Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 192, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1917 — The Protector of Finance [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Protector of Finance

Tales of Resilius Marvel, Guardian of Bank Treasure

By WELDON J. COBB

THE INVALID LOAN

I AWAITED the opening of a door in Resilius Marvel’s private office • with a good deal of fjnterest. Upon that action hinged something important, and I knew it. Here was a place where small things counted—a strange room, a strange man its master; only the unusual happened here. Besides that, beyond the door of this, the headquarters office of the United Bankers’ rt’otective association, there Were strange sounds. They were impelling and then deterrent; a shrill cackle, more eerie than human, as of some hunted animal in mortal terror—a voice calling distressfully into the bleak stormy night, like that of a victim from the outer world being resistingly dragged over the threshold of a new and uncertain one. To the inner circle of financial men given to good comradeship in exclusive club circles, the mention of the name of Resilius Marvel would bring a tender glow to heart and brain. It would suggest a quaint tale told so evenly and entrancingly that the memory of the tranquil, musical tones would be like the echo of golden beads dropped into a crystal dish. In one mood steeped in the ichors of Thalia, of Calliope, of Euterpe, of Erato, in the next following some sloping fancy down a fairy trail of thought sweet and refreshing as a field of daisies, one of the Marvel reminiscent hours would mean a transformation of lazy rising rings of rich Havana smoke into filmy lace pictures formed of cobwebs and starshine. His sayings were chaste as a Tiffany gem, his mind a palace, making men forget for the nonce that he held the destinies of the great banks as an egg shell in the palm of a giant, lulling them with this necromancy of tone and professional expertness into the security of a Vision house. I had not spoken since I entered the rooms, for I saw that Resilius Marvel was in one of his dark moods. So well did I know him that I at once discerned that he was struggling with some great case where the dead blank wall of “No Clue” faced him grimly. He stood at the window looking out at the rain-blurred lights of a glowing thoroughfare, just now remindful of some woeful Bagdad. Out of that world of shadows a lone bird beat its wings against the window. Into its secret recesses Marvel seemed boring his way through .obscure labyrinths, seeking that which he must find. Fitly framing the picture was a wall covered with duplicates of famous forged checks, portraits of the great counterfeiters, cabinet sections containing odd trophies of his career. Here was a stamped brick from Assyria four thousand years old —“the Book of the Dead”—one line of the hieroglyphics of which had solved an international mystery. Next was a rude seal from the Beloki Congo, wrested from the possession of a native chief who had flooded the country with "phoney” government scrip until Resilius Marvel had found him. Next was an ivory fan from Turkestan with a.sanguinary streak that was the blood of a princess, a fragment from a dynamited American steel pillar of Hindia that Could have told a racy tale of a smooth contractor. And a bulging scrap book, clasped and locked like a bank code ledger, containing his private personal notes on the new generation of bank criminals, modern in education as in an appreciation of the value at the graver’s tool, “the drag,” the raised check manipulator, the automobile as assets to crime against obsolete police methods. Always there was an air of complete stillness in this inner room. At the disturbing sound without Resilius Marvel turned —distracted, and therefore annoyed. His eye fell upon Loti, his servitor, who, velvet-shod, noiselessly opened the door and closed it after him. The man had a face like one of those you see on old Roman medals, an acquaintance with the moods and ways of his master that enabled him to question intelligently and to respond through a look, a hand mbvement, a mere expression of the lips. Loti was of three generations who had given their entire lives to the production of four famous statues —one at the cemetery of Genoa, three at the beautiful Fere le Chaise at Paris. He was a theorist as to the sense of smell, bolding thaV he could analyze a man by scenting hie favorite dish. At him now ip sharp silent challenge Marvel looked. I know not what telepathic system bridged the chasm of inquiry and response, but at once Marvel straightened up magically as if touched by a sharp mental prod. Then he gla,pced at me, and I further knew that he had made some new and Important discovery in the Paget case. When I had first entered this room I felt sure that Marvel was preoccupied, and that, too, over the case I have mentioned. In fact I had come there on that business, being a bank man and myself Interested in its outcome. To Marvel the banks were something more than clients—they were as children who went toppling down the line like tilted cards, once started in panic.' It was for this reason, when the Clearing House after two recent bank failures feared a general run on deposits, that Marvel had

exerted all his abilities to smother a scandal in the case of the Guardian Trust & Savings bank, of which young Tyler Paget was president That official was the son of one of the oldest financiers in the city. Fatherly influence had given the junior a fine start, in fact business had been so active that double the original capital was soon Invested. It was trusting a great deal of responsibility to a very young and inexperienced man, but Paget, Jr., was of excellent personal character and habits, and energetic and ambitious. However, the minute a new bank is started there is an immediate invasion on the part of crooks, schemers, “pikers” and delinquents who nave been flagged at the older institutions. Young Paget pretty shrewdly evaded most of the pitfalls, but one day “King” Gundorf walked into the bank. It was not as Gundorf that he did this, but as Bogart Rutledge. He announced that he was about to buy out the old and established Acme Metals company, a concern so well known to Paget that he was at once interested. Gundorf stated that he was paying $400,000 for the business, half cash, now held in escrow, as a receipt showed. He wished the bank to loan him $200,000, for which he, as the new president of the Acme, would put up the entire $500,000 stocks of that company. The bank had no right to make a loan in one volume so largely in excess of proportional capital restrictions, but'Gundorf claimed it would be for only ten days and offered a handsome bonus, and the deal was made. In five days the explosion came. To his dismay Paget learned that the pretended Rutledge, in giving the collateral note for $200,000, had no authority to sign, at that time, as president of the Acme. This fact relieved the corporation of all liability and the Cana held a worthless piece of paper and a non-valld stock transfer receipt. The next discovery was that Gundorf had disappeared with the $200,000 received from the bank, and that the $200,000 in escrow comprised counterfeit notes. When the escrow funds were examined tJils was made manifest, and at this point Resilius Marvel was called in.

He recognized the culprit from his earmarks at once. Gundorf had been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in Brazil a year back. He was supposed to be out of the way, for a spell at least. But about six months since there had appeared on the market a fifty-dollar counterfeit note, which, to Marvel’s experienced eyes, was the product of Gundorf’s skill. Before any of them had been recognized as dangerous by the banks, Marvel had detected the-flaws in the issue. There were two material variations from the good notes. As soon as he sent out this possibility of world-wide identification, all fifty-dollar notes were of course scanned closely. To run down the counterfeits was Marvel’s first purpose; to help out the Guardian Trust and Savings an added motive. The Acme people had lost nothing, as they simply invalidated the stock contract. Paget-, however, was out $200,000. His father was now trying to raise this amount so the bank could continue, or, if necessary, go out of business honorably. The banks within the Clearing House were trying to smother publicity,,, for fear of a general run. Paget had been given thirty days by the bank examiners to clear the situation. He had technically violated the banking laws, and but for the pending strained financial situation his bank would have been closed and himself prosecuted. The Guardian Trust and Savings cleared through our bank, Paget was a personal friend, I held fifty shares of the stock—that is how I was Interested. Few two weeks Marvel had been on the track of Gundorf. He had his own ideas as to how far catching him would relieve conditions. “You are Interested,” he said, as I arose to leave the room, fearing I might be In the way. “Stay 'where you are. I have had a man watching the house where Gundorf lived until he put over thlii last deal of his.” “But vacant, I understand you to say?” ~ “Vacant, true, but the rent paid up for six months, and telephone, gas and electricity ordered kept ready for use and paid for ahead. I fancy my man has learned something at last, and I also Imagine he is bringing somebody with him.” As the door opened on noiseless hinges Loti ushered Into the room two men. The one who held the other a prisoner was a powerful, unkempt fellow, who resembled a tramp who might have been sleeping In a dog kennel over night I later found out that this was literally true—but for a week, instead of a day, His companion, cringing, terrorfaced, wildly distraught, was a lithe, wiry man, brown as a berry, with small, beady eyes. His garb was half foreign, his actions those of a menial. He was in a frantic excess of terror, and trembled as , Marvel* fixed those grave, boring eyes upon him. «. "1 made the catch on suspicion," spoke his captor. ;.“He was ringing at the door bell of the, place we know, wheh I showed up. He’s an innocent

and doesn’t understand a word of English. Held out this card and this picture,” and the speaker gave both *to Marvel, who glanced at them and then passed them to me. The card bore the address of the house under surveillance. The photograph was a duplicate of one he had _ shown me more ■ than once —“King” Gundorf. Marvel nodded to his assistant, who departed like a man thoroughly trained in his profession. The foreigner stood now nervously pressing his unsteady hands together, the cold sweat gathering on his face. Once he held out his hand piteously for the return of the articles taken from him. Marvel never removed his eyes from him. I saw that he was studying him critically. He spoke a word to Loti I did not hear. As for himself, he went over to a bookcase. Loti went through the clothing of the man with remarkable rapidity. All he came across, as I saw, was a purse containing a small sum of money. Marvel hastily consulted half a dozen books, and turned and consulted the man. “Comprenez vous moi?” -he asked. But he need not have spoken for all the words conveyed to his strange guest. “Wer bist du?” The foreigner looked puzzled. Then he jabbered out a hideous jargon in some obscure tongue. , “Quien es usted?” No, the man spoke neither French, German nor Spanish. In some oriental patois Marvel made a new try, followed by one in a South African dialect. It was of no avail. Whoever the man, whatever his purpose in visiting the Gundorf house, he could not be intelligently approached on the subject I saw Marvel grappling with this new, baffling problem in a mighty mental throe. Then he gave Loti an unspoken instruction and the latter left the room. Marvel backed to his desk. I saw him place his hands behind him, seize a broad topped bottle, remove the stopper, insert one finger in it and come again to the stranger. As if carelessly he touched him on

the back with that finger, drew him about, ppened the door and waved him from the room. The man sped away at the injunction as though his feet were winged. Marvel pointed to my hat and overcoat He briskly arrayed himself for the street. When we reached it no one was in sight. As we turned the corner I saw Loti on one side of the thoroughfare. On the other, racing along as though relieved from a vivid spell of restraint, was a man in the center of whose back glowed a dull splotch of phosphorus, an infallible guide at a distance, and explaining the manipulation of the bottle from the desk. Twice we lost sight of Loti, whose duty it was to keep sight of the foreigner. On these occasions my companion was not at all perturbed. But his roving eyes were all the more watchful. I followed their direction more than once to observe some white marks on pavement or building, made, I knew afterwards, by a chalk crayon inserted in the end of the cane which Loti carried. I do not think Loti spoke a hqlf dozen words to his master as we finally came up with him, but these, the expression of his face, and some quick signs, seemed to convey to Marvel a world of intelligence. Loti stepped back, Marvel moved me aside with a pressure of his palm and pushed open the street door of one of those small upper story hotels with which the city abounds. The inference was that Loti had traced his man to this place. I soon knew this for a certainty. I was not at all sure that some sound signal, remote and vague, was not conveyed to my companion— or something telepathic or mystic. At all events, from an attitude of prim, soldier-like patience, Loti suddenly started like a manikin unhinged. With a movement extremely courteous and apologetic, as if deprecating that he must be in advance, he proceeded up the stain, and I followed him.

Not for an Instant did he falter or deviate from % straight course. The hallway whs lighted by lamps, but his eyes were cast down. Then, at the second landing I noticed a tiny gteen thread of raw silk close to the protecting baseboards alongside the stair treads, and guessed who had unreeled it At the end of the third Loti, with unerring precision, arrived at a door, the transom of which showed light beyond. Almost but not quite noiselessly, his long, shapely fingers groped across a panel. Again he must have caught some sound signal in response, entirely unnoticed by myself. He turned the knob of the door and we entered the room. Once more the foreigner was in evidence. He sat, or rather lay crouched back in a ragged arm chair, akin to the rest of the poor furniture of that' poor room. The old terror lurked in the depths of his shrinking eyes, and he was hushed and inert as a person subdued by some deadening influence of power he dared not resist. Marvel hadjifted. a Batchpl to the rickety table in the center of the room. There was in the apartment apparently no other personal possession of the foreigner. To my crude mind, crude at least as compared with the professional workings of the mental machinery of a great man and his equally remarkable assistant, it was the most natural thing in the world that Marvel, having cornered a mysterious quarry, should seize upon that satchel. Given a man who could not converse save in an obscure and unknown tongue, an investigation of his personal belongings might reveal everything—anything. Therefore the only sensation I experienced as Marvel pressed the catch that held the satchel locked was curiosity. But as the bending flaps opened out, to my amazement. Loti, with slight warning cry, betokening the most vivid alarm, was at the side of his master in a swift slide. He snatched at the satchel, snapped it shut again, and maintaining a tense grasp of the lock he stood pallid, his nostrils dilated, gazing with fixed and

HE WAS IN A FRANTIC EXCESS OF TERROR AND TREMBLING AS MARVEL FIXED THOSE GRAVE, BORING EYES UPON HIM

resolute challenge into the face of Marvel. “It is—pestilence,” he said simply, and slightly drew the satchel towards him. His fine mobile face expressed protection, defense. I noted a tremor spreading all over his sensitive frame, and he waved his hand. It made somewhat the same gesture that a person would make in dissipating an annoying cloud of thick smoke. Marvel returned the daring glance of his ally. Then those quick thoughts of his seemed to make a brisk run. He shrugged his shoulders as if there was a potentiality to the suggestions of Loti he could not dispute. He took out his card case. I was near enough to him to read the name in pencil—“L)r. Peter Horn.” I knew that he had sent for the most famous analyst in the city and I wondered what whs coming next. Marvel was not the man to tell, at the present juncture. He sat down on the. -bed, facing the foreigner. He leaned his chin on his two hands, these resting on his knees, and fixed his eyes upon the cowering wretch as if he was looking through him and beyond him. It must have been fully an hour before Loti showed up. He was followed by the doctor, whom I had seen before —a big, burly, heavily whiskered man, breathing deeply, looking everywhere—-a restless monument of power and force. There was a small room with glass doors connecting with the one we were in. It seemed to have been used AS.« dressing room before the hotel had sunk to second class, and, being small, went gratis with the larger apartment The doctor barely nodded to Marvel, who did not speak so much as a word. He was wont to impress his friends into service in a professional case. The doctor knew his ways as I know them. Loti must have explained what was expected of him. He proceeded 7 to business at once. Dr. Horn had brought up from his

automobile a large case, tie set this on the floor, and his first movement was to proceed to the glass doors, thrust them .open, survey the space afforded, and then point to the table. “Move It," he said tersely, and Loti carried it into the adjoining apartment. There was gas there, -and the doctor lit a jet. Then he carried his case into the room, closed the doors, and drew from the case a glass head with air tubes at the top. He sprinkled some deodorizing acid about the* room from a bottle, put on a pair of gloves, took out a microscope and proceeded to his strange task. The foreigner paid, no attention to all this. Marvel did not seem particularly interested. We four were left in the outer room, but could discern the doctor’s activities through the connecting noticed Loti glide to the side of his master; I caught the words: “The man is from a banana raising country.” “Your sixth sense tells you that, does it?" responded Marvel lightly. "Then It must be South America.” How true that instinctive sense of odor, of which Loti made a theory, was correct, the examination of the satchel by the doctor would soon tell. The illustrious savant rapidly pulled forth its contents. It held nothing but a few worn garments. Selecting a skull cap from the litter, upon this the doctor focussed his microscope. There were flashes of finely mirrored plates and instruments, the application of acids, a mixture of the scrapings of the wool from the cap, massed in a little lake of chemicals. Then the doctor closed the satchel, poured a new bottle of some disinfecting agent over It, and replacing his analytical gear in its case, came out into the larger room. “Peru," he said simply to Marvel. “Southern part. The germs are the /a bacilli, peculiar to that country alone. And to the falling sickness particularly prevalent there. You will yet come before the great societies, Loti,” he added admiringly.- “You diagnosed it right—a banana country, and the pestilential taint. The man should talk Spanish,” he supplemented, with a keen glance over the foreigner. “But he doesn’t,” responded Marvel tersely. “I know what to do now. Thanks, doctor.” He glanced at Loti and motioned me to follow him and Dr. Horn. At the street Marvel dismissed the latter with a nod, proceeded along briskly, hailed the first taxi we met, gave a brief direction, and we were whirled away to a street in the foreign quarter. The taxi halted in front of a row of old buildings. ’ Their occupants were incongruous. One little store bore a window full of more varieties of sausages than I expected to exist in the entire world. There was a store given over to Hungarian wines, a Japanese restaurant and two curio shops. These were reminders of world’s fair years, of stranded importations, and Marvel seemed to know them like a book. It was not five minutes before he reappeared from one of the curio stores. A swarthy man in a fez was with him. We were again whirling along to our terminus, the hotel. It was all so swift, so silent, so impressive—Marvel’s resistless rush of ideas and events, carrying me along irresistibly—that it reminded me of the changing scenes of a motion picture film. The curio man was ushered into the room where we had left Loti and the other. He viewed the foreigner with a measuring glance, and spoke half a dozen words in a tongue-twisting dialect. In an instant the foreigner was transformed. Eyes, frame and ■ soul seemed to awake. He uttered a joyful cry and flung himself on his knees, clasping those of the curio man, jabbering away twixt sobs of delight and tears of relief. Marvel softly rolled a cigarette with those deft hands of his, which with equal facility could slip a ring upon the dainty finger of a debutante or snap a pair of handcuffs around the brawny wrists of a burglar. I knew he divined the end of circumstnce and the beginning of coherency. There was a rapid colloquy between the foreigners. Then there was a whispered conversation carried on by Marvel and the curio man in a corner of the room. The latter returned to the prisoner. Some animated discussion endued. And then the foreigner did a quite remarkable thing. He removed his shoes, and for the first time I noticed how broad and how thick were the soles. Their owner looked appealingly at the curio man, who nodded reassuringly, as though promising protection. The former took a shell-like article from his pocket, stripped back the edge of each sole, tore them lengthwise, and from those hiding places produced two oblong rigid articles cased and encased in cushions of the softest wool. I watched Marvel as he , received these, placed them in his pocket, and made a motion to Loti, who in turn touched my arm ceremoniously with the simple words: “We will go.” "To sum up,” Resilius Marvel advised me when I visited his office the next evening, “the two packages were these,” and he produced from his desk; two steel plates and proofs of the same. “The |SO plates,” I remarked naturally. “Not at aH,” was the dissent—“duplicates of the old plates, with the flaws 1 pointed out rectified. The old issue served their purpose. These people are shrewd. Cashiers will be,, on the lookout for the old flaws only. The new notes would pass without suspicion, at least for a time. I know the man who has been making these

plates, .Mt I did not know that he was working, secluded in Peru, until last night. That native was sent with these plates, concealed as you have seen. Ho was instructed in detail what he was to do. There has been a hitch somewhere, at least a change in the plans of the people at this end of the line, of Gundorf and his associates. That he or they will be looking out for the Peruvian, however, is so certain that I shall install myself in the house where we found the native. You may help me out, and I will tell you how.” Marvel proceeded to do so. For two nights in succession I carried food supplies to my patient and invincible friend, and messages from him and to Loti. The third night, as I approached the house by the rear, as I always did, I noticed a strange thing and halted, looking up sharply. A man was leaping the space between the two houses. I knew that he saw me and was startled, for I watched him peer down at me. I could only construe that this person was entering the vacant house surreptitiously by the roof and scuttle route. At just that moment a clear sound proceeded from the house I was about to enter —the sharp, quick jangle of a telephone bell The man aloft must have been suspicious of my appearance. Perhaps he caught the sound of footsteps in the house, those of its solitary occupant. At any rate, I heard a sharp snap, a severed wire whipped down between the houses, nearly striking my face, and the man leaped back.over the space and disappeared. Perhaps two full minutes passed away, and I was about to enter the house, when the rear door flew open and Marvel was upon me. “No delay!” he spoke quickly, and seized the food valise I carried and flung it on the step. Then he started on a run, reached the next street, ahd hailed a taxicab, and gave th* quick - words: “Central telephone office." "What?” I interrogated simply. “A crash of thunder.” I did not understand, but I hoped to, soon. He left me, his first point of destination reached. I watched him rush into the telephone building, then out of it, with the sharp mandate: “Signal service bureau,” to the chauffeur —“Bad system in there,” to myself. “You are ready for a fifty mile run, double fares?" he inquired of the chauffeur as he came out from the weather brueau. “I’m .ready,” was the willing response. "My wait at the vacant house,” said Marvel, as he fled down a country road, “was rewarded by a telephone call. I was at the receiver promptly. ‘ls that you Frafiklln ?' was challenged, and then —’It’s King’—and I knew I was talking with Gundorf. There was an interruption, and the current went” “Yes, the wires on the roof were cut —’’ I began. *“No, a crash of thunder at the far end of the line.” I pointed to the blue/ sky, with all the stars a-sparkle. Marvel laughed. "There was no trace at the exchange of the call,” he explained. “Suburban, that was all. At the weather bureau a passing storm cloud reported at one station only— at Bloxton. We are going there.” We reached Bloxton in an hour and a half. Marvel located the telephone exchange. He came out bright and brisk. “Message sent from the office here direct by one Colonel Worthington,” he said to me, after giving a direction to the chauffeur. “Newcomer. Blind. Passing cloud, clap of thunder—only one—struck the wires,, My man.” I was standing just behind Marvel when he entered the library of a secluded house at the edge of the town. A bewhiskered man with big, obscuring goggles, was seated in an armchair. Marvel approached him, looked keenly at him, reached over and—removed a false ear. This was ths identifying trademark of “King” Gundorf, half an ear bitten off by a swindler confrere in the years past I know not In detail how the case was adjusted, but Gundorf 'gave up nearly all of the >200,000. I think the bargain was that he should leave the country. At all events, the Guardia* Trust & Savings did not go out of business, and is still within the clearing house. A week later, while in the office of the United Bankers’ Protective association, Marvel led me with a look to his desk. Re opened a drawerand took out the photograph of a lovely woman. Her name, “Orthello,” was written on the card. He next unrolled the plans of a wonderful mansion. 'With a pencil he drew a line through its first story. Then I knew that his exertions 1* the Paget case had paid for that much of his future home, and that he was that much nearer to the fruition of his dream of a home—and Orthello.