Past Masters Forty One
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: 41st anthology of stray short stories published in magazines and newspapers and largely forgotten. Some were anthologised in print years ago, but those anthologies themselves are also forgotten. Many of these stories came from the weekly Detective Story Magazine in the period 1919-1922, held in Internet Archive. For some reason the Archive does not have contents as part of the metadata, so searching by author name and title doesn't bring anything up; I have had to search through each magazine for L+70 public domain stories. 1: Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream / Christopher B. Booth 2: The Rolling S

PAST MASTERS

FORTY-ONE

September 2021

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream / Christopher B. Booth

2: The Rolling Stone / Guy Gilpatric

3: Shooting Gallery / Raoul Whitfield

4: Popeau Intervenes / Marie Belloc Lowndes

5: The Perfect Murder / Stacy Aumonier

6: The White Pillars Murder / G. K. Chesterton

7: The Manor House Mystery / J. S. Fletcher

8: The Murder on the Golf Links / M. McDonnell Bodkin

9: A Posteriori / Helen Simpson

10: Wolf Medicine / Hugh Pendexter

11: Mr. Clackworthy's Return / Christopher B. Booth

12: Tardy, but on Time / John J. Chichester

13: The Grim House / Richard Connell

14: Mistrusted Sight / Oliver Maddox Hueffer

15: Mrs. Huggins's Hun / Stacy Aumonier

Cumulative Index Nos 31-41

_______________________

1: Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream

Christopher B. Booth

1889-1950

Detective Story, 11 March 1922

"AN observant eye, my dear James, often fattens the bank balance," philosophized Mr. Clackworthy as he and James Early, his co-plotter upon idle and surplus wealth, walked briskly along La Salle Street toward the city's financial district. "Only an opportunist can hope to be successful in our profession."

"You gotta cut out them chin gymnastics if you want me to get hep," grumbled The Early Bird. "I reckon you're aimin' t' say that the guy what drags in the kale is the bozo what keeps peeled for the yellow stuff, huh?"

"There have been times, James," pursued Mr. Clackworthy, "when you have failed to appreciate my interest in such a variegated assortment of subjects. Recently, for example, you offered strenuous objections to a little motor tour which we took through the State. Apparently I had given myself over to relaxation, but, nevertheless, I had a weather eye out for opportunity—and found it."

At this moment the master confidence man turned into an office building, and the presence of a crowd prevented confidential conversation. An elevator whisked them up to the fourth floor, where the pair stepped from the lift, and Mr. Clackworthy led the way around the corridor to an office, the door of which bore the announcement:

WILLIAM SACHS & CO.

Stocks and Bonds.

Mr. Clackworthy was shown at once into Mr. Sachs' private office, for he was more or less a regular customer.

"Good morning, Mr. Sachs," said Mr. Clackworthy; "meet Mr. Early. I received your letter in the morning's mail, and I am here, ready to write you a check. You have procured the stock, I believe you said."

The broker nodded as he reached into his desk and produced a fat bundle of stock certificates.

"There they are," he replied, fixing his customer with a curious stare.

"Four thousand shares in the Stanton Natural Gas Co., par value one hundred dollars a share. That is the total issue with the exception of one thousand shares which we have been unable to find. My agents got most of it for one dollar a share, and narrowly escaped detention as lunacy suspects. As I warned you before, the stock isn't worth the paper that the certificates are printed on. Ordinarily, Mr. Clackworthy, I restrain my curiosity, but I wonder if you would mind telling me what you want with this worthless stock."

"I am buying it as an investment," replied the master confidence man with a smile; "you must admit that four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock for four thousand dollars is quite a bargain."

"I admit no such thing!" exclaimed the broker. "The Stanton natural gas field gave out completely nearly ten years ago. The stock's worthless, and you know it. This five hundred thousand dollar company was formed when the Stanton boom was at its height, and when it looked as if that district had enough natural gas to light every city in that part of the State. I happen to remember the details quite well.

"Some farmer around Stanton bored for oil, and, to his own surprise, tapped natural gas instead. One well after another was brought in, and it seemed that the supply was inexhaustible. This company was formed to sell natural gas to all of the artificial gas companies in cities within a radius of fifty miles, but about the time they had finished laying the mains the supply gave out. There wasn't enough gas left in the Stanton area to fry an egg.

"That's what you're buying, and you know it! You've gone into it with your eyes open. I warned you at the time you first commissioned my firm to round up this stock for you. Investment! Bah! You couldn't resell this stock for enough cash to get a shave! If you don't mind telling me, I'd like to know what the idea is."

"Investment," repeated Mr. Clackworthy enigmatically.

"But, hang it all, man, you don't expect the Stanton gas field to be revived, do you?"

"No, I don't expect that," admitted Mr. Clackworthy. "The field is dead beyond all hope of rejuvenation. I don't ever expect to find any one fool enough to buy this stock."

Mr. Sachs threw up his hands. "You're too deep for me!" he exclaimed. "If you don't expect to resell the stock, you've simply thrown away four thousand, five hundred dollars, for I'm going to charge you five hundred dollars as our commission for getting hold of the shares. It was quite a job."

"Yes," agreed the master confidence man, "it probably looks as if I had thrown away some very good money, but I'm not in the habit of stinging myself in such an absurd fashion."

He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen and proceeded to write a check.

"Then you don't care to tell me what you propose to do with this stock?" urged the broker.

"I don't mind in the least telling you what I am going to do with it," replied Mr. Clackworthy. "I am going to keep it."

Mr. Sachs sighed. "Blamed if I wouldn't rather know what your idea is than to have the five hundred dollars commission," he said.

"And I would prefer you to have the commission," said Mr. Clackworthy laughingly, passing over the check and picking up the certificates.

The broker stared at him intently as he moved toward the door. "Either the deepest man in Chicago, or the nuttiest," he said under his breath. "Probably the nuttiest!"

"Boss," demanded The Early Bird, when he and the master confidence man were again in the street, "was that stuff on the level about the stock bein' N. G.?"

"For marketing purposes, James its value is just that of old paper, an almost infinitesimal fraction of the coin known as one penny."

"An' there ain't no more gas under the ground near that burg than there is in a busted blimp, huh?"

"Mr. Sachs stated it very aptly, James, when he declared that there is not enough gas left in the Stanton field to fry an egg; there is no gas, and there will never be any more gas."

"Then, boss, watcha wanna pay out good dough for that bundle of pretty paper; that's what I wanna know!"

"It was my wish, James, to be in full control of the Stanton Natural Gas Co. and its assets."

"Unleash the chin, boss," begged The Early Bird. "I'm guessin' there ain't no assets."

"I suppose, James," the master confidence man said teasingly, "that it would not be amiss to say that I am, so to speak, indulging in a— well, a pipe dream."

ii

THE EARLY BIRD was not favorably impressed; in fact, he was utterly disgusted. He didn't like the looks of Kiethsville, Illinois, and so expressed himself, promptly, positively, and frankly. He had not gone four blocks on the way from the railroad station to the hotel when he began to wail bitterly.

"Honest, boss, you ain't expectin' to take any kale outa this burg?" he demanded incredulously.

"And why else would we be here?" retorted Mr. Clackworthy. "This is hardly the sort of place that one comes to for pleasure."

"You said somethin', boss!"

Kiethsville is on the northern edge of the big coal fields; it is a shabby, sooty place, made up largely of modest miners' cottages. When the six big coal mines, the profitable properties of The Plunkett Coal Mining Co., are in operation, every one is prosperous, for miners are good spenders when they have it. In the summer season, however, when most of the mines are running only one and two days a week, and some of them not at all, a pall of dejection hangs over the town. Merchants loaf listlessly in their stores and wait for the time when the public begins filling its coal bin.

The Plunkett Coal Mining Co. is but the corporate name for the Hon. Horatio Plunkett, who had, it was estimated, amassed two or three million dollars during the some fifteen years that he had operated the mines. In addition to his mines, he owned the Plunkett Trust Co., and was by far the richest and the shrewdest man in Kiethsville.

As soon as Mr. Clackworthy and The Early Bird had registered at the hotel, the master confidence man at once sent for an automobile at the public garage.

"I propose to spend about ten thousand dollars, James, during our first few hours in this charming little city," he announced. "I am now going to take you for a little ride and give you a look at my prospective purchase."

"Speak the piece, boss," pleaded The Early Bird. "Slip me the low-down. I ain't heard a peep as to why we're in this here junior Pittsburgh. Ten thousand bucks! Huh! I wouldn't give a hundred berries for the whole burg. Whatcha gonna give up all that kale for?"

"I am considering the purchase of a mountain."

"Say! Whatcha givin' me!"

"A mountain, James— a mountain of coal. Here's our machine; we shall now go forth and indulge in what is known as taking a look."

Mr. Clackworthy seemed quite familiar with Kiethsville, the result of a previous visit some weeks before. He directed the chauffeur to take them to the nearest of the Plunkett mines east of town. It was one of the shafts entirely closed down for the summer. The hoisting machinery was idle and silent, and only the pumps, which prevented the mine from being flooded by seepage water, were in operation.

"That's the mountain of coal which I propose to purchase— at least one of them," explained Mr. Clackworthy, and The Early Bird stared in puzzled curiosity at the sloping sides of the three hundred-foot-high mound of coal shale some distance from the mine proper.

"I ain't jerry to this minin' business, but it don't take a very smart guy to see that it's the dump pile; it's stuff what's thrown away because it ain't no good, huh?"

"Precisely, James," answered Mr. Clackworthy. "At every coal mine is to be found a great mountain of coal screenings like that, growing year after year without hope of a purchaser; it is too compact and of such poor grade as to be practically without fuel value.

"This particular dump, I would say at rough estimate, contains some ninety or a hundred thousand tons of tailings, for which there is no market. I propose to buy it as well as others like it at each of the Plunkett mines."

"You're gonna give up ten thousand iron men for that worthless stuff; boss, are you sure that the old noodle is hittin' on all cylinders?"

"I should consider fifty thousand dollars as a fair price for all of the Plunkett dumps," said Mr. Clackworthy. "I am sure that Mr. Plunkett will be glad to accept, say, ten thousand dollars cash, and the rest payable later."

"But, boss, you've just said that the stuff won't burn!" protested The Early Bird.

"It has never been utilized as fuel," admitted Mr. Clackworthy, his eyes twinkling; "it is so fine that it smothers out a fire, and, as I said, the grade is very low. However, it's apparent worthlessness is just the point; it is my present job to buy a total of something like five hundred thousand tons of worthless shale— and make it burn!"

The master confidence man walked back to the waiting automobile, refusing to proffer any further explanation. When they had returned to the hotel, The Early Bird made himself as comfortable as his gnawing curiosity would permit, while Mr. Clackworthy went across the street to the imposing Plunkett Building, where Horatio Plunkett had his business quarters, and where were the executive offices of the Plunkett Coal Mining Co.

Mr. Plunkett's secretary, a thin, haughty little man who was exceedingly proud of his position with Kiethsville's richest and most important man, was accustomed to receive visitors with a chilling aloofness, but at the sight of the tall, prepossessing, elegantly tailored Mr. Clackworthy he found himself bowing. He decided instantly that it must be something very important, indeed, which would bring such a personage to Kiethsville.

"I am quite sure that Mr. Plunkett will see you, sir," he said in answer to Mr. Clackworthy's inquiry. He did not even ask the nature of the caller's business.

A moment later the master confidence man was ceremoniously ushered into Mr. Plunkett's inner sanctum, a richly furnished office with a massive mahogany desk, expensively carved. On the wall facing the desk was a large oil painting of Mr. Plunkett himself.

Horatio Plunkett was florid and portly; an aggressive chin protruded from beneath a bristling gray mustache, and over a slightly bulbous nose were a pair of shrewd, cold eyes which had the habit of narrowing almost to pin points. A shrewd man, one knew instantly, and possessing a ruthless determination to turn his shrewdness into gold.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Clackworthy?" he asked in his booming voice, respectfully fingering the caller's impeccable card. His appraising glance darted up from the visitor's twenty-dollar shoes, along the lines of the hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, to the pleasant face and faultlessly barbered Vandyke beard.

"I am about to surprise you," announced Mr. Clackworthy with his genial smile, yet getting to his point in quite a blunt, businesslike way. "I want to buy your six shale dumps. I am not a bargain driver, Mr. Plunkett; I will give you ten cents a ton."

Mr. Plunkett was surprised; more than that he was utterly dumfounded. The thin line of his mouth relaxed as his chin dropped in an expression of complete bewilderment.

"W-what!" he stuttered.

"I am both serious and sane," assured Mr. Clackworthy. "Your ears have not tricked you; I am offering to buy your six shale dumps for ten cents a ton; ten thousand dollars cash, and the remainder within a year. I have a bank draft in my pocket."

"What—what do you want with the shale dumps?" demanded Mr. Plunkett.

"I must decline to answer that question," replied Mr. Clackworthy. "You have six shale dumps which grow larger year after year and which are at present utterly worthless. They are without value to you; they are worth ten cents a ton to me, and if I can turn them into a profit, that would be my business. At ten cents a ton, your shale will bring you about fifty thousand dollars, which is just fifty thousand dollars more than you ever expected to get. Do we make a deal?"

"But, my dear sir, I have a right to know what you are going to do with that shale!"

"Not necessarily," returned Mr. Clackworthy. "I must have an immediate answer; if we cannot close a deal, I shall get the first train to Fallsburg, where there are other mines."

Mr. Plunkett's shrewd eyes searched the master confidence man's face for a moment, and he saw no signs of relenting. Swiftly he considered the possible uses to which the shale might be put.

"Do you intend using that shale for fuel?" he demanded.

"I prefer to keep my own counsel," answered Mr. Clackworthy, and Mr. Plunkett smiled in mixed triumph and sneering amusement. Experts had long since given up the problem of fuelizing coal shale.

"Humph!" he thought. "The fellow has a hare-brained notion that he can burn shale. Ten thousand cash! Even if he never completes the payments on the rest of the forty thousand dollars— and, of course, he won't— I'll be just ten thousand dollars ahead. If I don't get his money some operator to the south of me will."

For a moment he continued to tap his fingers against the desk top.

"All right, Mr. Clackworthy," he agreed. "I'll deal with you— five hundred thousand tons of shale at ten cents a ton; ten thousand dollars cash, and forty thousand dollars payable in two installments divided over the year. Is that satisfactory?"

"Entirely so," said Mr. Clackworthy. "Call in your attorney and we will draw up a contract."

The contract was a matter of simple legal composition, and within the hour it was signed, and Mr. Plunkett had the ten thousand dollars.

When Mr. Clackworthy returned to the hotel he found The Early Bird standing in the lobby, Christopher B. Booth Mr. Clackworthy's Pipe Dream Detective Story, March 11, 1922 5 staring intently at a map of the State which hung on the wall.

"Boss," he said, "I just been givin' this here map the double O, an' it just filters through the bean that this burg is just twenty miles across country from the town of Stanton."

"Yes," admitted Mr. Clackworthy. "I believe that is so."

"An'," pursued James exultantly, "I ain't forgot that Stanton is the place where is them gas wells that ain't gassin' any more."

"Quite so," encouraged Mr. Clackworthy. "An' you went an' bought up all the stock in that gasless gas company."

"Your deduction progresses, my dear James."

"I gotta first-class hunch that you buyin' this coal that won't burn has got somethin' to do with gas wells what won't gas."

"Proceed, James; proceed, and let us see just how closely you can hit the nail on the head."

"Hit it on the head, m'eye!" exclaimed The Early Bird. "How'm I gonna hit it on the head when I can't even see the nail!"

iii

MR. CLACKWORTHY could not remain long in a town without the town being gaspingly aware of his presence, and so it was with his presence in Kiethsville.

He moved swiftly to the business in hand. The lumber company, for two thousand dollars of his money, had delivered large quantities of building material to a vacant plot of ground near the railroad tracks; a double force of carpenters were set to work, and a rough, shedlike structure, measuring some one hundred by fifty feet, went up almost like magic.

When the carpenters went away, brick masons were put to work building a large oven along one side of the factory; then machinery began to arrive. During these operations, Mr. Horatio Plunkett continued to chuckle over the bit of good fortune that had sent an unexpected ten thousand dollars his way.

Since Mr. Clackworthy banked with the Plunkett Trust Co. it was a simple matter for the local magnate to know that of the original thirty thousand dollars that the stranger had brought to Kiethsville, only fifteen thousand dollars remained, and that, with Mr. Clackworthy's lavish check writing, this balance was dwindling. This seemed to Mr. Plunkett to indicate that his chances of getting another payment on his shale was negligible, but, well, ten thousand dollars was better than nothing.

It was one morning while Mr. Plunkett was considering these matters that Dawson, his secretary, entered and laid upon the desk a clipping from a Chicago morning paper.

"Here's what they are up to," announced Dawson.

Mr. Plunkett saw that there had just been incorporated at the State capital, The New Era Coal Brick Co., Kiethsville, Illinois, Mr. Amos Clackworthy, president.

"Coal bricks!" exclaimed Mr. Plunkett. "Bah! Who ever heard of coal bricks! Don't bother me with such nonsense."

Nevertheless, the coal magnate was possessed of a normal curiosity, and more than once he found himself wondering just what "coal bricks" were supposed to be. He was wondering when Mr. Clackworthy telephoned.

"Mr. Plunkett," said the master confidence man, "we are turning out our first coal bricks this afternoon, and thought you might like to come over."

For a moment the mine operator hesitated, but curiosity won, and he accepted the invitation. When he reached the shedlike factory, workmen were unloading shale hauled in from the Plunkett mines, and Mr. Clackworthy came forward with his genial smile. "You are about to witness the production of our first coal brick," he said. "There you see your shale— worthless in its present state. In a few minutes it will be transformed into coal bricks which can be sold at the price of your best-mined coal."

Mr. Plunkett grunted skeptically as he stared about the unpretentious interior of the factory, if a shed could be dignified by such a name. Fires had been started in the big brick oven, and in the middle of the room was a ponderous machine with a big hopper and a cylinder with a capacity of about three tons of shale.

"Only one machine installed at present," explained Mr. Clackworthy. "It gives us a capacity of a hundred tons a day, but we'll expand. After we've cleaned up our profit on your five hundred thousand tons of shale, we'll step out and buy other shale dumps. Not much investment in factory, as you can see; not necessary."

"Humph!" grunted Plunkett. "What are you going to do with— er— coal bricks after you have— ah— manufactured them?"

"Burn 'em," replied Mr. Clackworthy. "Fuel on a par with your best-mined coal— cleaner and more convenient; and, as you doubtless know, ten cents a ton is far cheaper than you can mine coal."

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Plunkett again. He eyed the master confidence man closely, impressed despite himself by the brisk, sure manner and the confident voice. "I'll have to see it."

"And see it you shall," promised Mr. Clackworthy. "The shale is shoveled into the hopper and fed into a cylinder which is revolved under compression; that is our secret process. I can't show you the process, only the result."

Two days previously George Bascom and "Pop" Blanchard, two of Mr. Clackworthy's trusted coworkers, had arrived in Kiethsville. George was to be the sales manager and Pop was in charge of the factory. The latter, in overalls and jumper, was busy directing the workers when Mr. Clackworthy called him over.

"Mr. Plunkett, I want you to meet Mr. Blanchard, our mechanical genius. You may proceed now, Mr. Blanchard."

The hopper of the ponderous machine was opened, and it was shoveled full of dry shale; a cloud of sooty dust arose and filled the shed. The hopper door was closed, clamped down, an electric motor switched on, and the big drum began to revolve. The ground trembled with the heavy motion of the machine.

Mr. Plunkett looked on curiously and stared questioningly.

"You are, I see, going to be much surprised," said Mr. Clackworthy. "As you know, of course, there is a certain amount of oil in all coal. Our process is merely to get sufficient excretion of oil from the shale to make it both readily combustible and cohesive. After the shale is taken from the machine you will see it sticky with oil; we mold it into bricks and bake it hard. The oil will make the coal bricks burn readily."

"Utter nonsense!" exclaimed Mr. Plunkett, but he waited to see the result. After some ten minutes the machine was stopped and the drum opened. The shale came out, moist and gleaming with oil. Mr. Plunkett, with a look of amazement on his face, picked up a handful of it.

"It— it's unbelievable!" he sputtered. "There— there can't be that much oil in shale."

"Yet there is; you have to admit that," replied Mr. Clackworthy.

"It must be a trick of some sort; what you've done is simply scientifically impossible!" protested the coal magnate. He strongly suspected that Mr. Clackworthy would presently draw him to one side and offer to sell him stock, and he was very much on his guard. He stepped closer and examined the machine; he had to admit that there was no conceivable place where enough oil to saturate three tons of coal shale might have been hidden. He looked about the factory; certainly there was not a secret nook or cranny in this barren interior. The oil-soaked shale was trundled to the pressing machines and molded into blocks about the size of an ordinary brick; then the blocks were placed upon a shelved truck and rolled into the bake oven. Twenty minutes of baking and there was the finished product.

"Behold!" exclaimed Mr. Clackworthy. "The New Era coal brick!"

"Let's see it burn," said Mr. Plunkett skeptically.

"With pleasure," agreed Mr. Clackworthy, gathering up some wood shavings, kindling a fire, and permitting the coal bricks to ignite. Mr. Plunkett stared at the now blazing coal shale which burned with a ready and hot flame.

"High degree of inflammability," explained the master confidence man.

"Easy to handle, no clinkers. Coal bricks should sell well, don't you think, at three dollars a ton, f.o.b. Kiethsville?"

Mr. Plunkett compressed his lips. He knew that the thing was ridiculous, and yet it was done. He sensed a trick of some sort, yet, confound it, there couldn't be a trick!

"You are offering stock for sale, of course?" he questioned shrewdly.

"Oh, no," replied Mr. Clackworthy. "We have too good a thing, and if our present plans go forward we can struggle along without outside capital. Quick sales is what we look forward to. The money will be rolling in soon, and that will give us the money to increase our production. We launch our selling campaign at once. Hey, George!"

George Bascom strolled over. "Bascom, meet Mr. Plunkett— Mr. Horatio Plunkett. And, George, we will turn out our first hundred tons today, I hope. We'll have our first carload in Chicago to-morrow night and open up our display room the day following. Release those full-page advertisements in the newspapers, George.

"You see," he added to Mr. Plunkett, "our idea is to create a demand among consumers at once; that will start the dealers ordering."

"Humph!" grunted the coal magnate; his tone indicated the opinion that sales for coal bricks might not be so easy as Mr. Clackworthy imagined. He looked about the cheaply built factory again; again he sought for the trick. If the thing was on the square— and he began to admit that he couldn't for the life of him see how it could be otherwise— the cost of production was very low. He did a swift problem in multiplication and figured that The New Era Coal Brick Co. was about to realize a profit of a million and a quarter dollars on the shale for which Mr. Clackworthy had paid ten cents a ton!

Thoughtfully Mr. Plunkett returned to his ornate offices in the Plunkett Building and at once called in Dawson, his secretary.

"Dawson," he said crisply, "you and Jerry Hunt, the railroad freight agent, are good friends."

"He is Mrs. Dawson's cousin," replied the secretary.

"Good," replied Mr. Plunkett. "I want you to find out if this fellow Clackworthy has shipped in any crude oil. Find out for me to-day, if you can; if the thing is on the square— humph!" His voice trailed off musingly. "A million and a quarter profit— on my shale! Quick sales! Humph! We'll see about that; we'll see about that!"

iv

IF MR. AMOS Clackworthy had, as he had intimated to Mr. Plunkett, optimistic visions of an avalanche of orders for coal bricks, he was doomed to disappointment. Two thousand dollars spent in newspaper advertising had stirred no demand from the wholesalers or retailers in coal. But Mr. Clackworthy was far from disappointed.

Keen analyst of human nature, he had anticipated this very turn in events. He knew that Mr. Plunkett was interested; he knew that he had put coal bricks through his laboratory and had found them high-class fuel. He had discovered, also, that Mr. Plunkett had blocked the sale of coal bricks; his agents had gone among the dealers, whispering warningly that they would find it to their advantage to "lay off" of coal bricks. It was broadly hinted that dealers who did handle coal bricks might find it difficult to get mined coal when they needed it most. It was a boycott, pure and simple.

Mr. Clackworthy sat in the offices of The New Era Coal Brick Co. and with him were The Early Bird, Bascom, and Pop Blanchard. The factory was deserted, for production had been suspended. Coal bricks wouldn't sell, so what was the use in making them?

"Well, my dear friends," began the master confidence man, "we don't seem to be a howling success, eh?"

"Coal bricks is sellin' like palm-leaf fans at a football game," grumbled The Early Bird.

"It's a conspiracy!" exclaimed George Bascom. "The dealers are scared to handle our product."

"Of course," went on Mr. Clackworthy; "that is what I was depending on."

"But," protested The Early Bird, "if them coal bricks ain't gonna sell, how're you figgurin' on gettin' a wise bloke like Plunkett t' cough up real dough for a factory what's shut down an' losin' dough?"

"My dear but sometimes dense friends," replied Mr. Clackworthy laughingly, "this is the work of Mr. Plunkett. He is noted in the coal trade for stifling the life of competition. He's trying to get us discouraged so that he can buy us out for a song. On my trip to Chicago yesterday I secured a nice collection of affidavits which give us the proof that Mr. Plunkett's agents have conspired to ruin us.

"Now, Pop, I think it's about time that you and I quarreled."

Pop Blanchard nodded cordially and leaned comfortably back in his chair. "You don't like the way I have handled the business," went on Mr. Clackworthy. "You are demanding that I buy your stock. I have in the bank a balance of nearly five thousand dollars. I shall give you a check for it and you will turn over to me your stock. You cash the check and leave town this afternoon."

"Just as you say," agreed Pop goodnaturedly.

The Early Bird was about to demand explanations, but he saw from the twinkle in the master confidence man's eye that he would not have long to wait.

"That being settled," said Mr. Clackworthy, "I will now attend to a little matter of simple mechanics."

He got a spade and a wrench which he carried into the factory. Winking at Pop, who, alone, seemed to be in on the secret, he began to dig a trench from the wall of the building to the big machine which performed the reputed function of extracting oil from coal shale. On he dug, without concern for his twenty-dollar shoes, and presently there was revealed a length of pipe. The Early Bird, watching eagerly, saw a great light. The pipe led up through a hole in the platform on which the machine rested, entering the drum through a hollow space in the base, so well concealed that even a mechanic would have had a hard time figuring it out.

"I gotcha!" exclaimed The Early Bird. "That oil comes from—"

"From Stanton, of course," finished Mr. Clackworthy. "This is the old pipe line of the Stanton Natural Gas Co., which passes through Kiethsville on its way to Owentown. I was very careful to build our factory directly over a point where the old pipe line runs. The rest was simple.

"The pumps at Stanton were put in repair at a small expense. Our old friend, Jack Prichard, is over there with a mechanic. The gas line would carry oil as well as gas, and Jack has simply been pumping oil through the abandoned pipe line. When the machine was set in motion it opened a valve which permitted enough crude oil to pass into the drum to saturate the shale.

"I knew that Plunkett suspected a trick, and that he would move heaven and earth to find out if we had shipped in any oil. We hadn't, of course. Moreover, there wasn't a square foot inside this shed where a gallon of oil could be hidden.

"The oil made fine coal bricks, and the only trouble is that it costs about six dollars a ton to make 'em— about twice as much as we were trying to sell them for. Now you understand why I was not more heartbroken when we found it so difficult to sell our coal bricks."

The Early Bird wrinkled his brow thoughtfully.

"Boss," he said, "mebbe you got this game all figgered out, but I gotta hunch that when Plunkett gets hep to the fact he's been stung—"

"I have considered that possibility," said Mr. Clackworthy easily. "I am ready to meet that emergency."

v

FOR some days Mr. Plunkett had expected a visit from Mr. Clackworthy, and he smiled smugly when Dawson came in to announce him. As the master confidence man entered the local magnate's office his smile was missing, and he looked badly beaten.

"Mr. Plunkett," he said dully, "we're at the end of our string. Coal bricks won't sell."

A pleased chuckle sounded from the depths of Mr. Plunkett's throat, and he massaged his palms almost gleefully.

"They burn," he admitted. "How much are you out?"

"Thirty thousand dollars—every cent that I brought to this town is gone now. My bank balance is just twenty-one dollars. Blanchard threatened to throw us into the hands of the receiver; I know coal bricks are all right, so I bought him out."

"Ah, I see!" murmured Mr. Plunkett. "So you control the company?"

"I own ninety per cent of the stock now."

Horatio Plunkett leaned back in his chair. "I'll be generous," he said. "I'll let you out with a whole skin— thirty thousand dollars."

As a matter of fact, Mr. Clackworthy had pinched out of his thirty thousand, including the five thousand dollars which Pop Blanchard had just drawn from the bank, a total of some ten thousand dollars. This made the expense of the adventure, including the ten thousand dollars paid to Plunkett for the shale, an even twenty thousand dollars.

"Ouch!" exclaimed Mr. Clackworthy. "You drive a hard bargain— too hard. I won't take it."

"Then you'll get nothing," answered the coal magnate snappily.

"I'll seek outside capital," declared Mr. Clackworthy.

"Seek is right," said Mr. Plunkett sneeringly. "Finding it will be the rub. Who will be interested when they find that the dealers have refused to have anything to do with your coal bricks, that your product has been virtually blacklisted?"

Mr. Clackworthy's body grew rigid with the pretense of great surprise.

"So!" he exclaimed. "That's it? I begin to understand. Blacklisted, eh? Whose blacklist? I know the answer. You've worked a boycott on us; that means you must have wanted my company and wanted it badly."

Horatio Plunkett stared as he saw Mr. Clackworthy thus transformed, and he realized in panic that he had been too hasty.

"Since I know that you really want to get your grasping fingers on my company, I guess I will have a little something to say about price!" exclaimed Mr. Clackworthy, triumphantly.

"My price is one hundred thousand dollars cash. I'm letting you off easy, at that."

"You— you're crazy!" yelled the mine operator.

"Fifty thousand— and it's my last word."

"I've got your number now, Plunkett, and I'm going to do a little squeezing myself. What an idiot you must think I've been! I've let you put over a neat little boycott on me. Coal bricks would have sold if it hadn't been for that; you'll clean up something like a million and a quarter as you figure it. I can't get capital, eh? Well, we'll see about that!"

For half an hour they bargained, and, finally, in his desperation, Mr. Plunkett raised his offer to seventy-five thousand dollars and Mr. Clackworthy, willing to give the magnate the feeling that he had triumphed, accepted it.

Mr. Clackworthy went to the hotel for the stock certificates, and when he returned Mr. Plunkett had drawn his check. Reluctantly, as was his habit when parting with money, the coal magnate passed over the slip of paper.

"All right. I control the New Era Coal Brick Co. I shall take charge in the morning."

"I will be at the factory to turn affairs over to you," promised Mr. Clackworthy. He hurried out, for it was only a few minutes until the Plunkett Trust Co. would close, and he wanted to lose no time in exchanging Horatio Plunkett's personal check for a bank draft. It was so easy to stop payments on personal checks! As soon as he had the draft the master confidence man found George Bascom and gave him instructions to catch the first train to Chicago to collect the money on the draft.

The next morning at nine o'clock Mr. Plunkett was ready to take over the factory, but Mr. Clackworthy reported from his room at the hotel that he was slightly indisposed, and he remained indisposed until he received a telegram from Bascom that he had safely collected on the draft. Then he telephoned to Mr. Plunkett that he was feeling better, which was true.

Thus it was that, a little after noon, Mr. Clackworthy and The Early Bird joined the coal magnate and the latter's mechanical engineer at the shedlike factory. The Early Bird was nervous.

"Look, boss!" he whispered apprehensively. "Plunkett's got a force of men ready; he's goin' to try an' make coal bricks."

"Of course," answered Mr. Clackworthy complacently.

"But, boss, he's gonna know in about two minutes that he's been stung."

"He is that, James."

"But, he—he'll have us pinched. Y' know, boss, I had a feelin' last night that the best thing I could do was t' sneak out of the hotel an' touch a match t' this dump. That would of covered our tracks; he couldn't of proved nothin' then."

"Arson is a reprehensible crime, James," reproved Mr. Clackworthy.

"We're ready," announced Mr. Plunkett. "As you see, I'm going to start production at once, and my engineer here will take charge."

"Here is the key," said Mr. Clackworthy.

He waited as the workmen were put to work. At once they were instructed to shovel the dry shale into the machine while the engineer looked on doubtfully.

"You say you saw it done, Mr. Plunkett," he said, "but I don't see how. That looks like a converted concrete mixer to me."

"I saw it done," insisted Mr. Plunkett. The motor hummed, and the big drum revolved. At the end of ten minutes it was stopped again, and the drum opened. Out poured the shale as dry as when it entered.

Mr. Plunkett's face paled, and the engineer nodded and said, "I told you so."

"What—what has happened?" demanded Plunkett hoarsely. "There—there is no oil secretion. The— the shale is dry! What has happened?"

"I wouldn't say," replied Mr. Clackworthy, and he wouldn't, of course. A horrible suspicion dawned upon the coal magnate, and he stared at the master confidence man and The Early Bird. James was having a hard time to disguise his growing panic.

"Fix that machine and fix it quick!" roared Mr. Plunkett.

"I only handled the financial end," replied Mr. Clackworthy. "I couldn't make a coal brick to save my life. Now if Blanchard were here—"

"Where is Blanchard?" demanded Mr. Plunkett. "I don't know; he has left town," said Mr. Clackworthy.

"I think it must be a trick of some sort," accused the engineer. "That's only a concrete mixer with some fancy trimmings."

"Yes, it's a trick!" shouted Mr. Plunkett. "You are a crook! Give me back my draft for seventy-five thousand dollars, or I'll have you arrested. Understand? Your man Blanchard skipped out; the whole thing's a fake. You had some way of putting oil in that machine; you never did extract any oil from shale." "You saw it done," reminded Mr. Clackworthy with dignity.

"I dare you to prove any way that I poured oil into the machine. I dare you to prove that I shipped in a gallon of crude oil."

"Just the same your coal bricks are a fake!" cried Mr. Plunkett. "Give me back my money or I'll send you and that man, Early, to the pen. I'll have a warrant for your arrest in twenty minutes."

The Early Bird's face paled, but Mr. Clackworthy lost none of his calmness. The master confidence man stepped toward the office and motioned for Mr. Plunkett and James to follow.

"I thought you'd come across— you crook!" ejaculated Mr. Plunkett.

Inside the office, however, Mr. Clackworthy showed no signs of fear.

"Take a look at this, Plunkett," he said snappily. "This is an affidavit made by Gregg, one of your men. He confesses that you personally ordered him to carry on a boycott, and that is a Federal offense. Gregg is where I can find him, and I'll send him to the Federal officials if you try to get nasty. The district attorney don't love you any too well; he's been trying to get the goods on you for some time, for juggling coal prices and a few other things. Gregg's testimony will get you indicted by the Federal grand jury."

"You bribed my man, Gregg!" whispered Mr. Plunkett.

"We will not discuss his motives in signing this affidavit," retorted Mr. Clackworthy. "The fact remains that I've got the goods on you for a conspiracy in restraint of trade, of boycotting the goods of a competitor in an effort to make their stock worthless and buy in their company for a song.

"I'll admit that the machine doesn't work to-day; I'll even admit that it may never work. I know nothing about mechanics; to make the machine work is a problem for your engineer. You say coal bricks are a fake; you say I've flim-flammed you. Prove it! Prove, if you can, that I ever shipped a gallon of crude oil into Kiethsville. You can't do it.

"If you try any foolish move like having me arrested for obtaining money under false pretenses, your former man, Gregg, goes to the district attorney and tells what he knows. I won't give you back a cent; do just as you please."

"Buncoed!" gasped out Horatio Plunkett. He knew that he was licked. Mr. Clackworthy had him dead to rights; he had no proof that oil had been injected into the mixing machine, and Mr. Clackworthy had proof that would result in a Federal prosecution.

"Some day, you crook," he cried as he shook his fist in impotent anger and moved toward the door, "some day I'm going to get even with you for this."

The Early Bird sank into a chair and gasped for breath. "You— you bluffed him out of it!" he muttered. "I sure had a picture of the sheriff bringin' our breakfast in to us! You cleaned up fifty-five thousand dollars— a nice little piece of change t' split five ways, I'll say. Some— some little pipe dream! Boss, I gotta good one. Ask me— when is it that a coal brick ain't a coal brick? Ask me! This is rich!"

"All right, James, I'll bite."

"When — when it's a GOLD BRICK!"

_______________

2: The Rolling Stone

Guy Gilpatric

1896-1950

The Saturday Evening Post 2 June 1934

TO STUDENTS of Scotland's history and to collectors of those stirring ballads, poems, and pibrochs which laud the prowess of her sons, the name "Glencannon" is one with which to conjure. Though the precise origin of the clan remains shrouded in the Scotch mists of antiquity, we may reasonably assume that its founder patriarch was a shaggy barbarian who painted himself blue and who used his whiskers to filter out the tadpoles, wigglers and lesser animalculae whenever he sucked up a mud puddle, as was customary in the benighted eons before mankind bestowed upon itself the priceless boon of whisky.

The earliest traceable mentions of the Clan Glencannon occur in the lays of the Gairloch minstrels, and though the patronymic is there variously rendered, the student cannot fail to be impressed by the frequency of its repetition in drinking songs. The first individual member of whom we have record is Skene Dhu Glencannon, who, in A. D. 1211, fell into a fit of pique, brained five Englishmen with a bottle, skinned the cadavers with his dirk in the High Street of Ecclefechan and nailed the pelts to the door of the church— a devotional gesture for which, so the chronicle tells us, his fellow pew holders "were toe hym most deeplye beholden." In the year 1507, three Glencannons of Ballachulish were drawn and quartered for "stealing a tunn of spirits, the whych they dyd then and there most greedilye drinke, quaffe, imbybe, swill, swigg and swallow," and on Saint Andrew's Day, 1740, one Malcome of the ilk was pilloried and given sixty lashes "for that he did mayke a horryd noise when the Duke passed bye." Even as recently as June twelfth of last year, a certain Colin Glencannon, variously describing himself as a temperance worker, a three-toed sloth, and the Dowager Queen of Rumania, but actually chief engineer of the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, was detained at Dundas Street Police Station, Glasgow, for disorderly conduct, as the charge sheet duly attests.

Now, from this last circumstance it is apparent that the Glencannon family is still actively engaged in upholding traditions established through the centuries; and so, to bring its history up to date, it is our purpose here to review the series of incidents leading to Mr. Colin Glencannon's incarceration.

Let us begin with the bright, warm Mediterranean morning when the Inchcliffe Castle, London to Dar-es-Salaam and ports of call as ordered, headed down past L'Ahrash Point on the western tip of Malta, skirted the pile of rocky hills growing out of the sea, and swung between St. Elmo and Ricasoli into Calcara Creek in the frowningly fortified Grand Harbor of Valetta.

The anchor down and the engines rung off, a great and peaceful silence descended upon the ship. The accustomed rushing tumult of angry waters, the throbbing pulse beat of mighty mechanism, the squeaks and rattles and groans of rusty riveted iron, all, all were stilled, and in their stead reigned a calm which was almost palpable, like that of Sabbath in a city.

Mr. Glencannon, perspiration dripping from his chin, emerged from the torrid depths which were his special realm, slouched to the rail and spat disconsolately over it. Before his eyes the turreted walls and rock-hewn bastions of the town reared like imperishable monuments to the Knights of the Maltese Order who had for centuries sallied forth to knock seven bells out of the Saracens. But Mr. Glencannon, if he saw Valetta at all, was less concerned with the glories and architecture of the past than with the finances of the present and future.

"Forty-seeven!" he muttered plaintively. "Aye, forty-seeven years auld today! More than half o' life's appointed span is spun, and I'm still nowt but a rolling stone! Twenty-eight weary years slaving in the bowels o' tromp ships, and what, oh, what do I amoont to?"

"Do you really want to know, ye crankous auld sweer?" inquired a truculent voice behind him. "If ye do, weel, we're both off juty, so it wud give me great pleasure to tell ye straight to yere walrus face!"

Wheeling, Mr. Glencannon saw his nephew Duncan, the Inchcliffe Castle's third engineer— a red-headed, keg-necked youth with pale-blue eyes and hands like the scoops of a dredger. He observed with concern that the red head and keg neck were thrust forward, that the scooplike hands were slowly contracting into fists and that the pale-blue eyes were fixed intently upon the point of his chin.

"Ah, Duncan, dear lad, what a start ye gave me!" he exclaimed, at the same time prudently edging out of range. "I was just the noo refleecting to mysel' that today's the forty-seeventh anniversurra o' my birth. Congrotulate me, Duncan, congrotulate me!"

"Congrotulate ye what for?" snorted the nephew, emitting from between his teeth a high-pressure jet that sizzled past the clump of hairs which sprouted luxuriantly from Mr. Glencannon's left ear. "If there's any reason to congrotulate ye, it's that ye're still alive, and that's nowt to shout aboot. But noo, as I started to say, you and I are off juty, so I'll just mak' bold to osk what the heel ye meant by writing on the slate that it was my fault she primed three times during my watch the other nicht, and why ye reported yesterday to Captain Ball that—"

"Haw, tush, come, come!" interrupted Mr. Glencannon, retreating still another pace. "As ye say, we're off juty the noo, so dismuss yere professional worries! Dinna be so conscientious, lad! It's my birthday— my birthday, and—"

"And what?" Duncan took a quick step forward.

"W-w-weel," stammered Mr. Glencannon, cornered, but desperately groping for a figurative, distracting glove to cast to the wolves and thus stay their onslaught— "weel— Haw! Haw!— it's my birthday, don't ye see, so I— I was aboot to invite ye ashore to drink my health in honor o' it!" He spread his hands and smiled a smile that was fairly convincing in the middle, but which petered out in palsy at the edges.

For an instant, Duncan Glencannon stood as one stunned. "Eh?" he gasped incredulously. "Ye mean ye're actually inviting me for a drink? You, Uncle Colin? Inviting me, meaning that ye'll pay? Why, o' coorse I'll drink yere health, for yere mind's completely gone!"

Relieved at the success of his stratagem in so far as it had saved his person, but smitten with dismay as he estimated the havoc it would play with his pocketbook, Mr. Glencannon relaxed dismally against the rail.

"Aye, lad, we'll mak' high holiday!" he promised. "Put on yere shore clothes whilst I do the same, and then we'll hire one o' yon bumboats to ferry us ower to town."

"Vurra weel," agreed Duncan, turning somewhat doubtfully toward his room. "I'll be ready in three shakes o' a whustle, so dinna ye dare attempt to scootle off without me, ye sliddery auld strunt luggie!"

A short time later, still shaken by his narrow escape and more than ever melancholy over the stormy course of life in general, Mr. Glencannon followed his nephew up a steep, cobbled defile, half stairway and half street, which had echoed the shouts of warriors long dead and which smelled as though they were still in the neighborhood. At length, warm and thirsty, they emerged upon the Strada Reale.

Malta being a link in the mighty chain of fortresses and dockyards which stretches from England to India, the Strada was bright with the uniforms of His Majesty's army and navy. At sight of them, Mr. Glencannon's spirits improved.

"For after all," he explained, "Valetta is a white mon's town, and thus, instead o' the usual Dago dog wash, it affords a wide choice o' really potable liquors—by whuch, o' coorse, I refer to whusky. So come, Duncan, do we turn into yon estoblishment so amiably labeled 'Amabile's' and dompen our puir parched gullets wi' a dollop o' genuine imported Scots bagpipe juice."

What with the soldiers, sailors, marines and aircraftsmen assembled therein, Amabile's was doing a rushing business. "Duggan's Dew o' Kirkintilloch," ordered Mr. Glencannon, when he and Duncan had shouldered their way to the bar. "Aye, Duggan's Dew, my mon, and leave the bottle here before us. 'Tis my birthday, do ye see—a braw wet festival at my expense for all proud bearers o' the name Glencannon!"

"Oh, aye?" boomed a great voice behind them. "Then mak' way, gentlemen, for a Glencannon to slake his raging theerst!" Through the crowd, and towering above it, they saw approaching them a man— a colossus— full seven feet high and built to scale all over. He was clad in the forest-green tunic and scarlet-and-heather kilt of the Argyll and Dumbarton Highlanders, and on his sleeves were the chevrons of a sergeant. Through some oversight, he was wearing his Glengarry bonnet hindside foremost; its two black ribbons dangled down over his face, and he was forced to blow them out of his way with frequent gusty blasts which sounded like the Inchcliffe Castle's main exhaust.

"Cousin Dooglas!" gasped Mr. Glencannon, clutching the bar for support as recollections of this giant's liquid capacity bore in upon him. "Weel, weel, how are ye, Cousin Dooglas? Four years since I've seen ye! Why, I thocht ye were still in garrison at Gib!"

"I dinna doot it!" chuckled the giant, reaching for the bottle and playfully whacking Mr. Glencannon across the trousers with a swagger cane made from the butt of a billiard cue. "Ye'd no hae been so free wi' yere invitations if ye'd thocht I was in the neighborhood! But how are ye yersel', Cousin Colin?"

With black ruin staring him in the face, Mr. Glencannon could do nothing but make the best of it. "I— I'm as ye see me," he said, filling his glass again. "Ye understand, Dooglas, that I—"

He winced as a violent kick caught him in the shin. "Exockly who in the heel is this great loomp, Uncle Colin?" demanded Duncan loudly, considering Sergeant Glencannon with a hostile eye. "Losh, when I consented to be yere guest at this debauch, I didna onticipate ye'd osk me to consort with freaks and munstrussities!"

Cousin Douglas, scowling cross-eyed through his ribbons, leaned over to obtain a better view of the speaker. Mr. Glencannon hastily intruded himself between.

"Ah, pairdon, pairdon!" he apologized. "It ne'er occurred to me that ye didna know each other. Nephew Duncan, this is Cousin Dooglas, and visa versus. Ye're both Glencannons, and so—"

"Weel," Duncan broke in, "if there's one thing that clogs my liver more than one Glencannon, it's another Glencannon, and yon brute"— he jerked his head toward the Highlander— "yon brute amoonts to at least three Glencannons any way ye look at him."

"Shoosh, Duncan!" Mr. Glencannon admonished him. "Cousin Dooglas is no beauty, 'tis true, and he's no' even vurra inteeligent, but that's no reason ye shud forget yere manners, lad!"

Cousin Douglas shifted his feet, and the sound was like that of moving furniture. "Noo, hae a care, the two o' ye!" he warned. "I'm a patient mon, and I'll stand for just so much, but when I've stud for just so much, I've stud for just so much!"

"Let's all hae a drink!" Mr. Glencannon strove to stem the rising tide of war. "Come, we'll move the bottle ower to yon table and mak' it a guid auld family reunion!"

"Oh, vurra weel," Cousin Douglas agreed. "I can drink just as weel sitting doon as I can stonding up, e'en though I canna stond up as weel when I've been drinking sitting doon as I can sit doon when I've been drinking stonding up."

"Blosh!" commented Duncan, disgustedly. "What ye say doesna mak' sense, ye hulking mullet, and I dinna lik' yere looks!"

Sergeant Glencannon was arranging his elaborately accordion-pleated kilt preparatory to settling himself into a chair, but Duncan's words gave him pause.

"Cousin Colin," he said, "just so's I'll know whose gore it is I'm spilling, will ye please explain to me exockly what relation yon snirtling, pig-eyed bore is to the two o' us?"

"Aye, mak' it plain to him, Uncle Colin," Duncan urged. "As plain as yere ain mean faculties will pairmit. And dinna be such a miser with that whusky!"

Mr. Glencannon's hand trembled as he filled the three glasses. "Weel," he said, "the geneology o' our clan is reediculously sumple. Cousin Dooglas, here, springs from that bronch o' our ilk whuch inhobits Inverfarigaig on Loch Ness and the nearby foothills o' the Monadhliadths. Salmon poachers they are mostly, although one of them got bruk on the wheel for piracy in Kingston, Jamaica, in the Year o' Our Lord Seventeen hoonderd and something, or thereaboots, A.D. His grondson was one o' the MacFeergus Glencannons, some o' whom still live aroond Craigellachie-on-Spey, as weel as in Tillieludlem, doon Larknark way. Their cousin by her second marriage— no, it was his third— was Tamish Glencannon, o' the Ichnadamph Glencannons, though his mother, as we hae just seen, was born in Drumlanrig. The sole fruit o' this union, the Reverend Strathallan Glencannon, got transported to Tasmania for sheep stealing in 1853, but shortly after sairving his time, he came into a tidy bit o' money by dynamiting a safe in Hobart. He died wealthy and in the cairtitude o' a glorious resurrection, amen. The Drumochie Glencannons, on the other hond, a collateral bronch originally o' Balquhidder and sodly addicted to alcohol, later migrated to the Island o' Muck, one o' the small isles north o' Ardnamurchan, and to Llanndydnowyddykilthragowrfydd, a picturesque little hamlet lost in the northeast corner o' the map o' Wales. Does that mak' everything clear?"

Cousin Douglas and Duncan nodded, and took a drink in silence.

Mr. Glencannon, feeling the tension relaxed, took one himself. "Aye," he said, settling back, "that's how it comes aboot that the three o' us here, but especially you two, are the logical heirs to the estate o' auld Uncle Jock Glencannon, o' Milngavie, and so he arranged it in his will. Strange," he mused, "but this is the feerst time— the vurra feerst time— that the three o' us hae been together. Hae ye had any news o' Uncle Jock lately, Dooglas?"

"Nowt that's encouraging," said the Highlander, gloomily chewing the ends of his cap ribbons. "The last letter I got fra' a friend o' mine in Milngavie said that the domned auld rip is getting tougher every day. E'er since he bruk his collar bone falling oot o' the tree, that time on his hoondred-and-eighth birthday when he foncied that he was an eagle, he'd been taking vurra guid care o' himsel'. He's turned streect vegetarian, consuming nowt whatsoe'er except a quart o' whusky, a quart o' oatmeal and a packet o' snuff per day."

"Aye," nodded Duncan, "I heard, too, that he's guarding his health and spending all his money doing it. He's e'en bocht an owercoat— an owercoat, think o' what that cost! Ho, domn it all, gentlemen, unless the auld reeprobate dies pretty soon, there'll be nowt left but the property for the three o' us to inherit!"

Mr. Glencannon pursed up his lips and frowned judicially. "Aye, Duncan's richt— he's absolutely richt," he declared. "When I was hame last year, I made it my business to check up on the cash estate, and I found that it amoonted to proctically nothing. Whoosh!" he sighed with relief. "Ye can weel believe me, dear reelatives, I didna sleep a wunk o' nichts until I'd contrived to get mysel' weel clear o' the rotten business!"

"Clear o' it?" repeated Cousin Douglas, hitching his bulk forward in his chair. "Why, what do ye mean, ye got clear o' it, Cousin Colin?"

"I mean I got clear o' the whole domn inheritance, and especially the taxes that will go with it, that's what I mean!" said Mr. Glencannon, chuckling happily. "Ye see, I hired a Glesga lawyer to figure it all oot, and he deemonstrated conclusively that the estate tax on my share wud run to approximately a hoonderd and seventy-three poonds, three shillings and saxpunce more than my third o' the property is worth. That's because the tax assessment stonds at the original purchase price; since it was made, o' coorse, the whole tract has depreciated way doon in value, due to their running the new Glesga highroad richt oot in front o' it and putting in sewers and all. Ah, losh, ye wudna reecognize the puir auld place noo!"

"But great swith, Cousin Colin!" exclaimed the Highlander. "Do ye mean to tell us that when Uncle Jock dies, Duncan and I will be called upon to foork oot a hoonderd and seventy-three poonds, three shillings and saxpunce more than we'll get?"

"Aye, do ye mean it?" gasped Duncan.

"I mean worse than that!" said Mr. Glencannon placidly. "Noo that I've succeeded in getting oot o' my share o' the inheritance, leaving it divided in two instead o' in three, each o' you will hae to pay a tax o' two hoonderd and fufty-nine poonds fufteen shillings and thruppence. Aye, and there'll be no dodging it, either! On matters o' that sort, ye canna diddle the King!"

Cousin Douglas and Duncan wilted back in blank dismay. "But—but how did ye monnage it?"

"Weel," said Mr. Glencannon, "it was a vurra deelicate job. Uncle Jock had made up his mind to leave it to the three o' us, and it tuk me many a weary hour to pairsuade the stooburn auld ram that you two were more desairving than I, and shud therefore hae the whole thing between ye. But finally he acceeded to my blondishments, changed his will and left me oot."

"Ho!" snorted Duncan, half rising from his chair. "So ye fixed it so Dooglas and I wud get stuck and soddled with the whole thing, did ye? Weel, ye putrid miscreant, I've a guid mind to—"

"Wait!" Cousin Douglas restrained him, brushing his ribbons out of his face and then petulantly yanking them off. "Hold on for just a minute, lad, and then I'll help ye tear him up by the roots as he domn weel desairves! But feerst I want to osk him what's to prevent us fra getting oot o' the mess the same way he did?"

Mr. Glencannon licked his lips and rolled his somewhat fishy eyes. "Weel," he said, "Article III o' the Act Pertaining to The Bequeathment o' Lands Entailed by Freehold, Fief and Fee leaves auld Jock no alternative but to leave it to his nearest kin, whuch, as ye've seen by the geneology I just noo explained to ye, clearly indicates you."

"Ah, fush!" groaned the Highlander. "Is there no way, no way at all, that Duncan and I can dodge this frichtful colomity?"

"And if there isn't"— said Duncan ominously— "and if there isn't— weel—" Very slowly he removed his cap, hung it on the back of his chair, and went about unbuttoning his jacket. Mr. Glencannon, glancing furtively at Cousin Douglas, saw that the Highlander was unhooking his belt and sporran. The moment, he realized, was critical, and filled with dire potentialities.

"Noo, wait!" he protested, at the same time signaling the bar boy to bring a fresh bottle of Duggan's. "Dinna wax violent, dear reelatives— dinna wax violent, for aloss, 'twull avail ye nowt! E'en though ye batter and buffet me aboot fra noo till Dumsday, ye'll still each hae to pay yon two hoonderd and fufty-nine poonds fufteen shillings and thruppence tax! The only way in the world ye cud possibly get oot o' it wud be to sign ower yere shares to somebody else, and there's a fat chonce o' anybody in his richt mind letting ye do that! Oh! Haw! Haw! Haw! M'lads! Pairdon my laughter, but I fear ye're vurra badly stuck!"

"Oh, aye?" One of Duncan's dredger-scoop hands shot out and clamped itself around Mr. Glencannon's forearm. "So we're vurra badly stuck, are we? There's a fat chonce o' anybody in their richt mind accepting our shares, is there? Weel, Uncle Colin— Haw! Haw! Haw! to ye, and pairdon my laughteir—you yersel' are going to accept our shares richt here and noo, as we mak' them ower to ye in black on white! In return, ye're going to give each o' us a written receipt, assuming full responsibility for all taxes and everything else, and releasing us completely. Aye, that's exockly what he's going to do, isn't it, Dooglas?"

"Losh, why, o' coorse it is!" thundered the Highlander joyfully. "Bless me, Duncan, ye're a braw clever lad, e'en though yere looks belie ye!... Ho, barman!" He clapped his hands with the sound of a salvo of field artillery. "Fetch us pen and ink and paper!... And noo, Cousin Colin, ye swundling sneak in the grass, we'll just compose some documents in triple dublicate that'll cost ye twice two hoonderd and fufty-nine poonds fufteen shillings and thruppence, or five hoonderd and nineteen quid ten bob sax, by yere ain canny colculation!"

Mr. Glencannon turned gray. He tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He sat as one crushed by weight of woe. Once, but only once, he glanced toward the door, like a caged beast planning a desperate break for freedom.

"Oh, dinna attempt it!" his nephew warned him. "If ye do— weel, Dooglas will clout ye feerst, and then I'll tromple on what I can find o'ye!"

A dry sob escaped from Mr. Glencannon as he watched Cousin Douglas preparing the papers, but tears were in his eyes as he read and finally signed them. Without a word, he stuffed his copies into his pocket and staggered from the room, a broken man. So deep was his despondency that he even neglected to pay for the whisky.

Once out upon the Strada Reale, however, a surprising change came over him. He squared his shoulders. Smiles wreathed his face. He stepped along like a man who walks on the very top of the world.

"Swith!" he gloated, patting his pocket. "Two shares added to the one I've got mak's three, and three mak's the whole domn estate! Hoot, lad, ye're noo sole heir to the entire Glencannon fortune! Losh, what a forty-seeventh aniversurra! Many hoppy returns."

ii

FROM Malta the Inchcliffe Castle went down to Dar-es-Salaam and to the Cape of Good Hope. From there she proceeded across the South Atlantic to the Plate, traipsed around through Magellan up to Valparaiso, and then clear over to China. Fourteen months had rolled by when, early one evening, just as the smell of fried kippers was rising from the galley, she swung out of the North Channel and stuck her snout into the dark gray waters of the Firth of Clyde.

The light on the tip of Arran winked cheerily through the gathering dusk, and Mr. Glencannon winked cheerily back at it. "Glesga in the morning!" he chuckled. "And oot to Milngavie to see Uncle Jock in the afternoon! Ah, little did I think when I set forth on this voyage that I'd return fra it with my prospects o' foortune increased two-thirds! He's a hoonderd and ten years, eight months and fufteen days o' age, and it won't be long noo!"

Shortly after noon the next day, he donned the somber garb which he affected when going ashore, took a drink of whisky for his stomach's sake, another to ward off pyorrhea, a third against dandruff and a fourth because he felt like it, and shaped his course along the Dumbarton Road toward the Glasgow-Milngavie motorbus terminal. He had not proceeded far, however, when a thought occurred to him.

"O' coorse it's no' customarra for the Prodickal Nephew to fetch alang his ain fatted calf," he mused, "but pairhops, in the caircumstonces, a gift o' some kind wud be no more than diplomatic. Some little token— an offering from the heart— a quart o' Duggan's Dew o' Kirkintilloch, for exomple." And crossing the street to an establishment labeled The Riveter's Rest, he made known his wants to the barmaid.

"Wrop it up, if ye please, muss," he requested. "And while ye're doing so, I'll just wrop mysel' aroond a dollop o' the same." As a matter of fact, he wrapped himself around several and had partially enveloped still another when he realized that someone was wringing his unoccupied hand and emitting loud protestations of friendship. Turning, he recognized a certain John MacColquhoun, boon companion of his youth and now generally conceded to rank among the three outstanding liquor consumers of Glasgow.

"John!" he cried. "Ah, guid auld John, how are ye, how are ye?" In the instant, the dear scenes of his boyhood flashed cinematographically through his mind; he saw himself and John throwing red-hot counterfeit pennies over the wall to the little children of the orphanage, and — grandest of pranks!— sawing the rail of the church pulpit in such a manner that it broke when the minister leaned against it, pitching him into the transept and fracturing his jaw. Nostalgia surged over him, and as he signaled the barmaid to do her duty, the scalding tears welled in his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. Mr. MacColquhoun, who bore signs of having done considerable wrapping on his own account, wept loud and unashamed. It was a touching reunion, but at length:

"Come, come, John," Mr. Glencannon urged. "Pull yersel' together and tell me the news o' Milngavie at first hond. I'm on my way oot there to pay my respects to dear auld Uncle Jock."

"Aloss, puir Colin, o' coorse ye are!" sobbed Mr. MacColquhoun. "Ah, it came as a bitter shock to all o' us, Colin, but when I think o' how you must feel, my heart aches in sumpathy!"

"Eh?" gasped Mr. Glencannon. "A shock, did ye say? Swith, John, d'ye mean to—"

"Aye, exockly—it was sudden as a boat from the blue! Apparently Auld Jock was his ain reegular sel', in full possession o' his health and faculties, except sometimes Soturday nichts when his faculties got scrambled, and then his health wud be a wee bit low on the Sobbath in consequence, as who in the heel's is often sometimes not, I osk ye? But none o' us drumpt that the end—"

Mr. Glencannon's glass slipped from his fingers and crashed upon the floor. Before his eyes myriad yellow specks went dancing— specks which turned into bright golden sovereigns.

Uncle Jock was dead! The patriarch had passed! The Glencannon fortune was his! He was rich, rich, rich!

"...and so the Reeverend Muster Lamb will officiate," Mr. MacColquhoun was saying. "'Tis for three o'clock this afternoon in the little ivy-grown kirk at the foot o' the hill, exockly according to Auld Jock's wish. All o' his few friends will be there, but whurra, Colin, how I admire yere ain fortitude in soobmitting yersel' to the ordeal!"

With great dignity and no little effort, Mr. Glencannon drew himself erect against the bar. "John," he said, "no mon o' our name was e'er known to shirk a fomily juty, howe'er sod the occasion and heavy his heart! I shall attend yon rites, e'en though my tears blind me!"

Shoving the bottle into his coat pocket, he squared his shoulders and strode bravely through the door. Fortunately, the plate-glass panel shattered outwards, so he escaped with minor lacerations. For a moment he believed that this little misadventure had passed unnoticed, but then, hearing the voices of the publican and his staff shrill in wrath behind him, he scurried across the street through the flood of traffic and into the gateway of a shipyard. A high board fence was between him and his pursuers, and in its concealment he proceeded on his journey, undisturbed by the hue and cry raised upon the thoroughfare.

From time to time he sang, and once, moved to dance, he launched into an airy pas seul. He had trod but the first few steps of the measure, however, when he was overcome by an irresistible tendency to spiral. Also, his feet felt heavy— so heavy that he was scarcely able to lift them. Suspecting a trap of some kind— fly paper, perhaps— he waxed righteously indignant.

"Ho, send for the headwaiter!" he cried. "If ye think I'm a mon to soobmit to such horseplay, ye're dom weel mistaken! I'm Muster Colin Glencannon, Esquire, one o' the most influential men in Scotland, and—"

At this point, abruptly, his right foot came up with a viscous "sluck!" and, carefully reviewing the situation, he found that he was standing ankle deep in ooze at the river's edge. The ship yard's boundary fence terminated just above the tide mark.

"Dearie me!" he muttered, stepping back to dry ground like a cat on a tarred roof. "I fear this barrier must hae turned a corner unbeknownst to me!" Leaning against the end of it, he proceeded to unwrap the bottle. "Weel, here's to yere meemory, Uncle Jock!" he toasted. "I bocht it as a gift, but noo it's yere monument!"

The word "monument" gave him pause. He wrinkled his brows in thought. "Monument!" he repeated. "Monument! Aloss, the monument's an item I had completely owerlooked! Naturally, as his sole heir, 'twill devolve upon me to erect a suitable meemorial, but I hae no doot that all such mortuary knickknocks run into a muckle o' money. Oh, dom it, Glencannon; 'tis plain to be seen that yere new-gained status is no' all milk and honey!"

Still gloomily pondering the matter, he waded around the end of the fence and headed across a mud flat. "Marble is the usual thing, o' coorse, but a shoft o' marble is a costly confection! Bronze? Bronze is entirely oot o' the question, judging from the price we had to pay for those three-inch tapered phosphor bushings for the ship. No, it must be something sumple— sumple, deegnified and inexpensive, in accordance wi' the consairvatif tendencies o' the times! What, oh, what cud— Och!"

A sudden shocking agony stabbed his left shin and traveled up and down it in white-hot twinges. He clasped his hands around the injured region and endeavored to hop upon one foot. At the second hop the foot became so deeply embedded in the mud that he sprawled headlong.

"Ah, strange, strange!" he muttered, shading his eyes and scrutinizing the landscape. "Whate'er it was the smote me, it's no here noo. But what cud it hae been and where cud it hae gone?... Swith, I've guessed it! It must hae been a boomerang! Ho, be on yere guard, Glencannon; the bushmen are on the rompage again!"

Rising cautiously, he had just leaped forward in a frantic sprint for cover when his right shin was seared with the same sickening anguish.

As before, he went down; as before, the piercing twinges coursed through him like high-tension electric currents. But this time— ah, horror!— he knew their cause. For there, scarcely a yard from his face, reared a giant cobra, hood expanded, ready to strike again!

This, then— this was the end! Mr. Glencannon's eyes closed and his hands clutched convulsively. One of them fastened upon something solid. A bit of driftwood! Lashing out blindly, he felt the club strike an immovable object and shatter in his grasp. Opening his eyes, he saw that the rearing cobra, the immovable object, was in reality the flat, triangular fluke of a kedge anchor. The other fluke was hooked in the mud, this securing a motorboat which lay tethered by a rope some twenty yards out in the stream.

"Hah, so 'twas you, was it?" he rasped, shaking his fist at the offending hardware. "Weel, ye dom treecherous shin breaker, if 'twas no' fer my wealth and social poseetion, I'd leave my mark on ye, I wud! The idea o'— r— er—"

Suddenly his annoyance gave way to gratification. "Why, 'tis the vurra thing!" he cried. "The anchor, emblem o' security, symbol o' rest and repose in the last quiet harbor o' life's journey! Ho, Glencannon, here's Uncle Jock's monument all ready for the taking, wi'oot the expense o' a single soliturra farthing!" He cut the line several fathoms above the rusty mud hook and rigged it into a sling by which to support the burden on his back. With staggering footsteps he set off toward Dumbarton Road. The motorboat, freed from its tether, went spinning merrily downstream toward the Firth of Clyde.

"A coat o' gilt will mak' it the brawest monument in the kirk yard!" gloated Mr. Glencannon. "Though aluminium paint wud be less extrovagant, as I can snoffle a tin o' it when I go aboord the Inchcliffe Castle to say my farewells tomorrow. Also, I must remember to filch a bit o' bross upon whuch I can engrave a suitable inscription. H'm— r— for instance— let's see:

"Here rot the bones o' J. Glencannon,

Whom grim Death from amongst us took.

His stormy voyage through Life is finished

And noo he'll never drag his hook."

"Losh, there's a pairfect epitoft! Ah, ye've talent, m'lad—rare talent— I've told ye so a mullion times!"

Having plodded through the marsh and regained the highway, he found the going easier. To be sure, the rope cut into his shoulders and the anchor chafed large areas of his back, but so cheerful were his spirits that he was oblivious of physical discomfort. When he turned into crowded Greenock Avenue, however, he commenced encountering difficulties. Several times the wide, projecting anchor flukes hooked and maimed innocent bystanders, and once, in the course of a sudden lurch, the starboard stock smashed an apothecary's window. The din was considerable. Perceiving a policeman approaching on the gallop, Mr. Glencannon dodged around the corner and strolled unconcernedly down a side street.

Arrived at the terminal, he set about hoisting the anchor into a Milngavie bus.

"Hold hard, muster!" the conductor objected. "Ye canna bring yon giant's pick ox or whate'er it is in here! What d'ye think we're running— an iron-monger's lorry?"

Mr. Glencannon considered him severely. "Yoong mon," he said, "were it no' for my belief in the wisdom o' that wise old provairb, 'A soft dancer turneth away wrath,' I'd smosh yere dom ugly snout for ye. This object is no' a pick ox; it's no' a tool o' any sort. It's a monument, a meemorial, a work o' art, and I insist upon yere tronsporting it."

After much bickering, it was agreed that the anchor be carried on the roof. Assisted by the conductor, he boosted it aloft and made fast the end of its rope to the railing of the baggage rack. Unfortunately, in the course of the boosting a window was broken.

"Faw!" he snorted. "Whate'er has come ower the glass in this town, onyway? It's as brittle as glass!"

The beginning of the journey was uneventful. In the outskirts of Glasgow, Mr. Glencannon leaned forward and observed to an elderly gentleman that the country thereabouts looked rather like the outskirts of Glasgow. The elderly gentleman changed his seat. Mr. Glencannon moved along and sat beside him, but finding the other to be discourteous even to the point of refusing a snifter from the bottle, he fell to romping up and down the aisle and knocking off hats. Tiring of this he recited "Gunga Din," complete with practical illustrations of the drinking scenes, and then launched into a highly technical discourse on the Pirie-Lossington acid-vapor method of removing scale from boilers.

Approaching the long, steep hill beyond which lies Milngavie, the chauffeur hit up a lively clip. At the foot of the grade, where the tram rails cross the highway, there was a sudden jerk, a violent rending, and lo! the bus roof was whisked away like a topsail by a typhoon.

There was a crash in the road behind them, shouts, and the shrill of brakes. The crew and most of the passengers piled out in consternation.

"Ah, noo, see here, conductor!" complained Mr. Glencannon, standing on his seat and leaning over into the great outdoors. "Fresh air is one thing, but too much o' it will suffice. And another thing, ye scut— what hae ye done with my anchor?"

"Here's yere anchor back here!" the conductor retorted. "Aye, dom, ye've ruint the bus, ye hae, and twull cost ye a pretty penny before ye've heard the end o' it! If ye want yere nosty anchor, get doon and lug it yersel', for ye'll ride no langer with us!"

"Haw, hae no fear!" Mr. Glencannon assured him, vaulting over the side. "I'd no' ride another step in yere rickety auld dump cart, so just put that in yere snipe and poke it!" Walking back, he found the remains of the roof lying in the ditch. The rope was stretched taut from the baggage rack to the anchor, which was securely hooked under the tram rail. "Ah, a bit o' luck, I call it!" he exulted. "Why, if it hadna caught the track and yanked the roof off, I'd ne'er hae known it had boonced owerboard. Weel, 'tis only a stroll from here to Milngavie, so I micht as weel get gaeing."

Though the distance was short, the hill was steep and the cargo heavy. After a hundred yards, he found himself so sorely tuckered that he sank down in the grass at the wayside to regain his strength. He lay studying the anchor and wondering how best to mount it upon the sepulcher. "Naturally, a peedestal wud set it off to the neatest advontage," he decided. "But there again the ugly question o' finonce intrudes itsel'." Just then his glance fell upon a boulder in the high grass beside him. It was perhaps three feet in diameter, rounded and smoothed by the weather of the centuries. He balanced the anchor upon the stone and stood off to view it like a connoisseur before a Rodin. "The vurra thing!" he declared. "Why, ye'd swear 'twas made to order!... Er— m'm....

"Rest ye tranquil, Uncle Jock;

Though ye strive from noo till Dumsday,

Ye will never budge this rock!"

This epitaph was more truth than poetry, as Mr. Glencannon discovered when he tried to roll the boulder out into the road. Once there, moreover, it exhibited a perverse and almost irresistible tendency to coast back down the hill. He dug his toes into the macadam; he sweated, groaned and strained; the veins of neck and forehead stood out like bunches of grapes. "Push, Glencannon, push!" he panted. "If it eludes ye the noo, ye'll be squashed beneath it lik' a caterpillow!" Fortunately, he was able to block it with the anchor; then, jamming a fluke beneath it, crowbar fashion, he found that he could make some forward way. Inch by inch, he levered the great stone up the slope. His muscles ached. He had a scorching thirst. But the summit was attained at last.

Mopping his brow, he gazed down into the valley where lay the town of Milngavie. Through the still, warm air of the June day he heard the solemn tolling of a bell. He shaded his eyes and watched a line of carriages slowly approaching the graveyard of the ivy-grown church at the foot of the hill.

"Come, come, ye must hurry!" he urged himself, falling to work again.

On the downgrade his problem, though reversed, was even more difficult than before. Now the boulder seemed determined to roll merrily on its way. He tied the rope around it; then, straddling the anchor and bracing backward with his full weight, he managed to keep the procession under a fair degree of control.

Half down the hill, the slant of the road increased. Despite his efforts, he felt himself walking faster and faster; felt the walk turn to a trot, the trot to a gallop and the gallop to a wild nightmare stampede. Faster he went, and ever faster. He was covering five yards with every stride. The stone was bouncing high into the air. He saw an ornamental iron gate, the entrance to a private driveway, standing ajar some fifty yards farther down the hill.

"Praises be!" he panted. "Pairhops I can check it there!" With a final desperate burst of speed, he managed to hook the anchor into the iron grille. The rope snapped taut and tore the portal from its hinges, whereupon gate, rope, rock and anchor went careering down the road until halted by a tree.

"Ah, whurra, more trouble!" gasped Mr. Glencannon. "How I yearn for the guid auld days lik' this morning when I was penniless but carefree! Aloss, we rich! Our obligations! Our reesponsibilities! For instance, for example, what am I to do aboot this gate? It's not a bad bit o' ironmongery but— but why, losh! I can mak' it part o' the meemorial! Aye, Gates Ajar, no less. Wait— ahem....

"Oh, he has gone to his heavenly home,

Has canny Uncle Jock.

For once he's left his gate ajar,

So ye need no' pick the lock!"

"Oh, needn't we?" said a gruff voice behind him. "Well, here's a lock that even you can't pick!... Put the handcuffs on him, Campbell!"

Wheeling, Mr. Glencannon saw four husky gentlemen descending form an automobile upon the door of which was stenciled Glasgow Metropolitan Police. "You're wanted, mister!" said one of the newcomers. "You've done enough mischief for today. We've had nineteen telephone complaints about ye in the last two hours, and if ye don't go quiet—"

"Ho, tak' care, officer; I give ye fair warning!" cried Mr. Glencannon, propping up the gate and thumbing his nose over it. "Ye see me here safe in the sonctity o' my ain private domain, and ye dare no' illegally violate the threshold wi'oot a search warrant! A Briton's home is his castle, so come in and arrest me at yere peril! Phut to ye, I say! Phut, phut, and phut again!"

He attempted disdainfully to slam the gate in the intruder's face, but just then a great lassitude overcame him, and he sagged to the ground in slumber with the gate on top of him. The anchor, jolted loose, joined company with the boulder in its mad career downhill toward the unsuspecting village of Milngavie.

iii

DISTURBED by the sound of voices, Mr. Glencannon opened his eyes and found himself in semidarkness. He was reclining upon a hard, narrow and unfamiliar cot beneath a blanket which reeked unpleasantly of disinfectant.

"Aye," a thin voice was cackling, "it's him, richt enough, the shameless, roistering gowk!"

Mr. Glencannon sat bolt upright and beheld a gnarled and gnomelike figure peering at him malevolently through an iron-barred door. His blood froze with horror. "Uncle Jock!" he screamed. "No, no, no, go away! Dinna come haunting me, ye ghost! Help! Help! Police!"

"Police, eh?" sneered the ghost. "Weel, if it's police ye want, dear Nephew Colin, ye've come to the richt shop to find 'em!... Aye, hasn't he, Sairjunt MacNab?"

"Indeed he has!" agreed a voice from the corridor. "But noo, sir, do ye plan to press the charges o' attempted murder or not? In view o' the fact that he was one o' yere principal heirs and therefore had everything to gain by preventing the wedding and killing you and the bride, I think he'd get twenty years at hard labor at the vurra least."

"Um," mused the ghost. "So he wud, and so he shud, but in that case I mysel' wud hae to pay for rebuilding the wall o' the kirk where the boulder smoshed it in. No, sairjunt, I willna press the charges. I'll temper justice wi' economy, and I know that my housekeeper, Muss MacDuck —er— I mean to say, my wife, Mussis Glencannon— will agree with me. And so, Colin, I'll leave ye alone with yere conscience, ye treecherous, tarrybreeked thigger, ye!"

The footsteps grew faint in the corridor, and suddenly the light was switched off. Mr. Glencannon settled back in the darkness. His head ached, his back was sore, and his mouth as parched as that of the worn hart which panteth for the water brook. But, strangely enough, his spirits were gay.

"Foosh!" he chuckled, "Muss MacDuck, his housekeeper! Weel, she's ninety-four years auld at least, and noo that he's married her, her monthly wages will be just that much saved for the estate. Be patient, Glencannon, be patient, and think o' the compoond interest!"

________________

3: Shooting Gallery

Raoul Whitfield

1896-1945

Black Mask October 1931

THE FAT MAN whose eyes were much more slanted than those of Jo Gar sat slumped in the fan-backed chair that had been made by Bilibid prison inmates and shook his round head from side to side. Between chubby fingers of his left hand he held a large palm leaf fan, with which he made faint but graceful motion. He spoke in precise English.

"It is good to have you back in Manila, Señor Gar. You were away a short time, yet it was much too long."

Jo Gar smiled a little with his slightly almond shaped eyes and said politely:

"You are kind, Señor Kanochi. I am glad to be back, even though I arrive in the midst of the hot season. It is always good to be home." A ceiling fan that turned very slowly stirred warm air in the tiny office just off the Escolta, main business street of Manila. Two lizards crawled languidly beyond the arc of the fan, and there were several annoying flies in the room. Jo Gar's diminutive body rested passively in the wicker chair beside the desk; he looked beyond the half-breed Kanochi and seemed to be thinking of things not concerned with the man. Yet he was actually remembering all he heard of the fat one.

Kanochi said in a flat, thinnish voice, still moving the fan in his fingers:

"There is trouble in my Park of the Moon. I have come to you about it. If you are at liberty—"

He let his voice trail off; the questioning note gentle and polite. It was almost as though he regretted mentioning the matter to Jo Gar.

The Island detective said:

"I am at liberty, Señor. I have had a good rest since recovering the Von Loffler diamonds. Your Park of the Moon has greatly enlarged this season, I have heard."

The fat one nodded his big head slowly. "I have spent much money, and I do not wish trouble," he stated in a grim tone. "But one does not obtain always what one wishes, Señor Gar."

Jo Gar smiled. "It is so," he agreed.

The fat one sighed heavily. He listened a few seconds to the shrill sound of a native argument, in the calle below. One of Manila's antiquated flivvers made a staccato sound. A tail of one of the two lizards on the ceiling dropped suddenly from the reptile's body and struck the matting of the floor with a faint sound. The lizard scurried towards a corner of the ceiling. The shrill argument below was suddenly stilled.

Kanochi said:

"In my Park of the Moon I have installed a shooting gallery. It is already very popular. The Filipinos like to shoot. Many of them come in from the ranches for gaiety; come in from the plantations. Some are excellent shots with the rifles. My new shooting gallery is an attraction."

Jo Gar said thoughtfully: "So many men have the desire to kill."

Kanochi's small, slanted eyes held a swift expression of surprise, which quickly vanished. He made a little gesture of agreement with his fat hands.

"It is unfortunately so," he said. "But in the Park of the Moon they destroy only figures of clay, many of which move from side to side. And thus they learn to defend themselves."

Jo Gar said quietly: "Very admirable is such a defense, Señor Kanochi."

Suspicion flickered in the fat one's eyes, but died almost instantly. "In my shooting gallery my son-in-law works," Kanochi went on. "He is a Filipino of the name of Vincente Calleo. He is not a good son-in-law, Señor Gar, but I am a patient man. I wish to give him every opportunity. He gambles at the cock fights and drinks too much. He has lost several positions I obtained for him. Now he works for me. He is not too grateful and not too good a husband for my daughter. Yet there is much about him that I like. He is very young and perhaps will outgrow his faults. That is what I think to myself. I urge my daughter to be patient."

The Island detective offered brown-paper cigarettes that were politely refused, lighted one himself. Kanochi said very slowly, his slanted eyes almost closed: "This morning I received a telephone call. The one who called said that Vincente owed him quite a sum of money, had owed it to him for some time. He did not give me his name, of course. He spoke Filipino, and many voices are alike. He said, 'that if I did not at once give to my son-in-law sufficient money for him to pay his gambling debt— Vincente would be killed.' "

Jo Gar widened his eyes slightly. The ceiling fan made faint squeaking sound and the Island detective said:

"I shall have to oil the fan— in my absence it has been neglected."

Kanochi frowned and made a little clicking sound. His eyes met Jo Gar's; he spoke more hurriedly.

"I do not intend to pay the sum demanded; I have told the one who spoke with me that. It is a large sum. Vincente admits that he owes it. He will not tell me the name of the one he has a lost the money to, and he is frightened."

There was a little silence. Jo Gar said slowly:

"It is Vincente's duty to load the rifles, at the shooting gallery?"

Kanochi shook his head. His eyes were expressionless.

"It is Vincente's duty to look after the clay targets," he said tonelessly. "He replaces those that are shattered— the figures of ducks and such things, when the machinery carries them out of sight and below the level of fire. At intervals the shooting is stopped, and he works swiftly replacing pipes and the silver balls on the water that spouts. I think that he does very well. But this afternoon he was not steady. A Chinese by the name of Matoy loads the guns and cares for the customers. He reported that Vincente was very careless in replacing the targets."

Jo Gar said: "Yet when he is out of sight he could not be hit? He is protected? And before he comes into range to replace the targets that do not move out of sight— all shooting is stopped?"

Kanochi said, frowning: "Yes— that is so."

The Island detective inhaled and spoke slowly: "I should like to go to the Park of the Moon, and to talk with your son-in-law. What hour would be the most convenient?"

The fat man seemed thoughtful. "At eight it begins to cool— at eight-thirty or nine there are crowds. Between seven and eight the shooting gallery is not very busy."

Jo Gar smiled. "I shall be there at seven-thirty," he said.

Kanochi nodded. "Vincente starts his work at seven," he said. "I will tell him to expect you, and that perhaps you can help him. But I do not think he will give you the name of the one to whom he owes this money— and who has threatened his life."

Jo Gar rose as the fat one rose.

"If he will not—perhaps there will be some other way of learning this man's identity," he said.

Kanochi nodded. "I think that shooting gallery work is bad for one whose life has been threatened," he said tonelessly. "And yet—" Jo Gar shrugged. "There are many ways of killing," he interrupted. "But we must try to learn the identity of the one to whom Vincente owes money. Having learned it, we can perhaps convince the man that an accident around the shooting gallery might prove inconvenient for him."

Kanochi's eyes held a grim expression. "That is it— that is what I am afraid of— an accident," he said very softly. "And it is good of you to take this case, Señor Gar."

Jo Gar smiled, his gray-blue eyes looking beyond the fat man.

"It is good of you to think of me, Señor Kanochi," he replied. "I shall be at the Park of the Moon at seven-thirty."

He bowed slightly and the fat man left the room. It seemed slightly cooler after he had departed, and the odor was better. His bulk made sound going down the wooden steps to the street.

Jo Gar seated himself and stretched his short legs. He ran browned fingers through his graying hair and murmured very slowly:

"Señor Kanochi has lied before. He is a potential murderer. He does not care for his son-in-law. He has much money. Even should the publicity of an 'accident' at his shooting gallery mean a loss of business, I do not think the half-breed would regret too much. Yet he fears the 'accident' theory might not be strong enough. So he has invented a story—"

Jo Gar closed his eyes and was silent for several seconds. When he opened them he glanced at his wristwatch, saw that it was almost six o'clock. He rose from the wicker chair and said with a touch of grimness:

"If this Vincente were to be dead when I arrive at the Park of the Moon it would be extremely difficult for me. There would be only the voice that Señor Kanochi heard—"

The Island detective smiled with his colorless, thin lips pressed into a straight line. Then he parted them and corrected himself.

There would be only the voice that Señor Kanochi says he heard," he murmured. "I feel it would be very wise for me to go early—to the shooting gallery."

THE PARK OF THE MOON was a fairly large amusement place beyond a turn of the dark, sluggish watered Pasig, perhaps three miles from the curving Escolta. On all sides of the park but the river side were thatch-roofed houses of the Filipinos. It was not yet seven when Jo Gar arrived and paid off his carromatta driver, and there was still almost a bright light. And at once the Island detective knew that Señor Kanochi had lied to him. The park was well attended. It wasn't crowded as yet, but the various rides and shows were all doing business. And in the distance he could hear the staccato crack of the shooting gallery; it reminded him of the sound he had heard from the porch of the house in San Francisco, weeks ago. But there was a difference. This shooting gallery sound was sharper, steadier. He moved in the general direction of it.

The Park of the Moon was filled with laughter— the laughter of Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Spaniards. And there the laughter of the half-breeds—the offspring of marriage between these races. A scattering of English and Germans were in the park, and Jo Gar saw the American, Condon, wandering around with a grin on his browned face. He passed a merry-go-round that squeaked ancient music in waltz time. The staccato-clatter from the shooting gallery was increasing in tone now. Down the lane between side shows and rides he caught sight of a greater flare of lights.

And then, very suddenly, the crackling rifle sound ceased. It ceased abruptly and Jo Gar halted, his small body stiffening. Young Filipinos and Chinese moved past him, laughing. He stood motionless, waiting. He muttered:

"It might be— that he is replacing the targets—"

A woman screamed— a shrill, long-drawn note. There was the figure of a short, brown-faced man running towards the Island detective now. His face was twisted.

The Island detective moved his body, blocked the path of the running one. Others made way for him, but Jo said sharply:

"What is the trouble?"

The small Filipino swerved to one side, throwing out his right hand and saying shortly:

"Accident— at the— shooting gallery! I go for —doctor—"

Jo Gar stood quietly for several seconds, his gray-blue eyes very small. People were staring after the running menthe Island detective moved forward, towards the shooting gallery's flare of light. Perspiration was on his face, and his lightweight shirt clung to the skin of his back. As he neared the lane opposite the shooting gallery he saw that a large crowd had gathered. It took him a half minute to fight his way through the crowd, to reach the counter of the shooting gallery.

Two of the park police, clad in white duck uniforms, were keeping the crowd back. Another came through the crowd as Jo reached the counter and looked across it. Clay ducks were moving from side to side— a silver ball was swinging in pendulum fashion. On the floor, near the line of moving ducks, lay a figure, two men bending over it.

Jo Gar reached the side of the nearest, white-clad policeman. He smiled at the man, said in Filipino:

"I am Señor Gar— Señor Kanochi asked me to come here. What has happened?"

The park guardian said grimly: "An accident, Señor. It is the son-in-law of Señor Kanochi— he has been shot."

Jo Gar moved towards a small door at one side of the counter, opened it and went beneath the slanting roof of the gallery. On a small wicker chair a woman sat, rocking from side to side and moaning. A taller woman stood beside her; both were Filipinos. Jo Gar went past them and reached the two who bent over the motionless figure.

One of them turned; he was Chinese. Jo said: "You are the Matoy who loads the guns?"

The Chinese looked surprised. He nodded. He had a round face and a heavy body. His eyes were gray and small. The second man straightened and said in very good English:

"He is dead— there are two slugs in his brain. He died almost instantly."

The man turned and Jo recognized him as Doctor Seth Connings, a rather well known English physician of the city. A woman's voice asked a question in an uneven tone, and the Chinese, Matoy, moved away from the body. He went to the woman who was rocking back and forth on the wicker, and spoke. Almost instantly she screamed— again and again. The doctor sighed.

"I'll have to quiet her," he said. "She was his wife."

Jo Gar stood looking down at the lean face of Vincente Calleo. He was thinking: "This woman who is screaming now is the one who screamed before. She did not know until the Chinese, Matoy, told her— that her husband was dead. She appears hysterical, and yet she was not beside her husband— she was in the chair over there."

Her screams were attracting a greater crowd, but more park police were arriving now. The doctor was talking to the woman; her screams became wails. Jo Gar went to Matoy's side and said:

"I am Señor Gar. Señor Kanochi asked me to come here, because his son-in-law's life had been threatened. How did the accident occur?"

Matoy shook his head. He spoke Filipino, and swiftly.

"I do not know, Señor. I was having trouble with one of the guns, and took it into the small room at one side, to inspect it more carefully. Several were shooting. I heard suddenly a scream— and hurried from the room. Vincente's wife was at the counter, pointing across it at the fallen figure of her husband. There was suddenly a great crowd— the English doctor came, and the park police— and yourself—"

Jo Gar said steadily: "You remember those who were shooting?"

There were little wrinkles around the eyes of the Chinese. He seemed to be thinking hard. But he shook his head.

"There has been much business— so many have used the guns. I think one was tall and skinny, Señor. I think three were shooting when I left with the gun I wished to repair. But they might have stopped shooting— and others might have started. I left several loaded guns on the counter. The three were Filipinos, I think, Señor. But I could not be sure—"

Jo Gar went to the counter. There were two rifles in a line. He inspected both— each was completely loaded with the special, small caliber shot used for the range. Three other rifles lay in different positions— two were empty— all shot having been ejected. The third had three small caliber slugs ready for action.

The Island detective faced the milling crowd and said clearly in Filipino:

"Those of you who were shooting when this accident occurred— please call out."

No person called out. Jo Gar said more slowly:

"You who were shooting were not to blame— the dead one should not have been within range. It will help me if you will speak."

No person spoke. The Island detective went away from the counter and to the woman on the wicker chair. There was horror in her eyes as she looked up at him. He said quietly:

"I sympathize greatly with you— but I must ask questions. You know your husband's life had been threatened?"

The woman's eyes were dark and wide. Jo Gar spoke Filipino to her and Doctor Seth Connings did not understand his words. The woman said:

"Yes— he had told me— he was worried—"

Her voice was broken. Jo Gar said: "You saw—what happened?" Horror showed more clearly in her eyes. She had a thin face, and was small, slight. She was pretty, but the tropics would not allow her to be pretty much longer.

She replied weakly: "I often come to the— shooting gallery. Several persons were shooting— I moved near the counter. Matoy, the Chinese, went through a small door as I called to him. He had a gun in his hand. I was very near the counter— the guns were making sounds. And then Vincente's head came in sight, his shoulders—"

Her voice broke. Jo Gar said quietly:

"Please go on."

She said: "He groaned and threw out a hand— he fell forward, across a row of clay targets. I screamed— and there was the crowd rushing—"

She covered her face with her hands. The English doctor frowned at Jo.

"She's in pretty bad shape," he said.

Jo Gar nodded. "These questions are necessary," he replied. "You were just passing, Doctor?"

The Englishman stiffened and said coldly: "I was just looking about the park. And sampling some of the cool drinks. There have been rumors of epidemic—"

Jo Gar smiled faintly and nodded. "Of course," he said. "You have the interest of the city at heart." He looked down at the woman again. Her eyes were staring into his. "You would remember any of those shooting?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I saw only their backs —I think they were Filipinos. There were many near the counter who were watching— not shooting."

Jo Gar sighed. He thought of making another appeal to the crowd beyond the counter, but sensed it would be useless. A man was dead— and Filipinos, Chinese and half-breeds could be very silent when they thought silence wise. They would think silence wise now, he knew that.

Moving away from the woman he said to Matoy:

"May I see the little room into which you carried the gun that did not work?"

The eyes of the Chinese held a faint flicker of light. He bowed slightly and led the way into a small room at the right side of the counter. The walls were of light wood— a small window faced the lane along which the crowd moved. There was a bamboo table in the room, a gun rack and a chair. On shelves along one of the walls were ammunition boxes and cleaning materials. The entrance from the spot near the counter was the only entrance to the room. On the bamboo table rested a range gun. It was very warm in the small room.

The Chinese stood close to Jo Gar, coughing dryly, as the Island detective inspected the weapon. It was jammed— the trigger would not squeeze. Jo Gar set it on the table again. The Chinese said:

"You are satisfied, Señor Gar?"

Jo Gar said slowly: "I did not doubt your word, be sure of that.

These things are necessary."

The Chinese bowed. It seemed to Jo that there was faint mockery in his eyes. He said slowly:

"Why do you think Vincente rose from the rear of the range— rose among the clay targets? He knew there were persons shooting. Yet he placed his body within striking distance of the slugs. And he was killed. Why?"

Matoy shook his head from side to side, frowning. He said after several seconds:

"He has been worried— it was the gambling debts he owed. He has been careless. It was almost time for him to replace certain of the targets. Perhaps there was a pause for a second in the shooting— perhaps he thought he heard me ring the bell—"

Jo Gar said: "Ah— there is a bell that you ring?"

The Chinese nodded. "It is just outside the door," he said. "It rings loudly, in the rear of the range. It is the signal that shooting has stopped, that the guns are all in my possession."

Jo Gar said: "Let us go outside. It is very hot."

They went outside and Jo Gar looked at the small button of the signal bell. When he pressed it there was instant ringing sound, quite loud, at the rear of the shooting gallery. He looked towards the counter, and Matoy, reading his thought, said steadily:

"The button cannot be reached from beyond the counter. No playful youths could make it ring."

Jo Gar nodded. He saw the fat form of Señor Kanochi fighting through the crowd. The half-breed entered the shooting gallery, went directly to Vincente's widow. He bent over her and spoke for several minutes. Then he straightened, mopping his face with a big handkerchief. He looked around, caught sight of Jo.

He came towards the Island detective, his eyes holding a dull expression. His thinnish voice wavered.

"You were— too late, Señor Gar."

Jo nodded his head and said very softly: "Too late," he agreed. "I am very sorry."

Kanochi said in the same shaken voice: "He has murdered him—the one who threatened to do it—"

Jo Gar said nothing. The pupils of Kanochi's eyes moved about within the slant-shape. He said without looking at the Island detective:

"You have learned anything— of importance?"

Jo Gar hesitated, and was conscious of a sudden tenseness of Kanochi's body. But he shook his head.

"I have learned—nothing of importance," he replied softly.

The half-breed sucked in a deep breath, making hissing sound.

"I want this murderer, Señor Gar!" he said with a strange fierceness. "You must find him."

Jo Gar was silent for several seconds. When he spoke his voice was almost toneless.

"I know the motive, Señor Kanochi— and that will help, perhaps." Kanochi nodded. "I will pay you well," he said, and moved toward

Vicente's widow again.

Jo Gar stood motionless for several seconds. When he ran his handkerchief over the wet skin of his face he was smiling grimly. And he was thinking that Vincente's widow had lied to him, and that the Chinese, Matoy, had lied to him. And that Señor Kanochi had lied to him again.

Lieutenant Sadi Ratan was very handsome and well built for a Filipino. He had dark eyes and good features, he was tall and erect. His white duck uniform fitted him exceedingly well. He stood near the chair into which Jo Gar had sunk rather wearily, after shaking hands with the visitor to his office.

"I have come at the request of Major Kelvey, Señor Gar," the Filipino lieutenant of police said in a tone that was so loud and assured that it annoyed Jo. "He is displeased because you took things in your hands, after arriving by chance at the shooting gallery directly after the accident."

The Island detective smiled a little. "I am sorry," he said. "A new police chief and a new police lieutenant. I must grow accustomed to the changes which have occurred since I left Manila."

Sadi Ratan stood more stiffly. He said in a cold tone, loudly:

"We are aware of your reputation, Señor Gar— but we do not wish interference. You are a private detective. You arrived by chance early on the scene of the accident—"

Jo Gar sighed and said quietly: "I did not arrive by chance, lieutenant. And I do not think the scene was one caused by accident."

There was faint amusement in the dark eyes of the well built Filipino. Jo Gar saw it and thought: This one will not be a Juan Arragon, but that does not mean he will be less shrewd. He dislikes me more than Arragon did, that is all. And the new head of police dislikes me also.

Lieutenant Ratan spoke in his loud tone. "I have done some hours of investigation. Vincente Calleo gambled and owed money. His life was threatened, but that was just a bluff. If he were killed he could not pay, and the one he owed the money to wished mostly for payment. So he was not murdered. He was frightened, worried. Perhaps he mistook the bell used on the new ride for the one that signals all clear at the shooting gallery. He rose from behind the protecting strip of bullet-proof steel, and he was struck twice by the slugs. The shooters vanished, afraid of something there was no need to be afraid of. It was an accident. I shall report it as such."

Jo Gar smiled. "The police will miss Lieutenant Arragon as much as I feared," he said simply. "Offer my apologies to Major Kelvey. I inspected the guns and asked questions because Señor Kanochi had engaged me on the case, and because I felt immediate action was necessary."

Lieutenant Ratan said, amusement in his dark eyes:

"But you did not know of the new ride— the cars that dip over tracks, which has a bell very much like the one in the shooting gallery?"

Jo Gar looked at his wristwatch. It was after eleven and the night was very hot. He said, wearily:

"I know of it now."

The new police lieutenant smiled coldly. "I am pleased to have informed you, Señor Gar," he said. "You did not realize that the one who was owed money would gain nothing by murdering the man who owed it to him?"

Jo Gar's smile widened. He shrugged. "I realize it now, Lieutenant Ratan," he said simply.

The Police lieutenant stood very straight. There was mild contempt in his dark eyes.

"Perhaps you have been away from the Islands too long— on this last journey, Señor Gar," he suggested.

Jo Gar nodded. "Perhaps, Lieutenant," he agreed passively.

The lieutenant bowed slightly. "I go now to make my report," he said. "In it I shall include your opinions, which I do not think are worth much, Señor."

Jo Gar rose and bowed. "Undoubtedly they will make your own opinion seem stronger," he said.

For a brief second their eyes met, then Lieutenant Ratan turned and went from the office. His footfalls sounded on the wooden steps very much like his voice— precise, loud— and very sure. Jo Gar smiled as he seated himself again. He lighted a brown-paper cigarette and puffed contentedly. The footfall died away.

The Island detective inspected his favorite Colt automatic, slipped it into a pocket of his white drill suit. He rose, after finishing the cigarette, drew a deep breath.

"In spite of the very splendid report that Lieutenant Ratan is about to make on the shooting galley accident— I think— I shall now go and talk with the murderer of Vincente Calleo," he said very softly.

The Chinese, Matoy, sat stiffly in the chair near a window of his house not far from the Park of the Moon. His eyes shifted about, went to the gleam of the Pasig, not far from the stilted house. Jo Gar stood in the doorway and said quietly:

"I know that the police of Manila believe that Vincente's death was an accident. But Señor Kanochi does not believe so. He wishes me to bring to justice the murderer."

Matoy's eyes held a peculiar expression. He said dully:

"Of course— it was the Señor's son-in-law who was killed. If he thinks Vincente was murdered, he would naturally wish the murderer to be caught."

Jo Gar said: "It was not an accident. The police are wrong in thinking so. It was murder."

Matoy's eyes became very small. He said in the same dull voice:

"What good does it do a murderer to kill the man who owes him gambling debts? One does not collect from a dead man."

Jo Gar smiled a little. "Lieutenant Ratan has asked the same question," he said slowly. "But have I said to you that the one to whom Vincente owed money was the one who killed him?"

Matoy's eyes widened; he coughed dryly, made short gasping sounds.

"You have not said that to me, Señor," he managed, after a few seconds.

Jo Gar nodded. The Chinese was watching him closely; there was fear in his eyes now. Perspiration streaked his face. Jo Gar said very quietly:

"I have gone to the new ride in the Park of the Moon. It did not start until tonight, at almost seven. As it did not start until then— the bell used for the signal that the cars were about to start was not used. Perhaps the bell was tested in the morning, but in the morning Vincente Calleo was not at work in the shooting gallery. He did not know of the bell."

The Chinese sat heavily in the wide chair, breathing quickly. He kept his eyes on those of the Island detective. Jo Gar said suddenly, more sharply:

"But you knew of the bell, Matoy! Why did not you warn Vincente?"

The Chinese rose a little from the chair, his hands gripping the wicker arms, said hoarsely:

"I— knew of— the bell?" Jo nodded.

"It was you who spoke to the owner of the ride, Herr Schrenn, the German, about a suitable bell. You suggested a certain shop not far from the Luneta. Herr Schrenn went there and purchased the bell that was shown him first. But before he went to the shop you visited it, Matoy. And you told the shopkeeper the sort of bell you felt Herr Schrenn should purchase."

Fear was in the eyes of the Chinese clearly now. He started to say something, stopped. He coughed, and his face crimsoned with the effort. The coughing spell was sustained. When it was over Jo Gar said very softly and very quietly:

"The new ride is at the rear of shooting gallery, less than a hundred yards distant. There is much clatter in the Park of the Moon, and often the bell in the shooting gallery sounds more faintly than at other times. It is true that Vincente's life had been threatened and that he was frightened. His nerves were not good. He made a mistake, rose into the range of bullets when the bell of the new ride rang. He thought you had pressed the button of the shooting gallery bell."

The Chinese stared at Jo, saying nothing. The Island detective said: "It would have been simpler if you had pressed the button of the shooting gallery bell, but you refused to do that. Still you have assisted a murderer, Matoy. And that is very bad, very serious."

Matoy said hoarsely: "No— Señor Gar it is not so— I did not think about the bell—"

Jo Gar said very quietly: "They will take you to Bilibid Prison, and if you do not die—"

The Chinese cried out, "No— it was accident. Three or four persons were shooting—"

Jo Gar shook his head. "It was not an accident," he said firmly. "If you are wise you will go at once to the office of Lieutenant Ratan, the new lieutenant of police. You will tell him that I sent you to him, and you will tell him who suggested to you that Herr Schrenn should purchase a certain sort of bell. If you do not go to the lieutenant—"

He shrugged, half turned his back on Chinese. Matoy cried out in a choked voice:

"I will tell— you, Señor—"

Jo Gar shook his head. "You do not need to tell me, Matoy," he said. "I know. You will go to Lieutenant Ratan, at the police station."

He went from the stilted, thatch-roofed house. The Chinese loader of shooting gallery guns was coughing terribly as he left. There was a small smile on the face of the Island detective.

"I will go now and talk to the murderer of Vincente Calleo," he murmured to himself.

Señor Kanochi fanned himself slowly with his palm leaf, his slanted eyes on the gray-blue ones of Jo Gar. The veranda of the Kanochi house was large and well furnished with wicker. In the distance were the colored lights of the Park of the Moon, and at intervals a faint, hot wind drifted tinny music to the veranda. Señor Kanochi watched Jo light a brown-paper cigarette. He spoke in his thinnish voice:

"Lieutenant Ratan, of the police, has convinced me that it was an accident, Señor Gar. It is a terrible thing. Vincente was often a fool, but he was young. And as I said, I have patience. He might have rid himself of his bad habits. But he was worried about the threat, and he mistook the bell of the new ride—"

Jo Gar interrupted quietly. "Does it not strike you as strange that the new ride used a similar bell?"

Kanochi widened his small eyes. For a few seconds he was silent, then he shook his big head.

"No," he said simply. "The Chinese, Matoy, bought the shooting gallery alarm for me. He is not too bright. I think he might have suggested a similar bell to the owner of the new ride, never thinking—"

Jo Gar said quietly: "You reason clearly, Señor Kanochi. That is exactly what the Chinese did."

He watched the flicker of light in Kanochi's eyes. The half-breed drew a deep breath and sighed. He spoke in a sad tone.

"Lieutenant Ratan has pointed out that the one to whom Vincente was indebted would not have killed him— it would have gained him nothing. It was just a threat. The death was an accident— a terrible accident."

The Island detective smiled very faintly. He wiped his face with a handkerchief; the heat seemed to be beating down on the veranda. He spoke very slowly and tonelessly.

"It was terrible, Señor Kanochi— but it was not an accident. It was murder."

The fat half-breed sat more stiffly in the chair. Jo Gar said with the same toneless quality in his voice:

"You would like to hear what actually happened, Señor?"

Kanochi's fat face was splotched with reddish color. His eyes were small and very slanted. His thinnish voice grated nastily.

"Lieutenant Ratan reports that it was an accident, Señor Gar— his word will do for me."

Jo Gar smiled.

"It will not do— for— me," he replied simply. "Matoy, the Chinese, has confessed. He has told me many things. Even now he is at the police station."

Kanochi rose heavily from the chair, his eyes staring. Jo Gar said quietly:

"I have talked much at the Park of the Moon. In the theatre there— the Oriental Theatre— is a young man named Katayou. He is very handsome, Señor Kanochi. Often, lately, your daughter has walked through the Wood of the Lanterns with him. And he has taught her many things. He is an actor, and your daughter has acting talent. She is very much in love with this Katayou. She does not think he would strike her, as Vincente Calleo did. Nor would he gamble. And above all, she is in love. This has gone on for a time. As for you— you like money, and Vincente is causing you to lose money. For your daughter's sake you must pay some of his debts. You have come to hate Vincente—"

The fat man said hoarsely: "No— it is not— like that—"

Jo Gar nodded. "It is— like that," he contradicted. "You come to me and tell me a story that is not true. You go to Vincente and tell him another. You received no telephone call threatening his life. But you wished to break his nerve. You knew when the new ride would start operation, and you told Matoy to suggest to the new ride's owner the purchase of a certain sort of bell—"

The half-breed's eyes were very narrow. He was calm now, too calm.

Jo Gar watched him closely, and after a brief pause, said:

"But even with the bell— and with persons shooting, you could not be sure that he would be hit. He might have risen— and escaped death. The shooters might have seen him in time. So Matoy fixed a gun in a manner that caused it to jam, and went into the little room. That removed him from the scene, and allowed him to say he could not know who was shooting. And one of those who was shooting was Katayou, who is a fine shot—"

The fat half-breed made a hissing sound, his body rigid near the chair. Jo Gar slipped his right hand into the right pocket of his drill coat. He said tonelessly:

"And your daughter screamed— not after Vincente was killed, Señor Kanochi, but before. She screamed when she heard the bell at the ride behind the shooting gallery ring— and as she saw Vincente's head appear. And Katayou used the repeating rifle several times—then slipped away in the crowd. Vincente was dead, and it was not an accident."

There was silence except for the heavy breathing of the fat half-breed. Then Kanochi said:

"You are guessing at these things."

Jo Gar said: "Some I know— from them I make what you call guesses. They are good guesses."

Kanochi said: "You are wrong. It was I who stood in the crowd and used the rifle! It was I who killed the weakling Vincente! He was a gambler, and brutal to his wife— my daughter. Katayou is a good man— a fine man. That is why I killed Vincente."

Jo Gar shook his head. "You are too fat and too well known—you were not in the crowd—"

Kanochi's eyes became a stare, beyond Jo. With a swift movement the Island detective swung around. But even as he was swinging he saw the half-breed's right hand come up. He checked his swing, jerked his body to one side and got his Colt clear of the pocket.

But Kanochi's hands were empty. Liquid dripped from his lower lip; he swayed a little. His right hand fell to his side, and the ring was held in the light, with the stone of red swung away from the lower half. Jo Gar stood quietly and said in a low tone:

"Poison."

Kanochi nodded, swaying. It was a jerky, broken nod. He said in a thinner voice than ever:

"I planned—the murder. I used the gun. My daughter has gone away—with Katayou—they must be happy. Vincente was bad—you know that, I did it—for them. Let them— go—"

Jo Gar said very gently: "You did not— use the repeating rifle. Katayou used it—"

The half-breed spoke with choking effort. His face was a graying, twisted mask.

"Let them— go— and be happy—"

He pitched forward and fell heavily to the polished wood of the floor. Jo Gar said suddenly and in a strange tone:

"Very well— it shall be as you wish—"

The half-breed pounded the floor with a clenched fist. He forced words from between his lips.

"It is— good. Go— and let me die alone—"

Jo Gar bowed slightly. He turned his back on the big man on the polished floor, went from the veranda. He walked slowly away from the house and the sound and color of the Park of the Moon. It was not pleasant to see a man die in convulsions. He was convinced that Katayou had actually murdered Vincente Calleo, but of that fact he could not be sure. And Señor Kanochi had planned the murder, of that he was sure. He decided, on the long walk back to his office just off the Escolta, that he would keep his word to the half-breed. He would report that Kanochi had murdered his son-in-law. It would be as the man who was now probably dead had wished. And in a sense it was justice— a life for a life.

______________

4: Popeau Intervenes

Marie Belloc Lowndes

1868–1947

(Said to have been first published in 1926; I can't find any details.)

Prologue

'THIS IS dear, delightful Paris! Paris, which I love; Paris, where I have always been so happy with Bob. It's foolish of me to feel depressed. I've nothing to be depressed about—'

Such were the voiceless thoughts which filled the mind of Lady Waverton as she walked down one of the platforms of the vast grey Gare du Nord on a hot, airless, July night. She formed one of a party of three; the other two being her husband, Lord Waverton, and a beautiful Russian émigrée, Countess Filenska, with whom they had become friends. It was the lovely Russian who had persuaded the Wavertons to take a little jaunt to Paris 'on the cheap,' that is without maids and valet. The Countess had drawn a delightful picture of an old hostelry on the left bank of the Seine called the Hotel Paragon, where they would find pleasant quiet rooms.

Perhaps the journey had tired the charming, over-refined woman her friends called Gracie Waverton. Yet this morning she had looked as well and happy as she ever did look, for she was not strong, and for some time past she had felt that she and her husband, whom in her gentle, reserved way, she loved deeply, were drifting apart. Like all very rich men, Lord Waverton had a dozen ways of killing time in which his wife could play no part. Still, according to modern ideas, they were a happy couple.

It did not take long for the autobus to glide across Paris at this time of the night, and when they turned into the quiet cul de sac, across the end of which rose the superb eighteenth-century mansion which had been the town palace of one of Marie Antoinette's platonic adorers, Monsieur le Duc de Paragon, Lady Waverton lost her vague feeling of despondency. There was something so cheery, as well as truly welcoming, about Monsieur and Madame Bonchamp, mine host and his wife; and she was enchanted with the high ceilinged, panelled rooms, which had been reserved for their party, and which overlooked a spacious leafy garden.

As Lady Waverton and her Russian friend kissed each other good-night, the Englishwoman exclaimed, 'You didn't say a word too much, Olga. This is a delightful place!'

i

'ROBERT? This is too exquisite! You are the most generous man in the world!'

Olga Filenska was gazing, with greedy eyes, at an open blue velvet-lined jewel-case containing a superb emerald pendant.

'I'm glad you like it, darling—'

Lord Waverton seized the white hand, and made its owner put what it held on a table near which they both stood. Then he clasped her in his arms, and their lips met and clung together.

The secret lovers were standing in the centre of the large, barely-furnished salon, which belonged to the private suite of rooms which had been reserved for the party; and they felt secure from sudden surprise by a high screen which masked the door giving into the corridor.

At last, releasing her, he moodily exclaimed, 'Why did you make me bring my wife to Paris? It spoils everything, and makes me feel, too, such a cad!'

'Remember my reputation, Robert. It is all I have left of my vanished treasures.'

He caught her to him again, and once more kissed her long and thirstily.

'My God, how I love you!' he said in a strangled whisper. 'There's nothing, nothing, nothing I wouldn't do, to have you for ever as my own!'

'Is that really true?' she asked with a searching look.

'Haven't I offered to give up everything, and make a bolt? It's you who refuse to do the straight thing.'

'Your wife,' she murmured, in a low bitter tone, 'would never divorce you. She thinks divorce wicked.'

'If I'm willing to give up my country, and everything I care for—for love of you, why shouldn't you do as much for me?'

To that she made no answer, only sighed, and looked at him appealingly.

What would each of them have felt had it suddenly been revealed that their every word had been overheard, and each passionate gesture of love witnessed, by an invisible listener and watcher? Yet such was the strange, and the almost incredible, fact. Hercules Popeau, but lately retired on a pension from the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Préfecture de Police, had long made the Hotel Paragon his home, and his comfortable study lay to the right of the stately octagon salon which terminated Lord and Lady Waverton's suite of rooms.

Popeau had lived in the splendid seventeenth-century house for quite a long time, before he had discovered— with annoyance rather than satisfaction—that just behind the arm-chair in which he usually sat, and cleverly concealed in the wainscoting, was a slanting sliding panel which enabled him both to hear and see everything that went on in the next room. This sinister 'Judas,' as it was well called, dated from the days of Louis the Fifteenth, when a diseased inquisitiveness was the outstanding peculiarity of both the great and the humble; even the King would spend his leisure in reading copies of the love letters intercepted in the post, of those of his faithful subjects who were known to him.

Hercules Popeau had been closely connected with the British army during the Great War, and he remembered that Lord Waverton, then little more than a boy, had performed an act of signal valour at Beaumont Hamel. That fact had so far interested him in the three tourists, as to have caused him to watch the party while they had sat at dinner in their private sitting-room the evening following their arrival in Paris. The famous secret agent was very human and he had taken a liking to fragile-looking Lady Waverton, and a dislike to her lovely Russian friend. The scene he was now witnessing confirmed his first judgment of the Countess Filenska.

'I wish Gracie were not here!' exclaimed Lord Waverton.

'She is— how do you call it?— too much thinking of herself to think of us,' was the confident answer of Lady Waverton's false friend.

There came a look of discomfort and shame over the man's face. 'You women are such damn good actresses! Then you think Gracie is really ill this morning?'

'"Ill" is a big word. Still, she is willing to see a doctor. It is fortunate that I know a very good Paris physician. He will be here very soon; but she wants us to start for Versailles now, before he comes.'

'All right! I'll go and get ready.'

When she believed herself to be absolutely alone, Countess Filenska walked across to the long mirror between the two windows and stood there, looking at herself in the bright light with a close dispassionate scrutiny.

Hercules Popeau, as he gazed at her through his hidden 'Judas,' told himself that though in his time he had been brought in contact with many beautiful women, rarely had he seen so exquisite a creature as was Olga Filenska. While very dark, she had no touch of swarthiness, and her oval face had the luminosity of a white camellia petal. She had had the courage to remain unshingled, and the Frenchman, faithful to far away memories of youth, visioned the glorious mantle her tightly coiled hair must form when unbound. Her figure, at once slender and rounded, was completely revealed, as is the fashion to-day, by a plain black dress.

Was she really Russian? Hercules Popeau shook his head. That southern type of beauty is unmistakable. He had known a Georgian princess who might have been the twin sister of the woman he saw before him now.

The hidden watcher's lifelong business had been to guess the innermost thoughts of men and women. But he felt he had no clue as to what was making this dark lady smile, as she was doing now in so inscrutable a way, at herself.

At last she turned round and left the room, and at once her unseen admirer, and, yes, judge, closed the tiny slit in the panelled wall.

What a curious, romantic, and yes, sinister page, he had just turned in the great Book of Life! A page of a not uncommon story; that of a beautiful, unscrupulous woman, playing the part of serpent in a modern Garden of Eden.

It was clear that Lord Waverton was infatuated with this lovely creature, but there had been no touch of genuine passion in her seductive voice, or even in her apparently eager response to his ardour.

Hercules Popeau had a copy of the latest Who's Who? on his writing table, and he opened the section containing the letter W.

The entry he sought for began: 'Waverton, Robert Hichfield, of Hichfield, York. Second Baron.'

And then there came back to him the knowledge that this man's father had been one of the greatest of Victorian millionaires. No wonder he had been able to present the woman he loved in secret with that magnificent jewel!

There came the sounds of a motor drawing up under the huge porte-cochère of the Hotel Paragon; and, rising, the Frenchman went quickly over to the open window on his right.

Yes, there was a big car, the best money could hire, with his lordship standing by the bonnet. Waverton looked the ideal 'Milord' of French fancy, for he was a tall, broad man, with fair hair having in it a touch of red.

Just now he was obviously impatient and ill at ease. But he had not long to wait, for in a very few moments Countess Filenska stepped out of the great house into the courtyard. Even in her plain motor bonnet she looked entrancingly lovely.

Popeau took a step backwards from his window, as there floated upwards the voices of the two people whose secret he now shared.

'Did you see Gracie?' asked Lord Waverton abruptly.

'Yes, and she was so sweet and kind! She begs us not to hurry back; and she is quite looking forward to the visit of my old friend, Dr Scorpion.'

Scorpion? A curious name— not a happy name— for a medical man. Hercules Popeau remembered that he had once known a doctor of that name.

'Are you ready, Olga?'

'Quite ready, mon ami,' and she smiled up into his face.

A moment later they were side by side, and Lord Waverton took the wheel.

As the motor rolled out on to the boulevard, the Frenchman went back to his desk, and, taking up the speaking-tube, he whistled down it.

'Madame Bonchamp? I have something important to say to you.' He heard the quick answer: 'At your service always, Monsieur.'

'Listen to me!'

'I am listening.'

'A doctor is coming to see Lady Waverton this morning. Before he sees Miladi, show him yourself into my bedroom.'

There came a surprised, 'Do you feel ill, Monsieur?'

'I am not very well; and I have reason to think this doctor is an old friend of mine. But I do not wish him to know that he is not being shown straight into the bedroom of his English lady patient. Have I made myself clear?'

He heard her eager word of assent. Madame Bonchamp was as sharp as a needle, and she had once had reason to be profoundly grateful to Hercules Popeau. He knew he could trust her absolutely; sometimes he called her, by way of a joke, 'Madame Discretion.'

ii

HERCULES Popeau always did everything in what he called to himself an artistic—an Englishman would have said a thorough—way. Before getting into bed, he entirely undressed, and then drew together the curtains of his bedroom window. Thus anyone coming into the room from the corridor would feel as if in complete darkness, while to one whose eyes were already accustomed to the dim light, everything would be perfectly clear.

The time went by slowly, and he had already been in bed half an hour, when at last the door of the room opened, and he heard Madame Bonchamp exclaim: 'Entrez, Monsieur le Docteur!' And then his heart gave a leap, for the slight elderly individual who had just been shown into the darkened room, was undoubtedly the man he had known twenty years ago.

Quickly the ex-secret agent told himself that as the doctor had been about thirty years of age when he had got into the very serious trouble which had brought him into touch with the then Chief of the French Criminal Investigation Department, he must now be fifty.

With a sardonic look on his powerful face Hercules Popeau watched his visitor grope his way forward into the darkened room.

'Miladi,' he said at last, in an ill-assured tone, 'I will ask your permission to draw the curtains a little? Otherwise, I cannot see you.' He put his hat on a chair as he spoke, and then he went towards the nearest window, and pulled apart the curtains.

Letting in a stream of light, he turned towards the bed. When he saw that it was a man, and not a woman who was sitting up there, he gave a slight gasp of astonishment.

'It is a long time since we have met, is it not, my good Doctor Scorpion?'

For a moment Popeau thought that the man who stood stock still, staring at him as if petrified, was about to fall down in a faint. And a feeling of regret, almost of shame, came over him— for he was a kindly man— at having played the other such a trick.

But the visitor made a great effort to regain his composure, and at last with a certain show of valour, he exclaimed: 'I have been shown into the wrong room. I came here to see an English lady, who is ill.'

'That is so,' said Popeau quietly. 'But I, too, feel ill, and hearing that you had been called to this hotel, I thought I would like to see you first, and ask your advice. I confess I rather hoped you were the Dr Scorpion I had once known.'

To the unfortunate man who stood in the middle of the large room there was a terrible edge of irony in the voice that uttered those quiet words.

'Of course, I know, that is in the old days, you were more accustomed to diagnose the condition of an ailing woman than that of a man,' went on the ex-police chief pitilessly.

And then he changed his tone. 'Come, come!' he exclaimed. 'I have no right to go back to the past. Draw a chair close up to my bed, and tell me how you have got on all these years?'

With obvious reluctance the doctor complied with this almost command. 'I have now been in very respectable practice for some time,' he said in a low voice.

He waited a moment, then he added bitterly: 'Can you wonder that seeing you gave me a moment of great discomfort and pain, reminding me, as this meeting must do, of certain errors of my youth of which I have repented.'

'I am glad to hear you have repented,' said Popeau heartily.

In a clearer, calmer tone, Scorpion went on: 'I made a good marriage; I have a sweet wife, and two excellent children.'

'Good! Good!'

Hercules Popeau's manner altered. He felt convinced that this man's account of himself was substantially true. And yet? And yet a doubt remained.

'Are you always called in to the clients of this hotel?' he asked suddenly.

The other hesitated, and the ex-police chief again felt a touch of misgiving.

'No, I am not the regular medical attendant of the Hotel Paragon,' answered Scorpion at last. 'But I've been here before, and oddly enough,' he concluded jauntily, 'to see another foreign lady.'

'Then who sent for you now, to-day?'

Again the doctor did not answer at once; but when he did speak it was to say, with a forced smile: 'A lady whom I attended for a quinsy, the last time she was in this hotel. It is to see a friend of hers that I am here.'

The doctor's statement fitted in with what he, Hercules Popeau, knew to be true. Yet something— a kind of sixth sense which sometimes came to his aid— made Popeau tell his visitor a lie of which he was ashamed.

'Although I know seeing me again must have revived sore memories, I am glad to have seen you, Scorpion, and to have heard that the past is dead. Now tell me if I can safely go off to-night to Niort, where I am to spend the rest of this hot summer?'

The doctor at once assumed a professional manner. He peered into his new patient's throat, he felt his new patient's pulse, and at last he said gravely: 'Yes, you can leave Paris to-night, though it might be more prudent to stay till to-morrow morning.'

'Now that you have reassured me, I shall go to-night.'

Then Dr Scorpion asked, almost in spite of himself, a question: 'Are you still connected with the police, Monsieur Popeau?'

'No, I took my pension at the end of the war, and I am now a rolling stone, for I have not the good fortune, like you, to be married to a woman I love. Also, alas! I am not a father.' He waited a moment. 'And now for what the British call a good hand-shake.'

He held out his hand, and then felt a sensation of violent recoil, for it was as if the hand he held was a dead hand. Though to-day was a very hot day, that hand was icy cold— an infallible sign of shock.

The ex-member of the dreaded Sûreté felt a touch of sharp remorse. He had nothing in him of the feline human being who likes to play with a man or a woman as a cat plays with a mouse.

As soon as he had dressed himself Hercules Popeau spoke down his speaking-tube. 'Has the doctor left?' he asked casually.

'Yes, some minutes ago.'

He went down to the office, and drew a bow at a venture: 'You knew Dr Scorpion before, eh?'

Madame Bonchamp said in a singular tone: 'The Countess Filenska and that little doctor have been great friends for a long time. Beauty sometimes likes Ugly, and Ugly always likes Beauty.'

Popeau had meant to go upstairs again, but after that casual word or two, instead of going upstairs, he walked out of the hotel.

Sauntering along, he crossed a bridge, and came at last to the big building, the very name of which fills every Parisian's heart with awe.

Now there is a small, almost hidden, door in the Préfecture of Police which is only used by the various heads of departments. It was through this door that Popeau went up to his former quarters, being warmly greeted on the way by various ex-colleagues with whom he had been popular.

Soon he was in the familiar room where are kept the secret dossiers, or records which play so important a part in the lives of certain people, and very soon there was laid before him an envelope with the name of Victor Alger Scorpion inscribed on it. Glancing over the big sheet of copy paper he saw at once the entry concerning the serious affair in which Scorpion had been concerned some twenty years before. And then came General Remarks:

Victor Alger Scorpion has made a great effort to become respectable. He is living a quiet, moral life with his wife and two children, and to the latter he is passionately devoted. But it is more than suspected that now and again he will take a serious risk in order to make a big sum of money to add to his meagre savings. Such risks are always associated with—

Then followed three capital letters with whose meaning Hercules Popeau was acquainted, though he had never been directly in touch with that side of the police force which concerns itself specially with morals.

He read on:

Just after the end of the war, Scorpion was concerned with the mysterious death of a young Spanish lady. But though he was under grave suspicion, it was impossible actually to prove anything against him; also the fact that he had done even more than his duty as a surgeon in the war, benefited him in the circumstances. He was, however, warned that he would be kept under observation. Since then there has been nothing to report.

iii

LORD and Lady Waverton and their friend had arrived on a Saturday night, and Dr Scorpion's first visit to the hotel had been paid on the Monday morning. As the days went on, Lady Waverton, while still keeping to her room, became convalescent, though the doctor recommended that her ladyship should go on being careful till she was to leave Paris, on the following Saturday.

Hercules Popeau, who had constituted himself a voluntary prisoner, cursed himself for a suspicious fool. Cynically he told himself that though marital infidelity is extremely common, murder is comparatively rare.

On the Friday morning Madame Bonchamp herself brought up his petit déjeuner. She looked anxious and worried. 'Miladi is worse,' she said abruptly. 'I have already telephoned for the doctor. The Countess Filenska is greatly distressed! I must hurry, now, as I have to serve an English breakfast for two in the next room at once.'

A few minutes later Popeau, peeping through the slanting 'Judas,' sat watching Lord Waverton and his beautiful companion. After having exchanged a long passionate embrace, they sat down, but the excellent omelette provided by Madame Bonchamp remained untasted for a while.

'I don't see why you should be going to England to-day!' exclaimed Lord Waverton.

She said firmly: 'It is imperative that I should see the picture dealer who will start for Russia to-morrow.'

'Well then, if you must go'— he had the grace to look ashamed— 'I don't see why I shouldn't go, too, darling? Gracie hates to have me about when she's ill, and I can't help thinking that the sensible thing to do would be to get a trained nurse over from England. I've only got to telephone to my mother to have a nurse here by to-morrow morning.'

The Countess looked violently disturbed. 'I know Gracie would not like that!' she exclaimed.

She was pouring some black coffee into her cup, and Popeau saw that the lovely hand shook. 'You cannot do better than leave Gracie in my French doctor's hands,' she went on. 'I was seriously ill here last year, and he was wonderful!'

There came a knock at the door, and the man to whom his ex-patient had just given such a good character, came into the sitting-room.

Dr Scorpion was pale, but composed: 'I am indeed sorry,' he began, 'to hear that my patient is worse—'

The Countess cut him short, almost rudely. 'Let us go to her,' she cried, and together they left the room. But in a few moments she came back, alone.

'Gracie is much better,' she observed. 'She will probably be able to go home Friday.'

She put her hand caressingly through Lord Waverton's arm. 'I will go over to England to-day at four o'clock, and I will be back here by to-morrow night. What do you say to that for devotion?'

Her lover's face cleared. 'Does that mean—'

'—that I'm a foolish woman? That I do not like being away from you even for quite a little while? Yes, it does mean that!'

She submitted—the unseen watcher thought with a touch of impatience—to his ardent caresses.

Suddenly the door behind the screen opened. The two sprang apart, and, as the doctor edged his way in again, Lord Waverton left the room.

'What have you come back to tell me?' said the Countess sharply.

Scorpion looked at her fixedly. 'Is it true that Madame la Comtesse is going away to England to-day?'

'I am returning to Paris at once,' she said evasively.

'I have thought matters over, and I refuse to go on with the treatment before payment, or part payment, is made,' he said firmly.

'Come! Don't be unreasonable!' she exclaimed.

He answered at once, in a fierce, surly tone: 'I refuse to risk my head unless it is made worth my while. I did not think it possible that you meant to leave me to face a terrible danger alone.'

'I tell you that I am coming back to-morrow night! Also it is absolutely true that I have no money— as yet.'

'Surely the Milord would give you some money? Cannot you invent something which requires at once an advance of say—' he hesitated, then slowly uttered the words, 'fifty thousand francs.'

Popeau expected to hear a cry of protest, but the beautiful woman who now stood close to the ugly, clever-looking little doctor, opened her handbag and said coldly: 'I have something here which is worth a great deal more than fifty thousand francs,' and she handed him the jewel-case which contained the emerald pendant.

Scorpion opened the case. 'Is the stone real?' he asked suspiciously.

'Fool!' she said angrily, 'walk into the first jeweller's shop you pass by, offer it for sale, and see.'

He was looking at the gorgeous stone with glistening, avid eyes. Slowly he shut the jewel-case and put it in his pocket. 'I know where I can dispose of it, should it become necessary that I should do so.'

'Then you will keep your promise?'

There was a long pause. Then the doctor produced a loose-leaved prescription block.

'I will fulfil my promise,' he said firmly, 'if you will write on this sheet of paper what I dictate.'

He handed her a fountain pen:

'My dear friend and doctor: I beg you to accept the jewel I am sending you, a square-cut emerald, which is my own property to dispose of, in consideration of the great care and kindness you showed me when I was so extremely ill last year.— Your ever grateful, Olga Filenska.'

She hesitated for what seemed both to the invisible watcher, and to her accomplice, a long time. But at last she wrote out the words he again dictated, and he put the piece of paper in the pocket where already reposed the small jewel-case.

'C'est entendu,' he exclaimed, and turned towards the door.

A moment later Hercules Popeau took off his telephone receiver. 'Invent a pretext to keep the doctor till I come down!' he exclaimed.

Then, taking out of a drawer a large sheet of notepaper headed Préfecture de Police, Paris, he wrote on it:

Madame la Comtesse,

You are in grave danger. The man you are employing to rid you of your rival is affiliated to the French Police. He has revealed your plot. An affidavit sworn by him will reach Scotland Yard in the course of to-morrow. A copy of the sworn statement of Dr Scorpion will also be laid before Lord Waverton, who will be summoned to appear as a witness at the extradition proceedings. An admirer of your beauty thinks it kind to warn you that you will be well advised to break your journey to-day, and proceed to some other destination than England. The value of the jewel which I enclose is eight hundred pounds sterling. Lord Waverton paid for it close on two thousand pounds.

He put this letter in a drawer, and then went down to the hall of the hotel.

Dr Scorpion was chatting to Madame Bonchamp, and looked startled and disturbed when he saw Hercules Popeau coming towards him.

'I found Niort dull, so I came back to Paris,' said the latter genially. 'How is your patient, my good Scorpion?'

'Going on fairly,' said the other hesitatingly. 'Though not well enough to leave the hotel this week, as she had hoped to do. Well! Now I must be off—'

'I have a further word to say to you, Scorpion.'

Popeau's voice had become cold and very grave. 'Come upstairs to my rooms.'

Scorpion stumbled up the staircase of the grand old house, too frightened, now, to know what he was doing, or where he was going.

When they reached the corridor, the other man took hold of his shoulder, and pushed him through into his study. Then he locked the door, and turning, faced his abject visitor.

'The first thing I ask you to do is to put on the table the emerald which has just been given you as the price of blood.'

'The emerald?'

Scorpion was shaking, now, as if he had the ague. 'What do you mean?' he faltered, 'I know nothing of any emerald.'

'Come— come! Don't be a fool.'

A look of rage came over the livid face. 'Does that woman dare to call me a thief?' he exclaimed. 'See what she herself wrote when she gave me this jewel!'

With a shaking hand he drew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

'I want that, too, of course.'

Scorpion sank down on to a chair. He asked himself seriously if Hercules Popeau was in league with the Devil?

The ex-police chief came and stood over him. 'Listen carefully to what I am going to say. It is important.'

The wretched man looked up, his eyes full of terror, while Popeau went on, tonelessly.

'Once more I am going to allow you to escape the fate which is your due. Last time it was for the sake of your mother. This time it will be for the sake of two women— your good wife, and the unfortunate lady whom you, or perhaps I ought to say, your temptress and accomplice, had doomed to a hideous death by poison.'

Scorpion stared at Hercules Popeau. His face had gone the colour of chalk.

'Get up!'

The unhappy man stood up on his trembling legs.

'Just now you dictated a letter to your accomplice, and I now dictate to you the following confession.'

He placed a piece of notepaper on his writing-table, and forced the other man to go and sit down in his own arm-chair. Then, slowly, he dictated the following!

'I, Victor Scorpion, confess to having entered into a conspiracy with a woman I know under the name of the Countess Filenska, to bring about the death of Lady Waverton on—'

Popeau stopped his dictation and looked fixedly at Scorpion.

'What day was she to die?' he asked.

Scorpion stared woefully at his tormentor. He did not, he felt he could not, answer.

'Must I repeat my question?'

In a whimpering voice he said: 'I did not mean that she should die.'

'What was the exact proposal made to you?'

Twice the man moistened his lips, then at last he answered: 'Five hundred pounds sterling within a fortnight of— of the accident, and ten thousand pounds sterling within six months of the Countess's marriage to Lord Waverton.'

'To your mind I suppose the emerald represented the five hundred pounds?'

'She was going away,' murmured Scorpion. 'I might not have got anything, the more so that I did not mean the poor Miladi to die.'

'On what day did the Countess expect her victim to die?'

Popeau had to bend down to hear the two words. 'Next Friday.'

'I see. Write down the following:

'I was to receive five hundred pounds sterling on the day of her death, and within six months of the Countess's marriage to Lord Waverton ten thousand pounds sterling, whatever the rate of exchange might be at the time. (Signed) Victor Alger Scorpion.'

'Do allow me to put down that I did not intend to carry out this infamous plan?' asked the unhappy wretch pleadingly.

Popeau hesitated a moment. 'No,' he said firmly, 'I will not allow you to do that. But this I will promise. Within a few hours from now, you yourself shall do what you wish with that piece of paper.'

'And the emerald?' said Scorpion in a faltering voice.

'The emerald,' said Popeau thoughtfully, 'will be returned to its owner. I regret that necessity almost as much as you do. But it is to your interest, Scorpion, as to that of others concerned, that the Countess Filenska should have enough to live on till she has found another lover.'

'Perhaps you are right,' muttered Scorpion sadly.

'Of course I am right! And now,' went on Popeau, 'you can make yourself at home in these two rooms for a while, and you can have the use of my bathroom also, should you care to take a bath.'

He smiled genially. 'You may telephone home to your wife, saying you will not be home till late.'

'Can I trust you?' asked his prisoner. 'Remember that I am a father. It was for the sake of my dear children that I placed myself in this dangerous position!'

'I have never yet betrayed any human being,' said Hercules Popeau seriously. 'I am not likely to begin by you, who are such an old—' he hesitated, and then he said 'acquaintance.'

Epilogue

THE BEAUTIFUL cosmopolitan woman, who had made so many warm friends in English society, had just settled herself comfortably in a first-class compartment of the Paris-Calais express. She was quite alone, for in July there are few travellers to England. So she was rather taken aback when a big man, dressed in a pale grey alpaca suit, suddenly thrust his body and head through the aperture leading into the corridor.

'Have I the honour of speaking to Countess Filenska?' he asked.

She hesitated a moment. Then she saw that he held in his hand a bulky envelope, and involuntarily she smiled. From dear foolish Waverton, of course! A billet doux, accompanied no doubt by some delightful gift. So, 'I am the Countess Filenska,' she answered.

'I have been told to give you this little parcel, Madame la Comtesse. I am glad I had the good fortune to arrive before your train started.'

The Frenchman had a cultivated voice, and a good manner. No doubt he was a jeweller. She was pleased, being the kind of woman she was, that there need be no question of a gratuity.

'I thank you, monsieur,' she said graciously.

He lifted his hat, and went off. She thought, but she may have been mistaken, that she heard a chuckle in the corridor.

The train started; slowly the traveller broke the seal of the big envelope. Yes! As she had half expected, there was a jewel-case wrapped up in a piece of notepaper. Eagerly she opened the case, and then came mingled disappointment and surprise, for it only contained the emerald which she had given that morning to Scorpion.

With a feeling of sudden apprehension she quickly unfolded the piece of notepaper and then, slowly, with eyes dilated with terror, she read the terrible words written there. The warning sent her, maybe, from some old ex-lover, from the Préfecture de Police.

Could she leap now, out of the train? No, it was now gathering speed, and she could not afford to risk an accident.

Feverishly she counted over her money. Yes, she had enough, amply enough to break her journey at Calais, and go on to—?

After a moment's deep thought she uttered aloud the word 'Berlin.'

Late that same afternoon Madame Bonchamp opened the door of Hercules Popeau's study. 'Milord Waverton,' she murmured nervously, and the Englishman walked into the room.

He looked uncomfortable, even a little suspicious. He had not been able to understand exactly what was wanted of him, only that a Frenchman, whose name he did not know, desired his presence— at once.

He felt anxious. Was his wife worse, and was the man who had asked to see him so urgently a specialist called in by the Countess's French doctor?

'I have a painful, as well as a serious, communication to make to your lordship,' began Hercules Popeau in slow, deliberate tones. He spoke with a strong French accent, but otherwise his English was perfect.

'I belong to the French branch of what in England is called the Criminal Investigation Department, and a most sinister fact has just been brought to our notice.'

He looked fixedly— it was a long, searching glance— into the other man's bewildered face. And then he felt a thrill of genuine relief. His instinct had been right! Lord Waverton, so much was clear, was quite unconscious of the horrible plot which had had for object that of ridding him of his wife.

'The fact brought to our notice,' went on Popeau quietly, 'does not concern your lordship; it concerns Lady Waverton.'

'My wife? Impossible!'

Lord Waverton drew himself up to his full height. He looked angry, as well as incredulous.

'Lady Waverton,' went on the other, 'possesses a terrible enemy.'

'I assure you,' said Lord Waverton coldly, 'that the French police have made some absurd mistake. My wife is the best of women, kindness itself to all those with whom she comes in contact. I may have enemies; she has none.'

'Lady Waverton has an enemy,' said Popeau positively. 'And what is more, that enemy intended to compass her death, and indeed nearly succeeded in doing so.'

The Englishman stared at the Frenchman. He felt as if he was confronting a lunatic.

'This enemy of Lady Waverton's laid her plans— for it is a woman— very cleverly,' said Popeau gravely. 'She discovered in this city of Paris a man who will do anything for money. That man is a doctor, and for what appeared to him a sufficient consideration, he undertook to poison her ladyship.'

He waited a moment, then added in an almost casual tone, 'Lady Waverton's death was to have occurred next Friday.'

'What!' exclaimed Lord Waverton, in a horror-stricken voice, 'do you mean that the little French doctor who has been attending my wife is—'

'—a would-be murderer? Yes,' said Hercules Popeau stolidly. 'Dr Scorpion had undertaken to bring about what would have appeared to everybody here, in the Hotel Paragon, a natural death.'

Lord Waverton covered his face with his hands. Yet even now no suspicion of the woman who had been behind Scorpion had reached his brain. He was trying to remember the name of a French maid his wife had had for a short time soon after their marriage, and who had been dismissed without a character.

'Most fortunately for you, Lord Waverton, this infamous fellow-countryman of mine had already had trouble with the police. So he grew suddenly afraid, and made a full confession of the hideous plot. He brought with him a written proof, as well as a valuable emerald, which was part of the price his infamous temptress was willing to pay the man she intended should be the actual murderer.'

The speaker turned away, for he desired to spare the unhappy man, whose sudden quick, deep breathing, showed the awful effect those last words had had on him.

'The rest of the blood money— ten thousand pounds sterling— was to be paid when Scorpion's temptress became the second wife of a wealthy English peer.'

Lord Waverton gave a strangled cry.

'I should now like to show you the proof of the story I have told you. I take it you do not desire to see the emerald?'

The other shook his head violently.

'That is as well,' said Popeau calmly, 'for it is once more in the possession of the woman who calls herself the Countess Filenska.'

He took out of his pocket the two documents, the deed of gift written out by the Countess, and the confession signed by Scorpion himself.

'I will ask you to read these through,' he said, 'and then I must beg you to put a firm restraint upon yourself. I have kept the man here so that he may confirm the fact that the whole of this statement is in his handwriting.'

Popeau waited till Lord Waverton had read Scorpion's confession. Then he opened the door of his bedroom.

'Come here for a moment,' he called out in a quick, business-like tone. 'I have done with that paper I asked you to sign, and I am ready to give you it back the moment you have informed this gentleman that you wrote it.'

Scorpion sidled into the room.

'Now then,' said Popeau sharply, 'say in English, "I, Scorpion, swear that all I wrote down here is true, and that this is my signature."'

The man repeated the words in a faltering voice.

Popeau handed him back the confession.

'Take this piece of paper,' he observed, 'down into the courtyard; there set a light to it, and watch it burn; then go home and thank the good God, and your good wife, that you have not begun the long road which leads to the Devil's Island.'

After Scorpion had left the room, Hercules Popeau turned to the Englishman. 'I trust,' he said, 'that your lordship will not think it impertinent if I ask you to listen to me for yet another two or three minutes?'

Lord Waverton bent his head. His face had gone grey under its tan.

'I am old enough to be your father, and this I would say to you, and I trust that you will take it in good part. There was a time when a man in your position was guarded by high invisible barriers from many terrible dangers. Those barriers, Milord, are no longer there, and—'

There came a knock at the door. A telegram was handed to Lord Waverton. He tore open the envelope.

An unexpected chance has come my way of getting back to Russia, and of recovering some of my lost property. Good-bye, dear friends. Thank you both for your goodness to an unhappy woman. Dear love to Gracie.

As Lord Waverton handed the two slips of paper to his new friend, Hercules Popeau looked much relieved.

'All you have to do,' he exclaimed, 'is to show Miladi this telegram, and then to give her— how do you say it in English?— a good kiss on her sweet face!'

_______________

5: The Perfect Murder

Stacy Aumonier

1877-1928

The Strand Magazine Oct 1926

ONE EVENING in November two brothers were seated in a little café in the Rue de la Roquette discussing murders. The evening papers lay in front of them, and they all contained a lurid account of a shocking affair in the Landes district, where a charcoal-burner had killed his wife and two children with a hatchet. From discussing this murder in particular they went on to discussing murder in general.

'I've never yet read a murder case without being impressed by the extraordinary clumsiness of it,' remarked Paul, the younger brother. 'Here's this fellow murders his victims with his own hatchet, leaves his hat behind in the shed, and arrives at a village hard by with blood on his boots.'

'They lose their heads,' said Henri, the elder. 'In cases like that they are mentally unbalanced, hardly responsible for their actions.'

'Yes,' replied Paul, 'but what impresses me is— what a lot of murders must be done by people who take trouble, who leave not a trace behind.'

Henri shrugged his shoulders. 'I shouldn't think it was so easy, old boy; there's always something that crops up.'

'Nonsense! I'll guarantee there are thousands done every year. If you are living with anyone, for instance, it must be the easiest thing in the world to murder them.'

'How?'

'Oh, some kind of accident— and then you go screaming into the street, "Oh, my poor wife! Help!" You burst into tears, and everyone consoles you. I read of a woman somewhere who murdered her husband by leaving the window near the bed open at night when he was suffering from pneumonia. Who's going to suspect a case like that? Instead of that, people must always select revolvers, or knives, or go and buy poison at the chemist's across the way.'

'It sounds as though you were contemplating a murder yourself,' laughed Henri.

'Well, you never know,' answered Paul; 'circumstances might arise when a murder would be the only way out of a difficulty. If ever my time comes I shall take a lot of trouble about it. I promise you I shall leave no trace behind.'

As Henri glanced at his brother making this remark he was struck by the fact that there was indeed nothing irreconcilable between the idea of a murder and the idea of Paul doing it. He was a big, saturnine-looking gentleman with a sallow, dissolute face, framed in a black square beard and swathes of untidy grey hair. His profession was that of a traveller in cheap jewellery, and his business dealings were not always of the straightest. Henri shuddered. With his own puny physique, bad health, and vacillating will, he was always dominated by his younger brother. He himself was a clerk in a drapery store, and he had a wife and three children. Paul was unmarried.

The brothers saw a good deal of each other, and were very intimate. But the word friendship would be an extravagant term to apply to their relationship. They were both always hard up, and they borrowed money from each other when every other source failed.

They had no other relatives except a very old uncle and aunt who lived at Chantilly. This uncle and aunt, whose name was Taillandier, were fairly well off, but they would have little to do with the two nephews. They were occasionally invited there to dinner, but neither Paul nor Henri ever succeeded in extracting a franc out of Uncle Robert. He was a very religious man, hard-fisted, cantankerous, and intolerant. His wife was a little more pliable. She was in effect an eccentric. She had spasms of generosity, during which periods both the brothers had at times managed to get money out of her. But these were rare occasions. Moreover, the old man kept her so short of cash that she found it difficult to help her nephews even if she desired to.

As stated, the discussion between the two brothers occurred in November. It was presumably forgotten by both of them immediately afterwards. And indeed there is no reason to believe that it would ever have recurred, except for certain events which followed the sudden death of Uncle Robert in the February of the following year.

In the meantime the affairs of both Paul and Henri had gone disastrously. Paul had been detected in a dishonest transaction over a paste trinket, and had just been released from a period of imprisonment. The knowledge of this had not reached his uncle before his death. Henri's wife had had another baby, and had been very ill. He was more in debt than ever.

The news of the uncle's death came as a gleam of hope in the darkness of despair. What kind of will had he left? Knowing their uncle, each was convinced that, however it was framed, there was likely to be little or nothing for them. However, the old villain might have left them a thousand or two. And in any case, if the money was all left to the wife, here was a possible field of plunder. It need hardly be said that they repaired with all haste to the funeral, and even with greater alacrity to the lawyer's reading of the will.

The will contained surprises both encouraging and discouraging. In the first place the old man left a considerably larger fortune than anyone could have anticipated. In the second place all the money and securities were carefully tied up, and placed under the control of trustees. There were large bequests to religious charities, whilst the residue was held in trust for his wife. But so far as the brothers were concerned the surprise came at the end. On her death this residue was still to be held in trust, but a portion of the interest was to be divided between Henri and Paul, and on their death to go to the Church. The old man had recognised a certain call of the blood after all!

They both behaved with tact and discretion at the funeral, and were extremely sympathetic and solicitous towards Aunt Rosalie, who was too absorbed with her own trouble to take much notice of them. It was only when it came to the reading of the will that their avidity and interest outraged perhaps the strict canons of good taste. It was Paul who managed to get it clear from the notary what the exact amount would probably be. Making allowances for fluctuations, accidents, and acts of God, on the death of Mme Taillandier the two brothers would inherit something between eight and ten thousand francs a year each. She was now eighty-two and very frail.

The brothers celebrated the good news with a carouse up in Montmartre. Naturally their chief topic of conversation was how long the old bird would keep on her perch. In any case, it could not be many years. With any luck it might be only a few weeks. The fortune seemed blinding. It would mean comfort and security to the end of their days. The rejoicings were mixed with recriminations against the old man for his stinginess. Why couldn't he have left them a lump sum down now? Why did he want to waste all this good gold on the Church? Why all this trustee business?

There was little they could do but await developments. Except that in the meantime— after a decent interval— they might try and touch the old lady for a bit. They parted, and the next day set about their business in cheerier spirits.

For a time they were extremely tactful. They made formal calls on Aunt Rosalie, inquiring after her health, and offering their services in any capacity whatsoever. But at the end of a month Henri called hurriedly one morning, and after the usual professions of solicitude asked his aunt if she could possibly lend him one hundred and twenty francs to pay the doctor who had attended his wife and baby. She lent him forty, grumbling at his foolishness at having children he could not afford to keep. A week later came Paul with a story about being robbed by a client. He wanted a hundred. She lent him ten.

When these appeals had been repeated three or four times, and received similar treatment— and sometimes no treatment at all— the old lady began to get annoyed. She was becoming more and more eccentric. She now had a companion, an angular, middle-aged woman named Mme Chavanne, who appeared like a protecting goddess. Sometimes when the brothers called Mme Chavanne would say that Mme Taillandier was too unwell to see anyone. If this news had been true it would have been good news indeed, but the brothers suspected that it was all prearranged. Two years went by, and they both began to despair.

'She may live to a hundred,' said Paul.

'We shall die of old age first,' grumbled Henri.

It was difficult to borrow money on the strength of the will. In the first place their friends were more of the borrowing than the lending class. And anyone who had a little was suspicious of the story, and wanted all kinds of securities. It was Paul who first thought of going to an insurance company to try to raise money on the reversionary interest. They did succeed in the end in getting an insurance company to advance them two thousand francs each, but the negotiations took five months to complete, and by the time they had insured their lives, paid the lawyer's fees and paid for the various deeds and stamps, and signed some thirty or forty forms, each man only received a little over a thousand francs, which was quickly lost in paying accrued debts and squandering the remainder. Their hopes were raised by the dismissal of Mme Chavanne, only to be lowered again by the arrival of an even more aggressive companion. The companions came and went with startling rapidity. None of them could stand for any time the old lady's eccentricity and ill-temper. The whole of the staff was always being changed. The only one who remained loyal all through was the portly cook, Ernestine. Even this may have been due to the fact that she never came in touch with her mistress. She was an excellent cook, and she never moved from the kitchen. Moreover, the cooking required by Mme Taillandier was of the simplest nature, and she seldom entertained. And she hardly ever left her apartment. Any complaints that were made were made through the housekeeper, and the complaints and their retaliations became mellowed in the process; for Ernestine also had a temper of her own.

Nearly another year passed before what appeared to Paul to be a mild stroke of good fortune came his way. Things had been going from bad to worse. Neither of the brothers was in a position to lend a sou to the other. Henri's family was becoming a greater drag, and people were not buying Paul's trinkets.

One day, during an interview with his aunt— he had been trying to borrow more money— he fainted in her presence. It is difficult to know what it was about this act which affected the old lady, but she ordered him to be put to bed in one of the rooms of the villa. Possibly she jumped to the conclusion that he had fainted from lack of food— which was not true— Paul never went without food and drink— and she suddenly realised that after all he was her husband's sister's son. He must certainly have looked pathetic, this white-faced man, well past middle age, and broken in life. Whatever it was, she showed a broad streak of compassion for him. She ordered her servants to look after him, and to allow him to remain until she countermanded the order.

Paul, who had certainly felt faint, but quickly seized the occasion to make it as dramatic as possible, saw in this an opportunity to wheedle his way into his aunt's favours. His behaviour was exemplary. The next morning, looking very white and shaky, he visited her, and asked her to allow him to go, as he had no idea of abusing her hospitality. If he had taken up the opposite attitude she would probably have turned him out, but because he suggested going she ordered him to stop. During the daytime he went about his dubious business, but he continued to return there at night to sleep, and to enjoy a good dinner cooked by the admirable Ernestine. He was in clover.

Henri was naturally envious when he heard of his brother's good fortune. And Paul was fearful that Henri would spoil the whole game by going and throwing a fit himself in the presence of the aunt. But this, of course, would have been too obvious and foolish for even Henri to consider seriously. And he racked his brains for some means of inveigling the old lady. Every plan he put forth, however, Paul sat upon. He was quite comfortable himself, and he didn't see the point of his brother butting in.

'Besides,' he said, 'she may turn me out any day. Then you can have your shot.'

They quarrelled about this, and did not see each other for some time. One would have thought that Henri's appeal to Mme Taillandier would have been stronger than Paul's. He was a struggling individual, with a wife and four children. Paul was a notorious ne'er-do-well, and he had no attachments. Nevertheless the old lady continued to support Paul. Perhaps it was because he was a big man, and she liked big men. Her husband had been a man of fine physique. Henri was puny, and she despised him. She had never had children of her own, and she disliked children. She was always upbraiding Henri and his wife for their fecundity. Any attempt to pander to her emotions through the sentiment of childhood failed. She would not have the children in her house. And any small acts of charity which she bestowed upon them seemed to be done more with the idea of giving her an opportunity to inflict her sarcasm and venom upon them than out of kindness of heart.

In Paul, on the other hand, she seemed to find something slightly attractive. She sometimes sent for him, and he, all agog— expecting to get his notice to quit— would be agreeably surprised to find that, on the contrary, she had some little commission she wished him to execute. And you may rest assured that he never failed to make a few francs out of all these occasions. The notice to quit did not come. It may be— poor deluded woman!— that she regarded him as some kind of protection. He was in any case the only 'man' who slept under her roof.

At first she seldom spoke to him, but as time went on she would sometimes send for him to relieve her loneliness. Nothing could have been more ingratiating than Paul's manners in these circumstances. He talked expansively about politics, knowing beforehand his aunt's views, and just what she would like him to say. Her eyesight was very bad, and he would read her the news of the day, and tell her what was happening in Paris. He humoured her every whim. He was astute enough to see that it would be foolish and dangerous to attempt to borrow money for the moment. He was biding his time, and trying to think out the most profitable plan of campaign. There was no immediate hurry. His bed was comfortable, and Ernestine's cooking was excellent.

In another year's time he had established himself as quite one of the permanent household. He was consulted about the servants, and the doctors, and the management of the house, everything except the control of money, which was jealously guarded by a firm of lawyers. Many a time he would curse his uncle's foresight. The old man's spirit seemed to be hovering in the dim recesses of the over-crowded rooms, mocking him. For the old lady, eccentric and foolish in many ways, kept a strict check upon her dividends. It was her absorbing interest in life, that and an old grey perroquet, which she treated like a child. Its name was Anna, and it used to walk up and down her table at meal-times and feed off her own plate. Finding himself so firmly entrenched, Paul's assurance gradually increased. He began to treat his aunt as an equal, and sometimes even to contradict her, and she did not seem to resent it.

In the meantime Henri was eating his heart out with jealousy and sullen rage. The whole thing was unfair. He occasionally saw Paul, who boasted openly of his strong position in the Taillandier household, and he would not believe that Paul was not getting money out of the old lady as well as board and lodging. With no additional expenses Paul was better dressed than he used to be, and he looked fatter and better in health. All— or nearly all— of Henri's appeals, although pitched in a most pathetic key, were rebuffed. He felt a bitter hatred against his aunt, his brother, and life in general. If only she would die! What was the good of life to a woman at eighty-five or six? And there was he— four young children, clamouring for food, and clothes, and the ordinary decent comforts. And there was Paul, idling his days away at cafés and his nights at cabarets— nothing to do, and no responsibilities.

Meeting Paul one day he said:

'I say, old boy, couldn't you spring me a hundred francs? I haven't the money to pay my rent next week.'

'She gives me nothing,' replied Paul.

Henri did not believe this, but it would be undiplomatic to quarrel. He said:

'Aren't there— isn't there some little thing lying about the villa you could slip in your pocket? We could sell it, see? Go shares. I'm desperately pushed.'

Paul looked down his nose. Name of a pig! Did Henri think he had never thought of that? Many and many a time the temptation had come to him. But no; every few months people came from the lawyer's office, and the inventory of the whole household was checked. The servants could not be suspected. They were not selected without irreproachable characters. If he were suspected—well, all kinds of unpleasant things might crop up. Oh, no, he was too well off where he was. The game was to lie in wait. The old lady simply must die soon. She had even been complaining of her chest that morning. She was always playing with the perroquet. Somehow this bird got on Paul's nerves. He wanted to wring its neck. He imitated the way she would say: 'There's a pretty lady! Oh, my sweet! Another nice grape for my little one. There's a pretty lady!' He told Henri all about this, and the elder brother went on his way with a grunt that only conveyed doubt and suspicion.

In view of this position it seemed strange that in the end it was Paul who was directly responsible for the dénouement in the Taillandier household. His success went to his rather weak head like wine. He began to swagger and bluster and abuse his aunt's hospitality. And, curiously enough, the more he advanced the further she withdrew. The eccentric old lady seemed to be losing her powers of resistance so far as he was concerned. And he began to borrow small sums of money from her, and, as she acquiesced so readily, to increase his demands. He let his travelling business go, and sometimes he would get lost for days at a time. He would spend his time at the races, and drinking with doubtful acquaintances in obscure cafés. Sometimes he won, but in the majority of cases he lost. He ran up bills and got into debt. By cajoling small sums out of his aunt he kept his debtors at bay for nearly nine months.

But one evening he came to see Henri in a great state of distress. His face, which had taken on a healthier glow when he first went to live with his aunt, had become puffy and livid. His eyes were bloodshot.

'Old boy,' he said, 'I'm at my wits' end. I've got to find seven thousand francs by the twenty-first of the month, or they're going to foreclose. How do you stand? I'll pay you back.'

To try to borrow money from Henri was like appealing to the desert for a cooling draught. He also had to find money by the twenty-first, and he was overdrawn at the bank. They exchanged confidences, and in their mutual distress they felt sorry for each other and for themselves. It was a November evening, and the rain was driving along the boulevards in fitful gusts. After trudging a long way they turned into a little café in the Rue de la Roquette, and sat down and ordered two cognacs. The café was almost deserted. A few men in mackintoshes were scattered around reading the evening papers. They sat at a marble table in the corner and tried to think of ways and means. But after a time a silence fell between them. There seemed nothing more to suggest. They could hear the rain beating on the skylight. An old man four tables away was poring over La Patrie.

Suddenly Henri looked furtively around the room and clutched his brother's arm.

'Paul!' he whispered.

'What is it?'

'Do you remember— it has all come back to me— suddenly— one night, a night something like this— it must be five or six years ago— we were seated here in this same café— do you remember?'

'No. I don't remember. What was it?'

'It was the night of that murder in the Landes district. We got talking about— don't you remember?'

Paul scratched his temple and sipped the cognac. Henri leant closer to him.

'You said— you said that if you lived with anyone, it was the easiest thing in the world to murder them. An accident, you know. And you go screaming into the street—'

Paul started, and stared at his brother, who continued:

'You said that if ever you— you had to do it, you would guarantee that you would take every trouble. You wouldn't leave a trace behind.'

Paul was acting. He pretended to half remember, to half understand. But his eyes narrowed. Imbecile! Hadn't he been through it all in imagination a hundred times? Hadn't he already been planning and scheming an act for which his brother would reap half the benefit? Nevertheless he was staggered. He never imagined that the suggestion would come from Henri. He was secretly relieved. If Henri was to receive half the benefit, let him also share half the responsibilities. The risk in any case would be wholly his. He grinned enigmatically, and they put their heads together. And so in that dim corner of the café was planned the perfect murder.

Coming up against the actual proposition, Paul had long since realised that the affair was not so easy of accomplishment as he had so airily suggested. For the thing must be done without violence, without clues, without trace. Such ideas as leaving the window open at night were out of the question, as the companion slept in the same room. Moreover, the old lady was quite capable of getting out of bed and shutting it herself if she felt a draught. Some kind of accident? Yes, but what? Suppose she slipped and broke her neck when Paul was in the room. It would be altogether too suspicious. Besides, she would probably only partially break her neck. She would regain sufficient consciousness to tell. To drown her in her bath? The door was always locked or the companion hovering around.

'You've always got to remember,' whispered Paul, 'if any suspicion falls on me, there's the motive. There's a strong motive why I should— it's got to be absolutely untraceable. I don't care if some people do suspect afterwards— when we've got the money.'

'What about her food?'

'The food is cooked by Ernestine, and the companion serves it. Besides, suppose I got a chance to tamper with the food, how am I going to get hold of— you know?'

'Weed-killer?'

'Yes, I should be in a pretty position if they traced the fact that I had bought weed-killer. You might buy some and let me have a little on the quiet.'

Henri turned pale. 'No, no; the motive applies to me too. They'd get us both.'

When the two pleasant gentlemen parted at midnight their plans were still very immature, but they arranged to meet the following evening. It was the thirteenth of the month. To save the situation the deed must be accomplished within eight days. Of course they wouldn't get the money at once, but, knowing the circumstances, creditors would be willing to wait. When they met the following evening in the Café des Sentiers, Paul appeared flushed and excited, and Henri was pale and on edge. He hadn't slept. He wanted to wash the whole thing out.

'And sell up your home, I suppose?' sneered Paul. 'Listen, my little cabbage. I've got it. Don't distress yourself. You proposed this last night. I've been thinking about it and watching for months. Ernestine is a good cook, and very methodical. Oh, very methodical! She does everything every day in the same way exactly to schedule. My apartment is on the same floor, so I am able to appreciate her punctuality and exactness. The old woman eats sparingly and according to routine. One night she has fish. The next night she has a soufflé made with two eggs. Fish, soufflé, fish, soufflé, regular as the beat of a clock. Now listen. After lunch every day Ernestine washes up the plates and pans. After that she prepares roughly the evening meal. If it is a fish night, she prepares the fish ready to pop into the pan. If it is a soufflé night, she beats up two eggs and puts them ready in a basin. Having done that, she changes her frock, powders her nose, and goes over to the convent to see her sister who is working there. She is away an hour and a half. She returns punctually at four o'clock. You could set your watch by her movements.'

'Yes, but—'

'It is difficult to insert what I propose in fish, but I don't see any difficulty in dropping it into two beaten-up eggs, and giving an extra twist to the egg-whisk, or whatever they call it.'

Henri's face was quite grey.

'But— but— Paul, how are you going to get hold of the— poison?'

'Who said anything about poison?'

'Well, but what?'

'That's where you come in.'

'I!'

'Yes, you're in it too, aren't you? You get half the spoils, don't you? Why shouldn't you— some time to-morrow when your wife's out—'

'What?'

'Just grind up a piece of glass.'

'Glass!'

'Yes, you've heard of glass, haven't you? An ordinary piece of broken wineglass will do. Grind it up as fine as a powder, the finer the better, the finer the more— effective.'

Henri gasped. No, no, he couldn't do this thing. Very well, then; if he was such a coward Paul would have to do it himself. And perhaps when the time came Henri would also be too frightened to draw his dividends. Perhaps he would like to make them over to his dear brother Paul? Come, it was only a little thing to do. Eight days to the twenty-first. To-morrow, fish day, but Wednesday would be soufflé. So easy, so untraceable, so safe.

'But you,' whined Henri, 'they will suspect you.'

'Even if they do they can prove nothing. But in order to avoid this unpleasantness I propose to leave home soon after breakfast. I shall return at a quarter-past three, letting myself in through the stable yard. The stables, as you know, are not used. There is no one else on that floor. Ernestine is upstairs. She only comes down to answer the front-door bell. I shall be in and out of the house within five minutes, and I shan't return till late at night, when perhaps— I may be too late to render assistance.'

Henri was terribly agitated. On one hand was— just murder, a thing he had never connected himself with in his life. On the other hand was comfort for himself and his family, an experience he had given up hoping for. It was in any case not exactly murder on his part. It was Paul's murder. At the same time, knowing all about it, being an accessory before the fact, it would seem contemptible to a degree to put the whole onus on Paul. Grinding up a piece of glass was such a little thing. It couldn't possibly incriminate him. Nobody could ever prove that he'd done it. But it was a terrible step to take.

'Have another cognac, my little cabbage.'

It was Paul's voice that jerked him back to actuality. He said: 'All right, yes, yes,' but whether this referred to the cognac or to the act of grinding up a piece of glass he hardly knew himself.

From that moment to twenty-four hours later, when he handed over a white packet to his brother across the same table at the Café des Sentiers, Henri seemed to be in a nightmarish dream. He had no recollection of how he had passed the time. He seemed to pass from that last cognac to this one, and the interval was a blank.

'Fish to-day, soufflé to-morrow,' he heard Paul chuckling. 'Brother, you have done your work well.'

When Paul went he wanted to call after him to come back, but he was frightened of the sound of his own voice. He was terribly frightened. He went to bed very late and could not sleep. The next morning he awoke with a headache, and he got his wife to telegraph to the office to say that he was too ill to come. He lay in bed all day, visualising over and over and over again the possible events of the evening.

Paul would be caught. Someone would catch him actually putting the powder into the eggs. He would be arrested. Paul would give him away. Why did Paul say it was so easy to murder anyone if you lived with them? It wasn't easy at all. The whole thing was chock-a-block with dangers and pitfalls. Pitfalls! At half-past three he started up in bed. He had a vision of himself and Paul being guillotined side by side! He must stop it at any cost. He began to get up. Then he realised that it was already too late. The deed had been done. Paul had said that he would be in and out of the house within five minutes at three-fifteen— a quarter of an hour ago! Where was Paul? Would he be coming to see him? He was going to spend the evening out somewhere, 'returning late at night.'

He dressed feverishly. There was still time. He could call at his aunt's. Rush down to the kitchen, seize the basin of beaten-up eggs, and throw them away. But where? How? By the time he got there Ernestine would have returned. She would want to know all about it. The egg mixture would be examined, analysed. God in Heaven! It was too late! The thing would have to go on, and he suffer and wait.

Having dressed, he went out after saying to his wife:

'It's all right. It's going to be all right,' not exactly knowing what he meant. He walked rapidly along the streets, with no fixed destination in his mind. He found himself in the café in the Rue de la Roquette, where the idea was first conceived, where he had reminded his brother.

He sat there drinking, waiting for the hours to pass.

Soufflé day, and the old lady dined at seven! It was now not quite five. He hoped Paul would turn up. A stranger tried to engage him in conversation. The stranger apparently had some grievance against a railway company. He wanted to tell him all the details about a contract for rivets, over which he had been disappointed. Henri didn't understand a word he was talking about. He didn't listen. He wanted the stranger to drop down dead, or vanish into thin air. At last he called the waiter and paid for his reckoning, indicated by a small pile of saucers. From there he walked rapidly to the Café des Sentiers, looking for Paul. He was not there. Six o'clock. One hour more. He could not keep still. He paid and went on again, calling at café after café. A quarter to seven. Pray God that she threw it away. Had he ground it fine enough?

Five minutes to seven. Seven o'clock. Now. He picked up his hat and went again. The brandy had gone to his head. At half-past seven he laughed recklessly. After all, what was the good of life to this old woman of eighty-six? He tried to convince himself that he had done it for the sake of his wife and children. He tried to concentrate on the future, how he could manage on eight or ten thousand francs a year. He would give notice at the office, be rude to people who had been bullying him for years— that old blackguard Mocquin!

At ten o'clock he was drunk, torpid, and indifferent. The whole thing was over for good or ill. What did it matter? He terribly wanted to see Paul, but he was too tired to care very much. The irrevocable step had been taken. He went home to bed and fell into a heavy drunken sleep.

'Henri! Henri! Wake up! What is the matter with you?'

His wife was shaking him. He blinked his way into a partial condition of consciousness. November sunlight was pouring into the room.

'It's late, isn't it?' he said, involuntarily.

'It's past eight. You'll be late at the office. You didn't go yesterday. If you go on like this you'll get the sack, and then what shall we do?'

Slowly the recollection of last night's events came back to him.

'There's nothing to worry about,' he said. 'I'm too ill to go to-day. Send them another telegram. It'll be all right.'

His wife looked at him searchingly. 'You've been drinking,' she said. 'Oh, you men! God knows what will become of us.'

She appeared to be weeping in her apron. It struck him forcibly at that instant how provoking and small women are. Here was Jeannette crying over her petty troubles. Whereas he—

The whole thing was becoming vivid again. Where was Paul? What had happened? Was it at all likely that he could go down to an office on a day like this, a day that was to decide his fate?

He groaned, and elaborated rather pathetically his imaginary ailments, anything to keep this woman quiet. She left him at last, and he lay there waiting for something to happen. The hours passed. What would be the first intimation? Paul or the gendarmes? Thoughts of the latter stirred him to a state of fevered activity. About midday he arose, dressed, and went out. He told his wife he was going to the office, but he had no intention of doing so. He went and drank coffee at a place up in the Marais. He was terrified of his old haunts. He wandered from place to place, uncertain how to act. Late in the afternoon he entered a café in the Rue Alibert. At a kiosk outside he bought a late edition of an afternoon newspaper. He sat down, ordered a drink and opened the newspaper. He glanced at the central news page, and as his eye absorbed one paragraph he unconsciously uttered a low scream. The paragraph was as follows:

MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT CHANTILLY

A mysterious affair occurred at Chantilly this morning. A middle-aged man, named Paul Denoyel, complained of pains in the stomach after eating an omelette. He died soon after in great agony. He was staying with his aunt, Mme Taillandier. No other members of the household were affected. The matter is to be inquired into.

The rest was a dream. He was only vaguely conscious of the events which followed. He wandered through it all, the instinct of self-preservation bidding him hold his tongue in all circumstances. He knew nothing. He had seen nothing. He had a visionary recollection of a plump, weeping Ernestine, at the inquest, enlarging upon the eccentricities of her mistress. A queer woman, who would brook no contradiction. He heard a lot about the fish day and the soufflé day, and how the old lady insisted that this was a fish day, and that she had had a soufflé the day before. You could not argue with her when she was like that. And Ernestine had beaten up the eggs all ready for the soufflé— most provoking! But Ernestine was a good cook, of method and economy. She wasted nothing. What should she do with the eggs? Why, of course, Mr Paul, who since he had come to live there was never content with a café complet. He must have a breakfast, like these English and other foreigners do. She made him an omelette, which he ate heartily.

Then the beaten-up eggs with their deadly mixture were intended for Mme Taillandier? But who was responsible for this? Ernestine? But there was no motive here. Ernestine gained nothing by her mistress's death. Indeed she only stood to lose her situation. Motive? Was it possible that the deceased— The inquiry went on a long while. Henri himself was conscious of being in the witness-box. He knew nothing. He couldn't understand it. His brother would not be likely to do that. He himself was prostrate with grief. He loved his brother.

There was nothing to do but return an open verdict. Shadowy figures passed before his mind's eye— shadowy figures and shadowy realisations. He had perfectly murdered his brother. The whole of the dividends of the estate would one day be his, and his wife's and children's. Eighteen thousand francs a year! One day—

One vision more vivid than the rest— the old lady on the day following the inquest, seated bolt upright at her table, like a figure of perpetuity, playing with the old grey perroquet, stroking its mangy neck.

'There's a pretty lady! Oh, my sweet! Another nice grape for my little one. There's a pretty lady!'

__________________

6: The White Pillars Murder

G. K. Chesterton

1874–1936

English Life January 1925

We've all heard of G K Chesterton's detective-priest Father Brown; but few know of his other detective, Dr Adrian Hyde

THOSE who have discussed the secret of the success of the great detective, Dr. Adrian Hyde, could find no finer example of his remarkable methods than the affair which came to be called "The White Pillars Mystery." But that extraordinary man left no personal notes and we owe our record of it to his two young assistants, John Brandon and Walter Weir. Indeed, as will be seen, it was they who could best describe the first investigations in detail, from the outside; and that for a rather remarkable reason.

They were both men of exceptional ability; they had fought bravely and even brilliantly in the Great War; they were cultivated, they were capable, they were trustworthy, and they were starving. For such was the reward which England in the hour of victory accorded to the deliverers of the world. It was a long time before they consented in desperation to consider anything so remote from their instincts as employment in a private detective agency. Jack Brandon, who was a dark, compact, resolute, restless youth, with a boyish appetite for detective tales and talk, regarded the notion with a half-fascinated apprehension, but his friend Weir, who was long and fair and languid, a lover of music and metaphysics, with a candid disgust.

"I believe it might be frightfully interesting," said Brandon. "Haven't you ever had the detective fever when you couldn't help overhearing somebody say something—'If only he knew what she did to the Archdeacon,' or 'And then the whole business about Susan and the dog will come out.'?"

"Yes," replied Weir, "but you only heard snatches because you didn't mean to listen and almost immediately left off listening. If you were a detective, you'd have to crawl under the bed or hide in the dust-bin to hear the whole secret, till your dignity was as dirty as your clothes."

"Isn't it better than stealing," asked Brandon, gloomily, "which seems to be the next step?"

"Why, no; I'm not sure that it is!" answered his friend.

Then, after a pause, he added, reflectively, "Besides, it isn't as if we'd get the sort of work that's relatively decent. We can't claim to know the wretched trade. Clumsy eavesdropping must be worse than the blind spying on the blind. You've not only got to know what is said, but what is meant. There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing. I don't say I'm exactly in a position to fling away a handsome salary offered me by a great criminologist like Dr. Adrian Hyde, but, unfortunately, he isn't likely to offer it."

But Dr. Adrian Hyde was an unusual person in more ways than one, and a better judge of applicants than most modern employers. He was a very tall man with a chin so sunk on his chest as to give him, in spite of his height, almost a look of being hunchbacked; but though the face seemed thus fixed as in a frame, the eyes were as active as a bird's, shifting and darting everywhere and observing everything; his long limbs ended in large hands and feet, the former being almost always thrust into his trouser-pockets, and the latter being loaded with more than appropriately large boots. With all his awkward figure he was not without gaiety and a taste for good things, especially good wine and tobacco; his manner was grimly genial and his insight and personal judgment marvellously rapid. Which was how it came about that John Brandon and Walter Weir were established at comfortable desks in the detective's private office, when Mr. Alfred Morse was shown in, bringing with him the problem of White Pillars.

Mr. Alfred Morse was a very stolid and serious person with stiffly-brushed brown hair, a heavy brown face and a heavy black suit of mourning of a cut somewhat provincial, or perhaps colonial. His first words were accompanied with an inoffensive but dubious cough and a glance at the two assistants.

"This is rather confidential business," he said.

"Mr. Morse," said Dr. Hyde, with quiet good humour, "if you were knocked down by a cab and carried to a hospital, your life might be saved by the first surgeon in the land: but you couldn't complain if he let students learn from the operation. These are my two cleverest pupils, and if you want good detectives, you must let them be trained."

"Oh, very well," said the visitor, "perhaps it is not quite so easy to talk of the personal tragedy as if we were alone; but I think I can lay the main facts before you.

"I am the brother of Melchior Morse, whose dreadful death is so generally deplored. I need not tell you about him; he was a public man of more than average public spirit; and I suppose his benefactions and social work are known throughout the world. I had not seen so much of him as I could wish till the last few years; for I have been much abroad; I suppose some would call me the rolling stone of the family, compared with my brother, but I was deeply attached to him, and all the resources of the family estate will be open to anyone ready to avenge his death. You will understand I shall not lightly abandon that duty.

"The crime occurred, as you probably know, at his country place called 'White Pillars,' after its rather unique classical architecture; a colonnade in the shape of a crescent, like that at St. Peter's, runs half-way round an artificial lake, to which the descent is by a flight of curved stone steps. It is in the lake that my brother's body was found floating in the moonlight; but as his neck was broken, apparently with a blow, he had clearly been killed elsewhere. When the butler found the body, the moon was on the other side of the house and threw the inner crescent of the colonnade and steps into profound shadow. But the butler swears he saw the figure of the fleeing man in dark outline against the moonlight as it turned the corner of the house. He says it was a striking outline, and he would know it again."

"Those outlines are very vivid sometimes," said the detective, thoughtfully, "but of course very difficult to prove. Were there any other traces? Any footprints or fingerprints?"

"There were no fingerprints," said Morse, gravely, "and the murderer must have meant to take equal care to leave no footprints. That is why the crime was probably committed on the great flight of stone steps. But they say the cleverest murderer forgets something; and when he threw the body in the lake there must have been a splash, which was not quite dry when it was discovered; and it showed the edge of a pretty clear footprint. I have a copy of the thing here, the original is at home." He passed a brown slip across to Hyde, who looked at it and nodded. "The only other thing on the stone steps that might be a clue was a cigar-stump. My brother did not smoke."

"Well, we will look into those clues more closely in due course," said Dr. Hyde. "Now tell me something about the house and the people in it."

Mr. Morse shrugged his shoulders, as if the family in question did not impress him.

"There were not many people in it," he replied, "putting aside a fairly large staff of servants, headed by the butler, Barton, who has been devoted to my brother for years. The servants all bear a good character; but of course you will consider all that. The other occupants of the house at the time were my brother's wife, a rather silent elderly woman, devoted almost entirely to religion and good works; a niece, of whose prolonged visits the old lady did not perhaps altogether approve, for Miss Barbara Butler is half Irish and rather flighty and excitable; my brother's secretary, Mr. Graves, a very silent young man (I confess I could never make out whether he was shy or sly), and my brother's solicitor, Mr. Caxton, who is an ordinary snuffy lawyer, and happened to be down there on legal business. They might all be guilty in theory, I suppose, but I'm a practical man, and I don't imagine such things in practice."

"Yes, I realized you were a practical man when you first came in," said Dr. Hyde, rather dryly. "I realized a few other details as well. Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Yes," replied Morse, "I hope I have made myself clear."

"It is well not to forget anything," went on Adrian Hyde, gazing at him calmly. "It is still better not to suppress anything, when confiding in a professional man. You may have heard, perhaps, of a knack I have of noticing things about people. I knew some of the things you told me before you opened your mouth; as that you long lived abroad and had just come up from the country. And it was easy to infer from your own words that you are the heir of your brother's considerable fortune."

"Well, yes, I am," replied Alfred Morse, stolidly.

"When you said you were a rolling stone," went on Adrian Hyde, with the same placid politeness, "I fear some might say you were a stone which the builders were justified in rejecting. Your adventures abroad have not all been happy. I perceive that you deserted from some foreign navy, and that you were once in prison for robbing a bank. If it comes to an inquiry into your brother's death and your present inheritance—"

"Are you trying to suggest," cried the other fiercely, "that appearances are against me?"

"My dear sir," said Dr. Adrian Hyde blandly, "appearances are most damnably against you. But I don't always go by appearances. It all depends. Good day."

When the visitor had withdrawn, looking rather black, the impetuous Brandon broke out into admiration of the Master's methods and besieged him with questions.

"Look here," said the great man, good-humouredly, "you've no business to be asking how I guessed right. You ought to be guessing at the guesses yourselves. Think it out."

"The desertion from a foreign navy," said Weir, slowly, "might be something to do with those bluish marks on his wrist. Perhaps they were some special tattooing and he'd tried to rub them out."

"That's better," said Dr. Hyde, "you're getting on."

"I know!" cried Brandon, more excitedly, "I know about the prison! They always say, if you once shave your moustache it never grows the same; perhaps there's something like that about hair that's been cropped in gaol. Yes, I thought so. The only thing I can't imagine, is why you should guess he had robbed a bank."

"Well, you think that out too," said Adrian Hyde. "I think you'll find it's the key to the whole of this riddle. And now I'm going to leave this case to you. I'm going to have a half-holiday." As a signal that his own working hours were over, he lit a large and sumptuous cigar, and began pishing and poohing over the newspapers.

"Lord, what rubbish!" he cried. "My God, what headlines! Look at this about White Pillars: 'Whose Was the Hand?' They've murdered even murder with clichés like clubs of wood. Look here, you two fellows had better go down to White Pillars and try to put some sense into them. I'll come down later and clear up the mess."

The two young detectives had originally intended to hire a car, but by the end of their journey they were very glad they had decided to travel by train with the common herd. Even as they were in the act of leaving the train, they had a stroke of luck in the matter of that collecting of stray words and whispers which Weir found the least congenial, but Brandon desperately clung to as the most practicable, of all forms of detective inquiry. The steady scream of a steam-whistle, which was covering all the shouted conversation, stopped suddenly in the fashion that makes a shout shrivel into a whisper. But there was one whisper caught in the silence and sounding clear as a bell; a voice that said, "There were excellent reasons for killing him. I know them, if nobody else does."

Brandon managed to trace the voice to its origin; a sallow face with a long shaven chin and a rather scornful lower lip. He saw the same face more than once on the remainder of his journey, passing the ticket collector, appearing in a car behind them on the road, haunting him so significantly, that he was not surprised to meet the man eventually in the garden of White Pillars, and to have him presented as Mr. Caxton, the solicitor.

"That man evidently knows more than he's told the authorities," said Brandon to his friend, "but I can't get anything more out of him."

"My dear fellow," cried Weir, "that's just what they're all like. Don't you feel by this time that it's the atmosphere of the whole place? It's not a bit like those delightful detective stories. In a detective story all the people in the house are gaping imbeciles, who can't understand anything, and in the midst stands the brilliant sleuth who understands everything. Here am I standing in the midst, a brilliant sleuth, and I believe, on my soul, I'm the only person in the house who doesn't know all about the crime."

"There's one other anyhow," said Brandon, with gloom, "two brilliant sleuths."

"Everybody else knows except the detective," went on Weir; "everybody knows something, anyhow, if it isn't everything. There's something odd even about old Mrs. Morse; she's devoted to charity, yet she doesn't seem to have agreed with her husband's philanthropy. It's as if they'd quarrelled about it. Then there's the secretary, the quiet, good-looking young man, with a square face like Napoleon. He looks as if he would get what he wants, and I've very little doubt that what he wants is that red-haired Irish girl they call Barbara. I think she wants the same thing; but if so there's really no reason for them to hide it. And they are hiding it, or hiding something. Even the butler is secretive. They can't all have been in a conspiracy to kill the old man."

"Anyhow, it all comes back to what I said first," observed Brandon. "If they're in a conspiracy, we can only hope to overhear their talk. It's the only way."

"It's an excessively beastly way," said Weir, calmly, "and we will proceed to follow it."

They were walking slowly round the great semicircle of colonnade that looked inwards upon the lake, that shone like a silver mirror to the moon. It was of the same stretch of clear moonlit nights as that recent one, on which old Morse had died mysteriously in the same spot. They could imagine him as he was in many portraits, a little figure in a skull cap with a white beard thrust forward, standing on those steps, till a dreadful figure that had no face in their dreams descended the stairway and struck him down. They were standing at one end of the colonnade, full of these visions, when Brandon said suddenly:

"Did you speak?"

"I? No," replied his friend staring.

"Somebody spoke," said Brandon, in a low voice, "yet we seem to be quite alone."

Then their blood ran cold for an instant. For the wall behind them spoke; and it seemed to say quite plainly, in a rather harsh voice:

"Do you remember exactly what you said?"

Weir stared at the wall for an instant; then he slapped it with his hand with a shaky laugh.

"My God," he cried, "what a miracle! And what a satire! We've sold ourselves to the devil as a couple of damned eavesdroppers; and he's put us in the very chamber of eavesdropping—into the ear of Dionysius, the Tyrant. Don't you see this is a whispering gallery, and people at the other end of it are whispering?"

"No, they're talking too loud to hear us, I think," whispered Brandon, "but we'd better lower our voices. It's Caxton the lawyer, and the young secretary."

The secretary's unmistakable and vigorous voice sounded along the wall saying:

"I told him I was sick of the whole business; and if I'd known he was such a tyrant, I'd never have had to do with him. I think I told him he ought to be shot. I was sorry enough for it afterwards."

Then they heard the lawyer's more croaking tones saying, "Oh, you said that, did you? Well, there seems no more to be said now. We had better go in," which was followed by echoing feet and then silence.

The next day Weir attached himself to the lawyer with a peculiar pertinacity and made a new effort to get something more out of that oyster. He was pondering deeply on the very little that he had got, when Brandon rushed up to him with hardly-restrained excitement.

"I've been at that place again," he cried. "I suppose you'll say I've sunk lower in the pit of slime, and perhaps I have, but it's got to be done. I've been listening to the young people this time, and I believe I begin to see something; though heaven knows, it's not what I want to see. The secretary and the girl are in love all right, or have been; and when love is loose pretty dreadful things can happen. They were talking about getting married, of course, at least she was, and what do you think she said? 'He made an excuse of my being under age.' So it's pretty clear the old man opposed the match. No doubt that was what the secretary meant by talking about his tyranny."

"And what did the secretary say when the girl said that?"

"That's the queer thing," answered Brandon, "rather an ugly thing, I begin to fancy. The young man only answered, rather sulkily, I thought: 'Well, he was within his rights there; and perhaps it was for the best.' She broke out in protest: 'How can you say such a thing'; and certainly it was a strange thing for a lover to say."

"What are you driving at?" asked his friend.

"Do you know anything about women?" asked Brandon. "Suppose the old man was not only trying to break off the engagement but succeeding in breaking it off. Suppose the young man was weakening and beginning to wonder whether she was worth losing his job for. The woman might have waited any time or eloped any time. But if she thought she was in danger of losing him altogether, don't you think she might have turned on the tempter with the fury of despair? I fear we have got a glimpse of a very heart-rending tragedy. Don't you believe it, too?"

Walter Weir unfolded his long limbs and got slowly to his feet, filling a pipe and looking at his friend with a sort of quizzical melancholy.

"No, I don't believe it," he said, "but that's because I'm such an unbeliever. You see, I don't believe in all this eavesdropping business; I don't think we shine at it. Or, rather, I think you shine too much at it and dazzle yourself blind. I don't believe in all this detective romance about deducing everything from a trifle. I don't believe in your little glimpse of a great tragedy. It would be a great tragedy no doubt, and does you credit as literature or a symbol of life; you can build imaginative things of that sort on a trifle. You can build everything on the trifle except the truth. But in the present practical issue, I don't believe there's a word of truth in it. I don't believe the old man was opposed to the engagement; I don't believe the young man was backing out of it; I believe the young people are perfectly happy and ready to be married tomorrow. I don't believe anybody in this house had any motive to kill Morse or has any notion of how he was killed. In spite of what I said, the poor shabby old sleuth enjoys his own again. I believe I am the only person who knows the truth; and it only came to me in a flash a few minutes ago."

"Why, how do you mean?" asked the other.

"It came to me in a final flash," said Weir, "when you repeated those words of the girl: 'He made the excuse that I was under age'."

After a few puffs of his pipe, he resumed reflectively: "One queer thing is, that the error of the eavesdropper often comes from a thing being too clear. We're so sure that people mean what we mean, that we can't believe they mean what they say. Didn't I once tell you that it's one thing to listen and another to hear? And sometimes the voice talks too plain. For instance, when young Graves, the secretary, said that he was sick of the business, he meant it literally, and not metaphorically. He meant he was sick of Morse's trade, because it was tyrannical."

"Morse's trade? What trade?" asked Brandon, staring.

"Our saintly old philanthropist was a money-lender," replied Weir, "and as great a rascal as his rascally brother. That is the great central fact that explains everything. That is what the girl meant by talking about being under age. She wasn't talking about her love-affair at all, but about some small loan she'd tried to get from the old man and which he refused because she was a minor. Her fiancé made the very sensible comment that perhaps it was all for the best; meaning that she had escaped the net of a usurer. And her momentary protest was only a spirited young lady's lawful privilege of insisting on her lover agreeing with all the silly things she says. That is an example of the error of the eavesdropper, or the fallacy of detection by trifles. But, as I say, it's the moneylending business that's the clue to everything in this house. That's what all of them, even the secretary and solicitor, out of a sort of family pride, are trying to hush up and hide from detectives and newspapers. But the old man's murder was much more likely to get it into the newspapers. They had no motive to murder him, and they didn't murder him."

"Then who did?" demanded Brandon.

"Ah," replied his friend, but with less than his usual languor in the ejaculation and something a little like a hissing intake of the breath. He had seated himself once more, with his elbows on his knees, but the other was surprised to realize something rigid about his new attitude; almost like a creature crouching for a spring. He still spoke quite dryly, however, and merely said:

"In order to answer that, I fancy we must go back to the first talk that we overheard, before we came to the house; the very first of all."

"Oh, I see," said Brandon, a light dawning on his face. "You mean what we heard the solicitor say in the train."

"No," replied Weir, in the same motionless manner, "that was only another illustration touching the secret trade. Of course his solicitor knew he was a money-lender; and knew that any such money-lender has a crowd of victims, who might kill him. It's quite true he was killed by one of those victims. But it wasn't the lawyer's remark in the train that I was talking about, for a very simple reason."

"And why not?" inquired his companion.

"Because that was not the first conversation we overheard."

Walter Weir clutched his knees with his long bony hands, and seemed to stiffen still more as if in a trance, but he went on talking steadily.

"I have told you the moral and the burden of all these things; that it is one thing to hear what men say and another to hear what they mean. And it was at the very first talk that we heard all the words and missed all the meaning. We did not overhear that first talk slinking about in moonlit gardens and whispering galleries. We overheard that first talk sitting openly at our regular desks in broad daylight, in a bright and businesslike office. But we no more made sense of that talk than if it had been half a whisper, heard in a black forest or a cave."

He sprang to his feet as if a stiff spring were released and began striding up and down, with what was for him an unnatural animation.

"That was the talk we really misunderstood," he cried. "That was the conversation that we heard word for word, and yet missed entirely! Fools that we were! Deaf and dumb and imbecile, sitting there like dummies and being stuffed with a stage play! We were actually allowed to be eavesdroppers, tolerated, ticketed, given special permits to be eavesdroppers; and still we could not eavesdrop! I never even guessed till ten minutes ago the meaning of that conversation in the office. That terrible conversation! That terrible meaning! Hate and hateful fear and shameless wickedness and mortal peril—death and hell wrestled naked before our eyes in that office, and we never saw them. A man accused another man of murder across a table, and we never heard it."

"Oh," gasped Brandon at last, "you mean that the Master accused the brother of murder?"

"No!" retorted Weir, in a voice like a volley, "I mean that the brother accused the Master of murder."

"The Master!"

"Yes," answered Weir, and his high voice fell suddenly, "and the accusation was true. The man who murdered old Morse was our employer, Dr. Adrian Hyde."

"What can it all mean?" asked Brandon, and thrust his hand through his thick brown hair.

"That was our mistake at the beginning," went on the other calmly, "that we did not think what it could all mean. Why was the brother so careful to say the reproduction of the footprint was a proof and not the original? Why did Dr. Hyde say the outline of the fugitive would be difficult to prove? Why did he tell us, with that sardonic grin, that the brother having robbed a bank was the key of the riddle? Because the whole of that consultation of the client and the specialist was a fiction for our benefit. The whole course of events was determined by that first thing that happened; that the young and innocent detectives were allowed to remain in the room. Didn't you think yourself the interview was a little too like that at the beginning of every damned detective story? Go over it speech by speech, and you will see that every speech was a thrust or parry under a cloak. That blackmailing blackguard Alfred hunted out Doctor Hyde simply to accuse and squeeze him. Seeing us there, he said, 'This is confidential,' meaning, 'You don't want to be accused before them.' Dr. Hyde answered, 'They're my favourite pupils,' meaning, 'I'm less likely to be blackmailed before them; they shall stay.' Alfred answered, 'Well, I can state my business, if not quite so personally,' meaning, 'I can accuse you so that you understand, if they don't.' And he did. He presented his proofs like pistols across the table; things that sounded rather thin, but, in Hyde's case, happened to be pretty thick. His boots, for instance, happened to be very thick. His huge footprint would be unique enough to be a clue. So would the cigar-end; for very few people can afford to smoke his cigars. Of course, that's what got him tangled up with the moneylender—extravagance. You see how much money you get through if you smoke those cigars all day and never drink anything but the best vintage champagne. And though a black silhouette against the moon sounds as vague as moonshine, Hyde's huge figure and hunched shoulders would be rather marked. Well, you know how the blackmailed man hit back: 'I perceive by your left eyebrow that you are a deserter; I deduce from the pimple on your nose that you were once in gaol,' meaning, 'I know you, and you're as much a crook as I am; expose me and I'll expose you.' Then he said he had deduced in the Sherlock Holmes manner that Alfred had robbed a bank, and that was where he went too far. He presumed on the incredible credulity, which is the mark of the modern mind when anyone has uttered the magic word 'science.' He presumed on the priestcraft of our time; but he presumed the least little bit too much, so far as I was concerned. It was then I first began to doubt. A man might possibly deduce by scientific detection that another man had been in a certain navy or prison, but by no possibility could he deduce from a man's appearance that what he had once robbed was a bank. It was simply impossible. Dr. Hyde knew it was his biggest bluff; that was why he told you in mockery, that it was the key to the riddle. It was; and I managed to get hold of the key."

He chuckled in a hollow fashion as he laid down his pipe. "That jibe at his own bluff was like him; he really is a remarkable man or a remarkable devil. He has a sort of horrible sense of humour. Do you know, I've got a notion that sounds rather a nightmare, about what happened on that great slope of steps that night. I believe Hyde jeered at the journalistic catchword, 'Whose Was the Hand?' partly because he, himself, had managed it without hands. I believe he managed to commit a murder entirely with his feet. I believe he tripped up the poor old usurer and stamped on him on the stone steps with those monstrous boots. An idyllic moonlight scene, isn't it? But there's something that seems to make it worse. I think he had the habit anyhow, partly to avoid leaving his fingerprints, which may be known to the police. Anyhow, I believe he did the whole murder with his hands in his trouser-pockets."

Brandon shuddered suddenly; then collected himself and said, rather weakly:

"Then you don't think the science of observation—"

"Science of observation be damned!" cried Weir. "Do you still think private detectives get to know about criminals by smelling their hair-oil, or counting their buttons? They do it, a whole gang of them do it just as Hyde did. They get to know about criminals by being half criminals themselves, by being of the same rotten world, by belonging to it and by betraying it, by setting a thief to catch a thief, and proving there is no honour among thieves. I don't say there are no honest private detectives, but if there are, you don't get into their service as easily as you and I got into the office of the distinguished Dr. Adrian Hyde. You ask what all this means, and I tell you one thing it means. It means that you and I are going to sweep crossings or scrub out drains. I feel as if I should like a clean job."

______________

7: The Manor House Mystery

J. S. Fletcher

1863–1935

Hush, Oct 1930 (as "The Malachite Jar")

1: Misadventure— or Murder?

IN A private sitting-room of an old-fashioned country town hotel, a man sat at a writing-desk absent-mindedly drawing unmeaning scrawls on a blotting-pad. On the table in the centre of the room lay the remains of the last course of a simple dinner; he himself had almost forgotten that he had eaten any dinner. In fact, he had left untouched most of what he had last taken on his plate—in the middle of a spoonful of apple-tart he had got up from his chair to walk up and down the room, thinking, speculating, racking his brain; just as abstractedly he had sat down at the desk, to lay hand on a pen, and begin to scribble lines and curves. He went on scribbling lines and curves and circles and various hieroglyphics, until an old waiter came in and laid the evening newspaper at his side. He started then and looked up, and the waiter glanced at the table.

"You can clear away," said the absent-minded man. "I've finished."

He remained where he was until the table had been cleared and he was once more alone; then he turned his chair to the fire, put his slippered feet on the fender, and picked up the paper. It was a small, four-page sheet, printed at the county town twenty miles away, and it contained little news which had not already appeared in the morning journals. The man turned it over with listless indifference, until his eye lighted on a paragraph, headed "The Flamstock Mystery." The indifference went out of his face then; he lifted the folded sheet nearer and read with eagerness.

"The mystery attending the death of Mr. Septimus Walshawe, J.P., of Flamstock, remains still unsolved. That this much-respected townsman and magistrate died of poisoning there is no doubt. It is inconceivable that Mr. Walshawe took his own life; no one who was familiar with him could believe for a moment that a man of his cheery temperament, his optimistic character, and his interest in life could ever terminate a useful and fully occupied existence by suicide. Nor is there any evidence that Mr. Walshawe took poison by misadventure. There is a growing feeling in Flamstock that the deceased gentleman was— to put it in plain language— murdered, but, although the services of a noted expert in criminal detection have been employed in this case, nothing, we understand, has so far transpired which is likely to lead to the detection of the cowardly— and clever— murderer."

The reader threw the newspaper aside with a smile. He was the noted expert in criminal detection to whom the paragraph referred, and, after several days' investigation of the Walshawe case, he was not quite so certain about the facts which appertained to it as the writer of the paragraph appeared to be. All that he was actually certain about was that he was very much puzzled. He had done a good deal of thinking during the last few days; he knew that a lot of thinking was still to be done. And, realising that there was no likelihood of his thinking of anything else that evening, he lighted a cigar, and settling himself comfortably before the dancing flames, fell to representing the case to his own judgment for perhaps the hundredth time.

This was how the case stood. Mr. Septimus Walshawe, a gentleman of about sixty years of age at the time of his sudden death, had lived in Flamstock, a small country town, for twenty-five years. He rented the Manor House, a quaint old mansion at the top of the High Street. He was a man of considerable means, and a bachelor. His tastes were literary and antiquarian. He was the possessor of a notable library; he collected old china, old silver; he had a small but valuable museum of antiquities. He was never so happy as when he was busied about his books and his curiosities, but he was by no means a recluse. From the time of his coming to Flamstock he took a good deal of interest in the life of the town.

He had served on its town council; he had been mayor; he had founded a literary and philosophical institute, and once a year he lectured to its members on some subject of importance. Also, he was a magistrate, and he never failed in his attendance at petty sessions or quarter sessions. In short, he was a feature of the town; everybody knew him; his face and figure was as familiar in High Street as the tower of the old church, or the queer figures which ornamented the town-hall clock.

So much for Mr. Walshawe's public life. His private life appeared to have been a very quiet one. His household consisted of a housekeeper, a cook, three female servants, and a boy in buttons; he also employed two gardeners and a groom-coachman, who drove his one equipage, an old-fashioned landau.

He seemed to have no near relations— in fact, the only relation who ever came to see him was a niece, married far away in the North of England, who visited Flamstock for a week or two every year, and for the last few years had brought her two small children with her. It was understood by those Flamstockians who were admitted to Mr. Walshawe's confidence that this lady would inherit all he had. And she had inherited it now that he was dead, and it was by her express desire and on her instructions that the New Scotland Yard man who toasted his feet at the fire of his private parlour in the Bull and Bucket had come down to Flamstock to find out the truth about the mystery which surrounded her uncle's death.

That Mr. Walshawe's death had taken place under mysterious circumstances there was no doubt. He was found dead in bed at noon on the tenth day of November on a Thursday. The detective had no need to refer to his memoranda for these precise facts as regards Mr. Walshawe's doings for some days previous to the day of his death.

Nothing had occurred which could be taken as presaging his decease; he had shown no sign of illness, had made no complaint of any feeling of illness. In fact, he had been rather more than usually active that week.

On the Monday evening he had delivered his annual lecture at the institute; on the Tuesday he had sat on the bench at the town hall from eleven in the morning till five in the afternoon; on the Wednesday he had lunched at Sir Anthony Cleeke's house, just outside the town; that evening he had entertained a few friends to dinner; one or two of whom had stayed rather late.

The fact that they had stayed rather late had relieved Mrs. Whiteside, the housekeeper, of any fear when Mr. Walshawe did not come down to breakfast at his usual hour next morning. She knew that he had not gone to bed until quite two o'clock.

When breakfast-time had been passed by two hours, however, she went to call him, and, getting no answer, walked into his room to find him asleep, but looking so strange and breathing so uneasily that she had become alarmed and sent at once for medical help.

There was delay in getting that. Dr. Thorney, Mr. Walshawe's medical attendant, was away from home, and his assistant had gone into the country on a round of visits. Consequently an hour elapsed before medical help was brought to his bedside. And when it arrived Mr. Walshawe was dead.

In the opinion of the coroner this was decidedly a case for a post-mortem examination, and it was immediately carried out. Its results went to prove that Mr. Walshawe had died from veronal poisoning. Thereupon the mystery began.

It was not known to any member of his household that he ever took such things. There was no trace of such things in the house. His private apartments were searched from top to bottom; his desks, his drawers, every receptacle, every nook and cranny where drugs could have been concealed, were scrupulously examined. Nothing was found.

Nor could anybody be found who had ever sold veronal or any similar drug to Mr. Walshawe. There were three chemists in Flamstock; none of them had ever known him as a customer for any drug of that sort. Advertisements asking for information on this point were inserted first in the local papers of the neighbouring towns, then in the London newspapers. Had any chemist ever sent veronal to Mr. Walshawe by post?

There was no reply to these advertisements. Of course, as plenty of people were quick to point out, Mr. Walshawe could have purchased veronal when he was away from the town.

But, as a matter of fact, he had not been away from Flamstock for well over a year. And, in addition to that, those who knew him best and most intimately agreed that he was given to boasting of his general robust health, his good appetite, and, above everything, his power of sleeping. He was the last man in the world, said they, to have need of sleeping draughts; he had been heard to say, a thousand times, that he slept like a top from eleven o'clock until seven. He had said so, Sir Anthony Cleeke remembered, only the day before he was found dead.

It was inconceivable that he should have taken veronal in a sufficient quantity to kill him. Yet the fact remained that he had died from veronal poisoning, and must have taken a considerable dose.

When the man from New Scotland Yard came on the scene, brought there by Mr. Walshawe's niece, he had at first come to an immediate conclusion that the dead man had taken the veronal himself. He had had his own reasons, he said, for taking the drug, and being— possibly or probably— unaccustomed to it, he had taken too much.

But he was faced with the fact that no trace of Mr. Walshawe ever having bought or possessed such a drug could be found. He was also faced with the general habits and tone of the dead man. He was further having it impressed upon him, day by day, that Mr. Walshawe's niece was sure, certain, convinced that somebody had administered the veronal to her uncle in order to do him to death.

She pointed out that there was nothing to show that he was likely to take a sleeping draught; certainly nothing to indicate that he was tired of life. Tired of life, indeed! Why, he was just then full of spirits, full of interests. He was looking forward to attending, on the very day on which he died, a sale by auction at a neighbouring country house, where there were certain antiquities and objects of art which he ardently desired to possess.

He had been talking of them when he lunched at Sir Anthony Cleeke's; he talked of them at his own dinner-party in the evening. No— no; nothing would persuade her that her uncle had done anything to bring about his own death. Nothing!

"Misadventure?" suggested the detective.

"No misadventure!" retorted Mr. Walshawe's niece. "My uncle was murdered. It is your place to find out who murdered him."

This was the problem which vexed the mind of the detective as he sat musing and reflecting in his quiet room at the Bull and Bucket. It seemed to him that he was doing little good. He had been in Flamstock nearly a fortnight, pursuing all sorts of inquiries, following up all manner of suggestions, and he was no nearer any solution of the mystery. Nevertheless, he knew what he wanted. And he muttered a word unconsciously.

"Motive!" he said. "Motive! Motive!"

A tap came at the door, and the old waiter put his head into the room.

"Mr. Peasegood to see you, sir," he said.

The detective, with the alacrity of a man who is relieved at the prospect of exchanging ideas with a fellow-creature, rose.

"Show Mr. Peasegood in, William," he answered.

2: The Legal Visitor

THE MAN who came into the room, contenting himself with a nod of greeting until the waiter had gone away, was known to the detective as Mr. Septimus Walshawe's solicitor. He had already had several interviews with him, and they had discussed the details of the case until it seemed as if they had covered every inch of the debatable ground. Yet it now appeared to him that Mr. Peasegood had something new to communicate; there was the suggestion of news in his face, and the detective wheeled an easy-chair to the hearth with an eagerness which really meant that he was anxious to know what his visitor had to say.

"Good evening, Mr. Peasegood," he said. "Glad to see you. Can I offer you anything now— a drink, a cigar?"

Mr. Peasegood was slowly drawing off his gloves, which he deposited carefully within his hat. He also divested himself of his overcoat, and, having run his fingers over his smooth hair, he dropped into the seat and smiled.

"Not just now, Mr. Marshford," he answered. "Perhaps a little later. Business first— eh?"

"There is business, then!" exclaimed the detective. "Ah! Something to do with the case, of course?"

"Something to do with the case, of course," repeated Mr. Peasegood, blandly. "Very much to do with the case."

Marshford threw his cigar into the fire and, leaning forward in his chair, looked fixedly at his visitor.

"Yes?" he said.

"You are aware," continued Peasegood, "of the tenor of Mr. Walshawe's will, which was executed by myself some years ago?"

"Yes— yes," replied Marshford; "of course. That is, I know what you told me— that, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, everything was left to the niece, Mrs. Carstone?"

"Just so," assented Peasegood. "It is ten years since I drew up that will. I have been under the impression that it was Walshawe's last word as to the disposition of his property."

The detective started.

"And— wasn't it?" he asked eagerly.

Peasegood smiled in an odd fashion.

"Another will— a later will— has come to light," he replied. He looked narrowly at the detective, and he smiled again. "It is a perfectly good will," he added; "and, of course, it upsets the other."

"Bless me!" said Marshford. "I'm sorry to hear it— for Mrs. Carstone's sake."

Peasegood laughed.

"Oh, it doesn't make any great amount of difference to Mrs. Carstone!" he remarked. "Oh, no! But it may make a considerable difference to somebody else in a way which that somebody else won't quite appreciate; a very considerable difference."

Marshford looked an inquiry. He was eager with inquisitiveness, but he recognised that Peasegood was one of those men who will tell a story in their own way, and he waited.

"This is how it is," continued Peasegood after a pause; "and you're the first person I've spoken to about it. This afternoon, just as I was about to leave my office for the day, Mrs. Whiteside called on me."

"Walshawe's housekeeper!" exclaimed Marshford.

"Walshawe's housekeeper— exactly. She requested an interview. Her manner was mysterious. She was some time in coming to a point— I had to ask her, at last, what she really wanted. Eventually she told me that not many months before his death Mr. Walshawe made a new will, and entrusted it to her keeping."

The detective whistled.

"Just so," continued Peasegood. "I, too, felt inclined to whistle. Instead, I asked to see the will she spoke of. She produced it. I read it hastily. It is a perfectly good will; nothing can upset it. Or, rather, there's only one thing that might upset it— we'll talk of what that is later. But— to give you particulars of it— it was made on the twenty-fourth of last May; it was written out by Walshawe himself on a sheet of foolscap; it is duly and properly signed and witnessed. Quite a good will."

"And its provisions?" asked Marshford.

"Simple— very!" replied Peasegood. "It appoints the same executors— myself and Mr. John Entwhistle. Mrs. Carstone is left the residue of everything— real and personal estate— as before. The trifling legacies are as before. But a sum of ten thousand pounds is left to Jane Whiteside, and a like sum to her son Richard."

Peasegood paused and laughed a little.

"That's the difference," he said— "a little difference of twenty thousand pounds. I said it would make no difference to Mrs. Carstone. It doesn't. Walshawe, first and last, died worth a quarter of a million. Mrs. Carstone can easily afford to drop twenty thousand. Twenty thousand is nothing to her. But ten thousand is a lot to Mrs. Whiteside— and to her son."

"To anybody but wealthy people!" exclaimed the detective. "Um! Well, that's news, Mr. Peasegood. But— do you think it has any bearing on the mystery of Walshawe's death?"

Peasegood's eyes and mouth became inscrutable for a minute. Then he smiled.

"You asked me if I'd take anything," he said. "I'll take a little whisky, and I'll smoke a cigar. Then— I'll tell you something."

His face became inscrutable again, and remained so until Marshford had summoned the waiter and his demands for refreshment had been supplied, and he kept silence until he had smoked a good inch of his cigar. When he turned to the detective again it was with a smile that seemed to suggest much.

"I dare say you're as well aware as I am that— especially in professions like yours and mine— men who are practised in deducing one thing from another are apt to think pretty sharply at times," he said. "I thought with unusual sharpness when Mrs. Whiteside revealed the existence of this will and I'd convinced myself that it would stand. Or, rather, I didn't so much think as remember. I remembered— that's the word— remembered."

"Remembered— what?" asked Marshford.

Peasegood bent forward with a sidelong glance at the door, and he tapped the detective's knee.

"I remembered two very striking facts— striking in connection with what we know," he replied, in a whisper. "First that Jane Whiteside's son, her co-beneficiary, is a chemist in London; second, that he was in Flamstock during the evening and night immediately preceding Walshawe's death. That's what I remembered."

Marshford opened his eyes to their widest extent. Once more he whistled.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, supplementing the whistle. "That's— gad, I don't know what that isn't, or— is! Anyway, it's news of rare significance."

"Some people," observed Peasegood, calmly—"some people would call it news of sinister significance. It's news that's worth thinking about, anyway. I," he continued, smiling grimly— "I have been thinking about it ever since I remembered it."

"What have you thought?" asked Marshford.

"Nothing that's very clear yet," replied the solicitor. "But you may be sure that Mrs. Whiteside had long since told her son of the will which she kept locked-up in her private repository for such things. He'd no doubt seen it. And a man will dare much for ten thousand pounds."

"You think he— or he and his mother between them— administered the stuff to Walshawe?" suggested the detective.

"I think," answered Peasegood deliberately; "I think that when a man dies as suddenly as Walshawe did, when it's found that he was poisoned, when it's discovered that two people benefit by his death to the extent of twenty thousand pounds, to be paid to them in cash and unconditionally soon after his decease, and when one of these persons is a man acquainted with drugs and their properties— why, then, it's high time that some inquiry should be made."

"Did you say as much to Mrs. Whiteside?" asked Marshford.

"No, I didn't," replied the solicitor. "All that I said to Mrs. Whiteside was— to ask her why she didn't bring forward this will at once. She replied that she didn't know that there was any occasion for hurry, and that she'd thought she'd wait until things had got settled down a bit."

The detective reflected in silence for a while.

"What about her manner?" he suddenly asked. "You'd have thought— good heavens!— why, if they're guilty, you'd have thought they'd be afraid to bring that will forward. They can't be— fools?"

"Apart from her mysterious way of introducing the subject, the woman's manner was calm enough," answered Peasegood. "And, as to their being fools, you've got to remember this— the onus probandi rests on us if we accuse them. We've got to prove— prove, mind you!— that they, or one of them, poisoned Walshawe, I repeat— prove!"

"The man may be the guilty party, his mother may be perfectly innocent," remarked Marshford.

"And the mother may be the guilty party, and the son as innocent as you are," said Peasegood.

Marshford nodded.

"Anyway, there's a motive," he said. "But I can see certain things that are in their favour. And the first is— since the son's a chemist, his knowledge would surely show him a cleverer way of getting rid of Walshawe than that. Considering that he's a chemist, and, of course, supposing that he's guilty, it was clumsy— clumsy."

"I'm not so sure," replied Peasegood. "You've got to remember this—good sleeper as Walshawe boasted himself to be, there's nobody can prove that he didn't take drugs at times. For instance, that particular night he'd been giving a dinner-party, he sat up, to my knowledge— I was one of his guests— until quite two o'clock. He may have said to himself, as on many similar occasions, "I'm a bit excited. I'll take something to make me sleep," and he may have taken this stuff. You can't prove that he hadn't it by him, any more than you can prove that these people— or one of them—contrived to administer it to him. All you can say is this: Walshawe undoubtedly died of veronal poisoning. There is nothing to show that he ever took veronal. Jane Whiteside and Richard Whiteside benefit by his death to the extent of twenty thousand pounds. They had the opportunity of administering—"

"For that matter," said Marshford suddenly, "Jane Whiteside had abundant opportunities—daily opportunities. Why choose that particular night?"

Peasegood got up and began to put on his coat.

"I said, to begin with, that Richard may be the sole guilty party," he answered. "He was in Flamstock that night. He came by the six train that Wednesday evening; he left at eight next morning, having spent the night at the Manor House. And it seems to me that the first thing to do is to find out if Richard Whiteside is in particular need of— his legacy— eh?"

"Just so— just so," agreed Marshford. "Leave that to me. I shall want his address."

Peasegood laid a slip of paper on the table.

"That's his address," he said. "Be cautious, Marshford. Well, I'm going."

The detective accompanied his visitor downstairs. In the hall, a little, middle-aged, blue-spectacled man, who carried a bag and a travelling-rug, was booking a room at the office window. And when the detective came back from the door, after saying "good night" to Peasegood, the landlady called to him, glancing at the new arrival.

"Here's a gentleman asking for you, Mr. Marshford," she said.

The little, blue-spectacled man made a bow, and presented the detective with a card.

"My name and address, sir," he said politely, in a sharp, businesslike fashion. "Can I have a few words with you?"

Marshford looked at the card, and read:

"William W. Williams, M.P.S., Dispensing and Family Chemist, The Pharmacy, Llandinas."

"Come this way, Mr. Williams," responded Marshford.

And as he led his second caller up the stairs, he said to himself that the evening was certainly yielding fruit. For he had no doubt whatever that Mr. William W. Williams had come to tell him something about the Walshawe case.

3: The Scientific Visitor

ONCE WITHIN the private sitting-room the caller unwound the shawl and comforter in which he was swathed, and took off a heavy travelling overcoat that lay beneath them. He then presented himself as a little, spare man of active frame and movements. What Marshford could see of his eyes beneath his spectacles, and his mouth beneath his beard and moustache, seemed to show that his mind was as active as his body.

He bustled into the chair which Peasegood had just vacated, accepted the detective's offer of a drink with ready cordiality, and, having expressed his thanks in a set phrase, clapped his hands on his knees and looked searchingly at his host.

"I have come a long way to see you, Mr. Marshford," he said. "Yes, indeed, a long way I have come, sir?"

"That shows that you want to see me on important business, Mr. Williams," observed Marshford. "I gather that, of course."

"Important business, sir; oh, yes, indeed! Of the first importance, in my opinion, Mr. Marshford," replied the visitor. He cleared his throat, as if he meant to indulge in a lengthy speech. "I have read what has been in the papers, sir, about Mr. Septimus Walshawe," he began. "I gathered from the papers that you are in charge of that case?"

"I am," said Marshford. "And if you can throw any light on it, I shall be much obliged to you."

Williams again cleared his throat.

"I can, sir," he answered. "Yes, indeed I can. I knew the late Mr. Septimus Walshawe, sir, though I have not set eyes on him for twenty-five years. Mr. Walshawe, sir, used to live in Llandinas, and though I have not seen Mr. Walshawe since he left— five-and-twenty years ago— I know something about him which, as I gather from the papers, nobody here in Flamstock knows, and you do not know, either. Yes, indeed!"

"Yes?" said Marshford. "What?"

Williams drew his chair close to the detective's. He wagged his head with a knowing air.

"This, sir," he said. "The late Septimus Walshawe was a victim of drugs— or, rather, of one drug. Of one drug, Mr. Marshford."

"What drug?" asked Marshford quietly.

Williams slapped his knees, put his face close to the detective's and rapped out one word.

"Opium!" he said. "Opium!"

Marshford stared silently at his visitor for a minute or two. Here, indeed, was a revelation which he had not expected— a revelation which might mean a great deal.

"You're quite sure of what you allege?" he asked at last.

"Allege!" exclaimed the chemist, with a laugh. "I know! Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Marshford! As if I should come all this way, whatever, to talk about something that I wasn't sure of! Oh, yes; I know, sir!"

"What do you know?" said Marshford.

"I know this," replied Williams. "Mr. Walshawe lived in Llandinas— at a house called Plas Newydd, Mr. Marshford— for five years before he came to live here. Soon after he came into Llandinas, he came to my shop for opium. He told me that he had become accustomed to taking it at times for a certain internal disorder which he had contracted while abroad. I made it up for him in five-grain pills. He had so many a month, and as time went on he began to increase his doses. But when he left our neighbourhood he was not taking so much— not nearly so much— as he did later on."

"How," asked Marshford, "how do you know what he took later on?"

The chemist smiled slyly.

"How do I know indeed?" he said. "Because I have sent him his opium pills to his house here in Flamstock ever since he came here. Yes, indeed; five-and-twenty years I have sent them, once a month. And he needed more and more a month every year. That man, sir, was a victim to the opium habit."

"You sent him a supply of opium pills regularly?" asked Marshford.

"Once a month I sent them— yes," replied Williams. "In a neat box, sir, sealed. Oh, yes; for five-and-twenty years, Mr. Marshford!"

"I thought," remarked Marshford, reflectively, "that a confirmed opium-taker showed marked signs of the vice?"

"Not always, sir— not always! He wouldn't," said Williams. "He was a fresh-coloured, lively-looking man when I knew him, and was to the end, judging from the accounts I've read in the papers. No, sir; I don't think he would show the usual signs much."

"You don't think that anybody else would detect it?" suggested Marshford.

Williams looked round him, and sank his voice to a whisper.

"I think that somebody here did detect it— was well aware of it," he answered. "Yes, indeed, I do, Mr. Marshford— oh, yes!"

"Who?" asked Marshford bluntly.

"Whoever poisoned him," replied the chemist with another sly smile. "Yes, sir— whoever poisoned him."

Marshford considered this suggestion awhile. It was some time before he spoke; meanwhile his visitor sat tapping his knees and watching him.

"Look here, Mr. Williams," said the detective at last. "You've got a theory, and you've come here to tell me what it is. I'm much obliged to you. And now— what is it?"

Williams cleared his throat with one of his sharp, dry coughs.

"This, sir," he said. "It seems certain that somebody wanted to get Walshawe out of the way. That somebody knew that he took opium in the shape of pills— probably knew how many he took, and the chemical value of the pills, and made the veronal up to resemble the pills— so closely, indeed, that Walshawe didn't know they weren't opium pills. Yes, indeed!"

"That argues a certain amount of chemical knowledge, Mr. Williams," said Marshford— "I mean on the part of the poisoner."

"Oh, it does!" agreed Williams. "Or it argues that the poisoner knew where to get veronal made up in the form and of the strength he wanted. Oh, yes!"

"That's your theory?" said Marshford.

"That's my theory, sir," answered the chemist. "I formed that theory as soon as I read the case in the papers. And having business in London to-morrow I took this place on my way so that I could tell you what I thought. And I venture to predict, sir, that if you ever do get to the bottom of this mystery, you'll find that theory to be correct. Yes, indeed! You don't know of anything that fits in with it, I suppose?"

"I may tell you something about that later, Mr. Williams," replied Marshford. "I suppose you are going to stay the night here?"

The chemist rose and began to gather together his belongings.

"I am, sir," he said. "I am now about to take some much-needed refreshment, and then I am going to bed— I have had a long journey, whatever. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you in the morning, Mr. Marshford?"

"Yes, that's it— see me in the morning," replied Marshford. "I'm going to think over what you've told me."

He sat for some time after the chemist had gone away, thinking steadily on the news just given to him. He was beginning to see a clear line now as regards the administration of the veronal, and it certainly seemed to lead to a strong suggestion of the guilt of the Whitesides, mother and son— or, at any rate, one or other of them. It might be that both were concerned; it might be that only the son was concerned. And it might be that the son was innocent and the mother guilty.

"Anyhow," he murmured, as he drew up a chair to the writing-desk, "the first thing to do is to find out all about the son, and I'll set Chivvins on to that at once."

But he had scarcely written a line of his letter when the old waiter put his grey head inside the door again and announced the third visitor of the evening.

4: The Imaginative Visitor

"MR. PITT-CARNABY, sir," said the waiter, mouthing the double-barrelled name with a reverence which showed Marshford that this latest caller was a person of importance. He bowed the visitor in and moved across the room on pretence of mending the fire. "Followed me straight in, sir— wouldn't wait," he whispered to the detective as he passed him.

Marshford looked up from his writing and recognised an elderly gentleman whom he had once or twice seen in the streets of Flamstock and who was chiefly remarkable for the fact that he always wore a knickerbocker suit and a Scotch cap with ribbons depending from its hinder end. He was a bearded and spectacled gentleman. Marshford, on the rare occasions on which he had seen him, had set him down as being a little eccentric. All the same Mr. Pitt-Carnaby looked business-like enough as he took the chair which had already been twice occupied that evening.

"Allow me to introduce myself," said the third visitor. "I am Mr. Pitt-Carnaby, of the Hollies. I have come to speak to you about Mr. Walshawe's mysterious death. Mr. Walshawe was one of my colleagues on the magisterial bench; he was also a personal friend of mine. We had many tastes in common— we were, for instance, both collectors of antiquities. Naturally, I have thought and reflected a great deal on the circumstances of his sudden decease."

"I should be very glad of any information, sir," replied Marshford, almost mechanically. He was not greatly disposed to listen to any further theorisings that night, and he wanted to write his letter to Chivvins. "Is there something you can tell?" he asked.

Mr. Pitt-Carnaby smiled.

"That is a very definite question," he answered. "Perhaps I can't reply to it quite so definitely. However, I will say what I came to say. Has it ever struck you, in the exercise of your calling, that imagination is a very valuable asset?"

Marshford was not quite clear as to his visitor's meaning, and he said so.

"Some people," continued Mr. Pitt-Carnaby, "bring science— in some shape or other— to bear on these things; I believe that imagination is a surer thing— eh?"

Marshford began to fear that he was in for a very long dissertation from an obvious crank. Nevertheless, it was impossible to get rid of Mr. Pitt-Carnaby in summary fashion.

"I suppose you have some theory, sir?" he said, thinking it best to put a direct question.

But the visitor was evidently not the sort of man to be forced into answering direct questions.

"I have allowed my imagination to play round the closing hours of my unfortunate friend's life," he said. "Perhaps the result is a theory, though I won't call it so. Instead, I will invite your attention to a few facts. And please to understand that I am not going to mention any names. If I make suggestions, I shall leave you to follow them up."

Marshford's face lightened; suggestions and facts— especially facts— were things with which he could deal. He left the mantelpiece, against which he had been leaning, and took a chair close to his visitor. Mr. Pitt-Carnaby noticed the sudden revival of interest and smiled.

"Very well!" he said. "The late Mr. Walshawe was, like myself, a collector of books, curiosities, and antiquities. On the evening before his death he entertained some friends— myself amongst them— at dinner. Our conversation during the evening turned very largely on a sale by auction which was to be held next day at a certain country house in this neighbourhood. Many interesting articles were to be offered; the late tenant of the house in question had been a great collector. Amongst those articles was a jar, fashioned of malachite, which, as you may or may not know, Mr. Marshford, is a mineral scientifically known as basic cupric carbonate. This jar was of the finer quality of malachite— the malachite found in a certain district in Siberia, which is used in the manufacture of mosaics and ornaments. Also, it has a well-authenticated history— it had once belonged to Peter the Great of Russia, and it was given by him, during his stay in England in 1698, to an ancestor of the gentleman whose effects were being disposed of. Mr. Walshawe was very anxious to acquire this malachite jar. He had a collection of articles which had belonged to Tsars and Tsarinas of Russia during the past two centuries, and he wished to add this to it. Concentrate your attention, then, Mr. Marshford, on the fact that on the evening before his death Mr. Walshawe's mind was fixed on buying a certain malachite jar which was to be offered for sale nearly twenty miles away at about one o'clock next day."

Marshford nodded silently. He was beginning to think that something might come out of this. And Mr. Pitt-Carnaby saw his increasing interest, and went on with his story.

"I repeat," he said, "for it is a highly important point, that Mr. Walshawe was absolutely determined to buy this antique. At dinner that night he talked of it a great deal; he said what figure he would go to— a heavy one. He anticipated a certain amount of opposition, for the jar was famous, and there were likely to be competitors from London, and even from Paris. However, Mr. Walshawe was, as you know, a man of very large means, and he meant to outbid anybody and everybody. When I left him, a good deal after midnight, he was still gloating over his determination to carry home the malachite jar in triumph from the sale."

"And he never went to the sale," remarked Marshford reflectively.

"He never went to the sale— true!" replied Mr. Pitt-Carnaby. "We know, of course, that when that sale began, my unfortunate friend was dead. But I went to the sale, as also did several of my fellow-guests of the previous evening. We expected to meet Mr. Walshawe there, but he never arrived. One o'clock came— he was still absent. At a quarter-past one the famous malachite jar was put up— Mr. Walshawe was not there to bid for it. There were many competitors— there were competitors from London and from Paris, as we had thought likely. The bidding began at five hundred guineas and advanced to two thousand guineas, at which sum the malachite jar was knocked down."

"To whom?" asked Marshford, eagerly.

Mr. Pitt-Carnaby rose, and picked up his Scotch cap, his stout stick, and his hand-knitted gloves.

"I said I should mention no names," he said with a smile, "but one name I must mention. The malachite jar was sold for two thousand guineas to John Pethington, the house and estate agent in our High Street. Of course, Pethington bought for somebody else. Well, I must now say good-night, Mr. Marshford."

"But," exclaimed Marshford, surprised at this sudden termination of the visit, "but— what do you expect me to do? What—"

Mr. Pitt-Carnaby wandered towards the door.

"Oh, what you please!" he answered. "Of course, if I were in your case, I should find out from Pethington the name of the person for whom he bought the malachite jar."

"And then?" asked Marshford.

Mr. Pitt-Carnaby laid his hand on the door and turned with a sharp look.

"Then?" he said. "Then you will have the name of the man who poisoned Septimus Walshawe!"

5: The Plain Truth

MARSHFORD looked at his watch when Mr. Pitt-Carnaby had departed. It was close upon ten o'clock. He believed that most people in Flamstock went to bed at ten o'clock; nevertheless, there was a possibility that some did not. Anyway, it would do him no harm to take a stroll up the High Street. And he threw the scarcely begun letter to Chivvins into the fire, and, putting on his ulster and a travelling cap, went out into the night.

There were lights in the windows of Mr. Pethington's house, and when Marshford rang the bell, Mr. Pethington, a fat-faced, stolid-looking man, answered the summons in person. As the light of his hall-lamp fell on Marshford's face Pethington silently moved aside, motioning the detective to enter. When Marshford stepped within, Pethington just as silently showed him into a small room near the door. He turned up a solitary gas-jet, and looked at his visitor with the calm interrogation of a man who expects to be asked questions.

"You know me, Mr. Pethington, and what my business is?" said Marshford, in a low voice. "I can take that for granted, of course?"

Pethington leaned back against his desk, and put his hands in his pockets.

"I don't know what it is at present," he answered, "I know what you're after in the town, of course."

"I want to ask a very simple question," said Marshford. "It's one which you'll have to answer sooner or later, and I wish you'd answer it now. For whom did you purchase that malachite jar? You know what I mean."

Pethington showed no surprise. Instead, he merely nodded, as if he had expected to have this question put to him, and he pulled out his watch, noting the time.

"Instead of asking me to answer that question, Mr. Marshford," he said, "I wish you'd just step round to the police-station."

Marshford stared at this unexpected reply.

"Why?" he exclaimed.

"Because I think you'll get an answer to it there," replied Pethington, dropping his watch into his pocket.

The two men exchanged looks. Then Pethington nodded.

"You'll find I'm right," he said.

Marshford went away from the house without a word. He walked rapidly up the deserted High Street towards the town hall, wondering what this sudden development implied. And suddenly, rounding a corner, and in the full light of a street-lamp, he ran into Peasegood.

"I was just coming to you," said the solicitor. "Well, the truth's out at last— just got it. Good heavens, what a world this is!"

"What is it?" demanded Marshford. "You don't mean that somebody's confessed to poisoning Walshawe?"

"That's just what I do mean," replied Peasegood; "the last man in the world I should have suspected, too!"

"Who, then?" exclaimed Marshford.

Peasegood took off his hat and wiped his forehead. Then he spoke one word— a name:

"Thorney!"

"What!" said Marshford. "The doctor?"

"The doctor!" repeated Peasegood. "He's just told the inspector and me all about it. It was by inadvertence. Dr. Thorney, you must know, is an ardent collector of certain things, as Walshawe was. He was bent on having a certain jar of malachite, with a history attached to it, which was to be put up at that sale I told you of. Walshawe was bent on it, too—vowed he'd have it. Thorney— you know that these collectors spare no pains to steal a march on each other— resolved to play a trick on Walshawe. It turned out that Walshawe took opium secretly, in pills— Thorney knew it, and knew where he kept his pills, in a little case on his desk. That night when we all dined there, Thorney got into Walshawe's study by himself, took the opium pills out of the case, and substituted veronal which he'd made up himself. His idea was to make Walshawe sleep far into the next day, until he was too late for the sale. If things had gone as Thorney intended, Walshawe would have slept until the afternoon and been all right after. But Thorney forgot one very important thing."

"What?" asked Marshford, eagerly.

"He didn't know how many opium pills Walshawe did, or could, take," answered the solicitor, "and so you see Walshawe took sufficient veronal to poison him. Misadventure, of course, in Thorney's eyes, but—"

He paused, and looked thoughtfully down the long vista of the High Street as the two men turned away together.

"But— what?" asked Marshford.

"I wonder what the judge will tell the jury to call it?" answered Peasegood.

________________

8: The Murder on the Golf Links

M. McDonnell Bodkin

1850–1933

The Royal Magazine, July 1907

'DON'T GO IN, don't! don't! please don't!'

The disobedient ball, regardless of her entreaties, crept slowly up the smooth green slope, paused irresolute on the ridge, and then trickled softly down into the hole; a wonderful 'put.'

Miss Mag Hazel knocked her ball impatiently away from the very edge. 'Lost again on the last green,' she cried petulantly. 'You have abominable luck, Mr Beck.'

Mr Beck smiled complacently. 'Never denied it, Miss Hazel. Better be born lucky than clever is what I always say.'

'But you are clever, too,' said the girl, repentantly. 'I hear everyone say how clever you are.'

'That's where my luck comes in.'

He slung the girl's golf bag over a broad shoulder, and caught his own up in a big hand. 'Come,' he said, 'you will be late for dinner, and every man in the hotel will curse me as the cause.'

They were the last on the links. The western sky was a sea of crimson and gold, in which floated a huge black cloud, shaped like a sea monster with the blazing sun in its jaws. The placid surface of the sea gave back the beauty of the sky, and in the clear, still air familiar objects took on a new beauty. Their way lay over the crisp velvet of the seaside turf, embroidered with wild flowers, to the Thornvale Hotel in the valley a mile away.

'How beautiful!' the girl whispered half to herself, and caught her breath with a queer little sigh.

Mr Beck looked down and saw that the blue eyes were very bright with tears. She met his look and smiled a wan little smile.

'Lovely scenery always makes me sad,' she explained feebly. Then after a second she added impulsively: 'Mr Beck, you and I are good friends, aren't we?'

'I hope so,' said Mr Beck, gravely. 'I can speak for myself anyway.'

'Oh, I'm miserable! I must tell it to someone. I'm a miserable girl!'

'If I can help you in any way,' said Mr Beck, stoutly, 'you may count on me.'

'I know I oughtn't to talk about such things, but I must, I cannot stop myself; then perhaps you could say a word to father; you and he are such good friends.'

Mr Beck knew there was a confession coming. In some curious way Mr Beck attracted the most unlikely confidences. All sorts and conditions of people felt constrained to tell him secrets.

'It's this way,' Miss Hazel went on. 'Sit down there on that bank and listen. I'll be in lots of time for dinner, and anyhow I don't care. Father wants me to marry Mr Samuel Hawkins, a horrible name and a horrible man. I didn't mind much at the time he first spoke of it. I was very young, you see; I lived in a French convent school until father came back from India, and then we lived in a cottage near a golf links. Oh! such a quiet golf links, and Mr Hawkins came down to see us, and he first taught me how to play. I liked him because there was no one else. So when he asked me to marry him, and father wished it so much, I half promised—that is, I really did promise, and we were engaged, and he gave me a diamond ring, which I have here—in my purse.'

Mr Beck smiled benignly. The girl was very young and pretty and innocent—little more than a child, who had been playing at a make-believe engagement.

'How long is it since you changed your mind?' he asked.

'Well, I never really made it up to marry Mr Hawkins. I only just agreed to become engaged. But about a week or ten days ago I found I could not go on with it.'

'I see; that was about the time, was it not, that the young electrical engineer, Mr Ryan, arrived?'

She flushed hotly.

'Oh! it's not that at all—how hateful you are! Mr Ryan is nothing to me, nothing. Besides, he was most rude; called me a flirt, and said I led him on and never told him I was engaged. Now we don't even speak, and I'm so miserable. What shall I do?'

'Don't fret,' said Mr Beck, cheerily; 'it will come all right.'

'Oh! but it cannot come all right. Father will be bitterly disappointed if I don't marry Mr Hawkins. He's awfully rich, carries diamonds about loose in his waistcoat pocket. He has fifty thousand pounds' worth of diamonds getting brightened up in Amsterdam; that's where they put a polish on them, you know. He showed father the receipt for them mixed up with bank-notes in his pocket-book. His friend, Mr Bolton, who is in the same business, says Mr Hawkins is a millionaire.'

'And Mr Ryan has only his brains and his profession,' said Mr Beck, cynically.

'Now you are just horrid. I don't care twopence about Mr Hawkins' diamonds or his millions. But I love father better than anyone else.'

'Except?' suggested Mr Beck, maliciously.

'There is no exception—not one. You come second-best yourself.'

'Oh, do I? Then I will see if I cannot find some diamonds and cut out Mr Hawkins. Meantime, let us get on to our dinner. You need not be in any hurry to break your heart. You are not going to marry Mr Hawkins to-morrow or the day after. Something may happen to stop the marriage altogether. Come along.'

Something did happen. What that awful something was neither Miss Hazel nor Mr Beck dreamt of at the time.

It was the fussy half hour before dinner when they arrived at the veranda of the big Thornvale Hotel that had grown out of the Thornvale golf links. As Miss Mag Hazel passed through the throng every eye paid its tribute of admiration; she was by reason of her golf and good looks the acknowledged queen of the place.

A tall, handsome young fellow near the porch gave a pitiful look as she passed, the humble, appealing look in the eyes of a dog who has offended his master.

'How handsome he is; what beautiful black eyes he has!' her heart whispered, but her face was unconscious of his existence.

She evaded a small, dark man with a big hooked nose who came forward eagerly to claim her. 'Don't speak to me, Mr Hawkins, don't look at me. I have not five minutes to dress for dinner.'

A tall, thin man with a grey, drooping moustache stood close by her left in the central hall. To him she said: 'I will be down in a minute, dad. I want you to take me in to dinner, mind. You are worth the whole lot of them put together.'

Colonel Hazel's sallow cheek flushed with delight, for he loved his daughter with a love that was the best part of his life.

Big, good-humoured, smiling Tom Bolton, as the girl went in to dinner on her father's arm, whispered a word in the ear of his friend, Sam Hawkins, and the millionaire diamond merchant cast a scowling glance at handsome Ned Ryan, who gave him frown for frown with interest thereto.

At Thornvale Hotel the company lived, moved, and had their being in golf. They played golf all day on the links, and talked golf all the evening at the hotel. All the varied forms of golf lunacy were in evidence there. There was the fat elderly lady who went round 'for her figure,' tapping the ball before her on the smooth ground, and throwing it or carrying it over the bunkers. There was the man who was always grumbling about his 'blanked' luck, and who never played what he was pleased to think was his 'true game.'

There was the man who sang comic songs on the green, and the man whose nerves were strained like fiddle-strings and tingled at every stir or whisper, whom the flight of a butterfly put off his stroke. There was a veteran of eighty-five, who still played a steady game. He had once been a scratch man, and though the free, loose vigour of his 'swing' was lost, his eye and arm had not forgotten the lesson of years. His favourite opponent was a boy of twelve, who swung loose and free as if he were a figure of indiarubber with no bones in his arms.

Mr Hawkins and Mr Bolton were a perfect match with a level handicap of twelve; each believed that he could just beat the other, and the excitement of their incessant contests was intense.

But Miss Mag Hazel reigned undisputed queen of the links. None of the ladies, and only one or two of the men, could even 'give her a game.' Lissom as an ash sapling, every muscle in her body, from her shoulder to her ankle, took part in the graceful swing which, without effort, drove the ball further than a strong man could smite it by brute force. Her wrist was like a fine steel spring, as sensitive and as true.

Heretofore only one player disputed her supremacy— Mr Beck, the famous detective, who was idling a month in the quiet hotel after an exciting and successful criminal hunt half way round the world. Mr Beck was, as he always proclaimed, a lucky player. If he never made a brilliant stroke, he never made a bad one, and kept wonderfully clear of the bunkers. The brilliant players found he had an irritating trick of plodding on steadily, and coming out a hole ahead at the end of the round.

He and Mag Hazel played constantly together until young Ned Ryan came on the scene. Ryan was a brilliant young fellow with muscles of whipcord and whalebone, whose drive was like a shot from a catapult. But he played a sporting game, and very often drove into the bunker which was meant to catch the second shot of a second-class player. Mag Hazel found it easier to hold her own against his brilliance than against the plodding pertinacity of Mr Beck.

It may be that the impressionable young Irishman could not quite play his game when she was his opponent. He found it hard to obey the golfer's first commandment: 'Keep your eye on the ball.' He tried to play two games at the same time, and golf will have no divided allegiance.

The end of a happy fortnight came suddenly. It was a violent scene when, in a grassy bunker wide of the course, into which he had deliberately pulled his ball, he asked her to marry him, and learnt that she was engaged to the millionaire diamond merchant, Mr Hawkins. Poor Ned Ryan, with Irish impetuosity, raved and stormed at her cruelty in leading him to love her, swore his life was barren for evermore, and even muttered some very mysterious, meaningless threats against the more fortunate Mr Hawkins.

Tender-hearted Mag had been very meek and penitent while he raved and stormed, but he was not to be appeased by her meekness, and flung away from her in a rage.

Then it was her turn to be implacable when he became penitent. All that evening he hovered round her like a blundering moth round a lamp, but she ignored him as completely as the lamp the moth and shed the light of her smiles on Mr Beck.

So those two foolish young people played the old game in the old, foolish fashion, and tormented themselves and each other. The two men concerned in the matter, Mr Ryan and Mr Hawkins, scowled at each other on the golf links and at the bridge table, to the intense amusement of the company, who understood how little golf or cards had to do with the quarrel.

At last Ned Ryan had an open row with Mr Hawkins on the golf links, and told him, quite unnecessarily, he was no gentleman.

Then suddenly this light comedy deepened into sombre tragedy. The late breakfasters at the hotel were still at table when the thrilling, shocking news came to them that Mr Hawkins had been found murdered on the links.

Perhaps it is more convenient to tell the dismal story in the order in which it was told in evidence at the coroner's inquest.

Mr Hawkins and Mr Bolton had arranged a round in the early morning before breakfast, when they would have the links to themselves. They had a glass of milk and a biscuit, and started off in good spirits, each boasting he was certain to win.

They started some time between half-past six and seven, and about an hour afterwards Mr Bolton returned hastily, saying that he had forgotten an important letter he had to send by that morning's post, and that he had left Mr Hawkins grumbling at having to finish his round alone. Mr Bolton then went up to his own room, and five minutes later came back with a letter, which he carefully posted with his own hand just as the box was being cleared.

At half-past seven Colonel Hazel, strolling across the links, specially noticed there were no players to be seen. Ned Ryan went out at a quarter to eight o'clock to have a round by himself, having first asked Mr Bolton to join him. He had, as he stated, almost completed his round, when in the great, sandy bunker that guarded the seventeenth green he found Mr Hawkins stone dead.

He instantly gave the alarm, and Mr Beck and Mr Bolton were among the first on the scene. The detective, placid and imperturbable as ever, poked and pried about the body and the bunker where it lay. Mr Bolton was plainly broken-hearted at the sudden death of his life-long friend.

Beyond all doubt and question the man was murdered. There was a deep dint of some heavy, blunt weapon on the back of his head, fracturing the skull. But death had not been instantaneous. The victim had turned upon his assassin, for there were two other marks on his face— one an ugly, livid bruise on his cheek, and the other a deep, horrible gash on the temple from the same blunt-edged weapon. The last wound must have been instantly fatal. The weapon slew as it struck.

It was plain that robbery was not the motive of the crime. His heavy purse with a score of sovereigns and his pocket-book full of bank-notes were in his pockets, his fine diamond pin in his scarf, and his handsome watch in his fob.

The watch had been struck and smashed, and, as so often happens in such cases, it timed the murder to a moment. It had stopped at half-past eight. It was five minutes after nine when Mr Ryan had given the alarm.

While all the others looked on in open-eyed horror, incapable of thought or action, Mr Beck's quick eyes found a corner of the bunker where the sand had been disturbed recently. Rooting with his hands as a dog digs at a rabbit burrow with his paws, he dug out a heavy niblick. The handle was snapped in two, and the sand that clung damply round the iron face left a dark crimson stain on the fingers that touched it.

No one then could doubt that the murderous weapon had been found.

Mr Beck examined it a moment, and a frown gathered on his placid face. 'This is Mr Ryan's niblick,' he said slowly.

The words sent a quiver of excitement through the crowd. All eyes turned instinctively to the face of the young Irishman, who flushed in sudden anger.

'It's a lie,' he shouted, 'my niblick is here.' He turned to his bag which lay on the sward beside him. 'My God! it's gone. I never noticed it until this moment.'

'Yes, that is mine,' he added, as Mr Beck held out the blood-stained iron for inspection. 'But I swear I never missed it till this moment.'

Not a word more was said.

The crowd broke up into groups, each man whispering suspicions under his breath. The whisperers recalled the recent quarrel between the men, and in every trifling circumstance clear proof of guilt was found. Only Mr Bolton stood out staunchly for the young Irishman, and professed his faith in his innocence.

Like a man in a dream Ned Ryan returned alone to the hotel, where an hour later he was arrested. On being searched after arrest a five-pound note with Hawkins' name on the back of it was found in his pocket, and his explanation that he had won it at golf provoked incredulous smiles and shrugs amongst the gossipers. Two days later a coroner's jury found a verdict of wilful murder against the young engineer.

There was a second sensation, in its way almost as exciting as the first, when it was found that the murdered man had willed the whole of his huge fortune unconditionally to Miss Margaret Hazel.

But the girl declared vehemently she would never touch a penny of it, never, until the real murderer was discovered. She had a stormy interview with Mr Beck, whom she passionately charged with attempts to fix the guilt on an innocent man. She made no secret now of her love for the young Irishman, to the horror of the respectable and proper people at the hotel, who looked forward with cheerful assurance to her lover's execution.

But the distracted girl cared for none of those things. She poured the vials of her wrath on Mr Beck.

'You pretended to be my friend,' she said, 'and then you did all in your power to hang the innocent man I love.'

Mr Beck was soothing and imperturbable. 'Nothing of the kind, my dear young lady. It is always my pleasant duty to save the innocent and hang the guilty.'

'Then why did you find out that niblick?'

'The more things that are found,' said Mr Beck, 'the better for the innocent and the worse for the guilty.'

'Oh! I'm not talking about that,' she cried, with a bewildering change of front. 'But here you are pottering about doing nothing instead of trying to save him. I will give you every penny poor Mr Hawkins left me if you save him.'

Mr Beck smiled benignly at this magnificent offer. 'Won't you two want something to live on?' he asked, 'when I have saved him, and before he makes his fortune.'

She let the question go by. 'Then you will, you promise me you will!' she cried eagerly.

'I will try to assist the course of justice,' he said, with formal gravity, but his eyes twinkled, and she took comfort therefrom.

'That's not what I want at all.'

'You believe Mr Ryan is innocent?' asked Mr Beck.

'Of course I do. What a question!'

'If he is innocent I will try to save him— if not—'

'There is no "if not." Oh! I'm quite satisfied, and I thank you with all my heart.'

She caught up the big, strong hand and kissed it, and then collapsed on the sofa for a good cry, while Mr Beck stole discreetly from the room and set out for a solitary stroll on the golf links, every yard of which he questioned with shrewd eyes.

He made one small discovery on the corner of the second green. He found a ball which had belonged to the murdered man. There was no doubt about the ownership. Mr Hawkins had a small gold seal with his initial cut in it. This he used to heat with a match to brand his ball. The tiny black letters, 'S.H.,' were burnt through the white skin of the new 'Professional' ball, which Mr Beck found on the corner of the second green. He put the ball in his pocket and said nothing about his find.

But about another curious discovery of his he was quite voluble that evening at dinner. He found, he said, a peculiar-looking waistcoat button in the bunker that guarded the second green. It seemed to him to have been torn violently from the garment, for a shred of the cloth still clung to it.

'If I had found it in the bunker where the murder was committed,' said Mr Beck, 'I would have regarded it as a very important piece of evidence. Anyhow it may help. I will examine young Ryan's waistcoats to see if it fits any of them.'

Then for a few days nothing happened, and excitement smouldered. People had no heart to play golf over the scene of the murder. The parties gradually dispersed and scattered homewards. Colonel Hazel, who had been completely broken up by the tragedy, was amongst the first to go.

Mag gave her address to Mr Beck, with strict injunctions to wire the moment he had good news. 'Remember, I trust you,' were the last words she said as they parted at the hotel door.

Mr Bolton and Mr Beck were almost the two last to leave. The diamond merchant was disconsolate over the death of his old friend and comrade, and the detective did all in his power to comfort him.

One morning Mr Bolton had a telegram which, as he explained to Mr Beck, called him away on urgent business. He left that afternoon, and Mr Beck went with him as far as Liverpool, when they parted, each on his respective business.

THE NEXT SCENE in the tragedy was staged in Holland.

Two men sat alone together in a first-class railway carriage that slid smoothly through a level landscape intersected with canals. They had put aside their papers, and talked and smoked. One of the men was plainly a German by his dress and manner— the other a Frenchman.

The Frenchman had tried vainly to stagger through a conversation in German and the German in French until they had found a common ground in English which both spoke well though with a strong foreign accent.

There had been an account of a big diamond robbery in the papers, and their talk drifted on to crimes and criminals of all countries— a topic with which the Frenchman seemed strangely familiar. He did most of the talking. The German sat back in his corner and grunted out a word or two of assent, to all appearance deeply interested in the talk. Now and again a silver flask passed between the two men, who grew momentarily more intimate.

'Herr Raphael,' said the Frenchman, 'I am glad to have met you. You have made the journey very pleasant for me. You are a man I feel I can trust. I am not, as I told you, Victor Grandeau, a French journalist. I am plain Mr Paul Beck, an English detective, at your service.'

With a single motion the shiny, sleek, black wig and the black moustache disappeared into a small handbag at his side. The whole character, and even the features of the face, seemed to change as suddenly, and the broad, bland, smiling face of our old friend Mr Beck presented itself to the eyes of the astonished German, who shrank back in his corner of the seat in astonishment at the sudden revelation. But Mr Beck quietly ignored his astonishment.

'As you seem interested in this kind of thing,' he said, 'I will tell you the story of one of the most curious cases I have ever had to deal with. You are the very first to hear the story. Indeed, it is so new that it hasn't yet got the right ending to it. Perhaps you have heard of the Thornvale murder in England? No! Then I'll begin at the beginning.'

He began at the beginning and told the story clearly and vividly as it was told at the inquest. The German listened with most flattering interest and surprise.

'When I found that golf ball,' Mr Beck went on, 'it gave me an idea. Do you know anything of golf?'

'I play a little,' the other confessed.

'Then you will understand that from the place where I found his ball I knew that the murdered man— I told you his name was Hawkins— Samuel Hawkins— never got as far as the second green. If he had, his ball would not have been lying where I found it. He would have holed it out and gone on.

'It was plain, therefore, he must have been murdered just after he played that shot— murdered somewhere between the tee and the green of the second hole. I went back to the deep bunker I told you of that guarded the second green, and I found there traces of a struggle.

'They had been cunningly obliterated, but to a detective's eye they were plain enough. The sand was smoothed over the footprints, but here and there the long grass and wild flowers had been torn away by a desperate grasp. I even found a faint bloodstain on one of the stones. Then, of course, I guessed what had happened. The man had been murdered in the bunker of the second green and carried under cover of the ridge to the bunker of the seventeenth. That, you see, disposed of the alibi of Mr Bolton, who had left him early in the game.'

'Oh, no!' interrupted the German, with eager interest in the story, 'you told me that Mr Bolton was at the hotel from half-past seven, and the watch of the murdered man showed the murder had been committed at half-past eight.'

Mr Beck looked at the German with manifest admiration. 'Forgive me for mentioning it. You would have made a first-class detective if you hadn't gone into another line of business. I should have told you that the evidence of the watch had been faked.'

'Faked!' queried the other, with a blank look on his face.

'Oh! I see. Being a German, of course you don't understand our slang phrases. I examined the watch, and I found that though the glass had been violently broken, the dial was not even scratched. The spring had been snapped, not by the blow but by overwinding. It was pretty plain to me the murderer had done the trick. He first put the hands on to half-past eight and then broke the spring, and so made his alibi. He got the watch to perjure itself. Neat, wasn't it?'

The German merely grunted. He was plainly impressed by the devilish ingenuity of the murderer.

'Besides,' Mr Beck went on placidly, 'to make quite sure, I laid a trap for Mr Bolton which worked like a charm. The night of the murder I went into his room and tore one of the buttons out of his waistcoat. The next day I mentioned at dinner that I had found a button in the second bunker where, if I guessed rightly, he and only he knew the murder was really committed. It was a lie, of course. But it caught the truth. That same evening Mr Bolton burnt the waistcoat. It was a light cotton affair that burnt like paper. The glass buttons he cut off with a knife and buried. That looked bad, didn't it?'

'Very bad,' the German agreed. He was more deeply interested than ever. 'Did you arrest the man, then?'

'Not then.'

'But why?'

'I wanted to make quite sure of my proofs. I wanted to lay my hands on the receipts for the diamonds which I believed he had stolen. I told you of those, didn't I?'

'Oh, yes, you told me of those. Did you search for them?'

'Yes, but I couldn't find them. I searched Mr Bolton's room, and searched his clothes carefully, but I couldn't find a trace of the papers.'

Again the German grunted. He seemed somehow pleased at the failure. Possibly the quiet confidence of this cock-sure detective annoyed him.

'But,' Mr Beck went on, placid as ever, 'I tried a guess. You may remember, Herr Raphael, that when Mr Bolton came back from the golf links he posted a letter immediately. I had a notion that he stuck the receipts in the envelope and posted it addressed to himself at some post-office to be left till called for. Wasn't a bad guess, was it?'

'A very good guess.'

'Then I did a little bit of forgery.'

'You what?'

'Did a little bit of forgery. I forged the name of Mr Bolton's partner to a telegram to say that five thousand pounds were urgently needed. That, I knew, was likely to make Mr Bolton gather up the receipts and start for Amsterdam. We went to Liverpool together and I changed to an elderly lady. I saw him as an able-bodied seaman pick up his own letter at the Liverpool Post-Office. I came over with him in the boat to Rotterdam. As a French journalist I saw him as a stout German get into this very carriage and— here I am!'

It was a very lame ending to an exciting story. The stout German plainly thought so. He had listened with flattering eagerness almost to the end; now he leant back in the corner of his seat suppressing a yawn.

'It is a very amusing story,' he said slowly. 'But, my friend, you must be thirsty with much talking. I in my bag have a flask of excellent schnapps, you shall of it taste.'

A small black bag rested on the seat beside him. He laid his hand on the fastening.

'It is no use,' Mr Beck interrupted, 'no use, Mr Bolton. I have taken the revolver out of the bag and have it with my own in my pocket. The game is up, I think. I have put my cards on the table. What do you say?'

Suddenly Mr Bolton broke into a loud, harsh laugh that ended in a sob. 'You are a fiend, Beck,' he shouted, 'a fiend incarnate. What do you mean to do?'

'To take you back with me to London. I have a man in the next carriage to look after you. No use worrying about extradition. You have a return ticket, I suppose; so have I. There will be a train leaving as we arrive. Meanwhile, if you don't mind—' He took a neat pair of handcuffs from his pocket and held them out with an ingratiating smile.

Mr Bolton drew back a little. For a moment it seemed as if he would spring at the detective's throat. But the steady, fearless eyes held him. He put his hands out submissively and the steel bracelets clicked on his wrists.

They had only to cross the platform to reach the return train that was just starting. But Mr Beck found time to plunge into the telegraph office and scribble three words to Mag Hazel's address:

'All right.— Beck.'

_________________

9: A Posteriori

Helen Simpson

1894–1940

Lovat Dickson's Magazine July 1934

AT ABOUT one o'clock on the last night of her stay in Pontdidier-les-Dames Miss Charters was awakened by indeterminate noises sounding almost in her room, and a medley of feet and voices in the street. It was not the first time this had happened. Pontdidier had belied the promise, made by an archdeacon, that she would find it an harbour of calm. The fact was, the town was too near a frontier, and too unsophisticated. When politicians in Paris, to distract attention from their own misdeeds, began to roar of treason, Pontdidier believed them, and the Town Council— ‘nos édiles'— set up a hue and cry for spies. Miss Charters had not failed to observe this nervousness, and to despise it a little, without ill-humour; but to be roused by other people's unfounded terrors at one in the morning was a little too much, and she said so, in her firm French, to the landlady as she paid her bill next day.

‘Je ne suis pas sure que je puis vous recommander à mes amis. Votre ville n'est pas tranquille du tout.'

The landlady sank her head between her shoulders, then raised and swung it deplorably to and fro.

‘Las' naight,' said the landlady, practising English, which reckoned as a commercial asset, ‘it is a man escape from the police. A spy that makes photographies. They attrape him, but the photographies— gone! Nobody know.'

‘Un espion!' repeated Miss Charters coldly, as one who had heard that tale before. ‘Esperons qu'il n'échappera pas.'

With that she walked upstairs to her room for a final inspection. Her hot-water bottle, as usual, had been forgotten in the deeps of the bed, and this she rescued thankfully. Going to the washstand to empty it, she set her foot on some round object, and came to the floor with no inconsiderable bump. The object, obeying the impetus she had given, rolled to rest against a chair-leg, and Miss Charters, turning to eye it with the natural resentment of one tricked by the inanimate, instantly recognised it as a spool of film.

Her mind, with a gibbon-like agility which unhappily never comes at call, leapt from the spool to the noises in the night; linked these with her own wide-open window, probably the only one in the entire façade of the hotel; and came to the conclusion that this spool had reached her floor by the hand of the suspected spy now in custody; flung as he fled. But there had been, her subconscious seemed to think, two noises in the room. She looked for another possible missile, and perceived, under the bed, a flat wallet of some kind. It was quite inaccessible, the bed's frame hung low, she had no umbrella to rake for it, and some vague memory of criminal procedure insisted that the police must always have first cut at a clue. It was her duty to go downstairs, display to the landlady the spool, which she had picked up instinctively, and ask that the authorities should be informed.

She set foot on the stairs, and even as she did so, halted. It became apparent that she would have to give her evidence in person, swear to the noise in the night, to the morning's discovery. This would involve missing her train, and its subsequent connection, with the expense of warning domestics and relatives by telegram. More sinister considerations succeeded these. The French were hysterical. They were spy-conscious. They would refuse to believe that she and the fleeing man were strangers. As an excuse for open windows a plea of fresh air would not satisfy.

Halting on the stairs, she rehearsed these reasons for holding her tongue, and came to the conclusion that silence, with a subsequent letter from England, would meet the case. To roll the spool under the bed till it lay by the wallet, and so depart, would be the dignified and comparatively honest course of action. But the turmoil of the morning had let loose in Miss Charters' mind hordes of revolutionary desires, which now found a rallying ground in the fact that she had not, in her forty-odd years, had one single unusual experience. She had never held unquestioned sway as chief talker at any party; she had never come within hail of being the heroine of any incident more lively than the spoiling of a Guide picnic by rain. The spool of film, now safe in her bag, tempted her; to take it home as proof of the adventure, to hand it over in the end, perhaps, to somebody from the Foreign Office or Scotland Yard! She hesitated, and the revolutionaries in that instant had her conscience down. No word of any discovery found its way into her farewells.

At the station she became aware of two things. First, that she had twenty minutes to wait for her train; second, that amid the excitements of the morning she had omitted a visit to that retreat which old-fashioned foreign hotels leave innominate, indicating it only by two zeros on the door. She cast a prudish but searching eye about her. The word ‘Dames' beckoned; Miss Charters bought a newspaper and, apparently purposeless, drifted towards it.

The usual uncleanness greeted her, and to protect herself from unspeakable contacts Miss Charters sacrificed a whole sheet of her newspaper. It was newly printed, the ink had a bloom to it. Miss Charters, accustomed at home to entrust to newspaper the defence of musquash against moth, vaguely supposed that it might prove, on this analogy, deterrent to germs. She emerged without delay, glanced to see that her baggage was safe, and paced up and down reading what remained of Le Petit Journal. There were fifteen minutes still to wait.

Seven or eight of these had passed in the atmosphere of unhurried makeshift that pervades all minor French stations, when a commotion was heard outside, chattering of motor cycles and shouting. Through the door marked ‘Sortie' three policemen in khaki and kepis made a spectacular entrance, followed by a miraculous crowd apparently started up from the paving-stones. The three advanced upon Miss Charters, innocently staring, and required her, none too civilly, to accompany them.

‘Pourquoi?' she inquired without heat. ‘Je vais manquer mon train.'

They insisted, not politely; and their explanations, half inarticulate, contained a repetition of the word ‘portefeuille.' At once Miss Charters understood; the wallet had been found. (Who would have thought the French swept so promptly under beds?) She must give her account of the whole matter, miss her connection, telegraph her relations. Bells and signals announced the train to be nearly due; with a brief click of the tongue she summoned resolution for a last attempt at escape.

‘Je suis anglaise,' she announced. ‘Mon passeport est en ordre. Voulez vous voir?'

She opened her bag, and immediately, with a swift fatal motion, made to shut it. On top, surmounting the handkerchief, the eau-de-Cologne, the passport, lay the damning red spool, so hurriedly, so madly crammed in. The foremost policeman saw it as soon as she did. He gave a ‘Ha!' of triumph, and caught the bag away from her. His two companions fell in at her side, the crowd murmured and eddied like a stream swollen by flood. As she was marched from the station, out of the corner of an eye she saw the train come in; and as they entered the Grande Rue she heard the chuff and chug of its departure. Hope gone, she could give undivided attention to her plight.

It became evident, from the manner of the policemen, and from the fact that she was taken to the Hotel de Ville, that matters were serious. She made one attempt to get her bag; certain necessary words lacked in the formula of defence she was composing, and the bag contained a pocket dictionary. Her request was denied. A cynical-looking man at a large desk— mayor? magistrate?— fanned away her protests with both hands and listened to the policeman. So did Miss Charters, and was able to gather from his evidence that the wallet found in her room contained papers and calculations to do with the aerodrome near by. Could anything be more unlucky? The one genuine spy that had ever frequented Pontdidier-les-Dames must needs throw his ill-gotten information into her bedroom!

The functionary asked at last what she had to say. She replied with the truth; and despite a vocabulary eked out with ‘vous savez' told her story well. The functionary noted her explanation without comment, and having done so asked the inevitable, the unanswerable questions.

‘You found these objects at 10.45 this morning. Why did you not immediately inform the police? You insist that they have nothing to do with you. Yet you were actually attempting to carry out of this country one of the objects. How do you account for these facts?'

Miss Charters accounted for them by a recital, perfectly true, of her desire to shine at tea-parties. It sounded odd as she told it; but she had some notion that the French were a nation of psychologists, also that, being foreign, they were gullible, and sympathetic to women in distress. The cynical man listened, and when her last appeal went down in a welter of failing syntax, considered a while, then spoke:

‘I regret, mademoiselle. All this is not quite satisfactory. You must be searched.'

The French she had learned at her governess' knee had not included the word he employed, and it was without any real understanding of his intention that she accompanied a woman in black, who suddenly appeared at her side, looking scimitars. They progressed together, a policeman at the other elbow, to a small room smelling of mice. The policeman shut the door on them; the woman in black ejaculated a brief command; and Miss Charters, horrified, found that she was expected to strip.

In her early youth Miss Charters' most favoured day-dream had included a full-dress martyrdom, painful but effective, with subsequent conversions. She now learned that it is easier to endure pain than indignity, and amid all the throbbing which apprehension and shame had set up in her temples, one thought lorded it: the recollection that she had not, in view of the dirty train journey, put on clean underclothes that morning.

The woman in black lifted her hands from her hips as if to help with the disrobing; there was a shuffle outside the door as though the policeman might be turning to come in. With a slight scream, at speed, Miss Charters began to unbutton, unhook, unlace her various garments; as they dropped, the woman in black explored them knowingly, with fingers active as those of a tricoteuse. At last Miss Charters stood revealed, conscious of innocence, but finding it a poor defence, and ready to exchange the lightest of consciences for the lightest of summer vests.

The woman in black was thorough. She held stockings up to the light, pinched corsets; at last, satisfied, she cast an eye over the shrinking person of Miss Charters, twirling her slowly about. Now the words of dismissal should have come. Instead, at her back Miss Charters heard a gasp. There was an instant's silence; then the one word, ominous: ‘Enfin!'

The woman in black ran to the door and shouted through it. Miss Charters heard excitement in the policeman's answering voice, and his boots clattered off down the corridor, running. Her imagination strove, and was bested. Why? What? The woman in black, with a grin lineally descended from '93, informed her.

‘And now, my beauty, we'll see what the pretty message is that's written on mademoiselle's sit-upon!'

The next few moments were nightmare at its height, when the sleeper knows his dream for what it is, knows he must escape from it, and still must abide the capricious hour of waking. An assistant in blue was vouchsafed to the woman in black. One deciphered such letters as were visible, the other took them down, pesting against the artfulness of spies who printed their messages backwards. In deference to Miss Charters' age and passport some decency was observed. Policemen waited outside the half-open door; there was much noise, but no threatening. The women heard her explanation (conjectural) of their discovery without conviction and did not even trouble to write it down.

At last the message was transcribed. The woman in blue compassionately gave Miss Charters back her clothes, a gesture countered by the woman in black, who refused to allow her to sit down lest the precious impression be blurred. With a policeman at her elbow and the two searchers at her back, her cheek-bones pink, and beset by a feeling that this pinkness ran through to her skeleton, Miss Charters once more faced the functionary across his table. The transcription was handed to him. He considered it, first through a magnifying glass, then with the aid of a mirror. The policeman, the two searchers, craned forward to know the fate of France, thus by a freak of Fortune thrust into their hands:

‘Et maintenant,' they read in capital letters, ‘j'ai du cœur au travail, grâce aux PILULES PINK.'

The functionary's eyes appeared to project. He stared at Miss Charters, at the searchers; with a start, at his own daily paper lying folded, with his gloves upon it. He tore it open, seeking. Page 7 rewarded him. ‘Maladies de Femmes,' said the headline; underneath, the very words that had been deciphered with such pains, accompanying an illustration of a cheerful young woman, whose outline appeared in transfer not unlike the map of a town. Silently he compared; his glass was busy. At last he looked up, and Miss Charters, meeting his eye, perceived something like comprehension in his glance, a kind of gloating, a difficult withholding of laughter— ‘Rabelaisian' was the word which shot across her mind like a falling star. It was a hard glance to face, but all Englishness and spunk had not been slain in Miss Charters by the indignities chance had obliged her to suffer. She had one magnificent last word:

‘Je rapporterai le W.C. de la gare aux autorités sanitaires!'

It was the best she could do. The larger threat which at first inflamed her mind, of complaints to the Ambassador in Paris, of redress and public apologies, would not do; both she and the Rabelaisian eye knew why. She could never, to any person, at any time, confide the truth of an experience so appalling. So far as vicarage conversation went, the thing was out of the question. Hateful irony! Something, after forty-odd years, had happened to her, and it had happened in such a manner that mere decency must strike her mute. In the words of a ceremony she had often in younger days read over fondly, she must hereafter for ever hold her peace.

Miss Charters held it. The relations who welcomed her a day later were of opinion that her holiday in France had not done her much good. They found her quiet, and discovered that what she wanted was to be taken out of herself. So they arranged little gaieties, at which Miss Charters listened silently, now and then pinching in her lips, to travellers' tales of those who had been seeing life in London and by the sea.

‘But then,' as a relative remarked, ‘poor Aggie never did have much to say for herself.'

_________________

10: Wolf Medicine

Hugh Pendexter

1875-1940

Adventure, 15 Jun 1928

FORT BENTON was too busy to bestow much attention on any individual. Prior to 1864, with only six steamboats arriving during the season, an eccentric character would have been noticed and discussed. But in 1867, with the number of steamboat arrivals jumping to seventy, when thirty or forty boats could be counted at one time between the post and the mouth of the Yellowstone, a man needed to stand out like a sore thumb to attract comment.

Montana's gold camps, road agents and restless Indians sated the river's appetite for excitement. Steamboat freight rates were up to twelve cents a pound; passenger fare was three hundred dollars. The levee end of Benton's interests vied in liveliness with the clamor attending the latest discovery in Last Chance Gulch.

One of the few men at Benton who had the leisure to study the surging humanity along the riverfront was a wolfer. He was idly waiting for his season of activity to set in— the bleak winter months, when mining would cease and the Missouri would be sealed with ice. He wandered much among the excited, impatient, raucous voiced men as they scrambled for transportation to the mines. He was daily among them, but not of them.

Those of the newcomers who took time to look at him carried away a picture of long ragged hair, falling from a wolfskin hat, sunburned to a rusty color over the broad shoulders. Also, perhaps, a vague recollection of bushy beard almost entirely covering the wolfer's features. Each batch of arrivals jostled against him without pausing to realize that he was the successor of the old beaver trapper, and a new type. He was indifferent to the buffetings of the gold crazed mobs; and aimlessly he lounged from saloon to levee, from store to store. Those held by trade or hire at Benton gave him greetings, which he acknowledged with a nod, or a few laconic words.

He was one of the few men on the Upper Missouri who was killing time. The bustling confusion of the gold hunters left him calmly contemplative. The sharp eyes peering from under bushy brows found little of interest except as they might linger on the dandyism of the river pilots.

Like the wolfer the pilots were idlers during the few days required to unload quartz mills and passengers. One of the pilots, working for Joe La Barge, bumped against him as a milling crowd hastened to the nearest bar.

The wolfer's gaze quickened as he noticed the fellow brush his sleeve.

"Just like I was poison," the wolfer told himself as he entered the saloon and stood beside the pilot in the long, thirsty line.

The pilot, as befitting a class drawing the unprecedented salary of twelve hundred dollars a month, was immaculate in appearance. From new stovepipe hat to dazzling shoes he wore the richest and the best. He would have shifted his position had there been room. He shrugged his shoulders philosophically and, being in no haste, took his time to examine the rough figure beside him. The two were opposite poles. The antithesis was complete. Ever a Prince Bountiful, the pilot condescendingly invited the disheveled creature to have a drink. The wolfer nodded, almost surlily. The pilot was puzzled by the bartender's courteous demeanor in serving the fellow. He began to understand, however, when the wolfer returned the courtesy and tossed a nugget on the bar.

"My friend," said the pilot, "I'd never taken you for a miner. You must have struck it rich."

"Not interested in mining," was the listless reply. "I'm a wolfer."

"But you managed to find a rare chunk of gold. Does wolfing pay better?"

"Pays fair to middling. I like it. You fetched up quite a crowd of menh. Mostly from St. Louis?"

"Come aboard there, largely. From Indianny, Iowy, Illinois, and Missouri. Your work must be lonesome."

"I like to be alone," said the wolfer, as he hunched over his drink and swept his gaze up and down the line.

All eyes were focused on him because of the nugget.

"What's your handle, if you don't mind?" ventured the pilot.

"Wolf. Just that."

This would have discouraged the pilot from attempting further conversation had not the wolfer displayed big white teeth, and added:

"I like to kill wolves. Just like I had a grudge against 'em."

Then he abruptly turned away and left the saloon. A dozen men broke from the line and hurried after him, each eager to learn the source of the nugget.

THE PILOT remarked to the bartender:

"He didn't get any change back for that nugget. Simple minded, eh?"

"He'd git change if he'd take it. We ain't holding out nothing from fellers like him. Wolf ain't nobody's fool."

"But he tosses gold away and works hard hunting wolves."

"Begins his season with the first freeze. Cleaned up better'n three thousand dollars last winter, beside what gold he picked up."

The men who followed the wolfer outside were now returning, clamoring for more liquor and cursing the wolfer. From their vociferous denunciation it was plain that their burning curiosity had been curtly and profanely discouraged.

Yet the ragged figure had taken on something of dignity even in the estimation of those who had been rebuffed; for gold can gild rough men as well as base metal. The wolfer was a Croesus in potentials. The outward garb was no longer an index. One of the unsuccessful loudly complained:

"He oughter be made to tell. He oughter be pushing his luck instead of fiddling round Benton. Does he always pay with gold, barkeep?"

"Yes. For two seasons that I've been here. Always acts like gold was just so much dirt to him."

"Gawdfrey mighty!"

" 'Tain't fair that a man should have secret diggings if he don't care a hoot about 'em!" proclaimed another.

"What's his name, barkeep?"

"Wolf. Only name the river knows. Short 'n'easy to remember."

That the wolfer enjoyed human companionship was further suggested that night when he invited himself into a poker game consisting of two pilots and two professional gamblers. He was welcomed warmly. Near morning he quit nearly a thousand dollars winner, but showed no elation. The pilot who had drunk with him was one of the players. As he walked to his boat to catch a few hours' sleep the wolfer accompanied him to the levee. The pilot, a loser to the extent of four hundred dollars, impatiently complained:

"Greenbacks and hard money don't seem to appeal to you any more'n the nuggets you carry loose in your pockets. If you know rich diggings, why don't you hog it out and go back to the States and live like a white man?"

"Ain't interested in the States. Just like to kill wolves. Just waiting for the first freeze. Have sort of an itch to see if any one I used to know happens up the river. Prob'ly wouldn't speak to them if I saw any such. Comes from living alone so much, prob'ly. Good night."

"Goodby. Off for the States tomorrow morning."

FOR TWO days the wolfer was missing from the riverfront, and those who had hoped to learn his secret departed in heavily armed bands for the diggings. The Zephyr was beginning to disgorge freight and passengers when the wolfer lounged along the bank. A storekeeper, an acquaintance, joined him and laughingly said:

"Rare man hunt for you the last two days. Tried to make them understand it was no use to pester you."

"Er— huh?"

"Yes, Wolf. Them pilgrims sure was keen to find you and lam where you got the gold. Tried to make 'em understand your oid friends here would be first to know if you was going to give it away."

"Er-huh?"

"But what we old-timers wonder about is, how do you manage the Injuns? Married a squaw?"

The man's eyes lighted in anger; but his deep voice was composed as he replied:

"No squaw. Injuns, at peace or war, always take the warpath against wolfers because of their dogs' dying from eating the poisoned bait. I buy their dogs before they're killed. Lame Bull and his Piegan band of Blackfeet are my friends. Each fall I visit the Bull at the Three Buttes. Carry along best presents money can buy. No trouble with Injuns if they see you're playing square. I talk their lingo. That helps a heap and—"

He broke off abruptly and removed his skin hat and violently rubbed his shaggy head. Then, without completing his sentence, he hurried to join the Zephyr's passengers, now making for the line of stores and saloons.

The storekeeper followed, asking him—

"Thinking to see some one in that batch of Pilgrims you know?"

"Couldn't know anybody. Been away from the States nigh on to twenty years."

"Never heard you say what State you hail from, Wolf."

"Been drifting round quite a spell."

"Had a notion you come from the South."

The jam at the saloon entrance held them up for a few moments, or long enough for the wolfer to say—

"I've talked Injun so long I reckon you'd find it hard to guess where I come from."

"Meaning it ain't none of my business?"

"Something like that. Come in and have a drink."

The storekeeper refused, and hurried away.

THE WOLFER entered the barroom and walked nearly to the end of the long bar before wedging himself in between two of the Zephyr's passengers. The latter scowled heavily after feeling his elbows and shoulders, but their resentment vanished when a nugget of gold rolled on the bar, and a bartender hurried forward, eager to give service.

"Drinks for the house. Call it twenty dollars."

The bartender, estimating the nugget to be worth more than fifty dollars at the least, loudly announced—

"My old friend, Wolf, buys a full round at four bits per."

Immediately those nearest the wolfer fired a volley of eager questions. One pilgrim, third away on the wolfer's left, leaned far over the bar to glimpse the hairy face, and put query after query. Unable to answer the general cross examination, even had he been so inclined, the wolfer fastened his gaze on the outstretched head and explained that the nugget came from hostile Indian country. Yes, he could easily find the place again, but did not care to do so. No, he was not afraid of the Indians. Friendly with them. Crazy? Maybe. But he wasn't interested in gold. Living? By killing wolves. Yes, he liked that better than picking up gold. No. He would not tell others how to find the diggings as it would be sending them to death.

"Death!" cried his questioner. "Joe Gilkil never held back from facing that critter yet. Taken chances all my life. Expect to die taking 'em. Neighbor, your best health. May you always be happy."

"Drink hearty, friend," replied the wolfer.

One drink was all he would take; nor would he remain to be questioned further. He was followed closely as he left the long room. Men struggled to get close to him. They pleaded and begged to learn something of his secret. He remained silent and slowly worked his way toward the river. Finding him entirely unresponsive, the group began to disintegrate. Curses andj denunciations were showered upon him, but he did not appear to be heeding. Gilkil fell back with his boat companions until they re-entered the saloon. Then he returned to the wolfer, chuckled heartily, and began:

"Friend, that parcel of critters is sore and mad. Was that drink slinger talking straight when he said you made several thousand dollars a year by skinning poisoned wolves?"

"That's right," confirmed the wolfer. "No secret about that. I'll tell any one where they can find wolves."

"Drink slinger didn't give your name— your real name."

"Prob'ly never heard it. Some one started calling me Wolf. Sort of stuck."

"Lots of folks up here have new names for old," and Gilkil nodded knowingly. "Just how do you go about wolfing?"

The wolfer briefly explained how he set his line of bait in a wide circle in an open valley after the first freeze.

"Bait's poisoned. Kills wolves. They freeze solid. More'n a hundred die from feeding on one carcass sometimes. With the first thaw I have to work sharp and pelt them before the skins can spoil."

"You have to dodge Injuns pretty smart."

"Not me. I'm wise enough to fix that before hand. No danger from them."

"Huh! That strikes me as being easier than breaking your back with pick and shovel."

The wolfer nodded, and said—

"Struck me that way. I'm satisfied."

"You haven't a partner?"

"No. Right sort hard to find. Too crazy after gold."

"You could make more if you had a partner? More'n double what you make working alone?" continued Gilkil.

"Yes. Two lines in place of one. When a big thaw comes and holds warm for some time, one man is helpless. He'll lose most of his season's work," said the wolfer.

"And summers? What do you do?" eagerly asked Gilkil.

"Fill my pockets with nuggets. Come down here and do something."

Gilkil breathed heavily. Then he confided:

"After you quit the bar some of the men laughed. I up and told them that a man who can clean up several thousand in one winter just by skinning wolves can stand lots of laughing."

The wolfer's lips drew back in a grin, or a snarl, disclosing the big white teeth to the gums. In a low tone he admitted—

"I've stood for lots of laughing in my day."

"How far do you go to get your skins?"

"Not far. Wolves come to me. They'll come. I'm good at waiting." Again the white teeth flashed.

GILKIL hesitated while endeavoring to estimate the wolfer's plane of intelligence. That a man would spend a winter in skinning wolves was a strong indication of mental deficiency. Conversely, a man who spent a season, or a portion of a season, in the wolfer's company, if he possessed any amount of shrewdness, ought to be able to learn the source of the beautiful nuggets. Suddenly squaring his jaws, Gilkil said earnestly:

"See here. Wolf. We're strangers to one another. But I feel as if I'd always known you. I'd like mighty well to learn your wolf game. I'd do my best at it. I'd take any split you might decide on. I'm down on my luck. Only got a couple hundred dollars I could put in. How do you feel? Is there any chance? I can live hard and work hard."

The wolfer stared at him for a few moments and then shifted his gaze to the rolling river and was silent for a minute. Gilkil's fingers contracted into fists and he barely breathed as he waited. Without looking at him, the wolfer was saying— "If you wa'n't so mortal crazy about finding gold we might make a go of it."

"Want to find gold? Yes. But I don't care if it comes from a wolfs back, or out of the ground," eagerly said Gilkil.

"That sounds—" the wolfer nodded approvingly. "I'd split fair with any greenhorn I took in."

"But I know how to use a knife!" cried Gilkil.

Without appearing to have heard him, the wolfer went on:

"I couldn't tell till after the first thaw how much a man would be worth. I always allow to give a man what he deserves."

"Nothing could be fairer'n that!"

"Just what he deserves. Then he can't kick. It takes money to run the game. Might lose everything by a big thaw spoiling the skins before I could take them off."

"I've taken chances all my life!" "There's the gifts I've got to hand out to Lame Bull," the wolfer continued in a monotonous voice, as if reading a bill of lading. "I'm working on the plateau between the Marias and the Milk. I buy Lame Bull's protection. Another man would mean another saddle and another packhoss, and double rations of beans, flour, coffee, sugar and salt. Then there would be another set of blankets, another buffalo robe, rifle, Colt six-shooter and a double supply of strychnine. Of course I've got my outfit."

"Look, Wolf, you take me on. Make any split you want to," urged Gilkil. "I'll chip the two hundred towards my part. You'd do the buying for me. I've been to the Coast. I can skin any sort of a critter. I'm no greeny."

The wolfer stared at him speculatively, his eyes focused on the cameo pin that fastened the collar of the flannel shirt.

"Been wondering what sort of jewelry that was." He poked his finger at the pin but did not touch it.

"Cameo. I'd like to give it to you, as I don't want it. But it belonged to a woman who brought me bad luck. I reckon it's unlucky."

"For a long time I've made my own luck," said the wolfer. He combed his fingers through his bushy beard and confessed, "You know, I've lived with Injuns so much I've gotten their notion of what's ‘medicine'. Plumb foolishness, mebbe. But right now I've the notion tha't pin would be big medicine for me."

Gilkil's fingers flew to his collar in nervous haste to remove the cameo.

"Take it, and most welcome, if you feel that way about it."

He dropped it in the wolfer's palm. The Wolf stared at it intently for a few moments. Slowly depositing it in a pocket he told Gilkil:

"I'll take you on. You're advancing the pin and your loose money."

"I trade!" said Gilkil; and he whipped out a buckskin bag and proffered it.

The wolfer shook his head and reminded Gilkil:

"You've got to live while we make ready to start. Time enough for the money after we make our first camp on the Marias. I'll find you when I want you."

He wheeled and walked rapidly away. After his first surprise at the sudden leavetaking, Gilkil smiled broadly.

IT WAS the nugget the wolfer had tossed on the bar that decided Gilkil to endure the rigors of winter on a treeless prairie. Desire had been inflamed further by the bartender's story of other nuggets carelessly exchanged for drinks and goods. He stared intently at the bluffs across the river, without seeing them. His vision was traveling far from the Upper Missouri.

Gilkil concluded his reverie by telling himself that it would be strange if Joe Gilkil failed to learn the innermost thoughts of a man, no more sophisticated than was the wolfer, after living with him for a portion of the winter. Once he succeeded, the world would be his playground.

He was aroused by one of his boat companions lustily crying out for him to make haste, as arrangements had been made for an immediate departure for the mines. He announced that he was remaining at Benton; and when they accused him of being foolishly afraid of road agents, he made no defense. He wished them all away before the partnership with the wolfer became known.

During the remainder of their stay in Benton the partners met daily and discussed the work and hardships ahead. Always before separating Gilkil would bring up the subject of gold. Beyond admitting that he knew a place where a man could "comb it out with his five fingers" the wolfer would give no details. But this was sufficient to cause Gilkil to suck in his breath with a little hissing sound. One day Gilkil exploded:

"Why don't you corral that gold? Gold means everything. Wolf."

Grimly whimsical, the wolfer said:

"Everything, eh? That means everything 'tween heaven and hell."

"Give me the gold and I'll pass up one and take my chances with t'other!" declared Gilkil passionately.

The wolfer studied him curiously, his lips slightly parted.

"Partner, I don't know but what you'll git your chance," he slowly said. "Pard Gilkil, when a man is thirsty as that, he's due for a drink, mebbe."

He would not go beyond that, but the half promise filled Gilkil with impatience to leave Benton.

At last came the day, late September, when the wolfer brought out the horses.

Gilkil asked— "Plenty of whisky?"

"Small jug. For medicine. No place for big drinking where we're going."

THE first stage of their journey was to the Teton, and for the six miles the wolfer rode ahead, his bearded chin covering the cameo pin he wore at the neck of his shirt. Once they had entered the valley and had turned their backs to the Missouri, their way was pleasant and aluring. The banks of the Teton were graciously timbered, and the valley was walled in by cliffs of the prairie plateau, rising a hundred feet or more. The wolfer became talkative, even loquacious, and strangely enough for one of his grim calling, he dwelt on the beauties of the valley in the summer months, when it was brilliant with flowers and perfumed with the scent of the rose.

"You talk the way poetry sounds," commented Gilkil, whose thoughts were not inclined to nature worship and who preferred framing pictures of nugget studded diggings. "You'll be writing verses next."

As if abashed,fthe wolfer became silent and talked but little for the rest of the day's travel-. They camped ten miles up the valley.

Before sunrise they had climbed a zig-zag path to the plateau and were riding over the dry, rolling grass lands. The wolfer had but little to say, and his companion was busy with his dreaming. They entered the valley of the Marias by a path that twisted downward for more than two hundred feet and left the high, cold wind behind them. Their camp that night was in a beautiful grove, close by the limpid stream. Their seclusion and coziness invited the rambling talk of contentment.

Gilkil abruptly suggested a drink of whisky. The wolfer bared his big teeth in a grin and reminded:

"Only for sickness. We'll be separated from the whisky trade for a long time, Gil."

Then he told his disgruntled companion stories of the Blackfeet bands and their country, the treeless, waterless plains between the Marias and the Milk. He pictured the red owners as almost continuously engaged in fighting their enemies at some segment of the huge circle.

When he became silent, Gilkil, stretched on his blankets and smoking his pipe, remarked:

"Lonely's hell up here, ain't it? I see you're wearing that cameo."

"Been wearing it for some time. It's pretty. I'm red enough to think it'll bring me luck."

"Mighty little luck it brought me."

"You was saying your wife wore it."

"Not exactly that. Don't want to talk about her. This must be a mighty bleak country when the snow comes."

"For our profit I hope it will be cold and bleak, with the thaws lasting only a day or so."

Gilkil removed his pipe and came up on one elbow and said:

"I don't see, Wolf, how you figger it the way you do. Willing to live in cold and storm when you could make your pile in honest summer weather and live snug all winter among white folks."

"I like it. I wouldn't go in for it if I didn't. I don't like mixing with white folks. Only people who ever cold decked me were white folks. Injuns will let you alone when you don't want to talk. If they're your friends, they stick. Don't blow hot one day and cold the next."

"I love a crowd and whisky."

"And women?"

"When they ain't the clinging land, and don't try to hamper me and nail me down in one place," Gilkil promptly admitted.

"Gilly, you've had women. Now you want gold. I'm thinking you'll have the last."

Gilkil came to a sitting position and hungrily urged—

"Why not promise up and down to let me have some of the gold you don't want for yourself?"

FOR half a minute the wolfer snapped dead cottonwood twigs and tossed them on the coals. Then he drew up his head and quietly said:

"All right. But not in a way that'll bring whites into the diggings. Lame Bull's been too good a friend for me to do that. But you're starved for gold. The cameo didn't fetch you any luck, you say. Gold won't fetch you any happiness, I'm thinking. But have it your way. Before we quit this trip, if we both live, I'll show you gold."

"Wolf, do that, and I'll always be your best friend."

"You're my friend now," reminded the wolfer. "No, I'm not buying friends. By the way, this is past the time when you were to pay in your loose money. Might as well be reg'lar and businesslike."

Gilkil sank back on the blankets and laughed shortly, and explained:

"My living, and the whisky, and a setback at poker, you know— Well, I've got just fifty dollars left." He dug a hand into his pocket.

"Leave it be there," said the wolfer. "Of course, I don't need the money; but I like to have a partner live up to just what he agrees. It makes no difference outside of that. Money's no use up here. Just the idea of knowing I can always count on a man. Just to have him do what he says he will. The feeling he'll always be fighting beside me, or keeping them off my back by standing with his back to mine.

"Wolf, you can bank on me 'way across the board. Joe Gilkil never yet went back on a friend. No, sirree!"

"Good. If a man will cold deck one friend, he will another."

"Dog-gone, Wolf! I'm thinking you've lived alone so much, or with Injuns, you git queer notions without any reason to back them up."

The other pondered over this for a bit, then agreed:

"That may be right. Living alone so much raises hob with a man's mind. Prob'ly that's it. Well, let's git some sleep. I want to be at my snug winter camp up this valley as soon as we can make it. Little log cabin in a cottonwood grove. Even built a snug lean-to for the hosses. They'll git feed there all winter, pawing the snow, what doesn't thaw and run off. Live snug, when you'd freeze up on the prairie. With Lame Bull my friend we don't have to worry about Injuns jumping us. His peace pipe will cover any friend of mine, of course. S'pose we sleep against an early start."

He was sleeping soundly within a few minutes. ' Gilkil remained awake for a long time. He was picturing the hidden spots where one could "comb it out with his five fingers."

The words danced through his brain. It maddened him to know that the great secret was in the keeping of the senseless log beside him. It infuriated him to know that he must serve the eccentric most drearily before achieving his great desire. When he awoke, the breakfast of beans and bacon was ready.

During the day's ride at the foot of cliffs, which at times towered three hundred feet, the wolfer talked of the work ahead. He explained how their prey passed the summer on timbered slopes, rearing their whelps in holes under the rocks, and living on the young of deer and elk, on grouse and rabbits, until cold weather set in. He pictured them descending to the plains to hunt in packs of fifty or more. Then was the time when a wolfer set his lines of bait and made his profits.

As Wolf talked, Gilkil listened gravely and nodded his head; while, almost all the time, his thoughts were racing to ledges, to holes along the side of a creek, where gold could be "combed" out in heaps.

ii

TAME BULL'S hand of a hundred lodges, housing a thousand men, women, and children, presented a barbaric yet invigorating picture to the horsemen approaching the village at a lope. Back of the village, and sprawling over fifteen miles of the elevated plateau, stood the Three Buttes. These mountains were half clothed with pitch pine and spruce and rich grass. The vivid green of the timber contrasted sharply with the white capped peaks.

The wolfer had tutored Gilkil as to manners. The lessons consisted largely of:

"Keep your mouth shet. Keep close to me. Don't pay any attention to the squaws. Eat what's set before you. There's lots of dogs, but don't shoot any. Use your cudgel."

Already he had told of the immense herds of elk, black tailed deer, of antelopes and bighorn sheep, that fattened on the grass lands to the very peaks. He had named the cherries and different kinds of berries in describing this as an Indian heaven. Nor did he forget that the heights served as watch towers for discovering buffaloes or enemies.

"I'll take you to the top of this nearest butte. You'll see old Cypress ninety miles to the north. No end of rolling prairie in the northeast and east. A mighty fine view of the Bear's Paw range southeast, and the ranges beyond the Missouri, and the Rockies in the west. But you won't see the rivers, as they're hid in the deep valleys. You'll like it."

"I'll climb up there for just one thing," mumbled Gilkil.

"Gold, or women?" The wolfer grinned broadly.

"Gold! I'd go to hell for that, and for nothing else."

"Not for a friend?"

"Oh, of course. That goes without saying. Say, Wolf, sure these fellers are all right?"

He referred to the band of horsemen suddenly sweeping from the lodges and riding toward them. The wolfer flung up his open hand, palm outward, and resumed conversation. Gilkil heard nothing. He was watching the racing band, now almost upon them. He winced, thinking the two horses and smaller mounts of the Indians were to crash together. But the band split and passed furiously on each side of the white men, and instantly wheeled and encircled them. The leader rode close to the Wolfer's stirrup and shook hands warmly. None of these men, perfect physical specimens, seemed to see Gilkil until the wolfer told the leader:

"Your brother brings a man to help him hunt wolves."

"There is a robe and meat for him. It is good he did not come alone."

Then he caused Gilkil's scalp to prickle by sounding an unearthly yell. His followers did likewise. The Americans' horses broke into a mad gallop, and the furious cavalcade did not halt until close to the lodge of the chief. In a low voice Gilkil muttered—

"Such damned smells!"

"Don't let anyone see you wrinkling up your fussy nose," warned the wolfer as he swung to the ground. "This is the chief."

Lame Bull, followed by several squaws, emerged from the lodge. He seized the wolfer's hand and threw his left arm around the broad shoulders and rubbed his wrinkled, painted cheek against the bearded one, first on one side and then on the other. He took no notice of Gilkil until the wolfer explained:

"A man to help your son hunt wolves. Your son brings gifts."

"Let the white man keep close to my son, so my young men will not take him for a Crow.

He led the way inside the big lodge, his small eyes glittering in expectation. Outside the curious gathered.

Although eager to learn what thewhite man had brought him. Lame Bull produced his pipe and smoked with his two guests. This important ceremony out of the way, the squaws spread a new Hudson's Bay blanket and placed in the middle of it a big kettle of elk meat and dried berries cooked together. The chief talked of the season's hunting and fighting, and expressed alarm because of the vast horde of white men overrunning the gold country a hundred miles or more from Benton.

While he talked his gaze wandered to where the wolfer's packs were piled just inside the entrance. He was as eager as a child to have the packs opened, but by no word did he betray his curiosity. Gilkil ate suspiciously. Once he grossly violated red etiquette by breaking in while the chief was speaking, to hoarsely whisper—

"This ain't dog we're eating, is it?"

"No! Shut your trap."

THE WOLFER ate heartily and leisurely. Gilkil stole glances at the scalps decorating the chiefs apparel of skins. He would have eaten but little had not the wolfer urged him with a quick frown. At last the white men would eat no more, and Lame Bull said they would walk about the village. The wolfer said he would open his packs before leaving the lodge.

Anticipation fairly burned in the small eyes as the chief watched his white son drag the packs to the center of the lodge. The entrance was filled with the heads of the curious. Playing for a climax the wolfer began with twenty pounds of hard candy for the children of the village.

Then followed some gay cloth for the women in the lodges of Lame Bull and two subordinate chiefs. There were two dozen hunting knives to be distributed by the chief. Slowly the wolfer placed the last package on the blanket. Lame Bull held his breath and attempted to stare indifferently away as the white man's fingers fumbled with the fastenings. He could not suppress a grunt of delight as the brace of .44's, Army model, were placed in his lap and quickly supplemented by a large box of ammunition.

The onlookers patted soft tattoos against their lips with their fingers to express their amazement and delight. Lame Bull expressed his love for his son, but gave no words of thanks for the gifts. Thrusting the revolvers into his belt, he spoke to a squaw, who quickly brought a box of rawhide to the blanket. The chief explained:

"This is medicine. A strong wolf medicine. You must see it before the white man does to keep the medicine strong."

"Gilkil, just a bit of red manners. Step outside until I have opened the box. Come back when I call."

Gilkil, wary of the crowd before the lodge, did as directed. The wolfer slowly unfastened the rawhide thongs and opened the box, sank back, and patted his fingers against his open mouth. Pleased as a child, the chief smiled.

"It is medicine," he repeated, "for my son."

The wolfer examined the gift more thoroughly, then replaced it in the box and securely knotted the thongs. He told the chief:

"It will be a long time before my white friend sees this. The medicine must know it belongs to me."

THE NEXT few days were days of feasting, of racing ponies, with the chief promising to become proficient with the revolvers if the ammunition held out. All the while Gilkil was yearning to be gone. When it was time for the wolfers to depart a final feast of the whole village was given by the leading men, and twenty young bucks rode with the white men for half of the thirty odd miles.

Early next morning the partners were back at their cabin and the wolfer was resuming his instructions to Gilkil. These consisted largely of taking Gilkil over a twenty mile semicircle. Over and over again it was impressed on the beginner that he must learn this route, the start and finish being equidistant from the river, so he could cover it when a blinding storm obscured all landmarks. For himself the wolfer planned a much longer line of bait.

Gilkil hated it, and was scarcely able to conceal his state of mind. He wished the actual work would come. One night the wolfer returned indoors from studying the weather and announced:

"Strong freeze by morning. We'll soon be at work."

Gilkil's accumulated resentment boiled over. For days he had fought to retain control of his tightly strung nerves. It was the wolfer's tone of satisfaction that rushed him into an open complaint. He savagely told his partner:

"I don't understand it at all, Wolf. No sabe to it. Here's you, knowing where you can scratch out prime nuggets with your bare hands, and you'd rather stick here in this Godforsaken place, through a rotten winter, poisoning wolves!"

The wolfer laughed aloud; something he seldom did. Gilkil flicked his eyelids rapidly and for a moment forgot his irritation as he said:

"I'd say, if I didn't know better, that some time, somewhere, I've known some one that makes me think of you. You never was out on the Coast?"

"No. If I'd ever seen you I'd remember. You were in Califomy sometime, and in rich diggings, from what you tell. If you're so crazy about gold, why didn't you stay there?"

Gilkil frowned, as he said:

"A woman. She spoiled my chances out there."

"Did she act up any better after you fetched her East?"

"She stayed out there. Died."

THE RISING wind sucked down the valley and howled woefully. The wolfer stepped to the doorway, where the big buffalo robe serving as a door bellied in as if some monster were crowding against it. He lifted the robe, and a cold gust blew ashes and sparks from the fireplace.

"You're freezing us out," complained Gilkil.

"The wind fooled me," mumbled the wolfer. "Thought some critter was pressing against the robe. Let's see. You was saying about the woman—"

"I said she died out there; but let's talk about something else."

The wolfer dropped on his blankets.

"I never knew much about women," he confessed slowly, "so we'll talk about them. Then about something else, say, my hidden gold mine."

"The last will make good hearing," eagerly endorsed Gilkil. "I'd stay awake all night to talk about gold— fat nuggets."

"You was in rich diggings. Why didn't you stick after the woman died? She couldn't bother you any after she was dead."

"Well, she did. She set people against me by dying."

"You've been gitting at the whisky," accused the wolfer harshly.

"Good land, no! It does sound funny, but it's easy to explain. You see, Wolf, the woman was a whiner. Homesick for the East. Blamed me for taking her West."

"Homesick. Took on about it. Er-huh?"

"Well, her whining, of course, made some folks think I'd abused her. Then when I happened to be with the boys and she was alone, she pegged out. How'd I know she was mortal sick?"

"Died alone, of course. But you ain't no doctor. And folks blamed you?"

"I said so. She's buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery: Done everything I could. But some folks got to talking rough. My friends told me I'd better cross the Sierra. I did. Kept on going till I struck Indianny."

"Of all I ever heard tell! Blamed you 'cause you was unlucky enough to have your wife get sick and die."

"Not exactly that," Gilkil corrected. "She wa'n't my wife, but I was taking care of her."

"Well, that beats all creation! No claim on you, yet you took care of her. Still she complained and you was blamed."

"I'm sick of the whole business. That's why I was quick to sell that cameo. It fetched me bad luck," said Gilkil.

"But if it wa'n't for that cameo I'd never took you on, prob'ly," said the wolfer. "And if I hadn't taken you on, you'd never git a crack at my hidden diggings. Now, Gil, I'd say that cameo fetched you luck. Fetched you a woman and will lead you to gold."

"Let it bring me gold and I'll forgive her for driving me from Californy with her whining and homesickness."

The wolfer threw back his head and laughed aloud. Usually his approach to risibles was limited to a cavernous opening of the mouth. The cabin was so small and the laughter was so loud Gilkil cried:

"Quit it. Wolf! Stop it! You're splitting my head open. Just as soon hear a wolf pack howling as to hear you letting out such hoots."

"Not knowing much about women it struck me as funny that you, who knows so much about them, could rim into hard luck because of one. Now as to my hidden diggings..."

FOR HALF an hour he sketched pictures, and Gilkil's mouth watered as he listened. When Wolf had finished Gilkil drew a deep breath and said:

"Now I can sleep and have pleasant dreams. You've promised. Plenty of gold there, or I wouldn't touch it. Don't go to rob any man. But you say there's more'n you'll ever use. If I can work into bonanza just once—"

"Plenty of gold, partner. Some danger, of course."

"Danger? Injuns are friendly and denned up in their village. I know my line of bait so well I can follow it blindfolded. And we can't freeze, or starve."

"I had wolves in mind."

"But they can't trouble one. A good hoss and guns. Bah!"

"No, no, not from a pack. I was thinking of the danger from a mad wolf getting at you."

Gilkil's brows drew down.

"That's silly," he decided. "Mad wolf hasn't more sense than a mad dog. He'd stand no show of catching me. If he tried it, a hunk of lead would mighty soon cure his madness."

"You don't get what I mean. You don't know wolves, mad ones, like I do," patiently said the wolfer. "It's their slyness that makes them dangerous. When a wolf goes mad he quits the pack. He'll steal into a tent, or hut, soft as a ghost, and bite your foot, or your face. The bite wouldn't amount to shucks if it wasn't for the poison. You wake up in the night and tell yourself, ‘Rat, or something, been nipping my toe.' In the morning you find, sure enough, something has nipped a toe. But it don't amount to nothing, and you go about your work. And then—"

He stopped and commenced fussing with his pipe.

"And then? Then what?" prompted Gilkil impatiently.

"Why, then you go mad. Mad like a wolf. I never see but one man who went mad. Never want to see another. He'd twist and howl and bite his own flesh—"

"Shut up, Wolf! See here. We're going to have a different sort of a door. Just a buffalo robe fastened with pegs! I won't stand for that."

The wolfer nodded his shaggy head, then reminded:

"But we haven't any tools. I've always blocked out the wind with a robe. Mighty careless, I s'pose. Mebbe we can fix a contraption of logs. What part of Californ was you in?"

"Oh, on the Feather'n' the Yuba. In dry diggmgs. Floated round quite a bit. In Frisco last."

"Can't dig gold in Frisco."

"Fine place to blow your dust after you've made a strike." Gilkil's eyes gleamed reminiscently.

"That's where your wife died."

"Woman, not wife," Gilkil corrected. "No, she wa'n't there. She was at the camp. Picked her time when I was having a toot in the El Dorado. How'd I know she was going to peg out and start the talking? Listen, Wolf, git this straight. I don't like to talk about Californy. Always feel I was driven away along of a woman's whining, and lost my big chance."

"Well, well, if you're that sensitive. But you've got a better chance with me to handle gold than you ever had out there, Gil. But she prob'ly wouldn't complained if you'd been lucky. Some women are like that."

"Dead wrong. In bonanza, or in borrasca, she fussed and whined. Tried to send her back East. Tried everything. No good."

"She didn't want to go home?" prompted the wolfer.

Gilkil shook his head, and explained:

"Way things was it wa'n't very pleasant for her. Now, Wolf, I just don't want to talk about that."

"All right. All right." The wolfer's tone was peevish. "But when two men are cooped up in a place like this, they talk about almost anything to keep from going crazy. I'm just as curious about women as you be about gold. A whiner. Never understood women. Always taking on. I couldn't stand for that."

"I didn't," said Gilkil grimly.

Again the peal of laughter, too loud for the small walls. Again Gilkil came up on an elbow. Before he could speak, his partner was apologetically explaining:

"Always strikes me funny when a man thinks he's finding heaven and wakes up in hell. Well, let's turn in. Dream of the gold you're going to paw over, and forget the woman who fetched you bad luck."

THE MORNING broke cold and clear.

The freeze was severe, and the wolfer grunted Lame Bull's hunting song as he prepared for the day's work. Gilkil, out of sorts because the wind had disturbed his sleep, "howling like wolves," worked up a transient enthusiasm by telling himself the sooner the drudgery was over the quicker he would be combing gold with his ten fingers. After they had eaten the wolfer directed:

"You be saddling up. I'm going to bury that stinking robe Lame Bull gave

"Sort of wondered why you left that rawhide contraption on top the cabin."

The wolfer laughed silently.

"If I'd kept it in here and the heat got to stirring it up, well, you'd slept outdoors, partner."

Gilkil winced and promptly confessed:

"Not after hearing about mad wolves. And my nose's rather fussy at that."

The wolfer carried the long rawhide box, unopened since leaving Lame Bull's lodge, back under the cliffs and buried it. The horses were saddled when he returned, and Gilkil was eager to be off. The wind was strong and cold when the two gained the plateau. Cuddling his head in his collar, Gilkil cried—

"It'll be rougher before it's softer."

The wolfer nodded and galloped over the frozen scum of snow. Inside of half a mile the wolfer killed a buffalo bull with his Henry rifle. Gilkil was amazed at the man's dexterity in preparing the carcass for the poison. When the wolfer had finished and swung into the saddle his partner grimaced in disgust and said—

"You look like a murderer."

"A butcher," the wolfer corrected. "Your man killer does a neater job. You saw how I doctored that carcass. You'll do the next one." They rode on a few miles and Gilkil took his turn. The wolfer laughed silently. Gilkil frowned at his gruesome arms and said—

"Wolves will smell me instead of the bait."

"Right. But they'll never give chase when their dinner's waiting on the floor of the prairie."

They were following Gilkil's line, and at dusk were back at the cliffs. Descending the crooked path, and washing in the icy water, they hastened to the cabin and kindled a blaze in the crude rock fireplace. The wolfer told his companion—

"What you've been through today is just August weather to what's coming."

Gilkil, trying to clean his nails, wrinkled his nose in disgust. His partner was amused, and he asked—

"Finicky about a little blood?"

"You can't expect me to like it," grumbled Gilkil.

"But it's clean blood. You can't make bread without getting dough on your hands. You'll get used to it."

The wind was making a weird sound in the valley. The robe filling the doorway bellied in and sucked out. Gilkil's brows contracted as he watched the robe work back and forth. Finally he cried:

"Damn that robe! Keeps acting as if some one, or something, was trying to git in."

"When you eat, throw the first bit of meat over your shoulder to feed the ghosts; then they won't bother you," said the wolfer.

"Ghosts? What do you mean? Or just some of your funning?"

The wolfer shrugged his broad shoulders and replied:

"I don't know if I'm joking, or funning. Injuns do that— Feed the ghosts. Sometimes I can't tell where I leave off being white and begin to think red."

"But I don't take no stock in ghosts," said Gilkil sharply. "I was thinking about mad wolves. That doorway's got to be plugged up."

"No boards, nor box stuff to use," mused the wolfer. "Mebbe we can fix it someway."

"We'll freeze to death when it gits colder."

"Cold air don't hurt a body," assured the wolfer. "You'll git used to it. One thing you never had to fret about in Californy—cold weather."

"Nor mad wolves," Gilkil added.

THE WOLFER kneeled before the fire, feeding fuel to make a bed of coals for cooking, and as he built up the blaze he said:

"Never could understand how a mad thing, beast or human, can use his cunning after he's lost his reason. Now what makes a mad wolf want to sneak into a cabin, or tent, and bite a man? He ain't hungry. Yet he'll slip in, sly's a weasel. He don't rush in and chaw whatever he comes to, but comes like a shadder, or a ghost. The harm he does wouldn't amount to shucks if it wa'n't for the poison he leaves behind. But even a teeny scratch is more deadly then to have your back half ripped off by a grizzly. And the suffering that can enter through the teeniest scratch! Good land! I could tell you more stories—"

"For God's sake, don't!" broke in Gilkil. "Talk about gold."

"Gold to me is just another kind of a rock."

"It'll buy all a man can want," shrilly insisted Gilkil.

"Didn't for me. I can hoe out a barrel of it." He paused at Gilkil's half smothered cry. "Yes, a barrel. You think you'd be happy with a barrel of gold. But don't call it gold. Call it all the food and terbaccer and finnified clothes and travel and whisky you could ever want."

"And women!" added Gilkil, his eyes blazing. "High and mighty, highty-tighty women, who'd never look at you poor, but who will clean your boots if you throw gold in their laps!"

"All right. Women. But what if you owned all the women in the world? And why do you want highty-tighty women to clean your boots?"

"Ain't it some fun to see a proud, grand'n' mighty one bow her head? Ain't it fun to see the high'n' mighty become meek'n' meeching?"

The wolfer turned it over in his mind while preparing the coffee. Then he reminded Gilkil:

"But I don't know much about women. Them you speak of, would be bowing their heads to the gold, not to you."

"I don't give a damn what they bow to, so long as they knuckle under."

The sudden peal of wild laughter gave Gilkil a start. The wolfer quickly subsided, and said:

"You're a funny cuss. You'll earn your gold just by keeping me company."

Mollified, yet a bit resentful, Gilkil complained:

"You make me jump with that wild hoot of yours. Must sound like the howling of a mad wolf."

"Now, Gilly, a mad wolf don't go round, howling his crazy head off. That's why he's dangerous. Soft footed as a ghost. And sly! Show me the slyest thing you can think of, and it'll be clumsy alongside a mad wolf."

"Don't talk about wolves. Mad ones."

"All right," patiently said the wolfer. "We was talking about women. How much happiness have women fetched you? I'm plumb ignorant, you understand, Gilly. Sometime I may want to go back to the States and cut a shine. I'd like to learn things. Do women who bow before gold make you the happiest?"

"I don't know." The tone was sullen. "The kind that don't help you any is the kind that fall in love. They are a great nuisance."

"Well, good land!" muttered the wolfer, staring, wide eyed, at his partner. "I can't tell what you mean. You don't believe in love?"

"Not the soft, mushy kind. Your red friends don't either. That old buck we visited has a lodge full of squaws. He barks, and they hyper. He has the right notion."

"It's their custom. Lame Bull's happy. His squaws are happy. But it's the red way. There was old Solomon. Had a thousand wives. Learned it when a younker. If I remember my book reading he wa'n't over happy. Look at it this way. What would you do if you got soft headed V soft-hearted about a woman who'd knuckled to your gold, and you lost your pile, and she made fun of
you?"

"I'd kill her!" hoarsely declaim Gilkil;
then meeting his partner's starihg eyes he hastily added, "Of course, I dAn't mean that, Wolf. It would be my hard luck. Let's talk about something else."

"All right. Tell me about the Californy diggings. Did you strike it rich?"

GILFIL made a face at disagreeable memories, and mournfully confessed:

"I could have made a million if I hadn't left a case knife at the foot of a ledge; or if I'd had a scrap of paper and a pencil with me one Sunday morning. It was above Dog Town, and only half a mile from our cabin."

"How many in your party?"

"Alone— that is, the woman was with me— Well, I'd passed that spot a hundred times. This Sunday I was making for Dog Town for a bit of fun. Happened to notice what looked like signs in the gulch wall. Stopped and scratched with my case knife that I used on crevices. Inside of two minutes I had ten dollars' worth of coarse gold. But I didn't have any paper or peneil, and couldn't put up a notice, showing size and direction of my claim. Being Sunday, and every one flocking to town, I left the case knife by the ledge and went on. I run my ten dollars in coarse gold up to two hundred at monte. Then lost it and what loose money I had, besides. When I went back to the cabin late that afternoon two fellers was in that gulch and had it posted. Wolf, that gulch paid a million, folks told me afterwards. I never got a smell. Talk about rotten luck!"

The wolfer started to laugh, but stopped to say:

"And talk about costly monte games! Why, Gil, you gambled away a million one Sunday afternoon! Or, put it this way. You once owned a million dollar case knife! Good land! Why didn't you turn back to your cabin and write out your notice?"

"Just what I'd done. I'd done that very thing. But there was my woman. She'd got on my nerves. We'd had a row. I don't mind when a woman rips and tears. But when they just sit still 'n' cry— oh, I can't stand that."

The wild laughter could no longer be suppressed. It roared and howled above the wind, When he could speak, the wolfer's voice was low and unsteady.

"You've given me a new thought, Gil. Besides the million dollar game and the million dollar knife you had a million dollar row with a million dollar woman, who had million dollar nerves and busted into a million dollar crying spell." Then the wild laughter again. He concluded by saying, "How she must 'a' combed you when she found you'd kicked away a fortune!"

"Well, she didn't," growled Gilkil, "and I don't like that hyena laugh of yours. She didn't. She'd learned better than to try any of them games. She wouldn't done any combing, anyway. She didn't seem to care about gold. Queer that way."

The wolfer nodded and placed two big frying pans on the coals, and said:

"You'll be the second white man to see my gold. I'm the first. We can eat in a few minutes."

"Why not have a drink erf our whisky. Just to cel'brate the first line of bait?"

"No, Gil. You'd have a head in the morning; for you'd want more'n one drink. Time enough for a spree after the season's ended, or—but that wouldn't be a spree."

"Or what?"

"I was going to say after one of us happens to git bit by a mad wolf."

"Will whisky cure a man?"

"No, no. Don't believe he could feel it, but I never see it tried. But if it did work a man might miss lots of suffering."

iii

THERE came the first thaw. The two men worked early and late, skinning a hundred wolves along Gilkil's line of bait. Gilkil soon proved himself to be an adept, and the thaw held on long enough to permit the cleaning up of the second and longer line. They enjoyed a great advantage over other wolfers; there was no red peril to guard against. The thaw ended just as the skinning was completed, and the scattered wolf carcasses served as new bait, supplemented by an aged bull.

By this time Gilkil was as hairy and disheveled as his partner. He was less loquacious and given to moody meditations after the day's work was finished. He could run his line alone. He bore himself as one sullenly waiting to be released. The wolfer had not announced how the
profits would be split. One evening Gilkil inquired as to what would be his share.

"Your share will be a fair one, Gilly. You'll git all you deserve," the wolfer assured.

"I don't care what it is, Wolf. Asked just for the sake of talking. Oh, hell, these stinking hides! All I can think of, Wolf, is that gold. Don't seem as if I could rest natural till I've had my hooks in it."

A few nights later the wolfer sat and stared at the fire a long time. Ordinarily he essayed to prompt a flow of reminiscences from his partner. At last Gilkil took notice of his abstractions and came out of his sullenness to querulously demand:

"Why don't you say something? My nerves are all out of joint."

"I was thinking," mumbled the wolfer without removing his pipe and without shifting his brooding gaze, "you ain't been much of a hand to talk, yourself, I was thinking."

"Don't think; talk," rapped out Gilkli.

"Yes. That's it. The loneliness is gnawing too deep into your nerves. Got me that way at first; that and other things. I don't want you going mad and biting like a wolf."

"What you driving at now?"

"I'm opining to stop your thinking about lonesomeness so much," slowly replied the wolfer; and he took the pipe from his mouth and turned to meet his partner's gaze. "Look here. I'd planned to wait till the season was about ended, but I won't wait that long. After the next clean-up I'll take you to my cache of gold. Diggings are too far away. Can't go there till warm weather. But I can show you rich samples; quarts of nuggets."

"Quarts of nuggets!" It was a new Gilkil towering above the wolfer. "Near here?"

"Not so awful far. That's as much as I'll tell now."

"Why haven't you shown me before, Wolf?"

"You'd be thinking only of gold and the number of women you could buy. You wouldn't be worth a hoot on a bait line. You'd just keep chawing over in your mind— gold, gold. You'd never think of the gold on the back of a wolf."

"Now you've changed your mind about waiting?"

"Yes. You need perking up. After the next thaw; after we've fetched in the next lot of pelts."

This left Gilkil feverish with excitement. He did not have to fight his impatience long, however. The thaw came over night, brought by the warm chinook. Gilkil worked his line alone; worked like one driven by demons. He scarcely paused to rest, or eat, until the skins were stacked to freeze on top of and behind the cabin. The night which marked the end of the second harvesting he stood in the middle of the small room, his head bowed to escape the slanting roof, and demanded— "Now!"

"Yes, Gil, in the morning. We ought
to be baiting up, but a wild man ain't any good. We'll lose only a bit of the day. Start early and git back soon."

"Gawd! I'll sit up all night. I can't sleep."

"Foolishness. Gold will be as common to you as a woman. You never set up all night on account of a woman, I'll bet."

Gilkil laughed bitterly, and confessed—

"Once, but I was young and much of a fool."

Nevertheless, Gilkil did sleep that night, and was sleeping soundly when the wolfer turned out and raked ashes from the coals and set about preparing the breakfast. He did not want to waste time eating. Swallowing a dipper of coffee and grabbing some bacon, he started to get the horses.

"We're walking; come back," the wolfer called after him.

Gilkil was amazed that the cache should be that close to the cabin. He felt he had been deceived, and despite his lust to be handling the treasure he was embittered by what he considered to be a deception. He barely hinted as much, but the wolfer understood, and genially said:

"If you'd known how close it was, you wouldn't be worth a cuss. Well, we'll start— and highty-tighty women will bow down to it— a piece of jailer ore!"

He talked none as he led the way through the scattered cottonwoods for a mile up the valley. His mood was almost somber as he turned to the base of the cliffs. Gilkil now was like one joyously intoxicated. He sang snatches of old songs. The singing aroused the wolfer enough for him to ask over his shoulder—

"Where'd you learn that stuff?"

"Singing school, down in Indianny. Twenty years ago."

"Er— huh? Sort of pretty, but lonesome like."

Gilkil trembled violently as his partner halted at the cliff and quietly announced—

"We've come to it."

Gilkil panted heavily, like an exhausted runner. The wolfer loosened the earth with his knife, then stepped back and invited:

"Dig. Comb it out with your fingers."

Gilkil dropped on his knees, and like a famished wolf after a rabbit began pawing out the dirt. He yelled hoarsely on coming to the first of the nuggets. Then he was pawing dirt and more nuggets against his knees. When he paused, the sweat was streaming down his face. He glanced wildly at the wolfer and gasped:

"My Gawd, man! You've got a fortune in this hole alone!"

"I've kept my promise. Take what you've dug out and cover the rest with dirt. Time to be at work."

He filled his hat and stuffed his pockets full. Then he stared wolfishly as his
partner carelessly kicked the loose earth over the hole. He reluctantly followed the wolfer down the valley, but walked slowly because of his precious hat and bulging pockets. The wolfer glanced back impatiently, then laughed and said—

"You walk like an old man who's mortal feeble."

"Don't want to jostle any out," muttered Gilkil, his staring eyes watching the brimming hat held in both hands before him.

Carelessly the wolfer remarked—

"I'm hoping you'll be better company from now on."

"Must be a big fortune back in that hole right now, Wolf."

Without turning the wolfer replied:

"Oh, from seventy to ninety thousand. Just guessing in a rough way."

"Land of glory! And you pelting poisoned wolves! Dangerous, you say, going to your diggings?"

"A trifle. Outside of Lame Bull's range. Yes, I'll say mighty dangerous. One way or t'other; you come back or you don't."

"When you was there you oughter packed back twice as much!"

"What I've needed is work. No one can find the place. It'll wait for me. But I've needed work. Your company's done a heap of good. Learned lots of new things. About women, in particular. Now we'll look over the short line and call it day."

"But just what chance would a man run in making your diggings?"

"Ten to one. Fifty to one. I don't know. Of course he'd have to know where they was first. Injuns would git him, or they wouldn't. If he loaded pack animals and had to come slow, they'd git him."

THEY ran the short line and were back at dark. Gilkil went inside to replenish the fire while his partner remained to take care of the skins they had brought back. Before entering the cabin the. wolfer stood at the robe and gently lifted a flap. He smiled grimly and softly retreated and commenced whistling. His entrance was advertised ahead. Once inside he ceased whistling and sniffed the air. Then he was gently rebuking Gilkil—

"You've been trifling with the whisky."

"Had to, Wolf. Nerves jumping that bad."

"No harm, if it don't start you on a drunk."

"Drunk?" repeated Gilkil; and he laughed boisterously. "Why, in the morning you'll never know I had a drink."

The wolfer opened his mouth in one of his silent laughs. Gilkil was deliriously exultant as he attempted to help with the supper. He sang. He asked many questions about the secret diggings and did not wait for an answer. As they were eating, the wolfer said—

"If one drink will make a man cut up and act so all fired happy, I'm glad you took it."

"Just had to have it. But the morning will find me sober enough. I'll bet there's an even hundred thousand dollars' worth of gold in that hole this very minute."

"Prob'ly. Just guessing in a rough way."

After the meal was finished and their pipes were lighted Gilkil's nervousness increased instead of diminishing. His partner noticed his condition and abruptly decided—

"You might as well be drunk as a crazy jumping jack!"

With that he picked up the jug and poured half a pint into a tin basin and extended it to his partner and invited—

"Drink."

For a few moments Gilkil did not accept the thing he so ardently had desired. Then he grabbed the dish and swallowed the fiery portion without taking it from his lips. Soon he quieted down and pulled off his boots. The wolfer refilled his pipe and smokpd. Gilkil stretched out on his blankets. Finishing the pipe, the wolfer filled it for the third time. Gilkil suddenly asked—

"Ain't you smoked enough?"

"Not yet. Pretty soon. Got some thinking I must finish."

WOLF was still smoking when Gilkil fell asleep. Gilkil still slept when, near dawn, the wolfer rose and noiselessly raked-back the ashes and placed dry fuel on the coals, a stick at a time. Then the wolfer stood beside the sleeper and slipped a hand under the blankets at the head of the pallet. As he glided to the swaying robe and gently pulled it one side his mouth was open in a silent laugh.

Hurrying up the valley a short distance, he unearthed the rawhide box Lame Bull had given him. Near the camp he opened this and took out the skin of a big white wolf. The skin included the entire scalp of the beast with the two jaws of grinning teeth. Beads of green glass served as eyes. After peering through the curtain, the wolfer threw the hide over his tall figure and dropped on all fours. The open jaws jutted from his forehead.

Crawling by the hanging robe, Wolf halted at the foot of the couch, where Gilkil's bare foot and ankle was exposed. Gently clamping the jaws about the foot he reached forward a hand and struck down smartly on the nose of the grim figurehead.

Thus aroused from sleep Gilkil muttered an oath, then was screaming like a madman as he beheld the head of an enormous white wolf receding by the robe, the eyes two green emeralds of malevolence. He reached under the blankets for his gun, and could not find it. Outside came the quick bang-bang of a Colt; and the next moment the wolfer was in the room, blowing the smoke from the long barrel.

"The wolf! The mad wolf! Did you see it?" yelled Gilkil.

"Shot him. Don't fret. You're—"

The wolfer did not finish. He was staring at Gilkil's left leg. He dropped beside the couch and examined the limb. Gilkil sat up and bent forward. Stark terror filled his eyes as he beheld it, one tiny abrasion, one drop of blood. The wolfer squatted on his heels and stared at the man.

"Why don't you speak? Why don't you do something?" raved Gilkil.

The wolfer rose to his feet and slowly announced—

"Gilkil, there is no cure for the bite of a mad wolf."

"Think I'm going to suffer like that? Like what you've told about? Why should I suffer like that?"

"Joe Gilkil, I don't know unless it's along of the poor dead woman you left in Californy."

"I won't die! What's the matter with you? Damn you! What do you mean about that woman?" And again he thrust his hand under the bedding.

"You're gun's gone. I saw you hide it. You decided to kill me and take what I have in my cache."

"What's anything got to do with this? I've been bitten by a mad wolf!"

"And there's no cure. But you've had what you wanted. Women! Gold! Think of the woman who got on your nerves. Did no man from Indianny never run across you and give you my message? That I'd kill you like a mad wolf, sometime?"

"Never Ranee Peters?" whispered Gilkil. Then he remembered his wounded leg and was yelling, "Ghost, or devil! I won't die from madness."

"If you'd been good to her after stealing her. If I'd found she'd been happy— but you killed her. It would been kinder if you'd shot her. You took her to die, heart broken, among strangers."

Then the terrible laugh again, and had Gilkil not been submerged in horror he he would have realized how close to the edge of life he had stood each time he heard that raucous outburst.

"I told you'd split fair. Give what you deserved. I promised gold. It shall be buried with you. Had you been brokenhearted over the girl's death... Had you loved her..."

GILKIL floundered about on the bed, but seemed to be pinned down. The wolfer inexorably went on:

"For two seasons I've waited for you to come up the river. Last spring a man from home told me you were back. Alone. He said you would come by boat to Benton, as you was 'fraid to cross the plains. For two seasons I've watched the boats. Then you came, false friend, woman stealer, and worst of all, woman abuser. Damn you! You even wore the poor girl's pin. And had you said you'd never part with it, that it belonged to some one you loved, some one who had gone away and left you— But you were willing to sell it. Gilkil, you killed yourself that day on the Fort Benton levee when you sold me the pin. Now die a mad wolf!"

He turned away and stared down at the fire, unheeding the mad screams that filled the cabins. When exhaustion silenced Gilkil for a bit the wolfer produced the gun he had taken from the bed and removed all but one cartridge. Gilkil watched him. The wolfer stepped to the couch and said slowly:

"I'll show you more mercy than you showed my poor wife. One shot in this gun. I'm giving it to you. Then I'm going outside. You can use it on me, you can't miss. Or—" Without bothering to complete the sentence he dropped the gun on the bed and slowly went to and by the robe.

Red voices were calling him. Ponies were scrambling down the twisted path. Lame Bull was in the lead. Galloping up to the wolfer he threw himself to the ground and said:

"Your red father comes to sit in your lodge. What does your father see in your face?"

"My father's wolf medicine is very strong. It makes a man kill himself. The man, a long time ago, stole my woman. He was not good to her. The wolf medicine came in the night and bit him like this."

Wolf gently pinched the wrist of the chief between his thumb and finger. Then he pointed to the rawhide box with the jaws and baleful eyes of the white wolf hanging out. He pointed toward the cabin. The muffled report of a heavy gun shattered the silence. All but the chief and the wolfer raced forward to enter the cabin.

When they emerged they were patting their open hands against their lips to express their great amazement. The wolfer seized the chief by the arm and said:

"All you find in there belongs to you, except some gold in the white man's pockets. Hide the gold with the white man in the ground. I go to find and bring back a woman, who died because she was so far from home. After another winter watch for me from the Sweet Grass Hills."

__________________

11: Mr. Clackworthy's Return

Christopher B. Booth

Detective Story 14 June 1930

Mr. Clackworthy, confidence man extraordinary, featured in more than a dozen short stories in 1921-2, and then reappeared in 1930 in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, needing to replenish his badly depleted bank balance. Several more Clackworthy stories followed into the mid-1930s.

AT ten o'clock on a certain Tuesday morning in November, Mr. Amos Clackworthy was a millionaire. Before two o'clock of the same afternoon, he owed money to his brokers. Between those frantic hours, which so many thousands of people will remember with shudders as the first day of the stockmarket crash, Mr. Clackworthy saw his paper profits melt and vanish, his margins swept away with such relentless swiftness that there had been no chance of salvage.

Being a philosopher and a good sport, having the nerve of the gambler who can lose his last chip without losing his serenity, the master confidence man accepted this reversal of his fortunes without lament; while others who had lost less were tragically contemplating selfdestruction— and some of them making this surrender to their desperation— Mr. Clackworthy merely mixed himself a high ball, lighted one of his excellent cigars, and reached the immediate decision that it was time he got back to his business of trimming "suckers," having himself been a sucker to the tune of a cool million.

Immediate activity was necessary if he meant to remain a tenant of this exclusive Lakeshore Drive apartment, for the November rent was due and to pay it would reduce his bank account to an alarmingly small balance. It was an exceedingly satisfactory place to live, with a roof-top terrace and an unobstructed view of the lake, and he meant to keep it. But the apartment cost money, and Mr. Clackworthy's tastes were expensively in keeping with his abode. Money must be had, and quickly, too.

The door of the luxurious living room was abruptly flung open and James Early, the master confidence man's confederate in their many successful adventures, burst in stormily. But it was the storm of despair. Clutched in his hand was a crumpled copy of a Chicago afternoon newspaper, with the news of the stock-market crash screaming across the front page; upon his thin, lean, sharpfeatured face was stamped an expression of dazed anguish which, however, began to relax as he saw Mr. Clackworthy sitting at ease, apparently in a cheerful and carefree mood.

"Good afternoon, James." said Mr. Clackworthy pleasantly. "You appear to be a trifle upset over something."

James Early, upon whom the police in days past had bestowed his nickname of the "Early Bird," stared searchingly at the master confidence man for another moment; a look of something akin to awe began to spread over his countenance.

"Boss!" he gasped out. "You— you got out with a whole skin, huh? This here Wall Street game didn't make a sucker outa you after all! Gee, boss, you sure outsmarted the rest of this whole cockeyed world. How'dja do it?"

"I didn't," responded Mr. Clackworthy. "No, my dear James, I certainly didn't."

The Early Bird's expanding smile began to lose radiance, but, viewing the other's calmness, he could not believe that disaster had been complete. Mr. Clackworthy, James decided, had been nicked, but not very badly.

"You're lucky at that, boss. Why, I seen guys down in the Loop that was stripped right down to their shirts. Lookit th' headlines; here's a bird that puts a hunk of lead inside the place his brains was supposed to be. Another one does a high-divin' act offn th' Monmouth Buildin'. The streets downtown is full of people talkin' to theirselves, and the nut ward at Cook County Hospital is dustin' off the old S. R. O. sign, and gettin' ready to sleep 'em three in a bed. I hears a street sweeper sayin' to th' blind dame what peddles lead pencils at .the comer of Clark and Randolph that his broker had sold him out, and 'Lady Smoked Glasses' comes back that she lost five centuries in Radio. Everybody was playin' this crazy market— everybody. Includin' you and me, worse luck."

Mr. Clackworthy chuckled, enjoying, as he always did, the Early Bird's picturesque outbursts of speech, and the chuckle further falsely reassured the Early Bird that his friend and idol had shrewdly escaped the tidal wave of liquidation.

"So, James, you've been speculating along with the rest of us?"

"Yeah, and here's a laugh; a wise bozo in LaSalle Street slips me a hot tip that Zenith Vacuum Cleaner was gonna be pushed up to a hundred and fifty. It vacuum-cleaned me, all right. I ain't got a bean left outa th' wreck, and that ain't speakin' in no figurative language neither. I'm so flat, boss, that a pancake would look like Pikes Peak." The Early Bird stripped off his nobby English overcoat and sat down expectantly.

"Aw, loosen up, boss," he pleaded. "Gimme a tell. How'dja manage to get into th' cyclone cellar before th' tornado struck? And why, oh, why, didn'tcha give me a tip-off? Mebbe I could have saved a part of my twenty-seven grand."

"You don't seem to believe that I'm cleaned out, too, James," said Mr. Clackworthy as he gently tapped an inch and a half of ash froni his cigar.

"Nix on tryin' to hand me that stuff, boss!" he exclaimed disdainfully. "Why, if you was clean, that would mean mighty near a million bucks, and no guy, not even you, can say good-by to that much dough and look like Merry Christmas. So quit kiddin' me and gimme th' low-down."

Mr. Clackworthy got up from his chair, produced another glass, and mixed two drinks.

"It pleases me to discover that I am such a game loser," he said. "The truth of the matter is, James, that market prices dropped so fast this afternoon there was no chance for any man to save himself. One stock I was in dropped thirty points in an hour and a half; the others were nearly as bad. I'm all in, down and out, James; I'm in debt to my brokers and I wouldn't be able to pay them what I owe and meet this month's rent on the apartment."

The Early Bird's mouth sagged open. For a moment, he was like a man petrified. It was extremely difficult to fit Mr. Amos Clackworthy into any picture of poverty knocking at the door, and yet he knew now that it must really be true. Mr. Clackworthy was broke, stony broke!

"A million bucks!" cried the Early Bird in a shaking whisper. "A million bucks gone— just like this." And he puffed to imitate a gust of wind. "B-but, boss, it—it can't be— as bad as that. Down to the last dollar."

The master confidence man's mouth tightened slightly. "Ah, but it is, James. I've been close to the ragged edge more than once; but never, never in my life, have I actually owed money that I couldn't pay. It puts me in a pretty bad hole."

A wabbly smile, sickly in its lack of mirth, spread over the Early Bird's face.

"For a couple of wise guys like you and me, we're certainly a fine pair of suckers. Two nice, woolly Mary's little lambs what's gone and got ourselves fleeced right down to the bare skin!" His voice had become bitter.

"We've got a lot of company," observed Mr. Clackworthy, but the Early Bird found small consolation in that. Philosophy isn't a great deal of comfort when apartment rent is due and the figures of the check-book stubs have been reduced to three figures.

"It proves," said Mr. Clackworthy as he sat down again and took a sip of his second high ball, "an old adage of mine: that the sucker is a sucker for one reason and one reason only— because he's trying to get something for nothing. We've demonstrated it many times; we've merely demonstrated it again with ourselves in the role of victims. We tried to take some easy money out of Wall Street. We were greedy, as men usually are when there's easy money in sight. With you, twenty-seven thousand wasn't enough; with me, a million wasn't enough. Both of us wanted more, and we got it—"

"We got it," the Early Bird chimed in dismally, "in the place where we're both gonna be wearin' patches on our pants."

Mr. Clackworthy finished off his high ball; perhaps, underneath his magnificent calm, his nerves needed to be bucked up. But a better tonic, undoubtedly, was the Early Bird's familiar note of pessimism. It was like old times again to hear this prediction of dire disaster which was to put them on the street in rags and tatters. The master confidence man threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"Where's all the comedy?" grunted James Early sourly.

"Really, James, I wonder if you do expect to see me in the bread line?"

"Whatcha gonna do? Answer me that!" There was a challenge in the Early Bird's voice although, of course, he didn't actually expect the master confidence man ever to be reduced to any such pitiful degree of destitution.

"Do?" murmured Mr. Clackworthy. "That, my dismal friend, is a question easily answered. You and I are going to dust off the old bag of tricks, and get back to business. To-day's stock-market debacle impresses me with the cheering thought of how many thousands of people there are who are trying to get something for nothing."

A bright sparkle lighted the Early Bird's eyes only to dim.

"There's plenty of suckers left," he muttered, "but try and find one of the poor saps who's got any jack."

Mr. Clackworthy's answer to that was to slide open a drawer of his desk and bring forth a small, card-index file which contained the names of various and sundry persons who, unknown to themselves, were candidate for election to membership in the master confidence man's own private lodge, the Ancient Order of Suckers.

From out of the little magic box, which Mr. Clackworthy called "the prospect list," there came the name of a certain Mr. Alonzo Prindivale. Upon the card devoted to Mr. Prindivale there appeared such information as the master confidence man might find useful in his particular field of endeavor. By a series of cryptograms, a great deal was contained in a small space, and Mr. Prindivale would not have felt flattered to have heard this condensed biography translated to its full meaning.

Alonzo Prindivale was a down-State banker in a town which bore the family name. It was a small town and none too prosperous. But Alonzo Prindivale was prosperous, amazingly so, considering his limited opportunities. By greedy dollar grabbing and parsimonious nickel nursing, he had become a very rich man. He owned half of Prindivale and had a mortgage on the rest.

Three days after the stock-market crash, having raised a small amount of working capital by various and sundry means, Mr. Clackworthy arrived in Prindivale on the evening train. It was raining, and this added to the dismal outlook from the railroad station platform: a block-long procession of shabby buildings across the tracks, headed by the only three-story edifice in town, the Prindivale House. There was no hotel porter on hand to look after the luggage of arriving guests. Mr. Clackworthy picked up his bag and started across the street which was poorly lighted. His foot splashed deep into a puddle of muddy water. The city fathers of the incorporated town of Prindivale were evidently not spending tax money for any such modern nonsense as pavements.

"I'll say," grunted the master confidence man, "that anybody who can make half a million dollars in a town like this is good."- He smiled grimly. "The greedier they are, the better I like to take 'em."

Like its exterior, the lobby of the Prindivale House was shabby and unpretentious. That's what lack of competition does to a business sometimes. A man behind the desk surveyed Mr. Clackworthy with a listless gaze; the lines about his face bespoke bitterness and a state of helpless rebellion. He spoke no words of cheering welcome, knowing full well that his guests came to him because it was the only place to stop and that they would depart at the earliest possible moment. Professional glad-handing would be just so much energy wasted.

Mr. Clackworthy signed the register in his crisp, compact, businesslike handwriting.

"A room with a bath," he said, and got a quicker answer than he could have reasonably expected.

"Can't give you no room with bath, mister. Got just one, and Mrs. Prindivale has got that."

"Prindivale?" murmured Mr. Clackworthy. "Do you happen to mean the wife of Mr. Alonzo Prindivale?"

"Uh-huh!" Even a grunt may contain a quality of voice which gives an index to a man's feelings, and the master confidence man knew instantly that the proprietor of the Prindivale House disliked the lady in question. More importantly, however, Mr. Clackworthy was immediately concerned as to the reason why Mrs. Prindivale was living at the hotel without her husband, or. for that matter, why she was living in the hotel at all. This didn't look so good; it offered a discouraging possibility—that Alonzo Prindivale was no longer to be listed among the living, that Mrs. Prindivale was a widow.

"And Mr. Prindivale?"

"Dead," said the hotel proprietor briefly, sourly, and thus was Mr. Clackworthy informed that he had wasted a tiresome train journey and twelve dollars in railroad fare— to say nothing of the unattractive prospect of sleeping in one of the Prindivale House beds which he was sure would be uncomfortable.

"Well, that's that!" thought Mr. Clackworthy with the philosophical resignation with which he characteristically met such annoying adversities of circumstance. Aloud he said: "So Alonzo Prindivale has passed from your midst. Um! The community must find it a distinct loss. It will be—ah— hard to replace such a leading and influential citizen."

The proprietor of the Prindivale House made a wry grimace. Perhaps he was unconscious of it.

"Not so hard as you'd think, mister. The only difference is that this here town of ours is bein' bossed by a skirt 'stead of a pair of pants. I guess, if th' truth was known, it's been bossed by the same skirt all the time. Anyhow, it's just the same as it was before—only more so." Again there was that note of bitterness, but he suddenly stopped talking as a half-frightened look leaped into his eyes.

From out of the dining room of the hotel strode a woman who, although he had never seen her 'before, Mr. Clackworthy knew instantly could be none other than Alonzo Prindivale's widow. She was tall, angular, and masculine. Her stride was that of a man. Her face was harsh and forbidding; her eyes were as cold as those of a dead fish, and her dominant jaw jutted out beneath a thin-slitted, tightly clamped mouth.

The proprietor of the Prindivale House smirked and bobbed his head.

"I hope you enjoyed your dinner, Mrs. Prindivale."

"The soup was cold, the beef was tough, and the coffee vile," answered Mrs. Prindivale acridly, and with that she strode her masterful way across the lobby and vanished through a door which led -to the stairs.

"What a pleasant person she is to have around!" murmured Mr. Clackworthy.

"Nothing ever suits her," mourned the hotel proprietor. "She ain't happy unless she's snapping at somebody. If the soup is served hot, she reads a paper until it gets cold, just so she'll have something to kick about. I buy a special brand of coffee, sixty cents the pound, and have it made special, but she always complains about the coffee, too. She complains that seventy-five dollars a month is too much for a room with a bath and three meals a day. And then she complains because I don't meet my notes at the bank right on the scratch."

"In other words," sympathetically observed Mr. Clackworthy, "Alonzo's spirit goes marching on."

"Thunder!" burst out the hotel proprietor, unable to resist the temptation of unburdening himself with a freedom with which he would not have dared to do to any one but a stranger. "Alonzo's spirit, my eye! Everybody in this town thought it was Alonzo, but it was her all the time that made him so mean and hard with folks. Oh, it's easy enough to see that now." He drew a deep breath, leaned confidentially closer, betraying the fact that his tongue was being loosened by several drinks of strong liquor. "I'll lay a little bet, mister, that Alonzo Prindivale is doggone good and glad that he's dead."

Mr. Clackworthy encouraged further confidences regarding the Amazonian Mrs. Prindivale. He gathered that the woman's residence at the hotel was but temporary. Her home had burned down and another was being built. She not only owned the controlling stock of the Prindivale State Bank, but had elected herself to the presidency of the institution. She had stepped into her husband's shoes, and they fitted her so perfectly that every one realized that they must have been her shoes all the time. She drove the same hard bargains that Alonzo had driven—only harder. Her usurious rates of interest, disguised as bonus charges, were higher than even Alonzo's had been. She could foreclose a mortgage with a ruthlessness that would have made even Alonzo gasp.

All of this information, Mr. Clackworthy carried with him into the dining room along with his food, which was really quite excellent. Over his coffee, the master confidence man came to a decision which completely overturned his private code of ethics. Never in his life had he cheated a woman; he found that he was able to do it now without a single twinge of conscience.

It was a sartorially subdued James Early who disembarked at Prindivale from the morning train and surveyed the local scene with an expression of deepest disgust upon his thin, sharp-featured face. The more he saw of the town, the less he liked it; he couldn't recall that he had ever disliked any place as he did this one. There flashed through his mind the thought that possibly he had got off at the wrong station, and heartily wished this were true, but the shabby sign over the shabby railroad station confirmed that this was Prindivale. Across the street was further proof: the "Prindivale House."

"Mebbe the Wall Street clean-out has made the boss cuckoo," muttered the Early Bird. "If there's easy dough in this burg, then there's orange groves in Alaska, and there ain't never no sunshine in Los Angeles. For two-bits I'd grab the next rattler back to Chi." Nevertheless, he picked up his cheap suit case and made his way toward the hotel.

Missing was the Early Bird's snappy English topcoat; absent was the raiment of dapper elegance which so delighted his vanity. His clothes gave him a bucolic air, the ridiculous hat, a size too small for his head, made him look like a simple-minded "hick," precisely the effect that was desired.

Half an hour later, James Early was entertaining further misgivings, inspired by his first glimpse of Mrs. Prindivale. The woman president of the Prindivale State Bank was fitting at her desk behind a railing, having it out with a borrower who couldn't meet his promise to pay. The Early Bird caught an occasional word of supplication. "Hard luck all winter; two horses died; lightning struck the barn and set fire to it; Rosie's appendix—"

The despairing tragedy of the poor fellow's face alone was enough to melt a heart of granite, but not a muscle of Mrs. Prindivale's harsh face relaxed, and her dead-fish eyes had the chill of death in them. What did she care for the misfortunes of other people other than that it usually meant a heavy profit? Another farm to be foreclosed and bought in for half its value.

The man stopped pleading, realizing how useless it was. His hands clenched. "Curse you!" Then he remembered that he was talking to a woman. He stumbled to his feet, fumbling with his hat with twitching fingers. They were gnarled hands that had worked hard to feed his brood of young. He was breathing heavily, his mouth sagging open; his staring eyes saw only the void of black despair.

The Early Bird witnessed this heartrending drama, suddenly stirred with the fervor of a crusader.

"Believe me, old girl," he said between his teeth, "you got a trimmin' comin' to you, and I'm gonna do my best to see you get one."

A moment later, the Early Bird was facing the lady ogre, playing the part of a perfect "sap." He sat on the extreme edge of a chair at the end of Mrs. Prindivale's desk, looking for all the world like a flustered yokel overawed by
a greatly superior person.

"Y'see ma'am," James improvised haltingly, "I come into a tidy piece of money. My aunt, Mathilda, she died and left me some of them Liberty Bonds, but, shucks, four per cent ain't nothin' to earn on money considerin' the profit what's to be got outta th' chicken business."

"So?" said Mrs. Prindivale. "The chicken business?" How well did she know the kind of fool who, with a lead pencil and a few sheets of paper, got rich in the chicken business. It's the fastest way in the world for a poor man to get rich—on paper. But she did not tell this simple-looking stranger that he was a fool. She waited to see where it would lead to.

"Yes'm," the Early Bird went on eagerly. "There's a sight of money to be made outa chickens. I got it all figured out, and there ain't no way to lose. Why, ma'am, with eggs sellin' up to seventy and eighty cents a dozen, it's a purty onery kind of a hen that won't make a clean profit of ten dollars a year. Now multiply that by a thousand layin' hens—"

"Do you want to borrow money?" broke in Mrs. Prindivale bluntly.

"I got money without havin' to borrow it, ma'am. Y'see I was just lookin' fer a mite of advice about buyin' a farm to raise chickens on. I thought mebbe you knowed of some place that could be got reasonable."

Mrs. Prindivale perceptibly thawed. A smile appeared upon a face that nature had not fashioned for smiling.

"Oh, yes, I see, Mr.—Mr—"

"Early's my name, ma'am." "Well, Mr. Early, the bank is not in the real-estate business, but upstairs is the realty office of a man I can personally recommend. Mr. Kitt undoubtedly has some bargains in farms, and he'll treat you right. Go up and see Mr. Kitt. You may place full dependence in any representation that Mr. Kitt makes to you. If you want any more advice, I'll be glad to help you."

The Early Bird got to his feet, thanking Mrs. Prindivale profusely. Hardly had he got through the railing gate than the female bank president was reaching for a private telephone which connected directly with the real-estate office of Mr. Kitt upstairs.

"Listen, Kitt," she said in her hard, metallic voice, "a man named Early is on the way up. Wants to buy a farm and raise chickens. Looks like a good chance to unload the Tuccio place. What was the figure we bought it for?"

"Fifteen hundred," answered Kitt.

"Something tells me that this man Early can be induced to pay five thousand."

Mr. Kitt gasped over the wire. Had he not been in such mortal fear of Mrs. Prindivale, he'd have told her that she was crazy to expect a price of seventy dollars an acre for the rocky, worn-out Tuccio farm. He himself hadn't as yet seen what a simple-looking sap he had to deal with.

"I'll try," promised Mr. Kitt.

"Start at six!" commanded Mrs. Prindivale who believed that a fool and his money were soon parted— and the sooner the better.

It would have been a mistake for Mr. Clackworthy to act too quickly, so, anxious as he was to recoup his finances, he quietly remained in Chicago and frequently smiled over the mental picture of the Early Bird in the role of chicken farmer, surrounded by cackling hens and crowing roosters. And the Early Bird, going right ahead with the building of poultry houses just as though he meant to stay in the chicken business all his life, with equal frequency thought of Mr. Clackworthy arising each morning amid the supercomforts of the Lakeshore Drive apartment. But James' resentment was not so great as might be imagined, for he had another picture— that of Mrs. Prindivale putting the screws on the poor devil who couldn't meet his mortgage.

A week and some odd days after the Early Bird had purchased the Tuccio farm for three times what it was worth, the master confidence man returned to Prindivale. Towns of this size are always curious about strangers, especially those who keep their affairs strictly to themselves. Mr. Clackworthy looked important; even in Chicago people would turn and stare after him as he walked along the street.

Mr. Clackworthy made himself a man of mystery. Each morning, after breakfasting at the Prindivale House, he would go down the street to Bud Seabrooke's auto livery and have himself driven out into the country. He would take along an empty canvas bag, always empty when he started and full when he returned. He never explained what it contained and Bud Seabrooke, extraordinarily adept at prying information out of people, went nearly crazy trying to figure it out. All he knew was that the mysterious stranger would suddenly order the car stopped with a curt "Wait here," and go striding across some farmer's field with his empty canvas bag, Mr. Clackworthy might be gone an hour; he might be gone four hours. Always, when he returned, the canvas bag dragged heavily at his arm.

"If he didn't look so sane and sensible," was all Bud could offer, "I'd say the guy was a nut."

"Maybe it's oil," suggested Elmer Robinson who worked in the Prindivale printing office. One guess seemed to be about as good as another.

Every few days, the mysterious stranger would ship a box of something to Chicago. What the boxes contained, no one knew. Mail arrived for Mr. Clackworthy, a letter a day in a long, heavily sealed envelope. But the address on the flap was annoyingly cryptic, merely "Suite 1241, Chemical Building, Chicago."

Eventually, Mrs. Prindivale herself began to share in the local curiosity, and, one evening at the hotel, she engaged Mr. Clackworthy in conversation. She found him a pleasant gentleman, willing to talk about anything save his own affairs.

While speculation was at a fever heat, Mr. Clackworthy received a telegram. Apparently, it was urgent for he packed his bags in haste and departed on the evening Chicago-bound train. He didn't say when he would return, if at all. And the town of Prindivale decided he never would, for almost a week passed and he hadn't come back. Apparently, the mystery would remain forever unsolved.

But, of course, Mr. Clackworthy did return. Another trip into the country, this time in the vicinity of the Tuccio farm, a neighborhood which he had already visited more than once. And that evening he called upon Mr. Kitt, the real-estate dealer whom Mrs. Prindivale dominated.

Mr. Kitt was a smallish man with a sharp mind and a weak chin. He had shrewdness but no courage, the sort who can never be anything other than an understrapper. Overawed by Mr. Clackworthy's magnificent presence, palpitating with an eager but timid curiosity, he waited to see what had brought the impressive and mysterious stranger to his shabby realty office.

"Mr. Kitt," the master confidence man began briskly, "I want to begin by saying that' I know how closely you are associated with Mrs. Prindivale.''

Mr. Kitt raised his hand to his throat and toyed with his protuberant Adam's apple.

"Why, I—er—that is—" Directness of speech was not his way.

"I am fully aware," went on Mr. Clackworthy, "just what that association is, and you're mighty poorly paid for what you do. I am here to offer you a chance to make a thousand dollars as my agent. Did you ever get a thousand dollars in any deal in which you represented Mrs. Prindivale? The answer. Mr. Kitt, is no."

Mr. Kitt licked his lips avidly.

"I want to buy a piece of property that belongs to Mrs. Prindivale," pursued the master confidence man. "It's an eighty acre farm legally described as the southwest half of the northeast quarter of Section 41, Range 15, East. I want to buy it without Mrs. Prindivale knowing I'm buying it."

Mr. Kitt took down the county atlas and turned the pages to Range 15, East. His eyes sought the description Mr. Clackworthy had given him. His mouth sagged open.

"Why, that," he gasped, "that's the farm—" But the next instant, his teeth had clicked together like the snap of a steel trap, and the master confidence man pretended not to notice.

"Mrs. Prindivale's money bought it in at a foreclosure sale three years ago. for fifteen hundred dollars. The title stands in the name of Oscar Biddle who, I know as well as you do, is only a dummy for Mrs. Prindivale's transactions."

Mr. Kitt thought it wise to withhold the information that the Tuccio farm had passed from Mrs. Prindivale's control. He meant to find out, if possible, what the prosperous-looking stranger wanted with a worn-out farm. Why had the local man of mystery picked out the Tuccio farm after weeks of roaming through the country? There must be money in it—big money, perhaps, for Mr. Clackworthy, one instinctively felt, wouldn't be interested in any other kind of money.

"You wasn't mebbe thinkin' of farmin' the Tuccio place?" said Mr. Kitt. "I wouldn't hardly have took you for a —er— an agriculturist."

"Never mind about that," retorted the master confidence man. "I want to buy that eighty acres. Its salable value is something like twenty-five hundred. Mrs. Prindivale ought to be satisfied with that, but probably won't be. I'm willing to give five thousand. You get it at five thousand for me and the difference is yours."

Mr. Kitt had difficulty in controlling the muscles of his face. True, a simple-minded sap by the name of Early had paid fifty-five hundred for the Tuccio place, but Mr. Clackworthy was not, by any possible stretch of the imagination, simple-minded. If this canny man of the world was willing to pay five thousand, it was worth more— undoubtedly, a good deal more. Why, why? That question shouted through Mr. Kitt's rather bewildered mind and without any answer.

"I reckon, sir," he said when he could trust himself to speak calmly, "you got land values held too cheap. Mrs. Prindivale— that is Mr. Biddle— has refused six thousand for that farm."

Mr. Clackworthy's eyes narrowed accusingly. "Are you trying to kid me. Mr. Kitt? Mrs. Prindivale refused six thousand dollars for it? Don't make me laugh!"

"Fact," declared the real-estate dealer.  "Land values seem to be kind of boomin' around here lately."

"Then I'm not interested," the master confidence man said curtly and moved toward the door. When Mr. Kitt did not call him back, he paused, retracing his steps. He looked angry.

"Same old game they always play in these hick towns. Let a stranger want to buy something, and up goes the price. But I guess I can do business cheaper through you at that. Get the Tuccio farm for me at six thousand, and there's a thousand dollars in it for you."

Mr. Kitt drummed the tips of his fingers together. Here was a situation which required the use of his wits. He had to have time to think.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "I'll let you know about it some time tomorrow."

When Mr. Clackworthy had departed, Mr. Kitt leaped to his feet and began pacing the floor. Here, he felt, was his chance to make a killing. But there were obstacles. To begin with, the Tuccio farm had passed out of Mrs. Prindivale's hands. James Early had paid fifty-five hundred dollars for the eighty acres; he had spent some money on poultry houses and chickens. Therefore, it wasn't likely that Early would sell for six. And there was Mrs. Prindivale to be considered. Her wrath would be a terrible thing if she discovered that he, Mr. Kitt, had been trying to make some money on his own "hook." Even at the thought of it, he had a faint feeling.

"It's no use," the real-estate dealer muttered. "There ain't nothin' I can do on my own. I gotta turn this proposition over to Mrs. Prindivale."

A few minutes later, Mr. Kitt was downstairs in the bank, conferring with Mrs. Prindivale.

"Nearest I can figger out," he was saying, "this here Early yap ain't had his deed recorded yet. That's why Mr. Clackworthy thinks title's still in Oscar Biddle's name, and he knows that Oscar Biddle is really you. He's crazy to get hold of that no-good farm, and I'm half crazy myself tryin' to figger out why. What could he want it for?"

"Shut up!" rasped Mrs. Prindivale. "I'm trying to think."

Peremptorily summoned to Mrs. Prindivale's room, Luther Witherspoon, the proprietor of the Prindivale House, wondered uneasily what it would be this time. Without much doubt, it was going to be unpleasant, whatever it was. He rapped respectfully at the door of his .star guest.

"Come in!" Mrs. Prindivale's voice sounded even more forbidding than usual. She fixed Mr. Witherspoon with her dead-fish eyes, and poor Luther shuffled his feet uncomfortably. For a moment, there was silence.

"Luther!"

"Yes, Mrs. Prindivale."

"You've got a seven-hundred dollar note due at the bank next Monday morning. Can you pay it?"

A sickly pallor began spreading over the hotel proprietor's face.

"Why— why, I guess you know I can't meet that note," he stammered. "You — you've been lettin' me pay a little something on it when I could."

Having made it clear to Luther Witherspoon that she could put him out of business any time she chose and hinting that such an eventuality was by no means impossible, Mrs. Prindivale abruptly switched to another subject. There was no apparent relevancy between the two but, of course. Luther would not miss the point.

"Luther!"

"Yes, Mrs. Prindivale."

"This man Clackworthy— what do you know about him?"

"No more than anybody else, ma'am, and which is next to nothing."

"I'd like to know what that man is up to, Luther."

"So would everybody else in this town, ma'am."

"I'm suspicious of the man, Luther. Honest men don't hide their business like he does. Who is he ? What is he ?"

The proprietor of the Prindivale House could only reply with a baffled gesture.

"He may be a crook, Luther. Maybe he's planning to rob the bank. I think we should know something about him." Again she impaled Luther with her icy gaze. "There is one way we can. It's our duty to do it, Luther."

"Do what, ma'am?"

"This Mr. Clackworthy is downstairs having his dinner. You've got a passkey to his room. I want you to get me whatever papers he's got and bring them here to me— at once. Don't stand there gaping at me like that, you dolt. We're not going to steal anything."

"B-but," stammered Luther Witherspoon, "s-suppose he walked in and caught me goin' through his things? Why— why he could have me arrested; he might—"

"What I'm particularly interested in seeing," broke in Mrs. Prindivale, "is the contents of those important-looking envelopes that have been coming to him in the mail from Chicago." Her heavy, bulging chin thrust itself forward. "Are you going to refuse this simple request, Luther?" she demanded ominously.

Luther Witherspoon gulped. He was on the brink of dilemma; if he refused to rifle Mr. Clackworthy's luggage, she would refuse to give him another extension on his note. It meant he would lose the hotel.

"I'll do it," he capitulated with a grimace of distaste, wondering what Mrs. Prindivale's real motive was. The elegant, solid, substantial Mr. Clackworthy a bank robber? She didn't think that any more than she thought five per cent a satisfactory rate of interest.

It wasn't, after all, so difficult as Luther Witherspoon had anticipated. Mr. Clackworthy hadn't taken the precaution of locking his bags. Resting conveniently within the top of the suit case was a portfolio neatly arranged with important-looking papers.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Prindivale was discovering why Mr. Clackworthy was trying to buy the practically worthless Tuccio farm. This information, contained in a letter on the letterhead of the International Chemical Co., made Mrs. Prindivale gasp for breath and sent her pulse up to one hundred and twenty. Anybody with a fair knowledge of things knew that the International Chemical Co. was a fifty-million-dollar concern, and what the excited lady didn't know, or rather what she didn't suspect, was that anybody with a printing press could print any kind of a letterhead he chose.

One paragraph in that letter contained the gist of the whole mysterious business.

Radium is where you find it. None of us can quite recover from our surprise to find it so close and in such unprecedented quantities, but the laboratory reports speak for themselves. The rock samples labeled No. 219-B make it clear that you have discovered the richest radium deposit in the history of the chemical industry. I am recommending to the board of directors that they vote you a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars.

Fantastic? We are living in a fantastic age, an era of almost incredulous miracles. A man with a bicycle shop becomes the richest man in the world. Three brothers capture the motion-picture business of the world with a phonograph disk and a radio loud-speaker. Science is the magician which makes impossible things come true. Radium in the rocks of a worthless hillside farm? Not so fantastic, perhaps, after all, considering all of the other amazing things that are happening!

Mrs. Prindivale's hands were trembling as she gave the filched portfolio back to Luther Witherspoon. She was hardly aware that she did.

"Radium!" she whispered. "Radium! And I sold the Tuccio farm for fifty-five hundred dollars. A hundred thousand dollars— just as a bonus." That meant millions— millions! She tried to remember what radium sold for an ounce; as near as she could recall, it was something like fifty thousand dollars.

In a trance, the woman got to her feet. There was no time to be lost. Any moment Mr. Clackworthy might discover that she no longer owned the Tuccio farm, and then it would be too late. She had to buy the Tuccio place back. No matter if she did have to give the poor fool who thought there was a fortune in raising chickens a profit of two or three thousand, she had to buy it back.

Having returned to Chicago some hours ahead of the Early Bird, Mr. Amos Clackworthy was mixing himself a high ball when he heard the door of his Lakeshore Drive apartment open. The Early Bird stood in the doorway, flapping his arms and crowing like a rooster. He danced a jig, dug his hands into his pockets and, with a grand gesture, flung a fat packet of yellow bills on the table, then another, and then a third.

"There's the stuff, boss. Thirty grand— thirty thousand smackers! Who says there ain't no money in the chicken business. I wasn't called the Early Bird for nothin' huh? Never has it been such a pleasure to take money from anybody. Oh, boy, wouldn't I give somethin' to see that female Shylock's face when she gets tired of waitin' for you to come back and buy the Tuccio farm for two or three million and phones the International Chemical Co. and is told they hadn't never heard of Mr. Clackworthy and that there's about as much radium in her rocks as there is in an old shoe. Oh, ain't she gonna be one mad lady when she finds out we put the bee on her! Yeah, and how! I gotta hunch, boss, we better slide outa th' country for a while."

The master confidence man shook his head.

"You mean that Mrs. Prindivale may have us prosecuted? No, my dear James, I anticipate nothing like that. Not even for thirty thousand dollars would she let that hick town know that she's been a sucker. But tell me, James, wasn't she rather bowled over when you screwed up the figure to thirty thousand? I didn't really expect you to get more than half of that. Thinking you such a boob, I wonder that didn't make her suspicious."

"Aw, that was dead easy, boss. I kind of give her the idea that Mr. Kitt had wised me up a little."

"Ah!" murmured Mr. Clackworthy. "That's genius, James."

"Sure, boss, I let her think that Kitt was tryin' to double cross her. And then I let her think she was real good by gettin' 'me down to thirty-five thousand."

"Thirty-five is it now, James? I thought you said thirty."

"I left five grand back there in Prindivale, boss. Y'see, there was a guy that Mrs. Prindivale had put th' screws on. He'd had a lot of bad luck— two of his horses died, and his barn got struck by lightnin' and burned down, and he had a couple of sick kids. She was foreclosin' on' him, y'understand, and I kind of got soft about the poor guy. Anyhow, boss, I slipped him three grand he owed Missus Prindivale, and got his kid sent to a hospital, and did a few other little things for 'im. You ain't sore, are you, boss?"

Mr. Clackworthy laughed merrily.

"So long as you did this act of charity with Mrs. Prindivale's money, I'm not. One thing I've always liked about you, James, is that you're so human."

_______________

12: Tardy, but on Time

John J. Chichester

(Christopher B. Booth)

Detective Story Magazine, 12 Nov 1921

AS the twelve jurymen, their faces grimly solemn, filed slowly toward the anteroom for their deliberations, one unanimous opinion was whispered through the courtroom. "It's the chair for Big Jim," they said.

Big Jim Loomis knew. His shrewd pin points of eyes, gleaming from under fat, puffy lids, had read the faces of the men who held his fate in their hands; his ears. had caught the shrill whisperings. But, for that matter, he had known before, had felt the encompassing web which the district attorney had woven about him. Even before the trial he had been prepared for this very moment—and had made up his mind that he never would go to the chair. It was because he had planned so well that he was able to sit so stolidly indifferent.

District Attorney Knapp, a grim, smile of satisfaction on his stern face, began gathering up his papers. He knew that he had done what he had promised the city of Berkshire he would do— dethrone the political czar of the West Side and fasten upon him at least one of his black crimes.

"Think y'got me, huh?" Big Jim queried across the counsel table. "Think I'm goin' t' the chair, don'cha?"

"I know it!" returned Knapp.

"Justice is sometimes a little tardy, but always sure."

"Guess again!" retorted Big Jim Loomis, with what the district attorney set down as pure bravado; Loomis always had been like that, swaggering, boasting, confident. But the thing that Knapp forgot was that Big Jim had a habit of making good his boasts.

Loomis' beady eyes swept the room, traveling swiftly from face to face. It was, for the most part, a hostile crowd; leaders of civic reform came to see their prayers answered, old enemies came to gloat over his fall. But not all of the faces were hostile; Big Jim had friends, bound to him by the stubborn loyalty of the underworld.

"Red" Bates sat near the door; one telegraphic fluttering of Red's eyelids, and Loomis knew that all had gone well with the plan which he had so cunningly devised.

"Yeah; guess again!" Big Jim again said to the district attorney, his mouth twisted into a one-sided smile.

Technically Big Jim Loomis was on trial for instigating the murder of Tom Boston, a political enemy whom he had found extremely troublesome, and whom he had disposed of as he always disposed of dangerous enemies who refused to be warned; in reality he was on trial for all of the black chapters of his life, extending over a period of fifteen years—a long time for any political boss. And at last Big Jim seemingly had overplayed his luck.

For years he had ruled over his West Side kingdom, a czar whose scepter was the blackjack; a monarch absolute, who had at his command a loyal army of gunmen and. thieves to whom his political influence furnished protection and a degree of immunity— soldiers of evil who held human life lightly and were ready to slay at Big Jim's word.

When Tom Boston had been found dead at the mouth of an alley, every one knew that Big Jim's hired gunman had done the trick. Big Jim was not worried about what every one knew; he was only concerned about what could be proved— and "Sonny" Dunham had put many miles between him and Berkshire. But the West Side boss figured without Knapp. The new district attorney combed the West Side until he dug out the information that Sonny Dunham had fired the shot; then he canvassed the big cities until he found him. It was a relentless job of sleuthing that had lasted for weeks. Sonny Dunham was loyal to Big Jim, but human. Knapp applied the third degree without mercy, and Sonny broke down, confessing that Big Jim had given him seven hundred dollars to kill Tom Boston. The silence of gangland had at last been shattered.

Loomis glanced at the clock; his guess was that the jury would be out less than an hour. He was right; they finished their deliberations in just thirty minutes less than an hour. Big Jim moved not a muscle as the clerk unfolded the slip of paper which the foreman handed him and read:

"We the jury, find the defendant, James Loomis, guilty of murder in the first degree."

"Of course we will appeal," whispered Loomis' lawyer.

"Appeal— nothing!" retorted Big Jim. "I ain't gonna waste no time on appeal." Which, if it sounded as if he had given up hope, was entirely misleading.

The judge and Loomis' attorney conferred briefly; then the judge called upon the prisoner to stand up. Slowly Big Jim lumbered to his feet. Despite his self-confidence, his unwavering faith in those to whom he had intrusted his crafty plan, a cold shiver ran down his back; it is a very harrowing thing, even for a man with nerves of steel, to hear the words which pronounce his doom.

"The customary procedure will be waived in this case," said the judge in slow, measured tones, "and sentence is to be pronounced at once. It is the sentence of this court that you shall pay the supreme penalty for your crime, The evidence has proven you to be a murderer and a coward— a man who murders by proxy. The court takes this occasion to thank the jury for their promptness in returning so obvious a verdict. This court orders that you shall be put to death in the electric chair in the State prison on the eighth day of October— and may God have mercy on your soul!

"Mr. Sheriff, take charge of the prisoner."

Two deputy sheriffs stepped forward. Jenkins, one of them, snapped a pair of handcuffs about Big Jim's thick wrists.

"Let's be on our way, Loomis," he said gruffly. "And if any of your crowd try to start anything— well, Heaven help 'em." Jenkins patted his hip pocket warningly.

"County jail, huh?"

"And the death house to-morrow," said Jenkins.

"To-morrow's another day," replied Big Jim philosophically.

From the criminal courts building to the county jail was an intervening distance of some twelve blocks. Some times officers walked their prisoners, but more frequently they used taxi cabs— which detail was the backbone of Big Jim's plan. As the three paused on the steps of the building, Loomis gestured toward the big limousine neat the entrance.

"There's my car," he said. "We c'n ride down in it!"

"I should say not! I'm taking no chances like that." Deputy Jenkins was cautious.

Just a few minutes before Loomis and his guards had emerged from the building, there had been six taxicabs out in front, waiting for fares. At a nod from Red Bates five men who might have been recognized as West side habitués sauntered across the pavement, each engaging a car and giving an address to which they asked to be driven. This left but one public cab for hire; it was, ostensibly, one of a fleet of taxis belonging to the largest company in town.

Deputy Jenkins raised his hand, and the driver, in response, moved his car forward.

"County jail," instructed Jenkins as he opened the door for Big Jim to squeeze inside; he and the second deputy followed. Both deputies were a little relieved; they had more than half expected that Big Jim's friends would stage some sort of demonstration.

Hardly had the car been put in motion when the chauffeur feached under the edge of the seat and turned on a pet-cock which had absolutely nothing to do with the automobile's mechanism. It connected the ends of a copper tube which extended from a small pressure tank beneath the seat and led back into the closed-in tonneau. The cab itself had been carefully gone over that morning, to make sure that the doors and windows fitted tightly. The close air inside the car was a welcome change from the cold outside. It was a cold day.

"Funny smell in this machine," remarked Deputy Jenkins, sniffing.

"Yeah," agreed the second- deputy; "kind of sweetlike, isn't it?"

A few seconds passed, and Big Jim Loomis sat silently, his gaze intent upon the faces of his two guards. As he saw a dull look come into their eyes, he began to feel sleepy himself, and he reached for the speaking tube which, led to the driver's seat. He held it to his mouth that he might drink in the fresh air from outside.

In a dazed way Deputy Jenkins began to realize that something was happening to him. He fumbled with the catch on the door, but that likewise had been taken care of; the knob had been fastened from the outside, and it would not budge. He made a sort of drunken effort to attract the attention of the driver as the fumes of oxo-ether continued to numb his senses. He reached for his pistol with the vague idea of breaking the glass, but his fingers were suddenly clumsy and incapable of muscular action. The second deputy had already succumbed and had slumped over in the seat, his mouth hanging open; he breathed in noisy gasps. Jenkins himself dropped limply back, lost to consciousness.

The chauffeur glanced back, and Big Jim nodded, still holding the speaking tube to his mouth. The car shot forward, turning to the side streets. Down Division Street it sped for several blocks, until it reached an intersecting alleyway. Into the alley the machine turned, coming to an abrupt halt beside the rear of a closed-in delivery truck. Two men waited beside the truck.

"Lemme out of this cab!" shouted Big Jim through the speaking tube. "I'm pretty near a goner m'self. Open the door quick, an' shut it quicker b'fore these guys come out from under the stuff. See?"

The chauffeur, after a quick glance up and down the alley to assure himself that it was quite deserted, opened the cab door, and Bie, Jim tumbled out. The door slammed shut again behind him, and Big Jim scrambled into the delivery truck, the chauffeur beside him.

"I'd better turn off that gas, boss," suggested the latter.

"Let 'em croak," muttered Big Jim. "They're only dicks; let 'em croak. Get these here bracelets off'n me, Gregg; that's what I'm interested in."

The two men in charge of the truck climbed to the front seat and got under way. As the lumbering vehicle bumped along the cobblestones Jack Gregg got busy with his file and cut away the handcuffs.

Big Jim, his arms freed, stretched himself proudly and grinned. "Send me t' the chair, huh?' he grunted out. "I guess not! Everything fixed, Gregg?"

"Yeah, boss. Here's the box, right here in the truck. Everything worked pretty smooth, I'll say. I slipped my cousin three hundred to let me drive off his taxi. We spent all last night puttin' in that 'sleep-baby-sleep' outfit under the seat an' sealin' up the doors an' puttin' that nozzle on the speakin' tube so's y' could cup it over your mouth. He'll report the car stolen, an' that'll put him in the clear.

"Red Bates had the boys planted outside the criminal courts buildin', an' they drove off all the taxis but this 'un. Pretty slick, boss; some noodle you got on you—arrangin' everything in jail through cipher the way you did."

"Got the place fixed up for me t' go?" demanded Big Jim.

"Sure, boss, the Dodge Buildin'; pretty good I calls that— the Dodge Buildin', when you're usin' it t' dodge the chair. Boss, y' reckon there's any chance of them two bulls croakin'?"

"Naw!" retorted Big Jim, a little disgusted that one of his aids should be so concerned over the welfare of two mere deputy sheriffs. "That gas was pretty near all outta the tank, anyhow. They'll have a beaut of a headache, kid, but that's all."

He cast a reluctant glance at the big packing box.

"Why didn't you guys put some paddin' in that thing?" he demanded angrily. Nevertheless he wedged himself inside, grumbling as Gregg nailed down the cover.

Half an hour later a closed truck drove up to the freight entrance of the Dodge Building.

"Got three boxes for the Liberty Company," said one of the truckmen; that had been a subtle flash of humor on Big Jim's part— the "Liberty Company." Three boxes were unloaded onto the freight elevator— the big one and two smaller. The offices of the Liberty Company were on the top floor, and Red Bates was waiting for them to be delivered.

Red pried open the top, and Big Jim stood up, blinking at the flood of liglit.

"Good boy, Red," said the escaped Loomis. 'Slick, huh? Thought they was gonna send me t' the chair, huh? Bang-up place y' got here, Red."

Red Bates nodded.

"Yeah," he said; "I done what you told me to. Back room fixed up with a couch an' some chow. Enough t' last a week, anyhow— unless y' eat too much. Nobody's gonna bother y' here. Private lock on the door so's the janitor won't come prowlin' around. Now I'm gonna clear out. The bulls is gonna be watchin' me, an' it won't do fer 'em t' trail me t' the Dodge Buildin', see: We gotcha here, an', so far as I can see, you c'n stay as long as y' want."

Big Jim snorted. "That ain't gonna be long, Red," he replied. "I ain't gonna be cooped up in no one room, eatin' what I fix m'self— not so's y' can notice it! I'm here just long enough t' let the trail get cold an' t' grow a beard on this mug of mine. Then it's Canada an' the long hike acrost the big drink. Got the coin?"

"Sure, boss, ten thousand seeds I got for you. Now I'm gonna beat it. It's gonna be lonely here, boss, but it won't do t' have none of the old gang comin' in an' out— leastways not until the trail is cold. There's a few quarts of hooch an' a deck of playin' cards; it'll beat the death cell up the river, anyhow."

Big Jim nodded shortly and looked about for the whisky. He had not had a drink in days.

Red Bates' prophecy came true a hundred fold; it was lonely in that room on the top floor of the Dodge Building— maddeningly lonely. Solitaire failed to entice him, and Big Jim threw the deck to the floor in silent rage. He got to reaching for the bottle more frequently.

At the end of the fifth day Red slipped into the Dodge Building one evening and let himself into Big Jim's place with his key.

"Gosh, boss, but the scenery on your face sure does change your phiz!" exclaimed Red. 'An' you ain't so fat, neither. I brought along a bunch of papers; knowed you'd want t' read about the escape. The bulls has got it figured out that you're a long way off by this time; they ain't watchin' me an' the rest of the boys so close now. I reckon-I dast hop up t' see you now an' then. An' guess what I got in this here bundle— a T-bone!"

As sick as he was of his fare of canned goods and stale bread and liquor, Big Jim reached for the newspapers; he was eager to feed his ego on the accounts of his master stroke. For half an hour he feasted his eyes upon the flaming headlines, upon the interviews with the dazed officials as they discussed the sensational escape. Said one of the newspapers:

The escape of Big Jim proves one thing— he is as clever as he is cruel and unscrupulous. Such a dangerous enemy must not be allowed to keep his freedom. He must be captured so that the law may exact its penalty. If there is such a thing as justice, Big Jim Loomis must be electrocuted.

Big Jim grinned in enjoyment.

"Thought they was gonna send me t' the chair, huh? I should say not!"

The days dragged past; frequently Red Bates visited him, and that helped to dispel the monotony. On one of these visits Red came in with a plan to put many miles between Big Jim and the Berkshire authorities.

"Boss," he said, "nix on that Canada stuff. I know a guy what's runnin' a tramp steamer t' South America. For two thousand smackers he'll let us smuggle you on board. There's a little country down there where they don't bother much with Americans. Justice is lax, and no one has been known to be sent out o' there extradited yet. See? Whatcha say, boss?"

Big Jim considered thoughtfully.

"Yeah," he agreed finally; "that's a good lay."

"Aw right, boss; then I takes y' outta here to-morrow night, an' we slip over t' the big burg, an' this guy stows you away on his tub. An', boss—y' know what day this is? The eighth of October!"

"The day they was gonna strap me in the chair, huh?" Big Jim grinned. "Swell chance they had!"

When Red had gone to complete arrangements Big Jim stood at the window, staring down upon the lights of Berkshire. From below came the noise of the little city's street.

"To-morrow I'm gonna start t' a place a long ways from here," muttered Big Jim. "I'd like t' have one look at the burg before I beat it."

The idea held him. He dismissed it, only to have it take possession, of him again. He looked into the mirror over the washstand. Certainly the beard had made a big change in him. Lack of thick steaks had reduced his weight, until he now weighed but a hundred and eighty pounds as compared with his former two hundred and ten.

"I'd like t' give the old town the once-over," he mused. "Sure, an' nobody would know me with this mug."

The daring of the idea appealed to his conceit— to walk about the streets a free man, when the police of not only Berkshire but of half the world were looking for him! He tingled at the thought. At that, he reasoned, it was more than half safe, for it was the last thing that the police would expect.

"Yeah," grunted Big Jim to himself, "I'm gonna have one more look at the old town."

He got into his overcoat, pulled his hat low over his face, and took a parting look in the mirror. Yes, he decided, he was safe.

Big Jim let himself out of the office and descended the stairway to the street. Emerging from the Dodge Building, he walked briskly up High Street. Ahead of him, sauntering in his direction, was a policeman, Big Jim had an inherent working knowledge of psychology; he knew enough, at any fate, to pass the policeman with the brisk air of a man who is going somewhere and has nothing to fear. Nothing happened, and he felt more secure.

For nearly two hours he tramped the streets, reveling in the feeling that he was the most daring man in all Berkshire. However, he felt it was not wise to tempt one's luck too far, and, as his steps carried him close to the borderland of his former West Side kingdom, he turned and retraced his course.

At the corner of High and Fleming Streets he paused at a stand and purchased a newspaper. He grinned over the headline:

LOOMIS REPORTED CAPTURED IN

TOWN ON PACIFIC COAST.

Was to Have Been Electrocuted To-day.

"Yeah!" he grunted. "They was gonna, but they didn't. I'll say they didn't!"

Within half a block of the Dodge Building Big Jim, glancing back across his shoulder, saw the one man in Berkshire who would penetrate his disguise if ahy one could. None other than District Attorney Knapp! A sudden panic seized Big Jim Loomis; he feared Knapp more than he feared any man on earth; he quickened his footsteps. So far, he knew, Knapp had not seen him, but he must run no chances.

"Hey! Watch where you're goin'!"

The words reached Big Jim's ears in an unintelligible confusion of words, for his mind was on other matters. He walked even a little faster.

"Hey! You fool—"

Big Jim failed to see the overalled workman who was trying to warn him. He rushed on; his right foot, thrust forward as he cast one more furtive glance in Knapp's direction, came down upon nothing. He tottered for a moment on the edge of the big, circular chasm and then went plunging into the mass of high voltage wires of the electric conduit.

His scream was drowned out by the snap and hiss of the powerful current as it tore about his body. When the power was shut off and Big Jim was lifted out, they found gripped in his contorted fingers a scorched blackened fragment of newspaper, bearing the words: ''Was to have been electrocuted to-day."

"Justice is sometimes a little tardy— but always sure," Knapp had said that day back in the courtroom; Knapp, it seems, was right.

_______________

13: The Grim House

Richard Connell

1893-1949

Detective Story Magazine, 28 May 1921

IN an out-of-the-way corner of the suburb of Pelham Manor, on the rim of Greater New York, stood a deserted house, which had once been painted a bluish gray, but which was now dull and ashen as if it had grown pale and bloodless with the passing years. It was an old, square, wooden structure of some twenty rooms, one of those high-ceilinged mid-Victorian whose jig-sawed gingerbread served to accentuate rather than relieve its forbidding, cheerless austerity.

Time was, no doubt, when it had been a fine mansion, a country house, even, and one of the floating stories connected with it was that President Grant had once dined beneath the carved gilt gas chandeliers of the dining room, a paneled, cave-like room, now dim, dank, and dirty. But its original owners had long since passed to the land where, it is almost safe to say, there is no mid-Victorian architecture, and now the old house was in a state of dilapidation approaching almost on decay, with blinds askew, windowpanes broken, and the lawns a jungle of weeds. The house was surrounded by five or six acres of grounds, studded with pine trees, which were also moth-eaten and dismal, and a privet hedge, which was unkempt.

No one had lived there in years, and it was believed by some of the dwellers in the small, modern houses near it to be haunted. Others, of a more materialistic mind, declared that the occasional sounds heard near it were nothing more ghostly than the wind in the pines. The neighbors, however, agreed that it was not the sort of place one would care to spend a night in; it was sinister, somehow. Some one once called it "The Grim House," and that became its familiar name.

I had always taken an interest in The Grim House since the time, some years ago, when I bought the house nearest it— a little place, separated from the privet hedge by a small field and a road. In the daytime I never passed the old place without thinking of a broken-down aristocrat, aloof and sullen, clinging to the husk of a former grandeur. At night, when a late visit to some patient caused me to be out, I must confess I always was a little glad when I had passed that ragged privet hedge, through the gaps of which I could get glimpses of the black bulk of The Grim House, lonely and silent amid the pine trees.

By a species of self-analysis I tried to discover why I, a middle-aged physician with a good, steady set of nerves, should quicken my footsteps almost automatically while passing the deserted house. But I could discover no tangible source for the effect it had on my imagination.

One moonless October night I was returning late from the deathbed of a patient of mine, and I was musing on the grotesque game we call life, when I approached the road leading past The Grim House.

I stopped, startled. Through a gap in the hedge I could see lights moving in the old mansion. My first thought was of burglars or tramps, but I quickly perceived that it could be neither. A large motor van stood at the gate and by the light of its lamps I could see the figures of four or five men coming and going, bearing large objects that were not clearly discernible in the darkness

They were not taking things from the old house; they were carrying things into it.

I drew nearer, curious to see more of this midnight moving. A tall man, who appeared to supervising it, struck a match to light his cigarette, and in the fluttering flame I had a momentary glimpse at his face. It was a keen, pale face, with a sharp black beard, and the flickering light distorted it, making it look like a Chinese theatrical mask.

Apparently I had arrived as the last of the load was being carried into the house, for before I could start on my way again, all the men, with the exception of the bearded man, jumped into the moving van, and it rumbled away. The tall man stood at the gate a moment, watching the tail lights disappear. I thought it would be only neighborly to pass the time of day, or night, with him, and besides, I admit, I was impelled by a certain curiosity to see what manner of man would choose The Grim House to move into at midnight. So I advanced and said pleasantly:

"Good evening."

The man started back as if I had struck at him with a knife. A thin, pale stream of light came through the open door of the house and down the path, and I could see his face. It was contorted with fear, suspicion, hate.

"Who the devil are you?" he questioned fiercely, and I saw his hand go behind him toward his hip pocket.

"I'm very sorry if I alarmed you," I said affably. "I'm one of your neighbors. Doctor Wain is my name. I'm just returning from a late call."

The demeanor underwent a quick and curious change. From snarling hostility it changed abruptly to a politeness so ingratiating that it seemed almost artificial.

"Oh, my dear Doctor Wain, forgive my rudeness," he said in a voice that seemed to me to purr. "One naturally must be on one's guard in a strange place, you know."

"Of course," I assented, "but you need not worry about thieves or tramps out here. The place is singularly free from them."

"That is fortunate— for them," he said.

"For them?" I repeated, mystified.

"You see," explained my neighbor, "I am a somewhat nervous man, so I keep four very large and fierce Great Danes. They are trained to tear the throat out of any person who should venture on my property after dark."

He looked at me steadily as he said this, and there was a note in his voice that disturbed me; I could not help feeling that he was giving me a warning.

"Well, good night," he said abruptly and went crunching up the gravel walk to my own house

I walked on y He had not mentioned his name. He had given me no clew as to why he had taken The Grim House. But he had given me a very definite warning not to go there after dark.

The next morning I glanced at the old house, but there were no signs of occupancy ; the new tenant was not to be seen. But late that night I heard the chug of a motor van and from my study window I saw the midnight movers at work again.

I do not approve of prying into one's neighbors' private affairs, but I felt that The circumstances in this case warranted my watching The Grim House. The objects the men carried were evidently quite heavy; frequently it took all four of them to carry one piece The sky was overcast and the moon gave forth only an occasional feeble beam, so that it was impossible for me o see what they were carrying into the house ; of one thing I felt sure, and that was that their load was not ordinary furniture. Once, as they were carrying what I thought at first to be an enormous vase, as tall as a man, the moon, for just a second, came from be- hind a cloud, and its rays were reflected by the shiny surface of the strange object. Then the moon retired, and in the dimmer light I saw one of the men slip and I heard the shivering crash of breaking glass. My bearded neighbor broke into a fit of swearing.

I never remember hearing a man so completely lose control of himself; he raged and cursed like a wild thing.

"You clumsy dogs," I heard him say angrily, "that was worth two thousand dollars."

Several more of these large glass objects were unloaded, with great care, and carried into the house. Then I heard what I believed to be hammer blows, as if some repairing were being done.

I sat at my window, letting my fancy supply all sorts of strange solutions to the riddle I had witnessed, when I heard a sound that froze my blood.

It was a prolonged, eerie, moaning sound, now very loud, now falling way to a deep, guttural muttering. Then the moon came out, and I made out, vaguely, several black shapes roving through the tall grass of The Grim House lawn. Animals as big as small ponies! I had heard the baying of the giant dogs that my neighbor said would tear the throat out of any nocturnal visitor.

When I passed The Grim House next day, [ took good care to keep clear of the hedge, for I had small wish to en- counter the savage brutes. I noticed that all the blinds were in place and that new windowpanes had been put in, making the decaying house look like some ancient, dissipated roué trying to put on a bold front with new spectacles and a new necktie. Also, I observed that a large sign hung near the front gate:

NO ADMITTANCE

Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.

Beware of the Dogs.

Several days passed. The man was a quiet enough neighbor; I never saw him during the day at all, and I'd have scarcely known The Grim House was occupied had I not seen lights there occasionally, or, now and then, heard the baying of the Great Danes, as they roamed about, a menace to any person who ventured to approach the old house and its secluded occupant.

About a week after The Grim House had become inhabited, I became aware that my neighbor with the black beard was not a hermit; he had a companion. I made this discovery as the result of an odd adventure.

I was strolling along past the privet hedge that girdled the old house, having found out that the dogs were kenneled up during the day, and was peering through the hedge, where it was thin enough, when I became aware that two sharp eyes were watching me through the leaves.

I paused, and made out the sketchy outlines of a face; it was not my neighbor of the beard, but a little, old man, with a weazened, lined face, like faded leather; it was the sort of face one seldom sees except on beds of pain.

As our eyes met, he looked alarmed; he glanced behind him several times, as if to see if he were watched.

"Good evening," I said to him.

For reply the old man opened wide his mouth and pointed into it. Then he shut it and motioned with his arm toward my house; it was a motion as if he would push me away. The gesture said as plainly as words could that I had better go to my own home and avoid the vicinity of The Grim House. But although the old man seemed to have a real concern for my safety, I stood rooted to the spot, for with the trained eye of a physician I had followed the finger of the man when he had pointed to his open mouth, and I had seen a shocking thing. The man had no tongue!

Before I could answer his wordless warning, the old man turned and scurried away toward the house like a venerable frightened rabbit. As he went I could see that he was dressed in the semiformal garb of an English man-servant.

A fascination that was stronger than my half-formed fears caused me to pass close to the hedge at about the same time the following evening; I was convinced that his gesture had not been a hostile one. As I passed along the hedge a wrinkled, bony hand was thrust through the hedge, and I started back, fearing, in a sudden panic, a knife thrust, but the hand of the tongueless old man contained nothing more deadly than a scrap of paper, which I took. I unfolded the scrap of rough wrapping paper, but before I could read the message he had turned and hurried away.

In a convulsive, hurried scrawl, I read:

If my master asks you to dinner, for God sake, don't come

Back in my study I read the note again and again, and I looked out at the great, square shape of the old house with a renewed interest.

That night I was called to New York for a consultation, and didn't get home till nearly one o'clock. It was a cool, crisp autumn night and before retiring I looked out at the shadowy outlines of The Grim House. A beam of light stealing through a chink in the blinds told me that it was brilliantly lighted inside, but there was nothing unusual that. My neighbor, I had long since concluded, was a very late reader, or else he was afraid of the dark. Tired, I went to bed at once, and had fallen into a doze, when the night was cut by a sound so ghastly and terrible that I bounded from my bed, trembling, It was the scream of a human being, a man, in an extremity of pain and terror, and it came from The Grim House. it was followed by words, shrieked, almost squealed :

"Mercy, mercy, for God's Sake man, mercy, mer—"

And then there was a muffled crash, and dead, awful silence.

I did not go up to The Grim House, as a braver man might have done; I quieted my conscience by telling my- self that the tall with the black beard could take care of himself. As for the old servant, it could not have been he who cried out.

I did not sleep well the rest of the night, and at daybreak I was awake. I looked out of the window where I could see the sickly gray walls of The Grim House, looking like the ghost of a dwelling in the morning mist. I saw that my fears for the safety of my bearded neighbor were unfounded, for I made out his figure, surrounded his huge dogs, which fawned about him and sprang into the air to snatch bits of meat from his hand. Then a second figure, bent and small, from the house, carrying more meat on a platter, and I recognized the tongueless servant, who held the platter while the black-bearded man made the great brutes beg for their breakfast. Who was it, then, who had cried out in the night in such anguish of body and spirit?

After that incident I decided that it was my duty as a member of the community to keep an even closer watch on The Grim House. My curiosity had a lot to do with it, too, for what I had seen and heard had served to deepen the atmosphere of mystery old place had always held for me.

Two nights after I had heard the cry, the noise of a motor car at The Grim House gate brought me to my observation post, and I saw the tall,  bearded tenant alight from one of the public taxicabs, followed by another man. The man, so far as I could tell in the moonlight, was young, rather fat, and roughly dressed. From the way he lurched as he went up the walk, I judged that he had been drinking.

My neighbor, however, walked with a and steady step, sometimes helping his companion by taking him by the arm. They disappeared into the house, the lights were lit, and I heard no more that night.

The nocturnal visitors of my bearded neighbor increased in number. Sometimes for a whole week straight, he brought home some one with him every night, usually around midnight, and always— of this I felt certain— a different person.

Most of his visitors appeared to be young. Several times there were women. This continued for nearly a month. The visitors were quiet enough; once the door of The Grim House closed behind them, I had no cause to complain, for I never heard a sound after that.

The Great Danes could be seen, now and then, roaming through the uncut grass of the lawn, but they, too, it seemed, had taken on the silence of the old house, and their baying grew more and more infrequent.

A motley collection of visitors came out with my bearded neighbor, always at night, and I had about decided to put him down as a harmless eccentric, possibly a bit demented, who enjoyed playing the Caliph of Bagdad, when one of those clear and obvious things which are often so near and plain that one does not perceive them, struck me. Although I had seen my strange neighbor leave the grounds early in the evening numerous times, I had never seen a single one of his guests leave!

The only exit from the grounds of The Grim House lay directly in the path of my observation, and I felt sure that had any of that numerous company of nocturnal visitors left I'd have seen them. I smoked many a pipe over the problem that night, and strange, disquieting theories crossed my mind. When I finally retired, only one thought was clear in my brain, and that was that I must get to the bottom of this strange-looking business.

As I left my house the next morning, a man was waiting for me on the walk. I was surprised to recognize the black-bearded tenant of The Grim House,

He made me a sweeping, Continental bow, and, showing his strong, white teeth, wished me a good morning.

"I fear I have been unneighborly," he said, "but I have been frightfully busy. But now my house is in order, and I hope you'll do me the honor of dining with me at seven-thirty  tonight."

I thought of the warning of the tongueless old servant, and I tried to read what was in back of that smile and that elaborate courtesy. But the smile was inscrutable.

"Oh, I'll chain up the dogs," he said, as I hesitated.

I made a sudden resolution.

"I'll be delighted to come," I said.

"Fine, fine," he said, with a curious little noise, like a chuckle. Then he walked away.

But I could not go to dinner at The Grim House that night. I was called to Philadelphia for an operation; I tried to phone my neighbor, but I remembered that he hadn't told me his name. I was forced to resort to the expedient of sending a telegram addressed to "The Grim House," and to hurry off to Philadelphia. I didn't get back home till past midnight. The Grim House was dark and silent.

The next morning I decided to go to The Grim House to tell its occupant why I had been unable to come to dinner. It was about ten o'clock when I set out to visit my Mephistophelian neighbor; I remembered the warning note of the old servant, so I slipped into my pocket the automatic I had carried in the Philippines.

I went to the front door of The Grim House, and pulled at the old-fashioned bell; rotten with rust, it came off in my hand. I rapped loudly with my walking stick without eliciting any response, I knew that it was not my neighbor's custom to be away from home at this time of day, so I went round to the back of the house and, climbing on the sagging, decaying back porch, rapped briskly on the back door. It had not been locked, and it swung open at my touch. I saw a sight that I shall remember to my grave.

The large kitchen of the old house had been painted a brilliant white, and it had been kept spotless. It was fitted up as an unusual sort- of laboratory, and was filled with strange instruments and machines that suggested at once chemistry and surgery. The apparatus was familiar, and yet unfamiliar. Then I realized what it was that made it so queer; the conventional chemical equipment was there, but it was many times the ordinary size. There were grotesque alembics, enormous burners, phials that would hold a gallon, and, finally, the glass vases which I had seen carried in turned out to be giant test tubes, as big as a man. Some were filled with curious substances, which I did not recognize, and in the room there was a pungent, mephitic odor. In one corner was a shelf, covered with glittering instruments, and near it a white-enameled table, under a powerful arc light. But the thing in the room that drew my gaze like a magnet was the only untidy object in it. It was the body of a man lying on the white table.

He had been dressed in white duck from head to foot, but his suit was now drenched in places with crimson. He had been beaten almost beyond recognition by some heavy, blunt instrument, but enough remained of that thin, sardonic face with its bristle of black beard to make me certain that it was my tall neighbor with whom I was to have dined on the night before, I bent over and made a hasty professional examination. He had not been dead long.

I called out several times, thinking to summon the old servant, but my voice echoed through the empty house. I pushed open a swinging door that in the old days had led into the dark, paneled dining room. The blinds were shut, so for a moment I could see nothing, Then, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I saw that the dining room contained four large steel cages, such as wild animals are transported in. They were empty. Had the dogs been kept there? Where were they now?

Continuing my cautious explorations, I pushed open another door and found myself in a butler's pantry, that had been turned into a bedroom by putting an iron cot in it. Several suits of clothes of expensive material hung there. I hastily examined the pockets of a brown suit I remembered the bearded man wore when he invited me to dinner, and found three letters. They were addressed to Doctor Karl Raffin, General Delivery, New York City. They were business letters of no significance from a chemical company about some rare salts he had ordered.

Karl Raffin! The name was familiar. Then I remembered. That was the name of a physician who had published in Vienna, some years before, some curious monographs on the possibility of a man creating human life. His theories had been generally discredited in the medical world, but they had been so plausible and so daring that for a time he had created quite a stir.

I went over to my own house and phoned for the police. Then I returned to pursue my investigations, to try to find out who it was who had struck those furious blows.

As I entered the front vestibule, I stumbled over something. I stooped and picked it up. It was a heavy blackthorn stick, broken in the middle, and on the big, knobbed handle were little tufts of black hair, stuck there with a dry, reddish paste. With such a weapon it would be easy to kill a man.

Then a panic seized me and a cold sweat came to-my brow, for I recognized the black-thorn stick. Years before, I had given it as a birthday present to my brother-in-law, Roger Farrier, who lived about a mile from The Grim House. Roger Farrier a murderer? A settled, family man, a respectable lawyer.

Then I remembered his sudden flares of violent temper, which so soon cooled for which he more than made up by long periods of perfect good nature, and I thought of his powerful physique, souvenir of his college rowing days. I held the broken stick in my hands; that there was not another like it I felt sure, for I had hunted all over Ireland for just such a stick. Roger always carried it; indeed, many persons who did not know his name described him as "the big fellow with the big, black stick."

I was in an agony of mind, torn between duty and my affection for Roger. What was I to do? The police solved this question for me by arriving just then, and I had no choice but to hand over the stick, and, since I knew that its identification would be the work of but a few hours, to tell them whose it was. Roger Farrier was arrested within an hour.

Below is sworn the statement of Roger Farrier, member of the New York bar and resident of Pelham Manor:

On the evening of November 12th, my young son, Robert, eleven years old, was returning home from a Boy Scout meeting. Just before dark he passed the property known as The Grim House. He was tossing a ball with his brother Vernon, aged thirteen, and the ball lodged in the hedge. Robert thrust his arm in to get the ball. As he did so, his arm was seized by some man on the other side of the hedge, and the man attempted to drag my son's body through the hedge. Robert screamed and his brother came to his aid. Vernon says that he saw the man, and that he was a tall man with a black beard and a wild, savage face. When the man saw Vernon, he released Robert, who ran home sobbing with terror and pain. His arm was black and blue from the grip of his assailant.

I was not at home at the time, and I did not hear the story until I arrived home about eight-thirty. I started at once for The Grim House to demand an explanation, for I was loath to have a man arrested until I had heard both sides of the story

I knocked at the front door of The Grim House, and a tall man with a black beard who was dressed all in white, like a baker or a surgeon, came to the door and asked what I wanted. I said, as calmly as I could that I had come to see the man who had assaulted my son.

He was suave, almost oily, as he replied that he feared the boys were telling me fairy stories. But I had seen the bruises on my son's arm, and I didn't like the man's smile, so I answered hotly that I didn't believe him, and that I wanted his side of the story, and without delay

"See that sign down there," he said, "it says no trespassers, doesn't it? Well, it's lucky for you I haven't let out my dogs for the night, or they'd have ripped you to pieces." Then he suddenly lost control of himself and cried out with an oath: "As for your brats, teach them to keep away from other men's property." He started to close the door in my face, but I was mad now, and I blocked it with my foot.  He attempted to shove me out of the door and down the steps, and gave me a blow in the chest. I lost my grip on my temper entirely, and struck him across the head with my blackthorn stick. He turned and cried into the house in a terrible voice, "Gryce, let out the dogs." Then he  struck at me again, and I struck back with such force that he staggered back into the hallway and dropped. I fled in a panic, but not a moment too soon for two or three huge dogs came tearing around the corner and came leaping after me. I reached the gate just ahead of them.

That is the whole story. I swear I struck Doctor Raffin only twice; I deny that in the heat of my anger I struck him repeatedly, although I cannot prove that I did not do so. I am deeply, deeply sorry for my loss of self-control, but I reiterate that I remember striking but twice, and then in self-defense.

(Signed)

Roger Gresham Farrier.

When I read the statement of my brother-in-law, Roger Farrier, I believed every word of it. In our long friendship I had known him to be a man of unimpeachable honesty, and I knew that even in this dire circumstance he would tell the truth as he saw it. But how I, his friend, felt about his guilt, and how a skeptical jury would feel about it, were two entirely different matters, and I was gravely concerned.

After my first superficial examination of Doctor Raffin, whose shattered head told a story of the insensate fury of his assailant, I had not looked at all closely at the body, which the police had allowed to lie as I had found it until the coroner should arrive.

The coroner was long in coming, so I decided to examine the dead man more closely. I unbuttoned his tight-fitting white coat, now stained with his life blood, and as I did so I gave a whistle of surprise that made the policeman on guard over the body start out of his reverie.

"What is it, doctor?" he asked.

"Why, this man has been stabbed through the heart!" I exclaimed.

The policeman examined the deep wound.

"Whoever struck that blow had a strong right arm," he declared.

The chief of the police force, McRae, an astute, middle-aged man, came into the room just then, visibly excited. He was carrying something in his hand.

"I always did say that the Frenchman who said, 'Look for the woman,' was a wise old bird," he announced. "Look at this."

"This" was an irregular piece of purple silk, about as big as a handkerchief, and with ragged edges.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Piece of a woman's dress," he replied, "Found it in the grass, near the hedge, Also a few small tell-tale stains."

"Show me where," I said excitedly.

Chief McRae led me to a place near the hedge not far from the gate, where the long grass had been trampled for several square yards. There were a number of small, crimson patches on the ground. Quite close to the hedge was soft dirt where the grass had not grown. Eagerly I examined it. There were fresh footprints there, of two kinds: the footprints of a woman's small, high-heeled shoe and the footprints of a very large dog.

"We must find that woman," said Chief McRae.

"And I think I have a good idea where she may be," I replied, as I hurried to my own house to telephone.

I called up the public hospital, which is located about a mile from The Grim House.

"This is Doctor Wain speaking," I said. "Have you treated a woman last night or this morning for severe lacerations caused by the bite of an animal? She was wearing a purple silk dress."

"Why, yes, doctor," came the answer. "She's here now."

"Please don't let her go before I get there," I directed.

"Oh, no fear of that," the hospital employee answered. '"She's pretty badly hurt. She's just recovered consciousness and we haven't been able to find out who she is or how she was hurt. She looks as if she'd been in a tiger's cage. We found her unconscious in a field not far from your house."

"I'll be right over," I said.

I jumped into my roadster and burned up the road to the hospital.

I was shown to the bedside of a dark woman of perhaps thirty, in whose deep, black eyes were signs of a great sorrow. Her limbs and body were swathed in bandages, and she was suffering from lacerations and shock, but the interne told me that her condition was not serious. When she heard I had come from The Grim House she said in a tired voice with a slight foreign accent, Italian, I judged:

"Is he dead?"

I nodded.

"I'm glad," she said simply. Then she asked me to write down a statement, which she dictated to me with an utter lack of emotion in her tone.

My name is Marie Therese Leska, and I was born in Corsica. I confess freely, and without fear of the consequences and with out remorse, that I killed Doctor Karl Raffin on the night of November 12th.

If there was ever a monster created in the shape of a man, it was he. I met Doctor Raffin about three years ago. I was singing small roles in the opera then, and had every promise of a bright career. I was fascinated by him; he was so masterful, so diabolically clever. We got married and then he deserted me

I had lost my place in the opera company— lost my voice, and everything I held dear and sacred. I wrote him frantic letters, for I was almost penniless, and what friends I had made I had sacrificed to him. He made no reply. I was desperate, so one night I followed him out to his house out here.

I swear I had no intention of killing him when I came out; the knife I carried was for myself if he should again spurn me.

I waited outside his house till nine-thirty, crouching against the hedge At about nine I saw a big man, swinging a big stick, go up the path. I heard the sound of angry words, and then some blows, and the big man came running down the path as if fiends were after indeed they were, in the shape of huge dogs.

He rushed past me as I trembled there in the darkness. A little later, someone whistled from the house and the dogs went around to the back, and I could hear them growling and snapping as they were fed. So I ran up the path and knocked at the door.

Doctor Raffin came very cautiously. He had a wound on his head, and he was holding a piece of absorbent cotton over it. I pushed by him, and was inside the house before he could stop me.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said in a sneering voice that chilled my heart.

We went into a brilliantly lighted laboratory. A scared-looking old man, whom I knew to be Gryce, Doctor Raffin's valet, came in from feeding the dogs. Some one in the room off the laboratory moaned, and I saw Gryce shudder.

"Get out, you swine," cried Doctor Raffin, and Gryce cringed out of the room, leaving me alone with the man I once loved and later hated so bitterly.

I begged him to have pity on me, but he only jeered at me.

"You may consider yourself lucky," he said, "that the dogs didn't tear you to ribbons when you came in. Under the circumstances, I think it would be wise of you to get down on your knees and beg me to escort you as far as the gate. That's the most I'll do for you."

He blew cigarette smoke in my face.

My brain seemed to burst. With the wild fury of my Corsican ancestors, I whipped out my knife and struck him in the chest, once, twice, and he reeled away from me.

Then I ran, sobbing with fear, into the night. I ran blindly toward the hedge, not keeping to the path. As I neared the hedge, one of the great dogs sprang at my throat. My knife was still in my hand, and I managed to beat him off. For a minute I struggled for my life with him; he tore my arm and legs with his fangs before I could get to the gate and fall, fainting outside

I may have lain there an hour, I may have lain there but ten minutes. I don't know. At last I got to my feet and the will to live made me stagger on. I had a vague hope that I'd reach a railroad station and be able to get back to New York.

But after I had struggled on for what seemed endless hours, my strength gave way just as day was breaking, I fell unconscious in a field by the roadside

Every word of this is the truth. I repeat what I said in the beginning. I do not feel the least remorse for what I have done. An earthly jury may find me guilty of the murder of Doctor Raffin, but I have no fear of the verdict of a Heavenly one. He was not a man; he was a beast

(Signed) Marie Therese Leska

It was past three in the afternoon when I returned to The Grim House with the statement of Marie Therese Leska. With me I brought, also, the knife with which she had committed the crime.

It was a small affair, very old, and with a carved handle that might have been the work of Benvenuto Cellini. The blade was not very sharp. Indeed, it was more like a paper cutter than a lethal weapon, and I wondered how so frail a woman could have driven that small, dull knife into the stalwart body of Doctor Raffin.

On one point my mind was greatly relieved. Her confession supplied an incontestable alibi, it seemed to me, for Roger Farrier, for had she not sworn that she had seen Doctor Raffin alive after Roger Farrier, "the big man," left the house? And yet how could one account for the shattered skull of the dead man?

As I drew near The Grim House, I passed that part of the hedge where the mysterious note of warning had been handed to me, and a new problem presented itself to my mind. What had become of the tongueless man? And where were the dogs?

The coroner had not reached the scene when I returned to The Grim House from the hospital; there had been a trolley accident in another part of the county which required his presence, it seemed. So the body of Doctor Raffin lay where I had first found it— on the operating table.

Once again I examined the stab wound in his chest, and then I compared it with the little Corsican knife in my hand. There could be no doubt about it; that little knife could never have made that deep gash. It might have made the two or three superficial cuts in the fleshy part of the chest, mere scratches, which I noticed for the first time, but it could never have been driven in, almost to the spine, even by a powerful man

My head began to swim with this mass of contradictory evidence. A man lead, his skull shattered and a deep stab wound in his heart. Two persons firmly believe that they have killed him, and yet there is every reason to believe that neither of them did! And if Roger Farrier or the Corsican woman had not killed him, who had?

I decided, while waiting for the arrival of the coroner, to poke around The Grim House. I made my way along one of those seemingly superfluous passageways that honeycomb those old, wooden houses, until I came to a trapdoor in the floor.

I opened it and started down the stairs to the cellar with a lighted match in my hand. I reached the bottom of the stairs, and as I did so the trap-door above me closed with a bang, blowing out my light and leaving me in total darkness. A heavy, sickening smell came to my nostrils. I took a step forward and partly stumbled. I put out my hand to prevent myself from falling; it touched something soft yet solid, the furry form of a large animal. I scrambled back up the stairs at the cost of a scraped shin, and then lighted another match. By its light I could see on the cellar floor four Great Danes, the largest I have ever seen; but I had no need to fear their fangs now, for their glassy eyes protruded and their muscular legs and bodies were contorted, and they were stone cold after the death spasm produced by what I could see was a powerful poison.

The atmosphere of the cellar was too nauseating for me to examine my grisly discovery further, and, indeed, I had little inclination to do so. But here was a new question that had to be answered before the whole story of the killing of Doctor Raffin could be told. Who had poisoned the dogs?

After my gruesome find in the cellar, I felt that I must ransack the entire house. The upper rooms were quite empty and had not been used.

The servants' quarters on the third floor were similarly covered with thick layers of dust. But in a little hallway I found a ladder leading to an attic, and the absence of dust on its rungs told me plainly that some one had gone up it within the past twenty-four hours, As quietly as I could, I climbed the ladder, my revolver in my hand.

I heard a slight sound above me, as if some one were moving, and then a noise that was like the whimper of an animal.

I flung open a small trapdoor and lifted myself into a squat, beamed attic. In the faint light that came through a skylight, uncleaned for ten years, I saw that the place had been fitted up as a bedroom. In the corner crouched the figure of a man.

"Come out or I'll shoot," I cried.

He turned, and I the recognized frightened face of the tongueless old servant. As he recognized me, he ceased to tremble so violently, and came out of the corner. Drawing the stub of a pencil from his pocket, he wrote on the gray wall:

"Is he dead?

I nodded my head.

A curious, grim smile came to his lined, leathern face, a face so marked with suffering that I hadn't thought a smile possible.

Then he pitched forward into my arms in a dead faint.

I carried the tongueless old man downstairs. He was on the point of a complete collapse, so I had him taken to the hospital. There, with warm food inside him, he seemed to recover rapidly, and he signified that he wanted writing material brought to him. A pen and some paper were brought, and he wrote out in the shaky scrawl of an old man the most frightful story I have ever read.

It was I, Simon Gryce, who killed Doctor Karl Raffin, the worst man ever born. I did it, yes, and I'm glad I did it. If the law wishes to punish me, I do not care, although it was not with my own hands that I struck the blows that ended the life of a devil. The blows were struck by another with even more reason for hating Doctor Raffin than I have; but he who struck the blows is beyond the reach of the law, and the crime is no blot upon his soul, because Doctor Raffin stole his soul away from him.

I, and I alone, am guilty; it was I who made it possible for the man without a soul to strike down the fiend who had stripped him of all that made life worth living. You think I talk in riddles. Let me tell you my story from the first.

I was born in London, sixty-six years ago, the son of Samuel Gryce, head butler in the household of the Earl of Dunraven. I always a timid, undersized lad, afraid of my own shadow.

"Lad, you haven't the pluck of a hare," my father would say, "but I'll make you the best gentleman's man in England, for all that."

That was my father's ambition and it became mine. I became Lord Ashdowne's man and was with him for more than thirty years; then I was with his son, Sir Ralph Berwind. One sad day, two years ago, Sir Ralph was killed while hunting, and I found myself an old man, no longer spry, and without a situation. I had supported a couple of sisters and had been able to put by very little, so one day found me sitting on the Thames Embankment, looking at the green water and thinking things no Christian had a right to think.

A tall, well-dressed stranger came and sat beside me.

"You were Sir Ralph Berwind's man, weren't you?" he asked.

"I was," I said.

"Out of a situation, eh?" he says.

"Yes," I reply.

"I need a man," he says.

"Indeed?" I answer, not very cordially, for there was something about him I didn't like; I don't know what it was, but I felt he wasn't an honest man.

"Oh," he says with a grin, "you needn't worry about my position. I stand quite as high in my field as Sir Ralph stood in polo."

And he handed me a card which said he was Doctor Karl Raffin.

I went with him; the wages were very good. He was overbearing, often lost his temper, and sometimes was drunk, but I put up with it. Then we came to the States.

From the very first, I stood in terror of Doctor Raffin, and my fear grew. He had a way of looking me in the eye with those burning eyes of his for a long time, until my head became dizzy and I felt weak all over. He had a way of gritting his teeth when he talked to me that always made me think he would have liked to bury them in my throat.

He took a house out in a wild spot in New Jersey, and fitted up a laboratory there. It was my work to keep the place clean. I was forbidden to come into the laboratory except when he particularly ordered it. He worked there for some weeks, and from my bedroom upstairs I heard some strange sounds, but I minded my own business as a well-trained gentleman's man should.

One night I thought the doctor had gone out, and I heard sounds in the laboratory, so I came downstairs, thinking it might be thieves. I opened the door gently and saw a dreadful sight. There was a little boy— No, I cannot write it down

My gasp must have betrayed me, for the doctor left his frightful experiment and shook me by the throat as a terrier shakes a rat.

"You cursed spy," he shouted, "I'll teach you to snoop!"

He seized the chloroform sponge, and pressed it to my nose and I lost consciousness,

When I woke up I was in my own bed, and my mouth felt dry, and sore and empty. I tried to cry out for I was too weak to move, but I could make only a gagging noise. He had cut off my tongue.

Every day while I was recovering, Doctor Raffin would come into my room and gloat over my pain and my attempts to speak.

"Listen, Gryce," he said to me one day, "let this be a lesson to you. You are my man, body and soul, do you understand, and if you betray me, I'll boil you alive in one of those big test tubes."

The disappearance of the boy created such a stir in the neighborhood, that Doctor Raffin thought it advisable to move, and he came out to the old house in Pelham Manor.

My pen revolts from setting down what happened there. Night after night he lured homeless, friendless men and women out there. They never left.

One day he had been drinking, and he said to me, "Gryce, do you know what I am? I'm a vivisectionist of souls. Some day in my test tube I'll find the elixir of life. Then I'll live forever. But no one else shall have a drop."

Again and again I tried to make up my mind to run away. But a fear stronger than my other fears held me there; my very soul was afraid of Doctor Raffin.

A little later he said to me: "Gryce, the quality of my material is too poor." "Material" was what he called the poor human devils he lured into his laboratory. "It takes life to make life," he continued "Now, these tramps are inferior beings; I need a man of good intellectual development—a man like my neighbor, Doctor Wain, eh?" And he rubbed his hands and chuckled. So, at the risk of torture, I wrote a note warning Doctor Wain of his peril. Lucky man that he never kept his dinner engagement with Doctor Raffin!

It was Doctor Raffin's custom to keep the men and women—"his material"—in the iron cages in the dining room. He silenced them by paralyzing their tongues.

At night he never permitted me in the laboratory; he made me go up to my little room in the attic, and then he took the ladder away. The screams and pleadings I have heard from those poor devils before Doctor Raffin silenced them were awful, awful. But I was too weak, too weak to do anything.

Yesterday I saw that the cage contained a handsome man, just turned thirty, a man with red hair and the physique of an athlete. His power of speech was gone, and he could only look at me with dumb, pleading eyes.

The doctor had been drinking again, and his tongue was loose.

"There's material for you!" he cried. "A brilliant lawyer, he was. To-night I'll take out part of his brain, the part that he thinks with, and leave only the part he imitates with. Then we'll see some sport. I'm a magician, Gryce, and with the touch of my wand I can turn a man into a gibbering parrot." And he waved a surgical knife over his head.

Last night Doctor Wain was expected, but he didn't come. It would have been his last visit on this earth, if he had. At nine or thereabouts, I saw the big man with the black stick visit the doctor, heard their quarrel, and saw the man strike the doctor twice.

They were only glancing blows, and inflicted slight cuts on the doctor's head.

Then I looked into the unlighted dining room, and I saw two bright, staring eyes— the eyes of the thing that had been a man. He, too, had seen the doctor struck. I slipped out and picked up the stick the big man left when he fled, and placed it near the cage.

A little later the woman came, and, as I returned from feeding the dogs, I heard her pleading with Doctor Raffin. He ordered me from the room, but I watched at the door and saw her strike twice with the little knife. The doctor was wearing a coat of tough linen, and her blows made only slight scratches, which he dressed himself. He laughed to himself when he heard the dogs attack her. But I slipped out and called them off, and coaxed them into the cellar. There I fed them poisoned meat.

The doctor was so engrossed in his experiment that he did not notice what was happening; he did not notice that I had left the dinning room door ajar so that the thing in the cage saw the woman stab him. Very softly I slipped into the dining room and placed a long surgical knife outside the cage door.

Then I unlocked the door of the cage, and hurried to my attic, where I knelt until below I heard the most terrified scream I had ever heard in that house of torture. I knew it could not be the thing that had been a man, for his tongue was dead. I knew it was Doctor Raffin facing the creature whose soul he had destroyed

(Signed) Simon Gryce.

I had finished reading this frightful document by the bedside of its writer when a young interne came in, walking on tiptoe.

"Say, Doctor Wain," he whispered "before you go, drop over to the psychopathic ward, will you. There's nut over there— a big, strong fellow with red hair. They picked him up in a swampy field not far from The Grim House. When they found him he was catching frogs and clubbing them to death with a stick and stabbing them with an operating knife."

_________________

14: Mistrusted Sight

Oliver Maddox Hueffer

1877-1931

Detective Story Magazine, 28 May 1921

1: On a Rotten Staircase

GLANCING at his watch Schalk closed the binoculars with a snap. “Time’s up,” he said. “I win.”

Reddes picked up the glasses, focused them, and peered at the house. He seemed to hope that even yet a miracle might happen. Obviously the place was empty. The house was a shabby structure perched on a little knoll above the shore, painted a dirty red that flamed in the sunset, the windows and door picked out in black. It might have been a barn save for the ragged blue and white blinds that hung across the windows. The door was barred, the lower windows boarded up. Reddes laid the glass impatiently aside and admitted that on the surface it seemed as though he were mistaken. He was not very gracious at the best of times, considering a brusque manner better suited to a man of business.

Just now he was feeling distinctly ill-used. Schalk’s very presence annoyed him. Schalk was so abominably prosperous. He was round and fat and fair, and he wore round, gold-rimmed glasses that positively sparkled with prosperity. He was so horribly satisfied with himself, so disgustingly amiable and good-tempered. It was absolutely intolerable that he should display his vulgar wealth by dining, wining, and cruising a poorer man than himself. That he should win two dollars from him by what might be a trick was nothing less than an outrage.

The average man is not given to accepting favors— quite considerable favors— from men whom he dislikes. Mr. Reddes, however, was anything but an average man. It may have been only a coincidence that he had reddish hair and green eyes; not only did he dislike Mr. Arthur Schalk— he even envied Mr. Clarence Waddy. Nor were these ordinary incidents of the kind that help to make up a lifetime; he had dwelt upon them until they became his dominant passion— the more so that for opportunist reasons he was forced to keep them to himself.

Of Mr. Waddy it is true that he saw very little— no more than the average clerk ever sees of the son of his president. But he reflected so deeply upon the iniquity of a providence which gave Clarence Waddy everything a young man could want, yet gave John Reddes only forty dollars per week, that he felt almost an intimate. It is true that he often forgot his distant envy of the president’s son in his livelier dislike of Mr. Arthur Schalk. The latter had sinned more overtly. At one time, that is to say, he sat at the same long desk where Reddes was still sitting and was likely to sit on the fourteenth floor of the Indubitable Guarantee & Trust Company’s building in Vesey Street. In those days they were very close friends, indeed... Then Schalk most unpardonably launched upon a venture of his own, and within three years he could afford an apartment in the East Sixties, a touring car, and a yacht.

If Reddes had never seen him again he might have forgiven everything. But Schalk was disgustingly loyal. He behaved exactly as in the old days, heaped benefits upon those of his old associates who showed any desire for them, and generally behaved in such a way as was beyond the possibility of Mr. Reddes’ pardon. The worst of it was that Schalk could never forget they had shared the same desk— the one at the end of the room by the window looking over the Elevated. He took an altogether unnecessary pride in this point of advantage from which he had leaped to his present glory— or so it seemed to Reddes, who had not moved from it. In some curious way Schalk associated its present occupant with his affection for it, so that he seemed to look on Reddes as quite the most intimate of his friends and treated him exactly as though there were no difference in their position at all. This irritated Reddes as much as— or more than— if he had ignored him altogether.

Naturally on general principles Reddes accepted what came to him, and thus it was that, on a sparkling summer’s morning he sat beside Schalk in that gentleman’s cruiser, lying at her moorings off the yacht club pier in Nagasacket. There was nothing in that, he felt, to be grateful for, whatever Schalk might think about it. It had cost him fifteen dollars for a yachting cap, to say nothing of having his flannel trousers pressed and cleaned for another seventy-five cents. He felt that rightfully Schalk owed him that money. There was a consolation, indeed, of which Schalk could suspect nothing. Clarence Waddy was vice commodore of the yacht club, and if by any chance he, Waddy, should meet him, Reddes, on such terms of social intimacy as the occasion warranted— and Reddes was fully determined that he should—he should learn— well, that money doesn’t necessarily make the man, or teach him how to wear his clothes.

“Mind,”— he was careful to point out, as he handed over the two dollars with the grave punctiliousness of one who knows his duty to those of a lesser breed— “I agreed to accept the evidence of the glasses. So here is your money, But I don’t for a moment admit that I was wrong.”

“In that case—" began Schalk.

“Not at all. I agree with you that the house does not look to be inhabited in the ordinary sense of the word. But I still insist that some one was in it last night with a light. I’m not going to rest until I have proved it.”

Hitherto Schalk had always showed himself the soul of honor; Reddes was not at all sure that this matter of the bet was not a cunningly worked out plot to trick and humiliate him. It began overnight when, having dined in the club house, they returned to the cruiser and, before turning in, lounged on the foredeck, at intervals sampling a certain product of the hip pocket.

Schalk began by boasting of his seamanship, to which Reddes took proper and immediate exception, pointing out, in terms which pleased him considerable, that the management of a toy cruiser on the smooth waters of the Sound does not make a man a sailor, any more than cranking a flivver makes an engineer of him. Thence they drifted into the more general argument whether a sailor’s eyesight is better than that of a landsman.

Reddes ridiculed the suggestion, declaring himself ready to back his own eyesight against that of any mariner who ever lived— up to ten thousand dollars. In the end they fixed the wager at two dollars. Schalk in the character of the mariner was to select a light from among those twinkling on the further shore of the bay, and in the morning Reddes was to prove to his satisfaction from which house it came, or forfeit the amount of the wager.

The Bat’s Wing provided an excellent view of the opposite shore. The bay is funnel-shaped, and the pleasant little town of St. Theodore stretches along its southern shore, The yacht club pier is at the end of the town, nearest the sound. There is perhaps half a mile of water between it and the northern shore on which, facing the town, is a little settlement of farm houses and two or three isolated buildings.

Schalk, perhaps because he did not wish to win his guest’s money, made an easy selection— that of the light farthest from the neck of the funnel. Reddes accordingly did not need any unusual clearness of eyesight in selecting, when daylight came, the house which occupied that position. But Schalk joined issue with him, pointing out that the house of his selection was manifestly empty, and that the light could not accordingly have come from it.

Reddes denied that it was necessarily empty because the windows seemed boarded up and proposed to spend the rest of his holiday studying it through the binoculars for some sign of occupancy.

Schalk suggested a time limit, and it was at midday precisely that Reddes handed over the two dollars, sure all the time that he was right, that there was only the one house from which the light could possibly have come, and that, if the glasses made out he was wrong, they must be uncommonly bad glasses.

They lunched at the yacht club, and Reddes might have felt happy in the knowledge that, in his own estimation at least, he quite outshone Mr. Clarence Waddy, who was among those present, had he been able to get that infernal empty house out of his mind.

So determined was he to prove himself in the right that he deliberately threw away the opportunity of social advancement offered by the company of Mr. Waddy and, making some inadequate excuse, set out alone early in the afternoon to prove himself right and Schalk wrong. As he told himself he was not an obstinate man at all, but when he knew a thing he did know it. It was not easy to find the house that had been called empty. It stood some distance away from the rest of the settlement amid a wilderness of disused gravel pits, approached through a string of mosquito-ridden marshes by a track that continually lost itself in bogs and sand warrens.

Reddes persevered through all such discomforts, upheld by his certainty that the house would prove inhabited, and this would insure the return of his two dollars. It was all the more disheartening to find on reaching it that, not only did the house seem empty, but it seemed as if it had been empty for years. Everything about it spoke of decay; a rusty iron bedstead leaned against a side wall; the nails which held the bars to door and windows were rusty with the storms of many winters; a venerable boat, its sides pitted with yawning seams, lay bottom side up beside a wellhead.

“Lucky thing I didn’t bring that bone-head along with me,” reflected Reddes ruefully. "Wonder if there is any way to get inside.”

He tried the door, but, having no better implements than his hands, only tore his fingers and exhausted his patience. He was about to admit defeat. Then, standing close against the wall while he recovered breath, he was suddenly electrified by a sound that came from within the house. It was too indistinct for him to be sure of its nature. It might be a footstep— probably it was a footstep— on creaking wood— perhaps on a rotting staircase. It was certainly within the house.

“Of course I was right,"— thought Reddes— "as usual.”

2: Through a Peephole

HE crouched down and laid his ear to the largest crack in the door. It seemed to him that he heard voices— low-pitched whispers — incontestably human. Cautiously he crept past the
door toward the window and, standing on tiptoe, tried to peer through its protecting bars. After several attempts he came across a knot in the rotting wood and, by deft use of his penknife, succeeded in removing it. Through the resultant hole he peered with a beating heart.

There seemed to him something almost painfully suggestive in this muttering of human voices in a house so ostentatiously untenanted. What if it should prove the den of some band of desperate criminals? What if they should discover him?

He was more than half inclined to make good his escape while yet there was time. But in that case he could never explain things to Schalk. His two dollars would remain lost to him forever, and his reputation for omniscience irretrievably ruined.

At first he could see nothing through his improvised peephole. Very gradually, as his eye grew accustomed to the darkness, he was able to distinguish a faint glow of light, seeming to come from somewhere overhead. He could also see that he was looking through the glass of a window, and that it was covered with the dust of years. Otherwise, he thought, he could have studied the interior of the house more easily.

Slowly it came to him that a wooden ladder led up from the center of the room to an open trapdoor through which the light came. He was about to go, finding that he could distinguish nothing more, when the light grew fainter, and he saw a man’s legs descending the ladder. He was coming down backwards— slowly and cautiously. A moment later the watcher could distinguish that he was carrying or supporting something that slowly revealed itself as a human body. There was something painfully lifeless in the limp angularity of its pose, and, as the light, increasing for a moment, dwelt upon the limbs, Reddes could see that it was dead— horribly dead.

He would have given anything to rush away, careless of whether he was discovered— to run anywhere to escape the horror that was so close to him. But it was as though he were physically glued to his peephole, so incapable was he of stirring. The living and the dead came slowly down the ladder, and, to add the last touch of horror, they were followed by a woman’s skirts. Evidently she was supporting the upper part of the torso, for her steps were as stealthy and slow as the man’s had been. Once she stumbled, and the man looked up quickly and said something— evidently a warning.

Just as his foot touched the ground it seemed as though the woman grew weary, or perhaps she felt faint from the horror of what she was doing, for she released her hold, and the limp form slipped down within the man’s arms. The head fell forward, and Reddes saw with a shudder that it was bald— horribly, grotesquely bald— and brown like that of an Indian or a negro. It needed but this one added touch of realism to break the bonds that held Reddes powerless. He turned and ran swiftly along the track by which he had approached the house, trembling in every limb, great drops of perspiration running from his forehead and impeding his vision, so that twice he stumbled and fell. He did not dare even to look behind him to see if the murderers, as he knew them to be, had observed his flight. Nor did he stop until torn and muddied— his breath coming in quick sobs, and his very soul quivering with the recollection of what he had seen— he at last reached the farmhouse that stood nearest the place of horror and came out upon the beaten, cinder track that led to it. His impulse was to lose no moment in telling what he had seen— in calling upon the police to arrest the murderers before they could escape.

But, as his immediate terror left him, something of his natural caution began to take its place. Might it not be better to wait— to be sure of his facts before giving the alarm. It was possible that death had been accidental— that— there were a dozen possibilities that he must consider before taking any decided action. Possibly the old man was not dead at all. If there should be any mistake— if he took any decided action and it proved later to have been precipitate— that ass Schalk— he would never hear the end of it. After all they could not escape unseen. There was no sign of a boat, capable of taking the water, anywhere near the house; there was no other track than that along which he had come. It might be better—it would certainly be better— to make some inquiries to find out who owned the house, and who, if anybody, was supposed to live there.

He had noticed a small and very new bungalow just where the track left the main road from St. Theodore to Clam Bay. It was the office of a real estate firm, and it was devoted to the development of a not-yet-existing model city, the desirability whereof it praised highly on huge black and white posters. To it Reddes made his way, recovering most of his equanimity before he reached it. A bored clerk, reading the comic section of a three-weeks-old Sunday paper, was its only occupant. He displayed, however, a very proper interest in the possible client, enthused over the possible glories of the prospective model city, and waxed quite lyrical over a portfolio of maps wherein the shaggy peninsula of the moment was represented as covered with boulevards and avenues and churches and palatial homes and community centers— all very impressive to the eye of faith.

His prophetic enthusiasm made Reddes’ task the easier. Improvising an ambition to own a summer bungalow somewhere on the water’s edge, he asked about the empty house, its history, and its present ownership.

The answer filled him with a new keenness. The owner was Mr. Clarence Waddy of the Indubitable Guarantee & Trust Company. It was an old house, originally built by a fisherman, subsequently bought by young Mr. Waddy to serve as a yachting land quarters and abandoned by him when the Nagasacket Club was founded.

Such was all the information the clerk had to give, and with it Reddes left the bungalow, promising to communicate if and when he should decide upon his bungalow site.

He had gone only a few hundred yards when he saw a fallen tree trunk in a thicket beside the track. Disregarding mosquitoes, he sat upon it and began to think very seriously. It would be a curious thing— a very curious thing— if Clarence Waddy was mixed up with the criminal band who obviously made their headquarters in his house. He was a spendthrift, of course, and want of money drives men to strange ends. He was notoriously given to the company of doubtful characters. There was something very fishy about the whole story of his owning such an abandoned shack. If it should prove that he was actually in the way of bringing his parents’ gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, what exactly ought to be done about it by one who was not only an employee of those parents, but was in the habit of mixing with their son on terms of social intimacy at the Nagasacket Yacht Club.

Long consideration decided him that he must know more about it before he took any decided action. The old negro was dead, so nothing could be done to help him. As to the murderers, they could be discovered at any time, for, if Clarence Waddy were not actually an accomplice in the crime, he must, at least, be aware of the criminals’ identities. Perhaps after all there might be a more merciful explanation. Perhaps Waddy had only killed the old man by accident— possibly even for good reason— and was now seeking a way to dispose of the body. Perhaps it might be well to approach him in the matter first of all— to offer him protection, secrecy, even assistance. You never know where the sense of gratitude in a wealthy young man may not lead. Perhaps—

It would never do to make a confidant of Schalk. He was such a blundering, impetuous animal that he would be certain to take some abrupt action which might ruin everything. Besides, the fewer people who knew about that sort of thing the better. Schalk must be got rid of at once.

His mind overburdened with possibilities, Reddes lost no time in returning to the Bat’s Wing, where, on the plea of an important telegram recalling him to New York by train, he took leave of his host. He was careful not to raise the question of the lost wager lest he might recall the empty house too vividly. He had made up his mind to return to the scene of action without delay, there to await events.

It was clear enough that no attempt could be made to remove the body before nightfall. By concealing himself he might be a witness to whatever transpired and possibly gain sufficient new evidence to justify an approach to Mr. Clarence Waddy as friend, counselor, or accuser, as events should decide.

Shortly before sunset the amateur detective started more for the house of mystery, carrying with him an electric flashlight and a chisel, in case an opportunity occurred of entering the house.

He would have carried arms, also, but he possessed none and feared to buy any, even had the law permitted, lest he should arouse comment. During his first visit he had noticed a little grove of locusts some fifty yards behind once would the house on the landward side. It overlooked the rear rooms, from which alone he was satisfied the house could be entered, and anybody approaching it must pass within a few yards of the grove.

In it he found a secure hiding place— a sunken hollow masked by branches only a few yards from the path, and yet invisible from it. There he set himself to await events in patience. The observation post was sufficiently comfortable.

The night was warm, and the mosquitoes less aggressive than he had feared. Also he was pleasantly buoyed up by the sense of approaching success, for the dusk had scarcely fallen when a definite light appeared through the cracks in one of the window cover. It remained there, growing always stronger as the outer darkness increased.

He may have dozed, he may even have slept, for he had no idea of time save that the night was very dark and still, and the stars above him very bright, when at last he sat up with a start, the honking of an automobile in his ears.

Many automobiles follow the coast road through St. Theodore in the summer, but this sounded as though it came from somewhere nearer than the road, and to Reddes’ startled imagination it had about it something insistent, something even furtive, as though it were a signal rather than a warning. He listened eagerly.

Within a few seconds, as it seemed, there grew upon his ears the rhythmic throbbing of a powerful motor. It was coming nearer cautiously, he thought. He could not imagine a more unlikely route for midnight joyriding.

Discreetly he raised his head and peered through the leaves. The air was full of the glare of powerful headlights, crisscrossed by the trunks of the locust trees. It seemed from the changing direction of the lights as though the car were veering and backing after some complicated method of its own.

At last it stopped, the buzzing of the engine died away, and a shrill whistle sounded— such a whistle as a boy makes by putting his finger tips in his mouth. Through Reddes’ mind raced innumerable possibilities— murderers, kidnapers, holdup men, the Camorra— but he could be sure of nothing save that things looked bad for Clarence Waddy.

3: An Accessory After the Fact

AN answering whistle came from within the house. Then a man sprang from the automobile and hurried toward the back entrance. The moon gave sufficient light for Reddes to distinguish all that passed.

The motorist was met at the door by a man and a woman. Her white blouse shone luminously. They entered the house. After a little the men returned with heavy grips which they placed in the tonneau of the car. They made another trip to the house, returning with a curious, tall, wooden structure covered with dark wrappings. Its purpose Reddes could not imagine, but it was horribly reminiscent of the guillotine used in the French Revolution. With a shudder Reddes found himself speculating as to the purposes to which it might have been put in that lonely house of ill omen.

Having fixed the instrument, whatever it might be, on the back of the car, securing it with ropes, evidently brought for the purpose, the men returned to the house once more.

They remained invisible for perhaps ten minutes; when they came out again they were accompanied by the woman. She was a woman, that is to say, in that she wore skirts, but Reddes was filled with a sudden suspicion that she was a man, or more probably a boy in disguise; her bare dark head seemed close cropped, and she walked with a freedom of gait never associated with high heels.

Whatever her sex she carried something large and square, which might was really have been a woman’s hat box, or something intended to pass for such. But Reddes had no eyes for her; one of the men staggered under the weight of something— something limp and dead— the sight of which stirred the onlooker’s hair beneath his hat.

It was swathed in white— perhaps a sheet flung over it. It was impossible to mistake its size and shape, the helpless, limp inaction of the limbs, the terrible angle of the head hanging over the man’s shoulder. It was unquestionably the body of the slain negro— unquestionably he had been foully murdered, the mystery and secrecy of this midnight flight admitted of no doubt; the mystery was to Reddes a mystery no more. It only remained, before giving notice to the police, to discover exactly what part Clarence Waddy was taking.

It would be idle to deny that Reddes was frightened; the whole circumstances were sufficient to daunt the most undaunted. Nevertheless he felt certain that he was invisible, and so he held his ground to watch for anything that might provide a clew.

The men on reaching the car heartlessly dropped the body upon the ground in a stiff heap, while they helped the woman or disguised boy to enter. Returning to his prey, the man who had carried it lifted it with an ease, which showed him to be of exceptional strength, and with incredible callousness sat it in the rear seat beside the woman. Then, as his accomplice climbed into the driving seat, he himself entered behind and took the vacant place beside the body, so that it was supported between him and in a sufficiently life-like attitude.

Much as he longed to spring from his hiding place and seize the criminals, Reddes realized that it would be sheer madness. Such miscreants would be without a doubt armed to the teeth and ready to stop at nothing to secure their escape. That they must be hardened almost to insensibility was shown, if by nothing else, by their brutal laughter as they prepared to drive away. He would certainly notify the police at the first opportunity; for the moment there was nothing to be done.

The car had already begun to move when the man in the rear seat bent forward and said something— apparently asking a question. His accomplice replied, shaking his head as he spoke. He stopped the car, climbed over the barricade of grips beside him, and descended to the ground. There he produced a box of matches and proceeded to light the tail lamp, very much to the onlooker’s amazement.

That they should thus trouble to provide a clew for their own undoing was contrary to all his impressions of murderers and their methods. Suddenly he recalled, from his recollections of detective stories, that the most cunning criminals almost invariably leave just such obvious clews behind them— greatly to the benefit of the police department. That his murderers should thus act in accordance with established precedent was only another proof of their criminality— if further proof were needed.

It is one of the drawbacks of being only an amateur detective that you lack that amazingly detailed memory for trifles, which is so marked a quality of the professional. As the match blazed up the figures on the number plate were plainly legible; Reddes would have given a week’s salary to remember precisely what was the license number of Clarence Waddy’s big Huntingdon limousine. He was quite familiar with the car, having seen it so frequently waiting for its owner outside the Indubitable Building in Vesey Street. He was more or less certain that there were two figures of eight in the number— but no more.

Now the numbers which grew visible on the murder car were “218846.” At least he would be careful not to forget them— for with them he held the murderers in the hollow of his hand. There was something wrong with the tail lamp; apparently the wick would not ignite.

Reddes was feeling a vague doubt whether the light on Waddy’s limousine was not electric; suddenly all his doubts were solved for good and all, There was no more need to identify the car or its other occupants. As the wick suddenly caught a strong light was thrown across the face of the man bending down before it. And that face without any possibility of doubt was the face of Clarence Waddy himself.

By the time Reddes had recovered from the shock— for his darkest suspicions had not included the figure of the son of the president of the Indubitable taking an active part in the crime— the car had swept out of sight, and the throbbing of the motor was lost in the rustle of the night wind.

In deep contemplation Reddes left his hiding place and stumbled through the darkness toward Saint Theodore, his mind full of tumultuous thoughts. He was not, as he frequently reminded himself, a plotter. He was sorry— very sincerely sorry for Clarence Waddy— and especially for Clarence Waddy’s parents. He dwelt, naturally very much against his will, on the tragic picture that would be presented by the young criminal as he stood in the dock listening to the sentence, while the president and his wife sobbed in the public seats behind him. At least it would be a lesson— a sad lesson— that those who seem most to be envied are not always the happiest— that Clarence Waddy, for all his wealth and opportunities, had shown himself immeasurably inferior to that accusing figure who, very much against his will, had put the ends of justice before any personal considerations; who, in fact—

Of course properly managed the possession of such a secret, and the power which it would give over the wealthy young criminal, and incidentally over the president of the Indubitable, was not altogether easy to forget. The very word “blackmail” was to Reddes too repulsive even to be whispered, but opportunity notoriously knocks at the game door only once in a lifetime. There might be circumstances attending the crime which would make it possible for its discoverer to effect some kind of compromise with his conscience. Possibly also—

When at last he reached the town Reddes did not make at once for the police station. Instead he went to the hotel where he had left his small belongings. Finding that it was not so late as he had believed, he made his way to the depot and caught the next train back to New York.

On his way to his boarding house he made it his business to pass the Waddy home. There were lights in several of the windows. Evidently the family were at home, little dreaming that the man, who in passing paused to look up at the great marble façade, held in his hand the key to a secret which might bring the whole of their prosperity and good name crashing in ruins about them.

He felt less repugnance to the idea as the solid wealth, which that façade represented, grew into his imagination. This sort of people needed to be taught a lesson, to be made to realize that wealth is not everything, that there might be others toiling long hours in fruitless desk work to help build up their fortunes, who yet were better men than they.

He slept very little, if at all, that night; the clocks were striking three when he finally determined upon his course of action. Before nine in the morning he was standing on the door-step of the Waddy mansion, his not unnatural nervousness almost forgotten in the sense of power over that house and its destinies which the very touch of his finger upon the bell button renewed.

Mr. Clarence Waddy was at home, the butler explained, regarding Reddes with an irritating suggestion of doubt, but he was very busily engaged. Mr. Reddes retorted that he was come on a matter of life and death. The man replied, still doubtfully, that he would see.

After a little time he returned and ushered the visitor into a library, where very soon Clarence Waddy joined him, curiosity in his every feature. a tall, slim young man, with a little fair mustache, straightforward eyes, and an expression which Reddes had long since He was characterized as vacuous. Not at all the sort of young man that you would expect to commit a murder, were it not that appearances deceive.

Reddes did not beat about the bush. He detailed at once all that he had seen, and how he had come to see it. He insisted upon his unwillingness to denounce any man in whom he took so sincere an interest. He entreated Waddy to leave the country at once— while yet there was time. He himself would take no action for twenty-four hours, during which time Mr. Waddy might secure his escape and be well on his way to Mexico. Otherwise— he shrugged his shoulders— there was but one painful course open to him.

At the commencement of denunciation the unfortunate man attempted to speak, but, failing to find words, thereafter remained absolutely speechless. He sat bowed upon his chair, his face averted, though Reddes could see by the quivering of his whole frame how bitterly he felt the shame and terror of his position.

Only when the tale was told did he find power to straighten his body and gaze directly at his accuser, his features screwed into only the vague semblance of a human face. For a moment he tried to speak, then relapsed helplessly into a scream of hysterical laughter— the laughter of a man who has lost all self-control.

“I— I— I— can’t help it,” he managed to stammer at last, “you’re too—”

Reddes hastened to calm him, fearing lest any one else should overhear. He urged upon him gently the necessity of overcoming his fear, promised to do all that he could to assist in his escape, and, although— as he told himself with a pleasant glow of moral superiority— he could not bring himself to shake hands with a murderer, he patted the culprit very kindly on the shoulder, repressing any outward sign of repugnance.

His efforts were not without effect. When again the unhappy young man raised his face, he had regained self-control, and the voice in which he expressed his gratitude trembled with real emotion.

“But— really— really, you know, I— I didn’t do the killing. I was only— what do you call it— an accessory— yes, an accessory after the fact.”

A little later, again averting his face, as though struggling for mastery over his feelings, he laid his hand upon Reddes’ sleeve and begged him, before passing any final judgment, to follow him into another room for a moment.

Reddes, as the young man grew more downcast, felt an increasing liking for him and obeyed in silence.

Waddy led him across a corridor to a closed room, threw it open dramatically, preceded Reddes into the room, and suddenly dropped into the nearest chair, covering his face with his hands.

4: Angelique

UNDER less serious circumstances Reddes might have found himself somewhat embarrassed. At a table in the center of the room a man and a woman were breakfasting. They were both young and foreign in suggestion. The man was stout, and his flowing black whiskers reached almost to his waist; the hair of the woman was bobbed, and she wore a curious dress of terra cotta. Reddes thought her gown more suitable for the ballroom than the breakfast table.

Both were evidently alarmed at the sudden and silent invasion of their privacy. The man, his fork still poised in the air before his face, looked round toward the door, an expression of guilty fear in his eyes.

"I am sorry, Jules, old man,” said Waddy. “They have tracked you down after all.”

Man and woman sprang to their feet as though pulled by one wire, The man still kept the fork in his hand, though he showed no intention of using it in self-defense.

"You shall not take me. I will die rather," said the man in a strong French accent.

The woman made a declaration of what seemed a similar nature, though Reddes could not be sure, being unfortunately unacquainted with the language.

As he looked at the guilty pair he felt that he had never before realized how criminality can be stamped upon the human face. For the first time he understood the full meaning of the French word Apache.

That Clarence Waddy should consort with such people was in itself sufficient to prove him a mental degenerate. Meanwhile Waddy, still covering his face with his hands, seemed to struggle against a new outbreak of hysteria.

The Frenchman turned toward him; the woman found time to throw back a stray lock of hair from her forehead,

“What are we to do, my friend?” entreated the Frenchman. ‘“Explain— this man—what does he want?”

“I— I am sorry to say—” He struggled to master his rising emotion. “I am afraid he— he wants you— your wife— all of us.”

“You— you also— are you implicated in our ruin? Oh, my best of friends.” “It— it seems— I am an accessory. Oughtn’t to have used my car or helped you put the— the body in it.”

“And they would imprison you for that? What a country! Quels barbares! Why did we ever come here?”

The Frenchman shook his fist at the ceiling as though reproaching Providence and ran his hand through his abundant black hair. The woman maintained an attitude of watch, as though considering whether to spring upon the messenger of justice.

"It may— I gather from what he says"— Waddy was almost as moved as were his accomplices— “that— it may mean— a life sentence at any rate. But I can scarcely believe it— for a little thing like that.”

The Frenchman sat down abruptly and in some marvelous way managed to shrug his shoulders in an inimitable suggestion of despair. The woman advanced upon the expectant Reddes and burst into a flood of voluble French of which he understood not one word. For his own part he was almost overwhelmed by the amazing callousness of Waddy.

“A little thing,” he remonstrated. “You call it a little thing to drag the body—””

“But it was our own body,” objected Waddy. “At least it was Monsieur Lestocq’s body. Surely that makes difference.”

Monsieur Lestocq raised his tearstained face, and his eyes were full of appeal.

“Yes— yes— indeed it is my own body— my very own to me. It is of no use to those others— they cannot serve it to their guests as a ragout. They can do nothing with it. Oh, it is of an unknown perfection. Such joints! Never were such joints.”

Reddes had heard much of the amazing lengths to which the dwellers in the underworld of France have carried their disregard of human feelings, but before such a declaration he felt himself dumb.

"Besides— it is now all different,” went on Monsieur Lestocq more hopefully. “We have only this morning the promise of Mrs. Vanderlinden. We some can pay money. How much money do you wish?”

“Expense is no object— positively no object at all,” interjected Waddy faintly.

“All the money in New York would not buy me,” answered Reddes sternly. “I’ve only waited so long out of my regard to Mr. Waddy, although it was against my duty as a citizen. But now I shall hesitate no more. I am going at once to the police to lay all the facts before them.”

For the moment, or so it seemed to him, the Lestocqs meditated violence, but Clarence Waddy was made of less stern fiber. He motioned dumbly to them to stand back, and himself held open the door as Reddes passed through.

It could not be said that the denouncer hurried on his way to the East Fifty-fourth Street Police Station. Two or three times, indeed, he waited, looking back in the direction from which he had come, as though to reassure himself that no attempt was being made to follow him. Truth to tell he was not very sure of the wisdom of what he was about to do.

With his son up the river, or on his way to the chair, it was certain that the elder Waddy would feel none too friendly toward the man who was the direct, though innocent, cause of it. It seemed only too certain that the desk by the window looking over the Elevated in Vesey Street would have a new occupant in the near future. Even now if Clarence Waddy should follow him, appeal to his generosity, put forward some argument which should make it possible for him to compromise with his duty— well, very much would depend upon what form that offer should take.

But Clarence Waddy did not follow him, showed no signs of following him, indeed, though Reddes waited a full ten minutes at the corner of the street, with his eyes glued on the Waddy home, lest there be any mistake in his direction.

In the end he grew seriously annoyed at this neglect. If the Waddy family preferred social ruin to owing their salvation to a man poorer than themselves the sooner they were taught their mistake the better. He entered the police station with a firm step and told his story to an attentive, if rather sceptical, audience of three.

“It is my belief,” he concluded, “that the body is at this very moment concealed in the house. There was a large closet in the room. I believe those foreigners were capable of anything. My own impression is that they have led my poor friend Waddy—”

But the lieutenant did not seem interested.

When Reddes, accompanied by the lieutenant, who considered the affair sufficiently sensational for his own investigation, again reached the Waddy mansion, the butler made no demur before admitting him. Nor had the suspects made any belated attempt at flight. Instead, they were all seated at the table enjoying an excellent breakfast with appetites which fear did not seem to have impaired.

Nor were they alone.

Facing Madame Lestocq sat a grim and silent figure of a brown complexion, dressed all in white. In one extended hand it clasped a champagne glass; its baldness was concealed beneath a garland of red roses; its white drapery had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the perfect modeling of the brown arm and the perfection of the joints. It was, in a word, a superb lay figure of the kind familiar in artists’ studios— life-size, and of the latest and most scientific construction.

“My friend, Madame Lestocq,” said Clarence Waddy, acting as master of ceremonies when at last he was able to speak, “and Monsieur Lestocq. I have not the pleasure of knowing—”

“Lieutenant Henderson,” explained the officer. “Monsieur Lestocq is the famous portrait painter, whose name of course you know. He is visiting New York in connection with the exhibition of his works which is being held at the Dilettante Galleries on Fifth Avenue.”

Lieutenant Henderson, who had read all about M. Lestocq in the Sunday editions, bowed politely.

Reddes, who was also a newspaper enthusiast, shivered with a dreadful premonition.

“Monsieur Lestocq has been staying at the Hotel Bonanza.” Mr. Waddy hesitated, as though seeking a diplomatic form of words. “Owing to a delay in his remittances— anyhow, he became involved in a dispute with the management and very unkindly did not inform his friends of his predicament. I happened to offer him a shack which I have on Long Island for making open-air sketches, without knowing exactly why he wanted it. He— well, he got his baggage away, including Angelique.” He waved his hand toward the lay figure which had all the appearance of listening intently.

“Mon ange. Mon petit chou,” interrupted Madame Lestocq ecstatically.

“Being a stranger to this country,” went on Waddy, “Monsieur Lestocq was not quite sure how he stood with regard to the law.”

Lieutenant Henderson shook his head solemnly, as though to express the reverence that native and foreigner alike should feel for the law. At the same time he smiled slightly, for the tentative lawbreaker was the friend of a very important family, indeed.

“IT happened to be at Nagasacket a day or two since, and I ran over to see how they were getting on. Monsieur Lestocq did me the honor of confiding in me. I— matters have been put right at the Bonanza, and I ran down last night and brought them all back, including Angelique, to stay with us for a time. This gentleman—” he turned toward where Reddes had stood.

But Reddes was no longer in the room.

_________________

15: Mrs. Huggins's Hun

Stacy Aumonier

The Century Magazine, Jan 1919

MRS. HUGGINS'S manifestation of antipathy to her prospective son-in-law was a thing to be seen to be believed. She bridled at the sight of him. She lashed him with her tongue on every conceivable occasion. She snubbed, derided, buffeted him. She could find no virtue in his appearance, manners, or character. She hated him with consuming wrath, and did not hesitate to flaunt her animadversion in his face or in the face of her friends or of her daughter Maggie. Maggie was Mrs. Muggins's only child, and Mrs. Huggins was a widow running a boarding-house in Camden Town. Maggie was her ewe-lamb, the light of her existence, whose simple, unsophisticated character had been suddenly, within two months, entirely demoralized by the advent of this meteoric youth. Quentin Livermore had appeared from the blue, when Mrs. Huggins was very distracted at her unlet rooms, and had applied for her first floor, for which he offered a good price. He was a weak-faced, flashy, old-young man, anything between thirty and forty. He dressed gorgeously, lived sumptuously, and was employed in some government department. He was in the house less than twenty-four hours when he began to make love to Maggie, and it was the change in Maggie which particularly annoyed Mrs. Huggins. Maggie was a stenographer in a local store, earning good money, and a simple, natural girl; but when Mr. Livermore appeared on the scene, she began to speak with an affected lisp, to wear fal-lals and gew-gaws, and to do her hair in strange bangs and buns. In a few days they were going out for strolls together after supper. In a fortnight he was taking her to theaters and cinemas. In six weeks they were to all intents and purposes engaged. At least, they said they were engaged. Mrs. Huggins said they were not. In fact, she told her friend Mrs. O'Neil, in-the private bar of the Staff of Life, that she would "see that slobberin' shark damned" before he should go off with her Mag.

But on the morning when this story begins Mrs. Huggins was in a very perturbed state. It was a pleasant June morning, and she had finished her housework. She sat down to enjoy a well-merited glass of stout and to review the situation. Maggie had gone away for a few days' holiday, to stay with some cousins in Essex, and the evening before she had left there had been a terrible rumpus. Maggie had come home with her hair bobbed, looking like some wretched office-boy. After Mrs, Huggins had vented her opinion upon this contemptible metamorphosis and had cried a little, she went out, and, returning late in the evening, found her Maggie lolling on a couch in Mr. Livermore's room, smoking cigarettes and drinking port wine! It was a climax in every sense, and to add to her misfortune the Bean family, who occupied the third and a part of the fourth floor, suddenly left to go and live at Mendon, near the aeroplane works, where they were nearly all employed.

Mrs. Huggins had now no lodgers except the insufferable Mr. Livermore. It would be impossible to keep up her refined establishment on the twenty-five shillings a week that Livermore paid her without breaking into her hard-earned savings. But this fact did not disturb Mrs. Huggins so much as the difficulty of furthering a more ambitious project, which was nothing less than to get rid of Mr. Livermore while Maggie was away.

Mrs. Huggins blew the froth off the stout, took a long draft, wiped her mouth on her apron, and then continued to ponder upon the problem. No light came to her, and she was about to repeat the operation when she was disturbed by the clatter of a four-wheeled cab driving up to the front door. She looked up through the kitchen window and beheld a strange sight. The cab was laden with a most peculiar collection of trunks and boxes, and, standing by the front doorstep, was a fat man holding a cage with a canary in one hand and a violin-case in the other.

"Ah, a new lodger at last!" thought Mrs. Huggins, and she slipped off her apron and hurried up-stairs. When she opened the front door, she noticed that the fat man had thick spectacles, a Homburg hat much too small for his head, and a tuft of yellow beard between two of his innumerable chins. He put down the canary and removed his hat.

"Have I the honor to speak to the honored Mrs. Huggins?" he said.

"Mrs. Huggins is my name," answered that lady.

"Ah, so? May I a word with you?" He walked deliberately into the hall and once more set down the canary and the violin. He then produced a sheaf of papers.

"I have been regommended. May I have the pleasure of your hospitality for some time?"

"I have some rooms to let," replied Mrs. Huggins, evasively.

He bowed, and blew his nose.

"I must eggsplain in ze first place, goot lady, I am a Sherman."

There was a perceptible pause while the two eyed each other; then Mrs. Huggins said explosively:

"Oh, I can't take no dirty 'Uns in my 'ouse."

It might perhaps be mentioned at this point that the speech of Mrs. Huggins was always characterized by directness and force. The Hun bowed once more and replied:

"The matter is already at your disposition, good lady. I state my case. If you gan gonsider it, I gan assure you that all my papers are in order. The London poliss officers know me. I report to zem. I have my passports, my permits. Everything in order. I pay you vell."

Mrs. Huggins blinked at the German and blinked at the cab. The cab looked somewhat imposing, with its large trunks, and the German's face was eminently homely and kind. Her eye wandered from it to the canary, and then along the wall to the hall stand, and came to a stop at Livermore's felt hat. She equivocated.

"What sort of rooms do you want?" she said.

At this compromise of tone the Hun assumed the arbitrariness of his race. He put his things down on the hall chairs and became voluble and convincing. He was a watch- and clock-maker. His business in Hackney had been destroyed by fire. He had been offered an excellent position at a colleague's in Camden Town, the said colleague being sick and in urgent need of help. He was simple in his requirements; a bed, a breakfast, occasionally a supper. His name was Schmidt, Karl Schmidt. He was willing to pay three pounds a week for the rooms, payment in advance. He had endless "regommendations." Mrs. Huggins found herself following him up and down stairs, helping him in with trunks, and listening abstractedly. In a vague way she took to the Hun, and her mind was active with a scheme to use him for her own ends. All the trunks were installed in the third-floor rooms, and she observed him take out an old string purse and say to the cabman:

"Now have we all the paggages installed. So."

He paid the cabman, came into the hall, and shut the door. He walked ponderously up-stairs, humming to himself. Mrs. Huggins heard him busy with bunches of keys, opening and shutting trunks and putting things away in drawers. The whole thing had happened so suddenly that Mrs. Huggins still could not decide her course of action. She went down-stairs and put some potatoes on to boil. After a time she heard the Hun coming heavily down to the hall again. She went up to meet him. He waved three one-pound treasury-notes in the air and placed them on the hall-table.

"Mrs. Huggins," he said, "please to be goot enough to allow me to present you with zese. I shall be very gomfortable here. It is all satisfactory. I go now to my colleague in pizness. Then I go to eggsplain to the poliss. It is all in order. Yes. I shall not be returnable since zis evening, perhaps eight o'gloch, perhaps nine o'gloch. In any vay, I gom back before ten o'gloch. Oh, yes, before ten o'gloch." He laughed boisterously, bowed, and went out. Mrs. Huggins stared at the door, then went to the window and watched him cross the street.

"Well, I'm demned!" she muttered to herself, and fingered the three crisp treasury-notes in her hand. She went up to his room and touched all his trunks and small effects. Most of his things were locked up. She said, "Cheep! cheep!" to the canary three times, and then went down-stairs and had her dinner.

And that afternoon Mrs. Huggins became very busy. In apron, and with bare arms and a broom, she worked as she had not worked for months. The details may be spared, but the principal effect must be observed that by six-thirty that evening all Herr Fritz's luggage and effects had been installed in the first-floor room, and all Mr. Quentin Livermore's property had been piled up in a heap in the hall!

We shall also take the liberty of passing over the details of the interview which took place between Mrs. Huggins and Mr. Livermore when he came in at seven o'clock that evening on his way to change his clothes and go down West to dine. It need only be said that the accumulated antipathy of their two months' intercourse reached a climax. There may have been faults on both sides, but Mrs. Huggins was in one of her most masterful moods, and she was, moreover, armed with a brush. Mr. Livermore had only a cane and his superciliousness. He was, indeed, rather frightened, and his sneering comments on her personal appearance had little sting. His ultimate decision to leave at once and go over to Mrs. Hayward's, so that he would still be where Maggie would find him, and where, in any case, it was tolerably clean, and the landlady knew how to cook, was the only shaft which told at all, for Mrs. Hayward and Mrs. Huggins were notorious rivals. In the end a cab was secured, and by eight o'clock the triumphant Mrs. Huggins had slammed the door on her hated lodger, with a final threat that "if she saw 'im going about with 'er gal she'd bang 'im over the chops with a broom."

So excited and exhilarated was Mrs. Huggins by her victory that when he had gone, she felt it incumbent upon her to dash down to the Staff of Life for ten minutes to get a glass of beer and to unburden herself to Mrs. O'Neil. Not finding her friend there, she had two glasses of beer and hurried back. On arriving at the corner of her street she had another surprise. A taxi was standing outside her door, and a short gentleman with a dark mustache and pointed beard was banging on her door and looking up at the windows.

"Gawd's truth! What is it now?" muttered Mrs. Huggins, hurrying up.

On approaching the stranger, he turned and looked at her.

"Well, what is it?" she asked.

The gentleman smiled very charmingly and made an elaborate bow.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "so at last I have the pleasure of addressing the charming Madame Huggins! Madame, my compliments. May I address you on a professional mattare?"

He slipped a visiting-card into her hand on which was printed, "M. Jules de la Roche, 29B rue Dormi, Paris."

Mrs. Huggins stared at the card and opened her front door.

"O my Gawd!" was all that occurred to her to remark. The Frenchman— for so he apparently was—bowed again, and followed her into the hall.

"You must pardon my precipitate manners," he said. "I am very pressed. I am in London on business connnected with the French Red Cross. I have a peculiar dislike to hotels, and a lady I met in the train was kind enough to refer me to your charming pension. I shall owe you a thousand thanks if you will be kind enough to allow me to enjoy your hospitality if only for a few days, or perhaps weeks. Whatever you can do—" He waved his arms and looked quickly, almost beseechingly, round the little hall.

Mrs. Huggins wiped her mouth on her apron, and stared at the Frenchman.

"Well, this is a rum go!" she remarked I at last. "I've got a German on the first floor, a nice, quiet feller. And now you 're a Frenchy! Now, look here; if I take you in, I'm not goin' to 'ave any fightin' goin' on. D' you understand that?"

The Frenchman gave her one of his quick glances and laughed.

"My dear madame," he exclaimed, "what ees eet to me? I am of entirely a gentle disposition, and if your friend is of gentle disposition, vy should we quarrel?"

"'E's no friend of mine," interjected Mrs. Huggins. "'E's a 'Un, but 'e's a lodger. I don't make friends of my lodgers, but I treats 'em fair. If I do the fair and square thing by them, I expect 'em to do the fair and square by me; but I won't 'ave the place turned into a bear-garden by a lot of foreigners."

M. de la Roche threw back his head and laughed.

"An admirable sentiment, chère madame. Then it is settled. I take my effects immediately to— vich floor did you mention?"

"I didn't mention no floor," replied Mrs. Huggins, "but if you like to leave it at that, I dessay I can fix you up on the third, and the terms will be three pounds a week."

The face of Mrs. Huggins was perfectly straight when she demanded this extortionate sum, neither did it show any evidence of surprise when the Frenchman quite avidly agreed, and immediately paid her three pounds down in advance. He seemed a gay and companionable gentleman. He had only one valise, which he ran up-stairs with. He paid the cabman a sum which seemed to leave that gentleman so speechless he could not even express his thanks. He chatted to Mrs. Huggins merrily about the weather, the war, the food problems, the difficulties of running a lodging-house. He was intensely sympathetic about various minor ailments of which Mrs. Huggins was a victim. He listened attentively to the history of various former lodgers, but beyond eliciting the fact that the German occupied the first floor, he showed no particular interest in his fellow-lodger. He explained that he had considerable correspondence to attend to that evening, so he did not purpose to go out; but if Mrs. Huggins could scramble him a couple of eggs on toast and make him a cup of tea, he would be eternally grateful.

Mrs. Huggins was a good cook. It was a matter she took a keen personal delight in. She would neglect her housework in order to produce some savory trifle for a pet lodger. On this occasion she surprised M. de la Roche by serving him with a large ham omelet and an apple tart.

"After yer long journey, you'll want a bite of somethin'," she explained.

Any apprehensions she entertained that her house was to be turned into a beer-garden by a lot of quarrelsome foreigners were early dissipated. At half-past nine that evening Herr Schmidt came in and went up to his room. Ten minutes later M. Jules de la Roche, coming down-stairs, beheld the canary in its cage on a chair outside Herr Fritz's door.

"Ah, le petit bossu!" he remarked.

The door was ajar, and Herr Fritz stepped out.

"Bonsoir, monsieur," he said in his deep-chested voice. "Are you interested in canaries?"

The Frenchman bowed a friendly manner.

"My sympathies always go out to the caged, monsieur," he replied. "But what a pretty fellow! Am I right in suggesting that he is of the Belgian species?"

"No, sir," said the German. "Although they vas somet'ing similiar, zis is ze Scottish."

"Pardon," replied the Frenchman. "I ought to have known. I have lived at Terceira, in the Azores, where one hears canaries singing in the open all day. Eet ees entrancing."

"Gom inzide," said Herr Schmidt and sighed, "and let us talk. I am lonely."

Mrs. Huggins overheard this conversation from the hall beneath, and she smiled contentedly. It was a triumph, a bolt from the blue. She had ousted the wretched Livermore, and like manna from heaven these two gentle, simple foreigners, who were willing to pay through the neck, had dropped right into her lap. Her conscience mildly smote her that she had demanded so much from Herr Schmidt, but a rapid mental calculation had decided that he must pay at least double as a penalty for being a Hun, but at the same time it wouldn't be fair to him to take another lodger for less. She had been, in any case, prepared to bargain, and to reduce considerably her terms, and had been quite nonplussed at not being called upon to do so. So far, so good; but the difficulty of detaching the wretched Livermore from her Maggie still remained to be accomplished, for Maggie was to return the day after to-morrow, and Livermore would be sure to be always hanging about the street.

In the meantime the conversation between the two foreigners up-stairs never flagged. They became extremely friendly. The violin case laid the foundation for an intimate chat on technic, personality, Bach, nationality. From these easily devolved discussions on politics, religion, and hence, inevitably, "this regrettable war." Each man was patently sensitive of the other's feelings. They talked of everything in the abstract, and avoided as far as possible the personal equation. They found each other extremely interesting, but there arrived a point when each was aware that the other was fencing. Herr Schmidt produced a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda, but he could not persuade M. de la Roche to partake of more than one glass. It was nearly twelve o'clock when the Frenchman suddenly said:

"Well, my dear Herr Schmidt, I have had a most entrancing evening. I suggest that you dine vif me to-morrow evening. I have made de happy discovery dat our good Mrs. Huggins is a most excellent chef. Why should ve two lonely bachelors not share our meal?"

"I gannot gonzidder anyt'ing more delightful," replied Herr Schmidt. "Only I insist that you dine vif me in my room. I glaim preeminence as ze first-floor lodger." He laughed boisterously, and after further mildly disputing the matter, it was arranged accordingly.

The dinner which Herr Schmidt prevailed upon Mrs. Huggins to supply the following evening in honor of his friend M. de la Roche was of such a nature that not only had the like never been served in Mrs. Huggins's household, but probably never before in the whole environment of Camden Town. In the first place, there were oysters and grape-fruit, soup, a baked bream, a roast fowl and several vegetables; a lemon-curd tart, Welsh rarebit, and grapes, the whole mellowed with the exhilarating complement of Italian vermouth, sparkling Moselle, and a very old brandy, to say nothing of coffee, cigars, and the dazzling conversation of the two gentlemen.

The preparation of these alluring delicacies occupied Mrs. Huggins nearly the whole of the day—a day which was marred only by a regrettable scuffle in the early morning. It happened at about half-past eight. Mrs. Huggins was at work in the kitchen when she heard a commotion going on up in the hall. Hurrying up-stairs, she found M. de la Roche arguing with Quentin Livermore. The Frenchman turned to her.

"Who is dis man, madam? I know him not. He comes into the house unbidden."

And Livermore cut in:

"I 've come to collect my letters. You 're not going to keep my letters from me."

Mrs. Huggins seized her broom and cried out:

"You get out, you dirty thief and blackmailer!"

She experienced no difficulty in routing Mr. Livermore and sending him flying up the street, and after his departure she told the whole story to M. de la Roche, who kept on repeating:

"Nom de Dieu! how shocking! Quel perfide! What a villain!" He was almost in tears.

The rest of the day passed quietly. Both the gentlemen went out soon after breakfast. Herr Schmidt did not return till seven-thirty in the evening, in time for the dinner. M. de la Roche came in at five o'clock, and persuaded Mrs. Huggins to go to the nearest haberdasher's and obtain two clean shirts for him, as, owing to his imperfect knowledge of the English tongue, he was unable to obtain the sort he required. She returned in half an hour, and M. de la Roche thanked her profusely. At eight o'clock precisely he presented himself in Herr Schmidt's room, wearing an ill-fitting evening dress peculiar to Frenchmen. Herr Schmidt was also in evening dress of an ill-fitting kind peculiar to Germans. They bowed, and shook hands cordially.

"I am indeed fortunate," remarked Herr Schmidt, "in a city so desolate as London, and in a quarter so traurig as zis, to find zo sympathetic and charming a fellow-lodger."

"Tout au contraire," replied the Frenchman. "The good fortune is exclusively to me. Ah, this London! was there ever a city so abaissé, so triste?"

"Never, never," retorted Herr Schmidt.

"Now, let me offer you a glass of goot vermouth, and then ve vill these excellent oysters circumscribe while ze goot Frau Huggins prepares ze soup."

The two men sat down, and toasted each other solemnly.

"Doubtless you haf gonsiderably traveled, frient?" remarked Herr Schmidt as he disposed of his second dozen oysters.

"I would not venture to address myself as a traveler," replied M. de la Roche. "True, I have lived in the Azores, and I am at home in Egypt, Morocco, Spain, France, and Italy. But a traveler, parbleu! it means something more than that. And you, Herr Schmidt, have you adventured far?"

"No; ze fatherland— pardon me speaking of ze fatherland in zese delicate times— ze fatherland has occupied me for most a long vile, and zen zis dear Engeland, vich I love almost as much as, it occupies me too already. For ze rest, a little Dutchman, a little Svede, a little of the sea; I am a citizen of ze vide, vide vorld, isn't it?"

"Ees eet not curious," remarked M. de la Roche as Mrs. Huggins brought in the soup; "eet appears mostly that you visit countries I have not visit, and I visit countries you not visit. Strange!"

"So it happens most nearly alvays. Now I vish much to go to America. And you?"

"Ah, America! Yes, most interesting."

"You do not go to America?"

The German looked at the Frenchman with his mild eyes, and M. de la Roche shook his head.

"No, no; I don't like," he rejoined. "It does not call to me. Interesting, yes, trèsé intéressunt; but to me too matériel. Life to me must be romance. Romance first, romance second, romance all de time."

"Efen in Camden Town?" queried Herr Schmidt, slicing the bream down the center. Then he laughed. "Well, after all, vy not? It is to be found, your romance, even in material zings. I lofe material zings, and I find zem romantic. It is a figure of ze mind. Allow me to offer you zome of zis sparkling vine, if it does not to trink a German vine you disgust."

"I am a Cat'olic," replied M. de la Roche, "bot' in my religion and in appreciation of goot t'ings. To your goot healt', Herr Schmidt, and happy days ven peace shall come."

"Happy days!" solemnly replied the German. "May the vorld vonce more to reason gom!"

The wine flowed freely. The fowl was done to a nicety. The conversation never flagged. Mrs. Huggins enjoyed the dinner almost as much as her two lodgers. They were the softest things she had ever encountered in her professional career. Visions of a bounteous time despite the war floated before her mind's eye. She even decided that she would treat them fairly and squarely. She would not take advantage of their innocence; but there would be a steady accumulation of "things left over," which were her natural perquisites. She was indeed surveying the remnants of the very solid fowl, as it reclined on a dish in the hall, and was mentally performing the skilful operation of "trimming it up" without altering the general effect of the mass, when she heard Herr Schmidt's door open and shut, and he came down the stairs quietly. In the hall he produced a large timepiece from his waistcoat-pocket, and resting one hand commandingly on her shoulder, he said:

"Mrs. Huggins, in seven minutes precisely two shentlemens vill gall to visit me. Ask no questions. Show them straight up to my room, open ze door, and say, 'Mr. Skinner and Mr. Trout.' Then close ze door and retire till I gall you vonce more again."

He gave her no opportunity to reply to these instructions, but returned to his room. As the door opened she heard him crying out:

"Pardon me, dear Monsieur de la Roche. You must try von of my Contadinos. I gan really regommend them. I brought zem myself from Amsterdam the year pefore zis distressful var."

"A thousand t'anks, my dear Herr Schmidt. It is a luxury I seldom allow myself dese days."

The gentle flow of these suave pleasantries reached their appointed crisis. Each man lay back in an easy-chair, with the divine Contadino between his teeth. On the table stood the little glasses filled with the old brandy.

"Life may be very pleasant and grassifying in the midst of vickedness and sin," murmured Herr Schmidt.

"C'est très vrai," replied M. de la Roche. "It does not do even to t'ink of dese t'ings all de time."

"Friendship is vat I value beyond all else, M. de la Roche, to your goot healt'!"

As each man raised the little glass, the door opened, and Mrs. Huggins announced:

"Mr. Trinner and Mr. Snout."

Two stolid-looking gentlemen entered, and Mrs. Huggins retired.

Herr Schmidt removed the cigar from his mouth and said:

"Good evening, gentlemen," and then without changing his position, and in a voice without any trace of German accent, he addressed M. de la Roche as follows:

"Ephraim Hyems, I have the honor to arrest you on an extraordinary warrant issued by the United States Government for embezzlement in connection with the Pennsylvania Small Arms Trust, and moreover with an attempt to convey certain information to an enemy agent in this country, under Article 36 of the Defense of the Realm Act."

The Frenchman leaned forward, and clutching the arms of the chair, he gave vent to a very un-Frenchified expression. He said:

"Gee-whiz!"

"It hardly required that native vernacular to convince me that you were not a Frenchman. As a matter of fact, I have lived for many years in Paris, and if I may say so without giving offense, Monsieur de la Roche, your French never convinced me at all."

The pseudo-Frenchman sat here apparently dazed. At length he said:

"Professionally speaking, Herr Schmidt, it is regrettable that our rôles were not reversed. It is true that I know little French, but I happen to have spent some years in Germany. I studied medicine at Leipsic. Your German is appalling. It would not deceive a London policeman. In this present case I am fully prepared to throw up my arms and to cry 'Kamerad!' only I would ask you, as a last request, whether you or your assistants would kindly extract my pocket-book from my breast-pocket, and examine my card and any other papers you or they may find. And, finally, whether you will allow me to finish this glass of very excellent brandy."

Herr Schmidt bowed.

"Trout," he said, "turn out all his pockets and hand me his pocket-book. In the meantime the gentleman can enjoy his last plunge of dissipation."

The solemn-looking sub-inspector did as he was told, and handed Herr Schmidt the pocket-book. That gentleman turned it over slowly and drew out a card. When his eyes alighted on it, his face expressed sudden amazement, and then he threw back his head and laughed explosively.

"Cyrus G. Vines!" he exclaimed. "Cyrus G. Vines of the New York police! It's quite true we 've been expecting Mr. Cyrus G. Vines for some time on this Hyems case. Holy Christopher! and are you really Cyrus G. Vines? Well, I'm damned! Also, I'm glad, if it's true. We shall require a little more evidence on that count. But in the meantime will you kindly explain your presence in Mrs. Huggins's house in Camden Town?"

Mr. Vines grinned. There was no longer any of the Frenchman about him. In fact, he carefully removed the little tuft of beard and mustache of the conventional stage Gaul. He puffed at his cigar and said:

"Unless my calculations are at fault, you will be Inspector Hartrigg. It is quite true my duty was to report right away to Scotland Yard. But it happens I'm a young man. Inspector, and I have ambitions to make good. I arrived at Liverpool last Friday; the boat was thirty hours ahead of time. I just thought I'd buzz around for a day or two on my own and see whether I couldn't get the case a bit straighter to hand over. I got wise that this Hyems galoot was boarding on the first floor of this shanty. I tracked him here and found him disguised as a Hun! Do you take me?"

The "Hun" pulled at the little tuft of beard between his chins, and twirled his genuine mustache.

"Well, this is a nice go!" he said. "Between us we have missed the quarry. I confess I only traced him to this house. I didn't know which floor. But when I discovered that there was only one other lodger, and he a Frenchman, the case seemed obvious."

"Say, Inspector," interjected the American, "what was your idea of this German stunt?"

"Hyems has been further suspected of dealing with a German agent, as I have told you. I thought a nice friendly German might draw him out. That is all. It is quite true I don't know German well, although I spent a long time in France. Now, tell me what was your idea of the French stunt, Vines?"

"A Frenchman enjoys certain prerogatives," Vines smilingly replied. "He can be talkative, inquiring, sympathetic. He can even make inquiries concerning 'things of the heart' without giving offense. Now, Mrs. Huggins is a very charming and sympathetic woman, and she has a daughter, I believe, although I've never had the pleasure of meeting her."

"That's true. But how does this affect Hyems?"

The "Frenchman" rose and said:

"Inspector, I understand that I am technically under arrest. But you have already granted me two favors while in that condition, and I am bold enough to appeal for a third. It is that you all three should accompany me to my room on the third floor and observe the devastating effect of love."

The four men trooped up-stairs, and Vines threw open the door of his bedroom. On his bed lay Mr. Livermore, neatly gagged and bound.

"This is our friend Hyems," remarked Vines. "We will remove the gag. I put it there because I didn't want our dinner disturbed by any fuss or excitement."

He removed the gag and said:

"How are you, Hyems?"

The wild-eyed man on the bed was in a state of collapse. He glanced at the other four men and closed his eyes, muttering:

"Go on. It's a do."

Inspector Hartrigg looked at the man carefully. Then he said:

"My God! you're right. That's Hyems. Skinner and Trout, stay with this man for a few minutes. He's under arrest, remember, I'll call you in a few minutes. Vines, come down to my room again. There are one or two points I'd like to clear up."

"Herr Schmidt" and "M. de la Roche" returned to the room below and surveyed the scene of their repast, and then both laughed.

"Come, a little more of this excellent brandy. Monsieur de la Roche, and then tell me how you accomplished your capture."

They filled their glasses once more.

"It all came fairly easy," explained Vines, "when I had once ingratiated myself with Mrs. Huggins. She's a daisy, that woman. She was full of this story about Livermore and her Maggie; but it was not till this morning, when the mail came, that I got wise on the real trend of things. Wherever I am, I always like to be right there when the mail's delivered. There's information of all sorts to be picked up even from the outside. This morning there was a long envelop franked and sealed, addressed to 'Herr Schmidt.' I was just crazy to open that communication, and I was just on the point of securing it when Mrs. Huggins came fussing into the hall. I retired to my room again for about fifteen minutes. When I got back to the hall the long envelop addressed to you had vanished, and a stranger was fingering the mail. I called for Mrs. Huggins. When she came, she soon put the stranger to flight with a broom and her tongue. I was a very sympathetic Frenchman, and then it was she told me the whole story of Mr. Livermore and her Maggie. While she was speaking, the whole truth came to me in a flash. I realized that Livermore was Hyems, but I was darned if I could place you. The capture was dead easy. In the hurried removal of Livermore's things last night, our good landlady had overlooked one or two trifles. She had apparently dumped some on that old chest at the top of the kitchen stairs. I found there a small box in which I discovered several notes and billets doux signed by 'M.' I am no mug at faking calligraphy. That afternoon I despatched a note to Mr. Livermore in the handwriting of M.

'Do come at five-thirty. Mother will be out. Tremendously important. M.'

I underlined 'tremendously important' four times. It was one of the lady's minor characteristics. At five-thirty Mrs. Huggins was very considerately buying me a couple of shirts in the High Street. I was alone in the house. I let Mr. Livermore in. The rest was just dead easy— as easy as skinning a rabbit.'

"Herr Fritz" laughed.

"Well, Vines," he said, "I congratulate you. It was a smart piece of work. I feel convinced you are destined to 'make good.' It looks as though our friend would even now be free if he hadn't been so enterprising as to rob the mail this morning and steal his own warrant of arrest."

"Ah, so that's what it was."

"I notified Chief Inspector Shapples yesterday that I had my man under observation, but when I left the Yard the warrant was not complete. The whole thing seemed so simple that he said he'd post it to me, which is quite an irregular proceeding, but one we occasionally indulge in. When it did not come this morning I judged that you had stolen it, and so I obtained a new one to-day. I must say, in fairness to our service, that you have been watched and followed all day and that you would have found it somewhat difficult to make an escape. I did not arrest you before because I did not wish to miss our little dinner this evening, and I also wanted to glean some information about other parties who are still at large. I thought you were fencing very skilfully, and, if you will allow me to say so, I am glad now that I was quite on the wrong tack."

"Inspector," replied the American, "I have not enjoyed such a dinner for a very, very long time, and I'm real glad to have made your acquaintance."

"After this success I hope the authorities will permit you to assist me in unraveling other little troubles in connection with the case before you return to New York. Here's to your good health and prosperity!"

"And yours, Inspector, to say nothing of Mrs. Huggins! My, isn't she a peach!"

"YOU KNOW, dearie," said Mrs. Huggins, three weeks later, in the private bar of the Staff of Life, to her friend Mrs. O'Neil, "it's a very rum thing about gals. There's my Mag, now. Lord! how she took on when this 'ere case came up. She was going to do this, that, and the other; but when they reely took 'im away, she calmed down like the lamb she is. And now she's already walking out with Sandy Waters, as nice a young feller as you could wish to meet. He's a soldier, you know, an officer; 'e's got all these 'ere stripes on 'is arm. A quartermaster, that's what 'e is; gets 'is perks all over the place. Gets quite a good livin', and when 'e goes, she gets 'er maintenance and a bob a day what 'e allots 'er like, to say nothin' of seven and six for the first child, six shillings for the second, three and six for the third, and three bob apiece for the rest; that is, if the war lasts long enough. They 're as sweet on each other as a couple of gumdrops in a glass bottle."

Mrs. O'Neil blew the froth off the stout.

"It's a wonderful interestin' case," she said, "what wif all this spyin' and cheatin' and stealin'. Lord! what a narrer escape you 'ad, Mrs. 'Uggins! 'Im comin', too, and stealin' the postman's letters in the mornin'. What a villain!"

Mrs. Huggins coughed, and cleared her throat. Then she looked thoughtfully across her glass and said:

"Well, you know, dearie, it's rather funny about that part. Of course, you know, it's nothing departmental to the case, as they say, or I might 'ave spoken out in court about it; but as a matter of fact, 'e never pinched that letter at all."

Mrs. O'Neil looked aghast, and Mrs. Huggins winked mysteriously.

"No. You see," she whispered, "it was like this 'ere. I was very rushed that mornin', what with the to-do of Mr. Smith's dinner, and that, and I couldn't get the b'iler to go. I never take no noospapers now. There's nothin' in 'em except about this bloomin' war. I takes my 'Reynold's' on Sunday, but as fire-paper that don't last long. Lately I 've taken to usin' these 'ere circulars what come from the sales, you know— spring goods, white sales, and so on. I never looks at 'em. I simply rips 'em open and shoves 'em into the b'iler fire. On that mornin', being 'ard-pressed as it were, I runs up into the 'all, and seein' circulars there, I cops 'old of 'em and runs down to the scullery. I rips 'em open and shoves 'em in. It was not till I got the b'iler goin' that I realized that one of the circulars 'ad a great red sealin'-wax blob on the envelop, and it was all official-like. It was too late then, but I thinks to myself: 'I burnt somethin' I didn't ought to then. That was a summons or somethin'.' Soon after that I 'eard the rumpus up-stairs."

"Lord!" exclaimed Mrs. O'Neil. "You run a risk there, Annie."

"As I say," repeated Mrs. Huggins, "it wasn't departmental to the case. There was enough proved against 'im to 'ang 'im in this country and quarter 'im in America without draggin' in a silly old envelop like that."

"Well, I 'ope your Mag'll be 'appy," said Mrs. O'Neil, wiping her mouth.

"My Mag'll be all right. Don't you worry," replied Mrs. Huggins.

_____________________

Index to "Past Masters" stories, by author.

Issues 31-41

I never envisaged this series of original anthologies going into so many issues, and the ever-growing index to all issues was becoming unwieldy.  Accordingly, I have now divided the Index.  This Index commences with Past Masters 31.

The Index to Issues 1 to 30 can be found in Past Masters 30, or as a stand-alone document uploaded to the Kindle and Epub libraries at MobileRead.

The stories are arranged in Alphabetical order of Author's surname, or if the author's name is consistently a pseudonym, that pseudonym (eg "Owen Oliver").  They are then in alphabetical order of title, disregarding "A", "An" and "The".

____________

Cleve F. Adams

Frame For a Lady 38

Lewis Allen

Pinched 39

Robert L. Ahern

Murder Needs No Motive  34

Anonymous

The Lady Detective's Story 32

F. Anstey

The Talking Horse  34

Alice and Claude Askew

Phyllis in the Wood  40

Stacy Aumonier

Mrs. Huggins's Hun  41

The Perfect Murder  41

Lillian Bamburg

The Missing Pearls  39

Robert Barr

The Doom of London   39

Charles Beadle

The Double Scoop 39

Wolcott LeClear Beard

A Ledge of Safety 33

Frederick R. Bechdolt

The Case of Mimbres  37

Randolph Bedford

Filamena's Hula 39

The Man Who Held the Wires  39

H Bedford-Jones

Apache Gold 31

The Arizona Callahan  37

The Devil's Fire 31

The Devil is Dead 31

The Fog at Fiddler's Green 31

The King's Pipe 34

Lady of the Evil Eye 31

Sons of Kalewa 31

Leslie Beresford

Eastern Guile 35

M. McDonnell Bodkin

The Murder on the Golf Links  41

Christopher B. Booth

In His Brother's Job  40

Mr Clackworthy and the Auto Rim  40

Mr Clackworthy Goes to Jail 40

Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream  41

Mr. Clackworthy's Return  41

The Sparrow  40

Tardy, but on Time (as by John J. Chichester)

Ellis Parker Butler

An Experiment in Gyro-Hats  37

Hats and Lilies 37

The Heckby Hill Murder 38

Mr. Marston's Chauffeurette  40

Egerton Castle

The Closed Door  35

Anna Alice Chapin

By Way of Experience 40

G. K. Chesterton

The White Pillars Murder 41

C. Langton Clarke

The Detective for the Defense 33

Richard Connell

The Grim House  41

Dorothea Conyers

Lord Hillayton's Settlement 35

Ted Copp

Blackmail Moll 36

Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey

The Bigelow Murder Mystery  40

Charles Dickens

To be Taken with a Grain of Salt  39

Captain Dingle

Homeward Bound 33

Deferred 33

George Allan England

Buzzards   38

Drugged  38

George Manville Fenn

Lady Florry's Gems  34

Francis Flagg

The Blue Dimension 33

The Heads of Apex 33

J. S. Fletcher

The Manor House Mystery  41

Elliott Flower

The Elusive Ten Dollar Bill 36

J. M. Fry

The Ring   38

Emile Gaboriau

The Little Old Man of Batignolles

Lady Gilbert

Aurora's Treasure 35

Guy Gilpatric

The Crafty Jerko-Slovaks 32

The Ladies of Catsmeat Yard  37

One Good Tern  35

The Rolling Stone  41

Winifred Graham

Pan   39

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Dancer's Mascot  35

Headon Hill

Rogue's Legacy 32

J. L. Hornibrook

Captain Cronhelm's Blunder 35

Oliver Maddox Hueffer

Mistrusted Sight 41

S. B. H. Hurst

The Brightest Jewel of Them All  32

Marianne Kent

A Black Diamond  35

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Dragoman's Slave Girl 35

George L. Knapp

The Family Compact  37

Thomas H. Knight

Old City of Jade  36

Alun Lewis

Private Jones 39

William J Locke

Ladies In Lavender 36

Marie Belloc Lowndes

Popeau Intervenes  41

Charles J. Mansford

The Dervish of the Nile Pyramid 34

The Great Dial of the Gold-Finders 33

The Hidden Egyptian Shield  34

The Lost Fetish of Walai 35

The Veiled Idol of Kor 32 '

The Wizard of Swazi Swamp   37

Mrs. L. T. Meade

Beauty Dear 32

The Yellow Dragon Vases 32

Mrs L. T. Meade and Dr Clifford Halifax, M.D.

The Strange Case of Captain Gascoigne 31

With the Eternal Fires 32

The Small House on Steven's Heath 33

"To Every one His Own Fear"  34

C S Montanye

Prey  40

Arthur Morrison

A Lucifo Match 36

Clarence Herbert New

The Attack from Moscow 32

Bill Garford’s Last Play (Culpeper Zandtt) 36

The Boss (Culpeper Zandtt)  37

A Challenge to the Submarine  36

The Island of Heaven and Hell 32

The Man Who Forgot  37

The Mystery at Mulungban  (Culpeper Zandtt)  37

A Night in the Kremlin 34

The Secret of Banda Sea 34

Owen Oliver

The Cape Conspiracy  35

A Pretty Woman 31

A Rapid Conveyance  36

Success 40

Frederick C. Painton

Narcotic Man  36

What! No Imagination? 38

Max Pemberton

The Cripple at the Mill  34

Last Across 39

The Lepers Guest   37

G. G. Pendarves

The Eighth Green Man  35

Hugh Pendexter

It Might Have Happened Otherwise  32

Kingbird 33

A New Keeper of the Wampum  39

The Raven Mocker 33

Wolf Medicine 41

Ernest M. Poate

Doctor Bentiron's Addict Case 40

Plain Soda 40

Three Alike 40

Through the Looking Glass 40

Vials of Wrath 40

Well Done  40

Lewis Ramsden

Désirée 32

C. S. Raymond

The Wireless Death 36

Robert Reeves

Alcoholics  Calamitous 39

Bail Bait  39

Dance Macabre 39

Morgan Robertson

The Subconscious Finnegan 36

Arthur Somers Roche

The Dayless Diamonds 32

A Flutter in Finance 32

"Illimore!" 31

The Premiere Danseuse 32

The Robbery at the Café Ravasan 31

The Victim of Amnesia 31

William Merriam Rouse

The Nitwit 36

Victor Rowan

Four Wooden Stakes  38

Perley Poore Sheehan

Dead Men Talk  38

Helen Simpson

A Posteriori   41

Annie S. Swan

The Diplomat  38

William Alexander Taylor

Intermere 33

Guy Thorne

Sir Patrick Armagh's Knife  39

Florence Warden

Grimgriffenhoof  39

F A M Webster

Towards Morning 33

Carolyn Wells

The Mystery of the Jade Buddha 40

Henry S. Whitehead

Jumbee 37

Raoul Whitfield

The Caleso Murders 32

Diamonds of Dread  38

Inside Job 36

Rivals of the Clouds 31

Shooting Gallery  42

Silence House 36

Sinners' Paradise 33

William Alron Wolff

Bait, Hook and Sinker  34

_________________

Table of Contents

- 1: Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream / Christopher B. Booth

- 2: The Rolling Stone / Guy Gilpatric
- 3: Shooting Gallery / Raoul Whitfield
- 4: Popeau Intervenes / Marie Belloc Lowndes
- 5: The Perfect Murder / Stacy Aumonier

- 6: The White Pillars Murder / G. K. Chesterton

- 7: The Manor House Mystery / J. S. Fletcher

- 8: The Murder on the Golf Links / M. McDonnell Bodkin

- 9: A Posteriori / Helen Simpson

- 10: Wolf Medicine / Hugh Pendexter

- 11: Mr. Clackworthy's Return / Christopher B. Booth

- 12: Tardy, but on Time / John J. Chichester

- 13: The Grim House / Richard Connell

- 14: Mistrusted Sight / Oliver Maddox Hueffer

- 15: Mrs. Huggins's Hun / Stacy Aumonier

- Cumulative Index Nos 31-41