The Green Forest tribune., 1916-10-27
Copyright by ". G. Chapman


 was able to observe rather carefully every process of the transfer of car go of sugar through the custom house at which the federal government takes it's toll
 All the time the special agent was looking for clew-was bringing an incisiye mind to bear upon the prob lem of the course the sugar took and the possibility of fraud at each step. He spent days observing the methods of the weighers. He watched every detail of the transfer of cargo from ship to warehouse. He loafed about the sheds where the samples were vast interest.
 Here the samplers, government en- ployees, ran their little hollow tubes through the mesh of the sacks that contained sugar. The tubes went Tn empty but came out full of that which was within This constituted the sam pie for a given sack Each sample was made into a little package care fully labeled, and went to the govern ment laboratory to be tested. The duty on the sugar coming in was charged according to the degree of purity of these samples.
 It was here that Billy Gard picked up his first clue He noticed a pc culiarity about the methods used by the samplers in inserting their tubes into the sacks. They were always run along the side of the sack and never plunged into it's very heart Tobin, the little consumptive, sampled in this peculiar way, as did the hammer handed Hansen of the eyery-ready scowl. Yet it would be easier to take the sample out of the middle of the bag. Why did the samplers skim near the edge?
 Gard took this question to the gov ernment laboratory, but found no ready answer to it. He procured a typical sack of sugar and from it took two samples-one from the very heart and one from the outside rim These he had tested in the laboratory. That from the middle of the bag showed degree of purity per cent higher than that from the outside The i'm | purity, the report stated, was in the form of water.
 Technical men were set to work to determine through many experiments
 .>sl tc. r., fl. the ,6rt''teS~6f tne su- \ sar in different patts Of the bag. y e ay 1t was established that raw < <f has a tendency to take up mois- ire, and that that portion of it which 5 exposed does so. The sugar near he outside came in contact with the ir which contained moisture, while hat on the inside did not. The efners were, of course, aware of | his tendency. But the important co1.- elusion from the viewpoint of Billy i Gard was that the government sam- piers were doing their work in such l a way as to favor the importers. Here might be a leak that was very i'm portant.
 William H. Gard, special writer, that day disappeared from the sugar docks and was never seen again. Simultane- ously with his disappearance the sa- loon of Jean Flavot, not a block and a half distant. acquired a new custore- CT in the person of a roughly dressed young laborer who did not drink as heavily as some of his fellews, but was none 'he less willing to buy for others But what was vastly more in his favor in the eyes of Flayot than even liber- ality was the fact that he spoke French. Mon Dieu, these rough Amer jeans who knew not of the blandish- ments of absinthe and drank only the whisky! The resort keeper and the newcomer held them in a common con- tempt
 The special agent had selected the resort of Jean Flavot as a basis of operations because it was the place most frequented by the samplers. He wanted, in the first place, to find out if these men had more money to spend than honest men of their salaries should have. The individual who makes illicit money usually spends it laYishly and it should therefore be easy to determine if the samplers were being paid to be crooked. And Gard after two weeks of convivial as- soeiation with them, was rather thrown back upon himself when he found that their carousals were always within their means and that money was scarce among them They were evi- dently not being bribed.
 
 mate basis with these samplers Gard went to work as a laborer on the docks, and there toiled for two months. He came to be most intimately one of them, was given every opportunity for observing their work, was even in- trusted with certain valuable conf dences when the men were sober and saw his way toward learning more by associating with them when they were in their cups
 His task was but half finished, how ever, when the maiden with the frizzy setting the beans. Tho daughter of the president of the company had played through her childhood on the docks and about the warehouse and was not yet averse to climbing stacks of sugar sacks or descending into the holds of the ships. So 1t happened that she often visited the water front, and Gard had at first feared he might be recognized, but this fear wore away as the visits were repeated and no attention was paid to him.
 But one busy day he was carting away the sacks of sugar that were be- in pnloaded in packages of twenty or lung in ropes and lifted by mighty