The Man Higher Up

This excellent detective scientifiction story is the first of a series to appear in AMAZING STORIES. These romances depict the achievement of Luther Trant, psychological detective.

While the results of psychic evidence have not as yet been accepted in our courts, there is no doubt that at a not-distant date such evidence will be given due importance in the conviction of our criminals. The authors of this tale are experts in their science and the series cannot fail to arouse your interest to the highest degree. A second story will appear in an early issue of AMAZING STORIES.

The first real blizzard of the winter had burst upon New York from the Atlantic. For seventy-two hours—as Rentland, chief clerk in the Broadway offices of the American Commodities Company, saw from the record he was making for President Welter—no ship of any of the dozen expected from foreign ports had been able to make the company’s docks in Brooklyn, or indeed, had been reported at Sandy Hook. And for the last five days, during which the Weather Bureau’s storm signals had stayed steadily set, no steamer of the six which had finished unloading at the docks the week before had dared to try for the open sea except one, the Elizabethan Age, which had cleared the Narrows on Monday night.

On land the storm was scarcely less disastrous to the business of the great importing company. Since Tuesday morning Rentland’s reports of the car-and train-load consignments which had left the warehouses daily had been a monotonous page of trains stalled. But until that Friday morning, Welter—the big, bull-necked, thick-lipped master of men and money—had borne all the accumulated trouble of the week with serenity, almost with contempt. Only when the chief clerk added to his report the minor item that the 3,000-ton steamer, Elizabethan Age, which had cleared on Monday night, had been driven into Boston, something suddenly seemed to “break” in the inner office. Rentland heard the president’s secretary telephone to Brooklyn for Rowan, the dock superintendent; he heard Welter’s heavy steps going to and fro in the private office, his hoarse voice raised angrily; and soon afterwards Rowan blustered in. Rentland could no longer overhear the voices. He went back to his own private office and called the station master at the Grand Central Station on the telephone.

“The seven o’clock train from Chicago?” the clerk asked in a guarded voice.

“It came in at 10:30, as expected? Oh, at 10:10! Thank you.” He hung up the receiver and opened the door to pass a word with Rowan as he came out of the president’s office.

“They’ve wired that the Elizabethan Age couldn’t get beyond Boston, Rowan,” he cried curiously.

“The —— —— —— hooker!” The dock superintendent had gone strangely white; for the imperceptible fraction of an instant his eyes dimmed with fear, as he stared into the wondering face of the clerk, but he recovered himself quickly, spat offensively, and slammed the door as he went out. Rentland stood with clenching hands for a moment; then he glanced at the clock and hurried to the entrance of the outer office. The elevator was just bringing up from the street a red-haired, blue-gray-eyed young man of medium height, who, noting with a quick, intelligent glance the arrangement of the offices, advanced directly toward President Welter’s door. The chief clerk stepped forward quickly.

“You are Mr. Trant?”

“Yes.”

“I am Rentland. This way, please.” He led the psychologist to the little room behind the files, where he had telephoned the moment before.

“Your wire to me in Chicago, which brought me here,” said Trant, turning from the inscription “Chief Clerk” on the door to the dogged, decisive features and wiry form of his client, “gave me to understand that you wished to have me investigate the disappearance, or death, of two of your dock scale checkers. I suppose you were acting for President Welter—of whom I have heard—in sending for me?”

“No,” said Rentland, as he waved Trant to a seat. “President Welter is certainly not troubling himself to that extent over an investigation.”

“Then the company, or some other officer?” Trant questioned, with increasing curiosity.

“No; nor the company, nor any other officer in it, Mr. Trant.” Rentland smiled. “Nor even am I, as chief clerk of the American Commodities Company, overtroubling myself about those checkers,” he leaned nearer to Trant, confidentially, “but as a special agent for the United States Treasury Department I am extremely interested in the death of one of these men, and in the disappearance of the other. And for that I called you to help me.”

“As a secret agent for the Government?” Trant repeated, with rapidly rising interest.

“Yes; a spy, if you wish so to call me, but as truly in the ranks of the enemies to my country as any Nathan Hale, who has a statue in this city. To-day the enemies are the big, corrupting, thieving corporations like this company; and appreciating that, I am not ashamed to be a spy in their ranks, commissioned by the Government to catch and condemn President Welter, and any other officers involved with him, for systematically stealing from the Government for the past ten years, and for probable connivance in the murder of at least one of those two checkers so that the company might continue to steal.”

“To steal? How?”

“Customs frauds, thefts, smuggling—anything you wish to call it. Exactly what or how, I can’t tell; for that is part of what I sent for you to find out. For a number of years the Customs Department has suspected, upon circumstantial evidence, that the enormous profits of this company upon the thousand and one things which it is importing and distributing must come in part from goods they have got through without paying the proper duty. So at my own suggestion I entered the employ of the company a year ago to get track of the method. But after a year here I was almost ready to give up the investigation in despair, when Ed. Landers, the company’s checker on the docks in scale house No. 3, was killed—accidentally, the coroner’s jury said. To me it looked suspiciously like murder. Within two weeks Morse, who was appointed as checker in his place, suddenly disappeared. The company’s officials showed no concern as to the fate of these two men; and my suspicions that something crooked might be going on at scale house No. 3 were strengthened; and I sent for you to help me to get at the bottom of things.”

“Is it not best then to begin by giving me as fully as possible the details of the employment of Morse and Landers, and also of their disappearance?” the young psychologist suggested.

“I have told you these things here, Trant, rather than take you to some safer place,” the secret agent replied, “because I have been waiting for some one who can tell you what you need to know better than I can. Edith Rowan, the stepdaughter of the dock superintendent, knew Landers well, for he boarded at Rowan’s house. She was—or is, if he still lives—engaged to Morse. It is an unusual thing for Rowan himself to come here to see President Welter, as he did just before you came; but every morning since Morse disappeared his daughter has come to see Welter personally. She is already waiting in the outer office.” Opening the door, he indicated to Trant a light-haired, overdressed, nervous girl twisting about uneasily on the seat outside the president’s private office.

“Welter thinks it policy, for some reason, to see her a moment every morning. But she always comes out almost at once—crying.”

“This is interesting,” Trant commented, as he watched the girl go into the president’s office. After only a moment she came out, crying. Rentland had already left his room, so it seemed by chance that he and Trant met and supported her to the elevator, and over the slippery pavement to a neat electric coupé which was standing at the curb.

“It’s hers,” said Rentland, as Trant hesitated before helping the girl into it. “It’s one of the things I wanted you to see. Broadway is very slippery, Miss Rowan. You will let me see you home again this morning? This gentleman is Mr. Trant, a private detective. I want him to come along with us.”

The girl acquiesced, and Trant crowded into the little automobile. Rentland turned the coupé skillfully out into the swept path of the street, ran swiftly down Fifth Avenue to Fourteenth Street, and stopped three streets to the east before a house in the middle of the block. The house was as narrow and cramped and as cheaply constructed as its neighbors on both sides. It had lace curtains conspicuous in every window, and with impressive statuettes, vases, and gaudy bits of bric-a-brac in the front rooms.

“He told me again that Will must still be off drunk; and Will never takes a drink,” she spoke to them for the first time, as they entered the little sitting room.

“‘He’ is Welter,” Rentland explained to Trant. “‘Will’ is Morse, the missing man. Now, Miss Rowan, I have brought Mr. Trant with me because I have asked him to help me find Morse for you, as I promised; and I want you to tell him everything you can about how Landers was killed and how Morse disappeared.”

“And remember,” Trant interposed, “that I know very little about the American Commodities Company.”

“Why, Mr. Trant,” the girl gathered herself together, “you cannot help knowing something about the company! It imports almost everything— tobacco, sugar, coffee, olives, and preserved fruits, oils, and all sorts of table delicacies, from all over the world, even from Borneo, Mr. Trant, and from Madagascar and New Zealand. It has big warehouses at the docks with millions of dollars’ worth of goods stored in them. My stepfather has been with the company for years, and has charge of all that goes on at the docks.”

“Including the weighing?”

“Yes; everything on which there is a duty when it is taken off the boats has to be weighed, and to do this there are big scales, and for each one a scale house. When a scale is being used there are two men in the scale house. One of these is the Government weigher, who sets the scale to a balance and notes down the weight in a book. The other man, who is an employee of the company, writes the weight also in a book of his own; and he is called the company’s checker. But though there are half a dozen scales, almost everything, when it is possible, is unloaded in front of Scale No. 3, for that is the best berth for ships.”

“And Landers?”

“Landers was the company’s checker on scale No. 3. Well, about five weeks ago I began to see that Mr. Landers was troubled about something. Twice a queer, quiet little man with a scar on his cheek came to see him, and each time they went up to Mr. Landers’ room and talked a long while. Ed’s room was over the sitting room, and after the man had gone I could hear him walking back and forth—walking and walking until it seemed as though he would never stop. I told father about this man who troubled Mr. Landers, and he asked him about it, but Mr. Landers flew into a rage and said it was nothing of importance. Then one night—it was a Wednesday—everybody stayed late at the docks to finish unloading the steamer Covallo. About two o’clock father got home, but Mr. Landers had not been ready to come with him, He did not come all that night, and the next day he did not come home.