BY WILLIAM ATHERTON DU PUY AUTHOR OF "UNCLE SAM'S MODERN MIRACLES," "UNCLE SAM, WONDERWORKER" WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY S. EDWIN MEGARGEE, Jr. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1916, by Frederick A. Stokes Company All rights reserved...

May I ask you to close your eyes for a moment and conjure up the picture that is filed away in your mind under the heading, "detective"? There! You have him. He is a large man of middle age. His tendency is toward stoutness. The first detail of him that stands out in your conception is his shoes. In stories you have read, plays you have seen, the detective has had square-toed shoes. You noticed his shoes that time when the house was robbed and a plain clothes man came out and snooped about. Thes

On the face of it one might have questioned the wisdom of selecting for a task so difficult a man who knew absolutely nothing about it. When the work in hand was the apprehension of a band of violators of the law who had for years defied and intimidated the whole countryside, this course seemed even more unusual. But the wonder would have still further multiplied itself if the casual observer could have given Billy Gard the once over as he sat nervously on the edge of the cane seat of the day co

Billy Gard was not thinking of business at all. As a healthy, ultranormal young man, he was drowsing over his breakfast as one has a way of doing when at peace with the world and when unaroused by any call of the present. He had reached the rolls and coffee stage of his meal in a spirit of detachment that took no account of the somewhat garish flashiness of the hotel dining-room in this typical hostelry of a city that had become noted as a maker of industrial millionaires. Then as his glance idl

It is here set down for the first time that Special Agent Billy Gard of the United States Department of Justice trod the deck of the good German ship Esmiranga and smoked many Mexican cigarettes on that historic morning in April, 1914, when she approached the port of Vera Cruz, loaded to the gunwales with ammunition for the Huertistas, and precipitated the landing of American marines. Also it was here first told that it was the hand of Billy Gard that lighted the match that ignited the powder th

"Mr. Gard," said the chief, "I take it you would like to earn the stipend the Government pays you." "Your lead sounds ominous," said the young special agent, who had a free and easy way with him even at the Washington headquarters. "If I say yes, you will hand me a large piece of hard work. If I say no, I will be courting discharge. I select the lesser of two evils. I confess to a desire to earn my money." "It is like this," said the chief. "We suspect that there is a leak in the collection of s

Billy Gard was jogging comfortably from the station to the Commercial hotel in the carryall which, in Royerton, still afforded the only link between those two points, when pandemonium broke out in the slumbrous streets. He met its forerunner head on not two blocks from the station. This bolt that had launched itself from the clear skies took the form of a normally dignified family carriage drawn by two lean bays. But the sedate respectability which surrounded this equipage when it was driven by

Special Agent Billy Gard sat in the café of Fun Ken, that wealthy Oriental who had pitched his resort among the ferns of the Blue Mountains which look down upon Kingston, the capital city of the tropical and flowery island of Jamaica. Many drowsy afternoons had he spent here with orange juice and a siphon at his elbow and the best of Havanas in his teeth. For Billy, in the opinion of every man he met in the islands, with the single exception of the American consul, was a retired manufacturer, wi

"It is astonishing," said Gard, the bookkeeper, "how few people know anything about their own business. Take bank accounts, for instance. Many people have money in the bank which lies there inactive. There is not one man in five, having such an account, who can tell the amount of it." This statement was launched during the evening meal at Mrs. Hudson's very respectable boarding-house in the prosperous little town of New Beaufort, which slumbers in one of the valleys of central New York. "I must

The effrontery of this special agent, you would quite naturally conclude, was ridiculous. You approve of the sort of courage that makes a man willing to tackle almost any big task, but you also recognize the limitations of the individual. David with his slingshot had an obvious chance of success. If he could make a scratch shot and land on the coco of Mr. Goliath he would win. But Special Agent Billy Gard sallied forth nonchalantly against the whole army of Philistines, apparently without even a

The Isla Dolorosa is in the Rio Grande River a few miles below El Paso. It is Mexican territory and is owned by an aged ranchman named Jose Encino. If one should start a camp fire anywhere on the island he would be running a monstrous risk, for so great is the quantity of ammunition that has been smuggled thus far on its way to revolutionary war and buried, that any such fire might cause a huge explosion. It was in the moonshine of a clear November night in 1911 that a boat drifted down the Rio

When one individual in a great world goes forth secretively to hide himself and a second man starts forth to find him, it would appear that all the advantage was with the fugitive. Particularly would this seem to be the case when the man in flight is of a high degree of intelligence and is thoroughly informed as to the methods that will be employed in the pursuit. Yet the detective who knows his business and who sticks to the trail month after month nearly always turns up his man. He may do this

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

Did you ever go among strangers and pretend to be a more important personage than you really are? Yes? So have I. There are many of us who habitually take a taxicab when we go into a strange city on a modest piece of business. Yet at home we would walk six blocks to save a nickel in car fare. I would not acknowledge to the hotel clerk, nor would you, that an inside room, price one dollar, is what, in my heart, I would like to ask for when I say that three-fifty will be about right. And we tip th