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Page 14
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.
"I suppose an impulse to offer the man a garment of some sort
moved me to address him.
"`You're nearly naked,' I said.
"He crossed one leg over the other with the toe of the carpet
slipper touching the walk, in the manner of a burlesque actor,
took the cigarette out of his mouth with a little flourish, and
replied to me:
"'Sure, Governor, I ain't dolled up like John Drew.'
"There was a sort of cocky unconcern about the creature that gave
his miserable state a kind of beggarly distinction. He was in
among the very dregs of life, and he was not depressed about it.
"'But if I had a sawbuck," he continued, "I could bulge your eye
. . . . Couldn't point the way to one?'
"He arrested my answer with the little flourish of his fingers
holding the stump of the cigarette.
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