Uncle Sam, Detective

In Short

William Atherton DuPuy’s episodic mystery novel follows Billy Gard, a sharp-witted special agent for the newly formed United States Department of Justice. Travelling from the Appalachian mountains to the high seas, Jamaica, and the Mexican border, Gard uncovers financial frauds, customs ring scams, arms smuggling, and industrial price-fixing schemes. Combining realistic detective work with quiet undercover grit, the book offers an authentic glimpse into early federal law enforcement, standing as an engaging historical precursor to modern procedural crime fiction.

The Story

The narrative opens in the rugged Cumberland Mountains, where Special Agent Billy Gard investigates a violent feud tied to illegal moonshining. Relying on forensic observation rather than blunt force, Gard uses local children to measure footprints and gather shell-casing scraps, realizing that to solve such insular feuds, an investigator must win the trust of the hill country locals from the inside.

Gard's cases quickly expand to encompass national financial crimes and international intrigues. When a major bank collapses under suspicious circumstances, Gard poses as a friendly fellow accountant, worming his way into the confidence of a mild-mannered bookkeeper to learn how internal ledgers are manipulated to deceive federal bank examiners. Tracking a fleeing cashier aboard a late-night express train, Gard engages in a high-stakes confrontation that ends in a desperate physical struggle on the rear observation platform.

His duties soon take him onto the high seas. Posing as a desperate Italian stowaway, Gard infiltrates a vessel secretly carrying Mexican ammunition across the Atlantic to Odessa, navigating hostile crews and paranoid authorities in foreign ports. Back in the States, he tackles widespread corruption on the docks, unmasking a massive customs fraud scheme where sugar refiners bribe official samplers to alter moisture content readings and intentionally divide scale weights in half.

Gard's undercover assignments demand constant adaptability. In the Caribbean, he poses as a wealthy, carefree retired glass manufacturer to gain the confidence of opium smugglers in Jamaica, gathering crucial intelligence over relaxed dinners. On the Mexican border at El Paso, he joins forces with the Texas Rangers, infiltrating a windowless meeting room of armed revolutionists to disrupt a border-wide insurrection before ringleaders can escape in canvas-covered wagons.

Later, Gard solves a sensational $400,000 bank looting scheme involving a missing bookkeeper, an elaborate faro-gambling syndicate in New York, and a lip-reading deaf typist who deciphered key clues from a silent newsreel. In his final listed assignment, Gard infiltrates a paper manufacturers' convention under an assumed identity, successfully calling their bluff to expose price-fixing cartels and bring the industry into voluntary compliance with federal trade laws.

How It Unfolds

A mountain shooting Gard investigates an ambush in the Cumberlands, using footprint measurements and improvised shotgun wads gathered by a local boy to pinpoint a hostile moonshiner.

Tracking the ledger Posing as an approachable accountant, Gard moves into a bank bookkeeper's boarding house to learn the precise accounting tricks used to pull off massive bank frauds.

The train platform struggle On a dark, lightly populated observation train car, Gard confronts a fugitive cashier carrying a bag of stolen funds, preventing a desperate attempt at escape or suicide.

Stowaway to Russia Disguised as an Italian laborer in Brooklyn, Gard boards an illicit arms ship bound for the Black Sea, managing ship logs and reporting back from the consulate in Odessa.

Exposing the sugar ring By placing dictagraph wiretaps in dockside taverns, Gard records customs samplers admitting how tobacco juice and wet boards are used to cheat federal import taxes.

Roping Jamaican smugglers Playing the role of an affluent, idle tourist at the Myrtlebank Hotel, Gard gains the confidence of an unsuspecting international smuggler to dismantle an opium pipeline.

Raid on the border Working covertly inside a windowless El Paso hideout, Gard assists the Texas Rangers in executing a synchronized sweep of revolutionary conspirators using canvas-topped wagons.

Reading lips at the movies Stumped by a fugitive's disappearance, Gard takes a deaf typist to a motion picture theater, where she reads the lips of suspects caught on newsreel footage.

The paper convention bluff Gard attends a trade gathering under false pretenses, exposing a paper cartel's price-fixing scheme before inviting them to voluntarily open their books to federal inspectors.

The People

• Billy Gard, a special agent for the Bureau of Investigation. Linguistically fluent, patient, and observant, he wants to dismantle federal crime networks through meticulous undercover work rather than brute force.
• Charley Sloan, a mild-mannered bookkeeper at the Second National Bank. Unwittingly drawn into Gard's friendly orbit, he reveals the internal vulnerabilities of bank accounting systems.
• Bayard Alexander, a bank cashier on the run. Desperate to escape justice with his illicit gains, he flees across state lines before being caught in a struggle aboard an observation train.
• O'Toole, an eleven-year veteran customs scale worker. Tired of pervasive dockside corruption, he overcomes his fear of local political bosses to help Gard expose short-weight bribery.
• Jane Gates, known as the "Lily Maid," a deaf copyist at headquarters. Exceptionally skilled at lip-reading, she provides the crucial breakthrough in tracking an elusive fugitive from silent newsreel footage.
• Peterson, an arrogant Jamaican smuggler. Deluded by Gard's portrayal of a wealthy, reckless businessman, he casually lets slip the key operational details of his illegal opium trade.

In Its Own Voice

"These shoes are a survival of the days when the detective walked his beat; for the sleuth, of course, is a graduate policeman."

Setting up the book's premise, the narrative rejects traditional fictional tropes of heavy-footed beat cops or eccentric armchair geniuses.

"The interviewer begins," said the special agent, "by seating himself, as I am doing, in an uncomfortable chair which has been arranged with the idea in mind of preventing him from staying too long."

Posing as a journalist to investigate a sugar refiner, Gard uses dry humor and casual banter to put his suspect at ease.

"I bet the Government has paid a million dollars for tobacco juice in the last ten years."

A corrupt dockside sampler casually explains to Gard how workers routinely manipulate government scale samples to reduce tax obligations.

What It's Really About

Underneath its procedural episodic narrative, the book explores the rapid modernization of early twentieth-century American crime and law enforcement. It contrasts old-fashioned physical intimidation with modern, systematic investigation built on accounting audits, chemical analyses, and undercover infiltration. The stories examine how white-collar greed, corporate price-fixing, and bureaucratic corruption pose a far greater threat to the nation's financial stability than traditional street crime. Ultimately, the book argues that justice in a complex society relies not on dramatic heroism, but on patience, adaptability, and quiet institutional integrity.

Why Read It Today

This collection will appeal to fans of classic mysteries, early procedural television, and American history buffs interested in the origin of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The writing is straightforward, confident, and delightfully free of melodrama, offering a fascinating window into early 1900s law enforcement techniques before the era of modern forensics or digital surveillance.

Readers should expect episodic case files rather than a single continuous novelistic narrative, as each chapter functions largely as a self-contained investigation. Period attitudes and occasional dated vernacular reflect its original publication era, but Gard's clever methods, subtle humor, and understated competence make this short volume a surprisingly fresh, readable piece of early American detective fiction.