Part 27

The sack of powder was sent to the Baltimore Customs laboratory with an urgent request for a quick test. It was turned over to tall, lanky Edward Kenney, who had received his training as a chemist at the University of Maine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University. Kenney was among the small group of men and women who had found the Customs laboratories to be a daily adventure in solving riddles posed by the legal necessity of identifying and classifying a bewildering variety of imports which poured into the United States daily from all parts of the world.

The analysis of the powder taken from the seaman was one of the routine chores which posed no problem for Kenney. The test for heroin was negative--and he sent his findings to the chief chemist to be relayed to the inspector on the case.

A few minutes later, Kenney received a telephone call from the inspector. “Mr. Kenney,” he said, “I just can’t believe that report you made on the powder I seized from the seaman. If ever I saw a guilty man, this one is guilty. Would you mind running another test?”

“I’m sure the report was correct,” Kenney said, “but if it will make you feel better, I’ll make another test. Would you like to come over and watch?”

“I certainly would,” the inspector said.

When the inspector arrived at the laboratory, Kenney took a sampling from the powder and placed it in a glass container. Then he picked up a bottle of liquid from a cabinet.

“This liquid is a mixture of sulphuric acid and formaldehyde,” he explained. “I’m going to make a Marquis test. It’s named after the man who invented it long before either you or I were born. Nobody seems to know much about Marquis, but he knew what he was doing. He found that when you add this liquid to an opium narcotic powder, the powder will show purple discoloration. Now watch.”

Kenney poured a few drops of the liquid onto the powder to dissolve it. But there was no indication of a purple color.

“Is that test conclusive?” the inspector asked.

“No, not necessarily,” Kenney said. “There are some impurities which could produce a purple discoloration. Let’s see if we can isolate any opium with another test.” But when an effort was made to extract opium from the powder with an infallible procedure, the result was negative. The powder beyond doubt did not contain narcotics.

“Well,” Kenney said, “that’s it. Your seamen wasn’t smuggling narcotics.”

The inspector said, “I know you’re right but I was certain I had grabbed a sack of heroin. What is the stuff in the sack?”

Kenney said, “I don’t know, but I’ve got a pretty good hunch. I’ll run another test and let you know the results.”

When Kenney completed his testing the following morning, he called the inspector. “Your man was carrying saccharine,” he said.

The inspector returned to the ship to have the seaman freed from detention and to question him further. “The powder wasn’t heroin,” he said. “It was saccharine. I’d like to know one thing. Why did you make such a big mystery of it?”

The seaman at last disclosed that he was a diabetic--and that for months he had kept this fact from his shipmates and from the ship’s officers. He gave himself insulin shots secretly and used saccharine instead of sugar in his coffee. He had been fearful that if anyone aboard the ship learned he was a diabetic, he would be barred from going to sea--a fear which he was to learn was entirely groundless.

When the inspector met Kenney later, he said, “I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble for nothing. The whole thing was a waste of time.”

Kenney shook his head in disagreement. “I don’t think it was a waste of time at all,” he said. “We proved the seaman was innocent of smuggling narcotics and we helped him get rid of an unreasonable fear. As I see it, the results were pretty good.”

The case of the diabetic seaman is only one of many strange cases which find their way to the Customs Bureau’s laboratories located in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Savannah, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Thousands of items, from yak hair to heroin, come to the chemists to be sampled, tested and identified.

In the course of a day, a laboratory may be called on to identify and determine the amount of grease and dirt that is in a shipment of Australian wool; report the percentage of tungsten in a shipment of ore; determine the antiquity of a diamond-studded tiara; test the alcoholic content of Scotch whiskey; examine a rosary case made in Japan, in order to establish its chief component; and analyze a sample of powdered milk from Holland to measure its butter fat.

Or the laboratory may be called on to analyze a shipment of mica to determine whether the mica splittings measure more or less than .0012 inches in thickness. The measurement of the mica has a dollars-and-cents importance to the shipper, the importer and the government because the duty is based on the thickness of the mica splittings, which in turn affects the market value of the import.

No laboratories in all the world have a more varied job to do than those of Customs. Every article that is known to commerce reaches these laboratories at one time or another. The examinations are necessary because only by a precise determination of the contents of many shipments are the appraiser and the collector able to establish value and thus determine the rate of duty which is to be paid into the Treasury of the United States.

The scientists never know when one of their analyses will touch off a court battle which will involve an entire industry and which may mean a difference of millions of dollars to businessmen.

Such a case occurred several years ago when one of the Bureau’s laboratories received for analysis a sample of a product imported from Canada under the trade name “Lioxin.” This product had a great many industrial uses and was competitive with vanillin, which is derived from the vanilla bean and also from coal tar. The imported product was being offered on the market at a price considerably below that of the competing vanillin product--at a price so low, in fact, that it threatened to upset the entire vanillin trade.

The discovery of Lioxin had been one of those accidents of science in which a waste product is found to be extremely valuable. A wood pulp company was dumping waste matter into a nearby stream, and sportsmen complained that it was killing all the fish. The complaints became so numerous that the company called in a scientist to see what could be done about correcting the situation. The scientist found while experimenting with certain chemical compounds that he could convert the waste matter into a substance that was 96 to 97 per cent vanillin. And it could be done much more cheaply than extracting vanillin from the vanilla bean or from coal tar.

When Customs chemists analyzed the product, they found that it contained impurities--but the impurities could be removed quite easily and cheaply. The end product was almost pure vanillin, meeting all the rigid standards set up by the U.S. Pharmacopoeia Act.

The result of the laboratory findings was a decision to classify Lioxin as vanillin, dutiable at $2.25 per pound based on the American selling price. The duty brought the price of the import into line with the competing American product.

The Bureau’s decision was protested by the importer. The claim was made that the compound was not vanillin under the terms of the Tariff Act. It was argued that when Congress passed the law setting the duty on vanillin, the lawmakers had in mind the vanillin which came from the vanilla bean and from coal tar.