The Red-Hot Dollar

The Red-Hot Dollar by H.D. Umbstaetter

In The Red-Hot Dollar, a hatless man leaps from the rear sleeping-car of the east-bound Chicago express at Buffalo to fetch coffee for his wife, then loses his change and the train itself. As the express pulls away, his agitated bride appears on the car's platform and tries to jump off, but a man pulls her back inside. The man, A. J. Hobart, philosophically mutters "It's fate!" and searches the station floor for his scattered coins. He finds all but one dollar, then spots the missing silver dollar wedged between the rail and the planking and fishes it out with a lead-pencil. Examining it closely, he is stunned. The restaurant cashier cannot recall who gave her the coin, but she thinks it may have come from Sleeping-Car Conductor Parkins of the Lake Shore express to Cleveland. Hobart telegraphs the conductor of his wife's train, asking that the lady in section seven of the sleeping-car Catawba wait for him at the Delavan House in Albany. He buys a hat, boards the 5.45 fast mail for Cleveland, and wires his wife, signing himself Ansel, that he cannot reach Albany before the next morning. He has been married just seventeen hours, and the coin has turned his honeymoon in the opposite direction. In Cleveland, Parkins says he took cash from only two passengers: a traveling man and a woman bound for Erie. The hardware salesman Richard Spears, found at the Stillman House, says he paid with a two-dollar bill. Hobart then travels to Erie and drives to the Wickliffe farm. There Mrs. Wickliffe, trying on a new bonnet before a neighbor, says she may have received the dollar from her son in Germantown, Pa., who had changed some money for her. She adds that a woman is foolish to take up a fad that might ruin her happiness. Hobart takes the night express east, unable to sleep, and dreads explaining himself to his wife. He decides to say only that he has a happy surprise that forces a change in their plans for a honeymoon in Europe. At the Delavan House he meets his very pretty and anxious wife, and the couple take a train for Philadelphia instead of a steamer for Europe. Early the next day, Dr. James Wickliffe of Germantown admits giving the dollar to his mother. He had it from a patient, a letter-carrier named John Lennon, who told him a strange story. Lennon was delivering mail along Vine Street, Philadelphia, when a silver dollar fell with a clink in front of a dingy brick house bearing a huge brass key and the word "Locksmith." The coin was almost red hot and burned his hand. The house held a green grocery on the ground floor and had one open window on the third story. Small boys reminded him it was the first day of April, and he went on his way, but his burned fingers later needed treatment, and he paid the doctor with the coin. That night two men confer behind locked doors in one of the officers' rooms of the United States Mint in Chestnut Street, while the wife of one waits at the Continental Hotel and wonders whether marriage is a failure. Two days later the Daily News reports the seizure of over forty thousand bogus silver dollars and the capture of three dangerous counterfeiters. It explains that one coin, fresh from the machine, fell from a third-story window and passed through many hands to Buffalo, where Mr. Ansel Hobart of the Secret Service noticed a flaw on its rim and traced it to the Vine Street locksmith shop and green grocery, which turned out six hundred counterfeits a day. Soon after, the New York newspapers list Mr. and Mrs. Ansel J. Hobart, of Chicago, Illinois, among the passengers on the White Star steamer "Majestic," sailing for Liverpool.

By H.D. Umbstaetter · First published 1911 · Genre: Crime Fiction, Detective Fiction, Mystery · 3,288 words

First lines

It lacked three minutes of five by the big clock in the tower when the east-bound Chicago express rumbled into the station at Buffalo. The train had not yet come to a standstill when a hatless man jumped from the platform of the rear sleeping-car and ran across the tracks into the depot restaurant. A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.

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short story · mystery · nineteenth century · American fiction · counterfeiting · silver dollar · Secret Service · honeymoon · newlyweds · railway travel · train station · Buffalo, New York

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The Red-Hot Dollar is listed on Textopian as a short story by H.D. Umbstaetter, dated 1911 CE.

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