hole itself. It required little imagination to picture the bit of steel spring, held in some hand (whose in the world but the man's who sat in that chair day after day?) in the gloom of that narrow corner scratching across the post, guided by the edge of the cleat, in search of the hole into which it fitted. On the inner side of the post the hole was worn much larger.

Regularly spaced along the dock stand the seventeen scale-houses; and in the obscurity of each one's farther corner a sturdy post is pierced by a hole like this. Some were worn more, some less; for not all the scales are used at once. As each ship unloads, her cargo is weighed at the scalehouses nearest her berth, and in the natural course of events some berths are more continuously occupied than others. It was proved at the trial that nine-tenths of the sugar received at this refinery was weighed on five of the scales, and it is worthy of note that the holes in the posts in those scale-houses were very much more worn than those in the other houses. In several of them the hole had been worn so large that the spring evidently did not work satisfactorily, and the enlarged hoie had been filled in, in one case with putty, in another with tacks driven in at its upper edge, in a third with a sliver of wood glued in to make the hole smaller. In the most striking of the cases the hole had become enlarged; it had been reduced by driving in two wooden pegs; these in their turn had become worn; and then the wood round the hole had been cut out and a fresh piece with a new and smaller hole had been countersunk into the post. This countersunk piece had evidently been painted over at the same time with the post itself; and the dried and worn condition of the paint showed that the repair must have been made a long time ago. On one of the scales a groove had been filed at the point on the iron lever where the end of the spring rested, presumably to give an accurate resting-place for the spring, and in other cases this point had been worn smooth by the friction of the spring.

Seventeen scale-houses there are, and by the same token seventeen holes. Hence the Federal Attorney's designation of the case: The Case of the Seventeen Holes

against the American Sugar Refining Company of New York.

In the summer of 1907 a man named Richard Whalley appeared at the Treasury Department in Washington and related that during the ten years from 1892 to 1902 he had been employed on the Sugar Company's docks as a Company checker, and that from 1897, when the Dingley tariff went into effect, he had been in the habit of using methods for lessening the apparent weight of drafts of sugar. These methods he had employed with the knowledge, and indeed by the direction, of the Company's dock superintendent. Whalley was a pretty poor specimen of a man, and he was doubtless actuated in offering this information by the desire of obtaining a reward. Nevertheless, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury had Whalley put on the Department's pay-roll as a special employee, and told him to go back to Brooklyn and see what he could find out about the continued existence of such practices. At the same time a special agent of the customs service, Richard Parr, who had been for some time quietly investigating the possibility of such frauds on his own account, was detailed to work upon the case, assisted by another agent, James O. Brzezinski.

Whalley obtained employment as a tallyman for the owner of a ship which was discharging a cargo, his duty being to stand in front of the scale-house and make a record of the number of bags of sugar landed from the vessel.

On November 19 he reported to Parr that while he had been unable to discover any definite evidence of fraud, he noticed that whenever a draft of sugar was put upon the scales, the Company checker in the scale-house dropped his left hand at his side in a peculiar way. It was arranged that the next morning Parr and Brzezinski should come to the dock, and if Whalley noticed the same action on the part of the Company's checker he should raise his hat. About ten o'clock on November 20 Parr and Brzezinski appeared upon the dock, and when Whalley saw them he gave the signal agreed upon. Parr had quietly instructed another Government employee who was on the dock, when he saw Parr approach a scale-house,

to stop the last three drafts of sugar which had been weighed on that scale. On receiving the signal Parr went quickly and by a roundabout route, not to the scale-house where Whalley was stationed, but to another not far away. He pushed open the door, and just after he entered the house a draft of sugar was weighed. That fact should be remembered. Standing at the door, where he thoroughly commanded the situation, he directed that the last three drafts of sugar, which had been detained by his associate as they left the scales, be reweighed. The result was significant. The draft which was weighed just after he entered the scalehouse weighed exactly the same the second time. But of the two other drafts the

one weighed fourteen pounds more than it had three minutes before, the other eighteen pounds more. Rather a miraculous increase in so brief a space of time! But it is even more interesting that the draft weighed while the Government agent was in the scale-house had increased not at all on reweighing.

While this little scene in the drama was being acted, Parr noticed that the Company checker in the far corner was crouched over his counter in a curious fashion, with his left arm thrust down into the corner under the shelf, and that he kept changing color.

Stepping toward him, Parr asked: "What are you monkey-doodling with down there ?"

Parr ordered him to get up, sat down himself, and, running his hand down the post, discovered the spring with its curled handle, wound with string as if to protect the fingers of any one handling it. He did not take the spring out of the hole, but asked the checker what he knew about it. That individual professed the most complete ignorance of its existence, purpose, use, origin, or history. And, what is perhaps a little remarkable, he showed no curiosity about it, and even declined to look at the spring or the hole where it had been found. It was some little time before the Government agents went to the three other scalehouses which were in use that morning, and when they got there no springs were to be found, though there was a hole in the same position under every scale. But during the delay two of the Company checkers in these scale-houses had been relieved by other employees of the Company, and one, who was not relieved, had left his scale-house of his own accord. Whether any springs went with them can only be a matter of conjecture. But their unanimous departure seems not without significance.

A perusal of the figures representing the weights of all the drafts of sugar contained in the cargo of the Strathyre, the ship which was being unloaded on November 20, throws some interesting light on this point. The ship began to discharge her cargo on November 18, and the drafts which were unloaded on the first two days averaged generally considerably less than one thousand pounds in weight, but at the time when Parr discovered and removed the spring the average weights took a sudden jump, and during the rest of the unloading of that particular cargo, on November 22, 25, and 26, the weights averaged nearly one thousand and fifty pounds, and never dropped below a thousand and twenty pounds. This condition of affairs is graphically shown by the diagram on page 33. It will be noted in that diagram that the broken line, representing the weight of the drafts, takes a jump above the thousand mark in the early part of November 18. This jump is interesting because of the fact that the

F. Vail, was present on the dock on the morning of that day. It will be shown later in this article that whenever special Government officials or detectives were on the docks the duty weights were very much higher than they were at other times. The deduction that the springs were not used when there was danger of detection is irresistible.

One other incident of that morning is illuminating. The refinery docks have been for twenty years under the control of a dock superintendent, Oliver Spitzer. His rule was absolute; he hired and discharged the Company checkers, kept in his office the records of their work, and, as the District Attorney expresses it, 66 was the Company on the dock." A few minutes after the discovery of the spring Spitzer met Parr, according to the story of the latter, took him to one side, and asked him to name his price to hush the matter up. All he needed to do, said Spitzer, was to "lose that iron." As far as the testimony shows, he had had no opportunity of seeing the spring at that time, and, in fact, he testified himself that he did not see it until several months afterwards. Spitzer was tried in Brooklyn for attempted bribery, on the accusation of Brzezinski, Parr's fellow-agent, and was acquitted, owing very largely to Brzezinski's reversal at the trial of the statements which he had made in swearing to the complaint. Parr's story, however, was unshaken by his companion's change of front, and during the main trial, while under oath, Parr flatly accused Brzezinski (who in the meantime had been dismissed from the Government service and had not been called as a witness by either side) of perjury.

With the evidence of the happenings of November 20 as a basis, the Government brought suit against the Sugar Company. The suit was brought under a law which provides that if any one-owner, importer, consignee, agent, or other person-shall make use of any fraudulent practice or appliance by which the Government shall be deprived of any of its duties in regard to a given article, then that article or its value shall be forfeited to the Government. It is a simple regulation; if you try to smuggle a watch or a pair of gloves or a