're the Chief of the United States Secret Service, from Was.h.i.+ngton.'"

Walker moved in his chair.

"That made me ugly," he went on, "the a.s.surance of the creature and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to me on the day before by the postoffice messenger to be seen. In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye of the chair attendant. I took the cigar out of my teeth and looked at him.

"'And I'll say a little something myself!' I could hardly keep my foot clear of him. 'When you got sober this morning and remembered who I was, you took a turn up round the postoffice to make sure of it, and while you were in there you saw the notice of the reward for the stolen bond plates. That gave you the notion with which you pieced out your fairy story about how you got the dollar tip. Having discovered my ident.i.ty through a piece of d.a.m.ned carelessness on my part and having seen the postal notice of the reward, you undertook to enlarge your little game.

That's the reason you wouldn't take fifty cents. It was your notion in the beginning to make a touch for a tip. And it would have worked. But now you can't get a d.a.m.ned cent out of me.' Then I threw a little brush into him: 'I'd have stood a touch for your finding the fake tanner, because there isn't any such person.'

"I intended to put the hobo out of business," Walker went on, "but the effect of my words on him were even more startling than I antic.i.p.ated.

His jaw dropped and he looked at me in astonishment.

"'No such person!' he repeated. 'Why, Governor, before G.o.d, I found a man like that, an' he was a banker--one of the big ones, sure as there's a h.e.l.l!'"

Walker put out his hands in a puzzled gesture.

"There it was again, the description of Mulehaus! And it puzzled me up.

Every motion of this hobo's mind in every direction about this affair was perfectly clear to me. I saw his intention in every turn of it and just where he got the material for the details of his story. But this absolutely distinguis.h.i.+ng description of Mulehaus was beyond me.

Everybody, of course, knew that we were looking for the lost plates, for there was the reward offered by the Treasury; but no human soul outside of the trusted agents of the department knew that we were looking for Mulehaus."

Walker did not move, but he stopped in his recital for a moment.

"The tramp shuffled up a step closer to the bench where I sat The anxiety in his big slack face was sincere beyond question.

"'I can't find the banker man, Governor; he's skipped the coop. But I believe I can find what he's hid.'

"'Well' I said, 'go on and find it.'

"The hobo jerked out his limp hands in a sort of hopeless gesture.

"'Now, Governor,' he whimpered, 'what good would it do me to find them plates?'

"'You'd get five thousand dollars,' I said.

"'I'd git kicked into the discard by the first cop that got to me,' he answered, 'that's what I'd git.'

"The creature's dirty, unshaved jowls began to shake, and his voice became wholly a whimper.

"'I've got a line on this thing, Governor, sure as there's a h.e.l.l. That banker man was viewin' the layout. I've thought it all over, an' this is the way it would be. They're afraid of the border an' they're afraid of the custom houses, so they runs the loot down here in an automobile, hides it up about the Inlet, and plans to go out with it to one of them fruit steamers pa.s.sing on the way to Tampico. They'd have them plates bundled up in a sailor's chest most like.

"'Now, Governor, you'd say why ain't they already done it; an' I'd answer, the main guy--this banker man--didn't know the automobile had got here until he sent me to look, and there ain't been no s.h.i.+p along since then.... I've been special careful to find that out.' And then the creature began to whine. 'Have a heart, Governor, come along with me.

Gimme a show!'

"It was not the creature's plea that moved me, nor his pretended deductions; I'm a bit old to be soft. It was the 'banker man' sticking like a bur in the hobo's talk. I wanted to keep him in right until I understood where he got it. No doubt that seems a slight reason for going out to the Inlet with the creature; but you must remember that slight things are often big signboards in our business."

He continued, his voice precise and even: "We went directly from the end of the Boardwalk to the old shed; it was open, an unfastened door on a pair of leather hinges. The shed is small, about twenty feet by eleven, with a hard dirt floor packed down by the workmen who had used it, a combination of clay and sand like the Jersey roads put in to make a floor. All round it, from the sea to the board fence was soft sand.

There were some pieces of old junk lying about in the shed; but nothing of value or it would have been nailed up.

"The hobo led right off with his deductions. There was the track of a man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from the board fence to the shed and returning, and no other track anywhere about.

"'Now, Governor,' he began, when he had taken a look at the tracks, 'the man that made them tracks carried something into this shed, and he left it here, and it was something heavy.'

"I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me, made the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.

"'How do you know that?' I said.

"'Well, Governor,' he answered, 'take a look at them two line of tracks.

In the one comin' to the shed the man was walkin' with his feet apart and in the one goin' back he was walkin' with his feet in front of one another; that's because he was carryin' somethin' heavy when he come an'

nothin' when he left.'

"It was an observation on footprints," he went on, "that had never occurred to me. The hobo saw my awakened interest, and he added:

"'Did you never notice a man carryin a heavy load? He kind of totters, walkin' with his feet apart to keep his balance. That makes his foot tracks side by side like, instead of one before the other as he makes them when he's goin' light.'"

Walker interrupted his narrative with a comment: "It's the truth I've verified it a thousand times since that hobo put me onto it. A line running through the center of the heel prints of a man carrying a heavy burden will be a zigzag, while one through the heel prints of the same man without the burden will be almost straight.

"The tramp went right on with his deductions:

"'If it come in and didn't go out, it's here.'