"When it is all over," she responded, "I do wish that we could find a way to let those detectives know that you were here under their very noses all the time."
Billy Gard, it may here be set down, was most anxious to learn how this had been possible. He had followed Margaret Berliner to the house when she had first come to see it. He had been notified immediately when she had rented it. From that moment he had watched every detail of her taking possession; had, with the aid of his men, seen everything that had gone into the house. Yet Berliner had installed himself without his knowledge and had been living there all the time.
"It would have been impossible without Archie," Berliner was saying. "A man in a position like mine needs, upon occasion, some one he can trust to do little things for him. We may quarrel with blood relatives all our lives, but they have the advantage of being safe to trust in time of trouble. It is a very small thing to send a man to a rent agent for a key to inspect lodgings and to send him back with the key after they are inspected. But had I not been able to trust Archie absolutely I would not have been able to get in here a day ahead of you and this snug little arrangement would not have been possible."
It was because of what he here overheard that Special Agent Gard, assisted by Coleman of the Paris office and the police of that city, considerately waited until Mrs. Berliner went shopping the following day and were admitted by the woman detective, who was at the time washing the accumulated dishes of the household. They so surrounded the locked door as to make escape impossible and then announced their presence. Gard told Berliner, through the locked door, of the situation that existed on the outside. He suggested that the easiest way was to unbolt the entrance, thereby saving the necessity of breaking it down. Whereupon the customs broker walked out and surrendered, and a very tedious fugitive case was brought to a successful conclusion.
XI THE BANK BOOKKEEPER
A twelve-dollar-a-week bookkeeper in a prim New England town, without access to the funds of the bank for which he worked, stole nearly a half million dollars and so juggled the books as to hide the shortage from the directors and from the national bank examiner for a period of two years.
The "faro gang," a band of master crooks, as well organized as though for the development of a mining venture, financed in advance for many thousands of dollars, took the money from the bookkeeper as regularly as he took it from the bank—took it all, but never aroused his suspicion.
The detectives of the bureau of investigation, Department of Justice, unraveled the whole tangled skein and revealed the ramifications of one of the completest schemes for the illicit acquisition of other people's money that the history of the crime of the nation has ever developed.