He gave no receipt to any responsible employee of the Scheftels company
for anything. When Mr. Stone, one of the cashiers, suggested to him
that he was there to safeguard the securities, he thundered,
"Come out of there!"
"What authority have you for this?" demanded Mr. Stone. The Agent
thereupon showed his badge.
A moment later one of the deputies pried open the cash-drawer. The
Special Agent was at his elbow.
"Oh, look what's here!" cried the deputy.
Thereupon the Agent of the Department of Justice impounded the contents
of the cash-drawer, without counting the cash, checks, money-orders,
etc., or giving any member of our firm a receipt for them.
Turning to the Scheftels officers and employees who had been placed
under arrest, he ordered them removed from the room.
It was about as raw a performance as was ever witnessed in a peaceful
brokerage firm's banking-room.
Bookkeepers were ordered to close up books. United States mail in the
office was impounded, including mail that had been received in the
office for delivery to others.
The Scheftels employees were commanded to stand in their places with
arms folded. The desperadoes among them--those for whom a warrant had
been issued and who had been jerked out and huddled together in the
outer room--were then searched for deadly weapons. One penknife and the
stub of a lead-pencil were found on their persons. The deadly knife was
hardly sharp enough to serve the purpose of nail-manicuring. Not one of
the men under arrest would have known how to use a revolver if it had
been placed in his hands.
The men taken into custody were: Mr. Scheftels, aged 54, quiet and
inoffensive, rounding out an honorable business career without a
blemish of any kind on his character or standing; Charles F. Belser,
one of the cashiers of the corporation and a 32d degree Mason, who
never before in his life had been so much as charged with the violation
of the spirit of a minor ordinance; Charles B. Stone, aged 60, another
cashier whose sons and sons-in-law had served their country in the army
and who, himself, was as peaceful as a class leader in a Sunday-school;
John Delaney, Clarence McCormick, William T. Seagraves and George
Sullivan, clerks of the establishment, who were as likely to offer
resistance that would require gun-play to combat as were a quartette of
psalm-singing children.
Mr. Scheftels protested in a dignified and self-respecting way against
the brutal demonstration. He asked to see the authority for the raid.
This was refused until after he and the other desperate characters were
collected in another room. His demand to see the officers' warrant was
met by a vulgar exclamation from the Special Agent, to the effect that,
"If you don't shut up, we will put the irons on you! If you are looking
for any trouble, you ---- ---- stiff, you will get what you are looking
for!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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