"No; that's just what I don't want. This investigation must not attract attention. Your presence there would only advertise it. After we are through you can have all the data, and do as you wish," I insisted, having in mind to assume an attitude that would allow Hiram to work out his own salvation if possible. The only way is to expose a weak or yellow spot, so that he would see it for himself.
Superintendent Kitchell again demonstrated that he was not an accident. Before ten o'clock that morning he had accomplished almost the impossible. The wire that Hiram worked for a while was soon hot with sworn statements from every man who had anything to do with that car, from its loading until it landed on the wharf. It remained for Hiram, the Agent of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and the local packing-house agent to open the car.
I glanced over the mass of stuff before handing it to Hiram.
The shipping clerk of the packing-house swore that there was put in the car six thousand cartons, each ten pounds net weight, of prime loose sausages. This was verified by the affidavit of a checker, then a second and third checker, before the doors were sealed by agents of the Government, packing-house and railroad agents. The railroad weighmaster's figures on the track scale verified that. It was loaded and iced in zero weather, so that no delay was necessary for re-icing all the way to New Orleans.
A verified transcript of train sheets of all the train dispatchers of both roads showed that the car came in a solid train of perishable provisions, over the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad to Memphis, without longer pause than to change engines at the end of each division, where it was delivered to the Yazoo and weighed again—which weight tallied with the Kansas City weight—and traveled into New Orleans on passenger time. All this without incident or delay of any kind, and delivered on the unloading wharf track at 2:30 a. m.
When I took the records to Hiram and told him what they were, I found him going about his work as usual. His attitude was disconcerting. Were his hands clean? One could have taken him for a man who had been caught with the goods. If guilty, I had little chance to shield him.
He carried his head erect, his stride was sure and determined, but he had a glitter that indicated a tumult inside, with an attitude of suspicious aloofness. The erstwhile mirthful smile on his lips was now supplanted by one of sarcastic severity, but a smile that evidently meant much. I would have given the world just then to know what. However, all he would say was: "Ben, this is a devil of a mess and I am in the center of it."