Bound to Succeed/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII
THE POST-OFFICE INSPECTOR
"Now then, my friend, behave yourself."
"Haven't I paid the damages?"
"You have, but don't get into any further expensive mischief."
"H'm!" observed the victim of Dale Wacker's mail order swindle, "that's to be seen, if I ever get my hands on the real fellow who robbed me. As to you, stranger," to Frank, "just send in your bill double. Sorry I disturbed you, but we all make mistakes"
"No, Mr. Halsey," replied Frank, "I only ask you to pay the cost of that window you smashed and the door you broke."
"How much—let me settle it now," urged Halsey.
"I'll trust you," said Frank. "I will send the bill when the carpenter gets the repairs done."
The trial had come off. A small fine had been imposed by the village judge on Halsey for his disorderly conduct. The marshal had explained to him that Frank was not the person who had swindled him. He added that very probably through Frank's investigation they would soon discover the identity of the United States Mail Order House.
"You can come with us, but you will have to curb your fighting proclivities," warned the marshal. "Here is where the law steps in, and you must not interfere with its course."
"I came a long way to get satisfaction," muttered Halsey. "Somehow, I'll have it too."
The marshal led the way, and they were soon mounting the stairs of Main Street Block. They proceeded quietly, so as to give no warning or create any curiosity with other occupants of the building.
"There is the door," said Frank in a guarded tone, as they reached the landing of the third story.
The marshal advanced and gave a firm resounding knock on its panels. They could detect a stir within. Then the wicket shot back.
"Who are you—what do you want? Thunder! it's the marshal."
Frank fancied he recognized the tones as belonging to Dale Wacker.
"That's who it is," answered the official. "Here, here I want a word with you, young man."
The wicket was shot as suddenly as it had been opened. They could hear a quick scramble in the room beyond.
"Open this door," loudly demanded the marshal, resuming his knocking.
"They won't do it," spoke up Halsey, advancing a step. "Say," lifting his ponderous fist, "I'll soon clear the way, if you say the word."
"No," responded the marshal, putting up a detaining hand. "We have no legal right to invade the premises. Whoever is in there, cannot escape. There is no other stairway leading to the street except this one."
"What are you going to do?" asked Frank.
"Why, you had better go back to the town hall with Halsey," advised the officer. "See the clerk, and let Halsey swear out a criminal warrant against Dale Wacker and others concerned in a swindling scheme at this place."
"All right," nodded Frank. "Come Mr. Halsey, let us make haste."
"I will save you any delay, gentlemen," spoke up a new voice.
All three turned, to observe a keen-faced, bright-eyed man who had come quickly up the stairs. There was a certain half-military, half-official precision to his make up that at once impressed Frank. "Yes," continued the newcomer, coming forward on the landing as though he had a perfect right there, "I'll soon get action here. You are the town marshal, I believe?"
"That's right," nodded the officer, regarding the speaker in some wonderment.
"Well, I am a post-office inspector. Came on a telegram. Got the birds caged in there? Give me a few facts, will you?"
The marshal briefly recited his suspicions and the case of Halsey. The inspector as tersely told of a telegram the post-office department had received, exposing the operations of the United States Mail Order House. Frank at once decided that Stet was its author.
"No dilatory fraud order case here," observed the inspector briskly. "It's got to be a raid, I see. Here, let me have a try. In there!" called out the official in a loud tone of voice, pounding on the door panels, open in the name of the law, or we shall be obliged to use force."
There was no response whatever to this mandatory challenge. The Inspector placed his ear to the door. Then he said sharply.
"Watch out close. I will be back at once."
"He's brought the locksmith with him," announced the marshal a few minutes later, peering over the banisters. "Those government fellows act pretty swiftly when they make up their minds. We haven't the power that they have."
The Inspector, arrived with the locksmith, ordered the latter to open the door.
Frank looked about him curiously as, the door once opened, all hands passed into the room beyond. Its tables were littered with envelopes, circulars and letters.
The big lodge chamber was partitioned off at one end by a cambric curtain. Here there was a couch, a small oil stove and some eatables and dishes, evidences of light housekeeping on the premises.
The inspector darted about from corner to corner, and into all the little apartments that had formerly been in service as lodge and rooms.
"H'm," he observed, coming back from his inspection to the others, "birds have flown."
He moved to an open window. Pendant from an iron shutter hinge was a strong portable knotted fire escape. Its ground end trailed into an inside court of the building.
"If you think you know the people who were here and who have certainly escaped," suggested the Inspector to the marshal, "you had better get your men on their track before they leave town."
"All right," said the marshal glumly making for the door.
"Here, I'm in on that arrangement," observed Halsey.
The inspector with an eagle glance at the letters on the tables and a business-like air, sat down to look over a mass of correspondence lying before him. Frank went up to him.
"Can I be of any assistance to you, sir?" he asked.
"You helped in this thing. Yes, yes you can help me," said the Inspector. "Take this note to the local postmaster, will you?"
The inspector wrote a few words on his own card. It summoned the postmaster. The inspector directed that official to deliver all future mail of the Wacker outfit to himself or his representative.
When the postmaster was gone the inspector impressed Frank into service. This consisted in sorting out the letters and taking down the names of the persons who had been swindled.
"Now you can go for the marshal, if you will," said the inspector, about an hour later.
Frank found that official just returned from an unsuccessful search for Dale Wacker and the old man with the big beard, his presumable partner, whom Stet had vaguely described to Frank.
"I must catch the afternoon train for the city and make my report to headquarters," said the inspector, when Frank returned to him with the marshal. "I want you to put a trustworthy custodian in charge here until we can send a regular man to close up the matter, and start after those swindlers."
"I'll put one of my deputies in charge," said the marshal. "As to Wacker and his partner, they're probably safe and far by this time."
The inspector regarded the speaker with a half-pitying, half-contemptuous look.
"That's as may be," he observed, "for the present. We don't let matters drop that easily, ourselves. There's something you mustn't forget officer: When the United States Government gets after a guilty man, if he fled to the furthest corners of the earth, we never let up till we find him."