Uncle Sam, Detective

by William Atherton DuPuy

Gard knew instantly that the man stretched across the dining-room table was Caviness, the bank wrecker. The policeman, true to his training, rushed into the affray that it might be stopped and the participants placed under arrest. The wielder of the heavy stick turned toward the door, took in the situation in a glance and fled toward the back of the house. As in his escape from Royerton, all the luck broke with him. As he dashed into the kitchen he slammed the door behind him. It was probably all chance that the latch was so set that the door locked, and the officer was delayed in breaking it down. From the back steps of this ground-floor flat to an alley was but twenty feet. When the officer gained those steps he but looked into a blank board fence in which there appeared another closed door. He rushed to this, flung it open, looked out. There was not a soul in sight. The police of Philadelphia lost track of Homer Kester when he slammed the flat door in the face of this member of its Germantown staff. The prowess of the Federal agents, represented by William H. Gard, one of its best men, was also ineffective in tracing the fugitive farther than to a railway station where he took a west-bound train.

It was more than a year after this and George D. Caviness was serving time in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Billy Gard had been working hard on many other cases that had intervened and the tracing of Homer Kester had been allowed to rest. It is the motto of the Federal detectives, however, that a case is never abandoned, and now Gard was back upon the old task of catching the fugitive cashier. His decks were otherwise clear and his instructions were to get his man.

Gard locked himself up with the Kester case for three days. He read the records of it, reviewed his personal knowledge, got together every scrap of information that had any bearing upon the character of the fugitive. He wanted to know exactly what sort of youngster Kester was, he wanted to place himself in that youngster's place and attempt to determine what he would have done under the circumstances. It is a method that has been used by a few detectives with very great success. But it is only the occasional man who is so human that he may discard his own personality and appreciate the course that would be taken by another, who may thus get results.

In Kester he had a youth of twenty-four who had been born and reared in Royerton, had rarely been away from that town, had no interests out of it. He was a young man of good character, had demonstrated certain strokes of boldness and action. He had a mother and father and two sisters living in Royerton.

It appeared that Kester had fled and that he had cut all ties behind him—that he had left town and had never communicated with his relatives or friends. While Gard had been off the case a vigilant watch had none-the-less been kept upon all letters arriving in Royerton that might possibly be from the fugitive. No letters had come.

"Now, Gard," said the detective to himself, "were you a youngster of this training, living thus in Royerton, surrounded by a family to which you were devoted, with no interests in the world outside, with a certain element of boldness in your nature; if under these circumstances you got into trouble, would you run clear away and never communicate with your people?"

"No," he answered, transported back the few years that separated him from the inexperience of twenty-four. "I could not break so easily from my dependence upon my family and the only world I had ever known."

"And if you were thus thrown upon your own resources in the big outside world and had no money, and if you had the additional handicap of having to keep in hiding—would you be able to face a proposition like this and still not call for help from your people?"

"No," again answered the hypothetical youngster. "I would hide and find a way to get money and news from home."