Uncle Sam, Detective

by William Atherton DuPuy

But the immediate task in hand fell to Billy Gard. It was the apprehension of the fugitive and the recovery, if possible, of all or part of the money taken. It was in the course of the performance of this duty that the ramifications of this case which give it a place among the most unique and complete crimes of the age were developed.

While accountants were revealing methods used inside the bank in getting hold of the money, Gard was busy outside. Tollman, having disappeared, was to be traced. The first step was to establish his habits, to find his associates. To the experienced special agent the groundwork of a case of this sort unfolds almost of itself. There were the people who knew him best in Bainbridge, for instance. They told Gard that the youngster had broken away, of late, from the friends of his youth. He was believed to have gone to Boston for his pleasures. He had a big red automobile which, it was supposed, he had bought with the money of his inheritance and in which he drove away practically every night. Through the whole of the last year of his peculations, Tollman, the twelve-dollar-a-week clerk, drove regularly to his work at the bank in this car.

In Boston Gard picked up the clues. Tollman was well known at certain hotels and cafés. At one hotel which was rendezvous for sporting people he regularly called upon a very dashing young woman who was registered as Laura Gatewood. It was at this same hotel that he became acquainted with an accomplished individual known as John R. Mansfield, who was well known about McDougal's Tap, in Columbia Avenue, and whose livelihood was secured through alleged games of chance. Miss Gatewood also introduced Tollman to a Mrs. Siddons, an especial friend of Mansfield, who maintained a cozy little apartment in a respectable part of Boston, and who had, in a dress suit case, a portable faro outfit which could be set up in her rooms upon occasion. There was also Edward T. Walls, a large and dominant man, who had, of late, found poker playing on transatlantic liners a rather precarious calling. But, finally, Miss Gatewood arranged meetings between Tollman and "Big Bill" Kelliner, who lived in Winthrop, not far away, was in the wholesale liquor business, in politics, and, as afterward developed, was a dominating spirit in the "faro gang."

With the development of the friendship with Kelliner began the trips to New York. These two would meet two or three times a week at the Back Bay station and together take the train for New York. So frequent were these trips that the members of the train crews came to be well acquainted with the men, and to know something of their movements. They gave clues to the hotels in New York at which these travelers stayed, and this led to their identification by hotel clerks and other facts as to their associates. Eventually all this led to a certain house in West Twenty-eighth Street and a consultation with the New York police as to its character.

It developed that in this house there was always running, on evenings when Kelliner and Tollman came to New York, a faro game. Here Kelliner gambled and at first won and induced Tollman to try his luck. The youngster was allowed to win prodigiously. Again he would lose, but not enough to frighten him away. So was the craze for gambling developed in the bookkeeper. But eventually he lost what was left of his inheritance.

Up to this time he was honest. But at the suggestion of Kelliner he stole from the bank to make good his losses. He lost again, and was in the mill. There was no chance of escape but through stealing more of the bank's funds and gambling in the hope of eventually winning out. The bookkeeper had entirely lost his head. He became consumed with the recklessness of desperation.

In the meantime the Gatewood woman had moved to New York. Also Tollman had become deeply enamored with her. So fond was he of her company, as a matter of fact, that he would often turn over to Kelliner and Mansfield and other of their friends the money with which to gamble, while he visited with Miss Gatewood. The members of the gang would go to some gilded restaurant and dine sumptuously and return to Tollman and report that luck had been against them, and that they had lost all their money. On such occasions the profits of the evening were almost clear to the gang. On such occasions, so the members of the train crew back to Boston reported, "Big Bill" Kelliner would sob out his apparent grief, because of his losses, on the shoulder of Tollman. The latter was thus placed in the rôle of comforter. Kelliner would swear never to gamble again and make his protestations so earnestly that Tollman would become the aggressor and urge his associate on and paint pictures of luck ahead. So adroitly did Kelliner play this game that Tollman had been heard to threaten to break with him because he was a piker.

For two years this arrangement continued. Kelliner, Mansfield, Walls, the Gatewood woman, and other accomplices, maintained themselves as decoys that induced the young bookkeeper to draw ever more checks against his personal account and always extract these and charge them where they were least likely to be missed. Despite his long carouses at night Tollman never failed to be at the bank in time to open the mail and extract the checks that would have betrayed him. Despite the loss of sleep he was never so dull that he neglected any detail of his bookkeeping that would have caused his accounts to fail to balance or to show any irregularities that would have caused the bank examiner to grow suspicious. Unsuspectingly the stern old bank of Bainbridge stood with unruffled front until it became but a financial skeleton, its last spark of vitality wasted away.

But this young bookkeeper of the gambling mania! What became of him? Those other aiders and abetters to his crime! What action was taken in their case?

Special Agent Billy Gard eventually had in hand a complete understanding of the individuals and the methods that were associated with this case. He had reached the necessity of making arrests.