Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Handicap

by Reginald Wright Kauffman

 

The Handicap

 

THE STRANGE ADVENTURE WITH WHICH STEPHEN SMITH,
SHORT AND RED-HAIRED, OPENED HIS CAREER
AS A GOVERNMENT DETECTIVE

 

By Reginald Wright Kauffman

 

THE big man looked at the little fellow—hard.

“No,” said the big man.

He was a big man in more ways than one. He was tall and broad, and he held a high position with a long title. In Washington nearly everybody owns a long title, and scarcely anybody is called by it. This personage's subordinates knew him as “the chief,” but on the rolls of the United States government he appeared as “chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice.” He commanded all the Secret Service under the Attorney-General.

“Well, anyway,” urged Steve, “will you please look at my letter of introduction?”

The little fellow had waylaid the chief passing through the tiny waiting room. The big man, when he caught sight of the blue type on the proffered envelope, took it.

Its writer was a man who commanded some attention—Senator Thomas J. Partington, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the upper house. His note introduced “Stephen Smith, son of one of my most esteemed constituents, who for the past year has capably performed the duties of my under stenographer, and who is now ambitious to qualify as an agent in your bureau.” Several lines extolled, in set phrases, this protégé's honesty, industry, and reliability. Using a sonorous term for it, Thomas J. declared that Steve knew how to keep his mouth shut.

“Anything that you can properly and conveniently do for him will be appreciated by yours very truly,” the letter ended.

“Wait here a minute,” said the chief.

He entered his own office and called the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on the telephone.

“About this young Smith,” he began. “Are you very set for him to have that particular job, Senator?”

It appeared that Senator Partington was not; but there was another “most esteemed constituent” who decidedly wanted his own son to have Steve's present position, and to this constituent the great man owed certain favors. That was one side of the affair. The other side was formed by young Smith. Stephen was “crazy to be a government Secret Service agent”—thought about nothing else—and, in short, an appointment would please all parties and relieve the Hon. Thomas of embarrassment.

When he talked to a close acquaintance, the Senator used less Senatorial language than on other occasions.

“But it 'll be O. K. just so you get him off my hands somehow,” he said.

Wherefore the chief hung up the telephone and sent for Stephen.

“Tell you what I'll do,” he told the ambitious youth. “I've got about all the stenographers we can use here, but I'll make a job for you among 'em somehow.”

Steve's lean, freckled face fell. He ran a thin hand through his brilliant, bristling hair. He was sick and tired of stenography—hated every separate key on a writing machine. Still, he tried to combine politeness with persistence.

“I've got that sort of position now,” he explained. “I don't want to keep on being a typewriter operator. I want to be a Secret Service operative.”

That, as he would have expressed it, put the chief's back up. He had a busy day ahead, and, after all, his favors account with Senator Partington showed, just now, a comfortable balance on the chief's side.

“You'll never in the world do for an operative!” he snapped.

Steve swallowed.

“Why?”

But he knew what the answer would be, and it came as truly and sharply as the rifle's report replies to the trigger finger's pressure:

“You're too small, and you've got red hair.”

Yes, here it came again! That unlucky combination had always proved his fatal handicap.

Steve's stature fell considerably below the average, and, though he kept his muscles hard by constant exercise, he appeared a weakling. There had been a time when he hoped to work his way through college at jobs provided by a zealous athletic coach; but the coach ridiculed his proposition. Nobody would have looked at him twice, had it not been for his hair; but everybody looked at him often—and laughed—exactly because of that.

It was red. It was more than red—it flamed. He had been derisively “Reddy” and “Red Top” to his scornful acquaintances. On the street—oil his hair and keep it cut, as he would, wear hats a size too large, as he did—people nudged one another and pointed:

“Pipe that red currycomb!”

“We need hefty fellows mostly,” said the chief; “and the only good detective is a man who looks just like everybody else.”

“I'm strong—”

“Humph! That doesn't matter, anyhow. With hair like that, anybody would know you the second time he saw you.”

“I could wear a wig.”

“And lose it. The fire underneath would burn holes in it.”

This person was laughing, too! Steve turned on his heel.

“All right!” he said.

But, once down in the elevator and out in the street, he said it in another way:

“All right!”

II

“Possible—period,” continued the distinguished Senator.

A careful man, he always dictated his punctuation. Moreover, adjournment was at hand, and he couldn't see the President, and didn't dare trust this business to the telephone.

Steve's pencil recorded automatically. His thoughts were distant. They were engaged with all the weighty arguments that he might have laid before the chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice—if only they had occurred to him in time. “Hefty men!” Occasion must often demand a little fellow; but red hair! Steve's cheeks turned the color of his blazing thatch.

“The weight of the evidence in this case joins American interests with manifest justice—comma.”

Those tones of Senator Partington's famous “golden throat” were unsuited to confidences, and perhaps his admiration of his own eloquence made him careless. On this warm morning, with the door half open, his voice must have carried beyond the private office and into the hall of the committee's quarters.

When Steve had crossed the hall, in answer to the eternal buzzer, he had subconsciously observed there the usual group of weary applicants for favors—an attaché of a Central American legation, a negro preacher, a stolid Chinaman, several self-nominated candidates for foreign missions, and two or three voters from home, eager to shake the Senatorial hand. Let them hear! Steve didn't care. He was angry with the chief for refusing him a Secret Service job, and with the Senator because the Senator was angry with both the chief and Steve. He felt pretty sure that the Senator was going to dismiss him before long. He knew the signs.

“But—comma—I greatly regret to say—comma—”

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Hon. Thomas was writing to the White House on a most confidential matter.

Those were the days when the Chinese province of Canton was rebelling against the central government in Peking. The revolutionaries were said to be supplied with unlimited funds from Soviet Russia. All that they now needed for success was a shipment of machine guns, which the Bolsheviks couldn't spare, and the prestige of recognition from some great power. Where they would get the guns nobody knew, but they were carrying on a strong propaganda to secure recognition by the American Senate. If they managed that, shipments of arms from the United States would cease to be illegal, and success would be within their grasp. If, however, they failed—

What was the Senator saying?

“You know that my opinion runs parallel with yours, Mr. President; but the Senate is tired after its long session, and, rather than fight, will probably adopt any recommendation made by my committee in the last few minutes' rush before adjournment. Now, though there is a majority of two in favor of recognizing the Cantonese, one of those two happens to be—”

The Hon. Thomas mentioned a well known name. This man could, he said, be turned to the other side by a word from the President. Result—a deadlock, and no report before adjournment. By the end of the vacation, the Peking government, thus aided, would recover so much ground that recognition of its enemies would be beneath consideration.

“Therefore,” concluded Senator Partington, “the fate of the Peking administration lies on the White House doorstep. The next ten hours will tell the tale. If you still wish to save this sister republic and assure the continuance of your Far Eastern policy, I most earnestly entreat you, Mr. President, upon receipt of this note, to send the necessary word to the Senator above mentioned. I—er—am—er—” The dictation stopped. “Give it the usual White House ending, Smith. Rush it, and bring it back here to be signed. It must get to the President immediately!”

Steve crossed the intervening hall, an object of mute inquiry from the attaché, the mission seekers, and the hand-shakers. Only the stolid Chinaman paid no overt heed to him, but to none of the waiting applicants did Steve pay any. He went into the little room with the other clerks, and rattled off the letter.

As he bore it back for signature, one of the candidates plucked him by the sleeve.

“Do you think I could see the Senator now? It's very—”

“I don't know,” said Smith, with the apparent interest that a Washington clerk is expected to give to such queries. “I know he wants to see you. You'd better ask his secretary, Mr. Douglas. He—”

“If you could just slip me in for two minutes—”

Steve jumped—not because of this familiar request. A cold hand had touched the fingers that held the open letter.

“You tell Senator, Mr. Sam Ki-en want see him about Lotus Valley Burial Association, yes?”

The Chinaman had interrupted. He was smiling a polite interrogation.

In another moment, the entire pack of favor seekers would be upon Steve. He was as irritable to-day as it is safe for a Senator's stenographer to be.

“I have to hurry,” he apologized to the room at large. “The Senator's waiting for this letter.”

Steve darted into the farther office. The Senator was in no agreeable humor.

“Things are getting worse and worse around this dump!” It was thus that the statesman referred to the Capitol of his country. “They slash the messenger service in half and call it economy!” He had been reading the letter while he roared. “Here, take this to the White House yourself, Smith. Get a taxi!”

“Yes, sir.”

The Senator softened a little. He always softened toward employees whom he intended soon to discharge.

“Take your time at lunch, and if you want to see that Chinese funeral parade this afternoon, go to it. The Senate sits late to-night before adjournment, and I shan't need you till the show's over.”

“Thank you,” said young Smith, and sprang away, not from any excess zeal, but in order to be out of earshot before there might be a change of the Senatorial mind.

The funeral parade was an affair organized by the Lotus Valley Burial Association, a society recently formed to gather the bodies of Chinamen dead in America and transport them to a final rest, according to their religious principles, in the sacred soil of their native land. There had already been some small shipments. The biggest was to start to-day, with bands and official mourners and firecrackers. Despite his disappointment, Steve, in common with half Washington, wanted to see this curious example of oriental pageantry.

As he ran across the hall, he thought there were fewer people there, but the impression was as fleeting as his own movements. He hurried down into Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Taxi, suh?”

An exceptionally good-looking car had purred to the curb. He faced a mulatto driver, with straight hair.

“Taxi? Where's your meter?”

“This here car's a durn sight cheaper than them meter cars is,” said the driver.

“I know that yarn—in Washington!”

“'Deed it is cheaper, boss! Where yo'-all want to go?”

“What 'll you charge to take me to the White House—State Department side?”

“Two bits.”

It was cheap. Steve jumped in. The car started with a leap up the avenue.

A very well upholstered tonneau! How had this chauffeur come by it? There was much talk about stolen cars; but if this was one, they were not avoiding observation. They shot around Central Market at a pace calculated to enrage the police. Now, before the brown Post Office Department building, they were turning a corner on two wheels. Smith grabbed the window strap to shout caution, but found that that particular window was like the windows of many public conveyances in one respect—it stuck tight.

Frightfully stuffy in there! No, not stuffy—unpleasantly fragrant. There was a heavy odor on the imprisoned air, and it seemed to be growing heavier.

Steve was tossed against the deep cushions by a sudden swerve. They were turning up Twelfth Street. That wasn't right. Didn't the fellow know where the White House was?

Only then Steve noted the yawning mouth of a speaking tube connected with the chauffeur's seat. He bent forward, and, with his nose at the black cavity, drew a great breath wherewith to make protest audible to the mad driver outside.

“Phew!”

From the mouthpiece into Steve's lungs rushed a blast of that queer odor. It was strong—it was overpowering—it was—

Smith's red head dropped against the tube. He thought with sudden horror:

“I'm being drugged!”

Even as that startling phrase came to him, he collapsed.

III

What had passed—hours or minutes? Steve put a trembling hand to his throbbing head. He wondered where he was. A prisoner, of course; but he wasn't bound. He stood up, swaying.

He was in a huge, barnlike room. It might have been a garage, save for its odor. The strange smell of the automobile that had kidnaped him was gone, and there was no gasoline here. There was a spicy smell—the smell of oriental spices.

A scanty illumination came from a few windows, which were far overhead, and barred like those of a warehouse. The rays of a late sun filtered through them, but left all below in a deceitful gloom. At first Steve could discern about him only piles and piles of boxes, perhaps six feet long and two and a half feet wide, which rose in groups, sometimes ten feet tall.

Why had he been carried away? Robbery? His wallet was safe, and the bills crinkled as he opened it. The Senator's letter—that was gone. He went through his clothes. No—it was gone! What, in the name of common sense, did anybody want with that?

A heavy door stood close by. He ran to it, and found it locked. He rattled its knob.

“Keep kliet! You keep kliet! Plenty eat, no hurt.”

Through an opened panel in the door a pair of almond eyes were almost against the prisoner's own.

“Let me out of here!” cried Steve. “What do you want with me, anyhow?”

“Want you keep kliet two, three day, mebbe two week. Plenty eat, no—”

“I'll give you all the money I've got”—Steve spoke low—“if you'll unlock that door and turn your back!”

“No money! All you do keep kliet. Then no hurt. Plenty—”

Steve extended the fingers of his right hand and plunged them at the eyes in the hole. The hole closed with a snap, and he stubbed his fingers on the wood.

Leaping back, he struck against one of the boxes, and turned savagely to vent his anger on the inanimate thing. Then he saw what it was. It was a coffin.

They were all coffins, those boxes in high piles around him. Nothing but coffins in the place—hundreds of them!

The yellow chauffeur posing as a negro, the missing letter, the almond eyes at the door, and now these coffins! Steve began to understand. If the Senator's letter didn't reach the White House before that session of the Foreign Relations Committee which preceded to-night's final sitting of the Senate, the committee would report for recognition of the Canton rebels, the report would be adopted, and the President's Far Eastern policy would fall along with the Chinese Republic.

That was why Stephen Smith had been kidnaped—he had been seized by Cantonese spies in order to insure the recognition of their faction. As Steve Smith, he didn't care two cents for Peking, and not more than one for Canton; but as a messenger to the President of the United States, it was his job to serve against Canton through the delivery of his message. Instead, he was a captive in the mortuary of the Lotus Valley Burial Association—located, so the newspapers had said, somewhere in Washington's Trinidad section. The White House was about three miles away.

Steve looked at the highest pile of coffins, shivered a little, and then began to climb it. Its top might be within reach of a window, and the window might just possibly be forced.

He climbed, and, as he climbed, his wrath grew. Before he reached the summit he was a zealous adherent of the Peking cause. He remembered now that Mr. Sam Ki-en had called on Senator Partington when the latter introduced his resolution forbidding the shipment of arms to China, and how the fellow had pleaded against it. Well, if these deceased Chinamen were all Cantonese, Smith hoped their ship would go down in the Pacific!

He reached the top. There was a window here, but he was a little too far below it. He could touch the sill with his finger tips, but could get no purchase.

He determined to raise the topmost coffin on end and lean it against the wall. Working it along the tier of boxes, he managed to grip it at a point where there was some leverage. It was astonishingly heavy, but he strained hard to lift it.

The top must have been insecurely screwed, for it came off in his hands. Steve turned away in horror, but in the fascination of horror he turned back.

The coffin was full of machine gun parts. All the coffins must be full of machine gun parts! The Lotus Valley Burial Association was smuggling arms to its Cantonese friends at home. Its sole purpose was thus to prepare its Peking enemies for burial!

IV

“Would you mind coming down? It's dangerous there, and we shouldn't want to hurt a little fellow like you.”

Steve looked below. This was another Oriental, but his speech was that of an English university man, and he held a perfectly good American automatic. Smith descended. The suave stranger evidently meant business.

He was dressed in a black cutaway coat and steel-gray trousers, and his tiny feet were shod in patent leather shoes topped by gray spats. He wore a silk hat and gray gloves, but his mouth was set in a tight line, and from his eyes gleamed a steady determination.

“I'm sorry that you attempted that climb,” said he, “for it showed you some things not intended for you. Now it will be necessary to treat you very differently from the manner originally intended.”

Steve's wrath blew a blast.

“I've had about enough of this! Where do you think you are? You're not in Canton—you're in the capital of the United States of America, and I'm an American citizen. I'm the stenographer of an American Senator. You open that door for me, and be mighty quick about it!”

The silk-hatted Chinaman shook his head.

“We intended to let you go as soon as your Senate gave us recognition; but you have seen too much. None of that!” The pistol rose as Steve showed fight. “If you attempt force, I shall have to shoot!”

Steve believed it. He ran his hand through his flaming hair.

“Well, what do you propose?”

“The Lotus Valley Burial Association,” explained his once more smiling host, “is about to carry this final shipment of its 'dead' through your capital to the freight station, where the coffins will be placed on freight cars, hauled to Baltimore, and put aboard ship.” He moved closer. “You are going along.”

The revolver rose higher. Smith's little body leaped forward. He flung out his right arm, and the weapon went spinning into the twilight.

But Steve's advantage was only momentary. As he closed with his adversary, the Chinaman cried out, the paneled door opened, and its warder rushed in, accompanied by a blue-bloused comrade. They seized Steve from behind, bound him hand and foot, and gagged him.

“Now,” said their leader, “here is an empty coffin—put him in!”

And it was done. None too gently, Steve—a helpless bundle—was deposited according to the silk-hatted man's orders. The horrible lid was screwed tight above him. As he lay face upward among the spiced cloths that lined the dark interior, an auger bored twin holes for his breathing with such precision that the steel point of the tool narrowly missed his face.

He lay dazed, bound, gagged, and helpless. He heard a clatter of Chinese talk, silenced by a sharp command—felt himself raised and borne outdoors, where the shuffling of many feet told him that he was surrounded by a large company. He was lifted into the air and pushed upon some vehicle. Came a blare of music—the music of a brass band—and the vehicle began to move.

It moved on and on. It moved perhaps a mile. The music continued. Firecrackers exploded; there was the clop, clop of horses' hoofs, and below all these sounds droned the murmur of observing crowds.

Steve, at last, was conscious enough—but how impotently! He was part of the Lotus Valley Burial Association's false funeral procession—the parade which he had wanted to watch. There must be a group of mourning Cantonese around him, bearing banners and flowing bits of paper scrawled with prayers for his soul. This silly band was a hired collection of reasonably sane American musicians; the crowd was a gathering of goggle-eyed Washingtonians and visitors to the capital. His coffin was probably being pointed out by megaphone men on rubberneck wagons. He and those illegal machine guns were being courteously escorted by a platoon of mounted District of Columbia police!

Somewhere, scattered through the procession—in plain clothes and alert for any international demonstration—there was probably a squad of agents of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice! It was one of that bureau's duties to prevent the illicit shipment of arms—the bureau that had refused Steve's proffered services! Cooped in his coffin, bound and gagged, the red-headed youth almost laughed at the irony of it.

Then he fell into a white rage. What to do? What could he do but lie still and go—good Heavens, to China? And the Senator's letter? The President's Far Eastern policy? He couldn't cry out because of his gag; he couldn't beat or kick the wooden walls of his prison because of his bonds. What could he do?

The rope about his hands, crossed before him, cut his wrists. The gag choked him. Notwithstanding the holes bored above his nose, the spices almost stifled him.

The parade went on and on for a long time, but the longest march has its end. At last they seemed to reach the freight yards. The band ceased playing; the wagons jolted over tracks; the transfer to freight cars began. Steve could hear the dragging of coffins and the comments of Irish laborers engaged in the task. He wondered if his portable prison would have another casket placed atop of it. In that case he would surely smother.

If the chief—that scornful chief—knew what Steve knew! The big man little guessed where Steve would soon be, when he sent the youth away because he was small and had red hair. His handicap—

And then, suddenly, he saw that his handicap might just possibly be made his advantage.

Little he was—thank Heaven! And blazing-headed—thank Heaven, too, for his stiff red hair!

The big man had scorned the small. Well, the very smallness of the small might here perform a duty that lay within the province of the big man's bureau—and perform it because of that very quality which the big man had scorned. The chief had said that a fellow with such hair would attract too much attention to make a good detective. Here was a chance to be a successful detective entirely through the hair at which everybody laughed, and which its owner had hated.

One chance in a hundred. Could it be seized ?

Already the workmen were engaged on the wagon that bore the concealed Steve, swinging its coffins into a box car. He felt the bumps. Could he act in time? Could he act at all? Could he turn over?

Cantonese coolies are generally small folk, but the unassembled parts of machine guns require considerable space. For the benefit of any Department of Justice official whose curiosity might otherwise be aroused, the Lotus Valley Burial Association had explained to the world, through the newspapers, that each of the organization's dead had to be accompanied by sundry provisions for eternity, which necessitated the use of extra large and heavy coffins. The rejected candidate for a Secret Service job could not speak; he could not move hand or foot; but he could turn over, and he could move his head a little.

He did turn. He lay face downward among the spiced upholstery, so that his back hair, the stiffest section of his rufous thatch, was uppermost.

He heard one of the workmen say:

“They're all-fired heavy, these here Chinks!”

“That's because they've got to take pounds an' pounds o' rice wid 'em for their journey to hiven,” returned another.

“Well,” said the first, “here's hopin' they git there; but, begobs, Oi have me doubts!”

A heavy hand was laid upon the lid of Steve's coffin. He felt the coffin move. He couldn't knock his head against the lid—there wasn't space enough for such gymnastics—but he could attempt something else. Tight along the upper woodwork he pressed his skull. He rubbed and scraped his bristling thatch across and across the auger holes.

Were the hated locks long enough and coarse enough to pass through? He rubbed harder.

If long enough and coarse enough to pass, would they, anyhow, be noted? He almost scraped his skin off.

Would—

“Look ye here, Tim!” That was the first workman's voice, quietly amused, and nothing more. “Red hair through thim quare holes! Tim, now, did ye iver hear of a red-headed Chinaman?”

The coffin was being tilted toward the box car. Rub madly, Steve—rub! It's the last chance!

“Wist!” yelled the other workman. “Larry, that hair's movin'! Blessed St. Pathrick, this corpse is a ghost!”

Released by its panic-smitten holders, the coffin spun dizzily on end. It fell between wagon and freight car. It fell to the ground with a crash that called up the silk-hatted Chinaman superintending the work—a crash that nearly stunned Steve, but that also burst the wood and spilled him at the feet of two policemen, in formal attendance.

After an instant of dumfounded amazement, the officers were cutting Steve's bonds and removing his gag.

“Get that Chinaman!” spluttered the released prisoner. “Get him—he's smuggling machine guns to Canton!”

V

What Steve himself got was the nearest telephone. He got Senator Partington on the wire just as the Foreign Relations Committee was going into session, and the Senator dispatched another messenger to the White House in time for action before the committee voted. The result was that the Cantonese rebels didn't secure American recognition.

Three more things Steve got. He got a second interview with the chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice—got a grin—got an appointment.

“You've earned the job,” said the chief.

“My size earned it,” said Steve. Then he blushingly added: “And my—my hair.”

“Oh, that was an exceptional case,” the chief declared. “Ordinarily, we couldn't possibly use your length of humanity or your shade of head; but we can always use pluck and a quick wit.” He pressed a button. “Here!” said he to the assistant who answered it. “Have Stephen Smith sworn in at once as a special agent of the Bureau of Investigation.”