Past Masters Nineteen
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: The 19th in a series of anthologies of stray short stories mostly gathered from newspapers, magazines and the like. Includes a cumulative index of all Past Masters anthologies to no 19. 1: Destiny / Owen Oliver 2: Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist / Harlan Halsey 3: The Silver Fox / George R. Sims 4: In the Wireless Room / Arthur Stringer 5: "Contact!" / Frances Noyes Hart 6: Slow Poison / Alice Duer Miller 7: Mary, Queen of Scots / Guy Gilpatric 8: Five Hundred Carats / George Griffith 9: Called To The Rescue / Henry Spicer 0: Rose Rose / Barry Pain 11: The Man Who Missed The 'Bus /

PAST MASTERS

NINETEEN

January 2021

Produced by "Pulpmeister"

(Terry Walker)

Contents

1: Destiny / Owen Oliver

2: Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist / Harlan Halsey

3: The Silver Fox / George R. Sims

4: In the Wireless Room / Arthur Stringer

5: "Contact!" / Frances Noyes Hart

6: Slow Poison / Alice Duer Miller

7: Mary, Queen of Scots / Guy Gilpatric

8: Five Hundred Carats / George Griffith

9: Called To The Rescue / Henry Spicer

10: Rose Rose / Barry Pain

11: The Man Who Missed The 'Bus / Stella Benson

12: Doctor Mazeppa / George R. Sims

13: Under the Mistletoe Bough /  George R. Sims

14: Gabriel's Trumpet / Guy Gilpatric

Cumulative Index to No 19

_______________

1: Destiny

Owen Oliver (Joshua Albert Flynn)

1863-1933

World's News (Sydney) 1 Aug 1908

THE mind holds anticipations as well as memories.

When I saw the castle lying among the hills, like a white bird in its brown nest, I knew that I had always been destined to see it, and that something touched my life there. I debated with myself whether I should turn back; but I knew all the time that I should go on.

I will not set down the place, or even the country; and the castle shall have no name. I was holiday-making in my motor-car, and had lost my way among the foreign mountains. It was near sunset, and I had no oil for my lamps. I must put up somewhere, I argued, and the castle was the natural place to try; but this was merely an excuse to myself. I had often slept in the car in preference to taking inhospitable lodgings; and I felt so sure that the castle and its neighborhood were inhospitable that I slowed down to about ten miles an hour and looked around me cautiously as I advanced.

The story— and it is the story of my life turned upon this anticipation that caused me to travel slowly.

When I had crawled along the winding road for some time I reached a small village. It was like dozens of other villages where I had been welcomed by a friendly crowd, gaping at my car— for motors were then unknown in these parts— but the peasants in the road ran hastily to their doors, and those in the houses flew out to them. The women screamed, and the children clung to their mothers' skirts. The men took their pipes from their mouths, and used them to point at me.

"The Englishman!" they cried. "The Englishman!" And when I spoke they did not answer me, but called excitedly to one another.

"It is destiny!" they declared; and some crossed themselves; and the women wailed about one Gretchen. They called her "our Gretchen," and "Little Lady."

"Is this the way to the castle?" I demanded, when the hubbub died down a little. I spoke the language fluently.

"The castle!" they repeated, nodding meaningly at one another. "He is going to the castle."

"He is going to the castle in the devil's car without a horse," a hunchback pronounced, tubbing his hands and chuckling. "Ho, ho!"

"Stop him!" some younger men advised, mak-ing a half-hearted show of movement toward me.

"You cannot stop him," pronounced a greybeard leaning on a stick. "It is destiny." He shifted his weight to a doorpost, so that he could point along the road with the stick. "That is the way to the castle," he announced, glaring at me and nodding his head.

"Is there "another way back?" I asked. I thought that I would seek a more hospitable route, if I were refused shelter at the castle.

The old man chuckled fiercely, and shook his stick at me.

"There is no way back!" he said; and the hunchback rubbed his hands and laughed maliciously.

"No way back," he said. "You can ride to the devil in the devil's car!"

"The devil's car!" the villagers shouted; and some began to gather stones. I shrugged my shoulders and started.

An old crone peeped at me through a hedge, and cried to me shrilly to go back, mid pointed to two wooden crosses in the field.

"He died just here," she warned me, "the one who came last, and they buried him there, and the one who came before. I was a child, but I remember. They were black-bearded men like you, mad Englishman. She died at the cross a year after; but that was the last time. I remember."

"Tell me about it, mother," I said, flinging her a coin; but, when she had picked it up and tested it with her teeth, she shook her head.

"They gave me money," she mumbled, "but they would not go back. They were big men like you; but they died. You go to your fate, mad Englishman!"

"If a man does not go to his fate, his fate comes to him, mother," I told her. "What is it?"

But she only mumbled incoherently. So I moved the lever and went forward— still slowly. The crone wrung her hands and shrieked that it was destiny.

Presently I reached the castle gates; they were tall gates of wrought iron, and they stood wide open. A man who was sitting there, smeking, dropped his pipe and ran to the lodge and called his wife; and she came and stared at me, and shrieked, as the others had done, and crossed herself.

"It is the Englishman!" she cried. "Gretchen—"

She had been Gretchen's nurse I learned afterward.

And she swayed, and her husband picked her up and carried her in. So I passed through the open gates into a broad avenue, rising sharply, and toiled up to the castle.

There was a terrace in front of the castle, where a dozen peacocks strutted by a fountain. Some twenty ladies and gentlemen stood there. They clutched at each other and pointed to me as I approached them at a crawl. A slight young girl, with blue eyes and yellow hair, stepped out a pace, and stood watching me like a statue. I was not interested in women as a rule, but it seemed to me that she was wonderfully beautiful, and I noticed that they called her Gretchen. An older lady drew her back, as I came in front of them; and a large old man put himself in front of her. I bowed and he returned my bow stiffly but courteously.

"This is private ground, sir." he said.

"I have lost my way," I explained, "and I seek a roof for the night."

"You are English?" he asked sharply.

"I am English," I owned. They looked at each other and shook their heads. An old lady gave a groan.

"Send him away," several muttered; but the big old man, whom I took to be the lord of the castle, waved them aside.

"He must stay," he said. "It is destiny! Your name, sir?"

I had never seen reason to deny my name before, but something whispered to me to do so then.

"Davidson," I said.

"Not Deland?" the old man asked suspiciously.

"Not Deland," I said steadily; but Deland was my name.

I remembered that my father's brother had been lost in these parts when I was an infant in arms; and now I was turned thirty; and I thought that destiny had a long arm.

"Not Deland," I repeated; "but my name does not matter. Since I am evidently unwelcome here, I will seek lodgings elsewhere. Perhaps you can direct me to an inn?"

"No!" cried the old man fiercely. "You must stay here!"

He nodded to the men and they closed around me. When I started the car, however, they sprang back. They were evidently afraid of it, and I could have escaped them easily, but I caught the girl's eyes, and, if ever eyes told "stay," hers said it plainly; and I thought that perhaps my destiny was to help this pretty, pale maiden. So I circled round in the car slowly and came back to them.

ii

"IF I AM to accept your hospitality, permit me to run the car under shelter," I said. "It is heavy to push, and it would rust in the open air."

"We will show you the way," the large old men offered.

A young man led on and I followed. The rest of the men walked beside me. At my invitation the old man entered the car. He asked me many questions about it. He had heard of them before, he said, but be had not seen one; and he thought that they went faster.

"It will go as fast as a carriage," I told him. "The large racing-cars, that you may have heard of, go faster, but this is only a little touring car."

It could, in fact, cover nearly thirty miles an hour, but I thought it well that he should not know how readily I could escape in it.

I heard him repeat the information to his companions while we put the car inside the coach-house; and I gathered that they regarded it as bearing in some way upon their treatment of me.

The baron— he was a baron I found, but I must not give his name— conducted me to a couple of rooms in a wing of the castle. They were well-furnished and comfortable; but their small, barred windows gave them the look of a prison. It was forty feet from the windows to the ground; and I noticed that the passage was closed by a massive door studded with iron, and that two sturdy men with swords sat on a settle outside.

"It seems that the claims of your hospitality are to be enforced, baron," I observed carelessly.

He bowed low.

"For a couple of days and some hours, sir," he said. "You shall be free at half-past eleven to the second on Thursday morning. You have my word. Meanwhile we will do our utmost for your comfort. I regret the necessity for detaining you."

"I do not understand the necessity," I protested.

"Ah," he said, half to himself. "Then you do not know. I wondered if you did. It is better that you should not; but, believe me, the necessity exists. It is destiny that we fight against."

"You cannot fight destiny," I told him.

"We can try," he said grimly. "In other days we took a harsher way."

I remembered the wooden crosses in the field. "Since you take a gentler way now," I suggested, "is it needful to confine me here, if I give you my word not to attempt to escape?"

"It is not only escape that we fear," he replied, "and not only yourself. It is for your own safety that we take these measures, as well as— I cannot tell you more; but I am at your service in everything else. If you will favor me with your presence for a few days afterward, the castle shall be at your disposal. Meanwhile, my servants shall study your wishes, and if you desire my company at any time I shall be honored."

"I shall be honored and pleased," I assured him.

"I will join you after dinner," he promised.

Then he left me.

I washed and rested and ate an excellent dinner with an excellent appetite. I tried to enter into conversation with the old woman who waited on me, but she crossed herself whenever I spoke, and would not talk. After dinner I walked along the corridor and found nothing hut stone walls and the strong door. I discovered, also, that my revolver had been slipped from my pocket. I resigned myself to my imprisonment, and sat down, and read some of the books in the sitting-room. From the book-plates and coats of arms in them, I ascertained the name of the castle and its owner, and found him to be the head of one of the most ancient families in the country.

The baron visited me, as he had promised. He was a poor talker, and we bored each other till he mentioned chess. When he learned that I was a player, he unearthed a board and men, and we played several games. I was easily master, but he vowed that I should have a worthier opponent the next day in his cousin Rudolf, who "lived for chess," and ranked among the minor masters.

He left me, and I slept a dreamy sleep. I thought that destiny played me with a silken line, and drew me nearer and nearer to the pale, yellow-haired girl, who stood like a statue, watching me with her blue eyes. I remembered the girl wonderfully well, considering that I took little interest in women as a rule; and I judged that she was a fellow-pawn of destiny.

The next morning I sat by the barred window, looking out upon a grassy plateau. It was at the side of the castle, and there was no traffic there; but presently the blue-eyed girl went rapidly by. Just before she passed from sight, she turned and took a long look at my window; and when she saw me she flushed and bowed. She was scarcely more than a child— barely twenty, I suppose— but she was very pretty; prettier than, ever, because she had a pink color from hurrying. I thought that she would make a sweet bride for some handsome young fellow, like my cousin. Dick. If she, too, was fighting destiny, I would he ready to help her, like an elder brother, if the chance came my way.

The baron's cousin, Rudolf— a grizzled man of fifty, and old for his age— visited me in the afternoon, and again in the evening. We played chess all the time, and did not finish till after midnight. He was a good player, as players go; but I was very strong. I won six games and drew two out of nine, while he scored once only; and he warmed: to me so that, at last, I induced him to tell me the circumstances which had led to my confinement.

iii

"IT IS A CURSE that was laid upon the baron's house, two hundred years ago," he explained. "The baron of those days was a wild, dissolute fellow; and he ran away with the daughter of a neighbor, an Englishman who had settled here. The girl died about a year afterward, leaving no children. The baron married again; and her father laid a curse upon their issue, that the eldest daughter should never marry to her father's wish, but should love a stranger, of English blood."

"I see," I said. "I am the stranger of English blood; and the pretty, slight girl whom they call 'Gretchen,' is the daughter; but I am not a marrying man, friend Rudolf; and she is a mere child. You need not have been afraid, even if you believe this old superstition of a curse."

"We have reason to believe it, Herr Davidson," he said gravely.

"Tell me about it."

"The baron's own daughter ran away with a captain of mercenaries— an Englishman, it is said, but I find no evidence of his nationality. His eldest grand-daughter was carried off by an outlaw— he was certainly an Englishman— on her way to church to be married. Our record says that she was stolen without her consent, but the popular story runs otherwise. There is a song that the peasant lads sing to the maids at their windows, and the maids answer, that is evidently based on the story of the bold outlaw and Margaret. According to the story, he just rode up to the carriage and lifted her up with one arm and set her in front of him. From which I judge that he was either a very strong man, or she was a very willing woman— or both!"

Good Rudolf rubbed his large red hands and laughed; and I laughed, too.

"Your pretty Gretchen might not be so willing!" I said.

"Gretchen takes it for her destiny, of course," he pointed out. "However, I will continue the story. The following baron set himself to fight destiny, and caught his daughter's lover under her window, and hanged him; but she drowned herself. The eldest daughter of the next baron, his son, stole away with an Englishman on her wedding eve; but they pursued them and shot him. He shot also and killed several, and there was a great confusion; and in the darkness some one accidentally shot her, too. The story says that it was her father who did it; but that must be pure guess. However it may be, it preyed upon his mind, and he was never himself again. The last— that was in my boyhood, and I remember it— was another Englishman, who came to the castle a few days before the marriage, just as you have done. His name—" he checked himself— "his name does not matter."

"It does not matter," I agreed. I remembered the name that the baron had mentioned, and that my father's brother travelled to these parts, and never returned.

"Our Gretchen is her niece, and very like her. They kept him a prisoner, as they have kept you, so that he should not know her. They never spoke, but they changed eyes, and it is supposed that she got a maid to carry a note to him. He made a rope of his bedding— I saw it— and escaped from the window by night. Now they have posted two men on guard with guns!"

"Pooh!" I said. "I do not lose my heart by 'changing eyes.' In fact, I do not mean to lose it at all, for I prefer my liberty to a wife. I should have been a hundred miles away by now, if they had let me go."

"So perhaps would he have been," said good Rudolf, with a sigh, "but they kept him here. It was destiny. She escaped, too, and joined him, and they fled. They took them where there are now two crosses in a field. Perhaps you saw?"

I nodded.

"The Englishman made a hard fight, but they cut him down before her eyes. She never recovered from the shock, and used to sit all day on his grave; and she died there just a year after it happened. It is strange that one could  love a person with scarcely a word passing."

"To me it seems impossible," I said, with a shrug of my shoulders. "I shall make no ropes to fly with your Gretchen! Is she to be married on Thursday?"

"At a quarter to twelve," he said, "at the church with one tall spire that you see to the right from the avenue. It is nearly five miles away, though it does not look so far. They start at a quarter-past eleven; and when they are be yond your reach, you may go; unless you will stay and play more chess with me?"

"We shall see," I promised. "You are a great player, Herr Rudolf; and, if I cannot stay then, I may return a little later. Is the marriage not to the taste of pretty Gretchen?"

He shrugged his shoulders and extended his  hands.

"He is nearly as old as I! Girls have their fancies, and for my part— well, it would not grieve me greatly if you ran off with the child. She has always been my favorite, and if she prefers— she thinks you are her destiny, you see; and you are young and well-favored; and so— can your devil's car without a horse go very swiftly?"

"About twelve miles an hour on a pinch," I said carelessly. "Why?"

I thought he was only trying to draw me out; but I believe now that I did him an injustice.

"They would be off their guard," he said; "and you might repeat the story of the outlaw and Margaret if you could overtake them. But you cannot: and you do not want to run off with our little Gretchen."

"No," I agreed. "I cannot; and I do not want to run off with the child; but you need not tell her that if she asks after me."

He nodded slowly.

"She will not ask; but she will look at me with her big eyes; and I shall tell her that— that the handsome Englishman called her pretty."

"Yes," I said with a laugh. "Tell her that. It's quite true, bless her! And if I could help the child in any other way than by marrying her I would. But this is the twentieth century, and bold outlaws are done with. Good-night."

"Good-night, my friend," he said, and went.

I went to sleep and dreamed again of destiny drawing me to Gretchen with a silken thread. And when I woke I wished very heartily that I could take the poor, pretty, frightened child to England and marry her to a nice English boy, since I was a dozen years older, and not a marrying man.

iv

I CAUGHT another glimpse of Gretchen from the window in the morning, but she was with an elderly lady who would not let her come near.

I found a pair of opera-glasses and watched her; and she gave many a look over her shoulder in my direction. Her look was such as might have set a younger man's heart afire; and it made me grind my teeth and think over the story of Margaret and the outlaw. The awkward thing was that, if I carried her oft, she would expect me to marry her. If I had thought of marrying, I owned to myself that I should have liked the idea of marrying pretty Gretchen. But I was, I assured myself, a confirmed bachelor.

Herr Rudolf came in the afternoon, and he brought me a white rose.

"Gretchen saw you at the window," he said, "and she thought that you had no flowers here. She asked me many question about the devil's car, and how fast it would go. It is natural that she should believe that—" he paused.

"That we should run off and be killed?" I suggested.

"That you should run off," he corrected. "The rest is no part of the curse; and if the devil's car were fast enough—"

"The devil's car is slow," I said; "devilishly slow! And I don't see what I could do if it were faster. Let's play chess." I was not sure of him.

He said no more about Gretchen till he was going.

"If the devil's car went faster," he remarked again, "and you caught them, they would be off their guard. If she ran to you— I make stories in my head sometimes, like one plays chess, instead of going to sleep. Good-night."

"And I sleep instead of making stories," I told him; but it was a long while before I went to sleep that night.

I could not stop thinking of the pale, pretty, unwilling bride, who thought it was our destiny that I should deliver her in the devil's car. I had more than half a mind to try; but the difficulty was what to do with her afterward. Still, I thought I could take her to England to my mother; and some of my younger friends were sure to fall In love with her, because she was such a pretty girl; such a very pretty girl. And she would not think any more of me, when she met some nice English boys nearer her own age. Probably she would like young Dick— confound him!

The baron called to see me the next morning. He apologised profusely for my detention, and in excuse retold the story which I had heard from his cousin. I accepted his apologies, and promised to make no fuss with the British con-sul, on condition that he would let me go to my car, under escort, and get it ready to start punctually at the appointed time. He agreed to this, and I prepared everything. I saw the bridal cortege go along the road; but it started from the other side of the castle, and the men who guarded me had no suspicion that I knew anything about the wedding.

At half-past eleven to the second my guards stood back and bowed, and I shot away on the top speed. I heard cries of astonishment and fright, and some cried that I pursued the Lady Gretchen in the devil's car; but I was soon out of hearing. I saw the one-towered church to the right, and turned that way, when I was out of the gates. When I was about a mile from the church I saw the bride's carriage just ahead, and sloped so that I should catch them just as they stopped, for I was not confident of my power to take her with one arm, as the outlaw had done. In fact, I would make no move to take her at all, I decided; but if the poor, pretty, little thing sprang to me for help, destiny should have her way.

A country cart was about forty yards behind the carriage; and I lurked behind the cart till they stopped. Then the baron stepped down, and his wife rose to be handed out, and Gretehen stood up behind them, and turned and saw me.

I shot forward and stopped just beside her, scratching the paint off her carriage and mine.

The coachman gave a yell, and the baron gave a roar, and the baroness gave a scream, and the people standing by the church— I can still picture the row of white-dressed girls with baskets of flowers— gave a great shout; and I gave a great laugh.

"Gretchen!" I said.

I held out my hand and she took it and stepped lightly from the carriage to my car, and we were off and away before any one got within arm's length of us. Never was a bride carried off so easily!

We went at twenty-five miles an hour over good roads and bad, round sharp turnings, and through narrow lanes; and I looked straight ahead and so did Gretchen.

When we reached the top of the hills, she turned and took her last look at the castle— lying like a white bird in its brown nest— and she caught her breath sharply. Then I took her hand. She was like a little white flower, I thought, tipped with pink. And I forgot the wise words that I had thought out to tell her, that she should choose a husband for herself in England.

"It is destiny, Gretchen," I said, "and I shall love you very much, if you will marry me."

"I shall love you, too," she said very simply; "and I will marry you. It is destiny; and—"

She looked at me for a moment and then dropped her beautiful eyes.

"And we are glad?" I whispered.

Gretchen nodded shyly; and I put my arm round her; and so we rode away, in the devil's car— on the road to Heaven!

______________

A complete "Old Sleuth" dime novel

2: Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist

"Old Sleuth" (Harlan Halsey)

1837-1898

Chapter 1

Two skillful young detectives overmatch a brace of villains and prove what nerve and courage can do.

“LET’S DUCK HIM and steal the girl.”

A young lady and gentleman were walking on the sands at Coney Island beach. The lady was very handsomely attired, and by her side walked a young man, a perfect type in appearance of an effeminate dude. Three rough-looking men had been following the lady and gentleman at a distance, and when the latter stopped at a remote part of the beach far from any hotel the three men held a consultation, and one of them uttered the declaration with which we open our narrative.

As usual certain very exciting incidents led up to the scene we have depicted. One week prior to the meeting on the beach a young detective known as Dudie Dunne, owing to the fact that he often assumed the rôle of a dude as a throw-off, was seated in a hotel smoking-room when a shrewd-faced, athletic-looking man approached him and said:

“Hello, Dunne! I’ve been on the lookout for you.”

“You’ve found me.”

“I have, and I’m glad. I’ve got a great shadow for you.”

“I am all ears, Wise.”

“I want you in the government service. There is a chance for you to make a big hit.”

“I am ready to make a big hit, Wise.”

“You are in a position to do it. You speak Italian, but what is better, you have your lady pal. She is a real Italian, I am told, and one of the bravest and brightest women that ever entered the profession.”

“Some one told you that?”

“Yes.”

“Whoever did so knew what they were talking about. Cad Metti is one of the brightest women that ever entered the profession; she is a born detective. What is the job?”

“There is a gang at work—the worst ever known. They are Italians, but they have a contingent of American and English rogues working with them. They are the most dangerous operators that ever organized for the coining of base money. They are located all over the United States. They have regular passwords. Indeed, their organization is perfect, and with them are a number of desperate assassins, and a few beautiful women. I can’t go into all the details, but the government has appropriated a large sum from the secret service fund. We must run down and break up this dangerous gang.”

“You have the case in hand?”

“I am directing the hunt. I have twenty of my best men on the case, and I have trailed down to the fact that all the movements are directed from New York. The chief men are located here, and never in the history of criminal doings was such a dangerous lot at work.”

“What points have you?”

“The only point I have is the fact that the leaders are located here in New York.”

“In what line are they working?”

“They are counterfeiting in all its branches, they are bank robbing and burglarizing private houses. Indeed every sort of criminal appears to be in the organization. It is not even confined to the United States. They are sending base American money to Mexico and Cuba. The president of the Mexican republic has sent a large sum here to aid in their capture. The merchants of Havana have also sent on a fund.”

“And you have no clues as to the identity of these people?”

“We have captured several of the gang, but that does not interrupt the work. It’s the leaders we want, and if you can get in and trail them down it will be the biggest feather you ever wore in your cap. But let me tell you, it’s a dangerous job. Several of our men have mysteriously vanished. Two we know were assassinated; the others have been done away with. My reputation is at stake. Thus far I have been baffled.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Shadow down and locate the leaders.”

“Can you give me a hint where to look for them? That is, can you give me any starter at all?”

“I cannot. You may find them mingling in the best society in New York; you may find them in the slums under cover. One thing is certain: they are the shrewdest rascals that ever defied the whole detective force of the United States, and I have great hopes that you can succeed where we have all failed. You can command me for all the money you need; and now get in and run down these rogues.”

“You have no photographs?”

“No.”

“You say there are women in with the gang?”

“Yes.”

“Here in New York?”

“Yes.”

“Are the women shoving the queer?”

“If they do they do it so well we cannot trace them; but there are women in the gang.”

“Have they a workshop here?”

“I do not think they have. I believe the workshop is in some remote place, possibly in Mexican territory; but the leaders are here, and it is necessary to trail down the leaders and get the evidence against them. If we get the leaders we can knock out the whole gang. My men have located members of the gang, and we can close in on them any time, but none of them will squeal as long as the leaders go free. But once let us secure the leaders and there will follow a wholesale squeal, and we can break up the gang.”

“All right, I am in with you. I will see Cad Metti and talk the matter over with you later on.”

“I should like to meet your female pal.”

During the time Wise, the great special, had been talking to Dunne a district messenger lad had been standing near munching on a cracker which he had taken from the free lunch table, and at the proper moment he stepped forward and handed our hero a note.

The latter glanced at the missive and said:

“All right, lad; there is no answer.”

The boy stood around and finally Dunne handed him a nickel. The boy laughed, said “thank you,” and walked away, and Dunne said:

“You have never seen Cad Metti?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, certainly, I’d know if I had ever seen her.”

“You would?”

“Yes.”

“Wise, your memory fails you.”

“I’ve never been accused of loss of memory.”

“You never have?”

“No.”

“And yet you’ve seen Cad Metti.”

“Never.”

“You are sure.”

“Certainly.”

“You saw her once talking to me.”

“Never.”

“Come, come, I’ll bet you a cigar.”

“No use to bet; I tell you I’ve never seen the girl.”

“Then bet.”

“All right, I’ll bet.”

“And you’ve never seen her?”

“Never.”

“But you did see her once, and as an old detective with his eyes always peeping I supposed you recognized her.”

“I reckon I would have recognized her if I had ever seen her. You have some other officer in your mind whom you confound with me.”

“No, you once saw her with me. She was under cover, but of course you would fall to that.”

“But I’ve never seen her.”

“Then it’s a bet?”

“Yes.”

“You saw Cad Metti within the last five minutes.”

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“That you should know. I tell you that you have seen her.”

“I say I never have.”

“You think you would have recognized her?”

“Yes.”

“Under any cover?”

“Yes.”

“You have seen her all the same.”

Wise was thoughtful a moment and then exclaimed:

“Great Scott! it is impossible.”

“No, sir.”

“Do you mean to tell me that—”

“Yes, I mean to tell you that the messenger lad was Cad Metti.”

“Great Cæsar! Oscar Dunne, that girl is a marvel.”

“Well, she is.”

“I’ve heard how you first met her.”

“Yes, and I’ve been her instructor. She is, I will admit, the most wonderful girl I ever met. Did I say met? I will add I never read or heard of such a girl. She could make her living on the stage as a marvel. She is a great musical genius. She can sing or dance, she can fence or wrestle like a man. Her strength is extraordinary, and as a pistol shot she is the champion woman of the world; and when it comes to quickness, nerve, cunning, and courage she cannot be excelled.”

“I reckon you are dead in love with your pal.”

“You needn’t do any guessing on that score. She is my detective aid and together we will perform wonders for you. I will talk the matter over with Cad. We will lay out a plan and I will report to you.”

“Good enough; I feel hopeful. It will be a great thing to run down this gang, for, as I said, they are the most dangerous lot of criminals on earth, and their head-center is evidently a man of genius. Let us catch him and we will easily close down on the whole gang.”

“Cad and I will locate him, you bet.”

“And get the evidence?”

“I reckon when we get him we will get the evidence along with him. You know it will be a hunt for evidence that will lead up to the capture.”

“Oscar, you are not slow at the business.”

“Thank you; but it’s business and not compliments.”

“Good enough; I expect to hear from you.”

“I’ll report.”

“Will you have your cigar?”

“Yes, I won; I’ll take it.”

Oscar Dunne was a young detective who had earned a great reputation. Some of our readers have read an account of his previous exploits and know what a smart chap he is. Those who have not read about Dudie Dunne we advise to do so. As stated in our previous account, Oscar had no particular history. He had simply graduated to the detective force, and had made a great success; and as also stated, he was a young man of singularly effeminate appearance, with muscles like a whipcord and powers of endurance that were seemingly tireless. He was not only a great athlete but a wonderful boxer, and it was a favorite role with him to assume the character of a dude, and many a surprise he had given to various smart Alecs during his career on the force, and with the surprise he generally administered when required a good sound drubbing to some fellow who had set him down as an exquisite. His looks when in the “dude cover” were very deceiving, and when he started in to throw off his mask he became a terror to evil-doers, and at the time when we introduce him a second time to our readers he had won a great reputation as a singularly successful detective officer.

Shortly after parting with Wise, the great government special, Oscar went on to the street, and proceeding up town entered a very respectable-looking house which he entered with a night key. It was his home. He had made considerable money and had provided a home for himself. The house outside was very unpretentious, but inside it was as luxurious as the home of a rich bachelor. We will here state for the information of our readers who are making their first acquaintance with Oscar Dunne that in a great case in which he had been engaged he met a beautiful Italian girl who aided him very materially. The girl earned a good reward and when Oscar asked her what she proposed to do her answer was:

“I shall become a detective,” and then and there a partnership was formed between Oscar Dunne and Caroline Metti. The latter lived with a countrywoman who had kept boarders, but who was only too glad to give up her general boarding business to become a housekeeper for Cad Metti, the latter having rescued and adopted two Italian children from the street, a boy and girl, whom she had determined to educate and advance in life in case both proved worthy.

Cad Metti’s home was not far from the residence of her male professional partner, and the pair were in constant communication. Oscar was an adept at disguises, and he had found in Cad Metti a ready scholar, and between them they had studied the art of disguise as a science and both had become very versatile and proficient.

As stated, Oscar went direct to his rooms after parting from Wise, the government special, and a few moments later a veiled lady appeared at his door and was shown into his sitting-room. Oscar’s housekeeper was a sister of his mother, a motherly old lady, to whom the detective had given a home. The veiled lady entered the house in a manner that might have suggested to a countryman that she was one of the family. She entered the sitting-room, as indicated, and throwing aside her veil stood revealed in all her magnificent youthful beauty.

“Cad,” said our hero, “I am glad you have come.”

The female detective, who had removed her veil, smiled a dazzling smile and said:

“I thought you might wish to see me.”

“I always wish to see you, but this time it is on business.”

“Then let’s follow the advice you have often given: spare compliments and talk business.”

Oscar proceeded and related to his lady pal word for word all that had passed between the government special and himself. The female detective listened with deep attention, and when the narrative was concluded said:

“I think we can locate this man.”

“I think we can; but how shall we start in?”

Cad was thoughtful a moment and then said:

“In our old way.”

“How is that?”

“Chum for them.”

This criminal “chumming” has yielded good returns, as a rule. It is the best card in the detective profession.

“Where shall we chum?”

“Everywhere.”

“I’ll put it straight. Where shall we start in?”

Again the beautiful Cad Metti pondered, and after an interval said:

“Criminals as a rule are fond of race betting.”

“That’s so.”

“We’ve picked up many a clue down at the race track.”

“We have.”

“Let’s try a little chumming down there. Good races are on, and if ever our bluefish show up at the track they will do so this present week.”

“And we’ll lure them as they swim, eh?”

“That’s it.”

“How will we make up?”

“You are to became Dudie Dunne. I will become Silly Sal.”

“And we’ll bet on the races?”

“We will.”

“It’s a go, Cad. To-morrow we will take in the races and chum for our game.”

On the following day the two detectives, well gotten up for their “chumming” scheme, started down for the Sheepshead Bay track.

They went on the course and played the rôle they had determined to play to perfection. They attracted considerable attention and that was what they most desired, for it was their “chumming” game to bring around the fish.

Chapter 2

Cad Metti and Oscar Dunne Do Some Fine “Chumming” and Succeed in Bringing a Big Fish to Nibble at Their Bait.

Oscar Dunne and Cad Metti were indeed great experts in enacting a rôle. They took a seat in the grand stand and through a messenger boy bet on the races. They won, and they laughed and tittered in delight over their success, and, as intimated, attracted a great deal of attention, and they exhibited considerable money. Oscar was playing the rôle of a dude with plenty of “stuff,” as the vulgar phrase puts it, and Cad was playing the rôle of a fast young girl who was leading the exquisite fool to squander his roll. Well, it was a great chumming game well played—played before a lot of men who were as avaricious as impecunious gamblers always are. There were men there who bet and lost. There were men there who had no money to risk, and they all thought themselves possessed of brains, and here was a silly fool loaded with money, and here also was a silly girl reaping a rich harvest in greenbacks from her enamored dude, as it appeared, and so the game went on until a man with a keen eye got them under his glance. He stood awhile and watched them, and various expressions passed over his face. After a little the man strolled away. He joined two other men, and going close to them he said in a low tone:

“I’ve struck a chance to make a raise.”

“Good enough,” was the response.

“Yes, and it’s dead easy.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll go over opposite the grand stand; you fellows follow me. Come up offhand and I’ll show where a big haul lies right in sight.”

The rogues had struck a lead and so had the two sharp-eyed detectives who were playing such a neat game.

“Cad,” said Oscar, “we’ve got a bite.”

“Yes, I felt the nibble.”

“It’s a good thing, sis, to locate a rogue.”

“Indeed it is.”

“We have not chummed in vain.”

“So it would appear.”

This little bit of side talk was carried on while the two detectives maintained the role they were enacting, and a little while later they saw the three join each other and beheld them as furtively they watched their anticipated prey.

“We’ve got three bites, Cad.”

“I see them.”

“What shall we do?”

“Don’t ask me to suggest, Oscar. No one can beat you in laying out plans.”

“We’ll leave here.”

“And learn if they follow?”

“Yes.”

“That would be my idea.”

“Where shall we go?”

“We will give them a chance to follow us. We will go to the beach.”

Oscar and Cad did not start right off—they were too smart for that. They were playing a great game. They did not see the three men; they did not know they were being watched. Oh, no, they were too absorbed in each other and the fun they were having and the winnings they were raking in. It was a strange incident, but one that often occurs. Oscar was not betting to win. He was merely betting as a “guy,” and, as intimated, it often happens that the careless win where the careful and posted lose. A race had just been run and a messenger boy returned with the tickets he had cashed, and the girl pulled out a big wad of bills and added the winnings to her roll. The three observers noticed that she carried the bulk of the money, and one of them said:

“Great sea waves! what a wad she has got!”

“And here we are, chummies, dead broke—not been able to make a bet.”

“Not a bet,” came the doleful refrain.

“We’ll bet to-morrow,” said one of the men with a knowing wink.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“They may have a coach down here and outride us.”

“Don’t you believe it. That chap is too happy. He’ll have the gal down to the beach for a supper. Good enough, we will take our supper later on. He’ll treat; yes, we’ll dine with him without an invitation—see?”

“I don’t see it yet.”

“Well, just watch. Aha! what did I say? They’ve had enough of the race; they are going. Good enough; I’ll bet my share of the swag they go for a ramble.”

“How will we manage it?”

“We’ll just lay low and learn what our chances are. They are getting very reckless, they are. Eh! the girl may want his watch and sparkles. If she does she will lead him away off for a long walk. She’ll nip the sparkles and the watch, and then, my covies, what will we do?”

“We’ll nip her, eh?”

“You bet. Now just watch. There they go. Who was right, eh?”

“I reckon you were, old man.”

“You bet I am, every time. Ah, we’re in luck.”

Oscar occasionally got a sly chance to glance at the three thieves, and so cute was he, and such a face reader, he could almost have repeated their talk without hearing a word of it. He read their conversation on their well-marked faces.

“Let’s go, Cad. We’ve got them well hooked. They have seen your wad; that’s what they are measuring.”

The girl tittered. It was her way of working off her excitement in view of the adventure she knew they were to pass through; and indeed a very startling adventure was to crown the incidents of the day and night.

Oscar and Cad left their seats and had wandered like a pair of happy young lovers toward the exit gate, and they were the observed of all observers. Many remarks, pertinent and characteristic, were made concerning them, and yet, seemingly unconscious that they were attracting any attention at all, they moved along. Upon reaching the platform they met a train that had just arrived from the city, and boarded it to make the short run to the Island. And all the time they maintained their frivolous demeanor, but four sharp eyes were on the alert, and Oscar observed:

“They are swallowing the bait.”

“Yes, we’ve got ’em.”

It’s strange, but about the same idea ran through the minds of the three rogues. They had feared that their game might take a train to the city, and when they saw them board the train bound for the Island the man who had spotted the game said:

“What did I tell you, covies?”

“They are going to the beach.”

“They are, dead sure.”

“We are in luck.”

“We are, you bet, and now I am going to prophesy again. That gal has got a good thing. I tell you she will walk him away off down the beach. She is bound to have those sparkles. She has her eye on them. Good enough; I hope she’ll get ’em, but she’ll never wear ’em. No, no, it’s I and you, my covies, who will wear those sparkles. We covets them, we do, and we’s got to have ’em; yes, sir, we’s got to have ’em, and we will.”

Oscar saw the man get on a rear car, as intimated, and there was triumph in his heart.

We will here explain the theory upon which the confederate detectives were working. Wise had said that there was an organized gang, that the scoundrels were practicing all manner of criminality, and he had determined upon the link by link game—a good one—a search for clues. One thief as a rule knows another thief, and so the linking of acquaintance goes on until a rogue is struck who suggests a participation. The rule does not always work, but generally it is a success, and was likely to prove so in the “shadow” Oscar was working. He knew he might get on to the trail of a dozen or more rogues before he struck one that was a member of the secret criminal organization. He had every reason to hope he would succeed.

The confederate detectives arrived at the Manhattan Beach Hotel, and as our hero had resolved to move very slowly and take notes as he went along he led Cad to a table and ordered a dinner, and during the meal the same amusing farce was kept up, and the thieves passed and repassed the table where their selected victims were seated.

“They are following down to a close shadow on us,” said Oscar.

“Yes, and I am looking forward to the surprise we have in store for them.”

“It will be very enjoyable; but, Cad, I’ve been thinking.”

“I call you down before you speak.”

“What was I going to say?”

“You were going to say there was risk, and I must not scare it.”

“Partner, you are a mind reader.”

“I can read your mind when it runs in a generous direction.”

“It is not a matter of generosity but of precaution. Those fellows look like a desperate trio.”

“Certainly, but they are off their guard.”

“They are?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Oh, you know well enough, we’ve acted so as to throw them off. Do you know how they have measured us?”

“I have an idea. What is yours?”

“They think you are a flat.”

“That’s certain.”

“They think I am playing you.”

“Right again.”

“They think a slight rap on the ear will send you squealing.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Then they will go through me, and as I am, as they believe, a thief like themselves they fear no risk from me.”

“Admitting what you say is true—”

“We will give them a great surprise.”

“Sure, but after they discover their mistake—”

“It will be too late for them to do any harm. We will have them flattened out, or we will have forgotten an old way of managing these things. Oscar, it is a great thing to meet an antagonist who really underrates you.”

“That is true.”

“And so in this deal I tell you I think we are on a better lay than we are aware of. After we have downed these fellows we will know what to do.”

“Yes, we will follow them up.”

“Certainly, and we will have a great lead.”

Oscar and Cad lingered a long time at the table. They desired “wind and tide,” as we will put it, to be just right for them.

It was well on toward five o’clock when the confederate detectives rose from the dinner table and walked down toward the beach. They walked very slowly and all the time maintained the rôle they had started out to assume. They passed the bathing pavilion, walked along beyond the Oriental Hotel and then turned toward the beach at a point bordering on the inlet, and there they halted and stood to admire the incoming waves. Twilight was beginning to cast its lengthening shadows over land and sea.

The men who were set to rob the couple meantime dodged along on their trail, keeping far in shore toward the Sheepshead Bay, and their leader was chuckling all the time. He said:

“Oh, covies! how am I for a prophet? I’m a mind reader, and I’ll set up for a professional. These fagots are carrying out my programme to the letter. I tell you I know the ways of smart gals like the one who has that poor dude in tow. She is going for him right smart. She will clean him out. I shouldn’t be surprised if she sandbagged him and left him lying on the beach. Well, well, won’t we have a haul! I saw that wad, and I tell you it’s a big one; and the watch and the diamonds! Ay, ay, we will just have a jolly time for a week. Talk about betting, eh! well, this little trick beats all betting. We play to win, not to lose, every time. There is no chance here. That gal is walking the dude right into our trap. We’ve got the wad already, and won’t we have a surprise for the smart, bright-eyed little miss! Why, she is laying out her cash already, she is so sure of getting all the chap has; but we’ll do the shopping on his wad, not she, you bet.”

As stated, Oscar and Cad wandered down to the beach and here as before they enacted their rôle to perfection, and it was at this moment that one of the men asked:

“How shall we do it?”

It was then the man uttered the words with which we open our narrative:

“Let’s duck him and steal the girl.”

The three laughed. It all looked so easy. The young fellow was, as they supposed, such a “sweetie,” such a little darling, who would turn pale and plead for mercy the instant one of the three men spoke to him. The latter discussed their plan, and it was arranged that their leader should approach the young people and engage them in conversation. The man did approach and Oscar remarked to Cad:

“Now the fun commences. Well, well, what a real pretty surprise we have in store for those rogues! Cad, I enjoy this; yes, I do—it’s immense!”

“Don’t forget yourself, Oscar, and laugh too soon.”

“Don’t fear me, but there will be two or three sore heads around here in a few moments.”

Meantime the man approached. The two detectives did not appear to see him until he stood directly in front of them and said:

“Good-day.”

Oscar elevated his glasses to his eyes and stared at the man in true dude style, and Cad recoiled as though shocked at being addressed by a stranger.

“I beg your pardon, my friend,” said Oscar, “I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

“Oh, you haven’t?”

“No, I can’t say that I ever saw you before.”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed it is true, my friend.”

“What a pity! why, we are old friends.”

The thief’s pals were drawing near.

“You are mistaken, my friend,” said Oscar, adding: “And I must kindly request you to move off and not disturb us.”

The man haw-hawed in a rough manner and said:

“Well, you are playing it nice.”

“I do not understand your allusion, sir. It is very vulgar—yes, sir, very vulgar.”

“Is it, indeed? Why, you rat, do you think I do not recognize you?”

“You certainly do not recognize me. I never saw you before in my life.”

“He! he! ha! ha! that’s great, my covie; yes, that’s great. So you never saw me before? Well, well, I’ve seen you often enough. I was looking at your portrait only yesterday.”

“You were looking at my portrait only yesterday?” repeated Oscar.

“Yes.”

“Where on earth did you see my portrait?”

“In the rogues’ gallery—number one hundred and three. Yes, yes, you rascal, I’ve run you down nicely; but see here, you and that girl appear to be enjoying yourselves and I don’t wish to spoil your enjoyment. I am a gentleman, I am, and you can buy me off.”

At this moment the rogue’s pals approached, and the fellow turning toward them said:

“See here, this ’ere rat is pretending he don’t know us. Eh! ain’t that cool of him? And we have been a-follerin’ of him this last two months and now we’ve caught him a-spendin’ of the swag, and he’s a-puttin’ on airs. I say, miss, mebbe you don’t know the character of the chappie who’s a-spendin’ his money on you so free. Mebbe you don’t know he’s a thief, and it’s a part of his swag that you are having a fine time on; but I don’t begrudge—no, I don’t—the money that’s gone, but youse must hand over the balance, or I’ll be compelled to do my duty and take youse both in. Yes. I’ll have to do my duty.”

“My friend, you are evidently laboring under a great mistake.”

“Am I now?”

“You certainly are.”

“Well, well, is that so?”

“It is the truth.”

“See here, Johnny, I know you as the most expert pickpocket in the country. I’ve been on your track a long time. Now you can just pony up and go on with your flirtin’; otherwise you and the girl will go with me.”

“Go with you?”

“That’s it.”

“Never! never! we would never permit ourselves to be seen in such company, you rough-looking boor, you.”

“Hear him, boys, hear him! ‘You rough-looking boor!’ Well, he is a-puttin’ on lugs, ain’t he? What shall we do with him?”

“Duck him,” came the answer.

Chapter 3

A Lively Scene Follows on the Beach and the Three Rogues Get What Had Been Promised—a Great Surprise.

“MY DEAR,” said our hero, turning to his companion, “just hear these awful men! Did you ever hear anything like it? Why, they are really impertinent. Come, dear, we will go away and not talk with them further. It’s a disgrace to be seen in their society a minute. Some of our friends might see us talking to these men and think they were our friends. Just to think of it!”

The three men laughed, and the leader mimicked:

“Yes, just to think of it! but see here, mister pickpocket, you can’t work your high airs on us. I see you won’t shell out, so we will just take you.”

“Yes, in the water,” said one of the men. “We’ll duck him first, just to soften down his cheek a bit.”

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” said the leader.

“Yes, sure; the idea of him puttin’ on airs, eh! yes, let’s duck him.”

“All right, comrade, it’s as you say.”

“Why, hear the horrid men,” said Oscar. “Maybe they think it is a great joke to try and scare us, but we don’t scare; do we, my dear?”

Cad did look as though she was almost scared out of her wits, and we desire to call our readers’ attention to the courage and nerve of both the detectives in daring for one moment to think of meeting those three great burly men.

“Say, young fellow, just hand over the swag you’ve stolen so we can return it to the owner and we’ll let you off. I’ve a list of the articles: a watch, some diamonds and money. We don’t want to be hard on you. Peel out the stuff and we’ll let you off; won’t we, comrades?”

“I don’t know about that. I think we should do our duty,” said one of the men.

“Well, yes, but seein’ they’re having such a good time I haven’t the heart to put them in jail.”

“Just as you say, captain, just as you say.”

“Say, young fellow, will you hand over the swag?”

“He! he! he! really, gentleman, what jokers you are! I know you are very funny, but I don’t understand your jokes; indeed, I don’t.”

“You don’t, eh?”

“No, no; he! he! he!”

“Is it a joke to go to jail?”

“He! he! he! how funny! now I see you want to scare us; but see here, I don’t scare. I can prove that to you, and if you do not go away I shall be compelled to thrash you.”

“What!” ejaculated the three men, giving utterance to real laughter. It really did sound comical for that apparently slender dude to threaten to thrash three burly men.

“So you’ll thrash us, eh?”

“He! he! he! yes, you will compel me to thrash you if you don’t go away. Why, this lady is very much annoyed. I cannot see her annoyed; certainly not, so go away and I’ll not harm you.”

“Hear him—hear him!” cried one of the rogues, and he added: “We’ll have to duck him for insultin’ us.”

“Yes, we’ll have to duck him.”

“Let’s do it.”

The men leaped forward when one of the most extraordinary scenes that ever occurred followed. As the men leaped forward both Oscar and Cad drew short billies—drew them so quickly that the men did not observe them until they felt them. A complete change had come over the appearance and actions of Oscar and Cad. The former with an ease and quickness that was wonderful to behold dealt the leader of the rogues a smart tap on the head that caused him to lie down in the sand as though stricken with a pain where his digestive organs reside. Cad meantime played a single-note tattoo on the head of number two, and Oscar, after dropping the first man, paid his compliments to number three, who also concluded to lie down without any premeditation whatever. It was, as we have intimated, a most singular, startling and extraordinary scene, and before the men could rise each received to turn a second rap, when Oscar inquired:

“What shall we do with them, sis?”

“Drown them,” came the answer.

“No, no, it would be too bad to toss such mean carcasses into pure water.”

“But they’ll become salted,” said the girl.

“I reckon we’ve salted them pretty well; let’s stroll.”

Oscar and Cad walked away, resuming the same smart girl and dude rôle they had played ere they fell to and downed the burly ruffians.

It was a sight for a comic paper, after Oscar and Cad had wandered away, to behold the three ruffians rise and look at each other. For a moment none of them spoke. They just looked, until one of the party, who evidently was a sort of humorist, said:

“Cap, I don’t think we’ll go shopping with their wad to-day.”

The other man fell to the spirit of the occasion and said:

“Well, cap, it was easy, yes, very easy for them.”

The leader looked, yes, looked very blue.

“Well, did you ever!” he murmured.

“No, I never,” came the response.

“What was it we struck?”

“I feel as though something had struck me,” was the answer.

“My covies, we got it good.”

“Did you? Well, I got it bad. Oh, how my head aches!”

“Who are they?”

“I’ll never tell you, but it was the gal gave me my rap and she came down on me with the force of a Goliah, and I went down—see? I’m down yet.”

“I don’t understand,” said the leader as he mopped the blood trickling from the wound in his head with his handkerchief.

“I’ll never explain it to you,” said the humorist.

“Hang me, but I can’t think.”

“Neither can I. My thoughts are wool-gathering, and no wonder, eh? By jiminy! what a settler I got, and I settled.”

“They were playing us.”

“Yes, they were playing us, and they had lots of fun rattling on my poor conk.”

“But who are they?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Giant, I reckon, and it came so quick that for a moment I thought I was in a ship and a squall had blown the mast over on me. But see here, pards, we’d better get up and git, or mebbe some of our misdeeds may rise up in judgment against us. Instead of our putting the dude in jail he may jug us.”

“Right you are; let’s scatter.”

“Where will we meet?”

“In the city, and we’d better lay low. There is more in this little experience than a crack on the head. We’re lucky if we get away.”

The three men rose to their feet, held a few moments’ talk and then scattered. Each man determined to make his way to the city on his own hook, and they considered it was possibly by hook or by crook that they would get there.

Oscar and Cad had disappeared. Indeed, the rogues had hardly dared look at each other or speak until the “singulars” had gotten out of sight.

Once well away Oscar said:

“All right, Cad, I must leave you now to shift for yourself awhile. I am going to finish up this business. We know where to meet.”

“Yes.”

They were standing in a hollow between two sandbanks and it was dark.

“Change,” said Oscar.

Immediately there followed a most wonderful transformation. Cad Metti dropped her fine feathers as though by magic, and in her stead appeared a plain-looking country girl, while the dude vanished, and in his stead appeared a regular sporting appearing young fellow. No one would have recognized in either the two who had sat on the piazza of the hotel eating their dinner and cooing like two turtle-doves.

“Well done,” said Oscar as he gazed at the wonderful girl, Cad Metti, and an instant later he said:

“Now I will leave you. I must get on the track of those scoundrels.”

Cad and Oscar did not stop to exchange farewells. The latter moved away rapidly toward the point where he had had the encounter with the three ruffians whom he and his female comrade had served out so well. Oscar desired to follow the leader and he arrived behind a rift of sand in time to watch them, and he was able to discern the fellow he desired to shadow. His man made a roundabout tour toward the depot and then started afoot down the track, not daring to take the train at the Manhattan station. Our hero, however, proceeded to the station, knowing his man would board the train at Sheepshead Bay, and his conclusion was verified, for all three men had arrived at the Sheepshead Bay station and boarded the train as individuals, not exchanging one word. Indeed, all had worked a sort of half-and-half transform.

Oscar maintained his seat; he did not go to the car boarded by the men. He remained one car behind, but he was on the alert lest at any moment the rascals might desert the train, and so he arrived at Long Island City. The men went to the Twenty-third street boat, the detective followed them, and still they kept apart.

“Those fellows are scared,” he muttered. “The surprise they got has taken all the life out of them.”

Once in New York the special chap whom he was following walked up Twenty-third street to First avenue, then he turned down and finally entered a low tenement house. Oscar was at his heels and noted the house he entered, and took up a position directly opposite. There were lights in some of the front rooms, but the windows of the top floor front reflected no brilliance until a few moments after our hero had taken his position, when there shot forth from the small windows a sickly gleam of light.

“Top floor front,” was our hero’s comment. He had located the room where the man had entered.

Oscar stood a little time revolving his next move in his mind, and finally he determined upon the old trick played so often and still played daily by officers on a quiet “lay.”

He entered the tenement house and ascended the creaking stairs, and not a muscle in his sturdy form quivered, although it was a dangerous undertaking to enter that sort of a house on such an errand. There was a possibility that there were a dozen villains scattered around in the several apartments, for as the old saying has it, “Thieves flock together.”

Oscar, however, was well-armed, cool, strong and agile, and he arrived in front of the door of the room and heard voices. He peeped in, as the keyhole was large and there was no key in the door. He saw the man to whom he had given the sore head, and a woman. The latter was a remarkable-looking person. She was about forty, as it appeared; her complexion was sallow, her features pointed, her eyes large and sunken, and the latter were very expressive, proving that the eagle-nosed woman was bright, alert and cunning. She wore a discontented look upon her face as she eyed the man who had entered her presence, and while Oscar peeped and listened he heard her say:

“I am tired of this.”

“Tired of what?”

“Do you want to know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll tell you. I am tired of living in these rooms; tired of going hungry; tired of wearing old clothes; tired of slaving for you—a miserable fake.”

“Hold on, Sarah, don’t talk to me that way.”

“Yes, I will talk to you that way. When I met you, I had plenty of money. You pretended to love me and I was fool enough to accept your love. I let you have money. I had a good, comfortable home, and now where am I? You have squandered every penny on the races. You don’t know how to gamble, and yet you gamble away every cent you get. You do not come home when you have a stake and say, ‘Here, my dear, is a hundred or two for you.’ No, no, you come in and dole me out a few stamps and say, ‘Make yourself comfortable.’ In fact, when you have a good stake you do not come home at all, if this miserable place can be called a home. Tom, I’ll stand it no longer; you and I will separate.”

“Hold on, Sarah, do not talk that way.”

“Yes, I will talk that way, and I will act. I can make plenty of money. No need for me to stay here and play wife to a man who only cares for himself and who hasn’t the courage to start in and make a good haul and give me the comforts I’ve been accustomed to enjoy; and as you can’t do it I’ll start out and win them for myself, and I will not furnish you money to gamble while I starve here in these rooms without food, fire or clothing. I tell you I am through.”

The man Tom was thoughtful a moment and then said:

“Sarah, all you say is true, but I’ve had no money.”

“And you never will have.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Never.”

“Why do you say so?”

“You haven’t the courage; you are a coward.”

“Hold, Sarah, I took a big chance this very afternoon to make a big stake. I showed all the courage, but got the worst of it. I ran up against a cyclone disguised as a gentle sea breeze, but I am going to have a big stake, and all you need is just a little patience and you shall have an elegant home, horses and carriages, and diamonds and servants.”

“Oh, come off, Tom; no more fairy stories for me.”

“It’s no fairy story, Sarah. I tell you there is no one on earth that I love as I do you. I’ve felt bad seeing you living this way and I’ve done the best I could; but I am to be let into the greatest gang on earth. I will make money from the start, and you will be let in and we can in a few weeks make a big stake and skip. What I tell you is no fairy story.”

“Bah! Tom, I’ve heard your wild tales before.”

“This is no wild tale. I tell you in a few weeks we will be flush.”

The woman’s eyes glittered as she said:

“I wish I could believe you, Tom.”

“You can believe me.”

“Why are you so secret about it? Why don’t you open up?”

“I have not been initiated yet. It is the greatest gang that ever got together.”

“Do you know any of the parties in it?”

“Certainly I do. All countries are represented. We have the talent of the world in it. The leaders are the smartest men on earth. They have branches in every large city in the United States. They are in with big politicians, judges and millionaires. They have defied the police for eighteen months, and they are all ready to flood the land and get away, and I am to be let in.”

“Counterfeiters, Tom?”

“Well, yes, that is a part of their business. They counterfeit currency, metal and bonds, government and bank. They will make a big general sweep. Every man in it will get his share, and a share is a fortune. It’s the most perfect organization ever effected, and I tell you I am to be in it among the big bugs too, and all through you.”

“All through me?”

“Yes.”

“How is that?”

“They need you.”

“They do?”

“Yes.”

“In what capacity?”

“To sign the papers.”

Again the woman’s eyes glittered as she asked:

“How did they learn about me?”

“One of our old pals told them about you.”

“And why did you not tell me about this before?”

“I have not had my first interview yet with the king-pin. He has been out West. He is to be in New York some day this week. You are to exhibit your skill and we will get a stake immediately.”

“And you will gamble it away in an hour.”

“No, I’ve sworn off.”

“Bah! how many times you’ve told me that!”

“I mean it this time.”

“Tom, I am fond of you, but I cannot let you ruin me again. If we make a big stake I am to hold the money. Do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear.”

“And you understand that I mean what I say?”

“I do.”

“I can beat the world on false signatures.”

“That is what they have been told.”

“I’ve long wanted a chance like this.”

“I know it.”

“I can make my own terms when they learn what I can do.”

“I know it.”

Our readers can readily imagine the feelings of Dudie Dunne as he listened to this wonderful revelation. He realized that he and Cad Metti had made the hit of their lives, or rather had a chance to do so. It seemed wonderful that he had in this most astonishing manner gotten right on to the whole scheme, was peering, as it were, into the very heart of the terrible organization. It was not wholly skill that had brought him to this point; there was a large element of luck in it. Was it not more? Was there not fate in it, that through his ingenious strategy and Cad’s suggestion he had followed the man of all men who under circumstances the most marvelous would bring him in contact with the king of the great criminal confederacy?

Oscar just reveled in his success. His face was actually radiant. The great special, Wise, had told him the best detectives in the land had been baffled. Wise himself had failed, and he had selected Oscar, and the young man was delighted at the prospect of maintaining the great special’s confidence in his ability. Meantime the conversation continued.

“When are you to meet these people?”

“I don’t know exactly. The king-pin is out West. He is liable to return any day.”

“And then?”

“You are to give an exhibition of your skill.”

The woman clasped her hands and casting her eyes to the floor exclaimed:

“Oh, how I have longed for a chance like this, Tom! I love luxury. I would be a handsome, yes, a splendid woman if I only had money. This is the best chance we ever had in our lives.”

“Yes, Sarah, and I will be proud to see you dressed like a queen.”

“Give me the money and I will dress like a queen; I know how to dress. But who is with you in securing this great chance?”

“I will tell you all about it later on, Sarah. You can be hopeful, and now I will go to meet one or two of the boys. I will not be home again until early in the morning. We have a little job on hand. It may yield a few, bits for us; I can’t tell.”

“Tom, with the great chance we have, be careful. Do not get nipped just as our fortune is made.”

Chapter 4

Oscar Encounters a Series of Adventures in Following a Promising Trail and Meets with a Pleasant Surprise.

Oscar slid down the stairs. His trick had been too good a one for him to take any chances. He did not wish to scare his bird off ere he had him bagged. He walked away and waited for Tom to appear. The man, however, for some reason or other remained in his rooms, and our hero at length muttered:

“All right, I have him treed. I can put my hand on him any time.”

Oscar walked away and proceeded to Broadway, and having another matter on hand which he was quietly shadowing he went to a noted private clubhouse. He entered and lounged for some time around the parlor. His keen eyes were wandering around in restless glances—not that he was directly looking for anything, but it was a habit, and as it will be demonstrated it was a useful habit in a man of his profession. He observed two strangers enter the assembly-room and later go with a club member to the café. This was not an unusual incident, and possibly might have passed off as intended by certain parties but for one fatal error. Just as the men passed through a doorway the clubman turned and took a measuring glance at our hero. The keen detective noted the fact which to him was significant, and he muttered:

“Hello! what does this mean?”

Oscar’s mind acted rapidly. He reviewed all the facts. He had just entered the club; he had come from a close “shadow;” two men entered immediately after him; he had never seen either of the men in the clubhouse before; they addressed one of the members and the three passed from the general sitting-room, but not until the clubman had taken a suggestive glance at our hero, and this latter fact was very significant—it meant something. Oscar did not recognize the club member. He had seen him, however, several times in the clubhouse, and was satisfied that the man was really a member. But who were the other two men, and why had they directed attention toward him? This was the question at that moment. Oscar retired to one of the private club-rooms. He wrought a marvelous change in his appearance. It was one of the most magical transforms ever attempted, and having worked the change he descended to the café. In the club our hero was not known as a detective. He was registered there as a matter of business, and had adopted but one initial, taking his middle name, so that under no circumstances would Woodford Dunne and Oscar Dunne be recognized as the same person. The club to him was a convenience for “fly” purposes. Once in the café he saw the two men and the club member seated at a table engaged in earnest conversation, and he heard the club member say:

“I still insist that you have made a mistake.”

“How?”

“In the crowd you lost your man and have trailed the wrong man.”

“I am certain he is the same man.”

“But I know the man.”

“Who is he?”

“I asked his name a few days ago. His name is Woodford Dunne. He is not an officer—a bank clerk, I think, or possibly a traveling salesman. One thing is certain: he was not trailing your man, not trailing any one.”

The man who had asked “Who is he?” was thoughtful a moment and then said:

“Our danger may be greater than you imagine.”

“Nonsense!”

“I say yes.”

“How?”

“Are you dead certain that man Woodford Dunne is not in this club to shadow you?”

The man addressed turned pale—very pale.

“How long have you known him as a member?”

“I am certain he has been a member for a number of months.”

“It’s all very strange. I tell you we have made no mistake. That man was listening at the door of Wadleigh, and it is Mrs. Wadleigh that we expect to employ. He came from Wadleigh’s rooms, where he had been peeping, to this clubhouse.”

The men were talking in very low tones. Oscar had sneaked in and had not been observed by them, so intensely were they engrossed in their talk. He had dropped into a seat near them and had picked up a paper.

“How do you know he was listening at Wadleigh’s keyhole?”

“You know our orders. Having agreed to employ Mrs. Wadleigh, the governor gave us orders to shadow Wadleigh. We have been on his track. I was going to take a peep and a listen, and silently ascended the stairs when I saw I had been anticipated. I slipped back to the street and we lay around. That man who you say is Dunne came from the house and we followed him here.”

“He may have come from some other part of the house.”

“I would like to think so, but I know better. He lay around after he left the house for Wadleigh to come forth, but we managed to give Wadleigh a tip and he stayed in his rooms. There is no mistake; the man Woodford Dunne was the man we saw dodging at Wadleigh’s keyhole. What his real lay was I don’t know, and we might assume it was an off play but for the fact that he came here. You are here. Is he not on your shadow? That’s what I want to know.”

“This is very serious.”

“Yes, it is.”

“We must go into this man Dunne.”

“We must.”

“And if your suspicions are correct the flag of the clubhouse must soon float at half mast for a dead member. We cannot afford to be tripped up now.”

“That is true.”

At this moment one of the men for the first time observed the presence of our hero. They had no reason to suspect that the man reading the paper understood the subject matter of their discourse and again, they did not realize how distinctly in their engrossment they had spoken. The presence of the club member did not give them much concern, but they changed their theme.

Oscar still maintained his position, and strange thoughts were running through his mind. He had obtained the information that many supposedly reputable men were in the great steal, and here he had evidence that a member of a very respectable social club was possibly in the great organization. It was not a startling discovery in one sense, for the police records will show that many a man who lived a reputable life before the great public for many years has been in the end discovered to be a cool, calculating rogue in alliance with criminals. Even while we write this statement one of these disclosures has been made to a startled public. Accident unmasked a millionaire, a man who has posed before the public for twenty years, and this accidental discovery led to the positive proof that this same man has been a systematic criminal for years; and even after having acquired a million he continued his evil criminal game until exposure came, as it is always sure to come and overtake the guilty sooner or later.

The men left the café. Oscar had a good lead and he knew he must go very slowly, as he had some very keen men to deal with. Again he went to a private room and worked back to Mr. Woodford Dunne. He had played his little game around the men and determined to let them play moth around his light.

A little later he left the clubhouse. He had determined to give the men a chance. Instead of being a shadower he learned that he was being “shadowed.” He had been there before. He could stand a shadow as well as he could shadow others. He determined to give the men a fair show, a better show than he usually got when playing the same game. He went to a well-known gambling place. There was not a resort in New York City that our hero could not locate, and in every one of these resorts, under one guise or another, he had an entrée. In some places he was known under one character, and in others under a very different guise. He had laid out all this piping for as many different emergencies. Having become a detective, he made the methods of his profession an exact science. Oscar had not been long in the gambling den when his original suspicions were all fully confirmed. The two men who had shadowed him to the club entered, and our hero mentally argued:

“Those fellows certainly stick to my identity.”

The detective engaged in the game. He was not a gambler—he abhorred gambling. He had seen so many men drop down to poverty who had taken their first step back in a gambling den, and during the course of his career he had warned, and in some instances saved young clerks who were just beginning to slide downward. Gambling is a fatal amusement and sooner or later leads to disaster. Oscar, however, knew how to gamble. He had learned the various games merely as aids in his profession, for most criminals are inveterate gamblers, and it is in gambling dens where detectives find their richest fields for “dead shadows.”

A few moments after Oscar had gotten into the game one of the men who were shadowing him also got in. It proved to be a very commonplace play. No large bets were made, no great sums were lost or won. The shadower had managed to crowd in beside our hero, and Oscar had favored him in securing the seat, and as was expected the man opened a conversation.

“A slow game,” he said.

“Very,” answered our hero laconically.

“I don’t like this faro anyhow,” said the man.

“It passes time.”

“I prefer a good game of draw.”

Oscar detected that the man was just playing a good game of draw—he was trying to draw our hero into a private little game of draw-poker; but it was not the poker that he wanted to inaugurate. His game was to draw our hero to some convenient place where he could play a still more significant game of draw.

“I like a game of draw myself,” said Oscar, nowise loath to favor the man’s game.

The detective did not know where it was all leading to, or what it was leading up to as a final denouement, but he was inured to the taking of desperate chances. Peril was a pastime to him. He was ever watchful and always prepared for danger.

“I think I’ve seen you before,” said the man.

“Where?”

“I can’t recall; possibly in some club.”

Our hero had detected that he was dealing with a very smart man—a man of nerve and coolness—a man who went slow but sure. He also discerned that it was to be a play of skill and experience in roguery against experience and skill in detective work.

“Let’s take a little of their whisky,” said the man. “It’s about all we can get out of this game.”

Oscar, having set out to be led, rose from the table, cashed in his checks, as his whilom friend did, and followed to the sideboard where they were joined by the second man, and number one said:

“My friend Thatford. I don’t know your name, sir.”

“Woodford Dunne,” answered our hero promptly.

“Yes, I’ve heard the name. I reckon you are acquainted with some friend of mine, for I’ve certainly heard the name.”

The men had poured out their drink, when number one, who had announced his own name as Girard, said:

“That’s mighty poor whisky. It’s like the game—bad.”

Thatford said:

“Let’s go and have a little lunch and a good drink to wash out that vile stuff.”

“Will you go with us?” said Girard.

“You must excuse me, gentlemen; I am a stranger. I cannot thrust myself upon you.”

“It’s no thrusting; we would be glad to have you join us. Thatford and I are no strangers in New York. Really, I am glad to have met you. I know a good fellow when I meet him. I am a sort of mind reader in picking out thoroughbreds.”

“If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I will decline your invitation. I thought I’d drop around to the theater and see the closing act.”

“That ain’t a bad scheme. We’ll go with you and have a little cold snack afterward.”

As the men had invited our hero to accompany them he could not well refuse to permit them to accompany him, especially in view of the little plan he had settled to act in regard to them.

The three men did proceed to a theater, and our hero was surprised to see one of the men, Girard, bow to a very innocent-looking and beautiful girl who was in a private box in company with quite a stylish party. Girard was a good-looking man and he dressed with faultless taste. No one would suspect him as a rogue on his appearance, and besides his manners were excellent—quite gentlemanly.

Oscar fixed his gaze on the fair girl between whom and Girard the nod of recognition had passed, and as he stood there in the theater he revolved in his mind the singular facts. He wondered how a man of Girard’s polished exterior should have been chosen to act the spy on a common confederate rogue.

Later he was destined to learn why Girard had been selected.

When the curtain went down on the last act Girard said:

“Thatford, you will have to excuse me to-night. I see a lady friend here. I may receive an invitation to dine with the party she accompanies.”

“I won’t excuse you,” said Thatford.

“Our friend here will keep you company.”

“No, you must go with me.”

“Where will you go?”

“To the Brunswick.”

“I may join you later.”

Oscar discerned the fine play that was being worked on him. He fell to the whole business, and more keenly appreciated what an excellent actor the man Girard really was.

“I fear I will have to beg off,” said Oscar.

“No, no, gentleman, this will not do. I am as hungry as a bear, but do not propose to sit down to a solitary meal. Come, Mr. Dunne, you must certainly be my guest.”

“All right, sir, as you insist. I did intend to go home and retire early to-night, but recognizing how your friend here has deserted you I will go with you.”

“I am obliged to you, and we will have a meal that shall amply compensate you. Girard will lose it, and when we tell him of our good time to-morrow we will make him green with envy.”

“I may be with you. I am not sure yet I will receive an invitation from the other party.”

“That chap,” thought Oscar, “is a quick thinker. He knows how to take advantage of the slightest incident when he is playing a game. All right, he is a bright player. We shall see how to scheme against him.”

Girard went away, and Thatford and Oscar proceeded to the Brunswick. The former became quite confidential after the first glass of wine, and his confidences were conventional and natural.

“My friend Girard is a great chap,” he said, “one of the biggest-hearted fellows in the world. He is very rich and generous.”

“He appears like a very generous man,” said Oscar.

“He is just what he appears to be. He has but one weakness—he is excessively fond of draw.”

“Yes,” thought Oscar, “he is playing a big game of draw with me, and he expects to draw me into some sort of a web. Well, he may succeed; we can’t tell, Mr. Spider.”

Oscar did not speak out just what he thought, but said:

“I am partial to a little game myself under the proper conditions.”

“What do you consider the proper conditions?”

“My companions in the game gentlemen, who, like myself, play for the sake of amusement, and not to win for the sake of the money.”

“Then Girard is your man, and I think he has taken a great fancy to you, Dunne. He is a queer fellow in some things, but when he takes a fancy to a man, he clings to him, and is always ready to do a good turn.”

“That is a good trait.”

“Do you know, or rather would you suspect, that he was a poor orphan, and the architect of his own great fortune?”

“No, he acts to me like a man born to wealth.”

“On the contrary, he is the son of Irish parents. He was born out West. His father was a ne’er-do-well. Girard at the age of twelve started in to provide for his mother and brothers and sisters. He went to Chicago and got in with a firm on the produce exchange. He served them well for several years and saved money until he could speculate on his own account. He is an honorable fellow. He resigned his position the moment he started in to deal on his own account, and he moved right along, making little successes, until finally he had money enough to go in for a big strike. He caught the market just right and at the age of twenty-eight got out of business with half a million to the right side of his hank account. He then came on to New York, and here he has lead an easy life, just enjoying himself in a quiet way; and, as I said, his great weakness is poker. He don’t play a heavy game, but loses with a good grace and wins with exceeding courtesy.”

“I reckon he must be a pretty good fellow.”

“He is, and hang me, if we are not going to have the pleasure of his company. That pretty girl did not ring him into her party, and he has come to make things pleasant for us. I am glad he is here.”

Girard, looking as innocent and jovial as a “let her go easy,” honest man, joined Oscar and Thatford, and started in with a pretty compliment, saying:

“Well, gentlemen, I got left, but I am stranded on a pleasant shore when my ‘renig’ sends me to such excellent company and such a bountiful repast.”

Chapter 5

The Game Goes on and Fine Play Is Displayed on Both Sides.

“WELL, you are a good one,” thought Oscar, and he mentally questioned whether or not he was coming out ahead of such a bold schemer, for the detective was well aware that the invitation business was a misleader—what is called a “fake.” The fellow really intended to gain time to put up his job for “doing” our hero, in case it was decided that he was to be “done up.” Herein Girard had the advantage. He had fixed his plan and our hero was going it blind, not having had time to arrange a trick against the one he well knew was being set up for him.

Girard sat down and commenced a lively talk. He spoke in glowing terms of the lady who had recognized him in the theater. Indeed, he was as jolly and pleasant as a man who had no evil design in his heart.

The meal was finally concluded. Oscar had placed his end of it well and appeared about as jolly as a man should appear who had imbibed his share of several bottles of wine.

“What shall we do?” asked Girard. “I don’t wish to go to bed; I prefer having a nice time. Can’t we go somewhere and have a jolly little game of draw?”

Oscar was not loath. He desired to let the men draw him, believing that while they were playing their little trick he might work a little on his own hook.

“Hang it!” said our hero, “I am not in the habit of staying away from my home all night, but since I’ve started in I don’t care what I do for the rest of the night.”

“Where can we go?” asked Thatford.

“To some hotel. We will take a room,” suggested Oscar. His suggestion was only a “flyer.” He knew the men did not wish to go to a hotel. It was a part of their game to draw him to some place where they could open up the scheme they had in their minds.

“I have a friend who always keeps open house.”

Thatford laughed and said:

“Yes, a pretty close friend. You want us to go to your bachelor quarters.”

“Well, why not at my rooms? We can play as long as we please and turn in when we get ready.”

“I have taken advantage of your hospitality so often I’d rather cry off,” said Thatford.

“Oh, nonsense! come on. What do you say, Dunne?”

The intimacy under the influence of the wine had progressed so far that the men addressed each other as though they had been friends for years. Wine softens down the austerities and makes apparent friends with great readiness. It was decided to go to the bachelor rooms of Girard, and the three men passed to the street. Oscar meantime became quite gay and very plainly showed the effects of the wine, but really he was fearfully on the alert, and when we write fearfully we mean it just as we write it; for he did not know at what moment one of the men might plunge a knife through his heart or send a bullet through his brain. He knew that their purpose was a dire one, and the only question was, how would they work out their plan? Keen were his glances under his seeming inebriety, and he beheld the men exchange glances, and also recognized looks of triumph, intimating, “We’ve done it well. He is ours.”

The three men walked on and at length halted in front of a house which our hero had once had under suspicion.

“Here we are,” said Girard.

“All right,” responded Oscar.

“Say, my friend,” suggested Thatford, “we must not play for large stakes. Remember I am not a rich man; I can’t lose like some of you golden bucks.”

“I never play for big stakes,” said Girard.

The men entered the house and Girard said:

“My gambling box is on the top floor. There I don’t annoy my neighbors.”

“All right,” said Oscar. Our hero was seemingly in a very complaisant mood. The men ascended to the top floor. Girard ushered his guests into a room which contained a full equipment for a game of draw. There were shaded lights, a polished table, and by touching a button he summoned a lackey to serve in attendance, and our seemingly half-boozed Oscar scanned the face of the lackey and perceived that indeed a very cunning game was being played. Cards, cigars, liquor, and all the paraphernalia were introduced, even to chips, and the game commenced. Our hero had started in to buy a big wad of chips, but he was restrained.

Indeed, the rascals were working the game for all it was worth in the way of a total blind, until the moment when they intended to open up.

The game had proceeded for about half an hour when the attendant entered the room and made a whispered announcement to Girard. The latter appeared to be annoyed, but said:

“All right, show them up;” and turning to his guests he added:

“It’s awful annoying, but a couple of my friends, knowing my habit, have dropped in. They will want to come in the game.”

“The more the merrier,” said Oscar.

Thus he spoke, but he realized all the same that the chances for his escape were lessening. Two more men would make it five against him, including the attendant, whom our hero had set down as a “stool” in disguise, and the inquiry arose in his mind:

“What can their game be? They have certainly gone carefully about it and have made great preparations to do me; but how do they intend to do it?”

The two men were introduced into the room. They came in seemingly in quite a merry mood, but a moment later one of them fixed his eyes on our hero, stared in a surprised way and finally asked:

“Girard, where did you come across that individual?”

There was a tableau at once.

“What do you mean? Of course you know the man.”

“Here, my good fellow, I’d like to know what you mean?” demanded Girard.

“Do you call that man your guest?”

“I do.”

“Do you know him well?”

Girard appeared very much confused and did not answer.

“Answer; do you know that man well?”

“No, I met him to-night.”

All this time Oscar sat silent, but really appeared like a man who had been detected in something mean.

“You don’t know him well?”

“I do not.”

“You met him to-night?”

“Yes.”

“Who introduced him to you?”

“No one. We became acquainted by chance. But see here, this gentleman is my guest and I want you to explain.”

“Oh, I’ll explain.”

“Please do.”

“I denounce that man.”

“You denounce him?”

“I do.”

“On what ground?”

“He is a spy and a sneak. He will report you for keeping a gambling house. He is a sort of detective pimp, does all their dirty work. That is the man you are entertaining. Let him deny it if he will.”

This was a bold accusation, and all the men glared at our hero, and finally Girard said:

“Dunne, what have you got to say for yourself? If this is false call that man a liar. It is your right, for he makes very grave charges against you.”

“With your permission,” said Oscar, “I will withdraw. That man’s charges are not entitled to a reply from me.”

“But see here, mister, that won’t do.”

“What won’t do?”

“If his charges are true you have been playing me.”

“I have been playing you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Well, you understand your purpose. I don’t. But one thing is certain: you must make a full confession, or I will hold you responsible for any interpretation I may put upon his charges.”

Oscar apparently began to sober up, and he said:

“I do not choose to make any explanations.”

“What do you know about this man?” demanded Girard, addressing the accuser.

“He is a reward seeker—a man who will ingratiate himself into the company of gentlemen. If he gets into a private game of cards he reports a gambling game and has gentlemen arrested. He is a general spy and sneak—a man who will go into court and perjure himself for a bribe, and he has made trouble for many a good fellow. He has hired witnesses, perjurers, at his beck and call. He is always up to some game. He is, in short, a lying, miserable rascal; that is what he is, and I know him.”

“These are very grave charges,” repeated Girard.

“Yes, and I will not remain to listen to them.”

“But you will remain.”

“I will?”

“Yes.”

“Who says so?”

“I do. You shall not steal into my house to spy and sneak on me, and get away.”

“What will you do about it?” asked Oscar coolly.

“What will I do about it?”

“That is my question.”

“Do you admit the charges?”

“I am too much of a gentleman to deny them: they are so gross.”

“Oh, you intend to get out of it that way, eh? Now who are you?”

As Girard spoke, he rose from the table and presented a pistol directly at our hero’s forehead. Oscar did not flinch, but asked:

“Do you intend to murder me?”

The detective was in the worst dilemma of his whole career. He knew the men were playing a game, that the chances were all against him, and that the possibilities were that under one pretext or another they intended to kill him.

“No, I don’t intend to murder you. I am no murderer, but I do not intend to let you get away with any sneaking purpose you may have had in working your way into this house. Are you a gentleman?”

“Yes, I am a gentleman.”

“Then you shall have a chance. I challenge you; yes, sir, you must fight me.”

“This is murder,” said Oscar.

Our hero believed his last moment had arrived. He had braved fate too far in his enthusiasm. He had walked into a trap from which there was no escape. The duel which had been proposed he knew would only be a pretense in order to murder him. He knew he had walked right into a trap, but he determined to die game. Yes, even at that moment he did not wholly despair. These men did not know his mettle, and could he once get a weapon in his hands he would make a desperate fight. He was armed, but thought that possibly the men might go through the farce of a duel. This would give him a chance. He had his club and he knew he must take them by a grand dash, a magnificent surprise. He had encountered as many men on several occasions in desperate conflict, but these men had the “bulge” on him. They were prepared and on the alert. The chances were that every man was well armed and ready to “pull.” He must get a vantage ground from where he could take them by surprise—throw them off their guard; but even then the chances were against him, for these were no ordinary men. They were a lot of cool, nervy criminals, well prepared, as stated—men who had their plans well arranged, their signals also. Possibly each man had his appointed work. They were men who could and would carry out their orders. It was a desperate moment, and all the chances were against him.

It was at this most critical moment that an extraordinary incident occurred. Oscar saw but little chance; still, as intimated, he was determined to make a desperate fight even in face of the odds against him, and there he sat revolving the matter in his mind when suddenly there sounded a little tick-tick like the tick-tick of a telegraph machine. The men did not notice the tick-tick, it was so low and sounded like the involuntary cracking that is sometimes heard from dried furniture when a fire is first ignited in a room. To our hero, though, this very singular tick-tick came with a wonderful significance; indeed, to him it was a language. It was a telegraphic message, and he knew that he was all right. Indeed, he received full instructions as to what he might expect; he learned when and how he was to give a signal at the extreme moment when he needed help. We will not at present attempt to describe his surprise and his admiration of the faithful one who like his shadow must have followed on his track to do the succor act when succor was needed. Oscar did not change his demeanor. He acted as though he still feared the terrible ordeal which confronted him.

“You must fight me,” said Girard, “and I show you great mercy in giving you a chance for your life.”

“Why must I fight you?”

“You are a sneak. You have imposed upon my confidence. You have forced your way into my rooms, having in mind a treacherous purpose.”

“I did not seek you. No, sir, you sought me; you invited me here. I declined to come. You forced yourself upon me. I did not force myself in here.”

“I thought you were a gentleman.”

“I am a gentleman.”

“You must fight me all the same.”

“I can see,” said Oscar, “you men are a gang of confidence men—robbers. You have inveigled me here to rob me. I will not be robbed. I will yell for the police.”

One of the men aimed a revolver at our hero and said:

“Open your mouth to utter one cry and you are a dead man.”

“You men dare to threaten me?”

“Yes, we dare to threaten. You shall not betray us.”

“Aha! I see my conclusions are correct. You are thieves and fear betrayal.”

“We only fear being belied by a rascal like you. We’re all gentlemen; we have reputations. We do not desire to rest under a false imputation of being gamblers. Now then you have one chance. Tell us just who you are and your purpose and we may spare you; otherwise—” The man stopped.

“What will you do otherwise?”

“Kill you.”

“See here; you men cannot double-bank me. I am not here to be robbed. I see through this farce. You rascals cannot scare me.”

“Hear!” exclaimed one of the men. “He is insulting.”

“Yes, he has insulted every one of us. He must fight.”

Oscar laughed and asked:

“Do you wish me to fight the whole gang?”

“Hear him! he denominates us ‘the gang’!”

“Certainly, you are a gang of thieves. I can see that I have been inveigled in here. This is a trumped-up charge against me; but I repeat, I defy you. Do your worst.”

“Get the swords,” called Girard.

“Who will fight him?”

“I will,” said the attendant suddenly stepping forward. “Yes, gentlemen, I will fight him. It is not proper that gentlemen like you should besmirch yourselves by fighting with a low-bred scoundrel like this fellow. I am his match; he belongs to my class. He and I will meet on equal terms. I will settle him, gentlemen, and afford you some rich and excellent amusement.”

“Henri,” said Girard, “you are not a swordsman.”

“I will prove to you, my master, that I am swordsman enough to fight this wretch who has forced himself into your presence to act as a spy. Yes, sir, I will teach him a lesson.”

Oscar could not discern what the real purpose of the men was. It appeared somewhat like a farce to him, and yet their trick was one that has often been played. They could in case of need make out that it was a case of assault, where one man had sought the life of another. Indeed, there had been several cases of a like character in New York. In one case the men had claimed that a duel had been forced upon another; and again a case had been known where it was made to appear that there had been a murderous assault, and of course there were plenty of witnesses, and the law is compelled to accept the testimony of unimpeached witnesses. While in both cases alluded to the police were convinced a cold-blooded murder had been committed, they were unable to prove it, however, and the assassins went free. Here were four men who could testify as they chose, and the chances were that as far as the courts were concerned they were reputable witnesses. The latter was the game our hero calculated the men meant to work on him. They had deliberately planned his murder, and the chances would have been dead against him but for the little tick-tick, and that singular tick-tick told a wondrous story; but even with this in his favor the chances were against Oscar when he conceived a plan as cunning as the one that was being played against him.

Chapter 8

Oscar Conceives a Plan and a Remarkable Denouement Follows—Coolness and Pluck Win Against Schemes and Cunning.

OUR HERO finally decided upon a plan. He determined to convert an impending tragedy into a farce.

The detective smiled when the lackey volunteered to “do him up,” and said:

“I see you wish a little amusement, you fellows. You shall have it. Get the swords. I am a gentleman and I will enjoy slaughtering this ambitious cocky-doodle-doo. He wishes to become mincemeat; I will gratify him. Yes, gentleman, get the swords and the fun shall begin.”

The men stared. This was a turn in the affair they had not anticipated, but they were evidently prepared to meet the emergency.

“Who will act as this fellow’s second?” asked Girard.

“You need not trouble yourselves, gentlemen.”

“Oh, no, you must have a second. Although you are not entitled to any consideration this affair shall be conducted as though you were really a gentleman. Thatford, will you act as the fellow’s second?”

“I must respectfully decline,” said Thatford. “I am not acting as second in an affair of honor for a low-bred spy and sneak.”

The lackey meantime had prepared himself for the affray, and Girard had produced two dueling swords. It looked serious indeed, but there was also an element of farce in the whole affair.

“I will excuse Mr. Thatford from acting as my second.”

“Will you accept me?” demanded Girard.

“No, I will not accept you. I anticipated that you fellows might be part of a gang of thieves and I prepared to meet you. No, no, gentlemen, you have not got this all your own way. I do not propose to be murdered like a caged rat, I assure you.”

The men glared. There had come a complete change over our hero, and indeed Oscar had laid out his whole campaign.

“You fellows are thieves,” he said, “thieves and murderers. I believe you are the parties who murdered a young man who has been missing for some months, and I further believe he was made a victim in some such way as you planned to make a victim of me; but, my dear rascals, I won’t have it.”

The men began to assume menacing attitudes, while exchanging glances.

It was evident they were surprised, but a greater surprise was in store for them as our hero exclaimed:

“The opening act is over. We will now bring on the tragedy.”

Oscar stamped his foot, the door opened, and to the surprise of the men a boyish-looking youth stepped in the room. Indeed they did stare, and Oscar said:

“See, I anticipated your moves. Here is my second; this young man will see that I have fair play.”

Girard here spoke up and demanded:

“Who are you? How dare you enter my house uninvited and unannounced?”

The youth assumed a merry demeanor and said:

“I thought there was going to be some fun here and I dropped in; that’s all. I like a fight—a good square fight.”

The men were evidently unmanned. There was something going on that they evidently did not understand. They were very shrewd men—great schemers. They believed they had played a good trick, but suddenly there came a change in their belief. There had followed a succession of strange and remarkable developments which they did not understand. The mystery paralyzed them; the boldness of the move terrorized them. Indeed, Thatford, who was usually a pretty nervy man, edged toward the door, but Oscar called out:

“Hold on, mister, don’t go. Remember this lackey here was to afford you some excellent amusement. He looks as though he were just the man to keep his word. He shall keep it, and afford you the amusement he promised. I will aid him. See, he is all ready; he is stripped for the fun. I do not need to strip. Give him a sword, give me a sword and we’ll have gore; yes, we’ll have gore. I will punish him, and then, gentlemen, I will be prepared to mix the gore. Yes, we shall have lots of amusement; it will be a roaring farce.”

One of the men appeared to recover his nerve and said:

“Say, mister, you call us thieves, but I reckon you are a thief. You have undoubtedly arranged a good little game of your own.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve arranged a good little game. I invited yonder fellow to my house to engage in a game of draw. I had three dummies ready to run on and make a trumped-up accusation. I attempted to force a duel on the man I had inveigled into my house. I had a disguised swordsman in the garb of a lackey to do the murder act. Oh, yes, I am a thief, and I planned well—so well that I have you gentlemen all at my mercy. Just witness how well I planned.”

Again Oscar stamped his foot on the floor and three men entered the room, and they were fully equal to the part they were called upon to play. The rascals thus overmatched realized the neat manner in which they had been beaten. Terror filled their hearts, for they did not at the moment know how well they had been trailed down. One fact was patent to them, and that was that they had put up, as they supposed, a great trick on a detective and had been outwitted in the most complete manner. There was no way out of the hole for them. Bad as they were, they knew they were not a match for the five individuals who faced them. The three men who had entered the room last were Jim terrors right on their looks, and their easy, offhand manner froze the blood in the veins of the conspirators. Girard attempted to face the matter by a display of nerve, but his attempt was pitiful in view of the situation as it at the moment confronted him.

The lackey meantime gave signs of terror. He was a swordsman, but realized that all his skill would go for naught, seeing that the game was exposed. Indeed, a most remarkable tableau was presented, but Girard tried to play out to save his confrères. He said:

“Well, well, Dunne, I expected to work a big scare on you, but I see you have been too smart. The next time I attempt a practical joke I will measure my intended victim better.”

“Ah, you will?”

“Yes.”

“Then this was all a joke?”

“Certainly; but you have proved yourself the best joker.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I am dead beat.”

“And as you say it was all a joke.”

“Certainly, you know it was.”

“And what license had you to attempt to play such a broad joke on me?”

“Joking is my delight.”

“Is it?”

“Always.”

“Good enough; you tried your joke, I will now try mine. I’ll teach you to pick up a stranger in the street to make him the victim of your joke. Oh, yes, we will call it a joke, a good joke, but the joke is not played out yet. You have had your fun. I must have mine, and here goes!” Oscar whipped out a club. He leaped forward and down went Girard, and the other detectives also got in and there was a very lively time in that upper room for about three minutes. The thieves did not dare offer any resistance. They took their medicine and yet they were all brave men. They were only too glad under all the circumstances to get off with a good sound clubbing, and they got it. Then Oscar and his forces drew off, leaving the men to think over their discomfiture at their leisure. We say the officers withdrew. They did, all but Oscar. He thought to take a little advantage of his success, and dodged into a room adjoining the one where the remarkable scene we have described occurred. He knew the men were all well done up and would not in their bewilderment be prepared for the latest trick of the detective. Our hero’s friends descended the stairs, making a great noise, and they kept addressing themselves to our hero, asking him questions in a loud tone, but he was not present to answer them. The questions were a part of his scheme to mislead the men, and his purpose was to overhear what passed between the men after they supposed that he and his companions had departed. He relied, as stated, on the demoralization of the scoundrels, and his position, as it proved, was well taken. The men did assume that he and his party had departed and they commenced talking, and our hero was at hand to overhear them talk. Girard was the first speaker.

“Great Scott!” he ejaculated, “who was looking for this? We are boys—greenhorns—compared to that fellow and a tale is told.”

“Yes, a tale is told,” said Thatford. “We thought we had everything dead under cover. We were proceeding in fancied security, but these fellows have been on our track. This is not the scheme of a night. We have met a setback that will keep us poor for six months. We will not dare move until we ascertain just how far they are on to us.”

“I knew something was up when we discovered that fellow shadowing Wadleigh. It was a lucky discovery, and our experience to-night, although rough, is a good play out in our favor. We know now just where we stand; that is, we know to a certain extent our danger.”

“Not altogether, nor do they know all. Otherwise there would have been a close-in. They are on to us, but have no real points. Yes, Girard, this little experience is a good one for us. All operations must cease until our enemies are removed. We must go back to the old game and do a little dropping out and make the road clear again.”

“That is just what we must do. We certainly have some information for our friends.”

“We have; and there must be a meeting. All work must stop. Word must be sent out all along the line.”

“Yes, sir, and at once. When will Redalli return?”

“He should be in New York within two days.”

“We need his headwork; that is certain.”

“We do, and you say he will be in the city within a few days.”

“Yes, and one more fact: we must throw up the lease of this furnished house and seek new quarters. They have this place down.”

“Well, this is only a fancy resort for us anyhow. Fortunately, there is no evidence in this house.”

“No, no; I never would have brought that fellow here if we had had any evidence in the house, although I did not think for one moment that he would do us up the way he did.”

“He has our identities.”

“He has.”

“That is his advantage, but where does ours come in?”

“We have his identity.”

“He will change.”

“So will we, but I will know that fellow under any cover. He will not know us unless we have forgotten how to do it.”

“It is easy for us to change.”

“You bet; he fell to us in our best rôle.”

“He did.”

“But how did he get on to us at all?”

“I must have time to think that out, and mark my words: he is a shadower. He got his points down well. I am a shadower; I will be on his track, and the next time I will have my points down well. Whatever happens, that fellow must be put away.”

“He is a terror.”

“He is, but he had it all his own way this time. We were groping in the dark, but he had a good flashlight on us.”

“He did.”

“Boys, we have had our ups and downs before. We have been in bad holes, but we always managed to get out. We have had better men than this young fellow on our track, and we have always got the best of them in the end. Remember, we have for years baffled the best officers in the United States. We have no reason to be discouraged. This is only an incident; we know they are not down to facts, and before they get there we will get in some of our good work.”

“You bet! How will we start in?”

“Our first object will be to identify every man who is in this raid against us. When we succeed then we will know just what to do.”

“Then we know how to employ our time until Redalli arrives in town.”

“Yes.”

“And we will lay everything before him. In the meantime there is no danger.”

“Unless he may get on to Wadleigh. How much did he learn from that fellow?”

“I can give it to you that he learned nothing, for Wadleigh said nothing; it was a lucky escape.”

“You have seen Wadleigh?”

“Yes, and he had something to tell me. I did not have time to talk with him because I had this scheme on hand with that fellow. Oh, I only wish I had known his game, and I would have laid a different course. He had it all his own way, as I said, when we thought we had it ours. It would have been a big thing, however, if our little trick of to-night had not miscarried. We would have had that chap in a hole that only a full confession would have gotten him out of, and then it is doubtful if we would have let him off alive.”

Oscar had overheard enough, and he did not give the rascals the credit he would have done had they suspected his little dodge in listening to what they had to say after the shindy, and again, as they were to follow him he knew he could get on to them when the time came. It was to be a game of hide-and-seek, and he felt assured that with the brave and magical Cad Metti he could give them points on a double shadow. He stole down the stairs, gained the street, and as he walked away he was joined by Cad, and he said:

“Well, sis, you appeared at the right moment.”

“Yes, Oscar, I feared they had some desperate game to pay. I knew your rashness. I fell to your track and when you entered that house I sought out some of our friends and had them at hand to drag you out of a bad scrape.”

“Sis, I was in a pretty bad scrape, and you appeared on deck at exactly the right moment.”

“That is what I intended to do, but what was their purpose?”

“Cad, to tell the truth, I don’t know.”

“How did they get on to you?”

“They caught me peeping on the fellow Wadleigh. There is where they played it nice on me.”

“What have you learned?”

“I have only picked up some leaders. We have a tangled skein to unravel, and we have got to do some pretty smart work. Those men are good ones; we are guarded at every point, and yet we have made a big stride toward a grand close-in some day, but our chance may come in some months from now.”

“What lead have we?”

“I have the names of some of the king-pins. I have their identity; I know the name of the great master of this lodge of criminals. I will have his identity, and then our work will begin. They will shadow us; they have my identity. They are good shadowers, and as they said I worked in the light last time they may work in the light next time, but if they do, Cad, it will be when our lights are smashed.”

Cad and Oscar proceeded to their several homes; both had worked hard, they needed rest, and it was late on the following day when they met. Before parting from Cad our hero had given her some specific orders, and when the two met they were prepared in case of an emergency to work some wonderful changes. They were prepared, as intimated, to do some magic trick detective work of the first order. Oscar had had a chance to think matters over and lay out his campaign, and when he parted from Cad he went to meet Wise, the great government special. He found his man at a hotel where he was masquerading in the rôle of a merchant from St. Louis, and he also knew well how to play any rôle he started out to assume.

“Well, Oscar,” said Wise, “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Certainly.”

“When will you start in?”

Oscar smiled and said:

“I thought you had started me in.”

“I did, but not having heard from you I thought you might be laying back to finish up some old business.”

“No, sir, I went right to work.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“Well?”

“I’ve made some progress.”

“You have?”

“I have.”

“Let’s hear about it.”

“I’ve shadowed down to several of the men.”

“Oh, you have?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my dear fellow, we did that, but it’s the king-pins we want.”

“So you told me, and it was the king-pins I went for.”

“Eh! what’s that?”

“I know the name of the chief center of the whole gang. I am on his track; I’ve got the identity of his aids.”

“You think you have.”

“I know I have.”

“Oscar Dunne don’t talk unless he knows what he is talking about.”

“I know what I am talking about this time.”

“Let’s hear your tale of woe.”

“Not yet. I only came to tell you that within three days I hope to introduce you to the king-pin—the chief man—the director of the whole business.”

“If you can do that you have accomplished one of the greatest detective feats of the age.”

“I will do it, sure. I’ve got all the lieutenants identified, got their names and their muggs. I’ve got them shadowing me. Within an hour they will be on my track. How is that?”

“It’s great.”

“Watch them on my track. You know what it means.”

“I think I do; you will really be on theirs.”

“Yes, and I’ve some big surprises for them. I’ve learned their plans, they are ready to spread a flood of counterfeits of every description. They have got all their plans complete. I will be on to their plans in a few days, and we can close in on them just as they let go their first dove.”

“If you are correct you are at the top of the profession. I’d like particulars.”

“In a few days, I’ll give you all the particulars and your men.”

Oscar went away. He had gotten up so as to be recognized. He sauntered on to Broadway when a lady approached. She was veiled and she asked:

“Is this Mr. Oscar Dunne?”

The detective was taken a little aback, but answered:

“May I inquire why you ask?”

“If this is Mr. Oscar Dunne, the detective, I have some business with you.”

“We will suppose I am the man you seek; what is your business?”

“Will you accompany me?”

“No.”

“I thought you were a detective.”

“Suppose I am.”

“It’s your business to listen to one who seeks your aid.”

“Go on, I am listening.”

“There are reasons why I do not wish to talk on the public street.”

Oscar was only sparring for time; he was measuring the woman, and he had not gotten on to her purpose when he said:

“Where do you wish me to go?”

“To any public place where we can sit down and I can relate to you my strange and remarkable experience. You will decide that I need aid and advice. I have been told that you are just the man to aid and advise me.”

“Who sent you to me?”

“A friend.”

“What is your friend’s name.”

“A Miss Lamb.”

Oscar did know a Miss Lamb. He had once done her a great service, and the woman’s answer rather threw him at sea in his conclusions.

Chapter 7

Cad Metti and Oscar Perform Some Great Tricks and at Every Step Gain Information Leading Toward a Thrilling Denouement.

THE DETECTIVE was compelled to think quickly, and yet he sought a little time.

“Miss Lamb sent you to me?”

“Yes.”

“You are a friend of Miss Lamb?”

“I am.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She is a deserving young woman working honorably for an honorable living.”

“And she sent you to me?”

“She did.”

“You desire my services?”

“I do.”

“Madam, I am very busy.”

“You will have time to advise me.”

“Is advice all you need?”

“That depends.”

“Upon what?”

“Upon what you may conclude after you have listened to my narrative.”

Our hero had decided on his course. He decided to go with the woman and permit her to tell her tale, for as the matter stood he could arrive at no positive conclusion concerning her.

“Where shall we go?” he asked.

“We will go to some prominent restaurant.”

“But, madam, I have not seen your face.”

“There is no reason why I should not remove my veil. I will do so when we are seated at a table. Let me tell you my experience is a very strange one. I have a very extraordinary story to relate. I know you will become interested; I know you will decide to serve me if you will only let me narrate my startling experience.”

“You shall certainly have an opportunity to relate your experience, madam.”

“Miss Lamb told me I could rely upon your generosity, but let me tell you I do not expect that you will serve me simply in a spirit of chivalry. If you can extricate me from my very singular entanglement I will be in a position to reward you in the most munificent manner, but it will require brains, courage and coolness to release me.”

“Madam, I will not claim any of these qualities in advance, but I will accompany you and listen to your strange tale. I am interested in odd experiences; it is my infirmity.”

“I have been informed that you have no infirmities; that you are a bold, resolute, keen, level-headed gentleman.”

Our hero smiled and said:

“Shall I select the place where we shall go?”

“If you please.”

“You do not seek privacy?”

“Only so far as I can relate my story and be heard by you alone, and let me tell you I may do you a great service while you are serving me.”

“That will be splendid,” said Oscar.

He walked with the veiled woman to a well-known restaurant. He led her to a table in a remote corner, and the moment they were seated she removed her veil and disclosed a very beautiful face. She was evidently an American woman, and our hero had detected a Yankee pronunciation, but he was thoughtful enough to know that the down east idiom might be assumed. We will here say that his suspicions of the woman had not relaxed, but when he beheld her fair, beautiful face his suspicion was just a little staggered.

As indicated, Oscar had not dismissed his suspicions entirely, and he waited wonderingly for the woman to open up her business.

“You have never beheld my face before?” she said.

“Never.”

“It may seem bold for a positive stranger to ask a favor, but as I said this is a matter which requires very delicate manipulation. I cannot trust every one, not even among the corps of detectives.”

“And yet you feel that you can trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I believe that combined with shrewdness, courage and cunning you possess a sympathetic nature.”

“You are very complimentary.”

“My informant was Miss Lamb.”

“Miss Lamb has evidently spoken very kindly of me.”

“Yes, she thinks you are a fine type of honorable manhood.”

“Miss, please do not compliment me any further through your acquaintance with Miss Lamb. Please explain the nature of the business that led you to seek me.”

“Before I explain my business to you I must exact a promise.”

“I am careful about making promises.”

“Yes, I know as a detective you are not at liberty to make promises off-hand, but my case is a very peculiar one.”

“What do you wish me to promise?”

“I have a very remarkable disclosure to make; probably one of the most remarkable disclosures you ever listened to during the whole course of your professional career. It is a disclosure that will call for very prompt measures on your part. It is a disclosure that will make you professionally one of the most famous detective officers in the world.”

Oscar stared and wondered what could be the nature of this thrilling disclosure. He said nothing, but kept upon a line of intense thought, and the woman proceeding said:

“Some very prominent people will be involved—men who stand high, who will be torn from their high estate. I am willing that you should perform your full professional duty, save as concerns one individual, and I want you to promise that you will save that one individual, though he may be the most guilty of the whole gang of criminals.”

The woman’s proposition was suggested, and it was a most remarkable one.

“Can you promise?” she asked.

“I cannot.”

“Then my lips must remain sealed.”

“I am sorry, miss, but I cannot promise to spare a criminal. I am bound by professional honor to close in on every criminal whom I can convict.”

“Then, as I said, my lips must remain sealed.”

“What are your relations to the individual who is a criminal and whom you desire exempted from the consequences of his acts?”

“He is my brother. Yes, sir, and in coming to you I am betraying my dear brother; but I would do so only to save him from the consequences of his crime. If I cannot save him I cannot betray him, but I do think that when I reveal to you the plot and identities of many criminals in return I should receive the promise of the exemption of one of them—that one, my own brother.”

“I will not positively declare that I will not make the promise; it will depend upon the nature of the disclosure. Will you indicate the character of the disclosure you have to make?”

“I will.”

“Do so.”

“There is existing in this city a band, an organized gang of the most skillful criminals on earth. Their organization is so complete that a discipline as perfect as military order prevails. These men have defied the police for years; they are doing more harm to the commercial world than ever was suffered before in many years. My brother is a member of this gang. Misfortune overtook him, and in a moment of desperation he became a member, a sworn member. He is very useful to them, owing to his skill in certain directions. He has made a confidant of me. He has told me everything and I, after a long struggle with myself, determined to save him if I could by betraying his confederates. I know all their identities. I know all their plans. I can place them bound hand and foot in your power, but my brother must be saved. It is to save him that I am prepared to make the terrible disclosure. You will become famous; you will achieve a professional victory where all other detectives have failed. You will do the country a service such as no detective ever before performed, but the price of my disclosure is the salvation of my brother.”

“Why do you not cause your brother to withdraw from these criminals?”

“I cannot. I have exhausted my persuasion with him. He is mad, mad, believes he is on the eve of the acquirement of great wealth. To be rich is his mania. He is really insane. I wish to save him. I can do so only by a betrayal of his confederates, and a disclosure of all their plans and devices as revealed to me by my brother.”

Oscar was amazed in spite of his inurement to surprises. He was aghast at the suggestions involved in the woman’s proposition, and he had cause for deep study. It was a singular fact that from the first moment the beautiful woman spoke to him he associated her with the matter he had in hand, but did not anticipate that her connection with the subject would come in the strange, weird shape that it did.

“It is your brother you wish to save?”

“Yes.”

“And he is associated with this gang of criminals?”

“Yes.”

“He has revealed everything to you?”

“He has.”

“And you wish to betray these men?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“In order to save my brother.”

“You have no other motive?”

“I have no other motive.”

“But you told me there might be a large reward for me.”

“I did.”

“What did you mean?”

“The government has offered a large reward for the arrest and conviction of these men.”

“How did you learn the fact?”

“My brother told me.”

“Tell me more about yourself.”

“I may, on one condition.”

“What is the condition?”

“Can I hope?”

“Hope in what manner?”

“That you will agree to save my brother, and—” The woman stopped short.

“Proceed, miss, you have another proviso.”

“I have.”

“State it.”

“Can I hope that you will save my brother under any circumstances, and share the reward with me? for without my aid you cannot earn it. I should be entitled to at least one-half of the reward.”

“Miss, if through any information you give me I earn the reward I will share with you.”

“And my brother?”

“I may be led to recognize that I can promise to spare your brother on the ground that criminals are sometimes promised immunity upon turning state’s evidence.”

“My brother is not a criminal,” answered the beautiful young lady in an earnest tone.

“He is not a criminal?”

“No.”

“But you have admitted that he is a member of this dangerous gang.”

“He is, but he is not a criminal.”

“How will you demonstrate that?”

“In a moment of desperation, while actually insane, he was seduced to become a member of the gang, but he is an honorable young man. Were it not for his trouble he never would have dreamed of converting his wonderful skill to the services of these bad men.”

“He is skillful.”

“He is.”

“In what direction?”

“Alas! I must have your answer before I tell you.”

“And I must know about you and your brother before I give the answer.”

“Can I hope?”

“Yes.”

“You will entertain the proposition to save him and divide with me?”

“Yes, I will entertain the proposition, but I will not promise until I know more.”

“Under any circumstances you will not use the information against my brother if I only partially explain to you?”

“I can make no promises.”

“I must have some guarantee.”

“I can give no guarantee until I know more.”

“Oh, what shall I do?” exclaimed the woman.

“Trust me; trust in my honor.”

A moment the beautiful lady meditated and then said:

“Yes, I will trust you. I can do nothing else.”

“I do not think you will have reason to regret trusting me.”

“My father lives in Massachusetts. He is an engraver. My brother inherited a marvelous talent for engraving, but he detested the employment. He went into other business, and met a very beautiful and accomplished girl. He was to be married when he lost his position. It maddened him, and in a desperate moment he fell in with one of the members of this gang. He was beguiled into betraying the fact of his wonderful skill as an engraver. He had no idea at the time of offering his services, but they induced him to show them a specimen of his handiwork. Then they offered him splendid inducements to join them, promising him a fortune. He was dazzled; he saw a way to win a fortune and his bride, and he yielded to the temptation. He has produced some wonderful plates. I do not believe his equal lives on the face of the earth at his craft.”

The story told by the woman was probable and reasonable, and it did appear that our hero was about to secure men and evidence in a most strange, remarkable, and complete manner.

“Where do you reside?” asked Oscar.

“I am temporarily residing in New York. I am studying typewriting. I hope to be able to earn my own living as a typewriter, but it would be a grand thing for me if I could secure a few hundred dollars out of the reward.”

“Is it your desire to obtain the reward, or is it your main purpose to save your brother?”

“It is my main purpose to save my brother. I do not care for the reward on my own account solely, but with it I can send my brother away. I believe he will learn a lesson that will last him all his life when those men are arrested and punished. And with the money he will have a chance to make a fresh start in some other city.”

Oscar thought the matter over, and we will admit that there was no doubt in his mind as to the genuineness of the story he had listened to. It did not appear that there was the least possibility of its being a false tale. It was not the beautiful face of the narrator and proposer that had led him to this conclusion. It was the probability and reasonableness of the story itself; but with his usual caution he determined to investigate. He was not prepared to accept any statement, no matter how probable and reasonable, without absolute proof. Still, as intimated, there was no question in his mind as to the genuineness of the information and the sincerity of the proposition.

“How do you intend to proceed?” he asked.

“In order to obtain the reward you must not only secure the men but convict them,” said the beauty.

“That is true.”

Oscar was a little disturbed here at the girl’s singular knowledge and shrewdness.

“These men have constant meetings with my brother.”

“Where?”

“At the little house where I and my brother reside.”

“Where is that house located?”

“In Brooklyn.”

“And these men go to your home?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know you are acquainted with the purpose of their visits?”

“No.”

“Are the plates in this house?”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

“I do not know. I only propose to furnish you the opening clues and let you follow them up and find the plates and all the evidence.”

“Your brother knows where the plates are concealed?”

“He does.”

“Can you not secure the information from him?”

“I cannot. I have tried to do so, but he tells me he is bound by terrible oaths not to reveal where the workshop is located.”

“He never works at your home?”

“Never. He is often gone away all night. I think they work at night.”

“Then how can I locate them?”

“You can trail my brother. Shadow the men also whom you will meet at our home.”

“I am to go to your house?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Any time you may elect.”

“And then?”

“I will conceal you. You can see the men who come to talk with my brother. You can overhear all that passes. You can identify them and shadow them. I think they go from our house to the secret workshop.”

“I will arrange with you to go to your home.”

“When?”

“At some future time.”

“Very soon?”

“Yes.”

“Within forty-eight hours?”

“Yes.”

“And I have your promise that under no circumstances is my brother to be arrested?”

“We may arrest him and let him turn state’s evidence.”

“No, no, never. I am only anxious to save him from disgrace. I am revealing this to you in order to save him from disgrace. Yes, it is for this purpose I am betraying his confederates.”

“Can you meet me to-night?”

“I can.”

“I must have time to think this matter over.”

“We must act quickly.”

“Yes.”

“It would be better were you to make arrangements to go to my house by to-morrow night at the latest.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Where shall I meet you to-night?”

“Here. We have dined together; we will sup together.”

“We will meet near here?”

“Yes.”

A corner was named and a little later the woman, who did not give her name, and our hero separated. Later Oscar called upon Miss Lamb. He learned from her that she had met a lady at the typewriting school where Miss Lamb was a substitute teacher, and Miss Lamb had really referred the lady to our hero upon gaining her confidence, and having learned that she had need of a detective in a very delicate affair, the nature of which had not been revealed to Miss Lamb.

When the detective parted from Miss Lamb he was more and more convinced that the beautiful sister of the criminal was honest, and really intended to put him on a “lay” that would indeed advance him to the top rung of the profession.

An hour later Oscar met Cad, who wore a very serious look upon her face, and she waited for a little time, when with a glitter in her eyes she demanded:

“Who was that creature you dined with to-day?”

Oscar laughed in a merry way. He read the thoughts that were chasing through Cad’s mind, or, rather, he imagined he did so.

“Did you see her, Cad?”

“Yes.”

“Did you mark her beautiful, innocent face?”

“Her innocent face?” repeated Cad in a sneering tone.

“Yes, innocent face.”

Cad fixed her brilliant black eyes on her partner, and her lovely face was ashen white and her voice trembled as she asked in what might be termed a husky voice:

“Are you joking, Oscar, or were you really deceived?”

“I was not deceived, Cad.”

There came a look of relief to the Italian girl’s face as she said in a less sharp tone:

“What a goose I was; certainly you were not deceived by that vixen.”

Oscar started.

“What do you mean, Cad?”

Again there came a glitter to the girl’s eyes as she said in a cold, incisive tone:

“Oscar, I really believe you are in earnest, and were deceived by that expert schemer. Brother, that woman was playing you for a fool and I see you were played.”

Chapter 8

Oscar and Cad Play Some Fine Detective Work Against the Cutest Rogue That Ever Set Out to Down a Detective.

“CAD, WHAT DO you mean?” demanded Oscar.

“I mean just what I say, brother.”

“You saw that lovely girl?”

“I did.”.

“Did you hear her strange tale?”

“I did not; but I watched her face while she was talking to you.”

“I did not see you.”

“No, I did not come under your gaze.”

“And you did see the lovely lady who was talking to me?”

“I did.”

“And what was your conclusion?”

“My conclusion was and is that she is one of the most subtle deceivers that ever set out to hoodwink a good man, for she succeeded.”

Again Oscar laughed and the glitter in Cad’s eyes became even more brilliant as Oscar said:

“Cad, had you overheard her story you would not think me quite as big a fool as it appears you do.”

“Tell me the story,” said Cad in sharp, quick tones.

Oscar did repeat word for word all that had passed between him and the woman and then added:

“You see, Cad, how for once you have reached a too hasty conclusion. That woman was really doing us a great service. I’ll bet my life on her sincerity.”

“You will?”

“I will.”

“It’s lucky I am here to save you from being trapped. Oscar, I am ashamed of you, but a blond beauty can fool any man, that is plain, and that woman has fooled you.”

“Nonsense, Cad.”

“I see through the whole scheme.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“All right, sister; I will never pooh-pooh anything you say, but this time you are at fault.”

“I am, eh?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure.”

“Oscar, I’ve a revelation for you.”

Oscar’s face assumed a serious expression, and Cad continued:

“My dear brother, I was on that woman’s track when she accosted you. I am on to their whole scheme, for I have been at work.”

Oscar stared and then said slowly:

“I am to meet her to-night.”

“Certainly, you will meet her, but when you do will you know her game? She is the beautiful siren who is to lure Ulysses into the den where he is to be slain with merciless precision and cold-blooded exactness.”

Again Oscar stared, but seeing the glitter in Cad’s eyes he fell to a conclusion and asked:

“Is my beautiful partner jealous?”

“Yes, I am jealous for your life. I do not wish to see you beguiled and imperiled by that woman.”

“Cad, you speak like one who knows what she is talking about.”

“I do.”

“Have you information?”

“I have.”

“Forgive me.”

“No, there is no need to ask forgiveness, but let me tell you something: this little game they are playing is one of the shrewdest tricks ever attempted. I would have been deceived; you are deceived, for a more reasonable and probable tale has never been told; and yet, Oscar, that woman is the right bower of the criminals. Her fertile brain conceived the whole plan to entrap you. It is the play of these men to remove every one inimical to their success, and they, having marked your identity, have conceived a scheme to drop you out. They know you are dangerous. I know you are brave, strong, and valiant, but they have arranged a plan against which courage and cunning count as naught.”

“You are sure, Cad?”

“I am sure.”

“What are you on to?”

“I am jealous for your safety, and after those men had your identity I determined to get on the track of the man Girard. He is a wonderful man in his way. I followed him; I saw him dispatch a messenger boy. I kept upon his trail.”

“Under what disguise were you?”

Cad laughed.

“Great ginger! Cad, can it be possible?”

Again Cad laughed and said:

“Yes, I was at hand.”

“You were the messenger boy?”

“I was.”

“Girl, don’t call Girard a wonder. You are the wonder of the age; but go on.”

“I carried his message, and the sweet-faced girl who has been giving you the beautiful tale concerning her enchanted brother is the party to whom I carried the message. They met, and under a changed disguise I overheard a part of their scheme. I saw her when she accosted you, and I knew that from you I would learn enough to connect the whole plan; I have.”

“And what is their plan?”

“That girl’s purpose is to win your absolute confidence. She has a party who will represent her brother, and by degrees and methods of her own, aided by her confederates, they will run down our side of it, and then at the last moment every one of us will be separately lured and done up. And they will make their plans so there will be no help for us, or rather there would be no help for us did they catch us unawares. But that they will never do; we will catch them in their own netting.”

“Oh, Cad, how much I owe to you! and now what shall I do?”

“Meet her, and I will wager that there will be some of her gang hovering around. We can play a very ingenious trick and open up their scheme.”

“How will you do it?”

“I can make up for you.”

“You can do it perfectly.”

“To-night I will go to meet this siren.”

“No, no, I will meet her.”

“Yes, you shall meet her, but listen: I will go to meet her; you will be on my track. You will see who will follow me, believing that they are following you. We can arrange where, at a given point, I will disappear and you will reappear, and then when you go to meet this siren you will know just exactly how the ground lays. You will have the whole business down on them.”

“Cad, this is a great scheme.”

“It is, if we play it out right. This girl will be working you for an innocent; you can afford to give her a great deal of information, and—” The girl stopped short.

“Go on,” said Oscar, “what will you be doing?”

“Why, man, between us, matching them at their own game, we will get the identities of every member of the gang. We will learn where their shops and where their plates are.”

“How will we do it?”

“We will know just whom to shadow for each separate bit of information.”

“By ginger! you are right.”

“Now that you are up to this siren’s movements I can trust you, Oscar.”

“I might have gotten on to her plans. I was not about to surrender on demand, but it is better as it is. Time is saved, and to-night we will work our scheme. You shall be Oscar; I will be Cad, and at the proper moment we will resume and let the game go on.”

“That is my idea.”

That night at the proper hour an individual who looked very much like Oscar might have been seen hovering in the vicinity of the restaurant where the interview between the detective and the siren was to take place.

Our readers can grasp what was going on. Oscar, gotten up as a female, was on the “shadow,” and very speedily all that Cad Metti had told him was confirmed. He saw two men following his talented counterfeit, and he followed them, and at the proper moment rejoined Cad. The second change was made and Oscar proceeded to the restaurant to meet the siren. He found her at the appointed place, and together they entered the dining-room and took seats at the same table where they had held their original consultation. The woman appeared to be in excellent humor and said:

“Oh, I feel so greatly encouraged.”

“I will encourage you still further. I have considered the matter and I have determined to rescue your brother, but I must have your full confidence. What is your name?”

“Libbie Van Zant.”

“Very well, Miss Van Zant, when am I to meet your brother?”

“You are not to meet him right away.”

“Why not?”

“I do not wish him to suspect that I have betrayed him. I must have time to prepare him for the meeting with you.”

“That is all right.”

“And now let me tell you something: these are very desperate men; you must secure aid.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“I want you to select the men who will aid you. We must not make a mistake. You must have men with you when you make the raid on the place.”

“I certainly will.”

“Will you introduce them to me?”

“Why should I introduce them to you?”

“I wish to know them, so I can arrange for my brother’s safety.”

“Oh, I see; well, in good time you shall meet them.”

“We must go slow and sure in this matter.”

“Oh, certainly, and you are becoming quite a detective.”

“I am working for my brother’s safety—his salvation. I am willing to brave almost everything to save him.”

“We will save him.”

“By to-morrow I will arrange for my brother to have a meeting with some of those men with whom he is associated, and I will arrange that you shall be hidden in a place from where you can overhear everything that is said. You will secure considerable information. You will know how to use it. Yes, we will move slowly, but surely. There must be no mistake made, no failure, or it will cost my brother’s life, and I also may become their victim.”

“Very well, you can depend upon me.”

“I have your confidence?”

“Yes.”

“Can we not arrange signals between us?”

“Certainly.”

“I am going to start in as a regular detective in this affair, and at any moment I may want to signal to you; yes, warn you in case anything appears to be going wrong at a critical moment.”

“I am delighted to work with one as shrewd and thoughtful as you are,” said Oscar.

“Can you not come to my home to-morrow?”

“I fear I will not have time.”

“We must practice those signals. I will not ask you to visit me across the river. I have the privilege of receiving company at the rooms of a friend of mine in this city. If we could meet there some time to-morrow morning, you might bring one or two of your friends with you and we will practice the signals together.”

“All right, it is not a bad idea.”

“Then I will take a walk in Washington Parade ground to-morrow at about eleven o’clock, and you shall meet me and I will lead you to my friend’s room, and then and there we will complete all our arrangements. Yes, yes, I will save my brother and earn the money to start him out on an honest course.”

“Your affection for your brother appears to be very great.”

“It is. I idolize him.”

“Then at eleven o’clock to-morrow we are to meet by chance.”

“Yes.”

Our hero and the siren separated. She said she was to meet her brother who was to accompany her to her home. The siren passed out ahead of our hero after a merry good-night. When Oscar came forth he had wrought a change. He stepped down to the curb and glanced. He saw a little chalk mark. It would have looked to an ordinary observer like a mere accidental scrape of chalk. To Oscar it spoke volumes, and he knew that his faithful strategist had succeeded in falling to a trail; and he knew that he would soon be on the trail like a sleuthhound following its prey. The detective started forward. At the first street corner he drew a little mask lantern and flashed its light around quickly and deftly, and there again under its glare he beheld a tiny chalk mark.

“Right,” he muttered as he read his sign and moved on; and so he proceeded until he arrived at a certain corner, when he came to a halt; and a few moments later a messenger boy came up close to him and said in a low tone:

“She met her man.”

“Well?”

“They went in that house across the street.”

“Great Scott!” ejaculated Oscar, “are you sure, Cad?”

“Yes.”

“The woman and how many men?”

“One man only.”

“And that man?”

“Was Girard.”

“Sis, you can call up our aids and have them ready.”

“We can snake them into the house.”

“It’s lucky; yes, it’s lucky, Cad, and yet, it’s risky.”

“Why?”

“Credo may be in with them.”

“But he knows you hold his life as it were in your hands, and——”

“Well?”

“He knows if you have trailed these fellows down so close that there is no show for him and he will be on your side.”

“By ginger! you are right, so here goes. We are down on these people for fair now.”

“We are, Oscar.”

Cad Metti, the strange, weird girl, who could flit from place to place like a shadow, who could change her appearances as readily as a change actress on the stage, glided away, and our hero, who also, as our readers will recall, had worked a change, boldly went to the house which Cad had indicated as the place where the woman and Girard had entered. He stepped into the dark hall of the house, and then quickly worked a second change; then he stepped to the street. The house was one well known to the police; its character, we will say, was established as the headquarters for the lowest sort of rogues. The owner pretended to keep a respectable hotel. He had rooms to let, and on the first floor he ran a barroom, and although the building itself was an old tumble-down affair the barroom was quite expensively fitted up.

Oscar staggered into the house, and as good luck would have it only the proprietor of the place was present at the moment and he was acting as bartender. Oscar staggered up to the bar, his eyes rolling in his head, but as they rolled, under their seemingly drunken glare shot forth a keen, observant glance.

As stated, he staggered up to the bar and fell over on to his elbows, demanding a drink.

“Where’s your pile?” came the answer from the proprietor, a fellow named Credo, who was a good-looking octoroon.

Oscar displayed a big roll of bills.

“All right; what will you have?”

“Whisky.”

The man placed a bottle and glasses on the bar when the detective reached over, caught the man’s eye, and said in a very low but sharp, decisive tone:

“Mart, on your life, look to business now.”

The man started, his swarthy face assumed a ghastly hue, and there came a look of terror to his eyes.

“You know me?”

“It’s Dunne.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your pull to-night?”

“You have visitors in your house.”

The man trembled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, and mark me, I know it all; yes, all. There is nothing for you in it only through me. Mark well my words: I can trust you; if not, it’s bad for you.”

“What is it you’re after?”

“I am close down on this whole business.”

“What business?”

“You want it straight?”

“Yes.”

“Redalli.”

Credo fell back like a man suddenly surprised. He appeared for an instant to lose his breath, but he managed to almost gasp:

“Are you on to that?”

“I am on to the whole scheme and just ready to close in. I tell you there is nothing for you in it, and you’re lucky.”

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You will make a good stake through me.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to overhear every word that is spoken here to-night.”

“You are dead on to it all?”

“I am.”

“Good enough, I am with you, and you know that when I say so I mean what I say.”

“I do.”

“You shall have the whole business if it’s opened up here to-night. Follow me.”

Chapter 9

Luck and Skill Run Our Hero Into a Great “Opening” on to the Big Organization, and Light Strikes in Very Dark Corners.

IT IS NOT necessary to explain to our readers our hero’s great hold on the man Credo; but he knew his man well and knew that when Credo said, “I am with you,” the fellow did mean just what he said. Credo led our hero to a rear room and once there he remarked:

“It’s dead against me what I am doing. I had a big stake in this enterprise.”

“You haven’t lost one, old man, the lines are drawn close.”

“That’s all right so far; but is it necessary that I tumble from anything you may pick up to-night?”

“No, you are safe; you will not come into it.”

The man’s face was at once wreathed into a smile.

“I know you, Mr. Dunne.”

“Yes, and I mean it. You will not in any way be involved.”

“They need never know that I keeled ’em over?”

“Never.”

“You know your business. When you talk you know what you say. I am satisfied, and I am going to let you into a secret, Mr. Dunne. I can fix you out just lovely. You will have the whole business, for the king-pin is to be here to-night. You’ll get the muggs of all the big men. If you were ready to close in you couldn’t have a better chance; for as I said the king-pins will all be here to-night. But I don’t see how I can run clear of suspicion.”

“I tell you that in no way will you be involved. I will open up from another quarter. What I pick up here to-night is only side evidence. I’ve got almost all I need.”

“And you won’t forget me?”

“No, sir.”

“You know I’ve always been faithful.”

“You have, and it’s a good streak of luck that they covied right here in your den.”

“Yes, they have covied here for a long time.”

“Are you into this affair?”

“Only partially. I am not one of them, but they have paid me well; never asked me to go in.”

“Then you can’t locate anything?”

“Only the men.”

“You know them all?”

“Only the big fellows, and they will all be here to-night. Their big gun, the boss of all of them, is in town, and to-night he receives reports up there. Yes, sir, you will get it all. Is it luck or Dunne?”

“It’s a little of both, old man.”

“You’ve got it good, that’s all. You are against the deck every time, and I did not look to you for a drop in on this thing—no, never. But you’ve got it all; yes, sir, that’s certain.”

The man Credo carefully locked the door leading into the room where he and the detective stood. He then disclosed a remarkable sight to Dunne. He slid aside a movable panel covered with paper at the side of the projecting fireplace and revealed a door. Oscar stared.

“You see, I like to know what’s going on, Mr. Dunne. I made this little arrangement myself. No out knows of it but you. This opens into the chimney, and there you see a spiral staircase that leads up to the room where the meetings are held. When these chaps come here I always give them that one room, and I have gathered some strange secrets at the head of those steps. You see I’ve let each party into the arrangements of the room where they meet. They think I have prepared for them a wonderful meeting place. I have arranged for escapes to the roof. Indeed, I’ve got all manner of ingenious contrivances for them; but you and I are the only ones who know of this little arrangement here. Yes, I am credited for picking up a great deal of criminal news. There’s where I get it, up there, and there is where you will get it to-night. I’ve given you the whole business, Mr. Dunne.”

Oscar fixed his keen eyes on his man, and a cold chill ran around our hero’s heart. He knew in some things he could trust the man, and he also knew that his own death would relieve Credo of many terrors. He knew that away down in his heart Credo hated him, and there was something suspicious in the revelation the man was making. It struck our hero that the fellow was acting with too much readiness. There was no need for the man to discover this very important secret. Was it possible that Credo was putting up a job to do away with the man who held him in his power? It was indeed possible at least, and our hero was slow and cautious. He did not intend to be trapped like a mouse nibbling at a piece of cheese. The idea of honor among thieves is a myth. A rogue is a rogue all the time, and criminals will betray a companion or a friend ninety-nine times out of a hundred. There is no romance in crime; it is always a dark record.

“Credo,” said Oscar, “you have it nicely arranged here.”

“Yes, sir, it’s perfect for the matter you have in hand.”

“What matter have you in hand?”

“You know.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I get the information and trade it. I’ve traded valuable information to you.”

“That is true, and between us it is business. You were not aware that I was on to this arrangement?”

The man stared.

“No, I was not.”

“Well, I am going to avail myself of this trick staircase, but keep very shady. Some of the lads are outside; they must not close in if I am gone some time. Give them a signal when they rush in, or they might do something rash. The rest of the fellows have not the confidence in you that I have, and they might suspect something. Be on the lookout, and if necessary show one of them where I am, for my orders have been very strict.”

There was no misunderstanding on the part of Credo. He smiled and said:

“I take what you mean. No, no, I’ve no such notion. It’s business with us; that’s right. I am not going to free myself this way, and here it is on the square. I’d rather make a stake this way, for if a man dies, he dies sudden—he don’t linger.”

“We understand then?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I am going to take in the meeting upstairs.”

Oscar drew his mask lantern, slipped into the opening after a thorough examination of the whole contrivance and then he said:

“Close the door, old man, close the door.”

The door did close and immediately our hero opened it. He looked out and said:

“Play very close to-night, Credo: don’t let your customers, if you have any, fall to us.”

“The people are all at a ball. I’ll have no visitors to-night except it may be a straggler.”

“All right, close the door.”

Oscar believed he had taken every precaution, and indeed he had; and under all the circumstances he was very cool, but for him it was a big night and the most important consequences were destined to follow, and he knew it.

With his lantern properly adjusted he ascended the stairs and in good time arrived at the place where he was to take in his news. He had been fully instructed and he found everything just as the man Credo had stated. Well, the arrangement was indeed a good one, and he mentally concluded:

“That fellow Credo is a genius; it’s a pity he is not an honest man.”

Oscar could see into the room and could overhear every word—almost hear a whisper, so cunningly had the eavesdropping trap been contrived. Oscar peeped in, and there was his siren, and there also was his whilom friend Girard. He and the siren were alone. Both wore a pleased look upon their faces; they were in a merry mood, and the man Girard said as our hero got fixed to take in their sayings:

“He thinks himself a very smart fellow.”

“Don’t make any mistake; he is a smart fellow—the smartest fellow that ever started out to shadow us, and he would be too much for us but for one fact.”

“And what is that?”

“He is honest and sympathetic, otherwise I would never have succeeded in fooling and getting him in tow, but now I’ve got him.”

“You feel assured of that?”

“I do. I’ve secured him on the only weak side he’s got. He is the hardest man to secure I ever started out to gain, but I’ve gone for him on just the right tack. I will handle him with care; I will learn all he knows. I will learn just who is working in with him, and then——”

“What then?”

“Alas! it’s sad to think of it. He is a good fellow, but he must walk the plank like the rest of them.”

“Look out you don’t lose your heart to him.”

The woman laughed in a merry manner and said:

“I’ve won his. I can read it in his eyes.”

“Woman’s vanity,” thought Oscar, and he did mutter: “That is her weakest point.”

“You have measured pretty well. What is your conclusion?”

“I’ll tell you; he is going it alone. He is the only one who has any points on us; of that I am certain. But, as I said, I’ll woo until I know just who is in with him, if any one.”

At that moment the talk was interrupted and three men entered the room. Well, our hero was surprised. One of the men he recognized at a glance and he muttered: “Can it be possible?”

As the three men entered Girard rose to his feet and greeted the man whom our hero had recognized. He exclaimed as he extended his hand:

“Redalli, I am glad to greet you, and let me tell you that you have arrived just in time.”

“Bah! I’ve heard all about it. You gentlemen are too easily frightened. There is nothing to fear.”

“That man is now known as Redalli, eh?” muttered Oscar, and there came a gleam in his eyes which few could read.

“We do not scare, as easily as you think, Redalli. I tell you there is a man on our track who is quietly running us down, and if we do not dispose of him he will spoil all our work of years.”

“We will dispose of him; but what have you gentlemen been doing? Why did you not dispose of him?”

“We have completed our plans.”

Girard proceeded and related all the arrangements for disposing of Oscar and all the other men who might be working with him. Redalli listened attentively and finally said:

“That is all right; but, gentlemen, we will make a fortune anyhow. We can move on while these men are locating us. We are all ready to shoot forth one of the greatest floods ever sent driving over this or any other land; in fact we will sweep over Canada and Mexico. I have managed our affair, I believe, in a satisfactory manner. One day this week all the agents will be in New York. We will distribute the stuff and send them abroad. The sweep will commence in three days. Under our present arrangements we will have gathered in several millions of dollars. No such plan was ever attempted or worked out.”

“How many agents are there?”

“There are eleven men.”

“And where are all the documents?”

“Here in New York.”

“Where are the plates?”

“The plates are all here in New York.”

“Where will the distribution be made?”

“I have secured a furnished house. In that house we will have all the goods and all the plates. The latter we will bury in the cellar, there to lie forever until New York shall crumble and some future archæologist digs them up from the ruins to be put on the shelves of some future museum. Yes, everything is complete.”

“But these detectives?”

“We will go ahead and dispose of them. There must be no mistake. We will secure them, take them on board a vessel we can secure, run them out to sea, hang them and throw their bodies heavily-weighted overboard. That is the plan; so let our good girl there, Libbie, carry out her plan. I am here now; there will be no surprises, no rushing in of detectives. I will have a well-armed and drilled force who will nail them all, and we will quietly dispose of them. The game is all in our own hands. We have nothing to fear. Our organization is too large, too far-reaching; and when once we have made the sweep we will make good our agreements and free every member of the gang that has been arrested. Yes, we will free them all, and as to the officers we will say good-by to them after the sweep and sail away to enjoy a heaven such as Mahomet has described. Yes, it’s all right; let Libbie play her game. In another ten days the cyclone will have passed and we will all be rich men—rich as Monte Cristos, dead sure.”

Oscar could hardly believe his own ears. It was the most wonderful “pick-up” of his whole career; and again was it proven how crime, in spite of the most skillful precautions, is always sure to walk into its own trap in the end.

Our hero lay low for over an hour and learned some additional facts of the utmost importance. Indeed, he had men and evidence. He knew it would be the greatest close-in since a detective force had been organized. It would beat all records. He had the names of every one of the leaders. He had the lead-up to the places where the manufactured goods were to be stored. He had the hour when the gang would assemble, and he determined upon one of the most dramatic of denouements.

Oscar stole down the stairs. He passed to the door of the room and summoned Credo. To the man he said:

“Credo, your fortune is made, unless——”

“I understand. You need not fear me when I know you have them dead to rights, as you must have them after a lay-in up in that eavesdropping den of mine. No, no, they will get no hint from me. I am not in with that gang. I am in with you, and you’ve got ’em, and I am glad. They have not used me right anyhow.”

“Then you fully understand?”

“I do.”

“All right.”

Oscar stole forth and Cad Metti joined him.

“What have you made out, Oscar?”

“Cad, we’ve worked up the job of our lives. We’ve got the whole business. Now then, you lay to my trail, for I must shadow Redalli.”

“You’ve got him?”

“Yes.”

“And the woman?”

“You were right. She is a siren indeed, but I will amuse her. Good-night for the present. Go, for here comes our game.”

Chapter 10

Oscar Makes Good His Promise and Aided by Cad Metti, the Wonderful Female Detective, Performs One of the Greatest Feats in All Detective Records.

Like a night sprite Cad glided away and Oscar fell to the shadow of the man Redalli. He followed him to the Hoboken ferry, crossed on the same boat with him, and saw him enter a house situated in the midst of a large plot of ground covered by lines of trees.

The detective was satisfied. He had the meeting-house, as he called it, located. He had Redalli located, and he started back toward the ferry and had gone but a few squares when he was joined by Cad and another detective. Cad was in her ordinary garb as a well-dressed young miss, only that she wore a veil drawn down over her face.

“It’s all right,” said our hero. He was jubilant, and he proceeded to relate all that had passed while he sat listening in the Credo eyrie.

It was well on toward three o’clock in the morning when the party walked on board the boat to return to New York, and they had just seated themselves on the boat when a party of roughs, numbering seven or eight, entered the cabin. The men were very boisterous and ready for a muss, as the saying goes. They talked loud and laughed violently, and soon their eyes rested on the three detectives. The two males as they were gotten up did not look like very formidable individuals, and the fact that Cad was veiled attracted their attention. They ranged themselves on the seats directly opposite to where the three detectives were located and our hero at once detected that there was going to be a jolly row—jolly as far he and his companions were concerned—for both the men were athletes and boxers, of the first order. To them the knocking down of two or three ordinary men was a mere pastime, and as our readers know the wonderful Cad was not much behind when it came to a shindy. She could have given the famous strong woman who a few years ago appeared on the stage points in many athletic feats. One of the men looking over toward Cad said:

“There’s a beauty.”

The detectives exchanged looks.

They had taken the measures of the rowdies.

“How do you know?” asked one of the men.

“I’ll bet on it.”

“You will?”’

“Yes.”

“How will you prove it?”

“I’ll prove.”

“How?”

“That’s my end of it.”

“You’ll bet she is a beauty?”

“Yes, I will.”

“How much?”

“A bottle.”

“And you are to prove it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take the bet.”

The fellow who had offered to make the bet immediately rose, crossed the cabin to where Cad sat and said:

“Say, miss, you’ve heard the bet. Raise your veil and let me win. I know you are a beauty.”

The men all laughed. They thought it evidently the joke of their lives; to them it was immense.

It was so destined to turn out. Immense was no name for what followed, and it is very unfortunate that similar roysterers do not run up against a like party.

“Come, miss,” urged the man, “I’ve paid you a compliment. You ain’t a-going to let me lose my bet?”

Cad paid no attention to the fellow, and his companions jeered. One said:

“She daren’t raise her veil, or she’ll make you lose, sure.”

The man who had bet exclaimed:

“You’ve lost; I’ve got a bottle on you.”

“Not yet; come, miss, you won’t see me lose.”

All this time the two detectives had sat silent. They knew what would follow, and just when to come in with the sledge hammer part of the farce. Yes, they were ready in good time to play the anvil chorus on the heads of the lively gang of insulters. It was just their pie, as the slang phrase has it.

“You’ve lost,” cried the better.

“Come, come, miss, do you hear what he says? I know you’re a beaut. Raise your veil and give me the laugh on him.”

Cad sat mute, and finally the man said:

“I can’t lose; I’ve got to see your face if I lift your veil myself.”

“Yes, yes, raise and expose her mugg,” cried one; “if she were a beaut she would’nt let you lose that way. Lift her veil.”

It was time for Oscar to interfere and he said:

“That will do, young fellow.”

“Will it?” cried the man in a fierce tone.

“Yes.”

“What have you got to say about it anyhow?”

“This lady is in my company, under my protection.”

“Oh, is she?”

“She is.”

“Well, here goes.”

The man grabbed Cad’s veil and raised it, disclosing her really lovely face, and at the same instant he uttered a yell of triumph, but the next moment he roared forth a yell of pain and rage, for Oscar had leaped to his feet, dealt the man a clipper square on the nose and over he went. The rest of the gang immediately set up a yell, leaped to their feet and made a rush, and the next instant there followed a regular young riot, but the fun of the thing was all on one side. The other officer also leaped to his feet and started in on the tattoo act. He just swung around like a revolving wheel with distended cogs, and every time he revolved down went one of the men, and Cad just stood up on the seat and laughed. The laugh in fact had bounded over to the opposite side of the cabin from where it first started. As the men who were downed attempted to regain their feet they got it again, and got it good. The two detectives having dropped the rascals with their fists gave them the balance of their dose with leather, and they did leather them well, kicking them over the floor of the cabin like stuffed bladders. The deck hands heard the noise, ran to the doors, and taking in the situation remained aloof. They were glad to see the rowdies get a whacking; glad that for once the assailants had run up against the wrong crowd. The rowdies bled and yelled, bled for their impertinence, yelled in dismay and terror, for they feared they would be beaten to death. They pleaded for mercy, and all the time the ferry boat kept on its way; and about the time our friends had fun enough the boat slid into her slip, and with a merry good-night to the discomfited and bleeding insulters Oscar and his friends proceeded ashore.

On the day following the incidents we have recorded our hero, Wise, the special, and several other officers held a consultation. To Wise alone did our hero reveal the importance and extent of the information he had secured, and a plan was arranged.

At the time named Oscar met the woman Libbie and he played her well—played for time, for his whole plan had been changed. One thing had led up to another, and the one little racket he had at first intended to work had been put aside for a new one under the latest developments.

He parted from the woman, threw her and her friends off his track and lay low for a fresh “shadow” on Redalli, and in due time he got on the track of his man.

Several days passed, and Cad and Oscar followed their lead. Our hero several times met the woman Libbie Van Zant and made her feel very good. He played the dupe to perfection; let it appear that he was dead gone on the siren; pretended to reveal everything to her, while in fact he was just getting his points from time to time and keeping her friends under close observation through her. He had constant access to the secret room in the house of Credo, listened to a great many consultations, and at length learned just the right facts for making one of the greatest hauls in the history of crime. He trailed to the delivery of the counterfeit goods at the house in Hoboken, and had every reason to believe that the plates also were all stowed away under one roof. Indeed, it appeared in plain words as though he were destined to capture not only all the manufactured stuff, but the complete outfit of the counterfeiters, the labor of years.

On the night when the great raid was to be made Dunne met Wise and his assistants. All the plans were completed and Wise said, at a proper moment:

“Dunne, you are the detective of the age.”

At the proper time the detectives one by one stole over to Hoboken. They took up their station, waiting for signals. Oscar had fallen into the wiles of the siren. She had arranged with him to take him to the house—she had played as she supposed a great card. She believed she had the name of every detective engaged on the “shadow” and she became bolder; told our hero she had in the interest of her brother and the detective beguiled one of the gang; informed him that she could introduce him into the house where the whole gang was to meet; that she would be able to identify every man of them. She even professed to have fallen in love with Oscar, played the alluring siren to perfection, and it was in her company that our hero proceeded to Hoboken to be introduced into the house and hidden at a point where he could see and overhear. In talking to Girard the woman had said:

“I’ve got him dazzled. The man believes in me as he does in his own mother. He is like wax in my hands. I can do with him as I choose.”

“Are you sure he is not fooling you?”

“Am I sure? Yes, I am sure. I will have him in that house to-night. You will discover him and drag him forth. The plan will be carried out: At the proper time the riot will commence and in the mêlée down he goes.”

“I hope it is as you say. I would not chance even on your positive assurance, but Redalli says it is all right, and he is the boss. He takes the responsibility.”

As intimated, Oscar started for Hoboken in company with the siren and two trusty men followed his steps. Our hero was determined that there should be no miss. He had provided against every possible contingency. He arrived at the house. Oscar had been seemingly persuaded that the siren’s brother was to be their guide, that she had fooled him for his own eventual good. Arrived at the house the siren signaled and a young man, supposed to be the woman’s brother, opened the door. The woman asked:

“Have they arrived?”

“No one has arrived yet.”

“Then I can secrete my friend.”

“Certainly; but, sister, remember, I am trusting you and believe it is for your and my eventual good that I consent to act in this matter.”

“You can trust me.”

“If not you, whom can I trust?”

“I am acting for your good.”

To Oscar the woman explained after they had entered the house that she had her brother deceived on a false “steer,” but she added: “You know it is to save him.”

“Oh, certainly.”

Oscar was led down the stairs, led to the basement and then to the cellar. A lantern was produced and a door was disclosed, showing that an excavation had been made and a room built under the yard of the house. All the arrangements were very cunningly made. When the door was opened our hero hesitated and the woman asked:

“What is the matter?”

In a tone of fearfulness Oscar said:

“I have been betrayed.”

“Betrayed?” repeated the woman.

“Yes.”

“By whom?”

“You.”

The woman laughed and said:

“But I thought you were a man of courage. Go on; I will go with you.”

Oscar delayed a moment, making some remark, until he heard a signal—a very tiny signal, but it was big and loud in its suggestions to him. He stepped into the passage and a moment later a second door opened. The secret room was disclosed and at least a dozen masked men who had been seated at a long table arose. At the instant, as our hero recoiled, the cold muzzles of two revolvers were placed on either cheek and a voice said:

“Go ahead; you can’t back out now.”

It was a supreme moment of peril. Our hero had friends at hand, but alas! ere his friends could announce themselves the deed of horror might have been perpetrated. It was indeed a critical moment, but Oscar was cool. He stepped forward and was pushed toward a seat, and the men gathered at the table. All sat down also.

There followed a moment’s silence. Oscar looked around. Near him stood the siren who had allured him into the den, and her whole expression of countenance had changed. She looked like a beautiful fiend as her eyes gleamed with delight and the red glow of triumph flushed her features. She was proud. She had promised to deliver the detective into the hands of his intending assassins, and she had made good her word.

“So you have betrayed me,” said Oscar.

“Yes,” answered the woman, “I have betrayed you.”

“The story about your brother was a lie.”

“All these gentlemen are my brothers.”

“And what now, woman?”

“You have just five minutes to live. You were set to destroy us; we will destroy you.”

“Poor creature,” said Oscar in a tone of deep commiseration.

The woman glared, for there was a terrible significance in his tones, and she shouted:

“Down him and make sure.”

Alas! the arrangements fortunately were run on seconds, not minutes, or our hero would have been a dead man. As the woman shouted “Down him!” there came a second, voice, stern and commanding:

“Hold! don’t let a man move or every soul of you dies.”

There was a tableau at that moment such as never has been equaled on the stage under all the complexity of colored lights. It was a scene never to be forgotten by any of the witnesses, a scene awful in its intensity of dramatic effect. The woman suddenly appeared to become frozen with horror. The men removed their masks in their excitement and their pale visages shone like so many corpses as all leaned forward and listened and looked.

In the doorway stood two men, armed with repeating rifles. Behind them crowded others, and at that instant every one of those wretches know that defeat and capture stared them in the face. All their labor, all their cunning and their skill had come to naught. All realized that the greatest detective feat on record had been accomplished. All knew that there was no escape, unless quickly with their own hands they freed themselves through the grave.

The detectives filed into the room, but the siren had recovered her nerve. She saw and realized that she had not played but had been played. Quickly she drew a revolver, aimed at Oscar and fired, but our hero’s quick eye detected her movement. It was not the first time he had dodged a bullet. The woman fired but the one shot. The next instant the darbies were on her tender wrists, and we will add that no resistance was offered. The men, as intimated, were well up in their trade. From the first instant they knew that in plain, vulgar language, their “jig was up.” Every man quietly submitted. Life was dear to them. Every man had been behind prison walls. A surrender meant a return to jail; resistance meant death. They, as stated, all accepted the situation and quietly surrendered.

Immediately the detectives set to work to gather up their spoils and learn the full value of their wondrous victory. It proved to be a complete victory indeed. All the manufactured stock was secured, the flood of counterfeits was averted, for the well-being of the business community. The plates even that had cost thousands and thousands of dollars were captured. They were never buried in the cellar to be found by some future archæologist. To conclude it was the greatest capture of counterfeiters’ outfit ever made, and to Cad Metti and Oscar belonged all the credit; and from the profession and the government they received it. Dudie Dunne went up to the top as a great officer, and in a future narrative we will relate where these two wonderful people once more entered the field and accomplished great results. We will also tell the romance of the life of the bright, beautiful Italian girl who from choice became a female detective strategist.

___________________

3: The Silver Fox

George R. Sims

1847-1922

Eastern Recorder (Kellerberrin), 13  Jan 1928

THERE WERE very few passengers inside the omnibus and only one outside it. It had been more or less foggy all the bleak December day, but towards night the fog had lifted and left the pavement damp and dirty, and the ashphalted roadway thick with sticky London mud. The solitary outside passenger had got up at the Swiss cottage, and the driver had not engaged him in conversation. But after the bus stopped at the Baker Street Tube to put down an inside passenger, he became communicative.

"Wonderful things, these toobs, sir," he said.

"Yes," replied the outside passenger, "and I suppose they aren't doing the horse buses much good?"

"You suppose right, sir," replied the driver. "They say as in another year or two there won't be a hoss bus on the road. Wonderful changes going on these times, sir, ain't there?"

"Yes, I've been away for years, and I seem to have come back to a new world."

"Been abroad, sir?"

"I've been in the north-west of Canada, in the Hudson's Bay territory."

"Where the furs come from. It must be awful lonesome," muttered the driver, "awful lonesome. Been back long, sir?"

"This is my first day in London, after an absence of over twenty years."

"Ah," said the bus driver, "it'll take a bit o' time to feel at home again."

"It will indeed," said the passenger, with something that sounded very like a sigh.

At the corner of Oxford Circus the bus stopped, and the man from the great North-West bade the bus driver "Good-night," got down, and walked away in the direction of New Oxford Street.

"A fine built chap," said Jim Hubbard to himself as he looked after the stranger, "and about forty, I should say. Oxford-street with all these noo lights must be almost blindin' to him after the sort o' nights he's come from."

AS JOHN ARKLOW walked leisurely along the broad thoroughfare on the way to his hotel in Bloomsbury, if he did not find the light blinding, it certainly brought into relief scenes very different from those to which his thoughts were turning.

Only a few months ago he was Sergeant Arklow, of the North-West Mounted Police, riding sometimes alone, sometimes with a comrade or two over vast regions of snow dotted here and there with the posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. As a rule, he was on a man-hunt, searching for some rough trapper or half-breed who had defrauded the company, or who had from motives of jealousy or revenge murderously assaulted or killed a rival.

He looked at the lighted street, the quiet people going their humdrum way, he watched the stolid policeman leisurely pacing his beat. He passed the electric-lighted stations of the Tube, he saw the motor cars and the taxicabs flying along the smooth roadway, and he thought of the nights in the Arctic region far away, where he hailed with a cry of joy the dim light of the lonely log hut that offered him the chance of a roof and a meal for himself and shelter for his tired horse in one of the rough outbuildings.

A score of years had passed since the thing had happened that sent him, a young man of twenty, to seek a livelihood where there was the least chance of his name, and the shame attached to it, being known. He had been brought up in luxury, he had always believed his father to be an exceedingly wealthy man, for John Arklow, sen., the only surviving partner of the well-known firm of Arklow, Hanson, and Grey, had an old-fashioned family business and many distinguished and wealthy clients.

Young Arklow had no taste for the law. He was going into the Army, and was working hard to qualify himself for a commission when the blow fell. One evening he came home to his father's house in Bedford Square to find his mother in an agony of grief and despair. His father had been arrested on a charge of converting a large sum of money, of which he was the trustee, to his own use.

The evidence given at the trial showed that John Arklow had impoverished himself by rash speculations on the Stock Exchange, and in a mad endeavour to retrieve his fortune had speculated with trust moneys. The official examination of his affairs showed that he had misappropriated over £100,000. The victims were mostly wealthy people, but there was one sad case which caused widespread public indignation when it was recorded by the Press reports of the proceedings.

Among the securities he had fraudulently realised were those which represented the entire fortune of a young widow whose husband had been Mr. Arklow's closest friend, the son of his old partner, John Grey. Mrs. Grey and her little daughter were left almost penniless when the arrest of John Arklow prevented him making from his own pocket the payments which he had kept up to conceal the fraud he had committed. It was many months after his arrest before the investigation was completed, and John Arklow appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey to be tried by a jury of his fellow citizens.

In the interval his wife had died of a broken heart. The son remained in London until the trial was over. He remained to render what assistance he could to his father. But when the verdict had been given, and John Arklow, the honoured and rejected family solicitor, had been sent into penal servitude for twelve years, the young man looked his future in the face and saw that his best chance of escape from the shame that his name must carry with it would be in some far-distant spot where his story would be unknown.

He went to Canada, and, after a short stay in Quebec, travelled to the North-West, and being a strong, well built young man and a good horseman, his request to be allowed to join the North-West Mounted Police received favourable consideration, and he was enrolled a member of that body. He had risen to the rank of sergeant He had no desire to rise higher, because he felt that directly he began to associate with the officers, honour would compel him to tell them that he was the son of a criminal undergoing punishment in a convict jail.

Before his sentence expired the convict lawyer died. John Arklow read the news of his father's death one day in the barracks where some of the men,  exiles, like himself, from their own country— received the English papers. It was when he had seen nearly nine teen years' service that a London paper mentioned the name of John Arklow again.

One of his comrades received "Lloyd's News" regularly from home and generally passed it on to Arklow. Looking over it one afternoon, as he sat by the fire of the men's quarters smoking his pipe, he saw his name. It was in an advertisement in the 'Long Lost Relatives' columns. John Arklow, formerly of Bedford Square, who left England some nine teen years previously, was requested to communicate with the editor.

Sergt. Arklow wrote to the office and in due course received a reply. A firm of solicitors were anxious to as certain his whereabouts without going into particulars which Mr. Arklow might not desire to see publicly advertised. A wealthy relative of his mother's had recently died a bachelor and had left a considerable portion of his estate to John Arklow, the son of John and Mary Arklow. In the event of John Arklow's death before the will came into force the money was to go to various charities.

John Arklow thought things out and arranged his plans for the future.

And now, in the middle of December,  he was once more in London, and with  wealth at his command. His first visit when he arrived in London was to the solicitors, and it was after dining with the senior partner at his house at South Hampstead that he had boarded the horse bus at the Swiss Cottage and engaged in conversation with the driver.

But the new London that he saw was far stranger to him than the old driver taking life on a box seat was capable of imagining, and suddenly all the romance of the Great North-West came back to him.

A shabbily-dressed man of about of five-and-thirty slouched out of a publichouse into the glare of the great lamps and Arklow uttered a cry of astonishment. The man heard the cry and glanced up, and a look of fear came into his haggard face.

"Jack Hessop!" exclaimed Arklow. Then, seeing the terror of the man who a trembled before him, he was merciful.

"You need not be afraid," he said, a "I'm not Arklow of the R.N.W.M.P. here. I haven't got a three-year-old warrant for your arrest about me. So you got to England, did you?"

'Yes, sergeant, I got here."

"And Nanon Bertrand?"

"Came here with me, and left me a year ago, curse her, because the money I was gone."

"It's odd, meeting you here," said Arklow. "I wish I'd caught you over there, it would have been a feather in my cap."

Three years ago the two men standing together in Oxford Street had been pursuer and pursued across the snows a great white land. Baptiste Bertrand, a half-breed trapper, had quarrelled with a comrade over a Silver Fox of rare quality. Bertrand had killed his companion in a fight, and Arklow, who was sent to arrest the assassin, had tracked him to the cabin in which he lived with his young wife, a half-breed like himself, but a gloriously handsome girl, of whom Baptiste was madly jealous, and, it was said, not without cause.

Nanon declared that Baptiste had only stopped to tell her of his trouble and had gone off.

Two days, later Baptiste was run to earth. He made a desperate fight of it, and was shot dead. It was supposed that he would be making for the frontier, where he could sell the skin and travel on with the money.

But the Silver Fox was no longer in his possession. When the sergeant got back to the post at Spirit River, where he was stationed, he found that Nanon had gone away, and that Jack Hessop, the clerk to the factor who represented the Company there, had also disappeared, taking with him a considerable sum of money belonging to the factor. He had started away with the factor's dogs and sleigh, ostensibly to visit another station, and he had not returned.

Subsequent inquiries left no doubt that Nanon had gone with him. All these incidents came back vividly to John Arklow's mind as Jack Hessop stood cowering before him outside the public-house in Oxford Street.

"And so Nanon left you?" he said. "Where? In Canada?"

"No, here— a year ago. She went off one day, saying she was tired of me. She robbed me and went."

"And the Silver Fox— I always believed Baptiste left it with her. Did he?"

"Yes. She brought it away. There was a hue and cry, and we were afraid because of the mark— the strange cross upon the back— to sell it in Canada. We brought it here and kept it. A year ago when she left me she took it with her."

"Well, you're not the first fool who's ruined his life for a woman. It serves you right, though. What are you doing?"

"What I can. I earn a little—enough to keep on the rooms where we lived. They are close by here. I stay on because I believe that one day she will come back. I look for her every night. I think I shall see her pass. I'd forgive her everything if she'd only come back."

"You'd better forget her, Hessop," said Arklow kindly. "She's no good to you or to anybody else. Be a man and make a new start."

He held out his hand and the man took it, hesitating a little.

"Thank you, Sergeant Arklow," he said, "I'll try. But I love Nanon— I was a thief for her sake, and it's hard to have been that for a woman and then to know that you've lost her for ever."

John Arklow went on his way to his hotel. But of the London that was so strange to him he saw nothing. His thoughts were far away in the white North-West with the trapper who murdered his friend for a Silver Fox and the factor's clerk who ran away with the murderer's wife and brought her and her beauty from the silent snows to the glare of the London lights.

The ex-Sergeant of Mounted Police understood now why the skin of that Silver Fox had not been traded away at the frontier. It was a skin which would at once have attracted attention and been identified, for the story of the murder had gone far and wide.

On the back of the skin there was a patch of peculiar colouring, and it was in the distinct shape of a cross.

LOOKING AS THOUGH he had been specially designed by George Cruikshank for a Dickens story, and had wandered out of the Mid-Victorian Era and had lost his way in the early Edwardian, Old Jacob Zwanziger stood outside his shop on Saturday evening and took the air.

It was the oddest shop in the world, and it stood in a little side street in the West End. The window was crowded with old china, old silver, old bric-a-brac, and old curiosities. But there was no order and no arrangement. Umbrellas with yellow ivory handles, walking sticks of ancient date, old door knockers, old tea caddies, old decanters, and old wine glasses were all mixed up together with Chinese ear-rings, Indian idols, Japanese masks, toby jugs, and faded fans, and the blue and white Delft jars that that a century or so ago adorned the shelves of a Dutch apothecary.

Jacob Zwanziger had been in England forty years, but he still spoke English with a foreign accent, He lived on the premises, occupying two rooms at the back of the shop, His comfort was looked after by an ld housekeeper who lived on the top floor, and the floor above the shop was let to a blind lady and her daughter who had been Mr. Zwanziger's tenants for nearly five years.

As Jacob Zwanziger stood at his door, a tall, fair girl of about five-and-twenty, quietly but elegantly dressed, came up the street. Her face was sad, nd she appeared preoccupied, but as he came to the shop she looked up, nd seeing Mr. Zwanziger, smiled and nodded.

"Ah! Goot evening, Mees, and how's your mudder to-day?" said the old curio dealer, his wrinkled face more wrinkled than ever as it shaped itself into a benevolent smile.

"I'm afraid she's not much better, but the doctor has seen her and he says that it may only be a touch of influenza."

"Only de 'fluenza?" exclaimed Jacob Zwanziger, holding up his hands. "Ach, mein Gott! but dat is de most awful ding in de vorld. I have him once and I vos vish I vos dead. I have nevare known noddings like it."

The memory of his sufferings from the influenza, the only illness he had ever had in his life, caused Mr. Zwanziger to make such a grimace that the young lady could not repress a smile.

But the smile faded quickly as the girl put her latch-key into the private door and passed into the house.

"Poor mother!" she sighed, "if she is going to be ill, whatever shall I do? I can't leave her— my last hope of an engagement will be gone, and oh! what shall we do.  What shall we do?"

The burden of finding the means of life and the means of comfort for her mother and herself had been borne by Margaret Grey alone, ever since the terrible day two years ago, when the specialist told her the one hope of preserving her mother's sight was that the sight should cease to be taxed. It was a forlorn hope, for six months later Mrs. Grey had become totally blind. Up to the time that the eye-trouble came, Mrs. Grey, who had considerable artistic ability, had managed to earn a modest income by sketching and designing for the ladies' papers.

The money, with the salary that her daughter earned by singing in the chorus of a well-known musical comedy house, was sufficient for mother and daughter to live comfortably in the two rooms they had taken over Mr. Zwanziger's shop in the quiet side street off Oxford Street.

When Margaret found that she had to be sole breadwinner she took her courage in both hands, saw the manager of the theatre, and begged him to give her a small part that would carry with it an increase of salary. She had a good voice, and being an attractive and intelligent girl, with her heart in her work, the manager looked upon her request favourably, and the chance was given her. She acquitted herself so well that her salary was raised to £5 a week, and on this the mother and daughter were able to live comfortably.

But in the early days of December the theatre had closed for the rehearsal of a new production, and Margaret to her dismay, had shared the fate of a large number of the girls who had been in the company for some time, and was not re-engaged. The manager had no fault to find with her, but he wanted "new faces." He should be very glad to have her back again in the autumn.

That meant a total cessation of income, and Margaret Grey went to an agent at once and endeavoured to get another engagement. But she had been day after day, and so far had failed.

Margaret had put off telling her mother the truth. But she was beginning to lose hope, and this Saturday evening, as she came home after a weary day of waiting in agents' offices and at stage doors, despair was in her heart. The little money she had been able to save was gradually disappearing, and she looked forward to spending the most miserable Christmas she had known since that terrible Christmas Day which was the first after her widowed mother's all had been lost through the dishonesty of her trustee.

But though tragedy was in her heart Margaret had in her mother's presence to play a comedy. When she entered the little sittingroom this Saturday evening it was with a quick step, and there was no note of sorrow in the voice with which sue greeted her mother.

"Aren't you late, dear?" said Mrs. Grey, as her daughter stooped over the chair by the fire and kissed the pale face uplifted to her. "You must be tired."

"Oh, no, mother," replied Margaret cheerily. "I'm quite all right. I walked home, and it did me good."

"When do they produce this new piece, dear;"

"Oh, soon, I hope."

"I hope so, too, dear," said the blind woman gravely. "The loss of your salary must make it very hard for you to have to do so much tor me."

"Nonsense, mother; I'm glad I'm able to. How's your cold now? You seem better!"

"I am better, dear. I'm sure it's not going to be influenza."

"I'm glad of that!" said Margaret, trying to laugh. "I'm glad, not only for your sake, but for Mr. Zwanziger. When I told him I feared you were going to have it he looked a hundred years-old. I suppose he fancies it might get through the floor and he might calch it downstairs."

MARGARET GREY had received her salary on Friday afternoon at the theatre and it was her custom to send the rent down to Mr. Zwanziger every Saturday morning by Betty after breakfast. This week she had not had sufficient until she had drawn her Post Office money. After supper she saw her mother to bed, and then came back into the sit -ting-room and rang the bell for the housekeeper. When the housekeeper came Margaret took the rent book from the mantelshelf and gave it to her. Then she went to her little handbag and opened it. She wanted her purse— There was nothing in the bag but her handkerchief. Then she remembered that in the omnibus she had noticed that the bag had come open, and she had closed it. But she had closed it too late. Her purse, containing all the money she had in the world, had been stolen. With a sharp cry of agony she sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. She was out of an engagement, there was no chance of work perhaps for weeks, and the two five-pound notes, all the money she possessed, had been stolen. It was the Saturday before Christmas. A woman with a child clinging to her skirts was singing with a doleful voice a carol of the glad tidings of Christmas Day.

ALL THAT NIGHT Margaret Grey lay by her mother's side in an agony of silent despair. She could not sleep. Her heart was full of the terror of the days to come. She made up her mind that on the Monday she would gather the few trinkets she possessed together and pawn them. She thought that by this means she could get enough to "pay the rent of the rooms, and have, .perhaps, a couple of pounds left to face the black future with. : But the money would-only see them over another week, and then . She closed her eyes and prayed— prayed, that God would help her, not for her own sake, but for the sake of
he poor, blind mother who had sufferd so much and had borne her sufTering so bravely. if only they could get over the next few weeks. She was young, she was good-looking, she was clever. The future could not be all black. It was only the Now—the * * terrible Now. * On Monday morning when Margaret came back from her first visit to a pawnshop she carried the money she had received clasped tightly in her hand. Her mother was in the sitting-ioom. She was nervous of asking for the rent book before her. She would have to explain why she had not paid as she had always done on the Saturday. Her mother might suspect, might question her, might even discover the truth. So Margaret went into the shop and saw Mr. Zwanziger, who was examining the fur of a Silver Fox curiously. Margaret apologised for not paying the rent on Saturday and put the money on the counter. Mr. Zwanziger scarcely noticed it.

"Zee," he said, holding up the fur, "it is a sdrange ding— I buyed dat Silber Vox skin a year ago. A young, dark woman— oh, vary dark— come in and speak funny sort of French, mit American Engleesh. She vant to sell dat skin. I zee he vos vary goot mit a patch on him voost like a cross— yoj zee dat?"

Margaret looked at the beautiful fur and noticed that there was a curious patch which, when the skin was laid out, looked like a cross.

"Vell, I buy him and put him avay— I puts lots of dings avay. On Saturday evening I tink 'Christmas is coming— for a Christmas present dat Silber Vox fur vould be goot.' So I take him from de drawer vare I keep him mit stuffs vich keep off ze moth, and I put dat Silber Vox in the window.

"Veil, yoost as I vos tell de boy to put de shutters oop dare comes in a shentleman, and he says, yoost as if I vos a teef: 'Vare you get dit Silber Vox mit de cross on him?' I say, 'Do you vant to buy him?' He say: 'I vill, but vare did you get him ?' 'Den I remember, and I tell him about the dark lady mit the funny French and Engleesh American, and he say, 'Mein Gott! Nanon Bertrand!'

"Den he tell me dat ober be Silber Vox skin mit de cross on him, de only one dat ever vos seen— it vos vot he called a 'freak'— dere vos a man killed dree years ago in de Hudson's Bay Territory by von half-breed Baptiste Bertrand, vot vos de husband of de Nanon vot he say 'Mein Gott!' about. And the shentleman vot vos in my shop vos de mounted boliceman vot vos on his trail, and de half-breed he got avay and vos shot, but dey never found de Silber Vox skin. Nanon vos gene oft not somebody else, and took the skin mit her."

Margaret listened, but her thoughts were somewhere else. Her own trouble was too much in her mind for her to be interested in the doings of a half-breed, liis wife, and a Silver Fox.

"It's vonderful dat shentleman boliceman see de vox in my shop vindow yoost de first time I put him in. Isn't dat so. De shop vos shut before he had told me all de tale, so he said he vould come again ais morning and buy de skin, because he had searched for him in de great North-Vest and found him in a London street."

"It's very curious," said Margaret, "but I— I must go. I―"

Margaret Grey's thoughts had been wandering while the old curio dealer, engrossed with the story of the Silver Fox, talked on and on. Her thoughts had brought the tears to her eyes. She opened her handbag ind drew out her handkerchief to wipe them away. She did not want her landlord to see her crying.

"You'll send the book up, receipted, by Betty," she said. "I won't wait." Then she went out of the shop and let herself in at the private door.

Jacob Zwanziger continued to gaze on the fur with a history. He was fascinated by it.

He was still examining it when John Arklow entered the shop and bade him "Good-morning."

"You've got the skin ready for me," he said. "How much do you want for it?"

Jacob Zwanziger named a price. His business instinct prompted him to-name a high one. The skin was rare, and it had a history. It was in every way a curiosity. The would-be purchaser had himself said that it was the only one known even by the Hudson's Bay Company.

But John Arklow knew as much about skins as Jacob Zwanziger, and he made an offer which Mr. Zwanziger eventually accepted. Arklow paid the money and gave the address to which he wished the fur to be sent. He was about to leave the shop when, looking down, he caught sight of a little square of cardboard lying on the ground, and he saw what it was at once.

"Someone has dropped a pawn ticket," he said.

"Vot?—a pawn ticket?" cried Mr. Zwanziger. "Dat vos funny!"

John Arklow picked the ticket up and looked at it. As he read the name the blood rushed to his face. What he saw on the pawn ticket had revived the memory of the shame that had exiled him from England for twenty years.

Margaret Grey had paid her first visit to a pawnbrokers, and, supposing that it was necessary, had given her real name. The ticket was made out to Margaret Grey, and the address on it was that of Mr. Jacob Zwanziger.

"Zoh!" exclaimed the old curio dealer, "dat's vot it means de rent not paid Saturday. Ah, poor young lady! Dat most be because she doesn't go to dc teater anv more of a night."

"You know— this— this young lady?"

"Yes," replied Zwanziger, "dat vos vary sad, dat dicket. It hurts me dat I took de rent. She lif oopstairs on my first floor mit her mudder. De poor mudder is blind."

"Blind?"

"Yes. It vos some great droubles she have been droo, poor lady. Sometimes veil she is quite alone, mein housekeeper has gone oopstairs to sit mit her, and she have told her about dose droubles. She vos loosed all her money after her husband die troo von damn scamp of a lawyer vot vos her drusdee. And now dat poor young lady has no work in de teaters, and she has to pawn tings to pay her rent. Ah! dose damn lawyers. I never have one; I vould sooner have de fluenza again!"

The blood had left John Arklow's cheeks. They were very pale as he repeated the address he had given for the dealer to write down. Then, with a curt "Good-day," he walked hurriedly out of the shop.

WEDNESDAY was Christmas Day.

On the Tuesday evening Margaret added up the balance of her money, and saw that there would be no Christmas gift for her mother, and that the quiet little dinner which they always had together would have to a very humble one indeed. The thought that her mother must discover the terrible plight to which they were reduced was troubling her most. She had put on her things and was just going out when Betty came upstairs with a registered letter.

Margaret Grey wondered what it could contain. She signed the receipt for it and then opened it with trembling fingers.

To her astonishment she found five ten-pound notes and a letter. She opened the letter and read it almost breathlessly. She did not realise yet what such a gift might mean. This is what she read:—

Dear Miss Grey,

I have ascertained through the solicitors who had the affairs of my late father in hand that your mother is the Mrs. Grey whose fortune was lost by him. That fortune I am now in a position to restore to you. If you and your mother will call upon my solicitors, whose address I enclose, on Monday next, they will arrange for the full amount to be paid to your credit at the Bank of England pending any other arrangements you may wish to make.

John Arklow.

Margaret Grey uttered an hysterical cry of joy and running to her mother flung her arms round her neck.

"Mother, mother!" she cried, "a miracle has happened; we shall never be poor any more. The fortune that John Arklow lost for you has been given back to us."

That night when she woke and heard the Christmas waifs there was only joy in the heart of Margaret Grey. She thought it would be the happiest Christmas Day she had ever known. But she was to have one happier still.

WHEN the Day of Days came round again. Mrs. Grey and Margaret did not dine alone in the little room over the shop.

Mrs. Grey was with her daughter in her daughter's lovely home the South of England. And Mr. John Arklow, late Sergeant Arklow, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, was there too.

There was mistletoe in the hall and in the  drawing-room. But there was no need for mistletoe to justify John Arklow in kissing Margaret. He could kiss her every day of the year. She was his wife.

Sergeant Arklow, of the North-West Mounted Police, had picked up the lost trail of the Silver Fox in London, and it had led him to love and happiness and home.

________________

4: In the Wireless Room

Arthur Stringer

1874-1950

The Saturday Evening Post, 28 August 1909

THE night was black and hot, as only an equatorial night can be. It was so black and hot that the low- swung stars seemed a stippling of fire on the arching crownsheet of an illimitable furnace-box. The sea itself, unwrinkled as an inkwell, was of an equal blackness. A gentle shower of cinders rained on the canvas awnings that roofed the bridge deck. Electric fans droned from open doorways, purring plaintively through the gloom where the deck lights had long since gone out, for it was well past midnight.

A sense of ease and indolence hung over the ship, with her muffled engine pulse and her quiet and orderly decks. The heat drove all thought of cabin berths out of our heads. So the four of us sat and smoked in the new wireless room that backed the captain's quarters and still smelt of white-lead paint. Four tall glasses stood on the apparatus table where the green-shaded Lamp swung low over its frustum of light. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we sat there in silent and Buddhistic vacuity. Through the outer gloom of this chamber, during our more cataleptic periods, showed the intermittent cherry glow of cigar ends. Sometimes a match flare would pick out the machinery of the wireless, polished like surgical instruments, in a momentary scattering of high lights. Sometimes it showed a beaded human face, mournfully thoughtful and placid, and poignantly isolated in its momentary irradiation.

Beckmire, the ship's doctor, self-contained, incredibly thin and prematurely gray, sat in the open door with his hands linked above his head. I sat next to him. The wireless operator, Wister, lounged against his work-table in the full current of the electric fan. Opposite him again sat the captain, leaning bulkily back until his head rested against the cabin wall, listening to the operator's account of a Scotch skipper who after his tenth glass mistook an iceberg for a Flying Dutchman. Then a step hurried lightly across the deck, and I noticed Beckmire's startled movement as a figure appeared in the door beside him. We looked at this figure resentfully; it was very late, but we preferred losing our beauty sleep in peace.

"Did you ring, sir?" asked the figure. We all knew, the next moment, that it was nothing more than the captain's steward.

"I did not ring, William," promptly answered the captain. The steward murmured "Very well, sir," and withdrew. We turned back to our talk and cigars and tail glasses. Whereupon the captain himself told the story of a signal-box which had rung of itself—and eviscerated the situation by explaining just how the wires had been crossed. We were leaning back in silent and leisured resentment of this undramatic disembowelment when, for the second time, the captain's steward came to the door. "You rang, sir?" he said.

"No one rang," retorted the captain. Then he turned and called the departing steward back. "What made you think I rang?" he demanded. The thing was becoming a little creepy. I began to see what Beckmire had meant when he said no one was immovably sane after midnight.

"I heard the bell, sir, I thought," the steward answered. I imagined he was a bit flustered, by the tone of his voice.

"And you still think so?" asked the captain.

"Yes, sir; I still think so," maintained the steward, after a moment or two of silence.

"But there are four people here who know that no one so much as touched a bell," argued the captain.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the steward. And again he left us, and again we sat and talked and watched the night grow old.

Each of us, I think, swung about a little uneasily when, ten minutes later, a figure in white passed the open door. It was the captain's steward once more. This time, however, he did not venture to come in. He circled off from us, like a colt shying at a paper. He would have retreated resignedly and discreetly below- deck, I suppose, but the ship's master called him back sharply.

"Give us some more light there," said the captain to the wireless operator. Then he turned to the steward as the unshaded electrics flooded the room. "And so you think you heard that bell ring again?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said the steward with conviction. "And you consulted the indicator?"

"Yes, sir. It showed this cabin, sir, the same as before."

The captain looked at us appealingly. Some one stirred uneasily. I think it was Beckmire, the ship's doctor.

"But not one of us so much as went near a bell," I corroborated.

"You being the only one up on the ship," began the steward.

"Where is the bell in this cabin?" demanded the practical-minded captain. The steward crossed the room until he stood directly behind the commanding officer's chair, where a wall map hung. He lifted the map and showed an electric push- button.

The captain laughed, and a moment later we all joined him. It was very simple. His head had rested on the push-button hidden by the map each time he had leaned back in his chair. "And there's another mystery gone," he derided, with a glance at Beckmire. "And gone the way most of them go."

"Yes, most of them!" Beckmire said under his breath as the captain ordered more Scotch and ice, and we all sat down again. The night was still hot and soundless, yet for all its heat there was something feminine and melting and softly mysterious in that tepid sea air of the tropics that fanned our faces. Through it I could sniff stray fumes of ammonia gas from the ice-plant below- decks. The operator sighed audibly as he got up to adjust his light shades. A vague melancholy, a new and disquieting loneliness of spirit, seemed to settle about him, about each man in that little group. A bell sounded out of the ship's bow, slow- noted and mournful, and was answered by another bell farther aft. It was then that the wireless operator turned to the ship's doctor.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked.

"I've got a Bolivian with D.T.'s down below who'll answer that for me," was the doctor's quiet retort. "He's seeing 'em now by the dozens!"

"But actual ghosts—er—objective ghosts?" I foolishly inquired.

The doctor continued to smoke for a minute or two.

"Isn't that word rather a stupid one?" he said at last. "Rather too generic, I mean, for times when we talk with stuff like this!" And he waved a hand indolently toward the apparatus table.

"But don't you somehow believe in the persistence of personality after what we call death?" I had the effrontery to ask, for something about that veiled and nomadic face, with its cavernous shadows in the half-light, made me feel his answer would be worth while.

"Yes," he said; "I do. I've lived long enough, I think, to believe in anything."

"Just cross your wires," ejaculated the captain, "and you'll always get your ghosts!"

"Yes," conceded Beckmire a little wearily, "you've got to tune up to them, as the wireless people put it; you've got to get in tune-accord with, well, let's call it the Exceptional, or you'll never get anything out of the jumble that's about us."

"Tuning up, I s'pose, means either turning on the hysteria or piling on the drugs until you get the right pitch of pure delirium?" inquired the captain.

"Sometimes," acquiesced the doctor. "At other times it's only eyes and stomach. And at still other times it's something you can't understand any more than Columbus could understand this wireless apparatus."

"Have you ever found anything that was more than eyes and stomach when you got to the bottom of it?" the captain demanded.

"But we can't always get to the bottom of it," was Beckmire's quiet reply.

"You know what I mean. Have you steered into anything that you couldn't explain as a physiologist, on the one hand, or as a psychologist, on the other?"

"Yes," said Beckmire, "I have." And that was how he came to tell his story.

ii

IT HAPPENED in the midwinter of 1907, on the old Aurian liner Clotilda, began the doctor in that quiet and matter-of-fact tone which of itself seemed to translate everything he said into a world of unquestioned actuality. We made the run from Rio to New York, swinging in to Cartagena and Limón and Kingston for fruit, on company orders. The Clotilda had been a handsome ship in her day, but I'd heard something about her grounding on the Irish coast in a fog, three or four years before. Then she was renamed and put on the southern run, and I was assigned to her under Captain Goodyear, the Goodyear who died of apoplexy at Port Antonio last winter.

We were bound north, and were well up over the Line at the time I speak of. I remember I was down in my cabin that first night, and should have been asleep; but the heat was terrific. I can even recall quite distinctly how I was lying propped up on my two pillows, in the gaudiest Chinese-silk pajamas you ever clapped eyes on. On one side of me, I remember. I had the electric fan going. On the other I had my swivel reading light switched on. I'd been trying to forget the heat by a couple of hours' dip into a paper-covered copy of Huysman's À Rebours— on the idea, I suppose, that mental discomfiture can sometimes discount that of the body.

Then I heard my name called sharply. It startled me a little, it was so unexpected. When I looked up I saw Stobart, the wireless operator, at my door. He was standing there looking in at me. I swung my reading light round on him. His face wasn't any paler than usual. But I noticed that the arm he leaned against the doorjamb with was shaking a little.

"Can you come upstairs?" he said. He spoke so quietly and yet so imperatively that I at once rolled out of the bunk and stuck my toes into a pair of matting slippers.

"What's wrong?" I asked, as I pulled on a pair of ducks. This wasn't the first time he'd startled me. Our old operator, Tucker, had deserted in Rio, and we'd come north without wireless until we picked Stobart up in the roadstead off Pernambuco. He'd been operating for a couple of years in some Brazilian swamp district, and I never saw a man so hungry to get back to the frost belt. But he'd come aboard with what I'd sized up as rice malaria—hemorrhagic malaria is what a hospital intern would call it—and when he looked me up the second or third day out and asked if I could do anything to help his eyes, and I saw his yellow skin and that jaundiced-looking conjunctiva, why, my heart came right up in my throat and I said: "Yellow Jack, or Cuban dengue at the least!" Dengue is mild yellow fever, usually ambulant. And I saw a sweet time ahead of that ship, and a month or two of quarantine when it was all over. You'll say these are side issues, of course; yet they're not without interest. For his conjunctivitis, in the first place, was caused by nothing more than the wireless spark. And his chills and fever and yellowness and all that came from malaria truly enough, as the Plasmodium malaria in the blood showed me later on. A pair of blue glasses, to guard his eyes against the ultra-violet rays when he was at work, soon fixed his conjunctivitis. But he was so full of swamp malaria that I used to give him as much as thirty grains of quinine, hypodermically, to keep him up and going. And I had to fight with him about taking it, the same as I have to with that D. T. patient of mine downstairs. The quinine, you see, made his ears ring—practically deafened him.

That, of course, cut out his chances of communication. He couldn't hear the receiver phones when they were clamped right against his ears; he couldn't even hear "static" with a hornet's nest like that in his head. And Captain Goodyear was waiting for company orders before swinging up into the Caribbean, and that new operator, naturally, wanted to make good on the Clotilda. So he'd cut out the quinine when I didn't watch him. You can imagine, accordingly, what he'd suffer during one of his bad spells. "I've gone to the blackest pit and back ten times over," was the way he expressed it to me. He couldn't even crawl out of the berth, sometimes, to get to his tuner and starting lever. Sometimes, too, when he knew he'd got his call, he couldn't read the Morse because of that quinine. We carried an outfit in those days without tape, inker or bell alarm. But, as I've said before, I thought he'd been having another of his bad nights when he came down to my door that way.

"Are you sick?" I asked him, and I remember he didn't even blink when I poked my light in his face. I saw no signs of collapse or high fever. His eyes were clear enough, but something about the enlarged and iridescent pupils disturbed me.

"Come upstairs," was all he said. Then he passed one hand over his forehead—he might have had a headache or he might have been brushing a cobweb off his face. But I could never forget that gesture. It spelled utter and helpless bewilderment to me.

"Anything happened?" I asked as I followed him along a sultry alleyway of closed doors. The warm air sucked through that alleyway like the back draft from a furnace. "Yes," was all he said.

"What is it?" I demanded again. You know the tricks that equatorial heat, just plain heat, will play on you sometimes. I didn't care to paper-chase round a boat with a paranoiac on a night like that. So I asked him again what it was.

"That's what I've got to find out," he answered me as he groped his way above-deck. He was very quiet about it.

Half way up the steps that led to the bridge deck, however, he came to a stop. He stood there guardedly, with his head just above the level of the deck boards, looking carefully about. What he was looking for I couldn't in the least surmise. But I heard him take a deep breath, as though relieved, and then go quietly up the rest of the steps.

It was really a wonderful night, hot and black as velvet—you know the kind, when the stars seem so close you get to thinking you can climb to a masthead and pick 'em like oranges. And off our port bow I could see the lights of a big Royal Mailer, southward bound. And everything was as still as this deck is now. But these things didn't interest me much at the time. I was too busy resenting that nautical steeplechase young Stobart was leading me into. And I told him so, as I groped and shuffled after him along the upper deck. The lights had been doused, of course, for the sake of the man at the wheel.

I could just make out Stobart's figure as he felt his way to the wireless room. The door to this room was closed and locked. I wondered at this, just as I wondered why his station itself was unlighted. I noticed, too, that he waited for me to catch up with him before he stepped in across the narrow little coppered doorsill. I also noticed that he did not turn on his lights. I began to express my impatience at the whole proceedings, and to express it in no uncertain language.

"Wait!" he said in little more than a whisper. Then he quietly closed the cabin door and padded about in the darkness with his hands. I heard him pull what I took to be a deck chair across the boards.

"Sit down," he whispered, with a tug at my pajama sleeve. I sat down. He himself took another chair not two feet away from me.

"Well?" I inquired, wondering if the heat had gone to his head.

"I want you to wait and listen," he said in my ear so quietly that I scarcely caught the words.

"For what?" I demanded, feeling that he was making a fool of me, yet infected, in spite of myself, by the atmosphere of the place.

"That's what I want you to tell me," was Stobart's answer. I could feel his ringers on my arm. I think he meant them as a signal for quietness, as a warning to wait.

We sat there, minute after minute, listening. What we were listening for Heaven only knows, it was more than I could even guess at. I could hear the other man's breathing. It was quick and short, and not the sort a visiting physician would find especially reassuring. Then the closeness of the room and the idiocy of our postures began to get on my nerves. I felt that I'd had about enough of it.

"Turn on that fan!" I cried out irritably. Instead of answering me he caught at my arm—almost imploringly, I thought at the time. I shook his hand off with some impatience.

"Wait!" he whispered; and I can remember how his fingers tightened on my arm again. Then I leaned forward a little, close beside him, and listened. My ear, I suppose, had not been so well trained as his with its years of active work over microphonic apparatus. But I leaned forward and listened. I was charminigly well primed to scoff at anything that might happen. But I can still recall the uneasy sinking I suddenly and involuntarily felt somewhere about the pit of my stomach. For beyond the closed door, from some remoter part of the quiet deck, I felt sure I heard a sound. It was quite faint and far away, at first. But as I listened it seemed to approach us.

It was, I felt, nothing more than the sound of footsteps; but coming as it did, and at that time of night, and after the seance Stobart had put roe through, it didn't exactly seem the sound a fireman coming to shift a ventilator would make. It couldn't have been an officer turning out for his watch. Those steps seemed very methodic and unhurried. I knew they were crossing the deck, coming slowly in our direction, as we listened. I could hear them draw closer and closer. I knew they were there, just through that half inch of painted pine, as plainly as I knew the wireless operator was clutching at my arm. There was no mistake about it; no room for illusion. I could hear them. They came toward us, and then they came to a stop directly outside the closed door of the wireless room.

"There's some one there," I told him as I sat listening for the knock. But no knock came. I started to my feet.

"Wait!" Stobart was imploring almost in my ear. Still no sound came from outside. And, oddly enough, I hadn't detected any sign of passing steps, to show our visitor had turned away.

"It won't come back again." Stobart was saying. "It heard you."

"What heard me?" I asked him.

"It would have turned the knob and tried to get in," was all he answered.

"That's what knobs are for!" I blandly retorted.

"But you heard It," he said with a gasp of relief. I remember how thin his voice was and the note of triumph that rang in it.

"Of course I heard it," I told him. "What about it?" Yet I must confess that my impatience was now three parts pretense.

"But you didn't hear It go away," he maintained mysteriously.

"Then it's still there!" I proclaimed with a bit of a sneer, I'm afraid.

"Wait!" he was still whispering. I heard him take a step or two in the darkness somewhere behind me. Then he spoke again.

"Open the door quick as I turn on the light!" I heard him say. I jumped for the door the moment I heard the snap of his switch. I was only too glad to let the nervous tension explode into some sudden activity like that. In the same breath that the white light flooded the cabin I had the door open.

No one was there. I can't explain to you how much I had counted on surprising a skulking deckhand or a listening steward or even a somnambulistic passenger from below. But the deck was empty; there was nothing in sight. A breath of cooler air blew in on my face, bringing with it a disagreeable sensation of dampness. But that was all.

"What's all this rot about, anyway?" I remember suddenly calling out. I felt the need of focusing my anger on something, for I began to see the absurdity of the entire situation. "What does it mean?" I demanded.

"I don't know what it means," Stobart answered very slowly and very quietly, as he stood looking through the open door. Something about his utter calmness took the wind out of my sails. I couldn't exactly call it calmness, though, for the next moment he turned and looked at me with his wistful and hungry and half- hopeless stare. Then I laughed outright at him.

"That particular deck was made for the particular purpose of walking on," I pointed out to him. "So, why sit up and worry about that particular individual who has to go about his own particular business on it? There's lots of people aboard to walk a deck. Let 'em walk—let 'em come and go until the heavenly cows come home."

"But It never goes," the other man answered.

"It must go," I told him.

"No, It comes to my door," he said. "Then It stops."

"What do you mean by 'It'?" I demanded. He did not answer my question.

"It will come again," he said, staring past me out into the darkness. "Then the knob will turn."

"And it'll go away again," I derided, "the same as it did five minutes ago. And probably go down to its berth and take off its clothes and go to bed, the same as you and I should be doing."

"But It never goes away," he whispered. Something in his voice, as he whispered those words, sent a tittle spreading chill needling up and down my back. I experienced a distinct horripilation, in spite of myself.

"But what do you mean by 'It'?" I persisted.

"I don't know," he said with his helpless stare. "Look here—this is rampant theatricality," I told him, and I said it with considerable vigor. "This is pure hysteria. You're getting worked up over nothing. You're worse than a juba-patter at a camp meeting. You're getting worse than a darky in a graveyard. But you can't get me that way."

He didn't so much as give me a look.

"It will come back," he mumbled. "It keeps coming back, as though It wanted something."

I forced a laugh at that. Then I made him sit down in one of the empty chairs.

"It's you that want something," I warned him. "Your wires are getting crossed. And this is no time to untangle them. But it's either heat and worry, or temperature and too much quinine. If it's not that, then it's stomach or eyes."

He turned round again and looked at me. I can see that haggard and mournful face even now. I can still see the look of plaintive indifference in his deep-sunken eyes, as though he'd realized I was out of touch with him, hopelessly out of touch with all his world.

"You're not getting enough air in here," I told him. "You keep this cabin like a bake-oven."

"It's not that," he wearily protested.

"And, I suppose, you shut this door every night?" I gibed.

"Yes," he told me quite shamelessly. I demanded to know why.

He looked at me again with those calm and indifferent eyes of his. Then he glanced out across the gloomy deck.

"I have to keep It locked out," was his answer.

"You've been dreaming," I told him.

"No," he persisted. "I have to lock It out every night. It wants to get in. It comes and turns the knob. It keeps trying to get inside."

This was a little too much. "You've been dreaming," I reiterated disgustedly.

"No," he persisted, "I haven't been dreaming. And my wires haven't got crossed. I can go through any test you put me to. I'm as calm and sane as you are. But, I tell you, I can't stand having It come to my door that way, night after night."

"My boy, you're malarial, and you've been having the nightmare of your life," I tried to assure him. "What you want is sleep and cooler weather and something to whip those nerves of yours into shape. And the first thing to do is to get to bed and forget all this. Then, I'll see you in the morning and we'll talk things over in sane, sensible daylight, when things don't get twisted and we don't hear crooked and see double."

"You'll keep It away from me? You'll clear it all up?" he asked in that plaintive and fretful tone of his. And I quite cheerfully assured him that I'd take "It" away from him. I was a little condescending about it, I fancy, the same as you'd be with a peevish child. Then we had a smoke together, and I tried to quiet him down by talking over such commonplaces as the new Broadway musical comedies and what Coney Island had grown into since he went south. Then I gave him a bromide, said good-night, and took a turn or two on deck, watching the stars and wondering first at the loneliness of the ship in particular and then at the loneliness of all life in general. Then I went down to that Dutch-oven of a cabin of mine and tried to go to sleep.

iii

I'M AFRAID I didn't sleep any too well that night. I tried to tell myself it was the heat, but I kept thinking about Stobart and his delusions a great deal. The next day, too, his appearance rather disturbed me. I made it a pretext to look him over when the chance came. And I pounded him about and put him through a catechism that'd make a Bertillon chart look like a chalk sketch. But I found him normal enough, outside the malaria and the cabin-door matter.

The only way to straighten out that mental kink of his, I decided, was to get to the bottom of the whole tu'penny mystery, to translate the entire business into its obvious materialities. Did you ever stop to watch a child engineering mill races on the seashore, and then with a sort of malicious good nature divert his whole river bed, knowing all along you could return it to its old channel with one side scoop of a foot through the sand? Well, that's how I felt about Stobart. I thought myself a bit of a psychologist, and I'd bumped into psychoneurosis enough to feel at home with an illusion like this. So I told myself that I could afford to be both patient and generous with him. In fact, we sat down and talked the whole thing over together very quietly and reasonably, though never once would Stobart admit the possibility of sense error or the contingency of a ship's motion occasionally flinging open a door which was not any too securely latched. He was quite fixed in his belief that some agency, not natural and normal, had repeatedly come to his door and tried to open it.

It ended in my agreeing to sit up and watch with him. And that midnight found me up in the wireless room, with a goodly supply of tobacco, a storage flashlight and a singularly open and disengaged mind. Stobart's plaintively superior manner, as he glanced down at my flashlight, rather irritated me.

"This may look foolish," I told him as I sent the flash fingering like a searchlight into his darkest cabin corner, "but I'm going to get a glimpse of those mysterious feet or know the reason why."

"I've been over all that ground," he answered a little wearily.

"Then you haven't been over it in the right way," I promptly informed him, "or there'd be no need of me here. This is no voodoo and black-cat business. We're not plantation negroes, you know. You can't carry a banshee and a wireless outfit on the same steamer."

"Then, what is it?" he demanded.

"It's several things," I told him. "But, most of all, it's mere neuropyra, and I'm going to show you why. You're a sick man—you're simply a victim of your own worn-out nerves." And I lit up and sat down and talked to him on abnormal psychology and what I remembered of it, explaining as well as I could the inferential construction of sense perceptions as related to illusions proper, in contradistinction to hallucination. He laughed a little, I remember, at some of my phrases, like intraorganic stimuli and associative law of preference and acatateptic imagination. But, naturally, you can't expect to make much headway on such subjects as the objectification of thought and the influences of expectant attention when your listener hasn't even heard of Rabier. "I'm not much of a Weir Mitchell," I know, I wound up with, "but I'm going to cure you of this bug."

That word "bug" was something he could grasp. But he only smiled a little. "It's no use," he said in his tired and wistful way. "It's not a bug."

"It is a bug, and you've got to smash it," I had the brutality to tell him, "or it's going to smash you." He got up with a shrug and crossed the cabin and closed the door. I looked at my watch. It was almost two in the morning, and nothing had happened.

Something about his isolated figure enlisted my sympathy against my will. I even tried to extenuate things for him as we sat there, explaining how everything in his case tended to pile up the mystery; how mysterious was any ship at sea, with an equatorial midnight about her; how mysterious the apparatus with which he worked was, with its ghostlike calling and receiving across such spaces of silence; how mysterious even trivial mental illusions were, once they were played upon by the converging lines of association. Then, oppressed by his haggard and hopeless eyes, I asked him to tell me how the whole thing had started.

He sat back and began talking. He spoke without excitement or emotion, watching his apparatus as he talked.

"I was sitting here, the second night out, just as we're doing now," he said. "I'd been trying to tune up to a Navy message I hadn't quite caught. Then, all of a sudden, I lost them altogether. It was very quiet in here except when 11 called.' Then, of course, it was nothing but crash and rattle, with my spark going. I was waiting and listening very intently when I What are you looking at?" he suddenly broke out with, for he must have turned, at that minute, and caught sight of my face. As a matter of fact. I wasn't looking at anything. I was listening—and listening with every nerve of my body.

For, across the quietness of the deck outside, I knew I'd heard a sound. It was a sound of footsteps. They were very faint at first; they seemed coming from an indescribable distance; but I could hear them coming closer and closer. They seemed as unhurried as the steps of a mourner at a funeral.

"It's coming!" Stobart whispered, and, before I could stop him, he'd switched out the light. I knew by this time there was no mistake about my hearing those steps. They were so distinct that I remember the feeling of disappointment that swept through me—I felt so sure our visitor would turn out to be an officer, who'd have the laugh on us for eavesdropping at that time of night. Yet the steps, all the while, kept coming closer and closer.

I remember Stobart's clutch at my arm as they came to a stop at his door. Yes, they were clearly and unmistakably at his door. I already had my hand on the knob, padding it with my moist palm, so that I could both detect any movement that took place in it and at the same time open the door without a second's delay.

But I knew the knob had not turned. I also knew the intruder was still there. I kept my attention fixed on him there, listening for the slightest movement, as I brought my flashlight up in front of me. I did not wait for any word or sign from Stobart. I simply opened the door like a flash. At the same moment I threw on my electric, giving it a sweeping, semicircular movement. If it had been a machine gun it would have mowed down everything on the deck. But it would have mowed down nothing mortal. There was not a living soul in sight. The deck was empty, as empty as a church!

iv

THAT EMPTY DECK was more of a shock to me than I had allowed for. It upset me considerably more than I had counted on. It gave me that sick feeling, that indescribable, nauseous sinking of the diaphragm which comes to a man when he feels his first earthquake under his heels. It seemed to take the bottom out of everything. Then, in some way, the whole thing angered me, made me as mad as a hatter. Nothing could dethrone Nature and Reason. As a man of science I wasn't going to stand for either hysteria or nautical table-rapping. I decided then and there to get to the bottom of the thing, to shake the nonsense out of it, if I had to sit up for a month to do it.

Stobart himself wasn't acting in a way to soothe anybody's ruffled nerves. "What does it mean?" he kept whimpering. "What does it mean?"

"Keep cool, man; keep cool!" I told him for the second time. Then it suddenly came home to me how hot that little cabin was. My ducks were wet through.

"Now you understand!" Stobart was exulting as he mopped his face and dodged back and forth like a hyena in a cage. I got the impression that the whole world was going mad and being coffined up in four stifling cabin walls.

"Come outside," I told him. "Get outside in the air and we'll talk this thing over." I didn't want him to think that I'd come a cropper myself. And I remember almost dragging him out of that cabin the same as you'd drag a man from a quicksand. We got to the rail and stood there for a while, looking about us. Then we walked up and down the quiet deck. I can remember how homely and consoling and regular the throb of the screw sounded. Even the scrape of the stokers' shovels from the engine-room fiddle was good to hear.

When Stobart spoke up and said, "There's something wrong with this ship!" I remember the feeling that crept over me, the passion to smash his sneaking thing of mystery, just as you'd want to smash a rat that kept raiding your pantry or vermin that were fouling your linen. I still clung to the belief that it was some trick, some foolish hoax, which any moment of calm study might suddenly show up, like a searchlight, in all its hilarious and laughable simplicity. I kept asking myself if it mightn't be an echo of some sort, a series of sounds oddly reflected from a remoter part of the ship, a sort of ventriloquism of wood and iron, which might be projecting certain footsteps from the bridge or from a lower deck into this upper area of audition. I even experimented among the lifeboats, using them for sounding-boards; but nothing came of it. Then I turned back to question Stobart. to make sure he had no enemies on the Clotilda, to cross- examine him as to what friends he'd made and what visitors he'd had. This, too, came to nothing; he didn't know a soul on board. Every possible avenue of escape seemed to lead straight back to that old, blind wall of enigma. So it wasn't merely sympathy for Stobart that left me more than ever determined to get to the root of the whole matter. I felt oddly and keenly sorry for him. It seemed to have left him so helpless and childlike. Indeed, if he'd been an imaginative man it would never have knocked him off his feet the way it did. Hut he was all sober, calm, common- sense, as we call it. What he saw, he saw. Truth, outside of actual experience, was to him what you might describe as a metaphysical absurdity. The corollary of this was equally obvious. Experience, outside established truth, was just as much an absurdity. So it cut the world from under his feet. It left his mind staggering feverishly through a dozen inchoate hells of doubt and disorder. It flung him back into a black chaos of unbelief, a chaos that a whole lifetime of careful sorting and pigeonholing of experience had been shutting away from him—the same way, I suppose, that Dutch gardeners shut away the sea with a dyke.

But it wasn't for Stobart's sake that I intended to stick to the thing. It was no longer curiosity; I'd passed the off-handed dilettante stage. My own experience had bumped into something it couldn't swallow, and I had to Fletcherize the whole lump into a pulp of common-sense or leave reason to choke to death on the irrational. But I preferred making my investigations by myself. I didn't care for any more outside infection of emotionalism. So I asked Stobart if he wouldn't go down and get a few hours' sleep in the infirmary or even in my cabin. He refused, however; he had to stick to his wireless. He wanted to be fair to the ship, he said; and I began to feel that, after all, there wasn't so much of the coward about him. But he finally agreed to take a deck chair somewhere amidships between the lifeboats, where it was cool and where he'd be within reach of his room. Then I could call him, he said, if anything happened.

v

MY FIRST MOVE, when Stobart had taken himself off, was to examine his room. Outside the apparatus table and the Leyden jars and condenser above the narrow sleeping-berth the room held nothing of interest. There were no dark comers, no draperies, no hidden openings, nothing in any way ambiguous, nothing capable of harboring mystery. The only thing that caught my eye with any sense of shock was a large-caliber revolver lying in between Stobart's helix case and his Leyden jars, directly above his berth. But even that I could account for when I remembered the uncertainty under which he'd been sleeping there. Indeed, I found something reassuring about that gun, as though it stood for a determination to combat only material enemies.

I was glad enough to take my hint from that, finding something rather consolatory in making those preparations which you'd make only against flesh and blood, which you'd make only when you're trying to trap something material and ponderable. This feeling prompted me to slip down to my own room and catch up a fresh supply of tobacco, a couple of suture needles and a spool of silk, and then a phial of quinine sulphate. The latter was some old stock which had failed to produce the quinine reaction— time and careless handling had apparently converted it into one of its isomers. But I'm afraid I'm making that rather technical. What I'm getting at is that the stuff was air-drawn, and I took it only because it supplied me with a white powder. I mention these details simply because I want you to understand I was thinking normally, that I was clearheaded enough to appreciate even the smaller points as I went along. I remember, in fact, the sense of confidence that came to me when I got those familiar suture needles in my hand, as though they were instruments that wouldn't even fail me in drawing together the ends of a psychic mystery, as though they could sew up even the sort of mental gash I've been trying to tell you about.

I also brought up with me a bunchlight, a cluster of six electrics under a glazed reflector, such as they swing over a landing ladder at night. I dug out enough of Stobart's insulated wire to connect this bunchlight with the ship's ordinary circuit, and swung it directly over Stobart's door, so that the turn of a switch from inside the cabin would make the deck as light as day. Then I threaded my two suture needles with silk and pressed them down into the deck boards about three feet out from the doorsill. Then I showered the deck with my quinine sulphate. No one would be likely to reach that wireless mom, I knew, without breaking my slender hurdle of silk. And no one could approach the door, I felt equally satisfied, without leaving a pretty clear impression of his steps. And when I had the size and shape of those steps I knew I'd have something to work on. I even remember my impulse to connect the brass doorknob with Stobart's dynamo, so that my evasive visitor, the moment his hand touched the metal, would get a shock that'd knock the sleepwalking out of him for a week or two. But that, I decided, as I stepped inside the wireless room again, would be both foolish and dangerous. Instead. I looked over the cabin for the second time very carefully and found everything as I had expected. Then I lit a pipe, lowered my collapsible deck chair a few notches, switched off the light, and quietly opened and hooked back the cabin door. Then I waited for something to happen.

I was comfortable enough, except for the heat. I remember putting down my pipe —tobacco had no taste in the dark — and I also recall shifting my chair along the cant of the deck so I could get my feet up on the berth edge. I remember thinking, for the second time, what mystery hung over all ships at night, and warning myself that it was in air like this, velvety-hot and steamily-distorting and humidly-melting all at once, that systems and theories went wrong in the hardest of human heads.

There must have been something hypnotic in the drone of the fan over my head, in the steady throb of the screw, in the slow rise and dip of the ship, in the soft swish of the water along her side plates. I suppose, too. I was a bit tired after my second night of broken sleep. But I went off, without knowing it. against my intentions.

I'd no idea how long I slept there. But I woke up with that sense of depression, of bewilderment, which comes over you when you wake up in a strange room. That's what I tried to tell myself, at least, as I lay back in my chair. Then a keener impression came to me, a vaguue sense of evil which I can't even describe. But the totality of that impression, whatever it was, caused a sort of mental gasp. If I'd translated it into actual words it would have amounted to the exclamation: "There's Something in this room!"

My shift of position had rather turned my face away from the operating table. But a sixth sense, intuition, anything you like, kept telling me that Something was stirring and moving behind me, almost at my side. I felt a draft of cooler and damper air from the deck outside. I remember wondering if the grayness of the light could mean that morning was coming. But I felt that Presence there until I could stand it no longer. I couldn't forget that this Thing, whatever it was, stood between me and the door; I couldn't forget that it was there between me and my freedom. And I knew I had to face it.

I turned my head very slowly, inch by inch, until my glance was able to take in the entire wireless room. And I merely saw a man in a double-breasted blue uniform. He stood at the operating table, bent over the responder as though some detail of its mechanism puzzled him.

Something in his attitude as he stood there struck me as indescribably sorrowful. I don't think I ever saw greater pathos, a more poignant suggestion of tragic misery, than I caught from the bending profile of that lean and hungry-looking face. The eyes were hooded by the bulging frontal bone until they were in deep shadow, until they were cavernous, like that figure of Abbey's Hosea, isn't it? I couldn't actually see them, but, hidden as they were, they seemed to hold the most unsatisfied and wistful look I ever saw on a human face. This pathos extended even to his figure, which was lean and stooping and seemed to have fallen in on itself. His whole attitude seemed one of an anxiety and anguish and frustration that was unfathomable. And, in spite of myself. I felt that sudden horripilation which comes with most sudden shocks to the nerve centers. I could feel my hair rise and then that tingle of fear—you know it, like mice going up and down your backbone! For I felt there was something— well, something abnormal about it all. Yet it was merely the figure of a man, understand—there was nothing phantasmal or sepulchral about it—no ghost nonsense with a mist or an aura of light about it. It was just a man, a plain, clear-cut, distinctly-outlined, extremely-attenuated man in a double-breasted blue cloth coat with two rows of brass buttons running down the front of it. But here was the disturbing part of it: I know every man and officer aboard the Clotilda. And this man in the double-breasted uniform coat was not one of them.

I remember, as I sat back, peering up at him, how I still refused to believe what I saw. I even remember thinking that a coat like that, in such heat, couldn't be altogether comfortable. I tried to tell myself that I was still half ski-ping. But I reason couldn't swallow that. Then I tried to persuade myself that the figure was that of some ovsriapplns dream projecting itself into the area of waking consciousness. Perhaps it was a sort of dream, and nothing more. But I know that, the next moment. I did one of the most foolish things of my life. I jumped to my feet and shouted out loud. It wasn't for help. It wasn't even to give an alarm. It was more the involuntary and inevitable expression of overpent feeling flowering into action. And as I shouted I sprang for Stobart's big nickel-plated revolver next to the helix case. I don't remember taking aim or firing. But I remember my surprise on hearing the sound, and my sudden horror as it came home to me that this man who had come into the cabin was merely a stowaway, and that I was murdering him. The shots rang out clear and quick—you can imagine the noise, at such a time, along a quiet deck!

When they came running into the wireless room they found it full of smoke and the splash of six lead bullets on the painted wall. But that wasn't bothering me. What appalled and stupefied me was that every bullet had gone through that stooping body as easily as hailstones drop through a cloud. I think he turned and looked at me, but I'm not sure. Then he passed through the cabin door and walked away, not exactly reproachfully, and not exactly angrily. But I watched him as he turned and strode across the deck. I watched him as he went through my silk thread without breaking it and the fall of a folded newspaper would have | snapped it and strode out over my I powdered boards without leaving so much as a mark. I stood leaning against the open door, watching him as he crossed I that empty deck and walked out through the ship's rail, out through three iron bars and six inches of solid oak into space, like a puff of smoke.

Then I knew that the uproar had brought the men from the bridge and Stobart from amidships and Captain Goodyear himself from his stateroom not thirty feet away. I could see the startled amazement on the men's faces. On the captain's. I remember, was anger. On Stobart's was something that seamed to be triumph, almost exultation.

I remember they all stood about, questioning me, and the captain's sagacious side look as he took the revolver from my fingers and craftily pocketed it. He was one of those oldish types of skipper, thickset, hairy, full-bearded, with an ear-tuft of hair on each side of his face, for all the world like a lynx's. I also remember the sudden reticence that had come over me after one look into that face. No, it wasn't reticence; it was merely a realization of the uselessness, of the hopelessness, of ever trying to explain. A minute before I'd been consumed with a passion to tell some one, any one, what had happened; to take outsiders into my confidence; to unload on them, in one avalanche of words; to electrify them with my discovery; to stagger them with the weight of this new mystery that had come into the world —and then to flail it about until we'd shaken out its last pod of truth!

But as I stood and faced them there I realized how utterly incommunicable it all was, how impossible it would be to translate it into the phraseology of every-day speech. I was a Cassandra with messages no one wanted and no one would understand. I was like a drunken musician with a thousand concertos reeling and ramping through my brain. I remember hearing Stobart lie for me—and it angered me inwardly to think he'd stepped into the role of guardian for me saying that sneak thieves had been trying to get into his cabin and I'd promised to sit up with him. I remember hearing Captain Goodyear telling me to go down and take a bracer and a bath and to come to him after breakfast. I remember Stobart trailing after me and asking what I'd seen. I remember turning and petulantly lying to him, saying I'd seen nothing, that I'd fallen asleep and had a nightmare and made a fool of myself.... But, most of all, I remember that strange and wistful figure I'd seen leaning over the wireless responder, and the hunger that seemed to hang on the gray and colorless face.

vi

I WAS LATE in getting up to Captain Goodyear's quarters, for I had my rounds to make and a stoker with heat apoplexy to look after. But I found him in the chart room, with a pair of dividers in his red and stubby fingers. There was something about Captain Goodyear's fingers that intimidated me. They were thick and square-ended and brownish-red and scarred. They weren't the sort of fingers to talk psychology to.

There's no use relating just what he said. He was one of the older school, you know; and, I'm afraid, there was a good deal of profanity. But it amounted to the fact that he was going to have order on his ship. He wasn't going to have it made into a private shooting gallery. And, for two pins, he'd lock the wireless room up and put the operator to scrubbing decks. With that, he turned away to his charts, giving me the full breadth of his back.

The incident would have been closed, only I still had a hankering to justify myself. I wanted to make myself leas of a fool in his eyes. "But Stobart's a sick man," I tried to explain. "He's got to be looked after."

That brought the captain round on me in a flash. "A sick man!" he cried. "They're all sick men! They get full o' dynamo and go dippy! Look at Chrysler, deserting at Kingston, two trips back, without so much as taking his clothes! Look at young Tucker, coming whining to me that ne can't sleep in that cabin, and then sneaking off the ship at Rio without a word of excuse. And it's always been that way, putting a lot of land-bred nincompoops into that wireless room to hand me out my orders!"

I tried to speak up for Stobart, but he cut me short.

"Don't argue about it, sir; don't you dare to argue about it! Wasn't it one o' those nincompoops who sent this ship to the bottom? And let her take twenty lives with her when she went?"

This brought me up with a start. "An operator sunk this ship?" I remember gasping out at him. He looked me up and down with his slow and resentful little eyes.

"Yes, a lying, land-bred, underhand sneak who went deaf on his run and wasn't man enough to say so!"

"Went deaf on his run?" I echoed foolishly, for every word was like a battery shock, and the whole thing was so unexpected.

"Went deaf as a post and all the time pretended to be getting his messages," scoffed Captain Goodyear. "And a land station could hear their foghorn when they came for the Irish coast, and kept warning him back. And so they went down on St. Withel's Rock, and there was the devil to pay!"

"What happened?" I gasped. Something in my face made that skipper stop and look at me.

"Happened?" he grunted. "They went down in five fathoms of water before they'd got their last twenty souls off. Ana it took thirteen thousand sterling to raise her and patch her up. And it was that one man who sent her down, that one nincompoop in the wireless room!"

I remember sticking there to the captain's side in spite of his gesture of dismissal. "But how did they know?" I demanded. "How did they know he went deaf?"

He didn't look at me as he answered. He was busy making his dividers walk over a chart, like a boy on stilts, stiff-legged, step by step.

"Shut himself up in his operating-room when she struck, and blew his brains out. Then they found letters he'd written, when they raised her letters to his wife telling what happened. And I'm here to navigate this ship, sir, and not rehash admiralty court inquiries."

"Then it's true!" I cried, and I stumbled out of the chart room, I don't remember how. But I remember wandering to the rail and leaning there, limp and weak as a seasick passenger in a side roll.

At last, I deliberately and vindictively made up my mind to see the thing through to a finish. I decided to go to Stobart at once and have it out with him, the whole cursed business. And I didn't give that feeling time to cool. I started for his door without waiting to think the thing over.

I say I started for his door but that was all. Did you ever see a house dog diving for a bone and suddenly finding a tomcat guarding it? Well, that's precisely the way I brought up, of a sudden, as I started toward that wireless room. For there, directly in front of me, in the deep shadow of the awning above the open door, stood the figure in the double-breasted blue coat with the two rows of metal buttons down the front. It wasn't looking at me, at first. It was looking up at the sky. at one of those wide, tropical skies with whipped-cream cumulus clouds in it, like an azure dish-cover with tufts of cotton wool stuck about its edges. I never saw a man look so wistfully at a stretch of blue sky before. Then he stepped slowly back into the wireless room and, as he stepped back, he looked at me steadily and quietly. It wasn't until he turned half away, and the stronger sidelight fell on his lean and melancholy face, that I noticed the mark on his temple, between the ear and the end of the eyebrow. I'm not maintaining it was a perforation, or even a scar. Only, I saw it unmistakably, quite small and clear-cut, as though the cork of an ink-bottle had been pressed against it.

vii

IT was Stobart himself, with a jug of ice water in his hand, who found me standing there, staring in through that open door. I didn't move or look round when he spoke. I wanted to assure myself that the Thing was still there, that it didn't escape.

"What is it?" Stobart cried out. I suppose I wasn't an altogether healthy color.

"There's some one in there!" I told him. He turned and looked into my face instead of looking into the room. It wasn't apprehension I saw in his eyes; it was rather incredulity, almost pity, I thought.

"But it's impossible," he declared, "here in open daylight. You imagine this. It's only in your own head." I remember something strangely like a note of relief in his voice, something that was almost joy on his yellow-skinned face.

"There's somebody in that room," I repeated with the calmness of utter conviction. Stobart started to say something to me. Then he came to a sudden stop. It was a new sound that arrested him, a sound which we each knew and recognized at the same instant. For what we heard was the familiar crescendo drone of the wireless starting-lever as it crossed on the contact-points and threw the current from the engine-room into the dynamo directly under the apparatus table.

I Called out sharply to Stobart to wait, for I could see that he was making a dive for the door. "Not on your life!" was all he answered as he pushed me aside and Hung the door open.

It was a moment or two, of course, before I could swing about and follow after him. I heard his laugh, a little high-pitched and hysterical, and then his self-assured exclamation, "It's empty!"

He laughed again as I stepped into the cabin. I suppose my face was something to laugh at, as I stood there trying to reframe my whole universe into some semblance of reason. I can't describe my feelings to you. But I began to feel that I'd been duped, that I'd been thimble-rigged and victimized.

"You look like a sick man," Stobart had the cheek to tell me.

"Who wouldn't look like a sick man," I retorted, "without four hours' sleep in two whole nights?"

I remember his answer, his complete change of voice. "I don't think I've had an hour's sleep honest sleep on this ship!" He said it wistfully, as though he were very tired. Then he cried out with sudden and vehement passion, "I'd be all right if I only could sleep! I've got to sleep!"

I relented at that, and tried to tell him he'd be better in a day or two, now we were steaming up into cooler weather.

"If I could only sleep!" he kept repeating, and the red rims of his shrunken eyes made me think of a hound's eyes. "All hell can walk that deck out there, now, if it wants to," he declared. "I'll lock it out. But I've got to sleep."

I couldn't stand for any more of that outbreak. My nerves were too shattered. I felt that a black plague of lunacy was crashing and tumbling like a wave over all the ship. I was glad to get away, flinging Stobart a promise over my shoulder that I'd do what I could for him, mix him up something to quiet him down. It was a relief to get below-deck to my dispensary, even to pretend to busy myself with every-day things, to make little tasks for myself, so I wouldn't have time to think. And, late that afternoon, I took Stobart up a phial of chloral hydrate, telling him what it was and advising him to follow the directions I'd written out on the bottle.

He showed little interest in the narcotic by this time, and seemed eager to talk. A strange spirit of elation had crept over him. He appeared pathetically anxious to impart some portion of this to me. But I told him I was tired out and had ten hours' sleep to catch up. I'm afraid I was curt with him. But he followed me to the door, in a way I afterward remembered, and looked after me as I crossed the deck. I caught sight of his wistful, yellow face as I went below, still looking up at the sky as the other figure had done. But I thought nothing of it at the time. I took an opiate and tumbled into my berth, for I wanted sleep before I got to thinking again—I wanted eight or nine hours of revitalizing, reorganizing sleep before I started back to that problem of mine. We'd be at Kingston by morning. I remembered. Once there I could slip away from the ship, out to Constant Spring for half a day, and get a new perspective and a new grasp on things. So I went to bed and slept, if you can call the nightmare of febrile torpor that comes from any of the opiatic derivatives real sleep.

I WAKENED suddenly, about four in the morning, I think it was. The moment I wakened, I remember, a sense of uneasiness, of impending evil, flashed over me. I tried to fight it oft, but it goaded me into my clothes and drove me up on the bridge deck—though, every step, I kept telling myself that the whole thing was asinine.

It was still dark, pitch dark, and the Clotilda was rolling heavily. I crossed to the wireless room as best I could. I found the door unlocked. I went inside and switched on the lights.

Stobart was there, huddled down and back in his chair, with one hand flung out and half covering his transcription pad. On this pad he'd written just five words:

Relay all ships northbound Jamaica...

I had my hand on Stobart's shoulder, shaking him, before I really saw his face. Then I stopped, for I knew he was dead. He'd been dead for some time. It took me only a minute or two to make sure of that.

I'd seen Death too often to be disturbed by it. I remember that I was quite calm as I picked up the empty chloral bottle and put it beside his tuner. I even felt it would be more fitting to place the poor chap's body on its berth, to lift it out of that huddled and wistful posture in which I'd found it.

It took me some time to do this decently. Then I hooked back his chair, which kept rolling from side to side, closed ana locked the door, and went at once to the captain's quarters to report. I waited for a moment before his stateroom, wondering how I'd word my message. I clung to a handrail, hesitating over how I ought to tell him. Then a sound came to my ears as I stood there. It sent a chill eddying up and down my back. For as plain as you hear my voice now I heard the spit and crackle of the wireless spark at the masthead above me. Some one or Something, in the room where the dead man had been locked, was operating the wireless apparatus. I pounded on the captain's door, like a frightened child knocking for its nurse—no, more like a lost soul beating on the bars of hell. For I was quivering and shaking when Captain Goodyear came out—or, rather, round from the bridge steps, for we were supposed to be fingering up along the southern coast of Jamaica.

"Stobart's dead, sir," I told him. "Come at once!"

He turned on me slowly, ponderously, like a liner swinging round in a roadstead. "Stobart's dead?" he repeated. "What makes you think he's dead?"

His question, coming after all the nonsense of the night before, rather flurried me. "He died as he was operating," I tried to explain. "I wish you'd come, sir, at once."

He cut me short, turning into the chart-room as he spoke. "Go and make sure you haven't been having another nightmare. Then come back and report!" And I heard him mutter in his beard over his chart, "This is the night we need his damned wireless!" He suddenly stood upright and stepped out on the deck again, peering up through the darkness. Then he turned on me in a towering rage. "Sir, you're making a fool of yourself and this ship!" he cried out. "He's there! He's there operating! Look at his spark, you fool, against the masthead!"

I looked up. I could see the small blue spark come and go at the insulation-points of the antennae. I saw it, and I didn't much care whether Captain Goodyear thought I was as mad as a March hare or not. But I at least knew what rigor mortis was; I knew a dead man when I lifted one.

"Go and see!" I almost screamed at my commanding officer. And something in my face made him first stare and blink and then swing about and start for the wireless room on the run. I ran after him, remembering I'd the door-key in my hand. He took it from me and flung the door open.

"Where's your dead man?" he cried as he faced the full glare of the electrics. His scoffing didn't last long. I remember the change that swept over his face as the empty cabin and the figure on the berth hit home. Then his eyes moved on to the apparatus table. My own gaze followed his as he turned to the inscription pad. He touched it.

"Why, it's not dry! The ink's not dry!" he said. Then we read through the words together:

Relay all ships northbound Jamaica south coast lights gone.... Stand by till morning....

I kept peering down at that message. I didn't hear the captain leave the wireless room. I didn't even know he'd left until I heard the tinkle of the engine-room signals, and then the bark and bellow of voices on the bridge. Then I felt the shake of the Clotilda's deck as the screws reversed and she swung and backed sullenly about in the cross seas. Then I heard more voices, and then the rattle of the anchor cables.

Of a sudden, the ship seemed startlingly quiet. Only the engines had been stopped, but all the world seemed to be at a standstill. I started for the rail to see what had happened. Then I stopped, for I saw a figure leaning over it, over the rail opposite the wireless room. The figure I saw was incredibly thin and wore a double-breasted blue coat. From somewhere out of the darkness, as I stood there, I heard a dog's bark, and then the sound of a gun, very faint, repeated three times. But all I saw was the figure in the uniform coat, as it stood there, peering ahead, with one lean hand over its eyes. It sounds all wrong, I know, but I've always thought I heard that figure say very quietly, "Thank God!" before it slipped away, though I had no sensuous evidence of its slipping away. All I can say is that one moment it was there, and the next moment it was not to be seen.

The lifting weather had already shown a scattered light or two. We'd anchored within rifle-shot of land. Then morning came. Jamaica lay in front of us, close enough to hear our siren. Port Royal stretched before us— a ruined Port Royal, slipped half-way into the sea. It was the second day after the Jamaica earthquake— the earthquake that ruined Kingston and wiped out every light on the south coast of the island, the earthquake that sent the Hamburg-American liner Waldemar ashore beside the ill-fated Princess Victoria Louise. And there was the Clotilda, rocking at anchor, with her forefoot almost pawing the shore gravel! Our ship had been saved.... We took refugees and wounded from Kingston aboard. That gave me work night and day, and I was glad of it. I had a busy week northbound to New York. In fact, I broke down under it and had seven weeks of it in Roosevelt Hospital with what my old friend Bromig mildly described as a case of neuritis. They were all very kind and fed me like a king, and I came away fat and hearty... and hungering for the sea again.

_______________________

5: "Contact!"

Frances Noyes Hart

The Pictorial Review, Dec 1920

THE first time she heard it was in the silk-hung and flower-scented peace of the little drawing-room in Curzon Street. His sister Rosemary had wanted to come up to London to get some clothes— Victory clothes they called them in those first joyous months after the armistice, and decked their bodies in scarlet and silver, even when their poor hearts went in black— and Janet had been urged to leave her own drab boarding-house room to stay with the forlorn small butterfly. They had struggled through dinner somehow, and Janet had finished her coffee and turned the great chair so that she could watch the dancing fire (it was cool for May), her cloudy brown head tilted back against the rose-red cushion, shadowy eyes half closed, idle hands linked across her knees. She looked every one of her thirty years— and mortally tired— and careless of both facts. But she managed an encouraging smile at the sound of Rosemary's shy, friendly voice at her elbow.

"Janet, these are yours, aren't they? Mummy found them with some things last week, and I thought that you might like to have them."

She drew a quick breath at the sight of the shabby packet.

"Why, yes," she said evenly. "That's good of you, Rosemary. Thanks a lot."

"That's all right," murmured Rosemary diffidently.

"Wouldn't you like something to read? There's a most frightfully exciting  Western novel―"

The smile took on a slightly ironical edge. "Don't bother about me, my dear. You see, I come from that frightfully exciting West, and I know all about the pet rattlesnakes and the wildly Bohemian cowboys. Run along and play with your book— I'll be off to bed in a few minutes."

Rosemary retired obediently to the deep chair in the corner, and with the smile gone but the irony still hovering, she slipped the cord off the packet. A meager and sorry enough array— words had never been for her the swift, docile servitors that most people found them. But the thin gray sheet in her fingers started out gallantly enough— "Beloved."

Beloved! She leaned far forward, dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of embers. What next? This was more like— it began "Dear Captain Langdon" in the small, contained, even writing that was her pride, and it went on soberly enough, "I shall be glad to have tea with you next Friday— not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It was stupid of me to have forgotten you— next time I will try to do better." Well, she had done better the next time. She had not forgotten him again— never, never again. That had been her first letter; how absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have treasured it all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing! She touched it with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have cared, to have cared so much for that! It seemed incredible that she hadn't remembered him at once when he came into the hut that second time. Of course she had onlv seen him for a moment and six months had passed— but he was so absurdly vivid, every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head to the heels of his shining, dark boots— and there were a great many inches! How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those eyes dancing like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift, disarming charm of his smile, and, above all, his voice— how, in the name of absurdity could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy Langdon's voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it rang out again, with its clipped, British accent and its caressing magic, as un-English as any Provençal troubadour's! And yet she had forgotten— he had had to speak twice before she had even lifted her head.

"Miss America— oh, I say, she's forgotten me, and I thought that I'd made such an everlasting impression!"

The delighted amazement reached even her tired ears, and she had smiled wanly as she pushed the pile of coppers nearer to him.

"Have you been in before? It's stupid of me, but there are such hundreds of thousands of you, and you are gone in a minute, you see. That's your change, I think."

"Hundreds of thousands of me, hey?" He had leaned across the counter, his face alight with mirth. "I wish to the Lord my angel mother could hear you— it's what I'm forever tellin' her, though just between us, it's stuff and nonsense. I've got a well-founded suspicion that I'm absolutely unique. You wait and see!"

And she had waited— and she had seen ! She stirred a little, dropped the note into the flames, and turned to the next, the quiet, mocking mouth suddenly tortured and rebellious. "No, you must be mad," it ran, the trim writing strangely shaken. "How often have you seen me— five times? Do you know how old I am. How hard and tired and useless? No— no a thousand times. In a little while we will wake up and find that we were dreaming."

That had brought him to her swifter than Fate, triumphant mischief in every line of his exultant face. "Just let those damned old cups slip from your palsied fingers, will you? I'm goin' to take your honourable age for a little country air— it may keep you out of the grave for a few days longer. Never can tell! No use your scowlin' like that— the car's outside, and the big chief says to be off with you. Says you have no more colour than a banshee, and not half the life— can't grasp the fact that it's just chronic antiquity. Fasten the collar about your throat— no, higher! Darlin', darlin', think of havin' a whole rippin' day to ourselves. You're glad, too, aren't you, my little stubborn saint?"

Oh, that joyous and heart-breaking voice, running on and on— it made all the other voices that she had ever heard seem colourless and unreal

"Darlin' idiot, what do I care how old you are? Thirty, hey? Almost old enough to be an ancestor! Look at me— no, look at me! Dare you to say that you aren't mad about me!"

Mad about him— mad, mad! She lifted her hands to her ears, but she could no more shut out the exultant voice now than she could on that windy afternoon.

"Other fellow got tired of you, did he? Good luck for us, what? You're a fearfully tiresome person, darlin'. It's goin' to take me nine-tenths of eternity to tell you how tiresome you are. Give a chap a chance, won't you? The tiresomest thing about you is the way you leash up that dimple of yours. No, by George, there it is! Janie, look at me―"

She touched the place where the leashed dimple had hidden with a delicate and wondering finger— of all Jerry's gifts to her the most miraculous had been that small fugitive. Exiled now, forever and forever.

"Are you comin' down to White Orchards next week-end? I'm off for France on the twelfth and you've simply got to meet my people. You'll be insane about 'em— Rosemary's the most beguilin' flibbertigibbet, and I can't wait to see you bein' a kind of an elderly grandmother to her. What a bewitchin' little grandmother you're goin' to be one of these days―"

Oh, Jerry ! Oh, Jerry, Jerry ! She twisted in her chair, her face suddenly a small mask of incredulous terror. No, no, it wasn't true, it wasn't true— never— never— never! And then, for the first time, she heard it. Far off but clear, a fine and vibrant humming, the distant music of wings! The faint, steady pulsing was drawing nearer and nearer— nearer still— it must be flying quite high. The hateful letters scattered about her as she sprang to the open window— no, it was too high to see, and too dark, though the sky was powdered with stars— but she could hear it clearly, hovering and throbbing like some gigantic bird. It must be almost directly over her head, if she could only see it.

"It sounds — it sounds the way a humming-bird would look through a telescope," she said half aloud, and Rosemary murmured sleepily but courteously, "What, Janet?"

"Just an airplane— no, gone now. It sounded like a bird. Didn't you hear it?"

"No," replied Rosemary drowsily. "We get so used to the old things that we don't even notice them any more. Queer time to be flying!"

"It sounded rather— beautiful," said Janet, her face still turned to the stars.

"Far off, but so clear and sure. I wonder— I wonder whether it will be coming back?"

Well, it came back. She went down to White Orchards with Rosemary for the following week-end, and after she had smoothed her hair and given a scornful glance at the pale face in the mirror, with its shadowy eyes and defiant mouth, she slipped out to the lower terrace for a breath of the soft country air. Halfway down the flight of steps she stumbled and caught at the balustrade, and stood snaking for a moment, her face pressed against its rough surface. Once before— once before she had stumbled on those steps, but it was not the balustrade that had saved her. She could feel his arms about her now, holding her up, holding her close and safe. The magical voice was in her ears. "Let you go? I'll never let you go! Poor little feet, stumblin' in the dark, what would you do without Jerry? Time's comin', you cheeky little devils, when you'll come runnin' to him when he whistles! No use tryin' to get away— you belong to him."

Oh, whistle to them now, Jerry— they would run to you across the stars!

"How'd you like to marry me before I go back to-morrow? No? No accountin' for tastes, Miss Abbott— lots of people would simply jump at it! All right— April, then. Birds and flowers and all that kind o' thing— pretty intoxicatin', what? No, keep still, darlin' goose. What feller taught you to wear a dress that looks like roses and smells like roses and feels like roses? This feller? Lord help us, what a lovely liar!"

And suddenly she found herself weeping helplessly, desperately, like an exhausted child, shaken to the heart at the memory of the rose-coloured dress.

"You like me just a bit, don't you, funny, quiet little thing? But you'd never lift a finger to hold me— that's the wonder of you— that's why I'll never leave you. No, not for heaven. You can't lose me— no use tryin'."

But she had lost you, Jerry— you had left her, for all your promises, to terrified weeping in the hushed loveliness of the terrace, where your voice had turned her still heart to a dancing star, where your fingers had touched her quiet blood to flowers and flames and butterflies. She had believed you then— what would she ever believe again? And then she caught back the despairing sobs swiftly, for once more she heard, far off, the rushing of wings. Nearer— nearer— humming and singing and hovering in the quiet dusk. Why, it was over the garden! She flung back her head, suddenly eager to see it; it was a friendly and thrilling sound in all that Stillness. Oh, it was coming lower— lower still— she could hear the throb of the propellers clearly. Where was it? Behind those trees, perhaps? She raced up the flight of steps, dashing the treacherous tears from her eyes, straining up on impatient tiptoes. Surely she could see it now! But already it was growing fainter— drifting steadily away, the distant hum growing lighter and lighter— lighter still―

"Janet!" called Mrs. Langdon's pretty, patient voice. " Dinner-time, dear! Is there any one with you?"

"No one at all, Mrs. Langdon. I was just listening to an airplane."

"An airplane? Oh, no, dear— they never pass this way any more. The last one was in October, I think―"

The soft, plaintive voice trailed off in the direction of the dining-room and Janet followed it, a small, secure smile touching her lips. The last one had not passed in October. It had passed a few minutes before, over the lower garden. She quite forgot it by the next week— she was becoming an adept at forgetting. That was all that was left for her to do! Day after day and night after night she had raised the drawbridge between her heart and memory, leaving the lonely thoughts to shiver desolately on the other side of the moat.

She was weary to the bone of suffering, and they were enemies, for all their dear and friendly guise; they would tear her to pieces if she ever let them in. No, no, she was done with them. She would forget, as Jerry had forgotten. She would destroy every link between herself and the past— and pack the neat little steamer trunk neatly— and bid these kind and gentle people good-by — and take herself and her bitterness and her dullness back to the class-room in the Western university town— back to the Romance languages. The Romance languages!

She would finish it all that night, and leave as soon as possible. There were some trinkets to destroy, and his letters from France to burn— she would give Rosemary the rose-coloured dress— foolish, lovely little Rosemary, whom he
had loved, and who was lying now fast asleep in the next room curled up like a kitten in the middle of the great bed, her honey-coloured hair failing about her in a shining mist.

She swept back her own cloud of hair resolutely, frowning at the candle-lit reflection in the mirror. Two desolate pools in the small, pale oval of her face stared back at her— two pools with something drowned in their lonely depths. Well, she would drown it deeper!

The letters first; how lucky that they still used candle-light! It would make the task much simpler— the funeral pyre already lighted. She moved one of the tall candelabra to the desk, sitting for a long time quite still, her chin cupped in her hands, staring down at the bits of paper. She could smell the wall-flowers under the window as though they were in the room— drenched in dew and moonlight, they were reckless of their fragrance. All this peace and cleanliness and orderly beauty— what a ghastly trick for God to have played— to have taught her to adore them, and then to snatch them away! All about her, warm with candle-light, lay the gracious loveliness of the little room with its dark waxed furniture, its bright glazed chintz, its narrow bed with the cool linen sheets smelling of lavender, and its straight, patterned curtains— oh, that hateful, mustard-coloured den at home, with its golden-oak day-bed!

She wrung her hands suddenly in a little hunted gesture. How could he have left her to that, he who had sworn that he would never leave her? In every one of those letters beneath her linked fingers he had sworn it— in every one perjured— false half a hundred times. Pick up any one of them at random

"Janie, you darling stick, is 'dear Jerry' the best that you can do? You ought to learn French! I took a perfectly ripping French kid out to dinner last night— name's Liane, from the Varietes— and she was calling me 'mon grand cheri' before the salad, and 'mon p'tit amour' before the green mint. Maybe that'll buck you up! And I'd have you know that she's so pretty that it's ridiculous, with black velvet hair that she wears like a little Oriental turban, and eyes like golden pansies and a mouth between a kiss and a prayer— and a nice affable nature into the bargain. But I'm a ghastly jackass— I didn't get any fun out of it at all— because I really didn't even see her. Under the pink shaded candles to my blind eyes it seemed that there was seated the coolest, quietest, whitest little thing, with eyes that were as indifferent as my velvety Liane's were kind, and mockery in her smile. Oh, little masauerader! If I could get my arms about you even for a minuite— if I could kiss so much as the tips of your lashes — would you be cool and quiet and mocking then? Janie, Janie, rosy-red as flowers on the terrace and sweeter— sweeter— they're about you now — they'll be about you always!"

Burn it fast, candle — faster, faster. Here's another for you.

"So the other fellow cured you of using pretty names, did he— you don't care much for dear and darling any more? Bit hard on me, but fortunately for you, Janie Janet, I'm rather a dab at languages— 'specially when it comes to what the late lamented Boche referred to as 'cosy names.' Querida mi alma, douchka, Herzliebchen, carissima; and bien, bien-aimée, I'll not run out of salutations for you this side of heaven— no— nor t'other. I adore the serene grace with which you ignore the ravishing Liane. Haven't you any curiosity at all, my Sphinx? No? Well, then, just to punish you, I'll tell you all about it. She's married to the best fellow in the world— a liaison officer working with our squadron— and she worships the ground that he walks on and the air that he occasionally flies in. So whenever I run up to the City of Light, en permission, I look her up, and take her the latest news— and for an hour, over the candles, we pretend that I am Philippe, and that she is Janie. Only she says that I don't pretend very well— and it's just possible that she's right.

"Mon petit coeur et grand trésor, I wish that I could take you flying with me this evening. You'd be daft about it! Lots of it's a rotten bore, of course, but there's something in me that doesn't live at all when I'm on this too, too solid earth. Something that lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting until I've climbed up into the seat, and buckled the strap about me and laid my hands on the 'stick.' It's waiting— waiting for a word— and so am I. And I lean far forward, watching the figure toiling out beyond till the call comes back to me, clear and confident, 'Contact, sir?' And I shout back, as restless and exultant as the first time that I answered it— 'Contact!'

"And I'm off— and I'm alive— and I'm free! Ho, Janie! That's simpler than Abracadabra or Open Sesame, isn't it? But it opens doors more magical than ever they swung wide, and something in me bounds through, more swift and eager than any Aladdin. Free! I'm a crazy sort of a beggar, my little love— that same thing in me hungers and thirsts and aches for freedom. I go half mad when people or events try to hold me— you, wise beyond wisdom, never will. Somehow, between us, we've struck the spark that turns a mere piece of machinery into a wonder with wings— somehow, you are forever setting me free. It is your voice— your voice of silver and peace— that's eternally whispering 'Contact!' to me— and I am released, heart, soul, and body! And because you speed me on my way, Janie, I'll never fly so far, I'll never fly so long, I'll never fly so high that I'll not return to you. You hold me fast, forever and forever."

You had flown high and far indeed, Jerry — and you had not returned. Forever and forever! Burn faster, flame!

"My blessed child, who's been frightening you? Airplanes are by all odds safer than taxis— and no end safer than the infernal duffer who's been chaffing you would be if I could once get my hands on him. Damn fool! Don't care if you do hate swearing— damn fools are damn fools, and there's an end to it. All those statistics are sheer melodramatic rot— the chap who fired 'em at you probably has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious with jealousy. Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus, the best pursuit-plane in the R. F. C.— or out of it?)— Peg's about as likely to let me down as you are! We'd do a good deal for each other, she and I— nobody else can really fly her, the darling! But she'd go to the stars for me— and farther still. Never you fear— we have charmed lives, Peg and I— we belong to Janie.

"I think that people make an idiotic row about dying, anyway. It's probably jolly good fun— and I can't see what difference a few years here would make if you're going to have all eternity to play with. Of course you're a ghastly little heathen, and I can see you wagging a mournful head over this already— but every time that I remember what a shocking sell the After Life (exquisite phrase!) is going to be for you, darling, I do a bit of head-wagging myself— and it's not precisely mournful! I can't wait to see your blank consternation— and you needn't expect any sympathy from me. My very first words will be, 'I told you so!' Maybe I'll rap them out to you with a table-leg!

"What do you think of all this Ouija Planchette rumpus, anyway? I can't for the life of me see why any one with a whole new world to explore should hang around chattering with this one. I know that I'd be half mad with excitement to get at the new job, and that I'd find re-assuring the loved ones (exquisite phrase number two) a hideous bore. Still, I can see that it would be nice from their selfish point of view! Well, I'm no ghost yet, thank God— nor yet are you— but if ever I am one, I'll show you what devotion really is. I'll come all the way back from heaven to play with foolish Janie, who doesn't believe that there is one to come from. To foolish, foolish Janie, who still will be dearer than the prettiest angel of them all, no matter how alluringly her halo may be tilted or her wings ruffled. To Janie who, Heaven forgive him, will be all that one poor ghost has ever loved!"

Had there come to him, the radiant and the confident, a moment of terrible and shattering surprise— a moment when he realized that there were no pretty angels with shining wings waiting to greet him— a moment when he saw before him only the overwhelming darkness, blacker and deeper than the night would be, when she blew out the little hungry flame that was eating up the sheet that held his laughter? Oh, gladly would she have died a thousand deaths to have spared him that moment!

"My little Greatheart, did you think that I did not know how brave you are? You are the truest soldier of us all, and I, who am not much given to worship, am on my knees before that shy gallantry of yours, which makes what courage we poor duffers have seem a vain and boastful thing. When I see you as I saw you last, small and white and clear and brave, I can't think of anything but the first crocuses at White Orchards, shining out, demure and valiant, fearless of wind and storm and cold— fearless of Fear itself. You see, you're so very, very brave that you make me ashamed to be afraid of poetry and sentiment and pretty words— things of which I have a good, thumping Anglo-Saxon terror, I can tell you! It's because I know what a heavenly brick you are that I could have killed that statistical jackass for bothering you; but I'll forgive him, since you say that it's all right. And so ghosts are the only things in the world that frighten you— even though you know that there aren't any. You and Madame de Stael, hey? 'I do not believe in ghosts, but I fear them!' It's pretty painful to learn that the mere sight of one would turn you into a gibbering lunatic. Nice sell for an enthusiastic spirit who'd romped clear back from heaven to give you a pleasant surprise— I don't think! Well, no fear, young Janie— I'll find some way if I'm put to it— some nice, safe, pretty way that wouldn't scare a neurasthenic baby, let alone the dauntless Miss Abbott. I'll find―"

Oh, no more of that— no more! She crushed the sheet in her hands fiercely, crumpling it into a little ball— the candle-flame was too slow. No, she couldn't stand it— she couldn't — she couldn't, and there was an end to it. She would go raving mad— she would kill herself— she would―

She lifted her head, wrenched suddenly back from that chaos of despair, alert and intent. There it was again, coming swiftly nearer and nearer from some immeasurable distance— down— down— nearer still— the very room was humming and throbbing with it— she could almost hear the singing in the wires. She swung far out over the window edge, searching the moon-drenched garden with eager eyes— surely, surely it would never fly so low unless it were about to land! Engine trouble, perhaps— though she could detect no break in the huge, rhythmic pulsing that was shaking the night.

Still―

"Rosemary!" she called urgently. " Rosemary— listen— is there a place where it can land?"

"Where what can land?" asked a drowsy voice.

"An airplane. It's flying so low that it must be in some kind of trouble— do come and see!"

Rosemary came pattering obediently toward her, a small, docile figure, dark eyes misted with dreams, wide with amazement.

"I must be nine-tenths asleep," she murmured gently. "Because I don't hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps―"

"Hush— listen!" begged Janet, raising an imperative hand— and then her own eyes widened. "Why— it's gone―"

There was a note of flat incredulity in her voice.

"Heavens, how those things must eat up space! Not a minute ago it was fairly shaking this room, and now―"

Rosemary stifled a small pink yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

"Perhaps you were asleep too," she suggested humbly.

"I don't believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle— he does make the most dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly ripping night— do see!"

They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic and enchantment. The corners of Janet's mouth lifted suddenly. How absurd people were!

The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle ! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic— even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent— and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land— anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly forever! But if they must rest, those beating wings— the old R. F. C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling— "Happy landings ! Happy landings, you!"

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as "the Big Storm." It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown appalling and incredible, even to Janet's American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn forever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness— it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Every one had struggled through the day assuring one another that when evening came it would be all right— dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other's hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

"Like— like black cotton wool," explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

"I honestly think that we must be dreaming," she murmured to her feverish audience; "I do, honestly. Why, it's only May, and we never, never— there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though. D'you remember, Mummy?"

"It's hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, love. Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet."

Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence— that terrible, empty space waiting to be filled up with your thoughts— why, the idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too— she closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and stiller, but open-eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory. The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that late October day.

She had been sitting curled up on the steps in the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path— there had been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in Jerry's great tweed coat— watching the tall figure swinging across from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes— not even curious. It was not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that he was wearing a foreign uniform— and even then she had promptly placed him as one of Rosemary's innumerable conquests, bestowing on him a friendly and inquiring smile.

"Were you looking for Miss Langdon?"

Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

"But no," he had said gently, "I was looking for you, Miss Abbott."

"Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was Miss Abbott?"

And he had smiled— with his lips, not his eyes.

"I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Philippe Laurent, Miss Abbott."

And "Oh," she had cried joyously, "Liane's Philippe!"

"But yes — Liane's Philippe. They are not here, the others? Madame Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?"

"No, they've gone to some parish fair, and I've been wicked and stayed home. Won't you sit down and talk to me? Please!"

"Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy's Janie that I would say it. May I, then?"

It had seemed to Jeremy's Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.

"Yes. And quickly, please."

So he had told her— quickly— in his exquisitely careful English, and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the details of the last drive, instead of tearing her life to pieces with every word.

She remembered now that it hadn't seemed real at all— if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and went raving mad!

"You say— that his back is broken?"

"But yes, my dear," Liane's Philippe had told her, and she had seen the tears shining in his gray eyes.

"And he is badly burned?"

"My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask— not good, not good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry— and so dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from hell itself— because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to tell you, most lucky lady ever loved."

"You mean— that he isn't going to die?"

"I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his life. Hold it fast."

"Will he— will he get well?"

"He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for him?"

And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the sunshine, an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant. Now he was hers forever, the restless wanderer— delivered to her bound and helpless, never to stray again.

Hers to worship and serve and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken— hers at last!

"I'm coming," she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly. "Take me to him— please let's hurry."

"Ma pauvre petite, this is war. One does not come and go at will. God knows by what miracle enough red tape unwound to let me through to you, to bring my message and to take one back."

"What message, Philippe?"

"That is for you to say, little Janie. He told me, 'Say to her that she has my heart— if she needs my body, I will live. Say to her that it is an ugly, broken, and useless thing; still, hers. She must use it as she sees fit. Say to her— no, say nothing more. She is my Janie, and has no need of words. Tell her to send me only one, and I will be content.' For that one word, Janie, I have come many miles. What shall it be?"

And she had cried out exultantly, "Why, tell him that I― say―"

But the word had died in her throat. Her treacherous lips had mutinied, and she had sat there, feeling the blood drain back out of her face — out of her heart— feeling her eyes turn back with sheer terror, while she fought with those stiffened rebels. Such a little word "Live!"— surely they could say that. Was it not what he was waiting for, lying far away and still— schooled at last to patience, the reckless and the restless! Oh, Jerry, Jerry, live!

Even now she could feel her mind, like some frantic little wild thing, racing, racing to escape Memory. What had he said to her? "You, wise beyond wisdom, will never hold me— you will never hold me— you will never―"

And suddenly she had dropped her twisted hands in her lap and lilted her eyes to Jerry's ambassador.

"Will you please tell him— will you please tell him that I say— 'Contact'?"

"Contact?" He had stood smiling down at her, ironical and tender. "Ah, what a race! That is the prettiest word that you can find for Jerry? But then it means to come very close, to touch, that poor harsh word— there he must find what comfort he can. We, too, in aviation use that word — it is the signal that says— 'Now, you can fly!' You do not know our vocabulary, perhaps?"

"I know very little."

"That is all then? No other message? He will understand, our Jerry?"

And Janie had smiled— rather a terrible small smile. "Oh, yes," she told him. "He will understand. It is the word that he is waiting for, you see."

"I see." But there had been a grave wonder in his voice.

"Would it―" she had framed the words as carefully as though it were a strange tongue that she was speaking— "would it be possible to buy his machine? He wouldn't want any one else to fly it."

"Little Janie, never fear. The man does not live who shall fly poor Peg again. Smashed to kindling-wood and burned to ashes, she has taken her last flight to the heaven for good and brave birds of war. Not enough was left of her to hold in your two hands."

"I'm glad. Then that's all— isn't it? And thank you for coming."

"It is I who thank you. What was hard as death you have made easy. I had thought the lady to whom Jeremy Langdon gave his heart the luckiest creature ever born— now I think him that luckiest one." The grave grace with which he had bent to kiss her hand made of the formal salutation an accolade— "My homage to you, Jerry's Janie!" A quick salute, and he had turned on his heel, swinging off down the flagged path with that swift, easy stride — past the sun-dial— past the lily-pond— past the beech-trees— gone! For hours and hours after he had passed out of sight she had sat staring after him, her hands lying quite still in her lap— staring, staring — they had found her there when they came back, sitting where Rosemary was seated now. Why, there, on those same steps, a bare six months ago—

Something snapped in her head, and she stumbled to her feet, clinging to the arm of her chair.

"I can't stand it!" she gasped. "No, no, it's no use— I can't, I tell you. I―"

Rosemary's arm was about her— Mrs. Langdon's soft voice in her ears— a deeper note from Rosemary's engineer.

"Oh, I say, poor girl! What is it, dear child — what's the matter? Is it the heat, Janie?"

"The heat!" She could hear herself laughing — frantic, hateful, jangling laughter that wouldn't stop. "Oh, Jerry! Oh-h, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!"

"It's this ghastly day. Let me get her some water, Mrs. Langdon. Don't cry so, Janie— please, please don't, darling."

"I c-can't help it— I c-can't―" She paused, listening
intently, her hand closing sharply over Rosemary's wrist.

"Oh, listen, listen — there it comes again — I told you so!"

"Thank Heaven," murmured Mrs. Langdon devoutly, "I thought that it never was going to rise this evening. It's from the south, too, so I suppose that it means rain."

"Rain?" repeated Janet vaguely. "Why in the world should it mean rain? " Her small, pale face looked suddenly brilliant and enchanted, tilted up to meet the thunderous music that was swinging nearer and nearer. "Oh, do listen, you people! This time it's surely going to land!"

Rosemary stared at her blankly. "Land? What are you talking about, Janie?"

"My airplane— the one that you said was the fat Hodges boy on a motorcycle! Is there any place near here that it can make a landing?"

"Darling child―" Mrs. Langdon's gentle voice was gentler than ever— "Darling child, it's this wretched heat. There isn't any airplane, dear— it's just the wind rising in the beeches."

"The wind?" Janet laughed aloud— they really were too absurd. "Why, Mrs. Langdon, you can hear the engines, if you'll only listen! You can hear them, can't you, Mr.  Bain?"

The young engineer shook his head. " No plane would risk flying with this storm coming, Miss Abbott. There's been thunder for the last hour or so, and it's getting nearer, too. It's only the wind, I think."

"Oh, you're laughing at me — of course, of course you hear it. Why, it's as clear as— as clear as―"

Her voice trailed off into silence. Quite suddenly, without any transition or warning, she knew. She could feel her heart stand perfectly still for a minute, and then plunge forward in mad flight, racing, racing— oh, it knew, too, that eager heart! She took her hand from the arm of the chair, releasing Rosemary's wrist very gently.

"Yes, of course, it's the heat," she said quietly. She must be careful not to frighten them, these kind ones. "If you don't mind, Mrs. Langdon, I think that I'll go down to the gate to watch the storm burst. No, please, don't any of you come— I'll promise to change everything if I get caught— yes, everything! I won't be long; don't wait for me."

She walked sedately enough until she came to the turn in the path, but after that she ran, only pausing for a minute to listen breathlessly. Oh, yes— following, following, that gigantic music! How he must be laughing at her now— blind, deaf, incredulous little fool that she had been, to doubt that Jerry would find a way! But where could he land? Not in the garden— not at the gates— oh, now she had it— the far meadow. She turned sharply; it was dark, but the path must be here. Yes, this was the wicket gate; her groping fingers were quite steady— they found the latch— released it — the gate swung to behind her flying footsteps. "Oh, Jerry, Jerry!" sang her heart. Why hadn't she worn the rosecoloured frock? It was she who would be a ghost in that trailing white thing. To the right here— yes, there was the hawthorn hedge— only a few steps more— oh, now!

She stood as still as a small statue, not moving, not breathing, her hands at her heart, her face turned to the black and torn sky. Nearer, nearer, circling and darting and swooping— the gigantic humming grew louder— louder still— it swept about her thunderously, so close that she clapped her hands over her ears, but she stood her ground, exultant and undaunted. Oh, louder still— and then suddenly the storm broke. All the winds and the rains of the world were unleashed, and fell howling and shrieking upon her; she staggered under their onslaught, drenched to the bone, her dress whipping frantically about her, blinded and deafened by that tumultuous clamour. She had only one weapon against it— laughter— and she laughed now — straight into its teeth. And as though hell itself must yield to mirth, the fury wavered— failed— sank to muttering. But Janie, beaten to her knees and laughing, never even heard it die.

"Jerry?" she whispered into the darkness, "Jerry?"

Oh, more wonderful than wonder, he was there! She could feel him stir, even if she could not hear him— so close, so close was he that if she even reached out her hand, she could touch him. She stretched it out eagerly, but there was nothing there— only a small, remote sound of withdrawal, as though some one had moved a little.

"You're afraid that I'll be frightened, aren't you?" she asked wistfully. "I wouldn't be— I wouldn't— please come back!"

He was laughing at her, she knew, tender and mocking and caressing; she smiled back, tremulously.

"You're thinking, 'I told you so!' Have you come far to say it to me?"

Only that little stir— the wind was rising again.

"Jerry, come close— come closer still. What are you waiting for, dear and dearest?"

This time there was not even a stir to answer her; she felt suddenly cold to the heart. What had he always waited for?

"You aren't waiting— you aren't waiting to go?" She fought to keep the terror out of her voice, but it had her by the throat. "Oh, no, no— you can't— not again! Jerry, Jerry, don't go away and leave me— truly and truly I can't stand it— truly!"

She wrung her hands together desperately; she was on her knees to him — did he wish her to go lower still? Oh, she had never learned to beg!

"I can't send you away again— I can't. When I sent you to France I killed my heart — when I let you go to death, I crucified my soul. I haven't anything left but my pride— you can have that, too. I can't send you back to your heaven. Stay with me— stay with me, Jerry!"

Not a sound— not a stir— but well she knew that he was standing there, waiting. She rose slowly to her feet.

"Very well— you've won," she said hardly. "Go back to your saints and seraphs and angels; I'm beaten. I was mad to think that you ever cared— go back!" She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her throat; she had gone several steps before she realized that he was following her — and all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell from her like a cloak.

"Oh, Jerry," she whispered, "Jerry, darling, I'm so sorry. And you've come so far— just to find this! What is it that you want; can't you tell me?"

She stood tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her answer— but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.

"Oh, of course!" she cried clearly. "Of course, my wanderer! Ready?"

She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide — a small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.

And, "Contact, Jerry!" she called joyously into the darkness. "Contact!"

There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell — and then grow fainter — fainter still— dying, dying— dying―

But Janie, her small white face turned to the storm-swept sky behind which shone the stars, was smiling radiantly. For she had sped her wanderer on his way— she had not failed him!

__________________

6: Slow Poison

Alice Duer Miller

The Saturday Evening Post Jun 12 1920

THE Chelmsford divorce had been accomplished with the utmost decorum, not only outwardly in the newspapers, but inwardly among a group of intimate friends. They were a homogeneous couple— were liked by the same people, enjoyed the same things, and held many friends in common. These were able to say with some approach to certainty that everyone had behaved splendidly, even the infant of twenty-three with whom Julian had fallen in love.

Of course there will always be the question— and we used to argue it often in those days— how well a man can behave who, after fifteen perfectly satisfactory years of married life, admits that he has fallen in love with another woman. But if you believe in the clap-of-thunder theory, as I do, why, then, for a man nearing forty, taken off his feet by a blond-headed girl, Julian, too, behaved admirably.

As for Mrs. Julian, there was never any doubt as to her conduct. I used to think her— and I was not alone in the opinion— the most perfect combination of gentleness and power, and charity and humour, that I had ever seen. She was a year or so older than Julian— though she did not look it— and a good deal wiser, especially in the ways of the world; and, oddly enough, one of the features that worried us most in the whole situation was how he was ever going to get on, in the worldly sense, without her. He was to suffer not only from the loss of her counsel but from the lack of her indorsement. There are certain women who are a form of insurance to a man; and Anne gave a poise and solidity to Julian's presentation of himself which his own flibbertigibbet manner made particularly necessary.

I think this view of the matter disturbed Anne herself, though she was too clever to say so; or perhaps too numbed by the utter wreck of her own life to see as clearly as usual the rocks ahead of Julian. It was she, I believe, who first mentioned, who first thought of divorce, and certainly she who arranged the details. Julian, still in the more ideal stage of his emotion, had hardly wakened to the fact that his new love was marriageable. But Mrs. Julian, with the practical eye of her sex, saw in a flash all it might mean to him, at his age, to begin life again with a young beauty who adored him. She saw this, at least, as soon as she saw anything; for Julian, like most of us when the occasion rises, developed a very pretty power of concealment. He had for a month been seeing Miss Littell every day before any of us knew that he went to see her at all. Certainly Anne, unsuspicious by nature, was unprepared for the revelation.

It took place in the utterly futile, unnecessary way such revelations always do take place. The two poor innocent dears had allowed themselves a single indiscretion; they had gone out together, a few days before Christmas, to buy some small gifts for each other. They had had an adventure with a beggar, an old man wise enough to take advantage of the holiday season, and the no less obvious holiday in the hearts of this pair. He had forced them to listen to some quaint variant of the old story, and they had between them given him all the small change they had left— sixty-seven cents, I think it was.

That evening at dinner Julian, ever so slightly afraid of the long pause, had told Anne the story as if it had happened to him alone. A few days afterward the girl, whom she happened to meet somewhere or other, displaying perhaps a similar nervousness, told the same story. Even the number of cents agreed.

I spoke a moment ago of the extraordinary power of concealment which we all possess; but I should have said the negative power to avoid exciting suspicion. Before that moment, before the finger points at us, the fool can deceive the sage; and afterward not even the sage can deceive the veriest fool.

Julian had no desire to lie to his wife. Indeed, he told me he had felt from the first that she would be his fittest confidante. He immediately told her everything— a dream rather than a narrative.

Nowhere did Anne show her magnanimity more than in accepting the rather extravagant financial arrangements which Julian insisted on making for her. He was not a rich man, and she the better economist of the two. We knew she saw that in popular esteem Julian would pay the price of her pride if she refused, and that in this ticklish moment of his life the least she could do was to let him have the full credit for his generosity.

"And after all," as she said to me, "young love can afford to go without a good many things necessary to old age."

It was the nearest I heard her come to a complaint.

As soon as everything was settled she sailed for Florence, where she had friends and where, she intimated, she meant to spend most of her time.

I said good-by to her with real emotion, and the phrase I used as to my wish to serve her was anything but a convention.

Nor did she take it so.

"Help Julian through this next year," she said. "People will take it harder than he knows. He'll need you all." And she was kind enough to add something about my tact. Poor lady! She must have mentally withdrawn her little compliment before we met many times again.

ii

PERHAPS the only fault in Anne's education of her husband had been her inability to cling. In his new menage this error was rectified, and the effect on him was conspicuously good; in fact, I think Rose's confidence in his greatness pulled them through the difficult time.

For there was no denying that it was difficult. Many people looked coldly on them, and I know there was even some talk of asking him to resign from the firm of architects of which he was a member. The other men were all older, and very conservative. Julian represented to them everything that was modern and dangerous. Granger, the leading spirit, was in the habit of describing himself as holding old-fashioned views, by which he meant that he had all the virtues of the Pilgrim Fathers and none of their defects. I never liked him, but I could not help respecting him. The worst you could say of him was that his high standards were always success- ful. You felt that so fanatical a sense of duty ought to have required some sacrifices.

To such a man Julian's conduct appeared not only immoral but inadvisable, and unfitting in a young man, especially without consulting his senior partners.

We used to say among ourselves that Granger's reason for wanting to get rid of Julian was not any real affection for the dim old moral code, but rather his acute realization that without Anne his junior partner was a less valuable asset. Things were still hanging fire when I paid her the first of my annual visits. She was dreadfully distressed at my account of the situation. She had the manner one sometimes sees in dismissed nurses who meet their former little charges unwashed or uncared for. She could hardly believe it was no longer her business to put the whole matter right.

"Can't she do something for him?" she said. "Make her bring him a great building. That would save him."

It was this message that I carried home to Rose; at least I suggested the idea to her as if it were my own. I had my doubts of her being able to carry it out.

Out of loyalty to Julian, or perhaps I ought to say out of loyalty to Anne, we had all accepted Rose, but we should soon have loved her in any case. She was extraordinarily sweet and docile, and gave us, those at least who were not parents, our first window to the east, our first link with the next generation, just at the moment when we were relinquishing the title ourselves. I am afraid that some of the males among us envied Julian more than perhaps in the old days we had ever envied him Anne.

But we hardly expected her to further his career as Anne had done, and yet, oddly enough, that was exactly what she did. Her methods had all the effectiveness of youth and complete conviction. She forced Julian on her friends and relations, not so much on his account as on theirs. She wanted them to be sure of the best. The result was that orders flowed in. Things took a turn for the better and continued to improve, as I was able to report to Anne when I went to see her at Florence or at Paris. She was always well lodged, well served, and surrounded by the pleasantest people; yet each time I saw her she had a look exiled and circumscribed, a look I can only describe as that of a spirit in reduced circumstances.

She was always avid for details of Julian and all that concerned him; and as times improved I was stupid enough to suppose I pleased her by giving them from the most favourable angle. It seemed to me quite obvious, as I saw how utterly she had ruined her own life, that she ought at least to have the comfort of knowing that she had not sacrificed it in vain. And so I allowed myself, not an exaggeration but a candour more unrestrained than would be usual in the circumstances.

Led on by her burning interest I told her many things I might much better have kept to myself; not only accounts of his work and his household and any new friends in our old circle, but we had all been amazed to see a sense of responsibility develop in Julian in answer to his new wife's dependence on him. With this had come a certain thoughtfulness in small attentions, which, I saw too late, Anne must always have missed in him. She was so much more competent in the smaller achievements of life than he that it had been wisdom to leave them to her; and Anne had often traveled alone and attended to the luggage, when now Rose was pesonally conducted like a young empress. The explanation was simple enough: Anne had the ability to do it, and the other had not. Even if I had stopped to think, I might fairly have supposed that Anne would find some flattery in the contrast. I should have been wrong.

Almost the first thing she asked me was whether he came home to luncheon. In old times, though his house was only a few blocks from his office, he had always insisted that it took too much time. Anne had never gained her point with him, though she put some force into the effort. Now I had to confess he did.

"It's much better for him," she said with pleasure, and quite deceived me; herself, too, perhaps.

Yet even I, for all my blindness, felt some uneasiness the year Rose's son was born. I do not think the desire for off-spring had ever taken up a great deal of room in Julian's consciousness, but of course Anne had wanted children, and I felt very cruel, silting in her little apartment in Paris, describing the baby who ought to have been hers. How different her position would have been now if she had some thin-legged little girl to educate or some raw-boned boy to worry over; and there was that overblessed woman at home, necessary not only to Julian but to Julian's son.

It was this same year, but at a later visit, that I first became aware of a change in Anne. At first the charm of her surroundings, her pretty clothes, even to the bright little buckles on her shoes, blinded me to the fact that she herself was changed. I do not mean that she was aged. One of the delightful things about her was that she was obviously going to make an admirable old lady; the delicate boniness of her face and the clearness of her skin assured that. This was a change more fundamental. Even in her most distracted days Anne had always maintained a certain steadiness of head. She had trodden thorny paths, but she had always known where she was going. I had seen her eyelids red, but I had never failed to find in the eyes themselves the promise of a purpose. But now it was gone. I felt as if I were looking into a little pool which had been troubled by a stone, and I waiting vainly for the reflection to re-form itself.

So painful was the impression that before I sailed for home I tried to convey to her the dangers of her mood.

"I think you are advising me to be happy," she said.

"I am advising no such thing," I answered. "I am merely pointing out that you run the risk of being more unhappy than you are. My visits— or rather the news I bring you— are too important to you. You make me feel as if it were the only event of the year— to you who have always had such an interesting life of your own."

"I have not had a life of my own since I was twenty," she returned. It was at twenty she had married.

"Then think of Julian," I said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit. "For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman, one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now, would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole story, would find it hard to forgive him if you should fail to continue to be the splendid triumphant creature whom we know you were designed to be."

She gave me a long queer look, which meant something tremendous. Evidently my words had made an impression. They had, but not just the one I intended.

iii

ONE OF THE first people I always saw on returning was Julian. How often he thought of Anne I do not know, but he spoke of her with the greatest effort. He invariably took care to assure himself that she was physically well, but beyond this it would have been a brave person who dared to go. He did not want to hear the details of her life and appearance. It was with some trepidation, therefore, that a few months after this I came to tell him that Anne was about to return to America. Why she was coming, or for how long, her letter did not say. I only knew that the second Saturday in December would see her among us again. It seemed fair to assume that her stay would not be long. Julian evidently thought so for he arranged to be in the West for three or four weeks.

I went to meet her. The day was cold and rainy, and as soon as I saw her I made up my mind that the crossing had been a bad one, and I was glad no one else had come to the wharf with me. She was standing by the rail, wrapped in a voluminous fur coat— the fashions were slim in the extreme— and her hat was tied on by a blue veil.

I may as well admit that from the moment I heard of her projected return I feared that her real motive for coming, conscious or unconscious, was to see Julian again. So when I told her of his absence I was immensely relieved that she took it as a matter of course.

"I suppose we might have met," she observed. "As it is, I can go about without any fear of an awkward encounter."

I say I was relieved, but I was also excessively puzzled. Why had Anne come home?

It was a question I was to hear answered in a variety of ways during the next few months, by many of Anne's friends and partisans; for, as I think I have said, Anne had inspiied great attachment since her earliest days. Why had she come home? they exclaimed. Why not, pray? Had she done anything criminal that she was to be exiled? Did I think it pleasant to live abroad on a small income? Even if she could get on without her friends, could they do without her? The tone of these questions annoyed me not a little when I heard them, which was not for some time. Soon after Anne's arrival I, too, was called away, and it was not until February that I returned and was met by the carefully set piece— Anne the Victim.

With that ill-advised self-confidence of which I have already made mention, I at once set about demolishing this picture. I told Anne's friends, who were also mine, that she would thank them very little for their attitude. I found myself painting her life abroad as a delirium of intellect and luxury. I even found myself betraying professional secrets and arguing with total strangers as to the amount of her income. Even in Montreal faint echoes of this state of things had reached me, but not until I went to see Anne on my return did I get any idea of their cause. She had taken a furnished apartment from a friend, in a dreary building in one of the West Forties. Only a jutting front of limestone and an elevator man in uniform saved it, or so it seemed to me, from being an old-fashioned boarding house. Its windows, small, as if designed for an African sun, looked northward upon a darkened street. Anne's apartment was on the second floor, and the requirements of some caryatids on the outside rendered her fenestration particularly meager. Her friend, if indeed it were a friend, had not treated her generously in the matter of furniture. She had left nothing superfluous but two green glass jugs on the mantelpiece, and had covered the chairs with a chintz, the groundwork of which was mustard colour.

Another man who was there when I came in, who evidently had known Anne in different surroundings, expressed the most hopeful view possible when he said that doubtless it would all look charming when she had arranged her own belongings.

Anne made a little gesture. "I haven't any belongings," she said.

I didn't know what she meant, perhaps merely a protest against the tyranny of things, but I saw the effect her speech produced on her auditor. Perhaps she saw it. too, for presently she added: "Oh, yes! I have one."

And she went away, and came back carrying a beautiful old silver loving cup. I knew it well.

It came from Julian's forebears. Anne had always loved it, and I was delighted that she should have it now. She set it on a table before a mirror, and here it did a double share to make the room possible.

When we were alone I expressed my opinion of her choice of lodgings.

"This sunless cavern!" I said. "This parlour-car furniture!"

She looked a little hurt. "You don't like it?" she said.

"Do you?" I snapped back.

After a time I had recourse to the old argument that it didn't look well; that it wasn't fair to Julian. But she had been expecting this.

"My dear Walter," she answered, "you must try to be more consistent. In Paris you told me that I must cease to regulate my life by Julian. You were quite right. This place pleases me, and I don't intend to go to a hotel, which I hate, or to take a house, which is a bother, in order to soothe Julian's feelings. I have begun to lead my life to suit myself."

The worst of it was, I could think of no answer.

A few evenings afterward we dined at the same house. Anne arrived with a scarf on her head, under the escort of a maid. She had come in a trolley car. Nobody's business but her own, perhaps, if she would have allowed it to remain so, but when she got up to go, and other people were talking of their motors' being late, Anne had to say: "Mine is never late; it goes past the corner every minute."

I could almost hear a sigh, "Poor angel! " go round the room.

The next thing that happened was that Julian sent for me. He was in what we used to call in the nursery "a state."

"What's this I hear about Anne's being hard up?" he said. "Living in a nasty flat, and going out to dinner in the cars?"

And he wouldn't listen to an explanation. "She must take more; she must be made to take more."

I had one of my most unfortunate inspirations. I thought I saw an opportunity for Julian to make an impression.

"I don't think she would listen to me," I said. "Why don't you get Mr. Granger to speak to her?"

The idea appealed to Julian. He admired Mr. Granger, and remembered thai he and Anne had been friends. Whereas I thought, of course, that Mr. Granger would thus be made to see that the fault, if there were a fault, was not of Julian's generosity. Stupidly enough I failed to see that if Julian's offer was graceful Anne's gesture of refusal would be upon a splendid scale.

And it must have been very large, indeed, to stir old

Granger as it did. He told me there had been tears in his eyes while she spoke of her husband's kindness. Kindness! He could not but compare her surroundings with the little house, all geraniums and muslin curtains, in which the new Mrs. Chelmsford was lodged. Anne had refused, of course. In the circumstances she could not accept. She said she had quite enough for a single woman. The phrase struck Granger as almost unbearably pathetic.

One day I noticed the loving cup— which was always on Anne's table, which was admired by everyone who came to the apartment, and was said to recall her, herself, so pure and graceful and perfect— one day the loving cup was gone.

I was so surprised when my eye fell on its vacant place that I blurted out: "Goodness, Anne, where's your cup?"

The next moment I could have bitten out my tongue.

Anne stood still in the middle of the room, twisting her hands a little, and everyone— there were three or four of us there— stopped talking.

"Oh," she said, "oh, Walter, I know you'll scold me for being officious and wrong-headed, but I have sent the cup back to Julian's son. I think he ought to have it."

Everyone else thought the deed extremely noble. I took my hat and went to Rose. Rose was not very enthusiastic. A beautiful letter had accompanied the cup. We discussed the advisability of sending it back; but of course that would have done no good. The devilish part of a favour is that to accept or reject it is often equally incriminating. Anne held the situation in the hollow of her hand. Besides, as Rose pointed out, we couldn't very well return it without asking Julian, and we had both agreed that for the present Julian had better remain in ignorance of the incident. He would have thought it mean-spirited to allow any instance of Anne's generosity to remain concealed from the public. Rose and I were willing to allow it to drop.

I was sorry, therefore, when I found, soon after, not only that everyone knew of the gift but that phrases of the beautiful letter itself were current, with marks of authenticity upon them. It was not hard to trace them to Anne's intimates.

I have no idea to this day whether Anne was deliberately trying to ruin the man for whom she had sacrificed so much; or whether one of those large, unconscious, self-indulgent movements of our natures was carrying her along the line of least resistance. There are some people, I know, who can behave well only so long as they have the centre of the stage, and are driven by a necessity almost moral to regain such a place at any cost, so that they may once again begin the exercise of their virtues.

Anne's performance was too perfect, I thought, for conscious art, and she was not a genius. She was that most dangerous of all engines, a good person behaving wickedly. All her past of high-mindedness and kindness protected her now like an armour from the smallest suspicion. All the grandeur of her conduct at the time of the divorce was remembered as a proof that she at least had a noble soul. Who could doubt that she wished him well?

If so, she soon appeared to be the only person who did.

For, as we all know, pity is one of the most dangerous passions to unloose. It demands a victim. We rise to pathos, only over the dead bodies of our nearest and dearest.

Every phrase, every gesture of Anne's stirred one profoundly, and it was inevitable, I suppose, that Julian should be selected as the sacrifice. I noticed that people began to speak of him in the past, though he was still moving among us— "As Julian used to say."

He and Anne fortunately never met, but she and the new Mrs. Julian had one encounter in public. If even then Anne would have shown the slightest venom all might still have been well. But, no, the worn, elderly woman, face to face with the young beauty who had possessed herself of everything in the world, showed nothing but a tenderness so perfect that every heart was wrung. I heard Rose criticized for not receiving her in the same spirit.

The next day Julian was blackballed at a philanthropic club at which he had allowed himself to be proposed merely from a sense of civic duty.

Over the incident I know Anne wept. I heard her tears.

"Oh, if I could have spared him that!" she said.

My eyes were cold, but those of Mr. Granger, who came in while her eyelids were still red, were full of fire.

She spent a week with the Grangers that summer. The whole family— wife, sons and daughters— had all yielded to the great illusion.

It must not be supposed that I had failed to warn Julian. The supineness of his attitude was one of the most irritating features of the case. He answered me as if I were violating the dead; asked me if by any chance I didn't see he deserved all he was getting.

No one was surprised when in the autumn he resigned from his firm. There had been friction between the partners for some time. Soon afterward he and Rose sailed for Italy, where they have lived ever since. He had scarcely any income except that which he made in his profession; his capital had gone to Anne. He probably thought that what he had would go further abroad.

I do not know just how Anne took his departure, except that I am sure she was wonderful about it. I had ceased to see her. She has, however, any number of new friends, whose fresh interest in her story keeps it continually alive. She has given up her ugly flat and taken a nice little house, and in summer I notice she has red geraniums in the window boxes. I often see a nice little motor standing before her door— the result doubtless of a year's economy.

Whenever her friends congratulate her on the improvement in her finances she says she owes it all to me— I am such an excellent man of business.

"I admire Walter so much," I am told she says, "though I'm afraid I have lost him as a friend. But then, in the last few years I have lost so much." And she smiles that brave sad smile of hers.

____________________

7:  Mary, Queen Of Scots

Guy Gilpatric

1896-1950

Britannia and Eve Aug 1929

THE Inchcliffe Castle, Para to Naples, stuck her rusty snout around the bend of Andalucia and ambled into sheltered waters across which sprawled the purple shadow of Gibraltar. Behind the Rock the sun had climbed an hour high; but Britannia's Lion, in its towering majesty, shut off all save a few ambitious rays which leaked around its edges, and framed it in a pinkly-glowing aureole.

The full moon, on the other hand— it would have been your left— swung over the white houses of Algeciras, in Spain, and sinking lower, paved a baleful pathway beyond Trafalgar for the wandering footsteps of Admiral Nelson's unquiet love-sick ghost.

In this strange and lovely moment of borning day and dying night, the Inchcliffe Castle's anchor let go with a shocking clatter of chains, a vulgar display of sparks, much profanity from the fo'c'sle head and even more from the bridge. The profanity was that of religious men, which is the kind that blisters paint.

The anchor caught in the mud, jerked loose once or twice, stirred up many bubbles and an evil smell, and finally hooked a fluke. Mr. Montgomery, hanging over the bow and seeing the chain stretch taut, waved his hands with the weary yet triumphant gesture of an orchestra leader bringing the Ninth Symphony to a glorious close.

Captain Ball, on the bridge, heaved a stertorous sigh. "Ring off the engines," he directed; and somewhere down below, the telegraph jingled. Suddenly, disturbingly, the decks ceased to throb and the stanchions to tremble. After eighteen pulsing days the ship seemed no longer to be alive. Silence, torrents of silence, poured in from all sides. And just then the sun, conquering the traditionally-unconquerable, scaled Gibraltar's heights and sent the night, its moon, and its lovely mystery scurrying away into Africa.

"Hell's bones!" remarked Captain Ball, unbuttoning his overcoat and taking a cigar from his night-shirt pocket, "What a trip that was!" Resting his elbows on the bridge rail, his eye travelled aft over the battered gear and salt-streaked superstructure which told of a rough and troublous passage.

Mr. Glencannon, the Chief Engineer, appeared on the deck below. At the heels of his oil-soaked carpet slippers toddled a jet black female Scottish terrier with barrel chest, stump legs, and whiskers such as one associates with natives of Aberdeen. Mr. Glencannon strolled to the rail, spat copiously over it, and considered Gibraltar at length— meanwhile wiping his face with a handful of greasy cottonwaste. Then he lifted the dog in his arms, and placed her forepaws on the rail.

"Mary," he said, "this is Geebraltar, an heestoric port. I'll first deerect your attention to the street which runs peerpindicular to yon wharf. If ye'll note the fourth— no, the fufth building on the left, ye'll be notin' a pub whuch sells the finest whusky South of the Firth o' Clyde. And then, on the nuxt street, over toward the naval coal docks, ye'll see a sma' house wi' a red roof. That's a pub called 'The Royal Oak,' after an old ancient freegate ship whuch... oh, a vurra gude morning to you, Captain Ball!"

"Good morning, Mr. Glencannon," and the Captain nodded over the canvas dodger. "How are you and Mary this morning— fit?"

Mr. Glencannon shook his head dolefully. "As fur my ain puir health, the less said the better. But Mary, the little lass, is ailin' sore. I was aboot to crave yer kind permeesion, Sir, to tak' her ashoor to a vetereenary, and get him to preescribe."

"Right-o," agreed the Captain cheerfully.

"Thanks kindly, Captain Ball," said Mr. Glencannon, setting Mary on the deck and deftly brushing up her coat. "The lass and I are grateful. We are indeed. Come on, Sweetheart— we'll ha' a bit o' brukfust, we will, and then Papa'll put on his new uneefurrm, and dress his ain little lass in her tartan collar, and hoot! ashore fo a romp we'll go!"

"Oh, now, my eye!" exploded Mr. Montgomery, the mate, who had joined Captain Ball upon the bridge. "Did you ever 'ear such blithering tosh in all your life, Sir?— Mr. Glencannon mykes a bit of an arss of 'imself over that dog when 'e sets 'is mind to it, 'e does!"

Captain Ball crinkled the corners of his eyes as do men who weren't born yesterday. "Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Montgomery, it's like this. I know as well as you do that he's going ashore to get drunk. Mr. Glencannon has his weaknesses, as who of us does not? Scripture says that 'To sin is human,' and though Mr. Glencannon drinks a full quart of whisky every day, and be damned if I haven't seen him drink five quarts, we must remember to let he without sin cast the first stone.— Particularly when he's the only Engineer on the high seas who can handle our rusty old tubercular junk pile of a blank-blanked engine."

"Well, all I can say is, God 'elp the Rock of Gibraltar!" grunted Mr. Montgomery, only half convinced. "'Ere 'e comes now."

Mr. Glencannon, brave in his best white cap, the four gold stripes of his rank, and the medal awarded him for saving a German's life by mistake, stood at the foot of the gangway and invited bids from the yammering bumboatmen to take him ashore. He cut the lowest bid in half, kicked the chin of the nearest competitor, who had sought to seize his arm, and made the trip to the Commercial Wharf for thruppence. With Mary frisking at his heels, he passed through cobbled streets lined with whitewashed houses labelled, for example, "Sgt. MaJor Alfred Hoskins, 67th Rgt. R.G.A.," and "Non-Com. Married Quarters— No Loitering." The latter sign he felt to be distinctly offensive in its insinuation. "Ha' no fear!" he muttered toward it. "I've better to do than loiter aboot with the she-beef o' the Royal Garrison Arteelery!" And forthwith be turned into an establishment the window of which displayed a spirited lithograph of the Relief of Lucknow, depicting several bottles of MacCrimmon's Very Old Liqueur Whisky being put to good use by the beleaguered defenders in the foreground.

He found MacCrimmon's Very Old to be distinctly creditable stuff— as good, in some respects, as The Laird's Selected Relics, Clammarty Royal Tartan Blend and Dunleven Particularly Choice. But none of them, of course, could compare with Duggan's Dew of Kirkintilloch— most gorgeous of all liquids that ever dripped golden from the nozzle of a still to mingle its perfume with that of the heather in the cold Highland mists.

Now, like Duggan's Dew, Mr. Glencannon hailed from the town of Kirkintilloch, in Dumbartonshire; and the picture on the label made him first happy, then sentimental, and finally homesick. A great grief overcame him; tears coursed his cheeks as he contemplated that label, and he was weeping copiously when he finished the bottle. "Look," he sobbed, hoisting Mary to the table, "Gaze, Lass, upon the dear fameeliar scenes o' your childhood! 'Tis there that our Mothers live. Ye played there as a bairn, and so, alas, did I... ." And Mary, falling into the spirit of the occasion, tilted back her head and gave vent to piercing wails. Mr. Glencannon purchased six cases of the whisky, ordered five to be delivered aboard the ship and the sixth to be stowed in a cab. The cab proved to be a spidery victoria driven by a Spaniard in straw hat, short jacket and baggy trousers. Mr. Glencannon and Mary scrambled aboard with the God-speed of the publican and some assistance from the bystanders.

"Where to, Capitan?" inquired the Spaniard.

"How in the hell shud I know?" replied Mr. Glencannon. "Must I act as guide to ye, on ye're ain native heath?"

"But I come from La Linea, "Señor," protested the Spaniard.

"Vurra weel— let's go there, then," and with Mary perched on the seat beside him, Mr. Glencannon dropped off to sleep.

They had clip-clopped out of the streets of the town and were well in sight of the Neutral Strip— a barb-wired belt of land which separates Spain from the Crown Colony of Gibraltar— when the driver reined in his nag. Mr. Glencannon, opening his eyes, saw that they were halted at a house before which paced a sentry in the uniform of the Royal Garrison Artillery. A sign on the place read "H.Q. Frontier Guard. Passes for Spain." Across the road, under the flat face of the Rock, stretched a field filled with hurdles, water-jumps, cricket greens, polo goal posts, and aeroplane hangars. Upon this field, troops were playing football.

The driver dismounted, entered the house, and shortly emerged with a little green slip which read "North front. Permit until first evening gunfire. John Cochrane, Chief of Frontier Police."

Mr. Glencannon was considering this suspiciously, and was just about to ask Mary what country they were in, when a disturbing sound came from the distance. At first he thought he only imagined it, and instinctively he glanced at Mary for confirmation. But, yes— her ears were cocked, her tail was wagging, and she was craning her neck around the side of the carriage. It was the sound of bagpipes; and they were playing "Piobair o' Lochaber."

"Foosh!" exclaimed Mr. Glencannon, lurching to his feet. "Why, it's the Argyll and Dumbarton Highlanders!" Mary showed her front teeth in a broad smile and then her entire perfect set in a series of joyous barks. Her little hairy forepaws pattered on the cushions, and she wriggled with excitement. For there, down the long white road, was the head of the approaching column— kilts and sporans swinging to the time, white gaiters slogging up and down, tartan ribbons aflutter on the pipes, and the bass-drummer with his leopard-skin apron whirling his sticks cross-armed, overhead, and behind him in the wild inimitable Highland manner!— It was the Dumbartons, beyond a doot— and Mr. Glencannon's own Cousin Douglas was a Sergeant of the Regiment!

Nearer and nearer they came— the shrill chant and basso drone of the pipes leaping into the air and echoing against the great grey face of the Rock above the plain. Then came the muffled clump of sixteen hundred hobnailed boots, the rhythmic swish of eight hundred tartan kilts! The Dumbartons— the great and glorious Dumbartons!— were marching by! Wheeling smartly before his very carriage, they deployed into the field.

They were going to play football, and so they weren't carrying their rifles. Numerous sporting Majors, Captains and Subalterns had turned out with the team, and they swung along with their walking sticks beneath their arms and banter upon their lips. And over all, there was a friendly, comfortable smell of venerable Scotch whisky upon the soft Iberian air....

Mr. Glencannon was sniffing deep when suddenly he and Mary beheld a sight which transfixed them. It was the regimental mascot— the handsomest, whiskeriest Scottish terrier in the whole wide world— a rakish, swashbuckling lad wearing a tiny Highland bonnet cocked over one ear, the silver-and-cairngorm badge of the Dumbartons pinned to the side of it. And he toddled along with a man who stood full seven feet high— a giant with a chest the size of the Inchcliffe Castle's main boiler, and great hairy knees like the oak trees worshipped by the Druids of antiquity. This giant— there could be no mistaking him!— was Mr. Glencannon's own Cousin Douglas.

Mary cast virginal modesty to the winds, and shrilly yapped her admiration. Cousin Douglas, spotting Mr. Glencannon, gave vent to a joyous "Hoot!" and promptly fell out of the ranks. Mr. Glencannon, not to be outdone, promptly fell out of the carriage.

"Heigh-nanny, lass!" said the terrier with the bonnet, swaggering up to Mary and kissing her full upon her luscious black lips without so much as a by-your-leave. "I'm Jock o' the Dumbartons, senior dog o' the reegiment. Welcome to Geebraltar!" Mary stood blushing, eyes downcast but heart throbbing wildly... Mr. Glencannon and Cousin Douglas were slapping each other on the back, saying "Weel, weel, weel, I'll be domned!" and repeating it over and over again.

"Foosh, Cousin Colin, and it's gude to see you!" roared the giant at length. "Why, ye domned old ghoul, ye, when did we meet, the last?"

"Let me think, let me think," said Mr. Glencannon, closing his eyes and grasping the carriage lamp for support. "Why, o' course!— it was Nineteen-fufteen, when I was Second on the transport takin' ye oot to G'llipoli."

"Thurteen years ago— eh, to think of it!" sighed Cousin Douglas and the sigh was as the sound of a locomotive plunging into a tunnel. "Weel,"— and he wrinkled his nose, smacked his lips, and cast his eye on the case of whisky partly concealed by the carriage rug. "Weel, it's customarra in such happy ceercumstances..."

"―I was aboot to suggest it!" hastened Mr. Glencannon. "Coach man, I'll thank ye for the loan o' a corkscrew."

"Dinna trouble yersel'," said Cousin Douglas, seizing a bottle and smiting it so lustily against his palm that the cork leapt out as from the choicer vintages of Rheims. "Come, Cousin Colin, do we mount yon carriage the twa o' us, an' go see the bullfight over in Spanish Town. T'wull be better than the futball. But feerst, let us drink a drap to our happy meeting. Here— I'll open another bottle so we'll both have one."... He tilted his own quart beneath his bristly red moustache; and when he took it down again, lo, it was only a pint.

"Haw!" he snorted, closing his eyes ecstatically and holding the bottle at arm's length, "Tis the Dew o' Kirkintilloch! I dinna ha' to look at the label— I reccognize the way it treeckles doon an cozeys my sluggish liver! 'Tis a happy meetin', Cousin Colin— a happy meetin' indeed!"

He climbed aboard the carriage, which groaned in every joint and took an alarming list to starboard as he settled into the seat. Mr. Glencannon was about to join him, when he saw Mary and the mascot joyfully gambolling across the troop-filled field.

"'Tis a-richt, peerfectly a-richt," Cousin Douglas assured him, "Let the little tykes frusk aboot while the lads are playin' futball. I'll tell MacPheerson and MacColquhoun to keep an eye on them, and leave them with Corporal MacClintoch at the Frontier guard house.— Ye see," he explained, "We're off juty today to play the 67th Arteelery— attendance optional. My time's my ain till evening gun. So, carra on, coachman!"

The driver beat several clouds of dust out of the hide of his nag, and headed for the border. At the British side they were halted by a Highlander who blanched perceptibly as he recognized Sergeant Douglas Glencannon.

"I'll thank ye for a look at your passes, gentlemen," he said, saluting.

"Tak' a gude look at this, Corporal MacClintoch!" replied Cousin Douglas, extending a fist the size of a hoof, and quivering it threateningly beneath the guardian's nose. "Tak' a verra gude look, while ye're still alive to see it!"

"Thank ye," said Corporal MacClintoch, backing up a trifle, and saluting again, "Yere passes are sateesfactorra."

They jogged across the Neutral Strip— a stretch of meadow in which the kine of Castile and Britain browsed in sisterly contentment— and paused again, for inspection at the Spanish Customs. The aduanero was a fat gentleman in a blue uniform and a sword left over from the American War. "Have you tobacco or spirits?" he asked in perfect English.

"I dinna ken your lingo," replied Cousin Douglas, smacking a fresh bottle against his palm, and watching the cork sail into a roadside cactus. "Drive on, gilly!"

The coachman was plainly troubled. "Tell heem you have no the tobacco, no the alcohol," he whispered.

Without removing his feet from the opposite cushions, Cousin Douglas leaned halfway across the road and seized the aduanero by the throat. Dragging him to the side of the carriage he shook him playfully.

"Pass!" gurgled the guard, retreating into his hut and swallowing diligently— "Vaya con Dios!" The driver clucked to his horse, and five minutes later they turned into the main street of La Linea de la Concepcion, headed for the bull ring. Evidently, from the cheering, the corrida was already in progress.

Arrived at the Plaza, Mr. Glencannon dismounted first. "Do ye please tak' charge o' the refreeshments, Cousin Dooglas, while I pay for the cab," he said, handing the driver a counterfeit Costa Rican colon and three brass Chinese coins with holes in them. The Spaniard raised his voice in protest, whereupon Cousin Douglas, standing in the carriage with the case of whisky under his arm, jumped into the air thrice and so mightily that the vehicle broke into two distinct halves. As he stood triumphant in the splintered wreck of the rear section, the terrified horse, the driver and the front wheels vanished in a dust-cloud down the street.

A crowd collected, and through it five cocked-hatted policemen shouldered their way. They took one look at Cousin Douglas, and shouldered their way out again.

Mr. Glencannon placed a shilling on the ledge of the ticket booth. "Twa!" he ordered, holding up two fingers. The Spaniard shook his head and pointed at the scale of prices. "Dos duros, Señores," he said.

"Twa duros!" snorted Cousin Douglas, "Why, 'tis rank extortion! Dinna submeet to it, Cousin Colin, dinna submeed" Seizing the ticket booth by one of its upper corners, he rocked it back and forth so violently that the Spaniard, the cash-till and two chairs went rattling about the interior like peas in a withered pod. Then, reaching through the window, he seized a sheaf of tickets and led the way through the cool shadowy tunnel which gave access to the seats.

They entered the first vacant box and were about to sit down when the audience burst into a storm of frenzied "vivas!" Ortiz, the Seville Sticker, had manoeuvred his bull into a perfect pase de la firma, and dispatched him with a masterly thrust. "Oreja! Oreja!" screamed the crowd; and at a sign from the President of the corrida, a man sliced an ear off the bull and handed it— the highest of honors— to the matador.

Ortiz, in his heelless slippers, strutted bowing around the sombra side of the arena, amid a shower of hats, fans, and flowers.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Glencannon, "Look, Cousin Dooglas— you can throw things! Foosh! what fun!" And falling wholeheartedly into the spirit of it all, he tossed a chair over the barrier and knocked the matador flat.

In that instant the cheers turned into the menacing roar of a mob whose idol has been desecrated. Wheeling about, Cousin Douglas saw a thousand Spaniards descending upon them with murder in their eyes. His bottle was almost empty; so hesitating only to empty it completely, he hurled it into the front rank with withering effect. Four chairs were handy, and he flung them with unerring aim. A policeman appeared with drawn sword. Cousin Douglas seized the sword, spanked him with it, and grasped him by the belt and threw him across seven tiers of seats. The seats were vacant— in fact by this time they had an entire section of the arena to themselves.

"Weel," he said, languidly settling himself beside Mr. Glencannon, who had been busy uncorking bottles, "We can better enjoy the speectacle the noo, without the fumes o' garlic from yon feelthy Spaniards."

"Ye're richt," agreed Mr. Glencannon, impatiently viewing the group which bore Ortiz from the arena on a stretcher, "But if they dinna proceed with their domned bull-sticking soon, I shall deemand our money back."

"A verra reasonable and tolerant deecision, Cousin Colin! We're being imposed upon by these swundling foreigners, and it's time we asseerted oursel's!"

Grasping the captured sword, he was about to go out and complain to the management when a fanfare of trumpets gave him pause. A herald appeared upon the bloody sand below.

"Hoot!" applauded Mr. Glencannon, pounding his bottle on the ledge of the box, "He's aboot to eloqute! Lusten closely, Cousin Dooglas!"

Choosing his words according to the conventions of the Corrida, the herald announced that El Vaquerito, the thrice-eminent espada from Bilbao, would match wits with a bull "con buenos adornos en la pensadora"— which meant a most intelligent bull indeed. The bull, he went on to say, was none other than El Maquinista... .

"L. MacKinister!" exclaimed Mr. Glencannon, "Did ye hear that name, Cousin Dooglas?"

"I canna believe my ears! Why, he must be a MacKinister o' Kirkintilloch! A Scottish bull!"

Mr. Glencannon grasped him by the arm. "Cousin Dooglas," he hissed, "We canna permeet it!"

"Ye're domned richt we canna!" boomed Cousin Douglas, seizing his sword, shoving the two remaining bottles into his sporan, and rising to his full seven feet, "Come, Cousin Colin— the Glencannons are gaein' to the wars!"

They vaulted the rail of the box and clambered over the barrier into the arena. Three thousand Spaniards shouted, but only twenty interfered. Cousin Douglas attended to fourteen, and Mr. Glencannon disposed of six. "'Twas dry and theersty work," observed Mr. Glencannon, surveying the scene of carnage,— "Thank ye, Cousin Dooglas— I ha' a bottle o' my ain."

Occupied as they were, neither of them saw El Maquinista as he rushed snorting into the sunlight. Spotting Cousin Douglas's flaming scarlet kilt from afar, he thundered toward it. A mighty shout came from the audience.

"Lusten to them, Cousin Dooglas— why, I do believe they're giving us a cheer!" Mr. Glencannon raised his cap in a graceful gesture of acknowledgment, and Cousin Douglas made a courtly bow. As he did so, El Maquinista's horn very neatly removed his kilt, and left him with nothing below the waist save gaiters, shoes and stockings.

"Oh, shame, shame, Cousin Dooglas!" cried Mr. Glencannon, "Quick, lad— do ye stand in back o' me and pull down your sporan!"

"'Twull be inadeequate," announced Cousin Douglas, "Look yonder, Colin— that domned bull has trompled my kilt all to nowt!"

A great rage came upon him. Despite Mr. Glencannon's scandalised protests, he strode across the arena and addressed the bewildered bull.

"Ye lout, ye!" he shouted, shaking his fist in the animal's face, "Ye ruddy garlic-eating impostor, ye! Ye're no Scot— ye're a feelthy, treecherous, back-knifing Spaniard, that's what ye are!"

El Maquinista bellowed, put down his head, and charged. Cousin Douglas stood his ground and met the charge with a right to the nose and a left jab to the eye. Stepping in, he landed blow after blow, every one of which jolted the bull from stem to stern.

"I'll knock ye oot, ye big booby, ye!" panted Cousin Douglas, "Another minute, and I'll uncoork the uppercut that made me Champion o' the Breetish Army."

Mr. Glencannon took out his watch, and stood solemnly by, ready to time the count. El Maquinista, both eyes closed and bleeding at the nose, was groggy on his feet when the bullfighters intervened. As they drove the bull out of the arena Cousin Douglas knocked out a couple of toreros for good measure. "Quick, Cousin Colin!" he shouted, "Help me borrow their troosers!" Together they had yanked most of the clothing off the limp Spaniards, when they saw five picadors galloping toward them, lances couched.

"Run for yere life, Cousin Dooglas— here comes the cavalry!" warned Mr. Glencannon; and dropping most of their spoils, they sprinted for the runway down which El Maquinista had vanished. He was standing just within the entrance, but he hastily stood aside when he recognized Cousin Douglas.

Climbing over the wall of the runway, they plunged into the labyrinthian foundations of the stadium. In the distance, they heard the hue and cry raised after them. Groping on their way, they came to a hole in the wall, and they crawled through it to find themselves in the back yard of a wine-shop.

"Foosh!" said Mr. Glencannon. "What a happy coeencidence! Let us gae in, Cousin Dooglas, and subdue the proprieter."

The tabernero was alone among his wine barrels, so Cousin Douglas imprisoned him within one, and sat upon it. "Oh, deary me, but I've a theerst on me!" he said, "Mak' haste, Cousin Colin, and let us quaff our fill."

"Verra weel," agreed Mr. Glencannon, inspecting the rows of bottles on the shelf, "I canna read any o' them, so we'll ha' to sample them all."

At this point things became curiously garbled. It seemed that a great deal was transpiring over a long period of time, but Mr. Glencannon's next really definite impression was of a splitting headache. He lay with eyes closed, his very soul cringing as white hot twinges of migraine surged through his brain.

Opening his eyes, he found that he was in his own room aboard the Inchcliffe Castle, and that he was wearing the green velvet jacket of a Spanish matador. Painfully hoisting himself to a sitting posture, he saw Mary Queen of Scots upon the floor, contentedly chewing a bull's ear.

"Bless me, I remember noo!" he chuckled, "Daddy brought it hame to his lass as a souvenir of Spain."

Mary wagged her tail and continued chewing.

"Weel," sighed Mr. Glencannon, lurching to his feet, "I wonder if we've coaled yet. Why! I do believe we're at sea!" He peered through the port at a blue expanse of Mediterranean across which trailed a long black smudge from the Inchcliffe Castle's funnel. He opened the port and gratefully gulped down the fresh, cool breeze. In the corner of his room were piled the five new cases of the Dew of Kirkintilloch, and uncorking a bottle, he poured himself a brimming tumblerful.

"Thur's no cure for dog-bite like the hair of the dog that bit ye!" he remarked to Mary, tossing it off and smacking his lips. Then, donning his working clothes, he made his way to the engine room— head clear, step brisk, and hand steady.

"Strike me ruddy, but the Chief's a wonder!" observed Mr. Swales, the Second Mate. "To look at 'im, this arfternoon, you'd think 'e was the H'Archbishop of Canterb'ry!"

"'Is recuperating powers are remarkable," agreed Mr. Montgomery. "I 'ad 'Ell's own time gettin' 'im out of the tender larst night. There was 'im and another wild man— a non-com. 'Ighlander nine foot tall, with nothing on below the wyste but one of them 'airy Scotch tobacco-pouches, like. Singin' 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' they were, and drinking out of bottles. They 'ad another of them black tykes with 'em, syme as Mary— wearing a little Scotch bonnet, 'e was."

"Well, the Scotch are a mad race," said Mr. Swales.

"Mad as 'Ell," agreed Mr. Montgomery, "And Mr. Glencannon's the maddest of the lot. But despite 'is quart a day, not counting 'olidays, he's a great engineer, Mr. Swales, a great engineer."

Some weeks later, though (they had called at Naples, gone to Cattaro, thence to Odessa, and were westward bound in the Sea of Candia) Mr. Glencannon's madness took a disquieting form. He became preoccupied, morose. He spent long hours in his room with Mary. His appetite dwindled.

At first there was only a rumor. Then the rumor spread throughout the ship's company until it was discussed incredulously from fo'c'sle to engine room. Mr. Glencannon had sworn off liquor!

"The thing is serious," declared Captain Ball, shaking his head ominously. "A man who has drank all his life like Mr. Glencannon has drank, can't shut down on it all at once."

"'E can't indeed!" said Mr. Montgomery, "But are you sure 'e 'as really sworn orff, Sir?"

"Yes. Last night I asked him if he'd lend me the loan of a little whisky to rub on my corns. He said 'Take all I've got and welcome, Captain— I'm quit o' the feelthy stuff!'"

"H'm," mused the Mate, "That looks bad, Sir.— Specially, offering you all 'e's got, 'im being of the Scottish persuasion, as you might say."

"Exactly! And he went moping off to his room saying he had to fix some medicine for Mary. She's sick or something, too."

"Sick my aunt, Sir! It's only the way 'e pampers the poor tyke! Meanwhile, 'e's letting 'is engines go to 'Ell."

"H'm. I noticed we were quite a bit shy on yesterday's run."

In the engine room things went from bad to worse. The Assistant Engineers, though diligently they slaved, lacked the great genius of their Chief which could make the old coffee grinder behave like clock work.

South of Kapsali they ran into dirty weather, and the poor old Castle took a sorry buffeting. She went rails under every roll, and the forward well-deck was a surge of green water.

Captain Ball, a notorious coal saver, had laid his course close. They were less than a mile off the thundering white breakers, when the engines sighed, wheezed, and stopped. From the gratings and ventilators came clouds of steam, and the sound of hammers and scurrying feet. Mr. Montgomery leaped to the speaking tube, and addressed the engine room. "'Urry up, you bleddy tinkers!" he screamed, "If you don't get way on 'er smartly you'll swim out through the condenser pipes!"

Captain Ball then stepped to the tube, and said a few words of his own. Those nearby could smell the rubber gums of his false teeth burning. When he had finished he went alone into the starboard wing of the bridge and considered the situation. Things were bad— very bad. In an hour, at most, they would pile up on a lee shore. He started toward his room to gather the ship's log, his Bible, chronometers and hair tonic preparatory to ordering away the boats. Half down the ladder he was blinded by a stinging gust of spray, and as he groped on his way he encountered some one coming up.

"Hoot, Captain!" shouted Mr. Glencannon, grasping his superior officer in a joyous and drunken embrace. "I was just gaein' up to get you! Stup into my room a moment, Sir— stup into my room!"

"Hell's bones, not now!" gasped the Captain, as he dragged Mr. Glencannon into the lee of the house, "We're due to pile up any minute, man! Can't you feel that the engines are stopped?"

"I was aboot to mak' appropreeate comment on the fact," said Mr. Glencannon, feigning a polite interest, "But if you'll just come wi' me a moment, Captain, and stup into my room, I'll go below in pairson and reepair them. It reminds me of a story I once heard aboot a..."

In desperation Captain Ball led the way across the rolling deck to Mr. Glencannon's room, and threw open the door.

"There, Captain," said the Engineer proudly, indicating the bunk with one hand and seizing a bottle with the other. "Look what the Angels ha' brought to Mary and her puir old Dad!"

On the center of the bed lay Mary Queen of Scots, feebly wagging her tail, and caressing six tiny squirming black shapes with a tender maternal muzzle.

"The responsibility!— Ah, the reesponsibility's been terrible Captain! But noo I'm my ain old self again! Do ye mak' yersel' comfortable for half a moment, Sir, while I just stup below and start those engines."

Weak and trembling, Captain Ball settled in a chair. This, he thought, would be as good a place to die as any. For the first time in his life be felt his years, and the tragic grief of a master about to lose his ship. Smiling bitterly, be patted Mary's hot little head. She raised it from her puppies and gratefully licked his hand. And at this instant there commenced a rhythmic throbbing underfoot! The Inchcliffe Castle became alive again! Mr. Glencannon, the wizard of steam, had worked a miracle with the engines!

Captain Ball arose slowly to his feet. Yes, the Inchcliffe Castle was ploughing along on her course. "Thank God— and three rousing cheers for Scotland!" he said.

In less than an hour, the Castle was around the Cape and in calm waters. Mr. Glencannon, oily, happy and thirsty, came back to his room.

"Weel, Lass!" he said, picking up the bottle, "I see that the Captain has gone. And— why, the domned old teetotal hypocrite! Look, Mary— he drank up half a pint o' Papa's Dew o' Kirkintilloch!"

_________________

8: Five Hundred Carats
George Griffith

1857-1906

Pearson’s Magazine Nov 1897

IT WAS SEVERAL months after the brilliant if somewhat mysterious recovery of the £15,000 parcel from the notorious but now vanished Seth Salter that I had the pleasure, and I think I may fairly add the privilege, of making the acquaintance of Inspector Lipinzki.

I can say without hesitation that in the course of wanderings which have led me over a considerable portion of the lands and seas of the world I have never met a more interesting man than he was. I say ‘was’, poor fellow, for he is now no longer anything but a memory of bitterness to the I.D.B.— but that is a yarn with another twist.

There is no need for further explanation of the all too brief intimacy which followed our introduction, than the statement of the fact that the greatest South African detective of his day was after all a man as well as a detective, and hence not only justifiably proud of the many brilliant achievements which illustrated his career, but also by no means loth that some day the story of them should, with all due and proper precautions and reservations, be told to a wider and possibly less prejudiced audience than the motley and migratory population of the Camp as it was in his day.

I had not been five minutes in the cosy, tastily-furnished sanctum of his low, broad-roofed bungalow in New De Beers Road before I saw it was a museum as well as a study. Specimens of all sorts of queer apparatus employed by the I.D.B.’s for smuggling diamonds were scattered over the tables and mantelpiece.

There were massive, handsomely-carved briar and meerschaum pipes which seemed to hold wonderfully little tobacco for their size; rough sticks of firewood ingeniously hollowed out, which must have been worth a good round sum in their time; hollow handles of travelling trunks; ladies’ boot heels of the fashion affected on a memorable occasion by Mrs Michael Mosenstein; and novels, hymn-books, church-services, and bibles, with cavities cut out of the centre of their leaves which had once held thousands of pounds’ worth of illicit stones on their unsuspected passage through the book-post.

But none of those interested, or, indeed, puzzled me so much as did a couple of curiously assorted articles which lay under a little glass case on a wall bracket. One was an ordinary piece of heavy lead tubing, about three inches long and an inch in diameter, sealed by fusing at both ends, and having a little brass tap fused into one end. The other was a small ragged piece of dirty red sheet— India-rubber, very thin— in fact almost transparent— and, roughly speaking, four or five inches square.

I was looking at these things, wondering what on earth could be the connection between them, and what manner of strange story might be connected with them, when the Inspector came in.

‘Good-evening. Glad to see you!’ he said, in his quiet and almost gentle voice, and without a trace of foreign accent, as we shook hands. ‘Well, what do you think of my museum? I daresay you’ve guessed already that if some of these things could speak they could keep your readers entertained for some little time, eh?’

‘Well, there is no reason why their owner shouldn’t speak for them,’ I said, making the obvious reply, ‘provided, always, of course, that it wouldn’t be giving away too many secrets of state.’

‘My dear sir,’ he said, with a smile which curled up the ends of his little, black, carefully-trimmed moustache ever so slightly, ‘I should not have made you the promise I did at the club the other night if I had not been prepared to rely absolutely on your discretion— and my own. Now, there’s whiskey-and-soda or brandy; which do you prefer? You smoke, of course, and I think you’ll find these pretty good, and that chair I can recommend. I have unravelled many a knotty problem in it, I can tell you.’

‘And now,’ he went on when we were at last comfortably settled, ‘may I ask which of my relics has most aroused your professional curiosity?’

It was already on the tip of my tongue to ask for the story of the gas-pipe and piece of india-rubber, but the Inspector forestalled me by saying:

‘But perhaps that is hardly a fair question, as they will all probably seem pretty strange to you. Now, for instance, I saw you looking at two of my curios when I came in. You would hardly expect them to be associated, and very intimately too, with about the most daring and skilfully planned diamond robbery that ever took place on the Fields, or off them, for the matter of that, would you?’

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘And yet I think I have learned enough of the devious ways of the I.D.B. to be prepared for a perfectly logical explanation of the fact.’

‘As logical as I think I may fairly say romantic,’ replied the Inspector as he set his glass down. ‘In one sense it was the most ticklish problem that I’ve ever had to tackle. Of course you’ve heard some version or other of the disappearance of the Great De Beers’ Diamond?’

‘I should rather think I had!’ I said, with a decided thrill of pleasurable anticipation, for I felt sure that now, if ever, I was going to get to the bottom of the great mystery. ‘Everybody in Camp seems to have a different version of it, and, of course, everyone seems to think that if he had only had the management of the case the mystery would have been solved long ago.’

‘It is invariably the case,’ said the Inspector, with another of his quiet, pleasant smiles, ‘that everyone can do work better than those whose reputation depends upon the doing of it. We are not altogether fools at the Department, and yet I have to confess that I myself was in ignorance as to just how that diamond disappeared, or where it got to, until twelve hours ago.

‘NOW, I am going to tell you the facts exactly as they are, but under the condition that you will alter all the names except, if you choose, my own, and that you will not publish the story for at least twelve months to come. There are personal and private reasons for this which you will probably understand without my stating them. Of course it will, in time, leak out into the papers, although there has been, and will be, no prosecution; but anything in the newspapers will of necessity be garbled and incorrect, and— well, I may as well confess that I am sufficiently vain to wish that my share in the transaction shall not be left altogether to the tender mercies of the imaginative penny-a- liner.’

I acknowledged the compliment with a bow as graceful as the easiness of the Inspector’s chair would allow me to make, but I said nothing, as I wanted to get to the story.

‘I had better begin at the beginning,’ the Inspector went on, as he meditatively snipped the end of a fresh cigar. ‘As I suppose you already know, the largest and most valuable diamond ever found on these fields was a really magnificent stone, a perfect octahedron, pure white, without a flaw, an weighing close on 500 carats. There’s a photograph of it there on the mantelpiece. I’ve got another one by me; I’ll give it to you before you leave Kimberley.

‘Well, this stone was found about six months ago in one of the drives on the 800-foot level of the Kimberley Mine. It was taken by the overseer straight to the De Beers’ offices and placed on the Secretary’s desk— you know where he sits, on the right hand side as you go into the Board Room through the green baize doors. There were several of the Directors present at the time, and, as you may imagine, they were pretty well pleased at the find, for the stone, without any exaggeration, was worth a prince’s ransom.

‘Of course, I needn’t tell you that the value per carat of a diamond which is perfect and of a good colour increases in a sort of geometrical progression with the size. I daresay that stone was worth anywhere between one and two millions, according to the depth of the purchaser’s purse. It was worthy to adorn the proudest crown in the world instead of— but there, you’ll think me a very poor story-teller if I anticipate.

‘Well, the diamond, after being duly admired, was taken upstairs to the Diamond Room by the Secretary himself, accompanied by two of the Directors. Of course, you have been through the new offices of De Beers, but still, perhaps I had better just run over the ground, as the locality is rather important.

‘You know that when you get upstairs and turn to the right on the landing from the top of the staircase there is a door with a little grille in it. You knock, a trap-door is raised and, if you are recognized and your business warrants it, you are admitted. Then you go along a little passage out of which a room opens on the left, and in front of you is another door leading into the Diamond Rooms themselves.

‘You know, too, that in the main room fronting Stockdale Street and Jones Street the diamond tables run round the two sides under the windows, and are railed off from the rest of the room by a single light wooden rail. There is a table in the middle of the room, and on your right hand as you go in there is a big safe standing against the wall. You will remember, too, that in the corner exactly facing the door stands the glass case containing the diamond scales. I want you particularly to recall the fact that these scales stand diagonally across the corner by the window. The secondary room, as you know, opens out on to the left, but that is not of much consequence.’

I signified my remembrance of these details and the Inspector went on.

‘The diamond was first put in the scale and weighed in the presence of the Secretary and the two Directors by one of the higher officials, a licensed diamond broker and a most trusted employee of De Beers, whom you may call Philip Marsden when you come to write the story. The weight, as I told you, in round figures was 500 carats. The stone was then photographed, partly for purposes of identification and partly as a reminder of the biggest stone ever found in Kimberley in its rough state.

‘The gem was then handed over to Mr Marsden’s care pending the departure of the Diamond Post to Vryburg on the following Monday—this was a Tuesday. The Secretary saw it locked up in the big safe by Mr Marsden, who, as usual, was accompanied by another official, a younger man than himself, whom you can call Henry Lomas, a connection of his, and also one of the most trusted members of the staff.

‘Every day, and sometimes two or three times a day, either the Secretary or one or other of the Directors came up and had a look at the big stone, either for their own satisfaction or to show it to some of their more intimate friends. I ought, perhaps, to have told you before that the whole Diamond Room staff were practically sworn to secrecy on the subject, because, as you will readily understand, it was not considered desirable for such an exceedingly valuable find to be made public property in a place like this. When Saturday came it was decided not to send it down to Cape Town, for some reasons connected with the state of the market. When the safe was opened on Monday morning the stone was gone.

‘I needn’t attempt to describe the absolute panic which followed. It had been seen two or three times in the safe on the Saturday, and the Secretary himself was positive that it was there at closing time, because he saw it just as the safe was being locked for the night. In fact, he actually saw it put in, for it had been taken out to show to a friend of his a few minutes before.

‘The safe had not been tampered with, nor could it have been unlocked, because when it is closed for the night it cannot be opened again unless either the Secretary or the Managing Director is present, as they each have a master-key without which the key used during the day is of no use.

‘Of course I was sent for immediately, and I admit I was fairly staggered. If the Secretary had not been so positive that the stone was locked up when he saw the safe closed on the Saturday I should have worked upon the theory— the only possible one, as it seemed— that the stone had been abstracted from the safe during the day, concealed in the room, and somehow or other smuggled out, although even that would have been almost impossible in consequence of the strictness of the searching system and the almost certain discovery which must have followed an attempt to get it out of the town.

‘Both the rooms were searched in every nook and cranny. The whole staff, naturally feeling that every one of them must be suspected, immediately volunteered to submit to any process of search that I might think satisfactory, and I can assure you the search was a very thorough one.

‘Nothing was found, and when we had done there wasn’t a scintilla of evidence to warrant us in suspecting anybody. It is true that the diamond was last actually seen by the Secretary in charge of Mr Marsden and Mr Lomas. Mr Marsden opened the safe, Mr Lomas put the tray containing the big stone and several other fine ones into its usual compartment, and the safe door was locked. Therefore that fact went for nothing.

‘You know, I suppose, that one of the Diamond Room staff always remains all night in the room; there is at least one night-watchman on every landing; and the frontages are patrolled all night by armed men of the special police. Lomas was on duty on the Saturday night. He was searched as usual when he came off duty on Sunday morning. Nothing was found, and I recognized that it was absolutely impossible that he could have brought the diamond out of the room or passed it to any confederate in the street without being discovered. Therefore, though at first sight suspicion might have pointed to him as being the one who was apparently last in the room with the diamond, there was absolutely no reason to connect that fact with its disappearance.’

‘I must say that that is a great deal plainer and more matter-of-fact than any of the other stories that I have heard of the mysterious disappearance,’ I said, as the Inspector paused to re-fill his glass and asked me to do likewise.

‘Yes,’ he said drily, the truth is more commonplace up to a certain point than the sort of stories that a stranger will find floating about Kimberley, but still I daresay you have found in your own profession that it sometimes has a way of—to put it in sporting language— giving Fiction a seven- pound handicap and beating it in a canter.’

‘For my own part,’ I answered with an affirmative nod, ‘my money would go on Fact every time. Therefore it would go on now if I were betting. At any rate, I may say that none of the fiction that I have so far heard has offered even a reasonable explanation of the disappearance of that diamond, given the conditions you have just stated, and, as far as I can see, I admit that I couldn’t give the remotest guess at the solution of the mystery.’

‘That’s exactly what I said to myself after I had been worrying day and night for more than a week over it,’ said the Inspector. ‘And then,’ he went on, suddenly getting up from his seat and beginning to walk up and down the room with quick, irregular strides, ‘all of a sudden in the middle of a very much smaller puzzle, just one of the common I.D.B. cases we have almost every week, the whole of the work that I was engaged upon vanished from my mind, leaving it for a moment a perfect blank. Then, like a lightning flash out of a black cloud, there came a momentary ray of light which showed me the clue to the mystery. That was the idea. These,’ he said, stopping in front of the mantelpiece and putting his finger on the glass case which covered the two relics that had started the story, ‘these were the materialization of it.’

‘And yet, my dear Inspector,’ I ventured to interrupt, ‘you will perhaps pardon me for saying that your ray of light leaves me just as much in the dark as ever.’

‘But your darkness shall be made day in all in good course,’ he said with a smile. I could see that he had an eye for dramatic effect, and so I thought it was better to let him tell the story uninterrupted and in his own way, so I simply assured him of my ever-increasing interest and waited for him to go on. He took a couple of turns up and down the room in silence, as though he were considering in what form he should spring the solution of the mystery upon me, then he stopped and said abruptly:

‘I didn't tell you that the next morning—that is to say, Sunday—Mr Marsden went out on horseback, shooting in the veld up towards that range of hills which lies over yonder to the northwestward between here and Barkly West. I can see by your face that you are already asking yourself what has that got to do with spiriting a million or so’s worth of crystallized carbon out of the safe at De Beers’. Well, a little patience, and you shall see.

‘Early that same Sunday morning, I was walking down Stockdale Street, in front of the De Beers’ offices, smoking a cigar, and, of course, worrying my brains about the diamond. I took a long draw at my weed, and quite involuntarily put my head back and blew it up into the air— there, just like that—and the cloud drifted diagonally across the street dead in the direction of the hills on which Mr Philip Marsden would just then be hunting buck. At the same instant the revelation which had scattered my thoughts about the other little case that I mentioned just now came back to me. I saw, with my mind’s eye, of course— well, now, what do you think I saw!’

‘If it wouldn’t spoil an incomparable detective,’ I said, somewhat irrelevantly, ‘I should say that you would make an excellent story-teller. Never mind what I think. I’m in the plastic condition just now. I am receiving impressions, not making them. Now, what did you see?’

‘I saw the Great De Beers’ Diamond— say from ten to fifteen hundred thousand pounds’ worth of concentrated capital—floating from the upper storey of the De Beers’ Consolidated Mines, rising over the housetops, and drifting down the wind to Mr Philip Marsden’s hunting-ground.’

To say that I stared in the silence of blank amazement at the Inspector, who made this astonishing assertion with a dramatic gesture and inflection which naturally cannot be reproduced in print, would be to utter the merest commonplace. He seemed to take my stare for one of incredulity rather than wonder, for he said almost sharply:

‘Ah, I see you are beginning to think that I am talking fiction now; but never mind, we will see about that later on. You have followed me, I have no doubt, closely enough to understand that, having exhausted all the resources of my experience and such native wit as the Fates have given me, and having made the most minute analysis of the circumstances of the case, I had come to the fixed conclusion that the diamond had not been carried out of the room on the person of a human being, nor had it been dropped or thrown from the windows to the street— yet it was equally undeniable that it had got out of the safe and out of the room.’

‘And therefore it flew out, I suppose!’ I could not help interrupting, nor, I am afraid, could I quite avoid a suggestion of incredulity in my tone.

‘Yes, my dear sir!’ replied the Inspector, with an emphasis which he increased by slapping the four fingers of his right hand on the palm of his left. ‘Yes, it flew out. It flew some seventeen or eighteen miles before it returned to the earth in which it was born, if we may accept the theory of the terrestrial origin of diamonds. So far, as the event proved, I was absolutely correct, wild and all as you may naturally think my hypothesis to have been.

‘But,’ he continued, stopping in his walk and making an eloquent gesture of apology, ‘being only human, I almost instantly deviated from truth into error. In fact, I freely confess to you that there and then I made what I consider to be the greatest and most fatal mistake of my career.

‘Absolutely certain as I was that the diamond had been conveyed through the air to the Barkly Hills, and that Mr Philip Marsden’s shooting expedition had been undertaken with the object of recovering it, I had all the approaches to the town watched till he came back. He came in by the Old Transvaal Road about an hour after dark. I had him arrested, took him into the house of one of my men who happened to live out that way, searched him, as I might say, from the roots of his hair to the soles of his feet and found— nothing.

‘Of course he was indignant, and of course I looked a very considerable fool. In fact, nothing would pacify him but that I should meet him the next morning in the Board Room of De Beers’, and, in the presence of the Secretary and at least three Directors, apologise to him for my unfounded suspicions and the outrage that they had led me to make upon him. I was, of course, as you might say, between the devil and the deep sea. I had to do it, and I did it; but my convictions and my suspicions remained exactly what they were before.

‘Then there began a very strange, and, although you may think the term curious, a very pathetic, waiting game between us. He knew that in spite of his temporary victory I had really solved the mystery and was on the right track. I knew that the great diamond was out yonder somewhere among the hills or on the veld, and I knew, too, that he was only waiting for my vigilance to relax to go out and get it.

‘Day after day, week after week, and month after month the game went on in silence. We met almost every day. His credit had been completely restored at De Beers’. Lomas, his connection and, as I firmly believed, his confederate, had been, through his influence, sent on a mission to England, and when he went I confess to you that I thought the game was up—that Marsden had somehow managed to recover the diamond, and that Lomas had taken it beyond our reach.

‘Still I watched and I waited, and as time went on I saw that my fears were groundless and that the gem was still on the veld or in the hills. He kept up bravely for weeks, but at last the strain began to tell upon him. Picture to yourself the pitiable position of a man of good family in the Old Country, of expensive tastes and very considerable ambition, living here in Kimberley on a salary of some £12 a week, worth about £5 in England, and knowing that within a few miles of him, in a spot that he alone knew of, there lay a concrete fortune of say, fifteen hundred thousand pounds, which was there for the picking up if he only dared to go and take it, and yet he dared not do so.

‘Yes, it is a pitiless trade this of ours, and professional thief-catchers can’t afford to have much to do with mercy, and yet I tell you that as I watched that man day after day, with the fever growing hotter in his blood and the unbearable anxiety tearing ever harder and harder at his nerves, I pitied him— yes, I pitied him so much that I even found myself growing impatient for the end to come. Fancy that, a detective, a thief-catcher getting impatient to see his victim out of his misery!

‘Well, I had to wait six months— that is to say, I had to wait until five o’clock this morning— for the end. Soon after four one of my men came and knocked me up; he brought a note into my bed-room and I read it in bed. It was from Philip Marsden asking me to go and see him at once and alone. I went, as you may be sure, with as little delay as possible. I found him in his sitting-room. The lights were burning. He was fully dressed, and had evidently been up all night.

‘Even I, who have seen the despair that comes of crime in most of its worst forms, was shocked at the look of him. Still he greeted me politely and with perfect composure. He affected not to see the hand that I held out to him, but asked me quite kindly to sit down and have a chat with him. I sat down, and when I looked up I saw him standing in front of me, covering me with a brace of revolvers. My life, of course, was absolutely at his mercy, and whatever I might have thought of myself or the situation, there was obviously nothing to do but to sit still and wait for developments.

‘He began very quietly to tell me why he had sent for me. He said: “I wanted to see you, Mr Lipinzki, to clear up this matter about the big diamond. I have seen for a long time— in fact from Sunday night—that you had worked out a pretty correct notion as to the way that diamond vanished. You are quite right; it did fly across the veld to the Barkly Hills. I am a bit of a chemist you know, and when I had once made up my mind to steal it—for there is no use in mincing words now— I saw that it would be perfectly absurd to attempt to smuggle such a stone out by any of the ordinary methods.

‘“I daresay you wonder what these revolvers are for They are to keep you there in that chair till I’ve done, for one thing. If you attempt to get out of it or utter a sound I shall shoot you. If you hear me out you will not be injured, so you may as well sit still and keep your ears open.

‘“To have any chance of success I must have had a confederate, and I made young Lomas one. If you look on that little table beside your chair you will see a bit of closed lead piping with a tap in it and a piece of thin sheet india-rubber. That is the remains of the apparatus that I used. I make them a present to you; you may like to add them to your collection.

‘“Lomas, when he went on duty that Saturday night, took the bit of tube charged with compressed hydrogen and an empty child’s toy balloon with him. You will remember that that night was very dark, and that the wind had been blowing very steadily all day towards the Barkly Hills. Well, when everything was quiet he filled the balloon with gas, tied the diamond—”

‘“But how did he get the diamond out of the safe? The Secretary saw it locked up that evening!” I exclaimed, my curiosity getting the better of my prudence.

‘“It was not locked up in the safe at all that night,” he answered,smiling with a sort of ghastly satisfaction. “Lomas and I, as you know, took the tray of diamonds to the safe, and, as far as the Secretary could see, put them in, but as he put the tray into its compartment he palmed the big diamond as I had taught him to do in a good many lessons before. At the moment that I shut the safe and locked it, the diamond was in his pocket.

‘“The Secretary and his friends left the room, Lomas and I went back to the tables, and I told him to clean the scales as I wanted to test them. While he was doing so he slipped the diamond behind the box and the corner of the wall until it was wanted.

‘“We all left the room as usual, and, as you know, we were searched. When Lomas went on night- duty there was the diamond ready for its balloon voyage. He filled the balloon just so that it lifted the diamond and no more. The lead pipe he just put where the diamond had been— the only place you never looked in. When the row was over on the Monday I locked it up in the safe. We were all searched that day; the next I brought it away and now you may have it.

‘“Two of the windows were open on account of the heat. He watched his opportunity, and committed it to the air about two hours before dawn. You know what a sudden fall there is in temperature here just before daybreak. I calculated upon that to contract the volume of the gas sufficiently to destroy the balance and bring the balloon to the ground, and I knew that, if Lomas had obeyed my instructions, it would fall either on the veld or on this side of the hills.

‘“The balloon was a bright red, and, to make a long story short, I started out before daybreak that morning, as you know, to look for buck. When I got outside the camp I took compass bearings and rode straight down the wind towards the hills. By good luck or good calculation, or both, I must have followed the course of the balloon almost exactly, for in three hours after I left the camp I saw the little red speck ahead of me up among the stones on the hillside.

‘“I dodged about for a bit as though I were really after buck, in case anybody was watching me. I worked round to the red spot, but my foot on the balloon, and burst it. I  folded the india-rubber up, as I didn’t like to leave it there, and put it in my pocket-book. You remember that when you searched me you didn’t open my pocket-book, as, of course, it was perfectly flat, and the diamond couldn’t possibly have been in it. That’s how you missed your clue, though I don’t suppose it would have been much use to you as you’d already guessed it. However, there it is at your service now.”

‘“And the diamond?”

‘As I said these three words his whole manner suddenly changed. So far he had spoken quietly and deliberately, and without even a trace of anger in his voice, but now his white, sunken cheeks suddenly flushed a bright fever red and his eyes literally blazed at me. His voice sank to a low, hissing tone that was really horrible to hear.

‘“The diamond!” he said. “Yes, curse it, and curse you, Mr Inspector Lipinzki— for it and you have been a curse to me! Day and night I have seen the spot where I buried it, and day and night you have kept your nets spread about my feet so that I could not move a step to go and take it. I can bear the suspense no longer. Between you— you and that infernal stone— you have wrecked my health and driven me mad. If I had all the wealth of De Beers’ now it wouldn’t be any use to me, and to- night a new fear came to me— that if this goes on much longer I shall go mad, really mad, and in my delirium rob myself of my revenge on you by letting out where I hid it.

‘“Now listen. Lomas has one. He is beyond your reach. He has changed his name— his very identity. I have sent him by different posts, and to different names and addresses, two letters. One is a plan and the other is a key to it. With those two pieces of paper he can find the diamond. Without them you can hunt for a century and never go near it.

‘“And now that you know that— that your incomparable stone, which should have been mine, is out yonder somewhere where you can never find it, you and the De Beers’ people will be able to guess at the tortures of Tantalus that you have made me endure. That is all you have got by your smartness. That is my legacy to you— curse you! If I had my way I would send you all out there to hunt for it without food or drink till you died of hunger and thirst of body, as you have made me die a living death of hunger and thirst of mind.”

‘As he said this, he covered me with one revolver, and put the muzzle of the other into his mouth. With an ungovernable impulse, I sprang to my feet. He pulled both triggers at once. One bullet passed between my arm and my body, ripping a piece out of my coat sleeve; the other— well, I can spare you the details. He dropped dead instantly.’

‘And the diamond?’ I said.

‘The reward is £20,000, and it is at your service,’ replied the Inspector, in his suavest manner, ‘provided that you can find the stone— or Mr Lomas and his plans.’

___________________

9: Called To The Rescue

Henry Spicer

1811-1891

THE SALIENT features of the following narrative have formed, the writer believes, the basis of a “sensation” story in a popular serial, but nevertheless in the latter differ so materially from the actual facts, that nothing but the sequence of circumstances suggests the identity of the two histories. This, then, divested of embellishments, is believed to represent the matter:

A young undergraduate of Cambridge, Mr. D——, had been reading, during the long vacation, at the quiet little town of Exmouth, at which place, as many readers are aware, the river Exe is crossed by a ferry, communicating with the Starcross station on the Great Western Railway. For this purpose a boat remains in constant attendance from dawn till dusk.

One night, between twelve and one o’clock, the young man suddenly awoke, with the impression of having been addressed by an imperative voice, saying, with such distinctness that the last word still rung upon his ear—

“Go down to the ferry!”

Thinking it an ordinary dream, he composed himself again to sleep, when a second time the command was repeated, with this addition—

“The boatman awaits!”

There was something in this second voice which it seemed to the young man’s mind impossible to disregard. He did, however, combat the inclination, and sat up in bed for some minutes, wide-awake, reasoning with himself on what he tried to consider the absurdity of rising in the dead of night, at the bidding of an imaginary voice, to go to a ferry where no boat would be found (for the ferryman resided at Starcross), upon an errand of which he knew nothing. His efforts to dismiss the idea were, however, unsuccessful. He felt, at all events, that sleep was impossible. Then, at the worst, it was but a walk to the ferry and back, and none but himself need be aware of that little excursion. Finally, he sprang from the bed, dressed rapidly, not to leave time for more useless self-argument, and set forth.

He had not reached the ferry when, to his astonishment, the boatman’s hoarse voice was heard through the darkness hailing him impatiently—

“Well, you’ve kept me waiting long enough to-night, I think. I’ve stopped nigh an hour for you.”

The ferryman had, it appeared, received his summons also, but did not attribute it to any unusual source. Finding no passenger waiting on his own side of the river, he probably concluded that he had been hailed by a passing boat, and directed to go over.

By the time Mr. D—— had arrived on the Starcross side, a further idea or impulse, which seemed to have its origin in the former, had gained possession of his mind.

“Exeter!” “Exeter!” “Exeter!” was the word that kept continually reverberating, as it were, in his mental ear, like a summoning bell. His impression now was that at Exeter would be fulfilled the purpose, whatever it might prove to be, of this strange nocturnal expedition. To Exeter he accordingly proceeded by the first opportunity, and, it being only eight or ten miles, reached that good city about dawn.

Now, for the first time, he felt at a loss. All impulse or impression had departed. Wandering aimlessly about the streets, he blamed himself severely for the readiness with which he had yielded to what he now regarded as an idle fancy, and only comforted himself with the idea that at that early hour none of his acquaintance were likely to be abroad to question him as to his untimely visit. Mr. D—— resolved to return home by the next train; but, meanwhile, the shops and houses began to open, and passing an hotel the young gentleman thought he could scarcely do better than while away the hour that must necessarily intervene by ordering some breakfast.

The waiter was very slow in bringing the repast, but when at length he did so, apologised for the delay on the plea that the assizes, then proceeding, had filled the house to overflowing.

Mr. D——had heard nothing of the assizes, and took but little interest in the subject. Seeing, however, that the waiter regarded it as an event of considerable importance, he good-humouredly encouraged him to continue the theme, and was rewarded with a very amusing history of such cases as had been already disposed of, as well as with the waiter’s own views concerning those yet remaining to be tried. Upon the whole, the man’s entertaining volubility ended by inspiring young D——with a portion of his own interest in the matter, and, accordingly, instead of returning to Exmouth by the next train, he strolled about until the court opened, and then took his place among the spectators.

The case just commencing seemed to create unusual excitement. The prisoner at the bar, who was in the dress of a carpenter, was arraigned on a capital charge. The chain of evidence against him, though circumstantial, was complete, and a conviction seemed inevitable. There was, in fact, no opening for a defence, unless the prisoner were in a position to prove the witnesses, one and all, mistaken in his identity, and establish an alibi.

When asked what he had to say, he quietly replied:

“It is impossible that I could have committed this crime, because, on the day and at the hour it took place, I was sent for to mend the sashline of a window at Mr. G——’s house, at M——. There is one gentleman,” he added, after a pause, “who could prove that I was there, but I don’t know who he is, nor where to have him looked for. Yes, I know he could prove my innocence, for a particular reason, that would remind him of me; but, there, I can’t help it, the Lord’s will be done,” and the poor fellow, with a sigh, appeared to resign himself to his fate.

All this time Mr. D——had been listening with profound attention to the progress of the trial, and when the prisoner concluded his sad and hopeless address, he started, and looked earnestly at him. As his eyes still dwelt upon the gloomy, toilworn face—one by one, link by link—a chain of circumstances, trivial enough at the time, but now important as bearing upon the liberty, if not the very life, of a fellowcreature, came back to his remembrance.

He had gone, some months before, to pay an early visit to a friend at M——. The latter was from home, but, wishing particularly to see him, D——had decided to await his return, and, for that purpose, had gone up to his friend’s library, meaning to beguile the interval with a book. Here, however, he found a carpenter, making some repairs about the window, and, in place of reading, he stood for some minutes watching the man, and conversing with him about his work. While doing so, something was said that he was desirous of noting down, and he took out his memorandum-book for the purpose, but found that he had lost his pencil, when the carpenter, observing his difficulty, handed him his own (a short, brown, stumpy article, with square sides), saying that “if he might make so bold, Mr. D—— was welcome to it.”

All this came back to the young man’s mind, as clearly as if it had occurred but the day before. Hastily turning to his pocketbook, he there found the very entry he had made, date included, written in the thick but faint lines produced by the carpenter’s pencil. He instantly made known to the court his wish to be examined on the man’s behalf, and, being sworn, deposed to the above facts, clearly identifying the prisoner, as well as the pencil, which the man produced from his pocket. The jury were satisfied, and returned a verdict of acquittal.

It is difficult to meet a sufficiently authenticated case of this description, otherwise than with the simple confession that God’s ways are not as our ways, and that it may be His pleasure, as unquestionably it is within His power, to suffer his ministering angels to speak in this mysterious tongue to the souls of those whom He has selected as the earthly instruments of His divine will.

_____________________

10: Rose Rose

Barry Pain

From Stories in Grey

SEFTON STEPPED back from his picture. "Rest now, please," he said.

Miss Rose Rose, his model, threw the striped blanket around her, stepped down from the throne, and crossed the studio. She seated herself on the floor near the big stove. For a few moments Sefton stood motionless, looking critically at his work. Then he laid down his palette and brushes and began to roll a cigarette. He was a man of forty, thick-set, round-faced, with a reddish moustache turned fiercely upwards. He flung himself down in an easy-chair, and smoked in silence till silence seemed ungracious.

"Well," he said, "I've got the place hot enough for you today. Miss Rose."

"You 'ave indeed," said Miss Rose.

"I bet it's nearer eighty than seventy."

The cigarette-smoke made a blue haze in the hot, heavy air. He watched it undulating, curving, melting.

As he watched it Miss Rose continued her observations. The trouble with these studios was the draughts. With a strong east wind, same as yesterday, you might have the stove red-hot, and yet never get the place, so to speak, warm. It is possible to talk commonly without talking like a coster, and Miss Rose achieved it. She did not always neglect the aspirate. She never quite substituted the third vowel for the first. She rather enjoyed long words.

She was beautiful from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot; and few models have good feet. Every pose she took was graceful. She was the daughter of a model, and had been herself a model from childhood. In consequence, she knew her work well and did it well. On one occasion, when sitting for the great Merion, she had kept the same pose, without a rest, for three consecutive hours. She was proud of that. Naturally she stood in the first rank among models, was most in demand, and made the most money. Her fault was that she was slightly capricious; you could not absolutely depend upon her. On a wintry morning when every hour of daylight was precious, she might keep her appointment, she might be an hour or two late, or she might stay away altogether. Merion himself had suffered from her, had sworn never to employ her again, and had gone back to her,

Sefton, as he watched the blue smoke, found that her common accent jarred on him. It even seemed to make it more difficult for him to get the right presentation of the "Aphrodite" that she was helping him to paint. One seemed to demand a poetical and cultured soul in so beautiful a body. Rose Rose was not poetical nor cultured; she was not even business-like and educated.

Half an hour of silent and strenuous work followed. Then Sefton growled that he could not see any longer.

"We'll stop for to-day," he said. Miss Rose Rose retired behind the screen. Sefton opened a window and both ventilators, and rolled another cigarette. The studio became rapidly cooler.

"To-morrow, at nine?" he called out.

"I've got some way to come," came the voice of Miss Rose  from behind the screen. "I could be here by a quarter past."

"Right," said Sefton, as he slipped on his coat.

When Rose Rose emerged from the screen she was dressed in a blue serge costume, with a picture-hat. As it was her business in life to be beautiful, she never wore corsets, high heels, nor pointed toes. Such abnegation is rare among models.

"I say, Mr. Sefton," said Rose, "you were to settle at the end  of the sittings, but―"

"Oh, you don't want any money, Miss Rose. You're known to be rich."

"Well, what I've got is in the Post Office, and I don't want to touch it. And I've got some shopping I must do before I go home."

Sefton pulled out his sovereign-case hesitatingly.

"This is all very well, you know," he said.

"I know what you are thinking, Mr. Sefton. You think I don't mean to come to-morrow. That's all Mr. Merion, now, isn't it? He's always saying things about me. I'm not going to stick it. I'm going to 'ave it out with 'im."

"He recommended you to me. And I'll tell you what he said, if you won't repeat it. He said that I should be lucky if I got you, and that I'd better chain you to the studio."

"And all because I was once late— with a good reason for it, too. Besides, what's once? I suppose he didn't 'appen to tell you how often he's kept me waiting."

"Well, here you are, Miss Rose. But you'll really be here in time to-morrow, won't you? Otherwise the thing will have got too tacky to work into."

"You needn't worry about that," said Miss Rose, eagerly. "I'll be here, whatever happens, by a quarter past nine. I'll be here if I die first! There, is that good enough for you? Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Sefton."

"Good afternoon, Miss Rose. Let me manage that door for you— the key goes a bit stiffly."

Sefton came back to his picture. In spite of Miss Rose's vehement assurances he felt by no means sure of her, but it was difficult for him to refuse any woman anything, and impossible for him to refuse to pay her what he really owed. He scrawled in charcoal some directions to the charwoman who would come in the morning. She was, from his point of view, a prize charwoman—one who could, and did, wash brushes properly, one who understood the stove, and would, when required, refrain from sweeping. He picked up his hat and went out. He walked the short distance from his studio to his bachelor flat, looked over art evening paper as he drank his tea, and then changed his clothes and took a cab to the club for dinner. He played one game of billiards after dinner, and then went home. His picture was very much in his mind. He wanted to be up fairly early in the morning, and he went to bed early.

He was at his studio by half-past eight. The stove was lighted, and he piled more coke on it. His "Aphrodite" seemed to have a somewhat mocking expression. It was a little, technical thing, to be corrected easily. He set his palette and selected his brushes. An attempt to roll a cigarette revealed the fact that his pouch was empty. It still wanted a few minutes to nine. He would have time to go up to the tobacconist at the corner. In case Rose Rose arrived while he was away, he left the studio door open.

The tobacconist was also a newsagent, and he bought a morning paper. Rose would probably be twenty minutes late at the least, and this would be something to occupy him. But on his return he found his model already stepping on to the throne.

"Good morning, Miss Rose. You're a lady of your word." He hardly heeded the murmur which came to him as a reply. He threw his cigarette into the stove, picked up his palette, and got on excellently. The work was absorbing. For some time he thought of nothing else. There was no relaxing on the part of the model—no sign of fatigue. He had been working for over an hour, when his conscience smote him. "We'll have a rest now, Miss Rose," he said cheerily. At the same moment he felt human fingers drawn lightly across the back of his neck, just above the collar. He turned round with a sudden start. There was nobody there. He turned back again to the throne. Rose Rose had vanished.

With the utmost care and deliberation he put down his palette and brushes. He said in a loud voice, "Where are you. Miss Rose?"

For a moment or two silence hung in the hot air of the studio.

He repeated his question and got no answer. Then he stepped behind the screen, and suddenly the most terrible thing in his life happened to him. He knew that his model had never been there at all.

There was only one door out to the back street in which his studio was placed, and that door was now locked. He unlocked it, put on his hat, and went out. For a minute or two he paced the street, but he had got to go back to the studio. He went back, sat down in the easy-chair, lit a cigarette, and tried for a plausible explanation. Undoubtedly he had been working very hard lately. When he had come back from the tobacconist's to the studio he had been in the state of expectant atten-tion, and he was enough of a psychologist to know that in that state you are especially likely to see what you expect to sec. He was not conscious of anything abnormal in himself.

He did not feel ill, or even nervous. Nothing of the kind had ever happened to him before. The more he considered the matter, the more definite became his state. He was thoroughly frightened. With a great effort he pulled himself together and picked up the newspaper. It was certain that he could do no more work for that day, anyhow. An ordinary, commonplace newspaper would restore him. Yes, that was it. He had been too much wrapped up in the picture. He had simply supposed the model to be there. He was quite unconvinced, of course, and merely trying to convince himself.

As an artist, he knew that for the last hour or more he had been getting the most delicate modelling right from the living form before him,. But he did his best, and read the newspaper assiduously. He read of tariff, protection, and of a new music-hall star. Then his eye fell on a paragraph headed "Motor Fatalities."

He read that Miss Rose, an artist's model, had been knocked down by a car in the Fulham Road about seven o'clock on the previous evening; that the owner of the car had stopped and taken her to the hospital, and that she had expired within a few minutes of admission.

He rose from his place and opened a large pocket-knife. There was a strong impulse upon him, and he felt it to be a mad impulse, to slash the canvas to rags. He stopped before the picture. The face smiled at him with a sweetness that was scarcely earthly.

He went back to his chair again. "I'm not used to this kind of thing," he said aloud. A board creaked at the far end of the studio. He jumped up with a start of horror. A few minutes later he had left the studio, and locked the door behind him. His common sense was still with him. He ought to go to a specialist. But the picture―"

"What's the matter with Sefton?" said Devigne one night at the club after dinner.

"Don't know that anything's the matter with him," said Merion. "He hasn't been here lately."

"I saw him the last time he was here, and he seemed pretty queer. Wanted to let me his studio."

"It's not a bad studio," said Merion, dispassionately.

"He's got rid of it now, anyhow. He's got a studio out at Richmond, and the deuce of a lot of time he must waste getting there and back. Besides, what does he do about models?"

"That's a point I've been wondering about myself," said  Merion. "He'd got Rose Rose for his 'Aphrodite,' and it looked as if it might be a pretty good thing when I saw it. But, as you know, she died. She was troublesome in some ways, but, taking her all round, I don't know where to find anybody as good to-day. What's Sefton doing about it?"

"He hasn't got a model at all at present. I know that for a fact, because I asked him."

"Well," said Merion, "he may have got the thing on further than I thought he would in the time. Some chaps can work from memory all right, though I can't do it myself. He's not chucked the picture, I suppose?"

"No; he's not done that. In fact, the picture's his excuse now, if you want him to go anywhere and do anything. But that's not it: the chap's altogether changed. He used to be a genial sort of bounder—bit tyrannical in his manner, perhaps—thought he knew everything. Still, you could talk to him. He was sociable. As a matter of fact, he did know a good deal. Now it's quite different. If you ever do see him—and that's not often—he's got nothing to say to you. He's just going back to his work. That sort of thing."

"You're too imaginative," said Merion. "I never knew a man who varied less than Sefton. Give me his address, will you? I mean his studio. I'll go and look him up one morning. I should like to see how that 'Aphrodite's' getting on. I tell you it was promising; no nonsense about it."

One sunny morning Merion knocked at the door of the studio at Richmond. He heard the sound of footsteps crossing the studio, then Sefton's voice rang out.

"Who's there?"

"Merion. I've travelled miles to see the thing you call a picture."

"I've got a model."

"And what does that matter?" asked Merion.

"Well, I'd be awfully glad if you'd come back in an hour. We'd have lunch together somewhere."

"Right," said Merion, sardonically. "I'll come back in about seven million hours. Wait for me."

He went back to London and his own studio in a state of fury.

Sefton had never been a man to pose. He had never put on side about his work. He was always willing to show it to old and intimate friends whose judgment he could trust; and now, when the oldest of his friends had travelled down to Richmond to see him, he was told to come back in an hour, and that they might then lunch together!

"This lets me out," said Merion, savagely.

But he always speaks well of Sefton nowadays. He maintains that Sefton's "Aphrodite" would have been a success anyhow. The suicide made a good deal of talk at the time, and a special attendant was necessary to regulate the crowds round it, when, as directed by his will, the picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy. He was found in his studio many hours after his death; and he had scrawled on a blank canvas, much as he left his directions to his charwoman: "I have finished it, but I can't stand any more."

___________________

11: The Man Who Missed The 'Bus

Stella Benson

1892-1933

First published as a limited edition small book in 1928

Mr. Robinson's temper was quite sore by the time he reached St. Pierre. The two irritations that most surely found the weak places in his nervous defences were noise and light in his eyes. And, as he told Monsieur Dupont, the proprietor of Les Trois Moineaux at St. Pierre, "If there is one thing, monsieur, that is offensive— essentially offensive—that is to say, a danger in itself—I mean to say noise doesn't have to have a meaning ... What I mean is, monsieur, that noise—" "Numero trente," said Monsieur Dupont to the chasseur. Mr. Robinson always had to explain things very thoroughly in order to make people really appreciate the force of what he had to say—and even then it was a hard task to get them to acknowledge receipt, so to speak, of his message. But he was a humble man, and he accounted for the atmosphere of unanswered and unfinished remarks in which he lived by admitting that his words were unfortunately always inadequate to convey to a fellow-mortal the intense interest to be found in the curiosities of behaviour and sensation. His mind was overstocked with bye-products of the business of life. He felt that every moment disclosed a new thing worth thinking of among the phenomena that his senses presented to him. Other people, he saw, let these phenomenal moments slip by unanalysed, but if he had had the words and the courage, he felt, he could have awakened those of his fellow-creatures whom he met from their trance of shallow living. As it was, the relation of his explorations and wonderings sounded, even to his own ears, flat as the telling at breakfast of an ecstatic dream. What he had meant to say about noise, for instance, had been that noise was in itself terrifying and horrible— not as a warning of danger, but as a physical assault. Vulgar people treat noise only as a language that means something, he would have said, but really noise could not be translated, any more than rape could be translated. There was no such thing as an ugly harmless noise. The noise of an express train approaching and shrieking through a quiet station— the noise of heavy rain sweeping towards one through a forest— the noise of loud, concerted laughter at an unheard joke—all benevolent noises if translated into concrete terms, were in themselves calamities. All this Mr. Robinson would have thought worth saying to Monsieur Dupont—worth continuing to say until Monsieur Dupont should have confessed to an understanding of his meaning—but, as usual, the words collapsed as soon as they left Mr. Robinson's lips.

Monsieur Dupont stood in the doorway of Les Trois Moineaux with his back to the light. Mr. Robinson could see the shape of his head set on stooping shoulders, with a little frail fluff of hair beaming round a baldness. He could see the rather crumpled ears with outleaning lobes bulging sharply against the light. But between ear and ear, between bald brow and breast, he could see nothing but a black blank against the glare. Mr. Robinson had extremely acute sight— perhaps too acute, as he often wanted to tell people, since this was perhaps why the light in his eyes affected him so painfully. "If my sight were less acute," he would have said, "I should not mind a glare so much—I mean to say, my eyes are so extremely receptive that they receive too much, or, in other words, the same cause that makes my eyes so very sensitive is ..." But nobody ever leaned forward and said, "I understand you perfectly, Mr. Robinson, and what you say is most interesting. Your sight includes so much that it cannot exclude excessive light, and this very naturally irritates your nerves, though the same peculiarity accounts for your intense powers of observation." Nobody ever said anything like that, but then, people are so self-engrossed. Mr. Robinson was not self-engrossed— he was simply extravagantly interested in things, not people. For instance, he looked round now—as the chasseur sought in the shadows for his suitcase— and saw the terrace striped by long beams of light— broad flat beams that were strung like yellow sheets from every window and door in the hotel to the trees, tall urns and tables of the terrace. A murmur of voices enlivened the air, but there were no human creatures in any beam— only blocked dark figures in the shadows—and, in every patch of light, a sleeping dog or cat or two. Dogs and cats lay extended or curled comfortably on the warm, uneven pavingstones, and Mr. Robinson's perfect sight absorbed the shape of every brown, tortoiseshell or black marking on their bodies, as a geographer might accept the continents on a new unheard-of globe. "It's just like geography— the markings on animals," Mr. Robinson had once said to an American who couldn't get away. "What I mean to say is that the markings on a dog or rabbit have just as much sense as the markings on this world of ours—or, in other words, the archipelagoes of spots on this pointer puppy are just as importantly isolated from one another as they could be in any Adriatic sea—" But the American had only replied, "Why, no, Mr. Robinson, not half so important; I am taking my wife— with the aid of the American Express Co.—to visit the Greek islands this summer, and we shall be sick on the sea and robbed on the land; whereas nobody but a flea ever visits the spots on that puppy, and the flea don't know and don't care a damn what colour he bites into." Showing that nobody except Mr. Robinson ever really studied things impersonally.

Mr. Robinson, a very ingenious-minded and sensitive man with plenty of money, was always seeking new places to go to, where he might be a success—or rather, where his unaccountable failures elsewhere might not be known. St. Pierre, he thought, was an excellent venture, although the approach to it had been so trying. As soon as he had heard of it—through reading a short, thoughtless sketch by a popular novelist in the Daily Call —he had felt hopeful about it. A little Provençal walled town on a hill, looking out over vineyards to the blue Mediterranean— a perfect little hotel, clean and with a wonderful cook—frequented by an interesting few....

"By the time I get downstairs," thought Mr. Robinson, as he carefully laid his trousers under the mattress in his room and donned another pair, "the lights will be lit on the terrace, and I shall be able to see my future friends. I must tell someone about that curious broken reflection in the river Rhone...." He went downstairs and out on to the terrace where the tinkle of glasses and plates made him feel hungry. He could hear, as he stood in the doorway looking out, one man's voice making a series of jokes in quick succession, each excited pause in his voice being filled by a gust and scrape of general laughter— like waves breaking on a beach with a clatter and then recoiling with a thin, hopeful, lonely sound. "Probably all his jokes are personalities," thought Mr. Robinson, "and therefore not essentially funny. No doubt they are slightly pornographic, at that. When will people learn how interesting and exciting things are...."

A waiter behind him drew out a chair from a table in one of the squares of light thrown from a window. Mr. Robinson, after sitting down abstractedly, was just going to call the waiter back to tell him that his eyes were ultra-sensitive to light, and that he could see nothing in that glare, when a large dog, with the bleached, patched, innocent face of a circus-clown, came and laid its head on his knee. Mr. Robinson could never bear to disappoint an animal. He attributed to animals all the hot and cold variations of feeling that he himself habitually experienced, identifying the complacent fur of the brute with his own thin human skin. So that when the waiter, coming quietly behind him, put the wine list into his hand, Mr. Robinson merely said, "Thank you, garçon, but I never touch alcohol in any form— or, for the matter of that, tobacco either. In my opinion—" —and did not call the rapidly escaping waiter back to ask him to move his table. The dog's chin was now so comfortably pressed against his knee, and the dog's paw hooked in a pathetically prehensile way about his ankle.

Mr. Robinson made the best of his position in the dazzle and tried to look about him. The Trois Moineaux was built just outside the encircling wall of the tightly corseted little town of St. Pierre, and, since St. Pierre clung to the apex of a conical hill, it followed that the inn terrace jutted boldly out over a steep, stepped fall of vineyards overhanging the plain. The plain was very dim now, overlaid by starlit darkness, yet at the edge of the terrace there was a sense of view, and all the occupied tables stood in a row against the low wall, diluting the food and drink they bore with starlight and space. The men and women sitting at these tables all had their faces to the world and their backs to Mr. Robinson. He could not see a single human face. He had come down too late to secure one of the outlooking tables, and his place was imprisoned in a web of light under an olive tree. In the middle of the table peaches and green grapes were heaped on a one-legged dish. And on the edge of the dish a caterpillar waved five-sixths of its length drearily in the air, unable to believe that its world could really end at this abrupt slippery rim. Mr. Robinson, shading his eyes from the light, could see every detail of the caterpillar's figure, and it seemed to him worth many minutes of absorbed attention. Its colour was a pale greenish fawn, and it had two dark bumps on its brow by way of eyes. "How unbearably difficult and lonely its life would seem to us," thought Mr. Robinson, leaning intensely over it. "How frightful if by mistake the merest spark of self-consciousness should get into an insect's body— (an accidental short-circuit in the life current, perhaps)— and it should know itself absolutely alone—appallingly free—" He put his finger in the range of its persistent wavings, and watched it crawl with a looping haste down his fingernail, accepting without question a quite fortuitous salvation from its dilemma. He laid his finger against a leaf, and the caterpillar disembarked briskly after its journey across alien elements. When it was gone, Mr. Robinson looked about him, dazed. "My goodness," he thought, "that caterpillar's face was the only one I have seen to-night."

The noise of chatter and laughter went up like a kind of smoke from the flickering creatures at the tables near the edge of the terrace. At each table the heads and shoulders of men and women leaned together—were sucked together like flames in a common upward draught. "My dear, she looked like a.... Oh, well, if you want to.... he's the kind of man who.... No, my dear, not in my bedroom.... A rattling good yarn.... Stop me if I've told you this one before...." One man, standing up a little unsteadily, facing the table nearest to Mr. Robinson, made a speech: "... the last time ... delightful company ... fair sex ... happiest hours of my life ... mustn't waste your time ... us mere men ... as the Irishman said to the Scotsman when ... happiest moments of all my life ... one minute and I shall be done ... always remember the happiest days of all my ... well, I mustn't keep you ... I heard a little story the other day...." And all the time his audience leaned together round their table, embarrassed, looking away over the dark plain or murmuring together with bent heads. The only woman whose face Mr. Robinson might have seen was shielding her face with her hands and shaking with silent laughter. The speaker was wavering on his feet, very much as the caterpillar had wavered on its tail, and his wide gestures, clawing the air in search of the attention of his friends, suggested to Mr. Robinson the caterpillar's wild gropings for foothold where no foothold was. "Yes," thought Mr. Robinson, "the caterpillar was my host. No other face is turned to me."

However, as he thought this, a man came from a further table and stood quite close, under the olive tree, between Mr. Robinson and the lighted doorway, looking down on him. The man stretched out his hand to the tree and leaned upon it. A freak of light caught the broad, short hand, walnut-knuckled and brown, crooked over the bough. Mr. Robinson could not see the man's face at all, but he felt that the visit was friendly. To conciliate this sympathetic stranger, he would even have talked about the weather, or made a joke about pretty girls or beer, but he could not think of anything of that kind to say to a man whose hand, grasping an olive bough, was all that could be known of him. All that Mr. Robinson could do for the moment was to wonder what could have sent the man here. "It could not have been," thought Mr. Robinson humbly, "that he was attracted by my face, because nobody ever is." And then he began thinking how one man's loss is nearly always another man's gain, if considered broadly enough. For one to be forsaken, really, means that another has a new friend. "This young man," thought Mr. Robinson, gazing at the black outline of the stranger's head, "has probably come here blindly, because of some sudden hurt, some stab, some insult, inflicted by his friends at that table over there— probably by a woman. Perhaps he thinks he has a broken heart (for he has young shoulders)—nothing short of a wound that temporarily robbed him of his social balance could make him do so strange a thing as suddenly to leave his friends and come here to stand silent by me in the shade. Yet if he only could—as some day, I am convinced, we all shall— know that the sum remains the same— that some other lover is the happier for this loss of his—and that if he had gained a smile from her, the pain he now feels would simply have been shifted to another heart— not dispelled.... We only have to think impersonally enough, and even death— well, we are all either nearly dead or just born, more or less, and the balance of birth and death never appreciably alters. Personal thinking is the curse of existence. Why are we all crushed under the weight of this strangling ME— this snake in our garden...?" So he said to the young man, "Isn't it a curious thing, looking round at young people and old people, that it doesn't really matter if they are born or dead—I mean to say, it's all the same whatever happens, if you follow me, and so many people mind when they needn't, if people would only realise—" At this moment there was a burst of clapping from the far table, and the young man bounded from Mr. Robinson's side back to his friends, shouting, "Good egg—have you thought of a word already? Animal, vegetable or mineral—and remember to speak up because I'm rather hard of hearing...."

Mr. Robinson suddenly felt like Herbert Robinson, personally affronted. The sum of happiness (which of course remained unaltered by his set-back) for a moment did not matter in the least. He pushed back his chair and walked away, leaving his cheese uneaten and the clownfaced dog without support. He went to his bedroom and sat down opposite his mirror, facing the reflection of his outward ME. There sat the figure in the mirror, smooth, plump, pale, with small pouched eyes and thick, straight, wet-looking hair. "What is this?" asked Mr. Robinson, studying the reflection of his disappointed face— the only human face he had seen that evening. "Look at me— I am alive— I am indeed very acutely alive— more alive, perhaps, than all these men and women half-blind—half-dead in their limitations of greed and sex.... It is true I have no personal claim on life; I am a virgin and I have no friends— yet I live intensely— and there are— there are— there are other forms of life than personal life. The eagle and the artichoke are equally alive— and perhaps my way of life is nearer to the eagle's than the artichoke's. And must I be alone—must I live behind cold shoulders because I see out instead of in— the most vivid form of life conceivable, if only it could be lived perfectly?"

He tried to see himself in the mirror, as was his habit, as a mere pliable pillar of life, a turret of flesh with a prisoner called life inside it. He stared himself out of countenance, trying, as it were, to dissolve his poor body by understanding it—poor white, sweating, rubbery thing that was called Herbert Robinson and had no friends. But to-night the prisoner called life clung to his prison— to-night his body tingled with egotism— to-night the oblivion that he called wisdom would not come, and he could not become conscious, as he longed to, of the live sky above the roof, the long winds streaming about the valleys, the billions of contented, wary or terrified creatures moving about the living dust, weeds and waters of the world. He remained just Herbert Robinson, who had not seen any human face while in the midst of his fellow-men.

He began to feel an immediate craving—an almost revengeful lust—to be alone, far from men, books, mirrors and lights watching, all his life long, the bodiless, mindless movements of animals—ecstatic living things possessing no ME. "I should scarcely know I was alive, then, and perhaps never even notice when I died...." He decided he would go away next day, and give no group again the chance to excommunicate him.

He remembered that he had seen a notice at the door of the hotel, giving the rare times at which an omnibus left and arrived at St. Pierre. "I will leave by the early 'bus, before anyone is awake to turn his back on me."

He could not sleep, but lay uneasily on his bed reading the advertisements in a magazine he had brought with him. Advertisements always comforted him a good deal, because advertisers really, he thought, took a broad view; they wrote of— and to— their fellow-men cynically and subtly, taking advantage of the vulgar passion for personal address, and yet treating humanity as an intricate mass— an instrument to be played upon. This seemed the ideal stand-point, to Mr. Robinson, and yet he was insulted by the isolation such an ideal involved.

He dressed himself early, replaced in his suitcase the few clothes he had taken out, put some notes in an envelope addressed to Monsieur Dupont, and leaned out of the window to watch for the 'bus. St. Pierre, a sheaf of white and pink plaster houses, was woven together on a hill, like a haycock. The town, though compact and crowned by a sharp white belltower, seemed to have melted a little, like a thick candle; the centuries and the sun had softened its fortress outlines. The other hills, untopped by towns, seemed much more definitely constructed; they were austerely built of yellow and green blocks of vineyard, cemented by the dusky green of olive trees. Gleaming white, fluffy clouds peeped over the hills—"like kittens," thought Mr. Robinson, who had a fancy for trying to make cosmic comparisons between the small and the big. On the terrace of the inn, half-a-dozen dogs sprawled in the early sun. Over the valley a hawk balanced and swung in the air, so hungry after its night's fast that it swooped rashly and at random several times, and was caught up irritably into the air again after each dash, as though dangling on a plucked thread. Mr. Robinson leaned long on his sill looking at it, until his elbows felt sore from his weight, and he began to wonder where the 'bus was that was going to take him away to loneliness. He went down to the terrace, carrying his suitcase, and stood in the archway. There was no sound of a coming 'bus— no sound at all, in fact, except a splashing and a flapping and a murmuring to the left and right of him. A forward step or two showed him that there were two long washing troughs, one on each side of the archway, each trough shaded by a stone gallery and further enclosed in a sort of trellis of leaning kneading women. Mr. Robinson noticed uneasily that he could not see one woman's face; all were so deeply bent and absorbed. After a moment, however, a woman's voice from the row behind him asked him if he was waiting for the 'bus. He turned to reply, hoping to break the spell by finding an ingenuous rustic face lifted to look at him. But all the faces were bent once more, and it was another woman behind him again who told him that the 'bus had left ten minutes before. Once more the speaker bent over her work before Mr. Robinson had time to turn and see her face. "What a curious protracted accident," he thought, and had time to curse his strange isolation before he realised the irritation of being unable to leave St. Pierre for another half-dozen hours. He flung his suitcase into the hall of the inn, and walked off up a path that led through the vineyards. As if the whole affair had been prearranged, all the dogs on the terrace rose up and followed him, yawning and stretching surreptitiously, like workers reluctantly leaving their homes at the sound of a factory whistle.

Mr. Robinson, true to his habit, concentrated his attention on— or rather diffused it to embrace— the colours about him. The leaves of the vines especially held his eye; they wore the same frosty bloom that grapes themselves often wear—a sky-blue dew on the green leaf. Two magpies, with a bottle-green sheen on their wings, gave their police-rattle cry as he came near and then flew off, flaunting their long tails clumsily. A hundred feet higher, where the ground became too steep even for vines, Mr. Robinson found a grove of gnarled old olive trees, edging a thick wood of Spanish chestnuts. Here he sat down and looked between the tree-trunks and over the distorted shadows at the uneven yellow land and the thin blade of matt blue sea stabbing the furthest hills. The dogs stood round him, expecting him to rise in a minute and lead them on again. Seeing that he still sat where he was, they wagged their tails tolerantly but invitingly. Finally they resigned themselves to the inevitable and began philosophically walking about the grove, sniffing gently at various points in search of a makeshift stationary amusement. Mr. Robinson watched them with a growing sense of comfort. "Here," he thought, "are the good, undeliberate beasts again; I knew they would save me. They don't shut themselves away from life in their little individualities, or account uniquely for their lusts on the silly ground of personality. Their bodies aren't prisons—they're just dormitories...." He delighted in watching the dogs busily engrossed in being alive without self-consciousness. After all, he thought, he did not really depend on men. (For he had been doubting his prized detachment most painfully.)

One of the dogs discovered a mousehole, and, after thrusting his nose violently into it to verify the immediacy of the smell, began digging, but not very cleverly, because he was too large a dog for such petty sports. The other dogs hurried to the spot and, having verified the smell for themselves, stood restively round the first discoverer, wearing the irritable look we all wear when watching someone else bungle over something we feel (erroneously) that we could do very much better ourselves. Finally, they pushed the original dog aside, and all began trying to dig in the same spot, but finding this impossible, they tapped different veins of the same lode-smell. Soon a space of some ten feet square was filled with a perfect tornado of flying dust, clods, grass and piston-like forepaws. Hindlegs remained rooted while forelegs did all the work, but whenever the accumulation of earth to the rear of each dog became inconveniently deep, hindlegs, with a few impatient, strong strokes, would dash the heap away to some distance— even as far as Mr. Robinson's boots. Quite suddenly, all the dogs, with one impulse, admitted themselves beaten; they concluded without rancour that the area was unmistakeably mouseless. They signified their contempt for the place in the usual canine manner, and walked away, sniffing, panting, sniffing again for some new excitement. Mr. Robinson, who had been, for the duration of the affair, a dog in spirit, expecting at every second that a horrified mouse would emerge from this cyclone of attack, imitated his leaders and quietened down with an insouciance equal to theirs. But he had escaped from the menace of humanity; he was eased— he was sleepy....

He slept for a great many hours, and when he awoke the sun was slanting down at the same angle as the hill, throwing immense shadows across the vineyards. The dogs had gone home. And there, on the space of flattened earth between two spreading tree-roots, was a mouse and its family. Mr. Robinson, all mouse now, with no memory of his canine past, lay quite still on his side. The mother mouse moved in spasms, stopping to quiver her nose over invisible interests in the dust. Her brood were like little curled feathers, specks of down blown about by a fitful wind. There seemed to be only one license to move shared by this whole mouse family; when mother stopped, one infant mouse would puff forward, and as soon as its impulse expired, another thistledown brother would glide erratically an inch or two. In this leisurely way the family moved across the space of earth and into the grass, appearing again and again between the green blades. Mr. Robinson lay still, sycophantically reverent.

Between two blades of grass the senior mouse came out on to a little plateau, about eighteen inches away from Mr. Robinson's unwinking eyes. At that range Mr. Robinson could see its face as clearly as one sees the face of a wife over a breakfast table. It was a dignified but greedy face; its eyes, in so far as they had any expression at all, expressed a cold heart; its attraction lay in its texture, a delicious velvet—and that the mouse would never allow a human finger, however friendly, to enjoy. It would have guarded its person as a classical virgin guarded her honour. As soon as Mr. Robinson saw the mouse's remote expression, he felt as a lost sailor on a sinking ship might feel, who throws his last rope—and no saving hands grasp it.

He heard the sound of human footsteps behind him. There was a tiny explosion of flight beside him— and the mouse family was not there. Through the little grove marched a line of men in single file, going home from their work in the vineyards over the hill. Mr. Robinson sat up, and noticed, with a cold heart, that all the men wore the rush hats of the country pulled down against the low last light of the sun, and that not one face was visible.

Mr. Robinson sat for some time with his face in his hands. He felt his eyes with his finger, and the shape of his nose and cheekbone; he bit his finger with his strong teeth. Here was a face— the only human face in the world. Suddenly craving for the sight of that friend behind the mirror, he got up and walked back to the Trois Moineaux. He found himself very hungry, having starved all day, but his isolation gave him a so much deeper sense of lack than did his empty stomach that, although dinner was in progress among the bands of light and shade on the terrace, his first act was to run to his room and stand before the mirror. There was a mistiness in the mirror. He rubbed it with his hand. The mistiness persisted— a compact haze of blankness that exactly covered the reflection of his face. He moved to a different angle— he moved the mirror— he saw clearly the reflection of the room, of his tweed-clad figure, of his tie, of his suitcase in the middle of the floor—but his face remained erased, like an unsatisfactory charcoal sketch. Filled with an extraordinary fear, he stood facing the mirror for some minutes, feeling with tremulous fingers for his eyes, his lips, his forehead. There seemed to him to be the same sensation of haze in his sense of touch as in his eyesight— a nervelessness— a feeling of nauseating contact with a dead thing. It was like touching with an unsuspecting hand one's own limb numbed by cold or by an accident of position.

Mr. Robinson walked downstairs, dazed, out on to the terrace. As before, the shadowed tables looking out over the edge of the terrace were already surrounded by laughing, chattering parties. Mr. Robinson took his seat, as before, under the olive tree. "Bring me a bottle of ... Sauterne," he said to the waiter (for he remembered that his late unmarried sister used to sustain upon this wine a reputation for wit in the boarding-house in which she had lived). "And, waiter, isn't there a table free looking out at the view? I can't see anything here." It was not the view he craved, of course, but only a point of vantage from which to see the faces of his mysterious, noisy neighbours. His need for seeing faces was more immediate than ever, now that his one friend had failed him. "There will be tables free there in a moment," said the waiter. "They are all going to dance soon. They're only waiting for the moon." And the waiter nodded his shadowed face towards a distant hill, behind which— looking at this moment like a great far red fire— the moon was coming up. "Look, the moon, the moon, the moon, look ..." everyone on the terrace was saying. And a few moments later, the moon, now completely round, but cut in half by a neat bar of cloud, took flight lightly from the top of the hill.

There was a scraping of chairs, the scraping of a gramophone, and half-a-dozen couples of young men and women began dancing between the tall Italian urns and the olive trees on the terrace. Mr. Robinson poured himself out a large tumbler of Sauterne. "Waiter, I don't want a table at the edge now—I want one near the dancers—I want to see their faces."

"There are no tables free in the centre of the terrace now. Several are vacant at the edge."

"I can see a table there, near the dancers, with only two chairs occupied. Surely I could sit with them."

"That table is taken by a large party, but most of them are dancing. They will come back there in a moment."

Mr. Robinson, disregarding the waiter, and clutching his tumbler in one hand and his bottle in the other, strode to the table he had chosen. "I'm too lonely— I must sit here."

"So lonely, po-oo-or man," said the woman at the table, a stout, middle-aged woman with high shoulders and a high bosom, clad in saxe-blue sequins. She turned her face towards him in the pink light of the moon. Mr. Robinson, though desperate, was not surprised. Her face was the same blank—the same terrible disc of nothingness that he had seen in his mirror. Mr. Robinson looked at her companion in dreadful certainty. A twin blank faced him.

"Sh-lonely, eh?" came a thick young voice out of nothingness. "Well, m'lad, you'll be damn sight lonelier yet in minute 'f y' come buttn' in on—"

"Ow, Ronnie," expostulated his frightful friend— but at that moment the gramophone fell silent, and the dancers came back to their table. Mr. Robinson scanned the spaces that should have been their faces one by one; they were like discs of dazzle seen after unwisely meeting the eye of the sun.

"This old feller sayzzz-lonely— pinched your chair, Belle."

"Never mind, duckie," said Belle, and threw herself across Mr. Robinson's knee. "Plenty of room for little me."

The white emptiness of her face that was no face blocked out Mr. Robinson's view of the world.

"Oh, my God!" she cried, jumping up suddenly. "I know why he's lonely—why—the man's not alive. Look at his face!"

"I am— I am— I am!—" shouted Mr. Robinson in terror. "I'll show you I am...." He lurched after her and dragged her among the dancers as the music began again. He shut his eyes. He could hear her wild animal shrieks of laughter, and feel her thin struggling body under his hands.

MR. ROBINSON sat, quite still but racked by confusion, excitement and disgust, beside the road on the wall of the vineyard, watching the last stars slip down into the haze that enhaloed the hills. The moon had gone long ago. All Mr. Robinson's heart was set on catching the 'bus this morning; to him the dawn that was even now imperceptibly replacing the starlight was only a herald of the 'bus and of escape. He had no thoughts and no plans, beyond catching the 'bus. He knew that he was cold— but flight would warm him; that he was hungry and thirsty— but flight would nourish him; that he was exhausted and broken-hearted— but flight would ease and comfort him.

A white glow crowned a hill, behind which the sky had long been pearly, and in a minute an unbearably bright ray shot from the hill into Mr. Robinson's eyes. The dazzling domed brow of the sun rose between a tree and a crag, and a lily-white light rushed into the valley.

The 'bus, crackling and crunching, waddled round the bend. Mr. Robinson hailed it with a distraught cry and gesture.

"Enfin.... très peu de place, m'sieu—n'y a qu'un tout p'tit coin par ici...."

Mr. Robinson had no need now to look at the face of the driver, or at the rows of senseless sunlit ghosts that filled the 'bus. He knew his curse by now. He climbed into the narrow place indicated beside the driver. The 'bus lurched on down the narrow, winding road that overhung the steep vineyards of the valley. Far below— so far below that one could not see the movement of the water— a yellow stream enmeshed its rocks in a net of plaited strands.

Mr. Robinson sat beside the driver, not looking at that phantom, faceless face— so insulting to the comfortable sun—but looking only at the road that was leading him to escape. How far to flee he did not know, but all the hope there was, he felt, lay beyond the furthest turn of the road. After one spellbound look at the sun-blinded face of St. Pierre, hunched on its hivelike hill, he looked forward only at the winding, perilous road.

And his acute eyes saw, in the middle of the way, half-a-dozen specks of live fur, blowing about a shallow rut.... The 'bus' heavy approach had already caused a certain panic in the mouse family. One atom blew one way, one another; there was a sort of little muddled maze of running mice in the road.

Mr. Robinson's heart seemed to burst. Before he was aware, he had sprung to his feet and seized the wheel of the 'bus from the driver. He had about twenty seconds in which to watch the mice scuttering into the grass— to watch the low, loose wall of the outer edge of the road crumble beneath the plunging weight of the 'bus. He saw, leaning crazily towards him, the face— the face—rolling eyes, tight grinning lips— of the driver, looking down at death. There, far down, was the yellow net of the river, spread to catch them all.

___________________

12: Doctor Mazeppa

George R. Sims

Cumberland Argus, 5 April 1899

THERE was the sound of a wild struggle in a room above, then of a woman's screams, and the hoarse voice of a man speaking fiercely in a foreign tongue.

The German proprietor of the restaurant below, and one or two of his customers, listened at the foot of the staircase. He knew what was happening, but he could not understand what was said. The occupants of the top floor were Russians.

Presently there was a sharp cry and a heavy fall, and the next moment a tall, fair-bearded man with light blue eyes came running down the stairs.

'I've settled her this time!' he cried in Yiddish. 'Let me go.'

He thrust the landlord and the two Polish Jews, whose afternoon meal he had disturbed, on one side as if they had been puppets, and went out into the street.

The proprietor looked at his customers, shrugged his shoulders, and then motioned them to follow him upstairs. On the top landing lay a woman of about five and thirty. A mass of unkempt hair fell over her face and breast. She was lying on her side, and the landlord stooped to push the hair back in order to see her face. But he drew his hand quickly away and looked at it.- His fingers were covered with blood.

'Poor woman!' he exclaimed. 'The brute has stabbed her. Quick, one of you, run for Dr. Mazeppa. It may be nothing; I won't send for the police unless he says it is serious.'

Dr. Mazeppa was in great request in the little colony of Russians and Poles who had established themselves in the district. He spoke both languages fluently, and he had no relations with the police. He saw and learnt many things in his professional capacity which the authorities would have been glad to know, but the men and women who had left the Czar's dominions for prudential reasons knew that the Doctor was 'one of themselves'. He, too, had 'conspired' and been denounced.  Mazeppa, an old Polish name made familiar to English people by the world-famous story, was not the doctor's real name. But nobody troubled about that. He had probably good reasons for not putting his own on the brass plate on his door.

The men standing round the prostrate woman made way respectfully for tho Doctor as he came up the stairs. He was a short, squarely built man, with a black beard tinged heavily with grey. His face was pale, and threw into strong relief the black deep-set eyes. He walked with a slight stoop, and his brow was heavily lined. He was a man of forty, who had seen trouble, and grown prematurely old.

The proprietor of the little restaurant and lodging-house pointed to the senseless woman and told her story in a few words. The Doctor knelt down beside her, pushed back the masses of red hair and looked at her face. As he did so he gave a slight start, and the corners of his mouth twitched nervously. The next moment he had regained his composure, and was examining the wound.

'It is bad,' he said. 'Very bad. Help me to carry her into the room, and I'll do what I can.'

They carried the woman into her room and laid her on the bed. Then the Doctor motioned the curious onlookers to leave him, closed the door, and returning to the bedside examined the wound more carefully and drew his case from his pocket.

'It is nothing after all,' he muttered to himself. 'A knife thrust— a mere flesh wound, but where is the knife, I wonder?'

He went outside and peered about in the semi-darkness until the shining of the blade caught his eye. It was lying in a dark corner where the man lad flung it.

As he entered the room the woman opened her eyes and looked about her. But the light pained her, and she half closed them again. Dr. Mazeppa was bending over her.

'The brute— he stabbed me— he has killed me!' she cried in Russian. 'Where is he? Have the police got him?'

'No,' said the Doctor under his breath. 'Do you want them to ? '

'Yes— I hate him! He is a coward. He has had all my money— everything I had, and now he drinks, and curses me. To-day he has tried to kill me.'

'What is his name?'

'Kriloff— Ivan Kriloff.'

'Ivan Kriloff— I will remember the name for you. You are going to die.'

The woman opened her eyes wide in horror, and put her hand to the wound in her breast.

'Is it— so bad as that? Is there no hope?'

'None'.

'Ah, then let him suffer for it!... Don't let him escape. You are the- doctor, are you not?'

'Yes.'

'Then I will tell you, everything as I would tell the priest or the magistrate. But for this wretch I should be to-day a happy woman, the wife of a good man— a man whom I betrayed. It was fifteen years ago. I was the wife of a young medical student in Moscow. I loved him till this Kriloff came with his honeyed words and lies, and he won my heart away from my husband. I knew my husband's secret— he was a conspirator, and belonged to a revolutionary society. Kriloff got that out of me, and persuaded me to betray my husband to the police that we might be free of him and live together.'

The woman paused and gasped for breath. The Doctor took a little bottle from his pocket and put it to her lips.

'Go on,' he said. 'It is for the magistrate when Kriloff has been arrested.'

'My husband was taken and condemned to death, but at the last moment he was sent to Siberia. I fled with Kriloff, my lover, taking my jewels and all my husband's property that I could realise with me. It was a great deal, for my husband was of a noble family. He was a medical student only because it enabled him to mix with the Revolutionaries and plot with them.'

'And it was this man Kriloff who told you to denounce your husband, that you might run away together; and you did it ?'

'Yes, but I have paid for it! For years my life has been a misery. I have had to work for him here in England. The money we have paid for this wretched lodging I have gained. He only beats me and drinks. And now?'

'Now he has murdered you— and he will hang for it !' 'Yes, be will hang, as he deserves! But, ah― I don't want to die. Save me, Doctor! Save me—'

The woman stopped suddenly. ' My head!' she exclaimed. 'I— I―' She murmured a few incoherent words, and gradually became senseless again...

The doctor took the little bottle from his pocket and held it up to the light.

'I was afraid I had not given her enough,' he muttered, 'she was so long going off.'

There was a dead silence for a, moment. Dr. Mazeppa walked to the door and shot the iron, bolt noiselessly. God has given them both into my hands at last!' he cried.

Then he picked up the knife, and approaching the senseless woman put the point in the flesh wound her assailant's blow had made, and pressed it deeper and deeper. The woman did not stir. The drug had done its work. Presently there was a convulsive movement, a deep sigh, then all was still.

The Doctor withdrew the knife, and opening the door, looked out. The men had obeyed his instructions and gone away. He put the knife quietly in the dark corner of the landing where he had found it, and went downstairs into the restaurant.

AN HOUR later an Inspector of Police came to Dr. Mazeppa and told him the murderer had been taken, and was now at the police station. The Doctor's evidence would be wanted for the Coroner's inquest.

'Though it won't need that to hang him,' said the Inspector grimly. 'We've found the knife, and the man admits that he stabbed the woman with it in a fit of passion.'

Dr. Mazeppa nodded and went back into his surgery. A child who had fallen and cut his knees badly had been brought in from the street. He dressed the wound and patted the little one gently on the head and smiled at it. Dr. Mazeppa looked quite five years younger. He thought so himself as he caught the reflection of his face in the glass.

IVAN KRILOFF listened to the evidence against him, and knew that his fate was sealed. The witnesses who heard the struggle, saw him come down the stairs, and heard him say that he'd 'settled' the woman, put the rope round his neck.

Dr. Mazeppa, who told how he had examined the wound and found at once that it was fatal, and that the woman had not many minutes to live, fastened it there.

While the Doctor was giving his evidence, he stood erect in the dock, and from time to time turned his dark eyes upon the prisoner. Afterwards the Judge pronounced the fatal sentence. The interpreter, as a matter of form, explained to the prisoner what the words of the Judge signified; and the prisoner bowed, and prepared to leave the dock.

As he did so, Dr. Mazeppa, who was standing by, spoke to him in a low voice in Russian, and Ivan Kriloff clutched at the dock for support. A moment more, and the warder had hurried him away.

The words the doctor had spoken were the words that the members of the Revolutionary Society use when they inform a traitor that his treachery has been discovered, and that his death has been decreed by the committee.

______________________

13: Under the Mistletoe Bough

A Christmas Story

George R. Sims

Australian Town and Country Journal 17 Dec 1902

IT WANTED but three days to Christmas and London was one vast Christmas market. The shops in the West End thoroughfares suggested fairy revels and gargantuan feasts. Even the humble little tradespeople of the byeways had dressed their windows in a gay fashion that brought colour and light into the dull, drab monotony of mean streets and squalid courts.

But of all the Christmas markets Covent Garden was the most Christmassy. Yellow is the colour that the experts in mental trouble use to-day when they wish to raise the spirits of the victim of melancholia, and yellow loomed largely through the foggy arcades of "the Garden."

In the Central Avenue the windows were filled with the soft-hued lemon and the glowing orange, glorious bouquets and bunches of yellow roses from the South of France were there to tempt the rich, and the bright yellow blossoms of Scilly appealed invitingly to the humbler purse. But the features of the market were the great stacks of holly and the daintier bundles of mistletoe. The green leaves revealing the clusters of berries―  red and white― stamped the date, and brought to the mind of every saunterer in the Central Avenue, every man and woman passing on business or pleasure bound through the quaint old-fashioned arcades, that the glad day was at hand, that Christmas with its hallowed lessons of humanity was once more dawning over the world.

A man of medium height, bronzed with a foreign sun, and with a touch of grey at the temples, halted for a moment by a stall by the entrance to the avenue, and watched the little crowd of purchasers selecting their bunches of "Christmas," and bearing them away. He was still gazing at the bustling scene, apparently lost in thought, when a gentleman and lady, who had driven up in a smart brougham and were strolling into the market approached him.

The couple paused a minuted to look about them, and glancing round, the gentleman caught sight of the sunburnt loiterer and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, surely," he exclaimed, "you are Dick Armiger?"

The man thus addressed looked up, and a smile of recognition at once passed over his face.

"By Jove, Franklyn, this is the oddest thing in the world. I was absolutely thinking of you at the very moment you spoke to me, and we haven't met for― for―"

"For fifteen years," replied Mr. Franklyn. "The last time you and I shook hands, Dick, was the night before you sailed for India."

"Yes― and that's fifteen years ago."

Mr. Franklyn suddenly remembered that in his astonishment at meeting his old friend he had left his companion unintroduced. He made a hasty apology.

"My dear," he said, turning to her, "this is one of my oldest friends, Dick Armiger. You've heard me speak of him. Dick, this is my wife."

Dick looked keenly, it seemed to her almost critically, at Mrs. Franklyn, and took her proffered hand with a smile.

"I'm eo pleased to meet you, Mr. Armiger," she said. "My husband has told me so much about you.''

"And Dick must tell us both a great deal more," exclaimed Mr. Franklyn heartily. "You― you are a bachelor still, eh?"

"Yes-still."

There was an unmistakable accent on the "still." But it was the speaker's thought that supplied it. It was not meant to convey anything... to his hearers.

"Then come and dine with us to-night, eh, old fellow― eight o'clock― same address, Russel! Square― nothing changed, except that the poor old governor's gone over to the majority. I didn't care to give up the old house I was born in, and so my wife waived the West, and the new Queen Anne architecture, and accepted Bloomsbury when she accepted me."

"I'll come, old fellow, with pleasure!" answered Armiger. "This Christmas bustle has made me feel a bit lonely in a London that's mostly new to me, and I shall be glad to be with a friend for a while."

With a few pleasant words Mr. Franklyn and his wife bade Dick Armiger au revoir and passed on into the arcade to one of the principal fruiterer's. Dick remained lost in thought, mechanically watching the buyers of the holly and mistletoe.

A young woman, with her arms full, pushing through the crowd, trod upon a piece of orange peel, slipped, and would have fallen had not Dick caught her in his arms.

The girl lifted her face to Dick's, and enabled him to see that it was a pretty one, a young one, and a merry one.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she cried with a little laugh. "And thank you so much― I hope I didn't hurt you."

"Hurt me― no!" laughed Dick, "but see, you've dropped some of your mistletoe― let me pick it up for you."

It was just one sprig out of the bundle the girl was carrying.

She gave him a roguish little look as he picked it up. As he held it towards her she shook her head, smiling.

"You may keep that," she said, "and kiss your sweetheart under it."

Then with another little laugh she darted away, and aas lost in the crowd.

"My sweetheart!" muttered Dick Armiger to himself with a sigh. "My―"

He held the sprig of mistletoe loosely in his hand. His impulse was to throw it away. Something caused him to change his mind.

"No," he murmured to himself, "I'll keep it. After all, it has awakened the old memories― it has carried my thoughts to her― it has let me see her sweet face again, if only in a day-dream. I'll keep the mistletoe; it shall hang in my dull old chambers this Christmas-tide. Ah, If only she could stand beneath it― my sweetheart― my poor lost darling!"

WHEN, shortly before eleven, Dick Armiger rose to bid his old friend good-night, Mr. Franklyn would not hear of it. It had been a pleasant quiet evening in the old-fashioned Bloomsbury mansion, that had been the residence of the  Franklyns, grandfather, father and son, for close on a hundred years. But as there were no other guests, Dick declared that Mrs. Franklyn could not be left alone in the drawing-room, so the after-dinner confidential chat over the cigarette had been of the shortest. But when Dick wanted to say good-night, his host interposed.

"Not bit of it, Dick," he said. "My wife believes ii her beauty sleep, and is going to leave us, so you and I will go into the library, and have a yarn about old times over the fire."

There was nothing to tempt Dick Armiger back to his chambers, and he yielded the point without argument.

John Franklyn and Dick Armiger had been friends in the days of their youth, when one was studying for the law and the other learning his future profession with a firm of civil engineers. They had met promiscuously, as young men meet, had become acquaintances, then friends, then "chums." They had learnt life and London together, and had only drifted apart when the tender passion took possession of both at about the same time, and their leisure ceased to be their own.

When John Franklyn was seven and twenty, and Dick Armiger twenty-five, their ways parted completely. Armiger obtained an appointment in India. He wrote to his old friend once or twice from Bombay, where he stayed for some months; then he went up country on some big railway work, and his letters ceased. Franklyn knew, when he bade Dick Armiger good-bye, that he had a trouble. He gathered that the course of true love had not run smoothly with him, and that was the reason he desired to leave England. But he had never pressed his friend for details, and Dick had not offered them. There are some troubles that men keep even from their most intimate friends.

But now that the years had flown, and Dick had returned to England still a bachelor, the elder man thought he might invite his confidence. He had gathered from the conversation they had already had that Dick had fared well from a worldly point of view, that he had come back with sufficient money to enable him at the age of forty to live the life, as the phrase goes, of a gentleman at large; but there had been no opportunity of putting the delicate question justified by their old intimate friendship.

When their cigars were lighted, and the servant had brought the spirit stand and accessories, and they were alone, Franklyn opened the attack.

"So Dick," he said, "you've come back rich, and you tell me you think of settling down in London, and you are still unmarried. Don't you think it's rather a lonely look-out for a man with probably a good thirty years of life before him?"

"You're right, Jack. No one knows that better than I do."

"Ah, but I suppose you'll be joining the ranks of the Benedicts presently. If we can be of any assistance, command us. My wife has some delightful femalo acquaintances, and she's a born matchmaker."

Armiger shook his head sadly.

"I've no thought of that," he said. "I loved one woman and I lost her. I shall never love another."

"Yes; I remember now. It was a trouble of that sort that sent you abroad. You only told me a little, but I guessed the rest. Did she― did she die, Dick?"

"No. It was the old story, her people didn't think me good enough. When we fell in love with each other she was hardly nineteen, I was four and twenty, and had my way to make the world. It was all right at first. Her father was a half-pay captain. We weren't engaged then, but he and his wife could see what was  likely to happen. When I knew that Annie love me― when I had dared to ask her, and she had whispered 'Yes,' her father was away in Scotland, staying with some friends. It was arranged that directly he returned I should ask his consent. In the meantime I wrote to him to the address Annie gave me.

"My letter remained unanswered for a week. When at last the reply came it was a thunderbolt. The captain absolutely refused his consent, saying that under no circumstances could he allow his daughter to marry a young man with unsettled prospects, and requesting me a a gentleman to cease all correspondence.

"Refusing to believe ithat the letter waa final I called at the captain's London residence, asked for his wife. Tho answer Was 'Not a home.' I asked ithe servant, who knew me, 1 her young mistress was in. She shook her head 'There's nobody at home― the family are all in Scotland.'

"I went home and wrote a letter to Annie telling her that I would not give her up― that she would wait for me I would attain a position that would satisfy her father. A few day later the letter was returned unopened, enclosed in one from the captain, informing me that his daughter would obey his wishes, and assuring me that if I tried to continue the correspondence it would be useless, as my letters would be returned to me unread. The letter wound up wltb these words: 'Any further attempt to communicate 'with my daughter will be looked upon as persecution. I regret having to write thus plainly, but your refusal to accept my decision compels me to.'

"What more could I do? Nothing! But for months I refused to despair. Every morning I woke believing that Annie would find some means of commnmicating with me. Every night I said to myself 'To-morrow― 'to-morrow I shall hear.'

"But no word came, and at last I know that she was lost to me. One morning reading the paper I saw the captain's name. It was the announcement of the death almost within a few hours of each other, of a wealthy Scotch baronet― a widower― and his only son. Father and son had it seems some three months previously been injured in a carrlage accident. Both after months of suffering had succumbed to their injuries almost simultaneously. By their death the title and an immense fortune would pass to the next heir, a cousin. The cousin was Annie's father.

"I understood, then, why I had been so suddenly dismissed. The captain knew that the cases of the injured men were hopeless. He had gone to Scotland to see his relatives, and while there had received my letter. He did not think that a young civil engineer of twenty-four, who might or might not earn salt in the profession which would be his sole source of income, was good enough for the only daughter of a baronet, and the presumptive heiress to a fortune.

"When I learnt these facts I recognised thc utter hopelessness of my suit. England had become hateful to me. I had an offer of an engagement with a firm of engineers in India, and I accepted it. That was what had happened to me, Jack, when I bade you good-bye fifteen years ago."

"And since then you have heard nothing!"

"What should I hear?― what was there for me to hear? I have endeavoured to forget― but― ah, Jack, don't talk of lt. It's like breaking open an old wound. Let's talk of something else― of you― your wife― your home― your happiness."

The two men talked on until long past midnight. Mr. Franklyn, seeing how deep the old wound lay, did not allude to his friend's trouble again. He chatted gaily with him until the clock struck one, and Dick rose to go.

But before that Mr. Franklyn had made his old "chum" promise to dine with them on Christmas Day. Dick Armlger, who dreaded the ordeal of passing lt in his lonely chambers, accepted eagerly.

When Dick was putting on his overcoat he thrust his hand in the big side pocket to feel for his gloves, and drew it out again with a laugh.

"By Jove, Jack," he said, "I'd quite forgotten. I've a favour to ask you."

As he spoke he drew out a little sprig of mistletoe.

Mr. Franklyn stared in amused astonishment.

"Good gracious, Dick, what have you got there!"

"You'll laugh at me― it's an odd idea― but I suppose you'll be having 'Christmas' put about the house?"

"Of course― but you don't mean to say you're presenting me with a sprig of mistletoe?"

"Well, it's this way: a young woman, quite a stranger, gave it me in Covent Garden Market this afternoon. No― don't laugh! I picked it up for her, and she told me jokingly to keep it. She said something else― and― well, I couldn't bring myself to throw it away because of what she said. I can't put it up in my place― it would bring me nothing but miserable thoughts― so I made up my mind to bring it with me to-night, and ask you― if― if you'd give it hospitality."

"My dear old Dick, you were always a sentimentalist― but I understand. Give it to me, old fellow-and I'll ask my wlfo to have it hung up in the hall. Will that ease your mind?"

"Absolutely," replied Dick with a sad little smile. "Here it is― good night, old fellow, and God bless you!"

He went out into the night, and left the staid Lincoln's Inn solicitor standing in the doorway with a sprig of mistletoe in his hand.

DICK ARMIGER had promised the Franklyns that he would come early in the afternoon and make "a long Christmas Day" of it. Mr. Franklyn wantod Dick to spend as little time as possible alone in his chambers.

"If it's a fine nftornoon," he said, "we can go for a walk. A good long constitutional is an excellent preparation for the gastronomic duties of the day."

When Dick set out from his rooms in Kensington it was cold and hazy. The skies were low, and the light seemed to be getting rapid worse. Soon after he got imto the Park, which he had to cross, a heavy fog began to roll in. It grew thicker and thicker, and presently it was impossible to distinguish anything. At first Armiger treated the matter lightly. But presently, when he found that he had absolutely nothing to guide him, that he was practically lost in the sea of fog in the centre of Hyde Park, he began to have misgivings as to the termination of his adventures.

He groped his way forward, and presently discovered a railing, and keeping by it, followed it, but after walking for some time he found that it came to an abrupt termination. He though he must be somewhere near the Marble Arch because in the distance he could hear every now and then the sound of wheels and the shouts of men. He called out, but received no reply. He had evidently no companion in misfortune in that part of the Park.

So he went cautiously on, trusting to Fate, and after half an hour's blindman's buff with railings, lamp-posts, seats, and trees, he saw what appeared to be a ghostly light or two moving about in front of him. He went forward with more confidence, and was brought to a dead stop by the closed central gates of the Marble Arch.

To feel his way from them to the open gate, and to get out on to the pavement, was not a difficult matter, but when he had assured himself that he was at the top of Park Lane he was not very much better off. However, he knew that he had to keep straight down Oxford-street till he got to Tottenham Court-road, and then to find a way which would take him across Gower-street, and so to Russell Square.

But the fog was, if anything, worse than ever. A conveyance, if one could have been found, would have been practically useless, and so the task before him looked uncommonly like finding the centre of Hampton Court Maze in the middle of a starless night.

All things have an end, and so at last Dick Armiger successfully accomplished his blind search for thc house of his friend. But instead of arriving at three o'clock, as had been arranged, lt wns close upon five when, with an exclamation of devout thankfulness, he received an affirmative answer from a shadowy policeman when he inquired, "Is this Russell Square?"

But the houses wore all alike in the fog, and numbers could not be easily identified. Mr. Armiger ascended several sets of steps, and striking a match, closely investigated the door, only to find that the number was still afar off. But at last his patience and perseverance wore rewarded. The number he had so eagerly sought gladdened his eyes in the momentary gleam of the vesta, and he made haste to lay hold of the knockor, and announce his arrival.

There was no need for him to apologise for his tardy appearance when his host greeted him with outstretched hands and warm words of welcome.

"My dear follow," said Mr. Franklyn, as he took his guest Into tho library, and made him sit by tho cheerful fire, "we've been quite anxious about you. What an awful afternoon! There will be plenty of unfortunate diners out who will never reach their destinations till Christmas Day, I'm afraid."

"It's dreadful in the streets," replied Dick "Travel is almost impossible."

"It's terribly dangerous at any rate. We've had a specimen of it here― quite an adventure. About an hour ago we were looking, or rather trying to look, out of the dining-room window, when we heard a terrific crash and a shriek. I could just see that a horse was on the pavement so I ran out, wondering if I could be of any assistance, and found that an unfortunate coachman had driven his brougham on to the pavement, and against the lamp-post. There wae a lady inside, who was terribly frightened, Fortunately, there was no great, damage done, but the lady was very terror-stricken, and upset by the shock, and I asked her to come inside, and stay with my wife until the fog lifted. She is some distance from home, and it would have been hopeless for the coachman to try any further experiments, especially after such an adventure. The man has led his horse into my stables, and will wait till the fog lifts. So I fancy we shall have one more guest at dinner than we anticipated. You won't mind a stranger, Dick?"

"I― my dear Jack― of course not. But―" He stopped and rose as Mrs. Franklyn carno into the room, and greeted him.

"I heard you come," she said, "and I felt quite relieved. After this accident at our very door, I began to be quite alarmed about you."

"Luckily I was on foot," replied Dick, with, a smile; "lt's safer In such a fog as this."

"How is our guest who has dropped from the clouds― or, rather, out of the fog?" said Mr. Franklyn, gaily.

"Oh, she's quite got over her fright now. She seems very distressed at having to intrude on us― the word is her own. She ls quite a charming woman― so sweet and gentle. It seems she had promised to go to a Christmas treat at some charitable institution, in which she takes a great interest. It was only slightly foggy when she started, and she was anxious not to disappoint her poor people, as she calls them. When the fog became so thick it was as dangerous to turn back as to go on. I really think it's quite providential that she met with her accident here― if it had been in some side street she might have been in a very awkward dilemma. Oh, by-the-bye, Mr. Armiger," she added, laughing, "my husband gave me your mistletoe, and I've had it hung up in the place of honour. It is under the hall lamp. Did you see it as you came in?"

"No," said Armiger, smiling, "I really didn't see anything except your husband. His face was such a welcome sight after my journey that I didn't think of anything else."

"Well," said Mr. Franklyn, "you can't leave the lady who seems to have come to us like the guest in the fairy tale. I think we'll take Dick inte the drawing-room. As we four are certainly going to be 'the Christmas party'― for I'm sure the fog's not going to lift before dinner― we may as well all know each other."

"Quite right," said Mrs. Franklyn. "I've already explained that we had a visitor coming, and I had the greatest difficulty in obtaining a promise that our 'guest' will stay and join our little Christmas party, but I assured her the visitor was a very old friend of my husband's."

"Who is the lady? Did she tell you her name?" asked Mr. Franklyn.

"No, poor thing, she's only just beginning to recover from her fright. But at any rate we can introduce Mr. Armiger."

Mrs. Franklyn led tho way to the drawingroom and entered it with her husband, Dick following them.

"This is our other guest," said Mrs. Franklyn to a lady who rose as they entered. "Mr. Ar―" She stopped suddenly.

The lady had uttered a startled cry

Dick Armlger stood, his hands stretched out in front of him as though he saw a vision, hut his trembling lips only uttered one word:

"Annie!"

WHEN MRS. FRANKLYN came quietly to seek the guests, whom with womanly tact she had left alone, she found herself greeted by two radiantly happy faces.

The story had been told. The shadow had been lifted from Dick Armlger's life.

The half-pay captain, who became a baronet and inherited a fortune was dead, and his wife had followed him to the grave. No male heir was left. The title was extinct, but the wealth had passed to Dick Armiger's old sweetheart. She had been faithful to the one love of her life. Though she never hoped or believed that they would meet again― though she felt that he might have married and forgotten her― the faithful woman remained true to the memory of her girlhood's romance. They were almost lad and lass when they parted, now they were man and woman, but God had willed it that they met free, and loving still, that Christmas afternoon.

LATE THAT Christmas evening the fog lifted from London, and the stars shone out in a steel blue sky. Outside the shouts of lost wayfarers had long since ceased, now there were only the cheery tones of happy home-returning little family parties.

The fog― the accident― the carriage― all had been forgotten under the Franklyns' hospitable roof. That part of the day seemed a dream; only the present was real― the present in which the man and the woman looked into each other's eyes, and knew that all the happiness of their lives lay before them― all the sorrows had been left far behind.

It was the parlour-maid who broke in upon that Christmas night's reverie.

"If you please, sir," she said, "the coachman's come round to say that it's quite clear now, and shall he put to?"

Dick Armiger and the woman he loved stood together in the hall waiting for the sound of the carriage wheels. He had sent the parlour-maid downstairs. He would see the lady to her brougham.

Mr. and Mrs. Franklyn had bidden the guest that the fog had sent them adieu, and remained discreetly in the drawing-room.

Dick looked up, and saw the sprig of mistletoe hanging from the lamp above. Softly he told its story.

"Annie," he whispered, "the good fairy, who gave it me said I was to kiss my sweetheart under it."

The woman lifted her soft brown eyes, moist with tears of happiness, and their lips met.

____________________

14: Gabriel's Trumpet

Guy Gilpatric

Australian Women's Weekly 29 July 1939

THE topsail schooner Scorpena, 270 tons, belongs in shares to numerous members of the Costoli family of Via Reggio, an ancient port midway between Pisa's leaning tower and Carrara's marble mountains.

One look at the trim little vessel as she scuds past at sea, chasing the tails of her plunging dolphin escort, is enough to tell you that she is a real sailor's ship, manned by sailors wno are sons of sons of sailors clear back into the shag-bearded, ear-ringed ancestor whose Christian zeal in encouraging Admiral Andrea Doria's Moslem rowing-slaves with a twelve-thonged scourge (one thong for each Apostle) gained for his galley the blue riband of the Genoese navy and for himself the foundation of the family fortune which the Scorpena represents today.

The Scorpena is commanded by Papa Costoli. He smokes cigars, gnarled and brittle as licorice root, and patriarchally lards it over a crew of sons, nephews and assorted social errors with names like Tucci, Pucci and Mucci, all pronounced with an ooch. But if, as is likely, you see not a soul of them on deck and perceive that the wheel is lashed, it is because all hands are below eating polenta, drinking wine, playing the accordion and trusting in St. Gabriel.

You will surely see St. Gabriel. He is the Scorpena's figure-head― a votive image of olive wood, right ann extended with the golden trump of doom, plundered in times remote from some cathedral in Calabria or Sicily. Such is the Costolis' faith in his usefulness, so often have they transferred him from old ships to new, that he has outgrown the status of family heirloom, and become a sort of doyen of their house. It is St. Gabriel who brings good health, good weather and good cargoes― in sum, la buona fortuna. With him at the prow, what need of mortal look-out to warn or rocks, shoals or the low-lurking derelict?

Never in the centuries since he took over his job has a Costoli ship piled up, but if ever one does― why then the archangel's trumpet will sound a blast, the gates of paradise will swing wide, and in will troop the Costolis, caps and rosaries in hand.

Each March 24, which is St. Gabriel's own day, they give him a fresh coat of paint, doing his robe crimson, his wings pale blue and his flowing beard the black of night. His halo and trumpet they gild most splendidly.

Thus secured against the manifold hazards of the deep, it is the Costolis' wont to put to sea with light hearts, rollicking song and a certain amount of accordion music, as in fact they quitted their home port one bright warm morning last May. Their ship was laden with bulrushes of the sort the infant Moses was found among, out which in our more practical times are used for making saxophone reeds and caning the seats of chairs to the lesser restaurants.

These bulrushes were consigned to Bagnoles, in the French Department of Var, where the Scorpena would exchange them for a cargo of bauxite and swap metal for La Spezia and home. It was a chore she had done so often that had her course lain across dry land, instead of the Ligurian Sea, she could have followed her own well-worn pathway like a milch cow between barn and pasture.

Now, May is a month of light airs below the Gulf of Genoa, and sun-down of the second day found the vessel with all sails set, lazing along somewhere south-west of Cape Mele in a faint breeze stirring off the land. As the long chaplet of coastal beacons flickered to life as one, Papa Costoli buttoned the top of his trou-sers and came ponderously on deck for the evening rite of taking the ship's position;

Ignoring the lighthouses (he could never remember their intervals of flash and doubted their accuracy anyway) he subjected the blood-red sky and sea and purple mountains to a scowling scrutiny, as though daring them to start something. Next, puckering his cheeks and expanding his equator to a prodigious dimension, he spat into the air and gauged the wind velocity by the descending curve of the gobbet. Finally, tilting back his head until the fat on his neck rolled into a series of distinct bulges, like the spare tyres on the back of a motor bus, he took a succession of deep sniffs.

"Ha! Petroleum!" he announced to the barefoot sons, nephews and informal fry gathered in reverence to witness the mystery. "Petroleum― fm-m-m-iff!-smell it? Well, you stupid apes, that means we are off Imperta, where the oil refineries are. May San Gaby guide us clear of their cursed tank shins in the night!" Turning to Bucci (or it may have been Lucci) who was dozing at the helm, "Hold her as she bears as long as you smell petroleum," he ordered. "Then ease her off a couple of spokes until you can see the flashes of the electric trains in the Bordighera yards, being careful not to turn your head sideways. Wait until you can no longer hear the locomotives whistle at the Ventimiglia tunnel on the French frontier, then lash her and come right in for supper. It's my turn to cook again, darn and darn and darn it all!"

Easing his paunch through the galley doorway, he observed that the clouds, become unstuck from the mountain peaks, were drifting lazily seawards down the slopes, perhaps to settle as fog.

"Zucci," he demanded, "did you remember to put oil in the lights?"

"Oil?" mumbled Zucci, waking up and scratching his back against the mainmast. "Oh, did you finally remember to buy the oil, Papa?"

"M-m, well, that is, er― Nucci, did you remind me to buy the oil?"

"What was the use, when you forgot to buy the wicks?"

"Why should I buy wicks when there wasn't any oil?" Papa Costoli forced his midriff past the jamb and slammed the door testily. Grumbling to himself, he lit the candle, gulped a tincupful of the purple wine of Montecatini, unmuzzled the garlic and set about preparing the pasta.

He made a good substantial job of it. Afterwards, they all sat around and sang to an obbligato of pancreatic gurgles and Stucci's pearl-inlaid accordion.

It was a snug, family evening. The air in the low-ceilinged cabin became thicker and thicker with the fumes of cigars, cigarettes, cooking and Costolis. It was almost as dense as the fog into which the vigilant St. Gabriel, alone in the bows, was thrusting his golden trumpet.

MR. COLIN GLENCANNON, Chief Engineer of the British tramp ship Inchcliffe Castle, lay sound asleep in his bunk, the sound emanating from the region due south of his adenoids and resembling the whimper of wind through the ribs of a gibbeted skeleton. From time to time, heightening the realism, he gave off strangled cackles as of ravens gorging a cadaveric feast and a sudden menacing "whoosh!" as though to frighten the ravens away.

Early that evening, in a laudable effort to keep the supper table conversation from flagging, Mr. Glencannon had remarked that Mr. Montgomery, the mate, was incompetent, cowardly, untruthful and unsanitary.

Mr. Montgomery, who chanced to be present, resented these allegations with spirit and offered to bet £1,000,000 sterling that Mr. Glencannon, himself, was a liar. Snort-ing his disdain for such niggardly stakes, the engineer proclaimed his readiness to hazard £50,000,000 against £10,000,000 in support of his original claims.

Swayed by the generous odds, the mate accepted the wager; then, not agreeing on just how to settle it, the pair embarked upon a fresh controversy in which Mr. Glencannon's superior elocutionary gifts enabled him to smite his adversary hip and thigh.

In retrospect, he had found the debate most satisfying; besides, the night had fallen clear and calm, and the gentle dew which moistened him after hip bedside orisons was the justly-esteemed distillation of Messrs. Mackenzie Duggan & Co., Ltd., of Kirkintilloch; thus, Mr. Glencannon dozed off free from care and aglow with well-being certified by the makers to test 100-proof. But presently, seeping into his slumbers, came an uncomfortable awareness that the ship was proceeding through fog. Mr. Glencannon knew this, not by virtue of clairvoyance, but because the engines were turning at half speed.

Wide awake and terror-frozen, Mr. Glencannon jerked upright. Simultaneously, the whistle blasted a panic of hoots which seemed to kick him in the pit of the stomach. He heard shouts, the scurry of feet and the steering engine gnashing its teeth as the wheel was jammed hard over. Something crashed against the vessel's starboard side, scraped rendingly along full half its length and after an agonising age slid clear. In a flash, the supper table controversy came back to him. "Foosh!" he gasped. "Montgomery! The dom lout's done it this time!"

Not pausing to don even the suit of droop-tail underwear which served him as pyjamas in the harsher climates, he snatched up a lifebelt and the bottle of Duggan's, dashed out on deck and flung himself into a lifeboat, where he cowered, trembling, under a thwart.

"Och, horrors!" he croaked. "Little did I dream, when I told him what I thocht o' his seamanship, that his stupidity wud soon be the death o' us all!― Ye're aboot to tenant a watery grave, Glencannon, so proof yersel', lad, proof yersel'!"

He had proofed himself to midway down the well-known Duggan label before he realised that Captain Bell was on the bridge and that the Inchcliffe Castle, instead of sinking, was proceeding on her course beneath a sky now clear and starlit.

"―Not a blarsted light was showing on 'er, sir― no, rot me if there was!" he heard Mr. Montgomery explaining shrilly. "First thing I knew, there we was right on top of 'er in the fog. We barshed 'er bow-sprit orff and she yanked down a  lot of 'er own top 'amper by 'er forestays, but I 'ad time to see she wasn't really damaged, no more than wot we are, sir!"

"HUMPH, ker-huff, well I mean to say, that makes it all the worse?" stormed Captain Bell, a trifle thickly, he having, in the first excitement, installed his false teeth backwards and bitten himself in the palate. "If you'd only hit her amidships and sunk her with all hands, everything would've been settled neat and tidy then and there. As it is, maybe she got our name and will report the collision and then we'll have a lot of forms and things to fill out. Shocking nuisance, ker-hem! But I can't understand why you didn't hear her. Even these French coasters, which you ought to know the waters around here is always thicker'n mutton stew with, usually blow bells and ring fish horns in a fog, ker-hem, which is, incidentally, more than you was doing, Mister Mate, to say nothing of the fact that they are also usually beating on dish-pans!"

"B-but, blyme, sir, she wasn't making a sound, not a sound!― you can arsk the steersman and the lookout if she was!"

"Oh, I can, can I? Well, I ain't asking you to go asking me to start asking anybody anything, and I'll ask you to please to remember it!" bellowed Captain Bell. "The steersman's here to steer, the look-out's there to look, but you're the officer responsible here to hear and see that this ship ain't climbed aboard of by every Frenchy that happens to be out at night! Oh, it looks to me as if you was asleep on your job, Mister Montgomery; it does indeed. Well, a-hem, ker-huff, we'll discuss this ker-business further in the morning!"

He ejected his false teeth into his palm, gathered up the skirts of his nightshirt and descended the ladder to his room, scolding gummily.

"Haw!" chuckled Mr. Glencannon, swinging himself over the gunwale to the deck and draping his lifebelt around him kilt-fashion. "It all bears oot what I told yon odious Cockney to his face!"

He strolled forward and gazed at the litter of splintered wood, ripped canvas and tangled cordage caught in the starboard stays. "Losh, thanks to him, it micht just as weel have been a frichtful tragedy which... But, oh, ho, what's that?"

He hurried down to the well-deck, picked up the object which had caught his eye, and examined it perplexedly. A canny smile wreathed his countenance; he turned and mounted to the bridge.

"A-weel, Muster Montgomery," he greeted the scowling mate, "I see that the grave charges I lodged against ye last evening are being abundantly confeermed already."

"Wot d'yer mean?" snapped the other. "And wot are yer doing up 'ere with nothing on but that there lifebelt, yer shameless Scotch walrus?"

"Why, as to my costume, I o' course knew that ye yersel' wud be panic stricken in the recent emergency, so I turned oot in all haste to set an example o' coolness and courage to the men. As to the meaning o' my statement― weel, ye'll recall that I publicly accused ye no' only o' gross incompetence, but o' being a liar besides. The collision was proof o' the one and here's proof of the other!"

From behind his back he produced a long gilded trumpet, something like a coach horn, and shook it triumphantly under the mate's nose.

"Here's the vurra fog horn ye swore to Captain Bell that they weren't blawing! Also, the puir Frogeater who was sounding it in their bows and who hurled it at ye in a last despairing effort to wake ye up is dootless droonded dead! His bluid is on yere hands, so who's the walrus noo?"

"'Now, wait, wait, wait a minute!" blustered Mr. Montgomery, albeit paling somewhat. "Supposing that there really is their fog 'orn, why, that's still no proof they were blowing it, any more than they was showing lights! I saw no lights, I 'eard no 'orn, and..."

"Aye, ye saw no lichts, ye heard no horn― and for why? Weel, I'll show ye for why !" He brushed past the mate into the wing of the bridge and from the deck snatched up a freshly-charged pipe, three burnt matches, and an open match box.

"There!" he shouted, "there's for why! Instead o' attending to yere job, ye were ducking doon under yon weather-cloth trying to licht yere pipe! E'en if ye glanced ahead between tries, which I doot, yere eyes were blinded by the match flames, just as yere ears were deefened and useless from stooping ower in the lee and then standing up in the wind again. Ye were deliberately violatin' the rules o' common prudence and the Thirty-one Articles. In the midst o' yere criminal negligence, the dread emergency aroseand ye were no' equal to it!"

Mr. Montgomery's mouth fell ajar and his knees trembled. He grasped a stanchion for support.

"Now, see 'ere, Mister Glencannon!" he man-aged to stammer. "I― I'm only 'uman, ain't I? I like a bit of a smoke on watch, same as anybody else. Orl of us make our little mistakes sometimes. Come, now, don't we?"

"Aye, but we dinna all lie aboot them!" thundered the engineer. "Lying, Muster Montgomery, is a vurra expensive luxury!"

"Hexpensive? Why, wot d'yer mean?"

"I mean that either ye'll pay me the ten million poonds ye lost to me in a fair and sporting wager, or I'll blaw this horn, wake up the Captain, and expose yere shame to him and the whole ship!"

The mate smiled half-hopefully and then laughed aloud.

"Lawks, I thought for a minute yer were serious!" he said, mopping his brow. "Ten million quid? Ho, ho, that's a good one, that is! I ain't got much over ten quid to me name, let alone ten million!"

"Then," said Mr. Glencannon, solemnly, "ye'd better stir yersel' aroond in Nice in the morning and raise the rest of it. Who knows?perhaps this thing will be the making o' ye! But I do know that a foormal bet is a binding contract, and that ye owe me the full and stipulated sum. I'll thank ye the noo to hand ower a numminal doon payment o' two quid."

The smile withered on Mr. Mont-gomery's face. "Oh, so yer really are serious, then!" he sneered. "Well, yer vampire, if yer think I'm going to pay yer a single brass farthing on a crazy bet that was made in fun, yer... Stop! Sh-h-h! Don't blow it! Please!"

Mr. Glencannon lowered the trum-pet and shrugged. "The doon payment has gone up to three quid," he announced, evenly. "In another ten seconds, it will be..."

Mr. Montgomery glanced fearfully over his shoulder towards the bridge ladder. "Orlright, orlright, ere, take it!" he whispered hoarsely, shoving the money into the engineer's hand.

"Thank ye," said Mr. Glencannon. "The balance o' yere debt is noo rejewced to a mere nine million, nine hoondered and ninety-nine thoosand, nine hoondered and ninety-seven poonds. Kindly remit same at yere airliest convenience and oblige."

He tucked the trumpet under his arm and departed down the ladder, the cork slabs of the lifebelt drumming hollowly against his knees. In the privacy of his room, he locked the money away in the dresser and then set about examining the curious gilded instrument.

"How vurra unique!" he mused. "I ne'er saw anything exactly Iik' it! And there's paint all ower it a quarter-inch thick, except on this one place aroond the middle."

He pressed the mouth-piece against his lips and essayed a breath into it. The breath was of a nature to penetrate solid concrete, but it failed to pass through the trumpet.

"Clogged up― useless! Weel, that explains why the Frenchies were throwing it awa'― and o' course is the real reason why yon jockoss Montgomery didna hear it. But-haw, haw, haw!― twill be a lang, lang time before he hears the last o' itl"

OUTSIDE the entrance of Bagnoles harbor, a little fleet of Italian schooners and tartanas were idling at anchor while three or four more of them, including the Scorpena, lay tied up in the shelter of the grey stone mole behind the cathedral. This untoward congestion of shipping was due to a shortage of bauxite, or aluminium ore; for although a red and dusty mountain-range of the stuff was piled upon the Quai du Mistral, it had all been bought up by cable for shipment to England.

The first of the British carriers, the Inchcliffe Castle, of London, had arrived and started loading that morning; now, as the Italian vessels continued to wait for additional ore trains from the mines, the crews of most of them were whiling away the time in slumber, song and the noisy game of mora.

The master and men of the Scorpena, however, were prey to a gnawing malaise. Slouching elbows on rail, they talked in hushed voices or in silence spat moodily into the waters of Bagnoles harbor. For the direst of all calamities had befallen them. They had lost their luck

Nine days had passed since their midnight misadventure, four of which they had slaved at sea, and five spent wearily waiting for bauxite. Papa Costoli. knowing that the collision had occurred in French waters, fearing that the vessel he had rammed was one of the Nice-Ajaccio mail boats, and quaking in his carpet slippers whenever he thought of the seven kinds of hell he would catch if responsibility for the accident were fastened upon him, had prudently contrived by carpentry and camouflage to efface all signs of it before putting into port.

All signs, that is, save one; St. Gabriel was without his trumpet. His splintered fingers patched with putty and touched up with paint, he presented the anomalous spectacle of an archangel shaking his fist at the world― a gesture scarcely calculated to bring good luck to the ship, cargo and crew in his charge.

And the luck, the proverbial Costoli luck, had vanished with the trumpet. St. Gabriel had saved the ship, but without his horn, the horn that he had carried for so many centuries― well, he was no longer St. Gabriel !

Immediately upon the Scorpena's arrival in Bagnoles, the douaniers had come aboard and confiscated 8000 liras' worth of Gorgonzola cheeses and choice Parma hams which Papa Costoli was attempting to smuggle into France in observance of a privily-recognised custom established by Italian skippers back in Garibaldi's time. The confiscation was bad enough luck, but on top of it the headstrong Zucci had berated the douaniers and kicked one of them in the shins at cost of a drubbing for himself and a 500 franc fine for the ship. And now there was this waiting, this irksome, expensive waiting, which, Papa Costoli was convinced, would end at any minute with his arrest, imprisonment and disrating for running in fog without lights and ramming a government mail vessel. He shud-dered, spat down at a big grey mullet that was swimming just under the surface, and returned his gaze to the sun-baked town

A uniformed figure came striding purposefully along the quay! Was he an insurance inspector from the Bureau Veritas? An official of the Administration Maritime? A police-man with a warrant? Like a sea turtle, Papa Costoli retracted his head into the fat of his neck; his nostrils dilated and his paunch turned cold. He nudged Bucci, Bucci nudged Tucci, Tucci nudged Lucci, and so the alarm sped down the rail. They saw the uniformed one come straight for their vessel. They held their breaths as they watched him eyeing it. They heaved a sigh of relief as they distingushed on his cuffs the four gold stripes and purple inset of a Chief Engineer of the British Mercantile Marine.

"He is not a Frenchman!" announced Papa Costoli. "San Gabriele, vi ring razio!"

"San Gabriele, vi ring razio!" came the fervent echo.

The engineer, now that he had paused, seemed much less steady on his feet than he had been while under way. Also, he seemed less interested in the Scorpena than in the several tons of scrap metal which lay ready for loading on the quay alongside her. Hands in jacket pockets and swaying back on his heels, "Lash!" he exclaimed rapturously, "a truly magnificent pile o' junk! Weel, noo I shall spend a delichtful hour browsing among it!"

He peeled off his jacket, hung it on the jutting leg of a crippled iron bedstead and set about his browsing with the eagerness of a bibliomaniac at large in the Bodleian library.

For a considerable time, then, the Italians watched in perplexity as he clambered, tripped and sprawled upon the junk pile, hoisting out cracked tram wheels, wrestling with a twisted motor car chassis and gloatingly clicking his tongue over a set of manhole covers the inscriptions upon which left no doubt of their authenticity as a limited edition. At length, however, he seemed to feel an embarrassment of riches; reluctantly, he laid aside the greater part of his incunabula and concentrated his attention upon the rarer and more readily-portable gems. These consisted of a worn locomotive brake-shoe, the fittings from a horse collar, a Louis XV chandelier, and a hollow copper ball of the sort used to stay the rushing waters which symbolise our civilisation.

He had gathered up his prizes and was heading for the Inchcliffe Castle when Papa Costoli, welcoming the chance to bolster his sagging morale with a little bullying and at the same time air his English to his tribe, sounded off with a challenging hail.

"Hey, looka you!" he shouted. "Whata for you are taka da junk, hey?"

The engineer halted guiltily in his tracks and stood blushing.

"Eh? Beg pardon?" he simpered sheepishly. "Oh! Weel, to tell ye the truth, sir, I'm just indulging an innocent little whimsy. Ye see, I'm a great one to fuddle and tinker aboot, making things in my spare time. Aye, making things!" His hand swept upward in a spacious, fluid gesture. "Little, pairfict, artistic things! Bross knuckles! Skeleton keys! All manner o' dainty trifles..."

He glanced at his collected treasures and his eyes kindled with a fond light.

"Perhaps I'm owersensitive to beauty, but the cockroach trap which I made for mysel' in Nice the other day really does seem more lovely than any pooem I hope to see climb up a tree, or howe'er that song goes, although I play it vurra sweetly on the bagpipe. Anyway, whene'er my guid foortune guides me to a truly monumental pile o' junk such as yon, I always avail mysel' o' the oppor―"

"Putta back!" ordered Papa Costoli. sternly. "Putta back queeck! Steal ees proibire! I proheebitta you steal-a my junk!"

"Oh, but my vurra dear sir!" Mr. Glencannon protested, crestfallen. "Surely ye dinna mean to say that these few puir frogments o' this-and-that are o' any value to ye! Pray what wud ye do with them if ye had them?''

"Whata we do?" screamed Papa Costoli, pounding on the rail. "Whata we do? We make-a da bomb, we make-a da cannon, we make-a da shell! Blow uppa all Inglese sheep, BOOP!''

"Weel, blaw them up and see if I care!" said Mr. Glencannon, airily. "The best mutton comes from Scotland anyway, so BOOP yersel'! But noo, I hope yell forgive me if I remark that yere accent is faulty, yere manners uncouth and yere odor stifling. In a word, my vurra dear sir, ye're nowt but a filthy dago."

Papa Costoli turned purple; his paunch vibrated like a stratosphere balloon about to burst. He sputtered impotently.

"―And moreover," the engineer continued, drowning him out: "Ye're no' e'en a feerst-class genuine dago! Ye're merely a renegade and a Communist, as yon figure head plainly reveals! Poosh, fie, and for shame! Whoe'er heard o' a loyal Eyetolian Poshist putting a statue o' whuskery auld Karl Marx in a red nichtshirt on the bow o' a ship! Look! His fist is e'en clenched in the Communist salute!"

"No! No! No Communista!" bawled Papa Costoli, attempting to beat his breast, but in his fury punching Bucci in the eye.

"Blosh ! I'll report ye to Ben Mussolini, that's what I'll do!" declared Mr. Glencannon, righteously. "I'll mak' a memorandum o' this whole international incident, and ye'll see what happens to ye when ye get back to Italy with yere Moscow pigbarge!"

Notebook and pencil an hand he strode along the quay and scowled up at the vessel's transom.

" 'Scorpena o' Via Reggio,' " he read aloud, ominously. "Vurra weel, ye red radical revolutionaries! Just wait till the guid Muster Mussolini hears how ye behave when ye're oot o' his country, and he'll rub yere noses in it till ye wish ye'd all been shot in Abyssinia!"

As he snapped the rubber band around his notebook, his fiery glance fell upon a square brass plate screwed to the Scorpena's after deckhouse. Upon the plate was en-graved "San Gabriele, Pateci la Grazia di Salvarci."

"San Gabriele?" he muttered. "San Gabriele?― That must mean Saint Gabriel, the Archangel who'll blaw the trumpet on Doomsday. But― but― trumpet? Aye, guid losh, why o' course!"

Ignoring the chorus of invective howled at him by the entire Costoli family, he stalked off towards the Inchcliffe Castle, covertly observing as he passed the Scorpena's figurehead that its freshly-painted fist was indeed posed exactly to accommodate the mysterious golden trumpet.

Once aboard the Inchcliffe Castle, Mr. Glencannon hurried to his room and thence, with the recently scoured and brightly polished trumpet wrapped in a newspaper, he went in search of Mr. Montgomery. He found him lying in his bunk, reading a temperance journal and looking glum.

"Well, wot is it now?" the mate demanded as his visitor very carefully closed the door behind him.  Then, spying the trumpet, "Oh, more blackmail, is it?" he groaned. "Well, blast yer soul, ain't yer ever going to let up on a chap? As far as I can see, Captain Bell 'as forgot orl about the haccident, but now, if yer should Just blow that thing― why, it might cost me my job and even my ticket!"

"Aye, I ken it vurra weel," said Mr. Glencannon. "But I must insist that ye withdraw yere insinuations aboot me being a blackmailer. If ye're referring to those trifling instalments ye've paid me on our wager, why..."

"Trifling instalments?" echoed Mr. Montgomery. "Trifling, yer've got the cheek to call 'em? Three pounds at sea, two pounds when we was in Nice, three more at sea, yestiddy; and now..."

"And noo," said Mr. Glencannon sudden good will throbbing in his voice and illuminating his face, "and noo, dear lad, yere worries are aboot to be ended once and for all! Surely, ye didna think the money interested me― foosh to money! No, Muster Montgomery, I was merely teaching ye a valuable lesson ne'er to sleep on yere job― I was trying in all altruism to mak' a better mon o' ye!"

"Oh, see 'ere, cut out the bilge!" growled the mate. "Stop beating around the bush and explain wot's yer game! I told yer at the start only 'ad ten quid and now yer've bled me down to two."

"Two?" repeated Mr. Glencannon, smiling brightly. "Weel, weel, weel! I must say that's handsome o' ye! One pound was the price I planned to sell ye this foghorn for, but as lang as ye insist upon paying two, why..."

"Yer-yer really mean yer'll sell it to me?" gasped the mate. "Yer mean yer'll sell it and keep your mouth shut about-about...? 'Ere― 'eres two pounds― take it!"

"Aye, I'll ne'er mention it, e'en in my cups," the other promised, tucking away the money and handing over the trumpet. "As to our little bet― weel, as lang as ye've no money left, I dinna mind telling ye it was only a joke all alang, haw, haw, haw!"

"Joke, eh? Fine joke!" snapped Mr. Montgomery. He rose from his bunk, rapped out a savage oath and was just about to shove the trumpet through the open porthole when Mr. Glencannon grasped his arm.

"Foosh, mon, foosh― dinna be reckless!" he counselled. "Dinna ye realise that yon horn is worth money?"

"Worth money to 'oo?"

Mr. Glencannon shrugged. "Worth money to yersel'. Frankly, if I was as broke as ye are, I'd go aroond aboot the port and try to sell it for whate'er I cud get to a French ship― aye, or e'en to yon dago schooner astern o' us. All Mediterranean windjammers use foghorns o' that same pattern."

"Oh, do they? Well, then, maybe that's an idea!'' assented Mr. Montgomery. "Even a 'arf-crown would look as big as the moon to me, right now! Yus, I'll just go back there and try it on them dagoes."

Mr. Glencannon accompanied him on deck and then stood watching him as he headed along the quay towards the Scorpena.

"Haw, losh, what a spectacle!" he gloated. "I shudder to think what yon dagoes will do to the gowk, and my only regret is that I canna be there to see it! Thanks to my recent gentle efforts, they're no doot feeling slichtly anti-British. And as soon as they recognise their ain horn being offered for sale to them by an English officer off a ship they'll instantly realise must be the vurra one that dom near sunk them, they'll they'll― oh, dearie me, haw, haw, haw!"

For twenty minutes he stood there, shaken by spasms of laughter and craning his neck Scorpenawards to see the carnage begin. But strangely enough, it didn't begin. Instead, to his consternation, he saw the fat Italian captain escort Mr. Montgomery to the ladder, embrace him warmly and wring his hand.

MR. GLENCANNON grew tense. "Weel, what happened? Did ye sell it?" he demanded, as the mate, beaming, came up the Inchcliffe Castle's side.

"Sell it? Yus. I sold it!" Mr. Montgomery appeared to be in a pleasant sort of daze. "Lawks. I― I cant quite figure it out! When I first went aboard, they was orl very narsty and 'ostile-like, but as soon as I unwrapped the fog'orn, they seemed scared to death of me. The skipper actually wanted to know if I'd come to arrest 'im! I told 'im eavens no― orl I wanted was to sell the orn. Then 'e arsked me, very suspicious, where I'd got it. and it was my turn to be scared, you bet! But as soon's I told 'im I'd stole it orff a drunken French sailor in Nice, 'e gave me this 'ere money and then― now dont larff― they orl gathered around and kissed me! Look!"

Mr. Glencannon looked, and saw two banknotes from each side of which scowled an engraved likeness of Il Duce. Mr. Glencannon returned the scowl.

"Two thousand liras!" he read. "Two-thousand liras! Why, it's ower twenty English pounds!" He trembled as though stricken with palsy. He steadied himself against the rail.

"Laugh!" he repeated dully. "Laugh, did ye say? No, Muster Montgomery. I willna' laugh. Oh, I assure ye. Muster Montgomery. I've no slichtest intention o' laughing! As a matter o' fact― as a m-matter o' f-fact. I― I―"

His emotion overcame him. Fumbling in his pocket for a corkscrew, he turned and lurched towards his room. From somewhere not far off came voices raised in song to the rollicking lilt of an accordion.

___________________________

Cumulative Index to No 19

An index to the short stories in the Past Masters series produced by "Pulpmeister", in which the issues are identified as follows:

Past Masters, P; More Past Masters: M; Past Masters Two, Three etc: as numerals 2, 3 etc.

Cleve F. Adams

Flowers For Violet 4

Forty Pains 4

A.J. Alan

The Diver  5

My Adventure at Chislehurst  5

The Hair  5

H2, etc.  5

My Adventure In Norfolk  5

W. L. Alden

Hopkins' Safe  15

Monty's Friend  15

Starkweather's Circular Hotel  15

Grant Allen

The Conscientious Burglar  P

Raymund Allen

Allah Knows Best  13

The Black Knight  13

A Happy Solution  16

The Winning Move  13

Mark Allerton

Price of Office  17

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews:

The Butler  6

Anonymous

Adventure of the Rubber Pipe  11

By a Miscalculation  12

A Detective's Story  12

The Fatal Trapdoor  15

Martin Guerre  12

The Walled Chamber  15

Arthur Applin

Overdue  17

Paul Arène

Uncle Sambuq's Fortune  15

Alice and Claude Askew:

Aylmer Vance and the Vampire  M

The Empty Chair  8

In Masquerade  16

Francis Henry Atkins

The Broken Sword  9

The Third Figure 10

Stacy Aumonier

George  M

A Source of Irritation  7

Where Was Wych Street?  8

F Britten Austin

An Affair Of Honour  5

Buried Treasure  5

Diamond Cut Diamond  11

The Fourth Degree  5

The Inca's Treasure  5

The Other Side  5

Well Lost?  11

W. E. Aytoun

The Glenmutchkin Railway  M

John Kendrick Bangs

Mr. Homes Shatters an Alibi  8

Robert Barr

The Great Pegram Mystery  M

H Bedford-Jones

The Four Red Circles  4

Gallegher of Beaver  4

The Luck of a Cowboy  4

J. J. Bell

The Great Corkscrew Mystery  17

Stella Benson

The Man Who Missed The 'Bus  18

J. D. Beresford

Cut-Throat Farm  15

Leslie Beresford

Black Cats For Luck  15

Diamonds for the Duchess  15

Feminine Feathers  15

Light-Fingered Looting  15

The Man in Khaki  15

Murder in Oils  14

Poker Hand  15

Understudy  15

John Bickerdyke

A Fearful Night 12

Earl Derr Biggers

Volcano-Mad 3

Harold Bindloss

The Evicting of Grainger  9

The Tempter  6

Ottwell Binns

Phantom Gold 15

The Prodigal Son, V.C. 11

The Remittance Man  15

M. McDonnell Bodkin

A Bolt from the Blue 7

Diamond Cut Diamond 9

A Drop of Blood 9

Find the Forger  8

Hide And Seek 9

The Matchmaker 6

Murder by Proxy 7

Only a Voice 8

Over-Ruled  8

Safe Bind, Safe Find

The Slump in Silver 9

The Torpedo 8

Under His Own Hand  9

A Wrong Turning  8

Rolfe Boldrewood

Five Men's Lives for One Horse 8

The Mailman's Yarn  8

Charles G. Booth

Stag Party 11, 18

Guy Boothby

The Family Honour 10

The Great Dives Elopement 10

A Strange Goldfield 10

Through Toil and Tribulation 13

Max Brand

The Silent Witness P and 7

Percy James Brebner

The Cobbler 6

The Lady's Glove 6

The Man with the Carnation 6

The Missing Signorina 6

Thomas Charles Bridges

Wingfield's White Elephant 10

Heywood Broun

The Fifty-First Dragon  17

Ellis Parker Butler

The Detective Club 7

Geoffrey's Panklaggephone 6

Wadsworth Camp

The Obscure Move 18

Egerton Castle

The Guinea Smuggler 17

Christopher Caudwell

Four Friends and Death  5

J. Storer Clouston

The Fortunate Lord Fabrigas 13

Magic 13

The Trials of Tony 13

Arthur Conan Doyle:

The Disintegration Machine  10

The New Catacomb  P

When the World Screamed  12

Frank Condon

A New Year's Surprise 13

Richard Connell

Flash!  7

Loser Wins All  9

Man of a Few Words  9

One-Trip Darling  5

The Solid Gold Article  9

Dorothea Conyers

Sir Hector Devereux's Bet 17

When Rogues Fall Out 17

Mrs. George Corbett

Spoofing a Detective  7

Heath Crichton

A Country House Surprise  15

The Gold Mummy  15

The Midnight Guest 15

The Mystery of the Hotel Royal  15

Colonel Henry Curties

A Summer Night's Weird  6

Richard Harding Davis

In the Fog  9

Aidan de Brune

The Empty Match Box  P

The Fifth Domino (as by John Morris)  12

The Gift to See Ourselves as Others See Us  8

Sir George B. Douglas, Bart.

The Adonis of Slagborough  17

Patience  15

Peter Pirnie's Prison-House  16

George Allan England

Arson in the Jungle  10

The Longest Side  14

Glyn Evans

"The Man Who Was—"  5

Gwyn Evans

The Croucher 18

J S Fletcher

Comedy of the Grand Canal  8

The Cracksman's Catspaw  7

The Honour of Two  16

The Yellow Dog  P

Sewell Ford

The Impressing of Looney Fipps  17

R Austin Freeman

The Great Portrait Mystery  P

Jacques Futrelle

Room 666   14

Tom Gallon

The Vengeance of Adam Rook  11

John Galsworthy

Acme  3

Guy Gilpatric

Gabriel's Trumpet 18

Mary, Queen of Scots  18

Kenneth Grahame

The Burglars  16

George Griffith

Five Hundred Carats  18

Harlan Halsey

Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist 18

William H Hamby

Cal Wood's First Case  16

Cosmo Hamilton

Proofs of  Guilt 10

The Mirror of Nature 12

The Silent Witness 5

Frances Noyes Hart

"Contact!"  18

Floyd Hamilton Hazard

Front!  13

Headon Hill

Behind the Cupboard 16

The Dragon Casket 16

The Fierce Eyes 16

The Gunman from the Underworld 16

The Sapient Monkey  9

Robert J Horton:

The Ninety-Ninth Proposal 4

Fergus Hume

Tragic Voyage  14

The Seaside Girl 15

The Blue Vase  15

C J Cutcliffe Hyne

The Anarchist's Scheme 6

Anchored 10

Beauty and the Beast 4

Confounded 3

Gregory Of Byzantium 3

Guaranteed Countess  8

A Lottery Duel 3

A Marriage of Convenience 3

The Men in Stone 3

Mrs. Seal McIntosh 3

Paradise Coal Boat 3

The Perfumer 3

A QC's Confession 3

The Ransom 4

The Settler-ess 3

The Ship-Breaker's Yard 3

The Tragedy of a Third Smoker P

The Traitor: 3

The Trinidad Treasure 3

A. A. Irvine:

The Fountain of Light 5

Violet Jacob

Secret Intelligence  17

Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace:

Mr. Belton's Immunity 7

The Tea-Leaf P

Lord Kilmarnock

A Man's Hand  14

Otis Adelbert Kline:

The Phantom Wolf-Hound 4

Stephen Leacock:

The Prince of Wurttenburg P

William Le Queux

Cheating The Spies!  14

The Mysterious Englishman  16

The Open Eye 11

The Secret of the Fox Hunter  17

Sheer Profit  P

The Wrong Road  17

Bruno Lessing

As It Happened To Moey  16

Moritsky's Ward  16

John Luther Long

Madame Butterfly 14

Sir William Magnay, Bt.

Mrs. Brotherton's Adventure  17

William J. Makin

Flight From Teheran 8

Four Guests 7

The Horror of the Loch 7

Murder off the Map 7

Supper at Midnight 5

Arthur W. Marchmont

The Bolchester Bank Robbery  17

Don Marquis

The Locked  Box  17

Richard Marsh

Giving him his Chance  16

"I Have Killed a Man!"  16

The Other Man's Boots  16

A E W Mason

The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel P

The Ginger King P

L T Meade

Warned by a Mouse 10

L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax

A Doctor's Dilemma  11

A Race with the Sun 10

L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

The Arrest of Captain Vandaleur 10

The Dead Hand 3

The Face in the Dark 7

Finger Tips 3

The Secret of Emu Plain 10

Sir Penn Carlyll's Engagement 3

The Yellow Flag 10

Alice Duer Miller

Slow Poison  18

Lucy Gertrude Moberly

Black Paws 6

C. S. Montanye

Come Back to Aaron 14

Cricket's Last Hop 18

Death With Music 14

Fog is Necessary  14

Frozen Stiff 18

Hoodwinked 18

Ink  13

Ivan’s Foe 13

Merry Month of Mayhem 14

Opals Are Unlucky 18

A Shock for the Countess 13

This Will Kill You 13

Wings For An Angel 18

Charles Leonard Moore

The Lion Rug 16

F. Frankfort Moore

The Crock 17

Joan's Two-seater  17

W. C. Morrow

The Mated Rubies of Kyat Pyen  16

Lawrence Mott

Nab  13

Talbot Mundy

Making £10,000 3

Edith Nesbit

The Mystery of the Semi-Detached M

William Edward Norris

The Willingham Van Dyke 6

David Wright O'Brien

The Money Machine M

Rats in the Belfry 9

Owen Oliver

Destiny  18

Her Account  6

The Last Laugh 6

A Rapid Conveyance  7

The Specialist 6

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Lady of the Morass 9

The Man Who Lifted the Blind  16

Mr. Senn's Past P

A Royal Dilemma 3

A Strange Conspiracy 13

The Tower Ghost 8

"Ouida"

The Eldest Born 13

John Oxenham

The Missing Q.C.s  18

Frank L Packard

Corporal Bob  12

Barry Pain

Albert Theodore Parish 11

Amphistamium Formosum  10

Clubs and Hearts  7

The Dog's Understudy 11

Hasheesh 11

"If"  13

Rose Rose 18

Some Imitations 6

Twelve Minutes 6

Marjorie Pickthall

Mannering's Men 6

Marmaduke Pickthall

The Poultry Yard  16

Lilian Quiller-Couch

An Exciting Week  16

Mabel Quiller-Couch

A Condoned Crime  11

Frederic Reddale

Galleon Gold 12

C E Bechhofer Roberts

The English Filter 7

The Last Lap 8

The Man Who Lost His Memory 7

Mrs Carnaby's Dairies 8

Murder of a Matchmaker 8

The Mystery of the Chaffeur's Suicide 7

The Radium Robbery 8

Virgin Snow 7

Morley Roberts

The Anarchist 12

The Anticipator 12

The Arbitrator 12

An Edited Story 12

The Figure-head of the "White Prince" 12

The Judgment Of Paris 12

A Man's Death 12

Her Memory 7

A Pawned Kingdom 12

The Pedestal 6

Round the World in a Hurry 12

Two Men and a River 12

The Wedding Eve 12

Clarence Rook

The Stir Outside the Café Royal  17

Theodore Roosevelt

The Wendigo M

Anthony M. Rud

Ooze 7

Damon Runyon

Tobias the Terrible P

Charles  ('Chic') Sale:

The Specialist M

"Sapper" (H C McNeile):

Will You Walk Into My Parlour? P

Dallas Lore Sharp

The Professor's Panther 16

Perley Poore Sheehan

The Hands of Killian 12

The Murdered Wife 11

Spider Tong  M

The “Smuggler’s Daughter”—Five Reels 12

Tiger Trail 4

Adam Hull Shirk

Osiris 4

George R. Sims

Doctor Mazeppa  18

Lance Warrener's Crime 11

The Silver Fox 18

Under the Mistletoe Bough  18

Howard Dwight Smiley

Smokeless Tobacco  16

Thorne Smith

Yonder's Henry! M

John Philip Sousa

The Conspirators M

Andrew Soutar

The Doctor Takes a Hand  6

The Story without a Title  16

Henry Spicer

Called To The Rescue 18

F St Mars

Shadows  16

There and Back  8

Arthur Stringer

In the Wireless Room 18

Halliwell Sutcliffe

At The Road Top  17

Annie Swan

Aunt Caroline  14

Sir Basil Thomson

The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser  P

Guy Thorne

The Flirt 10

Major Marlowe's System  13

On Christmas Night  13

Puzzle Phyllis  6

Reward of Revenge  12

Unforeseen 5

Katharine Tynan

His Lordship and Kitty-for-Short  17

E. Charles Vivian

Locked In P

Other Gods 6

Edgar Wallace

Bill of Scotland Yard  4

Christmas Eve at the China Dog M

A Present for Evans M

The Slane Mystery P

"Waif Wander" (Mary Helena Fortune)

The Dead Man in the Scrub  17

The Dead Witness  17

Monk's Mark 13

The Phantom Hearse 10

The Spirits of the Tower 10

Henry Brereton Marriott Watson

The Devil of the Marsh M

Mrs. Baillie Weaver

The Scarecrow  16

F A M Webster

No Leopards in Surbiton 5

The Schimmel Sets the Pace 6

The Secret of the Singular Cipher 6

Carolyn Wells

The Silent Model  17

Ethel Lina White

Cheese P

Wax Works 7

Fred M. White

According to the Statute M

The Azoff Diamonds P

Victor L. Whitechurch

Stopping an Execution 12

Raoul Whitfield

Death in the Pasig 14

The Great Black  14

Inside Job  14

Oscar Wilde

The Canterville Ghost  8

Valentine Williams

Blind Guess M

C N and A M Williamson

The Dazzle Plot  8

John Strange Winter

Hunks 12

P. C. Wren

Simple 6

May Wynne

The Tiara   16

Leroy Yerxa

Through the Asteroids— to Hell! 15

Arthur Leo Zagat

Beyond the Spectrum  M

Israel Zangwill

Cheating the Gallows  9

_____________________

Table of Contents

- 1: Destiny / Owen Oliver

- 2: Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist / Harlan Halsey

- 3: The Silver Fox / George R. Sims
- 4: In the Wireless Room / Arthur Stringer
- 5: "Contact!" / Frances Noyes Hart
- 6: Slow Poison / Alice Duer Miller
- 7: Mary, Queen of Scots / Guy Gilpatric
- 8: Five Hundred Carats / George Griffith
- 9: Called To The Rescue / Henry Spicer
- 10: Rose Rose / Barry Pain

- 11: The Man Who Missed The 'Bus / Stella Benson

- 12: Doctor Mazeppa / George R. Sims

- 13: Under the Mistletoe Bough /  George R. Sims

- 14: Gabriel's Trumpet / Guy Gilpatric

- Cumulative Index to No 19