Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

Dynamiters by Lin Bonner

So many victims, from all walks of life, falling prey to wily swindlers suggest the question: is any one safe?

When, some twenty-odd years ago Mrs. Cassie Chadwick, that amazing Cleveland woman, made cat’s-paws of astute bankers in a swindle that netted her somewhat more than a million dollars, editorial writers and the world in general gasped their astonishment that wise and sophisticated men could be such dupes.

The same thought grips us every time we read of a supposedly intelligent man or woman being taken in by a swindler nowadays. That is because we never have been “dynamited” — canvassed by master salesmen in whom bullet-fast thinking and ruthlessness are outstanding characteristics. Histrionic talent of a superior order also is an important part of their make-up, and they do their acting for higher stakes than Chaplin, Barrymore, or any of the other great thespians garner in a limited period of time.

Until Keyes Winter was appointed Deputy Attorney General of New York State and placed in charge of the Fraud Prevention Bureau with the Martin anti-Bucketshop Act as his lance, the “Dynamiters,” or hundred per cent swindlers, ran as wild as weeds in New York and environs. Now, after a little more than two years of this combination, the high power gangs have been broken up and their personnel scattered to the ends of the earth. Some are in prison, many more are fugitives in this country and Europe.

To appreciate how this clean-up was made possible after the swindling gentry had held forth for scores of years, seemingly immune from punishment, it is only necessary to know that the Martin Act is the most potent weapon ever placed in the hands of a public prosecutor.

By its terms, the attorney general or his deputies can pry into the family secrets of any firm, corporation or individual dealing in stocks, bonds or other commodities at any time they suspect the subject of being engaged in fraudulent activities. Summary powers, including that of subpoena plus arresting authority, are vested in the enforcing officer and he can compel a person to answer questions or produce records in certain circumstances under penalty of fine and imprisonment.

He also can institute injunction proceedings and have receivers appointed for suspected concerns. It is the padlock law of the financial world and, in the hands of Winter, has resulted in closing out more illicit enterprises than the Volstead law has speak-easies.

But unlike the victims of the Prohibition padlock, who merely shift their base of operations to a new location when the quietus has been put on them, those who have felt the mailed fist of Winter rarely resume again. Also, the immediacy with which offenders are indicted and brought to trial does not give them much chance for organizing any new “rackets.”

There is no lost motion, no procrastination in the Winter method. He usually has a complete case against his quarry before he ever makes an arrest, and the result is that he rarely fails to get indictments and convictions.

Not every crook nailed by Winter and the Martin Act has been put behind bars, because he has concentrated his efforts upon landing the ringleaders in the swindles and has permitted the lesser minds to turn State’s evidence in many cases.

“It is not our desire,” he told me, “to load the jails of the State with a lot of cheap crooks, but we do want to get the master schemers there. Our work follows largely the theory that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ It is preventive as well as corrective, and we have demonstrated the efficacy of our method by ridding New York City and State of bucketshops, ‘Dynamiters,’ ‘Reloaders,’ and ‘Peat’ men.

“With all these classes of swindlers rendered impotent through imprisonment or fear, they have been prevented from organizing or operating fake stock propositions or other games which, in the past, have cost the public billions of dollars. Those millions and billions which have been lost by investors in oil, mining, and manufacturing Utopias which existed only in the minds of the glib stock shovers never can be recovered; but other millions and billions of dollars which might have been enticed from them are, we believe, reasonably safe.”

In another article dealing with the enforcement of the Martin Act by Winter and his staff, activities of a bucketshop ring and a house which failed for many millions of dollars were revealed. It was explained therein that the sucker, or “Fall Guy” — any person who gives his money into the hands of these vampires of the financial underworld — is known to the larcenous fraternity as a “Mooch.” The bankers who fell for the specious schemes of Cassie Chadwick were mooches, so were those who intrusted their millions to Ponzi.

And understand that the larceny involved in these schemes is not all on the side of the man who takes the money from the mooch. For if the mooch did not think and believe that he had a chance to make huge and sudden profit he would not hark to the siren song of the stock swindler. The latter class work on the theory that “there is a little bit of larceny in everybody” and, if their philosophy were not more or less true, they could not survive and live in the luxury they do.

As with the fictionist who seeks to present “the Perfect Crime,” the dream of every dynamiter and every other crook engaged in filching from the public is to find “the Perfect Mooch.”

In this article, three of the genus are presented: One who begged off from testifying against a gang that had taken seventy-five thousand dollars from him, another who refused to believe he had been robbed when it was shown he had been looted of twenty-two thousand dollars, and a third — a banker — who permitted himself to be jobbed out of ninety thousand dollars in four raids by the same gang on the same proposition.

Each of these men was intelligent, each had made himself financially independent through his own ability and shrewdness. Yet they were all dynamited out of their thousands; deliberately swindled by stick-up men who dressed like fashion plates and carried no weapons save their wits. For the dynamiter is the suavest and most personable of all confidence men, always two jumps ahead of “What the Men Will Wear” and at all times thinking twice as fast as his victim. The smarter the mooch, the faster he thinks, and he always has the answer to any question which the prey may ask.

Consider the man who lost seventy-five thousand dollars and pleaded with Winter to let him lose it without any publicity attaching to the loss. He was and is, a man high in the affairs of Tammany Hall in New York; a millionaire building contractor who has erected a large proportion of the schools of New York City in recent years. Regarded as a man of wisdom, impossible to conceive in the role of a sucker for a racket. Yet — here is the story:

A few years ago, an impressive and pompous-looking gentleman who maintained a suite in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel was wont to promenade the famous Peacock Alley of that hostelry. He was served by a valet and changed his attire three or four times a day, and never was seen after the dining hour except in immaculate evening clothes.

He and evening garb seemed to be in affinity, so fine a picture did he make in such habiliments. He was about five feet and seven inches high, with very broad shoulders and generous girth. He had sleek black hair, scintillating black or deep brown eyes, and a healthy complexion. But the thing which distinguished him from all the other beaus and cavaliers of Peacock Alley was an artistically groomed mustache of black, tightly curled at the ends.

“That,” an informer would whisper to inquirers, “is Mr. John Papamakas, the millionaire Greek banker.”

Banker he was, to the extent of several hundred thousands of dollars; but his fiduciary activities ceased with his own personal account. The informers and the listeners, of course, did not know that. Nor did they know that a speaking likeness of the splendid Mr. Papamakas at that moment nestled in the archives of the New York police department, along with the “mugs” of thousands of proved confidence rogues.

At this time, John — known as the Greekie among the sacrilegious police and people of his own world — was a thriving bachelor, with no thought of getting himself entangled in the bonds of matrimony. But it so happened that during his periodical parades of Peacock Alley, he was introduced to a very charming lady, the sister-in-law of one of the partners in the marbled halls of J. P. Morgan & Co.

This, of course, made it different. John, already known as one of the shrewdest operators of swindling pools in the country, immediately saw an opportunity — and he was not the kind of boy to overlook an opportunity when it bumped into him. So, looking and acting the part of a big banker, he “promoted” the lady into marrying him, just the same as he would promote a mooch into buying a waste basket full of worthless stocks.

He was not true to her, for like all of the dynamiters and high pressure stock swindlers, he had a passion for the life that is Broadway, and spent much of his time away from her. That she is suing him for divorce now is not due so much to the fact that he neglected her as to the enlightenment she received about her banker husband when he was arrested and exposed as one of the most daring crooks that ever wooed wealth from the unwary.

But, while he was going well, John made the most of the opportunity he had married, and a large part of the success of his last recorded swindle rested on the fact that his underlings, in pointing him out to prospective investors, mumbled his marital status in such a way that it sounded as if John were a brother-in-law of the mighty Morgan himself.

“Big shot” — “On the inside” — “Gets the real dope through his Morgan connection.” These and similar statements were whispered awesomely behind the hand.

With the false Morgan background his marriage had given him, John engaged a large suite of red-carpeted and velveted rooms in the Waldorf Astoria, and there held luxurious court every evening. Enchanting women displaying shimmering shoulders above gorgeous gowns; gay and handsome men; Lucullian feasts and a bottomless well of fine wines and liqueurs; music and dancing. All these were gathered nightly, and the man of the coiling mustache paid the bills, totaling thousands weekly.

He was a benign monarch, but he held aloof from the crowd and its frolickings. He was not easily accessible and those who seemed to know him best were chary of introducing newcomers to him. These timid or seemingly timid ones were in reality his hired steerers and their attitude, along with the whisperings about his affiliation with Morgan, was all part of the little comedy — or tragedy — staged for the deception of the mooch who had been steered into the elegant “trap.” It was what is known as “the build-up,” the game of giving John importance and impressiveness in the eyes of the sucker.

The sesame which usually exposed the wealth of the mooch to the relentless clutch of John was a blackboard on the wall of the big dining hall, similar to those which are part of the trading room of every brokerage office. On it were names of stocks listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and alongside each name were figures showing the career of the stock that day.

This, by the way, was an illustration of the Greek’s astuteness, for not one person out of a thousand who plays the New York stock market would know the least thing about the Toronto list. And to learn anything about it they first had to be introduced by one of the steerers to the master himself.

This usually followed an inquiry by the visitor as to what the figures on the board meant. The steerer would plead ignorance, adding: “I’ll introduce you to him, and you can ask him about it.” This was the first step in the genteel game of shearing the guest.

Introduced to the magnificent John, the sucker, or mooch, would be left alone with him, and John would explain the movements of stocks at Toronto, pointing out on the board the various issues. Somehow or other a stock called “Hattie Gold Mines,” selling for around eleven cents a share, would stand out conspicuously from the rest, and invariably the visitor would ask about it. John then would confide in him that he had taken a fancy to the stock because his wife’s name was Hattie — which was the truth, because he had named the stock for his wife — and he had such faith in it that he had organized a pool in it.

The mooch would ask to be let into it and try to buy stock from John, but he had none to sell. So they would go to their banks next day and ask them to buy from some good broker in Toronto a few thousand shares of the stock. They would go into the market to get it and succeed, because as the purchase shoved the stock up a little, John would sell. In due time, the stock, accompanied by a draft from the brokers, would arrive at the sucker’s bank, the draft would be paid out of his account and the stock turned over to him.

The stock would then be delivered to John as manager of the pool, to be sold or held as he saw fit. John then would send the stock back to Toronto and, telling his followers that he thought it was time to start a buying campaign in order to shove the price up, would order Mr. Mooch to buy some shares. He, trusting creature, would do so, getting in return for his new money his old stock, which he still owned. As all the stock in Toronto was held in John’s name, all the new money went to him without his having spent a cent on the stock.

It was into this brace game that the wise Tammany contractor was led by one of John’s deputies. He was carried through the routine outlined above, and stuck with it until John was put out of business, at which time he had sunk seventy-five thousand dollars.

So long as he remained in the role of pool manager and made the suckers buy their own stocks, John was within the law and doing naught that has not been done by bigger and more highly respected financiers a hundred times in Wall Street. Even the reselling of their own stock to his followers would have been a difficult matter to prove against him, because there were millions of shares of Hattie Gold Mine and John could have delivered the stocks to the owners at any time they demanded it.

But, after he had got at least six hundred thousand dollars, and probably a million — an estimate by the man who arrested him — he tripped over a measly seven thousand dollars, committing that tiny error which always prevents the perfect crime.

One night, his chief lieutenant and steerer, one Waldo, a wine-soaked derelict of the bucketshop lanes and former member of the firm of Dean, Waldo & Co., 49 Wall Street, led up to the slaughter the mooch that was to bring John’s swindling structure tumbling about his head. The victim was a woman, a high-salaried seller for a manufacturing concern. The trap, in even greater splendor than had prevailed at the Waldorf, was now located, en suite, in the Biltmore Hotel.

As per formula, John, with his high pressure salesmanship and mock austerity, dynamited the lady out of seven thousand dollars after she had explained to him that she had scrimped and sacrified all her life so that she could send her daughter to college. The girl was then a student in Syracuse University.

John took her money with the same ease that he had that of the millionaire Tammany contractor. And then he made the fatal error of stepping out of his character of pool manager and outside the law as well. For, in acknowledging receipt of the woman’s money, he wrote “we have purchased for your account.” This absent-mindedness automatically changed him from an agent to a dealer in securities, and as such he was amenable to the provisions of the Martin Act.

Some time passed and nothing happened in the way of rising values on Hattie, so the mother of the girl who was in Syracuse University called upon John the Greek for her shares. He couldn’t deliver them, because, preparing for a new killing, he had promoted a gold mining company to work the Hattie claim, which was located in the Red Lake district of Canada, and had placed all of the shares in a holding company. This, an operating corporation, had no authority to deal in stocks, and John could not produce the certificates.

But he offered her something “just as good,” a bundle of securities of even more dubious value than those of the Hattie. The saleswoman refused to accept the substitutes and took her story to the office of Winter. From the description she gave of the beautiful rooms at the Biltmore, with its superb tapestries, Oriental rugs, and fine furniture as the setting for John’s lavish entertainments, he sensed a major case of dynamiting on a big scale.

It so happened that Winter, upon taking office, had created, partly from his private fortune, a compact but highly efficient Secret Service, backed by stalwart State Troopers. He had been deeply touched by the woman’s sad story, especially when she told of her sacrifices and declared she had been compelled to withdraw her daughter from the university. He at once called in the chief of his Secret Service staff and the best men in the department, told them the story and sent them out to run down the perpetrators of the fraud.

For many days the hunters could make no contact with the crooks, for John had been using a strange name — not his own — when he robbed the hard-working mother in his Biltmore den. Then, through an underground source, they got a line on Waldo, the steerer. He was located at the Times Square Hotel, Forty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue, New York.

Armed with a subpoena issued under the authority of the Martin Act, Winter’s squad of wolf hunters raided Waldo’s quarters and routed him out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning. He was ordered to dress while the detectives and State Police stood by, then he was taken down to Winter’s office, then located at 66 Broadway, in the shadow of Trinity Church.

He was subjected to a bitter examination all day, but stoutly maintained he knew nothing whatever of the swindle. But, along toward twilight, his liquor-razed nerves gave way and he made a full confession, explaining the entire scheme and giving the name of John Papamakas and the Tammany man who was one of the principal victims. He also informed the investigators that John Papamakas was living at No. 410 Riverside Drive, and they immediately organized a raid for that night.

Accompanied by Waldo and the woman victim, city detectives and his own State Troopers, the chief of Winter’s Secret Service proceeded, at ten o’clock in the evening, to the Papamakas demesne overlooking the Hudson River. They were readily admitted to the apartment, as richly and exquisitely appointed as had been John’s workshops in two of New York’s most gorgeous hotels.

John and his wife were both at home, the latter beautifully gowned, and the master of Hattie Gold Mines at ease in a handsome black satin smoking gown. He received his visitors calmly and courteously, smiled and graciously offered them chairs. Winter’s representative flashed his badge, then turned to the victim of the Papamakas.

“Is this the man you gave your money to?” he asked.

“Yes!” said the woman.

“And is this his partner?” pointing to Waldo.

Again she answered in the affirmative.

“All right, Greekie,” said the investigator, who knew the swindler well, “get on your hat and come on.”

Papamakas volubly but vainly protested his innocence, declaring the woman had made a mistake. But in the midst of his protests he was taken from the luxury of his apartment, given a fast ride down town and placed in a cold, cheerless jail cell.

The following morning he was arraigned before Magistrate Rosenbluth, who regarded his offense as of so serious a nature that he held him for the grand jury without bail. He remained in jail only a comparatively short time, however, for he had plenty of money and was able to employ the best of legal talent. By the time he had been indicted for grand larceny, they had succeeded in having one of the higher courts fix his bail at twenty-five thousand dollars.

John paid this promptly, and as promptly vanished from New York. He was last heard of in Canada, a fugitive from justice and a bail jumper, as well as the deserter of the wife whose family connections he had used so nefariously. She, disillusioned after her husband’s arrest, is seeking freedom from the bond that tied her to him.

While preparing the case against Papamakas for the grand jury, Winter’s chief investigator subpoenaed the big Tammany mooch to tell how he had been “clipped” for his seventy-five thousand dollars. But he did not wish to appear against the dynamiter, fearing the ridicule which would follow his exposure as a sucker for a stock racket would destroy him politically. Matching the seventy-five-thousand-dollar loss against possible city contracts running into millions of dollars, from which his profit would be many times what Papamakas had taken from him, he was glad to remain silent and unnamed in the case.

If Papamakas heard of his big victim’s attitude he must have had one of the most satisfying moments of his career. For what could be sweeter — to a dynamiter — than a mooch who would “go” for “seventy-five grand,” as the sharpshooters refer to thousands, and then refuse to “squawk?”

Perhaps the big man of business was not entitled to any sympathy in the matter. He was just one fellow who thought he was smart and met up with one who was smarter. The real iniquity of the Greek adventurer lay in his robbery of the woman who had struggled to give her daughter a better chance in life. In the first instance, the investor, wordly wise, was out to make a big cleanup. In the other case a trustful woman risked her pathetic all in the hope of making it secure in a legitimate investment.

More tragic, but less pathetic was the case of the banker who demonstrated that lightning, in the guise of a fake stock proposition, may strike in the same place not only twice, but four times. In addition to sacrificing ninety thousand dollars to the wily crew which plucked him, he also forfeited his life and brought the bank for which he worked perilously close to wreckage. As it was, the bank had to close its doors for a brief period until an audit could be made of its books to ascertain if any of the institution’s funds had been diverted to speculative channels.

Somehow or other, whenever a banker is revealed as the victim of a confidence game, it always seems more dreadful than is the case when any other class of citizen is the goat. That is because the banker is the guide, philosopher, and friend — as well as guardian — of the layman in matters financial, just as the doctor or lawyer is in his particular line of public service. The banker is credited, first, with an abnormal streak of caution, and second, with expert knowledge of all forms of investment.

If you ever have tried to borrow money from a bank, even a few hundred dollars, you will recall how you felt as the credit man impaled you with a cold eye while he probed the innermost secrets of your soul; how he made you wish you never had stolen those cookies from the pantry when you were a hungry kid.

Made you feel, in short, that there was something distinctly dishonest about your trying to borrow money from your bank. You were willing before he had half finished giving you the third degree, to kick yourself and wish that you never had started on the miserable enterprise of trying to get the loan. You would gladly have let the matter drop and leave without the money.

With such personal knowledge of the keenness of the banker, is it any wonder you should experience surprise, shock, unbelief, and amazement when you read that the banker has surrendered to a band of swindlers a sizable fortune, a sum sufficient at six per cent interest, to provide an income of more than one hundred dollars a week for life?

The people of Nichols, Tioga County, New York, received that kind of a jolt when they heard about the easy prey a gang of blood-sucking dynamiters had found in John Edsall, respected cashier of the Nichols National Bank.

So far as the records show, there was nothing criminal in the actions of Edsall, unless gullibility and an abnormal faith in mankind can be regarded as criminal traits. Of these, poor Edsall was plentifully endowed.

The disaster which literally swept Edsall into a ruined man’s grave was inaugurated by an undersized rat of the financial underworld, one of the waifs of Wall Street who exist on crumbs from the table of crookedness. Rodent men, too illiterate or too incompetent to promote a swindle themselves, but nevertheless sufficiently nimble-witted to filch information and peddle it to the high pressure thieves in return for a cut-in on the proceeds of the deal.

The weasel-like creature who ferreted out John Edsall for the dynamite mob that ultimately wrecked him was a little Italian who was despised even among his own kind as a nerveless, spineless double crosser and tout. With his peculiar gifts for snooping information, he managed to learn that Edsall, whose name was on a sucker list downtown, was a wonderful mooch prospect. Those who knew of him were holding him in reserve until such time as they could rig up an attractive proposition for extracting his money from him.

Mere knowledge of the fact that Edsall had money was sufficient for the little tout, and he dashed up to the roaring Forties, where the dynamiters held forth, looking for a market for his stolen mooch name. He found a buyer in Jerome “Red” Pomeroy, a Beau Brummel of Broadway and a high pressure man with the reputation of being as slippery as an eel.

Pomeroy’s passion was clothes, and he was credited with having the most extensive wardrobe of any sharpshooter on Broadway. Standing five feet and eleven inches tall and weighing about one hundred and sixty pounds, his slim, muscular figure was a fine model for clothes.

He affected the professional man’s garb of striped trousers and cutaway coat most of the time, and he usually displayed such fine taste in the selection of his raiment that his dazzling mane of red hair was made one of the most conspicuous units on the dance floors of the all-night drinking and dining clubs.

For some time prior to having John Edsall thrust upon him by the little Italian, Red had not been doing so well in a “business” way, and neither had some other energetic boys of his set.

Then, all of a sudden, he blazoned forth in glorious new garb. The rest of the mob were wise immediately — Red had “knocked off” a mooch!

Like maggots after cheese, they crowded around the elegant Red and begged to be let in on the snap, but he wisely kept his own counsel. For a sucker name, in the dynamiting racket, is a real asset and no sane grafter ever surrenders one unless he has to do so, or else sees the lion’s share of the loot coming his way.

We now see the beginning of a game of cheating cheaters. Try as they would, with blandishments of which they were masters and prolific plying of Red with liquor, the others could not shake him loose from his secret. He did weaken sufficiently, however, to tell a couple of the boys that he had taken his man for two thousand dollars.

That was good enough for the others, who were none other than “Dynamite Dan” — otherwise Tom — Kelley and Mr. Packey Lennon, known as “the Butterfly Man of Broadway.” Each of these worthies was rated as clever as Red himself, and the latter knew it. Although, it must be told, the escutcheon of Mr. Dynamite Dan Kelley was slightly smirched by the fact that his handsome countenance adorned the rogues’ gallery of New York, due to a bit of youthful carelessness in being caught in a confidence racket.

Be it known that the dynamiters and other swindlers have their own system of getting the financial rating on a prospective victim and, if they cannot obtain the necessary information there are certain alleged mercantile agencies which will do it for them — for a good price.

Thus, Dynamite Dan and Packey counseled Red to get a “line” on his sucker and, if he seemed possessed of sufficient “sugar,” or money, they would work a “peat” on him. In other words, make him the subject of a real killing by selling him a given stock and then pretending to have a market wherein, if he had several times the number of shares he was known to hold, he could sell his block at a substantial profit.

Red cogitated the matter over many Scotch highballs, and finally agreed to the proposal. He quickly ascertained the financial rating of John Edsall, deemed his holdings sufficient for the purpose in mind, and cast in with the other two precious thieves.

Would you be duckling enough to let some unknown person canvass you out of two thousand dollars by long distance telephone for a stock of which you knew nothing? Well, that is what poor John Edsall, supposedly cautious bank cashier, did.

That was Red’s first contribution on the “peat” after he agreed to let the other two in on his good thing. He explained to them that he had obtained the name — never mind how — and had called Edsall by long distance telephone to offer him a few shares of Interstate Mortgage bonds.

These were legitimate securities, but they only had a market value, among unlisted securities, of six dollars a share. In a previous article, mention was made of these same bonds having been used to swindle Dr. Babcock, professor of economics at New York University, of almost two thousand dollars, the perpetrator of the fraud now being a resident of Atlanta, where the Federal prison is located.

The caliber of men these fellows chose for their victims is a key to their boldness and cleverness.

Red went on to say that he had sold Mr. Edsall two thousand dollars’ worth of Interstate Mortgage at something like seventy dollars a share. This meant that he had only about twenty-eight shares of the stuff, the real value of which would be less than one hundred and seventy dollars.

With the history of the case revealed, Red, Packey, and Dynamite Dan held a triple christening party, out of which they emerged with brand new family names. They then rented a handsome suite of offices in the Capitol Theatre Building at Fifty-First and Broadway, New York, and went to work on Edsall immediately.

Red Pomeroy, who had been Mr. So-and-so when he sold Edsall the securities originally, now became transformed into Mr. Henley, or a similar name, president of the Broadway Finance Corporation. Again he brought into play the old reliable long distance telephone and, when he had John Edsall on the wire far up in New York State, told him that the financial syndicate of which he was the head was buying up control of the Interstate Mortgage Company and were willing to take his stock at a price which would give him — Edsall — a neat profit. The conversation ran about as follows:

Pomeroy: Mr. Edsall, our syndicate is engaged in acquiring control of the Interstate and we find your name on the list of persons who hold stock in that corporation. If your holdings are sufficient to make it worth while, we will be glad to take over all you have at one hundred dollars a share.

Edsall: But I only have about twenty-five or thirty shares of it.

Pomeroy: That’s too bad, Mr. Edsall, because you were in a way of making a nice little profit on your investment, no doubt. Sorry — by.

Two telephone receivers click upon their hooks. At one end of the line there is a chuckle, at the other a sigh of defeat.

That conversation had cleared the way for the “peat,” and laid the corner stone of the swindling structure that was to be reared in the near future. Edsall had now been opened up, his cupidity aroused by the knowledge that, if he had a sufficient number of Interstate Mortgage shares, he could sell out at a profit of thirty dollars per share. He was ready for “clipping.”

Three days passed and then, to his surprise and delight, Mr. Edsall went to the long distance telephone to find that Mr. So-and-so — in reality, Packey Lennon or Dynamite Dan — was at the other end of the line. The salesman had got hold of a few more shares of Interstate, it would seem, and he had just called up to ascertain if Mr. Edsall would care to take them off his hands.

Would he? How much of it did he have? About twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth? Glad to take them. Just express them cash on delivery to him at Nichols, and he would lift them with a certified check. His orders were obeyed, the six dollar value securities were shipped to him by express — to avoid the embarrassing detail of explaining away possible future charges of using the mails to defraud — and he acquired them in exchange for a certified check of the value of twenty-five thousand dollars, paying the previous share price of seventy-five dollars.

In the course of his conversation with the supposed president of the non-existent financial syndicate, Edsall had been given the telephone number of the latter organization. So, immediately upon getting his new allotment of shares, he called up the president and told him what he had.

“That’s fine,” said President Pomeroy, or whatever name he was using. “Edsall, you’re a fast worker, and we’re glad to do business with you. Our vice president in charge of the Interstate purchase will be up to see you in a few days and take your holdings off your hands at the hundred dollar figure.”

Edsall waited a week, but the purchasing agent did not show up. He was not particularly concerned, however, because he knew that in deals of such magnitude things were likely to bob up to disrupt the working schedule. And, sure enough, his deductions proved correct, for the very next day the president of the syndicate called him up and apologized for the non arrival of the buying vice president, explaining that he had had to run out to the Middle West to unsnarl a purchase involving many thousands of Interstate shares.

He probably, the president regretted, would be detained out there for two or three weeks longer. But, meanwhile, the syndicate president hoped, Mr. Edsall would preserve those securities for him and, if possible, try and dig up some more among his friends.

“We can handle as much again as you now have,” he informed the banker.

Whew! That meant that Edsall must get about thirty thousand dollars more of the Interstate certificates. But it meant double the profit he had previously sighted on the horizon, and he determined to get the stock if he could.

Having thus kept their mooch in line by dangling the bait of double profits before his eyes, the dynamiters now decided to let him rest awhile. They didn’t attack him again for almost two weeks. Then his unseen friend of the long distance telephone, from whom he already had bought twenty-seven thousand dollars’ worth of the issue, called him and asked if he would be interested in taking over about thirty thousand dollars’ worth more. He not only would, but did.

It seems that about this time Edsall was at the end of his own resources and had to seek outside assistance to swing his big deal. Whether he borrowed the money or not was not very clear, but it was said that he enlisted the aid of a millionaire lumberman of Owego, New York, George Fenderson, either as partner or backer.

At any rate, he paid over the thirty thousand and he again called his Broadway financial syndicate and told the president of his good fortune in getting the additional stock. For which gladsome intelligence he received the heartiest congratulations and thanks of the president, our friend Red Pomeroy.

This thing was so soft that the trio decided to play him for a grand slam, and so they decided to invite him down to the palatial offices in the Capitol Theater Building for a conference. It was arranged and the stage was set to receive him.

At this juncture the ugly game of cheating cheaters thrust its ugly head into the situation in the person of the little Italian who had first discovered Edsall’s name. While the dapper dynamiters had split more than fifty thousand dollars of Edsall’s money, the discoverer had not received a cent.

But, in his own peculiar way, he learned that the three had a mooch coming into town at an early hour the next morning, to be met at Grand Central Terminal by the exquisitely dressed gentleman whose face adorns the rogues’ gallery, Mr. Dynamite Dan Kelley. He rightly surmised that the sucker was Edsall, his discovery, and he decided to declare himself in on the play.

Going to the offices of the dynamiters, he informed them that he wanted his “bit” out of the takings from Edsall, threatening, if they refused to share him in, to expose them to Edsall as he came into the building with the sucker. They laughed him out of the office.

When, however, they later found him lurking outside the building, they realized that he meant to carry out his threat. So, to stall him off and placate him, they told him Pomeroy had lined Edsall up for another two thousand dollar job and that his share of it would be six hundred dollars. This satisfied the little Italian.

That night, in anticipation of the morrow’s fifty thousand dollar coup, it seems that Dynamite Dan Kelley and Packey Lennon staged an all night celebration, the result being that Dynamite Dan, who was to meet Edsall, showed up at the rendezvous in what he later described as a “stinking” condition.

However, his state evidently did not register with Edsall, because he made no comment at the time, or later, and permitted himself to be escorted to the thieves’ den in the building which houses what has been called the most beautiful theater in the world.

There, the usual business of absorbing Scotch whisky had given way to the business of appearing busy. A great display of activity met the eye of Edsall as he walked into the “trap,” which had every appearance of a private banking or brokerage office under full steam. The poor dupe was introduced, with due formality, to Mr. Lennon, but the sorrel-topped Pomeroy was absent. Nevertheless, the business of stringing him anew was quickly under way.

Remember, please, that until he was confronted by the illuminated Dynamite Dan Kelley at Grand Central some minutes previously, Edsall never had laid eyes on any of the men to whom he had given more than fifty thousand perfectly good dollars! He was now meeting his trimmers en banc, as they say in the courts, for Lennon and Kelley were the ones who were actually jobbing the stock to him.

While clerks were whirling in and out of the offices with bundles of papers — supposedly bona fide securities — opening and closing a huge empty safe, the negotiations were carried on. The swindlers were selling Edsall more of the Interstate shares and doing a fine job of talking. He, in his turn, had very little to say, and mentioned not at all the fact that he was loading up with the stuff so that he could unload it on the Broadway syndicate at a profit of thirty dollars per share.

The upshot of the negotiations that bright morning was that Edsall engaged to take fifty thousand dollars more of the paper, to be paid for in two installments of twenty-five thousand each. He fully intended to do that, but, by a strange trick of fate, the dynamiters were destined to receive only half of the total amount.

Edsall, as per his agreement, dispatched a check for twenty-five thousand dollars through the Federal Reserve Bank at New York. But there it was found he had made one of those odd errors which are committed, at some time or other, by all of us. In one part of the check he wrote twenty-five thousand dollars, as he intended, but in another he wrote twenty-five hundred dollars.

This discrepancy being discovered at the bank, the check naturally was voided and returned to the maker. But Edsall was a sincere mooch and he promptly sent another check, free from flaws and good for twenty-five thousand dollars.

When the boys heard about that ill-fated first check, they had a hunch that Lady Luck was about to desert them, and, while subsequent events proved they would have received the other twenty-five thousand dollars in due season, they decided their position was getting “hot” and that the discreet thing to do was to cut their line and let the fish get away. So, with the record showing that more than eighty thousand dollars’ worth of Edsall’s money had found its way into their pockets, they closed their handsome offices and wandered out into the wide open spaces of Broadway.

So far as they were concerned, Edsall could keep the rest of his money, along with his precious Interstate shares, and await the coming of the syndicate’s purchasing agent, who never would show up.

But, while the dynamiters were through with him, Edsall was not through with the stock business. Nor with the business of being a perfect mooch. He was destined for a new adventure, with a specious gentleman now sojourning at Sing Sing acting the role of villain.

This individual is known by the picturesque title of “Dapper Don” Gutterson, with a record of financial chicanery covering many lines and many years of activity. At present he is serving a term in Sing Sing for a bond swindle apart from the Edsall job, but he is still under indictment in the latter case, and will have to stand trial when he comes out of the penitentiary walls at some date in the future.

The appearance of Dapper Don on Edsall’s horizon was said to be the result of a little fancy double crossing in which Red Pomeroy figured as the manipulator. Gutterson and Red, years before, had been associated in business which culminated with their arrest and indictment for a half million dollar swindle.

Upon their conviction, Red had expiated his share of the crime by serving a single day in jail, while Dapper Don had to remain in durance vile for thirty days. If they split fifty-fifty on the half million dollars, Red, with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as his bit, registers the highest earning power for one day’s service in the history of the world. Gutterson, doing the thirty days, earned his share, then, at the rate of eight thousand, three hundred and thirty-three dollars per diem. Not such a bad scale itself.

Shortly after Pomeroy, Lennon, and Kelley withdrew their fangs from the unfortunately gullible Edsall, Dapper Don, seated in a splendid motor car, rolled into the town of Nichols, New York, where the bank cashier was a citizen of substance. That the latter was still unsuspecting is demonstrated by what Gutterson did to him.

Seeking out Edsall with the boldness characteristic of him, Gutterson engaged him in a discussion of stocks and investments. He learned, among other things, that Edsall held wads of Interstate paper, and he tactfully suggested that perhaps the banker was making a mistake in placing all his eggs in one basket. The idea took root with Edsall, and he in time agreed that perhaps Gutterson was right. He still had that twenty-five thousand dollars which was to complete his fifty thousand dollar deal with the New York boys — and Gutter-son knew it.

Putting on his strongest pressure method, Gutterson managed to engage Edsall in a deal whereby the latter parted with a block of his Interstate shares — they, at least, were worth six dollars apiece — and ten thousand dollars in cash. In exchange, he received from Gutterson a wad of engraved paper which had practically no value whatever. Dapper Don bade him a fervid farewell, reentered his beautiful motor, and rolled out of the town which boasted Edsall as a citizen.

That is how the upstate man was looted for more than ninety thousand dollars, and now comes the story of how his defilers were run to earth and placed behind prison bars.

Some time after Gutterson had visited him, Edsall seems to have risen to the suspicion that perhaps all was not right with his Interstate deal. It had been weeks since he had heard anything from the financial syndicate about purchasing his holdings and he had heard nothing from the stock sellers since he had paid his last twenty-five thousand dollars.

Futile efforts to find trace of the dynamiters ripened his suspicion into certainty. He felt that he had been trimmed and he investigated, as he should have done at the outset, the market for Interstate Mortgage stock. There he learned the truth, and realized for the first time that he had been swindled out of many thousands of dollars. His predicament could not be kept from the directors of the bank, there was an inquiry, and the institution closed its doors for several days while an audit was made of its affairs.

The bank being a national institution, the Department of Justice was notified and its operatives went to Nichols. They began a hunt for the swindlers, but, after several weeks, had failed to get a trace of their men. The matter was then referred to Winter, as head of the Fraud Prevention Bureau.

From descriptions given by Edsall, Winter’s secret service chief immediately recognized Dapper Don Gutterson, Packey Lennon, and Dynamite Dan Kelley. As Edsall never had seen Red Pomeroy, the man who initiated him into his downfall, there was no description of him available. Winter, under the authority of the Martin Act, swore out warrants in Tioga County, charging grand larceny to the three high pressure men, who were identifiable from the Edsall descriptions.

The reason Winter took out warrants in the upstate county rather than in New York, where the gang would most likely be apprehended, was predicated on the knowledge that in the rural section the criminals, if caught, would have to stand trial before a backwoods jury, combat the charges on their merits and stand or fall on the evidence.

In the big city, they had ways of enlisting influence and “fixing” which might bring them scot free or get them off with some ridiculous penalty like those imposed upon Gutterson and Pomeroy in the half million dollar swindle.

The chase now was on, with Winter’s picked men and burly State Troopers determined to close in on the dynamiters as quickly as possible. It lasted for many months, however, and led through most of the big hotels and most glittering cafés in the White Light district.

Then, after one lead following another had been run out, there came the break. The little thing that, typically, the big money crooks had overlooked in the hurry of getting the swag.

It was the little Italian ferret from Wall Street. They had neglected, out of their huge stake of more than eighty thousand dollars, to pay him his petty six hundred dollars! They double crossed him, as they had intended doing even as they promised him the money. And he was sore.

So sore, in fact, that he was babbling his hate all up and down Broadway.

Soon, through the underground maintained by the Winter secret service, his wailings came to the ears of the hunters. They picked up the Italian and, after lengthy examination, he squealed. He poured into the ears of the man-hunters the complete story of the swindle, from the time he had picked Edsall’s name off the sucker list until Gutterson had bored him for the last ten thousand dollars.

While the hunt was on Gutterson, who was operating a racket known as the Union Mortgage Company, again entered his elegant car and drove brazenly into Nichols. He went to the authorities.

“I understand,” he said, “there is a warrant out for me. I have no idea what it is for, but here I am.”

They obligingly arrested him, and his bail was set at ten thousand dollars. He laid the money down on the desk and walked out of the place. He got into his car and drove back to New York.

Red Pomeroy, the ring leader, had fled, and it was more than a year before anybody engaged in the hunt laid eyes on his flaming hair; this despite the fact that local officers and Department of Justice agents were looking for him all over the land.

Where the red-crested dandy had been hiding during the long hunt was not ascertained, but one day word was received at the Winter offices that Pomeroy had boarded a train in Detroit and was due to arrive in New York at a given time. When he stepped off the train at Grand Central he was welcomed home with vast enthusiasm by a reception committee made up entirely of operatives from the deputy attorney general’s office.

Red was shocked and chagrined, not to say disappointed by the turn events had taken, but those emotions constituted the only balm he got out of the situation. He was escorted at once to Winter’s office and, after many hours of severe questioning, was placed aboard a train and taken to the Tioga County jail.

While the hunt had been going on, Edsall died of a broken heart, and it looked to Pomeroy as if, the chief witness and victim of the swindle being thus removed, there was no way by which anything could be proved against him and the others who participated in the fraud. Unfortunately for the dynamiters, though, Winter’s men, as the result of the little Italian’s “squawk,” had picked up two minor figures in the job, known as Sanford Tack and Charlie Whitaker.

They were indicted, along with their chiefs, and immediately turned State’s evidence. Their testimony helped to convict Pomeroy, and he was sentenced to serve five years in Auburn prison, where he was sojourning at last reports. The informers were liberated under suspended sentences.

During the trial of Pomeroy the net was spread for Packey Lennon, who had used some of his ill-got wealth to start a flashy cabaret on Broadway, and he was finally apprehended one day as he was leaving a brokerage office of shady reputation.

Taken upstate to face the music, he arrived almost at the moment that the jury brought in its verdict of guilty against Pomeroy. He was brought to trial shortly thereafter, convicted, and sentenced to serve eleven months in the reformatory at Elmira, New York, as a first offender.

Thus, with his conviction, three of the four principals who participated in despoiling the misguided Edsall were behind bars — Pomeroy, Lennon, and Gutterson, although the last named had not been brought to trial on the indictment naming him in the case. Dynamite Dan Kelley is the only one of the quartette who escaped capture, but he has been made a fugitive and has been driven out of New York, his choice of all the real estate that goes to make up this old earth.

The Edsall swindle was not the biggest that ever was put over via the “peat” racket, but it affords a splendid illustration of a gang of dynamiters functioning at their best — or worst — and proves that no man, not even one saturated with the cautiousness bred by banking policy, is immune from the wiles of the polished gentry who gain their livelihood through their ability to outtalk and outthink the average business man.

The experiences of Edsall and the Tammany contractor heretofore mentioned are glittering examples of what can be done with so-called mooches of intelligence, men familiar with stock gambling and big finance. But for downright dumbness, they do not begin to compare with one Stephen Baker, a truly rural citizen engaged in farming outside the little town of Belmont, New York, about fourteen miles from Buffalo.

He was such a perfect set-up for the dynamiters that it is difficult to decide whether one should laugh or cry over what a gang of fast workers did to him and his fortune. For so thoroughly sold was he that even after his bank and the attorney general’s office showed him where he had been buncoed out of more than twenty-two thousand dollars, he refused to believe it and still thought the dressed up dudes were joshing him.

Baker’s story, as it is unfolded here, will appear to the reader so improbable — so comical — in spots that we may be suspected of rewriting “The Old Homestead” or some other rural comedy drama, so be assured at the outset that the narrative is one hundred per cent true.

Baker was the victim of what is known among the high pressure gentry as “laying in a ‘Zex,’ ” or slipping a hot one to the mooch.

It is springtime, in 1925, and there are gathered in a charming suite at the Alamac Hotel, on upper Broadway, sundry lovely women and well groomed men. They are drinking much liquor to the accompaniment of gay laughter and music of the brand that makes one giddy. A perfectly grand time is being had by all, and this has been going on for many weeks, with a group of clever dynamiters supplying the ammunition to keep things lively.

But even dynamiters sometimes run low in funds, and that was a contingency now confronting the hosts to the merry company at the Alamac. It was imperative that they turn a trick quickly if the good times were to continue. So they decided to buy a sucker list and work a racket.

For their purposes, any old sucker list would suffice, but it so happened that the list they acquired was that of a tire promotion inaugurated during the boom days of the war, stock for which had been worked off on almost four thousand investors. This list was a ten-strike for the dynamiters, for it not only provided them with the sucker names, but also presented a sorely needed new “angle” for separating the public from its surplus cash.

About this time, Ford Motor Company stock, selling for about four hundred and fifty dollars a share, became the medium for a brand new wrinkle in stock dealing. Reasoning that the market figure was prohibitive for the average investor, certain legitimate brokerage houses in Wall Street conceived a plan for giving the small trader a chance to deal in the issue without too much outlay of capital.

This plan provided for the purchase in open market of Ford shares which were then split up into one hundred parts, or units, of a face value of four dollars and a half. A transfer office was established and these shares were offered to the public at their face value of four dollars and a half each, plus two dollars to cover the original investment and expense of handling the units.

This made the price of each unit six dollars and a half, so that a man with sixty-five dollars could acquire ten units, or one-tenth of a full share of Ford stock, and share in dividends proportionately. Millions of dollars’ worth of these transactions are said to have been consummated, and the “Ford Motor Unit” market became one of the most active little trading points in the financial district.

The unit certificates closely resembled the real full shares of Ford Motor stock in appearance, so that the unwary investor might be easily tricked by an unscrupulous dealer. This situation was made to order for the Alamac boys, and they immediately conceived one of the most brazen confidence schemes imaginable. A merger between the Ford Motor Car Company, the biggest automobile property in the world, and the mythical tire company that long before had been listed among the “stillborn” war babies, if you please.

The promptness with which they perfected this imaginary deal was due to the fact that the stock ghoul is a schemer at all times, and this particular crew reasoned there were enough suckers on the tire list who would pay the price of a full share of Ford stock for a unit worth only one one-hundredth of the amount to make a campaign profitable. So they set forth to pilfer and rob.

Out of the list of nearly four thousand purchasers of the tire company stock, they selected friend Stephen Baker of Belmont, New York, as the first beneficiary of their new philanthropy. He was shown to hold three thousand shares of tire stock, bought at one dollar a share some years before.

It would never do for them to approach a canny farmer cold on a stock proposition such as they had in mind, so they devised a little drama that would afford Stephen a thrill and give them much profit.

Came a day, as they say in the movies, when a gorgeous Rolls-Royce motor car came whirling along the Belmont road and, just as it reached the gate leading to the Baker homestead, it suddenly halted. It seems something had gone wrong with the engine. Five immaculately garbed business men stepped out into the road to stretch their legs and see what was wrong with their car.

Stephen Baker gazed at them from the porch of the home that had been in his family for generations. He was the typical hardworking American farmer — slightly under six feet tall, spare of build, with shoulders bent and hands warped by hard work in the fields. His ruddy face was topped by a pair of heavily prismed glasses, for Stephen was regrettably nearsighted. It were well for the well dressed strangers that they could not know Stephen’s idea of “big money,” else they should have rolled along their way and missed a small fortune.

For Stephen, some time later, boasted to the chief of the Winter secret service, by way of proving his shrewdness, that he had taken advantage of the sugar shortage during the war to make a fortune.

“Warn’t nothing said,” he declared, “against usin’ honey while they were holdin’ down on the sugar, and I just about made a fortune in honey. Why, man, my sales of honey used to run sometimes as high as ten dollars a day! Yes, sir, I made big money.”

While Stephen was looking over the city fellers, they, in turn, were giving keen study to him without his being aware of the scrutiny. Soon they called him down to the gate and asked him if he could lend them some tools. Stephen, kindly soul, did so, and even tried, in his awkward way, to help repair the car.

All the dressed-up strangers did the same, with the result that they soiled their perfectly manicured hands. This they had done deliberately, as a means of gaining entry to the Baker home. They asked if they might wash their hands, and Stephen hospitably invited them into the house.

While he was getting towels and wash basins ready, the strangers animatedly discussed some big deal in which they were engaged, and Stephen, remembering the success of his flyer into honey, listened in on the conversation.

From what he was able to gather, it seems these gentlemen were the principal owners of the tire concern in which he held three thousand shares of stock. They were on their way to Buffalo, where they were to be joined at dinner in the Statler Hotel by Henry Ford, himself in person. After dinner they were to close the deal whereby their company was to become a part of the vast Ford organization, and their tires were to go out on all new Ford cars.

The gentlemen had introduced themselves by names which sounded very financial and important, but as Stephen sized up the party he saw, actually:

1 — Samuel Taschoff, otherwise “Hot Stove Sammy,” veteran of a hundred swindles; about five feet, eight inches tall, and weighing one hundred and forty pounds. A prepossessing gentleman with black hair and brown eyes, known to have a penchant for two hundred dollar suits, and the tenant of an elaborate apartment on West End Avenue in New York.

2 — Murray Burkhardt, a burly and forceful individual who bore the title of “the Ape,” because of his physical resemblance to one.

3 — Henry Kahn, a rotund, dignified man of quiet mien, with silver hair at his temples. Known as the Bull or the Banker, because of his ability to pose as a policeman or a financier as needed.

4 — Mike Lawlor, a high pressure stock swindler for whom there were said, at one time, to be one hundred and fifty warrants. Noted for his made-to-order Stetson hats and twenty-five dollar shirts.

5 — Sammy Golden, a desperado well known in the underworlds of Philadelphia and New York, also a very superior dynamiter.

As Stephen returned to the room with towels and basins, the financiers were still absorbed in their own affairs, but Hot Stove Sammy Taschoff, acting as spokesman for the party, thanked him for his kindness and expressed the wish that they might be able to reciprocate. Then Stephen, plainly embarrassed, explained that he had overheard part of their conversation, and that he was the owner of three thousand shares of the stock they were negotiating with Henry Ford.

“That’s splendid!” said Hot Stove Sammy enthusiastically. “Mr. Baker, your fortune is made! Suppose you let us look at the stock.”

Stephen left the room, to return shortly carrying a large black strong box which, when opened, was seen to hold a stack of very good bonds, some of which had been purchased through S. W. Straus & Co., of New York. The three thousand tire shares also were there, a fact which had been known to the swindlers from the first day they looked over their sucker list.

So appreciative of Stephen’s kindness were they that the important travelers, after a brief whispered conference, decided to let him in on the Ford deal. They told him they would let him have a twenty-five thousand dollar interest which he could finance by putting up his three thousand dollars’ worth of tire stock and twenty-two thousand dollars in bonds or other good collateral. They even went so far as to invite him to dine with them and Henry Ford at the Statler that evening. Stephen was almost overwhelmed by his good fortune, and he accepted the invitation.

It was suggested that he spruce up and put on his best suit, and that he be ready when their car should come, at six that evening, to take him to Buffalo and the presence of billions. Just before they were to leave, the austere banker, Mr. Kahn, suggested that it might be a good idea if they closed the deal with Mr. Baker on the spot, because in the turmoil of the vaster deal with Mr. Ford they might forget his smaller proposition and he would be denied an opportunity of a lifetime.

Stephen felt that way about it, too, and so he at once turned over to them twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of gilt-edge bonds, receiving in return naught but a promise to send him twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of Ford Motor Units, and a final admonition to be ready when the car should come for him that evening.

The crooks should have been satisfied to go with what they had, but, buzzards that they were, they had to pick the carcass clean; and in so doing they laid the trail that was ultimately to bring them to grief.

In their lightning-like survey of the contents of Baker’s strong box they had seen a bank book which showed him to have a savings account of one hundred and fifty dollars, deposited in a Pittsburgh bank. One of the gang suggested that the expense of transferring the tire stock and other little details would amount to about one hundred and fifty dollars, so Stephen wrote a check for the amount, thus wiping out his little savings. His friends then left.

Six o’clock that evening found Stephen, freshly shaved and in a state of exultation, waiting for the Rolls-Royce. He hadn’t deemed it necessary to keep secret the fact that he was to dine with Henry Ford, and the result was that the little town of Belmont was buzzing over his great good fortune. But, for some reason, the Rolls-Royce never arrived, and Stephen solaced himself with the thought that it probably had broken down along the road or else the bankers had found it necessary to alter their plans at the last minute.

He never questioned their good faith, and his trust seemed to be well placed when, a few days later, a package insured for twenty-five thousand dollars came addressed to Stephen. It arrived via American Express, because the gang, like the Pomeroy mob, had no relish for mail fraud prosecution. The station agent rang up Stephen on the telephone, and, as it was a party line, a large part of the town of Belmont learned for the first time that Stephen Baker was a man of means.

The package contained Ford Motor Units, worth four dollars and a half apiece, but assigned to him at one hundred times that much. For his twenty-two thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars he had received paper worth exactly two hundred and fifty dollars. He gave them only a cursory examination, then tossed them into the black box and went about his fanning.

A few weeks later he needed some ready cash, and he decided to borrow it on his new Ford stock. Taking the unit certificates to his bank, he asked for the loan and was informed that the collateral he offered was only worth two hundred and fifty dollars.

Instead of being alarmed, Stephen became indignant and told the bankers that they didn’t know their business. Some time later, in Buffalo, he visited the broker who had sold him the bonds he had given to the sharpers and told him of his deal.

He was again informed that he had been swindled, and the broker put the matter up to the fraud bureau. Even now Baker thought he was being made the butt of a joke and didn’t want to make a complaint against the dynamiters.

Other complaints about the Ford Motor Unit swindlers had been filtering into Winter’s office, but the case of Baker revealed such raw piracy that he sidetracked all the others and concentrated on it. He took over personal control of the case and assigned his best secret service operatives the task of running down the swindlers, telling them to spare no expense in landing their quarry. As Winter is himself a millionaire, this meant that he was ready to delve into his personal fortune to bring the crooks to justice.

Baker was of little help to the inquiry, due to his aversion toward the investigation and his nearsightedness, which prevented him from giving a fair description of the men who had swindled him. He was able to give Winter’s office the numbers of his stolen bonds and the cancelled check for one hundred and fifty dollars which they had squeezed from him at the last moment. This comparatively small sum proved to be the “little error” which broke this particular crime wide open.

Through an undercover man in the employ of Winter, it was learned that this check, indorsed by “Joe Brown” — later revealed as Murray Burkhardt — had been cashed by a bootlegger named Goldman who, in turn, had cashed it in Lindy’s restaurant, next to the Rivoli Theater on Broadway, and at that time the hangout of the dynamite mobs.

The undercover man told Winter that the “Zex crowd,” or hundred percenters, hived at Lindy’s, and a secret service operative was sent to work his way into the sharpers. Through fragments of conversation, picked up at various tables, this investigator got a pretty fair notion of who the men were that had dynamited Baker.

He learned, also, that the same gang was planning a raid in Syracuse, at the Onondaga Hotel. Winter quickly notified his Buffalo representative to get Baker and have him in Syracuse for the purpose of identifying the crooks, then he and a force of secret service men picketed the train on which the gang was supposed to leave from Grand Central Terminal.

The dynamiters did not board the train — it was learned later that they had crossed to New Jersey and traveled north via the Lackawanna — but the Winter party proceeded to Syracuse, expecting to find the gang there.

When Winter spotted Stephen Baker in the Onondaga he almost suffered a stroke. The man looked so palpably what he was, a farmer, that the head of the Fraud Bureau feared some sharpshooter might kidnap him before he had a chance to identify the New York crooks. For one thing, he had on a frowzy overcoat and wore his trousers tucked into his boots.

Winter sent him forth to be rearranged sartorially, buying him a wing collar, black tie and new overcoat. He also made him drop his trousers legs outside his boots. But even in the new make-up, the detectives had a busy time guarding their man against pickpockets and others who spotted him as legitimate prey.

All day long the Winter party, planted at strategic points in the Onondaga lobby, waited for the New York dynamiters, but they failed to show up. That night Winter went to Buffalo and instructed his chief investigator to take Baker down to New York. The investigator reported upon arrival that the Belmont man was in terror all the way, being sure the train would be wrecked because it was going so fast.

His first night in New York. Baker was housed in a small hotel across from the Grand Central Terminal and the clerks were under instructions not to let him out on the street lest he fall into the hands of a confidence man. The next morning, en route to Winter’s office. Baker was in a state bordering upon panic, fearful that the high buildings would fall down upon and crush the taxicab.

Learning that some of the suspects were at the Alamac Hotel, arrangements were made to raid their apartment that afternoon at five o’clock, an hour when the highballs would be bouncing and a crowd would be present. In preparation, Winter’s Secret Service man who was hobnobbing with the swindlers and regarded as one of their crowd, was brought in and introduced to Baker as Mr. Walker. He was told just who Walker was and instructed not to show any sign of recognition when he saw him later at the hotel.

That afternoon, as per schedule, the raid was made. Murray Burkhardt and Henry Kahn, two of the men wanted, were in the crowd which was lined against the wall so that Baker might look them over. But he only was able to identify one man — Walker. Yet, in the line-up were two of the men who had robbed him in his own home.

One of these was Burkhardt, the other was Kahn. The former is the man who had taken his check for one hundred and fifty dollars and cashed it, the latter the one who had put on the crusher that placed the twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of bonds in the hands of the dynamiters.

Baker’s identification of Walker, the man he was instructed not to recognize, almost cost that young man his life as the betrayer of the mob and only exceptionally quick thinking extricated him from his perilous position.

Knowing as he did that Burkhardt and Kahn were two of the men wanted. Winter nevertheless had to let them go as the result of Baker’s failure to pick them out of the crowd. Realizing that the man, due to his visual impairment and his natural disposition, would be of no help to him, Winter sent Baker back home and, a few days after the fiasco at the Alamac, forwarded to him a rogue’s gallery picture of Burkhardt. The farmer readily identified him, then, as one of the swindlers.

But his help was now too late to be of any good. A warrant for Burkhardt was sworn out, but when State Troopers went to serve it they learned their man had fled to England. Kahn also had taken flight. Both men are to-day fugitives from New York, facing arrest any time they show their faces in the metropolis or any other part of the country.

Through the bond numbers supplied by Baker, the Winter agents now sought to work back to the dynamiters and, after some intensive investigation, met with partial success. The bonds were traced to several legitimate banking houses, each of which mentioned the same man as the purveyor of the securities. This man, when located, satisfied the probers that he was an innocent party in the matter, but what was more important, supplied them with the name of the man from whom he had purchased the bonds.

This turned out to be Hilly Goldman, the bootlegger who had previously cashed the fatal check which first pointed the way to the bandit crew. Subsequently, it was learned that Goldman was in league with the dynamiters, acting as the “schleifer” or fence for the gang and taking a rake-off for each bit of plunder of which he disposed.

The man to whom Goldman had sold the Baker bonds led the Winter agents to the bootlegger’s rooms in the Markwell Hotel, on West Forty-Ninth Street off Broadway. They invaded his quarters and placed him under arrest on the charge of receiving stolen property; in other words, acting as a fence.

At first Goldman tried to brazen the thing out, waxed indignant and disclaimed any connection with the dynamiters. He admitted he had sold the bonds, but asserted he had received them in payment for a cargo of contraband liquor.

Asked to describe the men who had given him the securities, he misled the police by giving them false descriptions and locating his alleged patrons in Chicago and other Western cities. He did his best to be loyal to the gang and, if they had been loyal to him, they might never have been brought to trial.

During the first ten days of his incarceration on the fence charge, Goldman, who had been taken to Rochester, received money from the gang and then the remittances stopped. An effort was made to double cross him into the penitentiary, the lawyer who had been engaged for him by the gang, advising him to plead guilty to the charge that laid against him. But, instead of accepting this counsel. Goldman, by no means a fool, put the double cross on his betrayers by squealing to Winter.

In return for the information given by Goldman, Winter agreed to protect him against the mob’s vengeance. Goldman declared that he fully expected to be “bumped off,” murdered for revealing the secrets of the dynamiters, and at his behest, Winter delayed bringing him to trial for eight months, or until all danger of his assassination had passed. He willingly remained in jail during that time.

The result of Goldman’s confession was that “Hot Stove Sammy” Taschoff, the only member of the original quintet still in New York, was arrested the next morning. It was barely seven o’clock when a raiding party from Winter’s office descended upon the magnificent West End apartment of the redoubtable Sammy, who was in the midst of his morning bath. Finding him in the tub, one of the State Troopers reached down, grabbed a handful of Sammy’s luxuriant black locks, and literally lifted him up by the hair of his head.

Sammy’s capture turned out to be one of the most important that had been made in years, for when his picture — the first the police ever saw of him — was broadcast through the country, he was recognized by Stephen Baker and hundreds of others who had been victimized by him in stock frauds similar to that worked on the Belmont farmer. So many places wished to get possession of Hot Stove Sammy that he was taken on a sort of triumphal tour of various cities where he had been active, and indictments were returned against him in Poughkeepsie, Pittsburgh, and dozens of other places.

Out of all the charges against his man. Winter elected to have him tried on one at Mineolá, Long Island. There Sammy was charged with having swindled a maid in the household of Supreme Court Justice Philbin out of her savings and the jury was not long in bringing in a verdict of guilty.

Sammy was sentenced to a penitentiary term of four to eight years and is now serving that “bit,” with the prospect of spending a large part of his future behind prison walls, because scores of untried indictments lie against him in all parts of the country. That he will be brought to trial on many of these is almost certain, because forty-five States are united now in the work of eradicating the stock swindler, and they will overlook no opportunity to make an example of such a brilliant member of the dynamiting fraternity.

Aside from the smashup of the Taschoff band, one effect of the Stephen Baker swindle was the suspension of dealing in Ford Motor Units, even by legitimate brokers. Winter, showing the vast possibilities for swindling schemes which lay in the plan, readily obtained agreement from the brokers to abandon the business and the little man’s chance to get a slice of the Ford dividends was wiped out.

In the three different forms of dynamiting chronicled here, it is hard to determine whether the “mooch” or the manipulator is most deserving of censure. But there are certain specific facts which stand out. First, and most important from the standpoint of investor protection, is the fact that three dangerous bands of swindlers were wiped out. Second, that the Martin Act, in the hands of a vigorous enforcer such as Winter, is a most valuable weapon for offense and defense. And. third, that hardly any man is proof against the skillful dynamiter.

These super-salesmen, keen students of human nature, have an uncanny ability for sizing up a victim and locating his weak spot and about the only safeguard against them, so far as the layman is concerned, is for persons desirous of investing in securities never to buy any stocks or bonds without first consulting a reliable expert in financial and market affairs.