Senator Sandy Mac Ghee

Yes, I once met a man near as smart at jewel running as I myself,” Captain Gault went on:

Sandy Mac Ghee, the Senator, you know. He was doing it to smash the jewel tariff. He was out to show that the Customs simply can’t stop a smart man getting the stuff past them. And he was right. He knew there was a spy aboard, and one day, in the first class smoke room, he got all the passengers to trust him to run their jewelry through for them, duty free. Then he pointed out to the Chaplain how free from jewelry, and all such “heathenish charms,” the passengers were; and of course, the fool of a parson must go and preach a sermon on that heading, in which he thought he was smoothing ’em down, I suppose!

Well, this is how Sandy did it. I was Captain of the ship, and I watched it all, and was up to my neck in it, as you might say. When the chief searcher and his men came aboard, Sandy was talking to a new pal of his, a Miss Macleoid, and he jumped suddenly to the rail and dumped a packet into the sea. Miss Macleoid called out “oh!” for she guessed he’d dumped something valuable. The Chief searcher then produced from his coat a brace and bit, and from his pocket several dowels (pieces of round wood) used as plugs to fit into holes in the deck-planks, over the heads of the holding-down bolts.

“Do you happen, Mister Mac Ghee, to recognize these?” he asked, with a grin of somewhat savage triumph; for he felt himself at last within touch of “putting away” Mac Ghee; and he knew that his superiors would count it in heavily for promotion; for the Treasury was sore, from top to bottom, as one might say, with the way that Sandy Mac Ghee’s publicly successful jewel-runnings had given the opposition press a chance to be scathing in cutting headlines.

Sandy Mac Ghee stared, in a dumb, stupid kind of way at the dowels and the brace and bit. Then, he shrugged his shoulders, and attempted a laugh.

“You’ll laugh better in a minute, I’m thinking,” said the chief searcher. “Perhaps you’ll come this way, Sir. We’ve already located the dowels you’ve hid the stuff under.” He beckoned his men up. “Stand back there! Stand back!” he shouted in true official fashion, at the passengers, who had begun to crowd round—Many of them exceedingly anxious. One of the men, who appeared to be a carpenter, was down on his knees, working at the dowels in the deck-planks. Presently, he lifted one out, and it proved to be no more than a thin disk of wood, scarce a quarter of an inch thick, instead of a couple of inches or so. And in the hollow, between it and the bolt-head, there were three magnificent diamond rings. “There!” said the head searcher, unable to hold back his triumph. “There’s no hiding places aboard ship, that we don’t know of. You can’t put that sort of trick over on us! Open up the others, Jim.”

In half an hour, they appeared to have collected all the surplus rings and valuable jewels that had been missing since the day when Mac Ghee had explained to the men in the First Class smoke-room, the Custom’s Jewel tariff. There was little, the head searcher felt, to add to his triumph, except the fixing of the crime upon Mac Ghee. But this, he could not do yet; for though the spy had found, and handed on to him, the dowels and the brace and bit; yet he had collected no evidence that would actually associate Mac Ghee with the hiding, and he knew it; and hence his attempt to bluff Mr. MacGhee into admitting that he knew where the stuff had been hid.

“Now,” said the officer, to the passengers, as he collected his men, “if any of you ladies and gentlemen want your jewelry, you’ll have to come up to the office to claim it, and pay the duty and fines, or else lose it!” Then he went; but as Mac Ghee walked ashore, later, he knew perfectly well that a Treasury detective tracked him all the way to his hotel. Perhaps the following cutting, which Sandy Mac Ghee enclosed with a note to his new friend, Miss Macleod, concludes this tale as effectively as anything I could add. The cutting is headed:

“SANDY PUTS ANOTHER OVER ON THE TREASURY”

“Sandy, Or His Ghost, Puts The Dowels Over The Diamonds”

Then followed much that I have told, in fluent and flowery journalese. “Only,” it concluded:

“the diamond rings and the other gew-gaws that someone (was it you, Sandy dear?) had put under the deck dowels, weren’t gen-u-ine at all, at all. (Sandy may have bought a little cheap jewelry in Brummagem!) Anyway, it was Brummagem trash the Head Searcher got swelled head over. And, of course, after this bully clean-up, the Customs never bothered to frisk anyone in the covered hall adjoining the wharf; and Sandy and the passengers walked ashore with their fal-lals in their pockets, as happy as you please; and poor Uncle Sam has never touched a cent. Honest Sandy must go as usual for his Treasury Receipt, to add to his little collection that’s going to knock the Jewel Bill out of time, before he’s finished. Well done, Sandy! Go to it again; We’re watching out for you!”

Sandy sent this note with the cutting:

Dear Miss Macleoid,

I heard you say, “oh!” when I dumped that package. It contained nothing but what was left over of the false Brummagem jewelry, that I bought in London; for I had planned out everything, before the trip across. If they’d caught me with that they might have been able to trace the dowel mystery to me. You will, I know, feel relieved to hear that, as usual, the Treasury will benefit to the full amount of what I smuggled. The sermon the Chaplain preached, was due to me, I’m afraid. You see, I guessed there was a Treasury spy somewhere in the ship; and I wanted to make sure he tumbled to the fact of the passengers’ abstinence from what the Chaplain called “heathenish charms.” So I got talking to the Chaplain about the way people were developing, these days, and I instanced that point in particular, and wondered why no one ever seemed to remark on these “upward tendencies.” He fell at once for my plan, like a useful innocent!

I hope to see you next time I cross. I know your father makes the trip every month, and if you are with him, it will be a great pleasure to look forward to.

Yours faithfully,

Sandy Mac Ghee.

P.S. It was rather neat, don’t you think so, leaving the brace and the odd dowels where the spy could find ‘em!

P.P.S. By the way, I slipped a small parcel into your bag, when I was talking to you, just before the search officer came up. Take care of it for me, won’t you. It contains 100,000 dollars worth of cut stones. I thought it better not to have it on me, in case the Treasury forced matters a bit, and detained me.   S. MG.