Walker of the Secret ServicePost, Melville Davisson
General
Walker of the Secret Service
Post, Melville Davisson
Secret service -- Fiction
He had been overtaken by an unforeseen misfortune.
After the bank notes had all been signed and made ready for
circulation, he left White in the south. He was convinced the plan
which White proposed to follow would bring him to misfortune. He
pointed out very clearly what would happen, and he was right. He had
no faith in White’s assurance and he had no intention to submit
himself to the possibility of any such disaster.
He had shipped his money to a city in the southwest and he followed
it there.
I do not know whether he intended to cross into Mexico or whether he
planned that the government officials who might be looking for him
should finally be able to trace him in that direction, and, from
this, to formulate the theory that he had crossed the southern
border.
This would be quite in line with the man’s character.
At any rate the fact was, that, having made this false trail toward
southern territory, he turned suddenly about and came north. He
brought the money with him in the traveling bag. But here in a
northern city he was overtaken by a misfortune which no man could
foresee and to which all are subject, no matter how wily or
skillful.
He was taken desperately ill and he realized his condition
immediately. He took the traveling bag to an express company and
shipped it to Canada to a fictitious person. Then he looked about
for a lodging house. He was afraid to go to a hospital; and, yet,
from what Maggie afterward said, Mooney was even then, in the first
few hours of his illness, certain that he had reached the end of his
career.
The man had no difficulty in finding what he was looking for; but
here he was met with one of those inexplicable vagaries of chance
for which there seems to be no adequate explanation.
It was night when Mooney got out of the cab and was helped into the
lodging which he had selected. In the preoccupation of his illness
he did not very closely regard the person who maintained this
lodging house. But in the morning when the man came up to the room
Mooney knew him instantly.
Years before in a holdup in which Mooney had been engaged there had
been a German mail clerk. More than once when Mooney had been in the
mood of reminiscence I had heard him talk about this ridiculous
person; a pale mild-mannered German, who had been simply unnerved
with terror when the bandit had entered the mail car. This man had
been physically unable, from sheer fright, to get down out of the
car when the mail clerks at the point of a weapon had been ordered
out.
He sat on the floor with his mouth open and his hands clasped
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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